natecooper.net

I downloaded Chrome some time last week and have so far been happy with the results. Very fast browser. I know it’s still new and all but I have run in to a few problems.

The following one I find a little bit hilarious:

Our most recent positing on Craigslist elicited an odd reCaptcha moment:

To add a bit of context: our posting on craigslist was for a room in our apartment. We were using my girlfriend’s computer. She is jewish. So the “random generation” was all the more to the point and bizarre in it’s hilarity. [The room is still available and open to one of any faith]

Perhaps her computer is just sending her messages in general. Here’s what iPhoto had to say about her:

I find this especially hilarious.

(via Married to the Sea)

SuperNews Twouble with Twitters // Current

This is too priceless. Just oodles of lulz.

It’s been a couple weeks since I finished Steven Johnson’s 1997 book, “Interface.” Though I’d like to say that I’ve been stirred by it’s profoundity enough to be stewing on my own thoughts for a post, the truth is that I haven’t been entirely changed. That isn’t to say that the book is that much out of touch or contains bad ideas. But frankly, it was written 10 years too early. Many of the complaints and questions aroused by the book’s content have been settled or decidedly answered in the decade since it’s first publication.

Though it mentions blogging off-handedly, the book seems to focus a lot on news websites failing to take into account the striking influence and change brought about by community-centered news-sharing. Not to mention the inability to foresee (who could?) the rise of social-centric/web 2.0 news aggregation (read: Digg, Reddit). Of course, it’s hard to fault Johnson. Instead it may have been his musings and insistent resurrection of Mcluhan-like observation that sparked many of the social-tech innovations and cognitive queries seen in the ensuing years.

What’s hard to work through, from my perspective today, is the laborious overtures on long-dead technologies. Microsoft’s Bob is discussed at length over several chapters, though mostly in the context in how its metaphors ultimately fail. Johnson devotes nearly an entire chapter to frames in web-pages. In some ways it’s nice to think we’ve moved so far away from these technologies that to see them discussed in such a serious context is nearly laughable. This of course also begs the question of what will seem old-hat and silly a decade from today?

Johnson writes about The Palace as an example of the coming possibilities (remember ‘97) of a graphical chat-like forum. It was fun in this instance to reminisce. I remember bouncing around in The Palace and thinking what a wonderfully, grand experience it was back then when I would have been in High School. What’s sad reading about it now is, of course, how close Johnson was to seeing such a drastic reorganizing of graphical, social networks. I would have loved to read his take on exploring World of Warcraft and Second Life as social-information spaces. Even the explosion of Facebook in recent years seems like a great example of rearranging information space within a social, graphical environment.

In short, while I really enjoy Johnson’s work and his excellent channeling of Mcluhan to critique a medium– even going so far as to adamantly suggest interface should be understood as an artistic medium– it’s timeliness falls short. Such is the problem with writing about technology and culture. A critique written two minutes ago is immediately out of date. Here’s to reading this blog post ten years from now and reminiscing and laughing about how out of date it is. So it goes.

With the ease of posting provided by Tumblr it seems like everyone is tumbling now a-days. I’d venture a reason for their success- aside from ease of use- is how Tumblr is marketed. “I don’t blog. I have a Tumblr.”

Though I have hundreds of nice things to say about Tumblr I also have a few gripes. One of the biggest interface flaws I see are the lack of comments on posts. Of course you can enable commenting on posts in the settings but the fact that the features is disabled by default is a bit disappointing.

We get it. Tumblr is not Livejournal.

It is great that people don’t use it to whine about their personal lives and start long threads along the lines of “It really wasn’t your fault. He was just being an asshole.” But what makes blogging so interesting as a medium is the conversational tone that online scrapbooks and random shout-outs can take. Having a blog without comments is the equivalent of mass text-messaging a bunch of blocked phone numbers.

We can comment on posted items on Facebook and it doesn’t turn into long, drawn-out threads. In fact it’s welcoming to get the occasional one line kudos like “wow” or “awesome” after uploading a pic or linking to a long-form story from a blog or news site.

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In retaliation here are a few Tumblog posts I felt inclined to comment on but was barred from doing so:
correct bandaging of feline stigmata
Awesome title.

welcome to your destiny
Welcome to puberty.

60 Christmas Photoshop Tutorials
Way to exploit the goyim.

Actually on second thought maybe it’s better they don’t have comments enabled. It’s not their fault. I’m just being an asshole.

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Photo by flickr: thivierr modified under GNU Free Documentation license as follows: cropped and renamed file.

Been doing a fair amount of offline reading so haven’t had as much to write about. Read Everything Bad Is Good for You and was pretty impressed. The book starts as almost a defense of video games as a complex medium, despite it’s being maligned at best as overly simplistic and at worst as degrading society. Steven Johnson’s assertions in the first half of the book as he traces the intricacy in popular culture through television, film and gaming are a great summation but no surprise to anyone familiar with Marshal Macluhan.

Where the meat of the book lies is in the second half when he supports his argument that not only is popular culture more complex than it was 30 years ago but it actually is making society smarter. He uses sociological studies to prove his points and in doing so goes one further in opening up the debate about the effects media has on our minds — even to the point of increasing IQs.

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While in California (my two week trip was also a reason for my lack of posts) I had a few conversations about Blogging, both writing and reading. Most I’ve spoken with seem to express having too little time to spend pouring over blogs and even less to write their own content. It’s interesting because those same contacts would likely agree with Johnson’s argument about the complexity of television with multithreading.

In the same span of time friends, would tell me they didn’t have the time to read blogs or write about their own interests they would extol the virtues of decoding an episode of Lost. I have many friends- smart friends mind you- here in NYC that spend hours on World of Warcraft. I don’t doubt that my acquaintances would feel vindicated by reading Johnson’s tome. In fact, reading it myself I’ve been somewhat inspired to pay more attention to T.V. and look into video gaming as a practice of sharpening my mind.

Johnson himself doesn’t touch much on Blogging and the internet. Sure he mentions how it opens new avenues for viewers and players to critique and dissect T.V. and video games. He also mentions the benefit of all that reading that’s going on since he is quick to note the virtues of rich narrative over the cognitive gains of video games and visual media.

What I wonder, however, is a deeper elaboration on how Blogging and the internet affect society and the central nervous system the same way Macluhan remarks about T.V. and its effects.

This isn’t so much of a criticism of the book, in fact, I was very taken by its arguments and the questions it raised. I’m a huge defender of popular culture as a valid and important discourse. I guess I’m just looking for Blogging to be considered in the same light.

Just saw this commercial on the T.V. during my riotous trip to California. This little Bluetooth headset-looking thing is basically a gigantic hearing aide. Hear the emcee yell at your Bingo! game.. creepily spy on your neighbors and children. Bring to parties to eavesdrop/stalk attractive women! It’s amazing!

This article by the New York Times was on Digg’s front page and by now must be common knowledge. The sacrifice of privacy our new president-elect must make will undoubtably be difficult especially since, as this article points out, Obama is as addicted to his smart phone as the rest of modern, western civilization.

What was more astounding to me, however, was this sentence from the article:

“Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.”

Really? Really? First president to have a laptop on his desk? I can’t say I would be shocked to discover that Bush was a technophobe — I understand the luddite philosophy even if I disagree with it. But if Obama were to for some reason not use a computer I would fear for our country. So a step in the right direction but shockingly one 16 years over-due (if not more).

The passage of Prop 1a is a great opportunity and for me somewhat surprising given this is the first time I’ve voted in a major election outside of California. (As is of course the disappointing passage of Prop 8). The California High Speed Rail Blog has published an excellent list of Next Steps concerning where to go from here to support the High Speed Rail system. In my mind the biggest thing on that list as far as forward thinking planning has to support of current infrastructure (point 6). However, supporting existing rail infrastructure alone is simply one piece of the puzzle. A drastic restructuring of zoning and city planning must simultaneously occur to not only ensure the success of the system but to restructure California to absorb the overwhelming population growth expected in the coming decades.

To be sure, California is going to grow larger and the High Speed Rail project is a landmark affirmation for focusing that growth in existing urban centers in the state. However, the cities themselves need to act resolutely to capitalize on the significant investment to enact change. While in the past several decades urban centers across the state have been financing transit infrastructure improvements — the latest and most notable being Los Angeles county’s Measure R; what has lagged in the state is significant rewriting of archaic (more…)