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infovore + technology   86

An Essay on the New Aesthetic | Beyond The Beyond | Wired.com
"Modern creatives who want to work in good faith will have to fully disengage from the older generation’s mythos of phantoms, and masterfully grasp the genuine nature of their own creative tools and platforms. Otherwise, they will lack comprehension and command of what they are doing and creating, and they will remain reduced to the freak-show position of most twentieth century tech art. That’s what is at stake." Loads of good stuff in this Sterling essay, but this is the leaper-out for me: the reminder - as I fervently behave - about truly understanding the things you work in. And in this case: the reminder that all the old metaphors of computation are rarely true. Computers are not intelligent; they do not see or hear. But nor are they stupid, blind, or deaf. They are just other.
newaesthetic  brucesterling  metaphor  computing  technology 
8 weeks ago by infovore
Agile Software Is A Cop-Out; Here’s What’s Next | Forrester Blogs
"Software development is not pure coding, engineering, architecture, management, or design. It is cross-disciplinary. Better yet, it is its own discipline. It is more akin to making a movie than to building automobiles on an assembly line. The studio revolves around talent. Great software talent means renaissance developers who have passion, creativity, discipline, domain knowledge, and user empathy. These traits are backed by architecture, design, and by technical know-how that spans just knowing the technology flavor of the day. Process is the studio; it has structure but is flexible enough to optimize talent and tools." This post is as dogmatic as what it rails against, but it's good at finding flaws in dogma and then pushing towards a more sympathetic view. And this paragraph is the best bit.
software  development  culture  technology 
october 2011 by infovore
Obituary: printf("goodbye, Dennis"); | The Economist
"All operating systems know when they were born. Their internal clocks start counting then, so they can calculate the date and time in the future. It is unclear whether it was Mr Ritchie or Mr Thompson who set the so-called start Unix time at January 1st, 1970. That moment came to be known as the epoch. Mr Ritchie helped bring it about. And with it, he ushered in a new era." Which is as poetic a way as any of expressing how deeply rooted K&R are in the modern world.
dennisritchie  economist  obituary  technology  unix  c 
october 2011 by infovore
The pace of change « matt.me63.com – Matt Edgar
"A billion drinks per day of Coca-Cola is an amazing thought, but such uniformity is a symbol of inertia, not dynamism. For the most part world trade still travels at the speed of shipping containers, not data packets." I chatted to Matt at dConstruct about this, and I'm really glad he's written it up: so much good examples and thought, about recognising the difference between pace and impact, of attention versus raw numbers.
technology  change  writing  progress  mattedgar 
september 2011 by infovore
Rhizome | Drone Ethnography
"You are obsessed with drones. We all are. We live in a drone culture, just as we once lived in a car culture. The Northrop-Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is your '55 Chevorlet. You just might not know it yet." This is all brilliant, word-for-word.
drones  technology  surveillance  newaesthetic  swarm  extelligence 
july 2011 by infovore
Sensor-Vernacular – Blog – BERG
"It is – perhaps – at once a fascination with the raw possibility of a technology, and – a disinterest, in a way, of anything but the qualities of its output. Perhaps it happens when new technology becomes cheap and mundane enough to experiment with, and break – when it becomes semi-domesticated but still a little significantly-other. When it becomes a working material not a technology." This is all great stuff.
sensors  materials  technology  fabric  nowness 
may 2011 by infovore
Abandonwear Clothing | The Place for Retro Tech Clothing
"A history of Silicon Valley failure written in T-Shirts." Much as I'm trying to wear fewer T-Shirts, wow, there's a lot here I'd wear in a flash, and not out of hipster irony. SSI! Sierra On-Line! Infocom! Microprose! Accolade! Brøderbund! Brilliant.
clothes  history  technology  tshirts  geek 
april 2011 by infovore
W. Brian Arthur Vs Silicon Roundabout, ‘Start-Up Britain’ and other shake-and-bake approaches « Magical Nihilism
"Deep craft is more than knowledge. It is a set of knowings. Knowing what is likely to work and what not to work. Knowing what methods to use, what principles are likely to succeed, what parameter values to use in a given technique. Knowing whom to talk to down the corridor to get things working, how to fix things that go wrong, what to ignore, what theories to look to. This sort of craft-knowing takes science for granted and mere knowledge for granted. And it derives collectively from a shared culture of beliefs, an unspoken culture of common experience." Craft / scenius / place / knowledge. The W Brian Arthur sounds great, and Matt's point - that building strength in a sector is building culture, and that requires investment in something that won't see immediate returns (rather than "five-year plans" and "strategies") is acute. Very good stuff.
innovation  technology  culture  learning  london 
march 2011 by infovore
The Technium: Computational X
"The best signpost to the future I know is to follow whatever happens after the word "computational."" Kevin Kelly being smart/interesting/as usual.
future  computation  progress  technology  innovation 
march 2011 by infovore
The Most Popular Phone in the World
"This is what the next generation of the mega-selling phone will look like. They'll be rough facsimiles of the high-end smartphones forged for well-heeled buyers, stripped of fat and excess—an embodiment of compromise. They'll be 90% of the phone for 20% of the price, with FM radios instead of digital music stores, and flashlights instead of LED flashes. This is how the other half will smartphone, if you want to be so generous as to call the developing world's users a half. We're not even close." Yes.
technology  mobile  design  phones  hardware 
october 2010 by infovore
The Prosthetic Imagination | > jim rossignol
"By enabling the brain to manipulate with virtual systems, to engage with simulation, it creates systems than span the mental and the virtual, the biological and the electrical. Also, even more significantly to my point, our imagination is not a description as a book is a textual description, or a film is a visual description. It is, instead, a model." This is good, and the links are great, too.
technology  imagination  games  cyborgs  jimrossignol  prosthesis 
september 2010 by infovore
Technology and the novel, from Blake to Ballard | Books | The Guardian
"I know which side I'm on: the more books I write, the more convinced I become that what we encounter in a novel is not selves, but networks; that what we hear in poems is (to use the language of communications technology) not signal but noise. The German poet Rilke had a word for it: Geräusch, the crackle of the universe, angels dancing in the static."
writing  technology  culture  novel  tommcarthy 
september 2010 by infovore
Lee Maguire – Guided by the Whispers of Angels
Nice post on future interfaces, but primarily bookmarked because I can *never* find that GITS:SAC still when I need it, and it's *brilliant*.
newspapers  future  interface  scifi  design  technology  gits 
august 2010 by infovore
Conflict Minerals and Blood Tech — The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century
"The Enough Project says that auditing component supply chains at the smelters to see whether the metal was sources from “clean” places like Australia or Canada instead of lining the pockets of Congolese warlords would add about one cent to the price of a cellphone, and that this figure originates from within the industry. I’d happily pay a thousand times that for each of my devices – a mere ten bucks – to ensure that I wasn’t bankrolling rape and murder." Depressing, and a very, very good point. It doesn't make me any surer of what to do, sadly.
conflict  technology  manufacturing  congo  activism 
july 2010 by infovore
The Technium: Predicting the Present, First Five Years of Wired
"Money is just a type of information, a pattern that, once digitized, becomes subject to persistent programmatic hacking by the mathematically skilled." (Lots of other good stuff here, but I wanted to note this one down).
trends  wired  quotations  technology  future 
june 2010 by infovore
Nick Sweeney · things to make and do
"When I look at the iPad, I see something my dad could use without hand-holding to find the history of that banjo, to seek out those screws, to look at old video of Sonny Terry, to feed his glorious practical creativity, unencumbered by the need to learn the habits and quirks of computing, and not relying upon a transatlantic support department. There’s a liberation in open things (and opening things) but there’s a far greater one in how things can open up people." Nick Sweeney is right.
ipad  creativity  freedom  technology  nicksweeney  writing 
april 2010 by infovore
Raiding Eternity - Myspace - Gizmodo
"Somewhere in the future, a picture of David Minor—in jeans and a tie, face beatific under a studio light, sleeves rolled up to expose the Eugene Debs quote tattooed on his arm—is berthed in a database table in off-system storage, waiting to be remade." Lovely, sharp, writing from Joel Johnson.
joeljohnson  memory  internet  technology  writing 
march 2010 by infovore
Chris Harrison's mind-blowing "Skinput" interface - Core77
"Harrison's concept--which works, by the way--uses the body as a sort of echo chamber. Which is to say, when the user taps a particular part of their body, a sensor worn around the upper arm can tell if the tap-point was at a particular spot on the forearm or on one of the individual fingertips, by assessing the vibrations sent throughout the body by the tap." The detection of tap location is remarkable - a single sensor, that picks out location based on the characteristics of the body's reverberation from the tap.
technology  input  interface 
march 2010 by infovore
Lasers would never have shone if Mandelson had been in charge | Technology | The Observer
"The laser has become vital for our way of life, yet no researcher who worked on it after Einstein's paper could have predicted what would emerge. If Mandelson had had anything to do with it, we'd be reading barcodes by flashlight."
politics  funding  technology  research  science 
january 2010 by infovore
Let's Enhance
"Zoom in on that spot there." Blade Runner has a lot to answer for; notably, this.
video  films  movies  technology  enhance  processing  tvtropes  grr 
january 2010 by infovore
Bruce Sterling: The Hypersurface of this Decade | ICON MAGAZINE ONLINE
"I have to print my bed, so that I can lie in it." Lovely BruceS fiction; not just futurism, but hyperlocal futurism at that.
fiction  brucesterling  technology  culture  futurism  design  fabrication 
january 2010 by infovore
Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem | Magazine
"...the Duke Nukem Forever team worked for 12 years straight. As one patient fan pointed out, when development on Duke Nukem Forever started, most computers were still using Windows 95, Pixar had made only one movie — Toy Story — and Xbox did not yet exist." Fantastic, dense, Wired article on DNF from Clive Thompson
games  business  take2  3drealsm  dukenukemforever  technology  development  failure 
december 2009 by infovore
Thunderbirds will grow a generation of mad engineers
"Thunderbirds is Rescue Fiction. All kids respond to rescue scenarios. Rescue Fiction is emotionally maturing - it removes the wish for magic, religion or flying people to zoom in to save the day; it confirms that it is a far more glorious and dazzling thing to invent ways to rescue ourselves."
engineering  engfi  science  technology  warrenellis  writing  thunderbirds  education 
september 2009 by infovore
BBC NEWS | Technology | Tech Know: Kinky boot that whips
"This is my boot fetish Pong game". I first saw James at OpenTech demonstrating his prawn-sandwich powered BBC Micro clock. It is good to know he is still building brilliant things. And: more Ellie Gibson interviews in the world is never, ever a bad thing.
jameslarsson  technology  video  interview  pong  mad  elliegibson 
july 2009 by infovore
100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About | GeekDad | Wired.com
A little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of fact, a few reminders of the past. Especially the old Kit-Kat wrappers.
history  culture  technology  children  kids  list  nostalgia 
july 2009 by infovore
Appfrica Labs | Investing in East African Innovators
"Appfrica Labs is an investment company and software development firm that facilitates and incubates technology entrepreneurs in East Africa. We do this by offering a physical space with a solid internet connection, servers, software and computers that allows entrepreneurs a place to develop their ideas in a constructive environment with industry professionals as mentors, outside of school. Entrepreneur projects are refined and prepped to help them secure funding and launch sustainable, profitable businesses." I met Jon who runs Appfrica at TEDGlobal last week; it's a great idea and, by the sounds of things, doing very well.
appfrica  development  business  africa  uganda  vc  venturecapital  incubator  technology  startup 
july 2009 by infovore
notes.husk.org. this amazing little internet-connected computer....
"Still, if I told myself as a child that I’d have a pocket computer powerful enough that it could play games that knocked the Spectrum into the dirt, along with music at the same time, and then look up almost anything from an encyclopedia, almost anywhere in the world, and in only a quarter of a century, I’m not sure I’d have believed it." Strong truth; I marvel at some of the technology I own, and wonder how I could ever have explained it to my eight-year-old self. Not explained the possibility; explained that it was within reach.
mobile  technology  progress 
july 2009 by infovore
The Toaster Project
"I'm Thomas Thwaites and I'm trying to build a toaster, from scratch - beginning by mining the raw materials and ending with a product that Argos sells for only £3.99. A toaster." This is clearly amazing, and a timely reminder of, you know, what the age of mass production really means.
technology  toaster  industry  massproduction  design  project 
june 2009 by infovore
Gamasutra: Philippe Ringuette-Angrignon's Blog - Why "Next-Gen Games" Went Gray, Brown, And Grey.
"There is one thing that our current consoles are terrible at; lighting. Our current lighting solutions are improving, but for the moment we have much difficulty simulating indirect lighting, especially in real-time... To hide this problem, we tend to instinctively desaturate everything. The mere presence of saturated colors unbalances the rest of the image. Since we often have some form of ambient occlusion in our environments, this visual effect makes the game look more visually convincing." And so: everything is brown.
lighting  games  technology  programming  aesthetic  brown 
june 2009 by infovore
E309: the 7 things you need to know about Microsoft's press conference - Offworld
If you want a wrap-up of the Microsoft keynote, you could do no better than Brandon's wrap-up for Offworld - spot on, nicely detailed, and covering all the facts with great illustration. Whilst their titles - L4D2, Forza 3, etc - are obviously real assets, it's their commitment to the 360 as a platform in the living room that was impressive.
e3  entertainment  blog  offworld  microsoft  games  technology  media  writing 
june 2009 by infovore
Charlie's Diary: LOGIN 2009 keynote: gaming in the world of 2030
"But the sixty-something gamers of 2020 are not the same as the sixty-somethings you know today. They're you, only twenty years older. By then, you'll have a forty year history of gaming; you won't take kindly to being patronised, or given in-game tasks calibrated for today's sixty-somethings. The codgergamers of 2030 will be comfortable with the narrative flow of games. They're much more likely to be bored by trite plotting and cliched dialog than todays gamers. They're going to need less twitchy user interfaces — ones compatible with aging reflexes and presbyopic eyes — but better plot, character, and narrative development. And they're going to be playing on these exotic gizmos descended from the iPhone and its clones: gadgets that don't so much provide access to the internet as smear the internet all over the meatspace world around their owners." Lots of great stuff in this Stross Keynote.
technology  games  play  future  charlesstross  progress  development 
may 2009 by infovore
Michael Tamblyn - 6 Projects That Could Change Publishing for the Better
Jolly good, this, with lots of sensible points and a real clarity of thought for what otherwise could just be Powerpoint-by-numbers.
technology  books  publishing  creativetechnology 
march 2009 by infovore
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky
"For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues. Many of these models will rely on excitable 14 year olds distributing the results. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing with the demise of news on paper, but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need." Late to link to this, but as everyone else who has done already would point out: it's great.
technology  media  publishing  printing  journalism  newspapers  internet  clayshirky  businessmodels 
march 2009 by infovore
Purse Lip Square Jaw: On mobile cities, Archigram, invisible networks and ubicomp
"The question of responsibility and accountability gets sticky here - especially if we consider that technologies are too often viewed as neutral tools or isolated artefacts. If we draw out these flows, these networks, these interconnections, we find ourselves faced with the possibility of being connected to people/objects/places/activites/ideas that we may never see. And with intimacy always comes risk."
mobile  technology  socialsoftware  ubicomp  networks  connectivity  annegalloway  archigram 
march 2009 by infovore
Computer programmer from Finland has lost finger replaced with USB drive - Telegraph
"When I'm using the USB, I just leave my finger inside the slot and pick it up after I'm ready." Well, quite.
technology  future  storage  prosthetics  finland 
march 2009 by infovore
David Merrill demos Siftables, the smart blocks | Video on TED.com
Lovely demo - some interesting interfaces that feel quicker than current alternatives, as well as experimental ones that, whilst slower and clumsier, represent information a bit better. I mainly like the form-factor, though - but what's the unit cost? These things get a lot better the more you have.
design  interaction  talk  video  technology  innovation  toys  siftables  ted 
february 2009 by infovore
Kevin Kelly -- The Technium
"One Amish-man told me that the problem with phones, pagers, and PDAs (yes he knew about them) was that "you got messages rather than conversations." That's about as an accurate summation of our times as any." A wonderful quotation in the midst of this dense, fascinating article.
technology  culture  society  communication  network  amish 
february 2009 by infovore
BBC NEWS | Technology | Video game helps with fire drill
"Durham University's Dr Shamus Smith, who helped spearhead the project, told BBC News that that while bespoke 3D modelling software was available, modifying a video game was faster, more cost effective, and had better special effects." Quite true. Although: "gamers" tend to treat it as a game, wheras "non-gamers" treat it as a training exercise, and behave accordingly.
games  technology  simulation  training  fire  safety  source  seriousgames 
february 2009 by infovore
How the Computer gets the answer
"It is a commonplace that if it weren’t for computers we couldn’t fly to the moon, or even keep an accurate record of the national debt. On the question of how it does what it does, however, the computer has always remained essentially mysterious—unfathomable to all but a small handful of initiates. An officer of one major computer concern guessed recently that not more than 2% of his employees really know how it works." 2% seems awfully high these days. Detailed, technical article from Life in 1967.
technology  engineering  journalism  life  computing  magazine  computer  logic 
january 2009 by infovore
scraplab : saturday saw the inaugural papercamp prototype...
"Compared to a standard web (un)conference where everyone knows their space, expertise and opinions, here lots (most?) of us were exploring stuff outside of our day job and business-as-usual. It was passionate and interesting and I felt completely out of my depth, which was was great. So in 2009, less of the comfort zone stuff please, and more like this." I can get behind that.
web  making  technology  comfort  papercamp 
january 2009 by infovore
Dial-A-Song - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Established by rock band They Might Be Giants (TMBG), Dial-A-Song consisted of an answering machine with a tape of the band playing various songs. The machine played one track at a time, ranging from demos and uncompleted work to fake advertisements the band had created... Due to the nature of an answering machine, only one caller could listen to the current song at any given time. This had been noted as creating a special bond between the song and the person calling as it is playing just for them... John Linnell stated in an interview in early 2008 that Dial-A-Song had died of a technical crash, and that the internet had taken over where the machine left off." How did I not know this? There is nothing about this that is not brilliant.
music  distribution  technology  massproduction  automation  telephones  tmbg  theymightbegiants  answerphone 
january 2009 by infovore
Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: now, more than ever
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties."
science  technology  security  history  futurism  future  prescience 
january 2009 by infovore
Dubious Quality: Fire
"'Why do you build your own computers?' Gloria asked earlier this week. 'Why don't you buy just buy one that's already built?' ... It's because computers are fire... If I was a caveman (I'd be dead, because I can't see clearly two feet in front of myself without glasses, but that's not the point), I wouldn't go to the guy who discovered fire and ask if I get a light off his torch. I might let him explain the process--documentation, as it were--but then I'd go off, hold the torch backwards, cut myself with the flint, and generally do it wrong."
technology  analogy  progress  computers  billharris  fire 
december 2008 by infovore
xiao（シャオ）｜タカラトミー
Click "CM Gallery". Watch. In order to illustrate the xiao's ability to not only take but also print photographs, Takara Tomy really pushed their anthropomorphic metaphor to the limits.
camera  print  electronics  technology  japan  anthropomorphic  maximumstrain 
december 2008 by infovore
cityofsound: Wi-fi structures and people shapes
"I mapped the strength of the wi-fi signal across levels 1 and 2 of the Library, the primary areas that the Library’s wi-fi is used. By taking readings across the floor of both levels, using standard wi-fi-enabled consumer equipment in order to mimic the conditions for the average user [...], I was able to construct a snapshot of the wi-fi signal strength across the Library." Some lovely work by Dan Hill.
visualization  technology  wifi  space  architecture  behaviour  buildings  activity  mapping  danhill 
november 2008 by infovore
Relevant History: Reflections on tinkering
"As we move into a world in which we can manufacture things as cheaply as we print them, the skills that tinkerers develop-- not just their ability to play with stuff, or to use particular tools, but to share their ideas and improve on the ideas of others-- will be huge." Lots of good reflections from "Tinkering As A Mode Of Knowledge".
tinkering  hacking  technology  making  opensource  building  craft  prototyping  learning  education 
november 2008 by infovore
Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: not present in the present
"The future is terribly easy to predict. It’s predicting the instantiation that’s hard."
prediction  futurism  design  product  service  technology  chrisheathcote 
october 2008 by infovore
All This ChittahChattah » The Conversation, and The Technology
"There’s a lot of great technology imagery... Here’s a sampling of stills depicting the awesomeness:" Beautiful. (If I had to have a favourite film, it would still be The Conversation).
technology  movies  audio  theconversation  retro  imagery  coppola  via:brandonnn 
october 2008 by infovore
al3x.net: al3x's Rules for Computing Happiness
Simple, straightforward, pretty much correct.
computing  software  rules  tips  technology  plaintext 
september 2008 by infovore
The Mid-Century Modernist: Polaroid SX-70 Film by the Eames
"[the film] presents the simple joy of photography and, without hyperbolizing or talking down to its audience, gives a comprehensive explanation of how the camera works." Lovely film explaining the way the SX-70 works, from the Eames brothers; the explanation of how the film itself works is beautiful.
sx70  polaroid  film  camera  eames  illustration  explanation  technology  video 
september 2008 by infovore
The Insane True Story Behind the Birth of the Internet - Funny Videos | Cracked.com
"You forgot one thing, Dr. Roberts. You forgot that people are dicks." Aheheh.
video  technology  internet  meme  humour 
september 2008 by infovore
PhD Dissertation | Anne Galloway
"The dissertation builds on available sociological approaches to understanding everyday life in the networked city to show that emergent technologies reshape our experiences of spatiality, temporality and embodiment. It contributes to methodological innovation through the use of data bricolage and research blogging 1, which are presented through experimental and recombinant textual strategies; and it contributes to the field of science and technology studies by bringing together actor-network theory with the sociology of expectations in order to empirically evaluate an area of cutting-edge design." Anne Galloway's PhD thesis, now online.
annegalloway  design  technology  ubicomp  ubiquitouscomputing  society  culture  thesis  toread 
september 2008 by infovore
SIGGRAPH 2008 Papers
Man, SIGGRAPH papers have the best titles. This is a lot of seriously hardcore, cutting edge, graphic-programming nous. Also: "jiggly fluids".
graphics  technology  siggraph  simulation  3D  programming  papers  presentation  research 
august 2008 by infovore
Analog Meets Its Match in Red Digital Cinema's Ultrahigh-Res Camera
"I'm passionate about this because I'm building the camera I've always wanted to shoot with," he says. "When my grandkids and great-grandkids look back, they're going to say I was a camera builder. I did handgrips and then goggles and then sunglasses to prepare myself. But cameras are magic." Fantastic article about Jim Jannard and his Red digital movie-camera business.
hd  film  camera  technology  red  wired  filmmaking  cinematography 
august 2008 by infovore
Do-It-Yourself InkJet and Laser Printer Repair (HP, Apple, Epson, and More) - fixyourownprinter.com
Now that's what I call a UI. Nice idea!
technology  printers  faqs  tips  maintenance  repair  reference  online  resource 
august 2008 by infovore
The Amazing Wooden Mirror [pics] | Environmental Graffiti
"a tiny camera gathers light and shape data, before sending it to a computer that processes it and uses hundreds of tiny electric motors to shift the wood blocks into the image in front of the device. Subtle gradations of shade are achieved by both the natural grain of the wood and the angle at which they are displayed, casting shadow if necessary." Beautiful.
wood  mirror  technology  art  visualisation  design  interaction  craft 
august 2008 by infovore
Twenty Sided » Blog Archive » The Cost of Spectacle
"By the time Joe Average has hardware that can run your fancy-pants game, it’s long gone from stores... You keep aiming your game at this tiny, pirate-infested group [of players with 'gaming rigs'] and wondering why sales are so small."
games  mooreslaw  industry  production  values  technology  casual  hardcore 
august 2008 by infovore
Swinxs, the toy that's active and fun - Swinxs the first computer to use outside
An outdoor games console, with lots of fun locative play elements. And it's *real*.
swinxs  play  outdoors  games  technology  everyware  ubicomp  fun  nlgd 
june 2008 by infovore
@ Future of Journalism: Adrian Holovaty's vision for data-friendly journalists | PDA: The Digital Content Blog | guardian.co.uk
"Google has to search through those blobs of stories to pull out that raw data again, thus undoing the work of the journalist. The two need to meet in the middle, argues Holovaty." More data-driven journalism stuff; all spot on, really.
journalism  data  datadriven  adrianholovaty  technology  development 
june 2008 by infovore
technology is what makes us human
"What I want to argue is that humans are uniquely talented at ‘thinking with our hands’, and its wrong to discard ‘intuitive’ engineering as a historical curiosity." Tim Hunkin, on fire, about the importance of making.
engineering  tools  technology  making  design  craft  craftsmanship  writing  essay  timhunkin 
june 2008 by infovore
Olinda (Schulze & Webb)
"Olinda is a prototype digital radio that has your social network built in, showing you the stations your friends are listening to.". It's here, and it's very much real. Congratulations to Matt, Jack, and all involved.
olinda  radio  social  technology  hardware  making  schulzeandwebb 
may 2008 by infovore
Science Museum - Visit the museum - Dan Dare & the Birth of Hi-tech Britain
"In an age before globalisation, products from rockets to radios sprang from local roots. Together they reveal a fascinating ‘lost world’ of British design and invention – a glimpse of a time when the TV in the corner was a Murphy, not a Sony."
exhibition  sciencemuseum  technology  design  eagle  futurism  comics 
april 2008 by infovore
Simple Solutions | A Better Course
"What else are you going to do with something you’ve just made, other than use it?" Empowering people as creators makes them more likely to look after/recyle a product.
recycling  environment  creativity  product  design  technology 
january 2008 by infovore
napkin vs. towel (tecznotes)
"It's hard to exaggerate how happy this makes me. It's a beautiful answer to the variety of wiping cloths we use day-to-day, and the place each occupies on a "dirt gradient" from snowy white bath towels to the pile of old rags under the kitchen sink."
product  design  technology  sustainability  environment 
january 2008 by infovore
Kindle can light up your life :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andy Ihnatko
"It's one of the most awesome consumer products ever. It might even be a landmark moment in technology. ... and Amazon is promoting it as a $399 waffle maker." Andy Ihnatko on the Kindle
kindle  amazon  technology  publishing  books  writing  reading 
december 2007 by infovore
booktwo.org » Swotter
"Swotter reads books to Twitter, and via Twitter to the world." It just finished reading Ulysses aloud. It is awesome.
twitter  books  technology  publishing  literature 
december 2007 by infovore
StupidFilter :: Main / HomePage
"Because the internet needs prophylactics for memetically transmitted diseases."
bayesian  filter  idiots  technology  youtube  stupid 
october 2007 by infovore
TMRC Dictionary
"The words defined in this dictionary are the property of the Tech Model Railroad Club of M.I.T. and all rights to use and define these words are strictly reserved." From 1959.
tmrc  hack  computer  technology  mit  jargon 
october 2007 by infovore
The Continuous World of Dungeon Siege
Technically hardcore, dense paper explaining how the Dungeon Siege environment was constructed without a loading screen. Word of the day: "frustrum". Interesting stuff in here. Now, how to apply it?
game  development  programming  mapping  algorithms  technology  streaming  play 
september 2007 by infovore
What Should Sony Do Next? - Forbes.com
"Nintendo hasn’t truly gone backwards technologically. It has simply innovated in a different way." Good Forbes piece pulling together the usual threads on what Sony's really up against.
technology  business  gaming  nintendo  sony 
august 2007 by infovore
russell davies: we love technology - part one
Russell writes up his take on this year's "we love technology" in Huddersfield.
design  technology  conference 
july 2007 by infovore
Conversation Hub » Video: Clay Shirky on Love, Internet Style
Linked everywhere, but what the hell: it's a cracking nine-minutes Shirkyblast. Listen to what he says; it is good.
video  technology  community  collaboration  clayshirky  shirky  social  sharing  love 
july 2007 by infovore
Doors of Perception weblog: New concept of mobility - in three lines
"Reducing the movement of matter - whether goods, or people - is a main challenge in the transition to sustainability." The other two lines are as good.
mobile  mobility  innovation  technology  thackara 
july 2007 by infovore
Rands In Repose: Managing Humans
Rands has a book. It looks very good.
randsinrepose  management  technology  book  writing  people 
june 2007 by infovore
Twitter as coral reef (Scripting News)
Dave Winer++ : "As a system designer, I'd like to believe that Twitter or something like it will always be there. I'm not sure of that yet, but it seems we're close."
twitter  technology  systems  software  ecology  metaphor 
may 2007 by infovore
"Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life"
Danah's keynote from ETech. It's very good.
technology  society  software  behaviour  culture  networking 
april 2007 by infovore
George Osborne: Recasting the political settlement for the digital age
Reasonably interesting speech from George Osborne at the RSA; interesting given how savvy it is, and how (within reason) fair. Certainly interesting coming from the conservatives.
conservatives  politics  opensource  georgeosborne  society  technology 
march 2007 by infovore
Horseshoes and Hand Grenades: Joel Johnson Returns...to Spank Us All for Supporting Crap - Gizmodo
Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn't do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. Use older stuff that works. Make it yourself.
gadgets  technology  cretins  blog  humor  true  marketing 
february 2007 by infovore
Comments on 13606 | MetaTalk
"The issue is, shall we now together proceed to create a universe of unbelievable facility and magnitude from the universe skeleton that lies before us, with the universe wrenches and universe screwdrivers that fall so easily into our hands?" Great line.
technology  mefi  history  computing  future 
february 2007 by infovore
Tony Comstock’s Blog » Porn in HD, or Why When Porn Sucks the Media Sucks on it Harder.
Nice article (and blog, in fact) from a maker of porn, debunking the whole porn-looks-bad-in-HD argument. Reasonably worksafe, too.
film  technology  video  hd  porn 
february 2007 by infovore
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