The New York Times > Week in Review > Knowing It All: The Pursuit of Knowledge, From Genesis to Google
The article contends with the human ambition to know everything and the immediate drawback of memory - reading everything is not knowing everything and knowing everything is pretty much impossible as Ptolemey I found out oh so many centuries ago... Now Google wants to digitize a bunch of libraries... will that make the fish-eye of our lense and the diameter of our tunnel vision smaller or larger? As any graduate student knows - the more you learn the more you feel you need to learn. As the circumference of the tiny circle of knowledge increases so does the awareness of the vastness of the unkown surrounding it. The concept is simple and yet we persist.
I don't remember anything... most things I read fall together and I can recall mere whispers of the ideas. Sometimes, I pick up a paper and realize that I had read it in depth not too long ago when I get half way through it. More often, I pick up a paper I know I have read and discover that I do not remember anything! This is frightening, considering that I have cited this paper in my own work several times! Universal knowledge, ultimate knowledge is impossible... but we try, oh how we try...
19 December, 2004
18 December, 2004
A.C.L.U.'s Search for Data on Donors Stirs Privacy Fears
The New York Times > National > A.C.L.U.'s Search for Data on Donors Stirs Privacy Fears
This article exposes ACLU for just another organization that whines one thing and does something different. As someone who has donated money to ACLU even while being a very poor graduate student, I not just concerned for my own privacy in view of the organization's idiocy, but have lost any desire to give them any money. Ever. Even the sad attempts of Michale Meyers to claim that the board knew nothing about this, are pathetic and laughable. The board just expected not to get caught. Richard Nixon didn't expect to get caught either. ACLU must understand that "cultivating donors" is rather different from collecting information that is perceived private even if it is publically available. One of the major points of the fight for privacy right now stands with that issue - the issue that there is a difference between legal privacy and privacy through obscurity, yet we, as people, have a hard time understanding which information about us is what. THAT is the problem, the problem that as humans we simply lack enough foresight and fall into corporate promotional traps. The excuse that "this is no different from doing a Google search" is moot in this case!
Much of ACLU's donor pool are very smart people who are very aware of these issues and I doubt that few of them will miss this one ... It's too bad, but this is an example of an organization forgetting what it stands for and falling for the carrot of information bloat.
This article exposes ACLU for just another organization that whines one thing and does something different. As someone who has donated money to ACLU even while being a very poor graduate student, I not just concerned for my own privacy in view of the organization's idiocy, but have lost any desire to give them any money. Ever. Even the sad attempts of Michale Meyers to claim that the board knew nothing about this, are pathetic and laughable. The board just expected not to get caught. Richard Nixon didn't expect to get caught either. ACLU must understand that "cultivating donors" is rather different from collecting information that is perceived private even if it is publically available. One of the major points of the fight for privacy right now stands with that issue - the issue that there is a difference between legal privacy and privacy through obscurity, yet we, as people, have a hard time understanding which information about us is what. THAT is the problem, the problem that as humans we simply lack enough foresight and fall into corporate promotional traps. The excuse that "this is no different from doing a Google search" is moot in this case!
Much of ACLU's donor pool are very smart people who are very aware of these issues and I doubt that few of them will miss this one ... It's too bad, but this is an example of an organization forgetting what it stands for and falling for the carrot of information bloat.
11 December, 2004
Cellphones Aloft: The Inevitable Is Closer
The New York Times > Technology > Cellphones Aloft: The Inevitable Is Closer - There was something curiously archaic in the inability to use cell phones on the airplane. At the same time, it was a bit of a safe heaven - you were not "expected" to be able to take calls because you were... well a few thousand feet above ground and acceptable unavailable.
Allowing cell phone use on the airplanes will not just make some people more annoying than others, but may also create expectations for people who aren't flying, expectations that would force people who are to take the calls even if they do not want to. Yet another social space invaded by noise, yet this one is so cramped and claustrophobic, with no escape for SO many hours (especially on transatlantic flights) that it is really a question of whether allowing cell phones could make long difficult flights even longer and more difficult...
Allowing cell phone use on the airplanes will not just make some people more annoying than others, but may also create expectations for people who aren't flying, expectations that would force people who are to take the calls even if they do not want to. Yet another social space invaded by noise, yet this one is so cramped and claustrophobic, with no escape for SO many hours (especially on transatlantic flights) that it is really a question of whether allowing cell phones could make long difficult flights even longer and more difficult...
Engaging the City - CHI 2005 Workshop
Engaging the City: Public Interfaces as Civic Intermediary
As interest in the city grows as a viable site for HCI research, the organizers of this workshop aim to shift the research perspective from the architects plan view to the street level. No longer reducing the city to a dense population of users, we challenge our participants to consider the city not just as a backdrop for interactions but as an inalienable part of interactions that happen within it. By reorienting ourselves, we move beyond the city as a muse to the city as a resource for public exchange.
This workshop is designed to explore notions of exchange within an urban landscape. What relationships do we have with the city? What do we give and take from it and each other in its embrace? How is this exchange enacted in and upon the city in everyday life? And how can technological innovation capture or foster this exchange?
The challenge for the HCI community is to design public interfaces that provide citizens with more active access, authorship, and agency. The workshops field research component will involve visiting the city of Portland as a case study for processing and refining these theoretical considerations. We would like to gather a representative group of social scientists, technologists, urban planners, architects, artists, and designers whose work addresses issues of shared public interfaces and interactions.
Application
Participants will be selected based on a demonstrated interest in the topic, as seen through position papers submitted prior to the workshop that consist of:
• A discussion of background, interests, current work and relevance to workshop goals.
• An object/image/idea which represents an active exchange with the city.
Participants should be prepared to demonstrate this item’s context within the theoretical framework of access, agency, and authorship.
Acceptable submission formats include: Word or PDF. Send submissions and questions regarding format to Michele Chang at: michele.f.chang@intel.com.
Workshop URL: http://hciresearch.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/engaging_cities/
ORGANIZERS
Michele Chang, Intel Corporation, People and Practices Research
Katrina Jungnickel, INCITE, University of Surrey
Chet Orloff, School of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University
Irina Shklovski, Human Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
As interest in the city grows as a viable site for HCI research, the organizers of this workshop aim to shift the research perspective from the architects plan view to the street level. No longer reducing the city to a dense population of users, we challenge our participants to consider the city not just as a backdrop for interactions but as an inalienable part of interactions that happen within it. By reorienting ourselves, we move beyond the city as a muse to the city as a resource for public exchange.
This workshop is designed to explore notions of exchange within an urban landscape. What relationships do we have with the city? What do we give and take from it and each other in its embrace? How is this exchange enacted in and upon the city in everyday life? And how can technological innovation capture or foster this exchange?
The challenge for the HCI community is to design public interfaces that provide citizens with more active access, authorship, and agency. The workshops field research component will involve visiting the city of Portland as a case study for processing and refining these theoretical considerations. We would like to gather a representative group of social scientists, technologists, urban planners, architects, artists, and designers whose work addresses issues of shared public interfaces and interactions.
Application
Participants will be selected based on a demonstrated interest in the topic, as seen through position papers submitted prior to the workshop that consist of:
• A discussion of background, interests, current work and relevance to workshop goals.
• An object/image/idea which represents an active exchange with the city.
Participants should be prepared to demonstrate this item’s context within the theoretical framework of access, agency, and authorship.
Acceptable submission formats include: Word or PDF. Send submissions and questions regarding format to Michele Chang at: michele.f.chang@intel.com.
Workshop URL: http://hciresearch.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/engaging_cities/
ORGANIZERS
Michele Chang, Intel Corporation, People and Practices Research
Katrina Jungnickel, INCITE, University of Surrey
Chet Orloff, School of Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University
Irina Shklovski, Human Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
08 December, 2004
PC pioneer leaves its history behind
BBC NEWS | Business | PC pioneer leaves its history behind - soo... Thinkpads will be made by Lenovo of China now... hmmm... no big change there :)
Lifestyle 'governs mobile choice'
BBC NEWS | Technology | Lifestyle 'governs mobile choice' - This article reports on a study done for Ericsson on ways to entice users to buy new handsets. Surprise, they found that lifestyle choices are better predictors of handset selection and purchase than the number of features a particular phone posesses. The feature bloat has gotten to the point where certain aspects of a phone appeal more or less to different types of populations. This idea of lifestyle is new for technology makers who have long operated on "build it and they will buy it and we will transform their lives" type of method. Awareness of the influence of lifestyle choices and the idea that technology doesn't "transform" human behavior per se, at least not immediately. In fact, technology must appeal to existing practices somehow augmenting them, and through this augmentation it eventually changes behavior patterns. This is an exciting change to see in industrial technology makers. It also smells of job prospects :)
Nextel Communications Increases Boost Mobile Subscribers
Nextel Communications reported one million subscribers for its Boost Mobile prepaid subsidiary at the end of November 2004. The company had expected to add 650,000 new subscribers in 2004, up from 385,000 in 2003. (Source: Reuters)
This is quite interesting. Boost Mobile is one of the pre-paid companies, but their rates are actually quite reasonable and you can see on their site they explicitly market to teenagers - the white middle-class boys actually. The first thing that comes up when you click "rates" is the rate for text messaging and not calling. This is an indicator both of their target audience and the types of services they sell most. This is very similar to providers in the UK much more so than in the US. The fact that Boost has only existed for a year and is exceeding expectations in terms of subscribers is also similar to what Vodafone and T-Mobile experienced in Europe nearly a decade ago. It could be that it was indeed the payment structure and the kind of perception of the consumers that wireless companies had here and geography of the country and it's habits, that created such a huge difference in patterns of mobile services consumption.
This is quite interesting. Boost Mobile is one of the pre-paid companies, but their rates are actually quite reasonable and you can see on their site they explicitly market to teenagers - the white middle-class boys actually. The first thing that comes up when you click "rates" is the rate for text messaging and not calling. This is an indicator both of their target audience and the types of services they sell most. This is very similar to providers in the UK much more so than in the US. The fact that Boost has only existed for a year and is exceeding expectations in terms of subscribers is also similar to what Vodafone and T-Mobile experienced in Europe nearly a decade ago. It could be that it was indeed the payment structure and the kind of perception of the consumers that wireless companies had here and geography of the country and it's habits, that created such a huge difference in patterns of mobile services consumption.
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