free-ride, freifahrt

In the city of Düsseldorf (:D), there is an application that allows mass-transit goers to generate bus and tram fare in exchange for a few moments of inattentiveness and letting a few advertisements play on one’s mobile device. Because of few paying sponsors so far, the new service is finite and can only issue a certain number of free ticket per day and has proven wildly popular but that ought to change as more become involved. What do you think? If fare could be redeemed as cash, passengers could technically earn over one hundred euro an hour, but surely the demographics gleaned is even more valuable to marketers and more effective—despite the potential for ignoring them—than traditional billboards and posters.

ringxiety or push-notification

I don’t often keep my mobile device in such close proximity to my person so as to make it an extension of my senses (say, something akin to an artist’s paint brush or a seeing impaired person’s walking stick), but sometimes when I am marching along with my phone in my bag, I’ll get false alarms that cause me to pause and check, only to find it was in my imagination.
This happens especially I think when I’m anxiously expecting a call, and I always feel a bit silly. I knew I was not quite alone in suffering from this phenomenon but had no idea that it was common enough to earn a forum, clinical studies and even a name: Phantom Vibration Syndrome. Researchers are not quite sure what causes these ghostly cues but most believe they are harmless, tiny muscle spasms that would otherwise go unnoticed (perhaps like a nascent version of Restless Leg Syndrome, which apparently becomes insufferable for some people and dreaming, twitchy dogs) that are at an amplitude sympathetic to the subsonic silent mode of our phones. Such prompts also indulge our sense of separation anxiety as these same calls and responses are our social towropes that connect us to the wider world. What do you think? Have you been haunted by phantom vibrations?

know thy selfie

Writing for Aeon magazine, philosopher Simon Blackburn delivers a thorough and thoughful analysis on the differences among vanity, narcissism and self-esteem and the interplay that too often results from the misapprehension of one for another. Bravery to do the needful is one thing—else we would too easily wither away from those challenges that we ought to confront, but the hubris that comes with never courting any real resistance or dissent is quite another, and particularly treacherous when it comes to assaying those things that are not instantly condemned or applauded, like leadership and relationships. Rather than acknowledging that pride and over-confidence has made us prone for a fall, praise for ourselves and for those kindred—who'll echo that praise, quickly turns into arrogance. If the first few sentences were not scathing enough, the spectres of all the great thinkers of the past become an absolute haunt, hopefully to disabuse us from our vanities—not for accomplishment but for admiration. What do you think? Does the medium rather make something harmless—or even invert them into something of a vulnerable catharsis?

hiobsbotschafter oder i spy

Though the German government and the people of the world had already lower their expectations regarding real reform to the practises of the fledgling police state that America has become—and from those partners duly or unwittingly deputized, the awkward spectacle of defending the indefeasible and saying essentially nothing by anyone in a position of authority was a more than a little revolting.

No stop the spying agreement, as Germany has called for—not instigated by “learning” that vast swaths of its citizens are under surveillance without cause but over the bugging of the Chancellor's cell-phone, which she's relying on even more since she has been out on crutches after a skiing accident, but the fact that the US is carrying on with its role, no longer out of necessity but rather self-appointed, without blush or stint is rather besmirching. Aside from this business as usual, which is ever on the rise, stride never broken, there were empty reassurances that the spying apparatchik was above abuse and has prevented damaged to US interests—neither of which are true, and reform was limited to oversight by committees of confirmed insiders and actual operations will mostly remain in the shadows—until or unless the next slate of unwanton exposures, at least. The term Hiobsbotschaft figuratively means bad news in German—from the string of bad events that happened to the biblical figure Job, but with the reports of the US embassies (auch Botschaften) in Berlin and elsewhere being used as listening posts, the term takes on a double-meaning.

das telefon sagt du

Germany is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the telephone, which predates Alexander Graham Bell's famous transmission, "Mister Watson, come here--I want to see you," by a full fifteen years with Johann Phillip Reis' cryptic and surreal message via switching, galvanic wire, "The horse does not eat cucumber salad," (Das Pferd frisst keinen Gurkensalat). Reis made up this phrase on the spot during his demonstration in Friedrichsdorf by Frankfurt am Main in 1861 to prove that his first call was real and not rehearsed. Reis' experiment of course was built on the work of others that came before and in turn, the idea was improved and realized as a two-way communication device by Bell. Reis' other pioneering work included an early prototype of what would become inline roller-skates and theoretical inquiries into the possibility photovoltaic cells.