Sunday, 2 March 2014

vernacular or pain-compliance

Not to glorify an overly weaponised culture, but did you know that like scuba-diving (a self-contained underwater breathing-apparatus) that a taser electroshock gun is a trade-marked abbreviation for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle, the NASA researcher who developed the prototype in 1974 naming it in honour of his boyhood hero's daring adventures?

Tom Swift had adventures like Buck Rogers or Perry Rodan but this prolific inventor was usually more Earth-based, like a predecessor to the Tony Stark behind Iron Man. I thought it was some contraction for a tag-laser, since two little electrode darts are projected at the target, unlike a stun gun that requires direct proximity. In any case, once one is it, then one is subject to all sorts of debilitating pain, which is the point of less lethal defense and offense but sometimes the effects linger, especially within a regiment of abuse among trigger-happy authorities who think there's a way to deal with the criminal or unruly without consequence.

Wednesday, 22 January 2014

autoclave

Though most product-launches in the hygiene industry are just affirmations of ones inner-verminophobia, however now working in a clinical environment whose undefended boundaries are packed with the everyday filth and detritus and contiguous with work-stations, packed lunches, personal affects, etc.

Nothing horrifying or unsanitary but neither a comfort—especially considering the culturing stunts performed recently with swabbing a cell phone and growing the results in a Petri dish. While I am certain that any surface, handled or not, could be conduced to yield similarly repulsive results and believe that taking things to extremes is not a healthy practise either, polio erupting in part because hermetically-sealed children had no natural immunity and that abuse of anti-bacterial compounds and the like have led to truly monstrous pathogens resistant to any treatment and besides the body has its own ecology that's usually a happy, harmonic symbiosis, but I do like the idea of a kiln for ones smart phones, tablets, keyboards and other hard to clean personal peripherals. I only caught a snatch of the piece on the radio describing this product, available only in the States, and I am not sure how it functions—possibly by heat, ultra-sound or inert gas or magic, but I think such a disinfecting box would come in handy.

Saturday, 11 January 2014

coin-op or waxing-nostalgic

Do you remember these?

I can distinctively recall summoning up some aquamarine elephant with a Mold-A-Rama vending machine at the zoo in Oklahoma City as a little kid. One could choose from a whole variety of souvenir animals and even dinosaurs, hot from the extruder. At the link, watch one at work from a recent visit to the animal-park in San Antonio.  Three-dimensional printing is potentially revolutionary but maybe nothing particularly new or novel in application, considering the mania introduced in 1962 and with these free-standing legacy machines still in action at zoos and other venues across America.

Thursday, 9 January 2014

ne pas รชtre un vide-poche ร  l'origine

Via the intrepid and inquiring Nag on the Lake, a single one of Intel's latest batch of innovations introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has captivated the public above others. This so called smart-bowl is basically a vide-poche, a place to deposit the contents of one's pockets at the end of the day, which generates an electric field to transfer energy from the bowl to a cellular phone or some other battery-operated gadget within via induction and without wires. Though inductive charging is not the most efficient method and only works at a very close range, the idea is pretty clever and maybe will led to improvements in the technology, particularly for something like electric cars that could charge passively without plugs and cables.

Thursday, 5 December 2013

travelling matte

More documents leaked to the press by the Fugitive reveal that US intelligence has the capability and apparently the prerogative to track the whereabouts of some five billion cellular telephones, the world's human population, per day. As the Washington Post reveals, with an array of special-programmes under names like CO-TRAVLER, the National Security Agency is able not only to intercept communications but also to plot the location of the devices and their users even when the phone is not actively sending or receiving—American reporting hinging on the fact that indiscriminate surveillance, almost apologetically those unfortunate and misguided Americans abroad, has culled some native mapping and associations—inadvertently.
Making self-reflection the biggest transgression always makes me angry about this sort of coverage, which comes at the expense of the rest of the population, as if their privacy was a trifling thing. With such a universe of star-crossed paths to reference, of course, analysts can retrace steps and build quite telling profiles (or misconstructions) through the gleaned habits and contacts of individuals. Of course, we've all too willingly outfitted ourselves and our lifestyles with these homing devices and pay a handsome ransom for the shackles of convenience, presence and awareness and such clever and useful tools were not doled out like identity papers or cattle-brands for these ends alone. It does seem odd, ironic that there is so much glee over the state-of-the-art when that's all the tidier to survey, with or without industry cooperation.

Tuesday, 5 November 2013

om, om--ugh

The New York Times has a provocative essay on mindfulness getting its share of attention, profiling a typical seminar entitled “Disconnect to Connect” that has drawn together many gurus and humble but respected practitioners trying to re-program patience, recalling a time that seems hopelessly inundated when people were content with waiting or engaging their immediate surroundings without being told by the Control Voice what to do. Ironically, many speakers introduce applications to remind people to be mindful and mediate, even if that's in the form of seeing out a television show without distraction. What do you think? Is this movement capitalising on a craze, shoe-horning a gimmick to sell? Many times technology and culture create divots and then invents something, at a premium, to smooth it over. Or are events like these genuine means towards circumspection? The answer is an important one.

Monday, 16 September 2013

mmm mmm mmm mmm or tip of the tongue

As part of its weekly digest of innovative and new ideas, the excellent blog Brain Pickings features an interesting review of a new work from Clive Thompson about how technology are collaborating in positive ways to augment how we remember, learn and triangulate novel and familiar concepts. The book, “Smarter than You Think: How Technology is Changing our Minds for the Better,” smartly covers a lot of emergent and age-old praises and cautions and is by no means swerving to avoid the counter-argument or discussion, neither a retreat into apologies for new standards of etiquette and work-ethics nor a luddite bemoaning short attention-spans and information overload, but rather presents an extended thesis that certain aspects of on-line resources can prove to be transcending, proving one knows how these tools function.

Knowing how to use the Google seems rather basic, and a chore made progressively easier with each software update, and while being an accomplished mechanic is not prerequisite for being licensed to drive, most probably could better articulate the input and output of a car than the gullible crash test dummies we are for herd-mentalities and the whims of the tool-makers. One intriguing idea that the review puts forward is the tip-of-the-tongue syndrome—certainly not a new phenomena itself, strangely modernized by the internet, which allows one to reverse-engineer any escaping memory. Connecting the dots, however as the author cites, is only good as the dots one collects. The internet and its dynamic interface is certainly more than just a scatter-shot consultant but can be rather a constellation-maker.

Tuesday, 16 July 2013

green grow the rushes ho, tell us of your GOOG-O

It is already been noted how the mass surveillance and spreading confessionals of intelligence agencies could well have a disastrous chilling effect when it comes to the early adoption of the latest gadgets and our understanding, relationship with mobility and convenience. Though by nature, equally as gimmicky and peripheral to the architecture of the internet, which ought not be co-opted and re-worked as a for-profit enterprise exclusively, I wonder what opportunities and threats will come if the mood of the surveyed is extended further, making seeking out advertising-space and market-intelligence more difficult, if not an anathema, with the public retreating into closed systems, forgoing the ability to triangulate.
If one does not look at them, do they go away?  Certainly the profit-motive and the creation of niche-markets has done much in the name of progress and ease of propagating ideas, even for those panhandlers that collect the crumbs of the advertising industry and including those Great-Souled individuals who expect nothing. What do you think? Targeted ads, when they hit the mark, can be disturbing in their own right, without considering the full dossier that others may have—and considering those tangential commercials that are laughably off-target, one has to wonder what computer-driven assumptions might be conspiring to form one's persona of record.

Wednesday, 3 July 2013

picture-picture or instamatic

Kottke, purveyor of fine hypertext products, presents a thoughtful reflection on how pervasive photography, saying it and sharing it with pictures, marks a fundamental change in how we experience things and how we in turn incorporate and interpret those moments. It is certainly an idea to give one pause, as images and the medium depart from documentation, archiving to communication itself. Rather than being worth a thousand words, the tales that illustrations impart could be an even greater abbreviation. What kind of shutter-bug are you? Do time and distance make photos, artefacts, more dear and meaningful or can instant and constant mirroring co-exist?

Monday, 10 June 2013

duomo di como

Among all the interesting sights we saw was the City of Como on the south western leg of the lake.

From the harbour, we were greeted by a monument to science.
We overheard a tourist declare to her husband tha was in fact the “Temple of Como,” flatly, as if some pagan god dwelt there, battery-powered.
Rather it was a memorial for native son Alessadro Volta and held the first engineered and practical energy sink and cell in the world. Campers, among many others, tip their hats to Volta, I'm sure. Next after exploring the piers, we came to the ancient cathedral among the ensemble of the oldest part of the city and other sacred architecture.
We were joined in admiring the series of altars and niches by a contingency of Buddhist monks clad in orange robes. I wondered if they were fellow-tourists or if initiates were sent out into the world to document their experience on tablet devices. They seemed genuinely engaged as we were, in any case—treated to an organ concert. The performer was seated at the keyboard beneath an unusual nave with a crucifix figure coiffed with genuine human hair.

Monday, 27 May 2013

picture-picture or long, lost weekend

Over the past several weeks, there have been a series of ninnying events though while far from spoiling our time together away from work, that grey immanence not having undue influence after hours, have presented challenges or bluffs that we not the choicest. First, I thought I had lost all my keys entirely—though I later found after a lot of bother that I had in fact had them with me the entire time, packed away in advance. Now, I've ruined a perfectly good computer (read: on its last legs, although functional and ironically lamented nearly on a delay basis that it was due for an upgrade) by sloshing a glass of wine over it and most of the entire dining table.

Searching for solutions afterwards and having made a triage of staunching the stains from setting in on the placemats first and foremost with a lot of salt, which turned out to be an ingenious investment, made of a spot-resistant material and already sort of the shade of wine-stain and came out perfectly clean, I learned that I did not react perhaps with the requisite urgency of doom and gloom. The laptop was powered down and I sopped up what I could see—although reading more, and with a paucity of domestic animals or clumsy children to blame for my own bad table-manners, I see I ought to have panicked over this most unpredictable of accidents, and I should have immediately disassembled the entire computer, buried it in a bag of rice and still hope for the best but prepare for the worst. The computer did thankfully, under the auspices of those guardian gremlins that manage such things, come on once and gave me a chance to back-up all the photos that I had neglected for months but then never again. At least, not for now: apparently there are a lot of testimonials too about computers eventually recovering after days of drying—propping them open in the shape of a lambda in a warm and dry spot is recommended rather than a hair-dryer. The separation anxiety is much more than I expected.  This accident gave the excuse to get a new computer but possibly not with the research I wanting to ply to it. I know it will take sometime to get used to the new environment and I think I got something also good and functional, logically, but it now feels like a boombox, huge and unwieldy compared to the Walkman that I had before, and though I am confronted with newish innovations and navigation at work, it has been a few years and I was not expecting to be keep so safe or have my intuitive sense called to the carpet. One has to purposefully run applications as an administrator in order for them to work and the hacks I was used to have been replaced with apps, all touchy-feely and visual. Since unboxing the new laptop, I have spent this whole time trying to put a sepia-tone on the entire platform in order to restore some degree of familiarity.

Thursday, 21 March 2013

an embarrassment of riches

The latest reconnaissance from the superb BLDRBLOG documents the recent trophies of an internet entrepreneur, recovering the artefacts of the Apollo mission to the Moon—sunk and a repurposed as components of a natural environment, and poses the interesting question if such exploits and adventures will become signature for the fabulously wealthy—at least from those with a flair for conquests. Mounting the highest mountains, delving the deepest oceans, and even prospecting asteroids could become serious attractions, like record-setting feats gone unbroken since the Machine-Age. I just hope that the endowed buccaneers choose good and responsible investments for their exploits, legacy and a damaging spirit of competition does not arise.

Tuesday, 19 March 2013

telomere

Biologists are at the verge of an important decision with technical hurdles toppled when it comes to the matter of de-extinctionNational Geographic covers this point of departure in a quite thoughtful manner, not dismissing the question of playing God, but positing that there is an ethical imperative to restore the individual species, and by extension the ecological diversity, that humans drove to extinction.
The dodo, passenger pigeon and even the woolly mammoth are poster-children representing many more creatures no longer around because of our activities, and scientists are quickly gaining the means to bring them back. What do you think? Are we obligated to make Nature whole again, or does our capacity to raise the dead cheapen our overall sense of stewardship and respect? Does Nature coldly absorb its losses quickly and move on, leaving no place for failed experiments? Our fault or not, since we are unable to operate outside of that broader context, should we be working to re-introduce some species? Ignoring individual ingenuity is something done at great peril and surely there is something to glean from every success and cul-de-sac. It was an unpopular argument when some ecologists advocated for a giant squid over a giant panda as a symbol for conservation efforts, since no one wants to lose the latter, but it was a judgement on our priorities.

Saturday, 2 March 2013

elective affinities or the boys from brazil

Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis has recently brought experimentation to the scientific community and the public with much enthusiasm and a certain flair that demonstrates the possibility of a future forms of communication, suggestion, via pure thoughts with a brain-to-brain interface. The trial consisted of two laboratory rats, geographically separated: one, the transmitting rat in a facility in Nicolelis’ native Brazil was conditioned to associate certain cues with the chance to get a reward, sweetened water as opposed to plain water. The other rat in the States, the receiver, was in a similar environment and opportunities for the treat were precisely synchronized.
The rat in America, however, was not privy to any of the sending rat’s cues, except that the rats’ brains were wired with electrodes and the former could telegraph via cables in the facility and over the Internet a micro-stimulus to the latter when he anticipated getting the reward. Their coordinated responses resulted in the American rat going for the reward at the exact moment the Brazilian right got the cue nearly seventy percent of the time; the Brazilian rate was transmitting the same conditioned response, impulse practically every time. The success rate shows that some significant mental exchange was going on but also suggests the limitations of scientists to pin-point the exact same neurons in two different subjects and that while there may be over-arching similarities, no two brains—or though-processes for that matter, are exactly identical. This sort of tethering is not telepathy or even Bluetooth. Communication was not reciprocal and who knows what the strangers would have thought if they knew their roles? What do you think? Will such stuff of science-fiction be the twitterpation of the near future and should we pursue this route?

Thursday, 28 February 2013

oracle or time and temperture

A really engrossing article from Aeon magazine profiles some more big-thinkers regarding the fracturing future possibilities for mankind. Building from an earlier clever interview that leaned towards the apocalyptic, our impulsive and unhelpful tendencies are explored but also our positive capacities and how they might be synthetically extended.
Like some hard-hitting thought-experiment, which does not seem so far-fetched like the classic Cartesian teasers of Brain-in-a-Vat or Teleportation that involves re-assembly of a subject on-site with simultaneous destruction at the origin, the dialogue summons up a hypothetical, benevolent and omnipresent Artificial Intelligence, having gradually won acceptance, that’s like the Ancient Greek household gods, cults, patrons, oracles and wishing-wells, only closely monitored, mimicking current trends in social networks and driven traffic, also known as popularity. The intelligence’s only manifestation in the real world would be as a question-and-answer service—a very sophisticated one, which would learn by aggregation of all queries and solutions offered, evaluating and project their outcomes. Such a universal internet, pervasive and accessible, could learn as well by positive-reinforcement, and here I think is where the dialogue veers towards doom and gloom, sort of like a lab rat (by who are the overlords and who is the subject?) who avoids an electro-shock or earns a treat from historical successes and failures. It all sound eerily familiar, and the landscape, world-view of inquiring minds. But how accommodating is the landscaper? Certainly most problems are not without precedence and our predicaments and quandaries are not as unique as we’d like to think in some form, but a lot of examples from the past do not necessarily yield a right, correct answer

Saturday, 16 February 2013

valkyrie or learning-curve

Here is another interesting find from the vintage science fiction archives of Project Gutenberg, which presents an eerily modern commentary on drones and action-at- a-distance, the short story from 1953 called “Watchbird” by Robert Sheckley. All these ebooks are available at no cost in a variety of formats, including epub for viewing on iPads. The images are taken from BLDGBLOG’s latest discovery of expansive bird’s eye view eye-charts, laid out in remote areas of US testing grounds (rediscovered via satellite maps) used to calibrate spy cameras dispatched on weather balloons from that same era.
Such test-pattern topology probably is not necessary for autonomous UAVs whose sharp sensors and acuity have become sort of a moral unto themselves, and that’s exactly the quandary that Sheckley’s prescient tale addresses, in a future-present where we’ve released judge, jury and executioner as stand-alone extensions of law-enforcement.

Friday, 25 January 2013

autostrada

Since their inception, there have been standards enshrined in the culture of highways, Autobahnen with the intent of breaking up monotony without sparing on utility. There are mandates for gentle curves in order to keep drivers alert, in contrast to straightaway, required in some places to allow for emergency airplane landings.
Sometimes such subtler persuasions are overshadowed by constant construction works, same-otherwise by a few vistas of spectacular scenery and roads hugging the contours of the landscape. There are still, however, quite a number of long numbing stretches of road, especially for the express route through flat lands. Although not common in America or Germany, there are score of techniques tried in France, Denmark and the Netherlands to with art streaming along the margins, posts a-pace with the traffic that change like flip-book animation, rather abstract and Jungian and light installations. Some really creative things have been done, but now such Dutch civil engineers are applying their artistry to creating smart-roads, beginning with a stretch of highway by Eindhoven.

Though the pavement is yet to be steam-rolled and there is a balance of skeptics, planners are brimming with ideas, like hyper-colour reactive paint, that yields neon blue snow flake patterns on the asphalt when temperatures dip below freezing or luminescent lanes that glow in the dark, roads that monitor traffic conditions and issue reports (displaying warning to drivers of on-coming traffic jams), cull wind power from passing cars to power a lane designated for electric automobiles that they might be charged en route. I imagine that quite a bit of energy could be harnessed in intelligent and passive ways. A lot of ideas to make vehicles more efficient are making some head-way but still fall short of where we should be, but paying heed to the pavement, the other substrate may yield a lot of inventive solutions.

Wednesday, 23 January 2013

herbie or christine

There was a rather disturbing report on the radio, heard naturally driving home when one can reasonably expect to be able to divide one's attention to an extent, confident that one's car is reliabily able to behave within certain parameters, regarding the very real eventuality that highly computerized modern cars, swarming in some cases to the beginnings of a network or at least integrated with accessories normally associated with networks, are quite vulnerable to digital sabotage.

This awareness and pushing the possibilities has not shown itself as something malicious, but has rather grown from the frustration of hobbyists and independent mechanics, restricted any administrative rights to their own cars, without the expensive intervention of a factory-authorized workshop. Hacks and back-door methods (all variety of strange tricks built into sub-systems for the programmer and technicians to pry into a car, figuratively, like clicking the door-opener in a certain sequence—sort of like the control tone of an automatic telephone dialer or the squeltch of a modem) are widely circulated among enthusiasts, and could be easily turned towards more sinister purposes. Doors could be made to only appear to lock, breaks could be made to fail on command. The possibilities are really frightening and limitless, considering how most people feel fairly secure and self-sufficient behind the wheel, and a computer virus disabling productivity and entertainment is one thing, but it is certainly another matter considering how a similiar infestation, not viruses but gremlins in this case, I guess, could manifest as something physical, hulking and deadly. The reporters even made a practical exercise of what they learned with the help of some experts and learned how easy it was to inobtrusively break into a car and rewire the settings. They were not yet quite able to remotely control the vehicle via cellular phone, but that scenario of marshalling zombie fleets may not be so far off.

Thursday, 18 October 2012

time in a bottle or pluperfect and future-tense

Bottles of wine are a bit like little secondary time-capsules, necessarily so as part of the manufacturing process, hermetically sealed and stored up, sometimes for years and years—although it’s a misconception that all wines improve with age and many times will sour or become corked. This unintentional archive, however, does resemble some of the criticisms of time-capsules in general, those walled into cornerstones or buried under pyramids and parking lots, of being unreliable narrators (unzuverlรคssiges Erzรคhler).

Those who act as curators of the past and assemble artefacts of the present for inclusion generally are not futurists and professional thinkers condemn them for not stocking their treasure chests with items that would give archeologists a useful and complete picture of their lives, etc. The critics strike me as a little bit unfair and matriculating kindergarteners should not be discouraged from hiding away something as a class and as individuals. Picking up the gravel drive way, I hesitate a bit over tossing an old screw, bit of glass, cigarette butt in the kip to eventual become the strata of a landfill and usually just knock it aside into the tall grass—for the benefit of future explorers. I wonder if any more historical elements are accidentally transmitted with the bottle under seal, other than the craft of wine-making and the quality of the growing season, the chemical signature of the terroir. While those characteristics are certainly sufficient, I do wonder if there’s not some other wayfarer (Anhalter) that’s been overlooked with the vintage, some snap-shot of a quality or quantity that isn’t recognized until later, like the growth rings of trees or ancient insects captured in amber (Bernstein).

Monday, 3 September 2012

castle week: bavaria

Here are some of the two-euro pieces that Germany has issued. The series is not yet complete, I believe, and maybe the mint might consider some lesser known symbols to represent the other states. Though certainly well-known and instantly recognizable by the many visitors who flock there, choosing Schloss Neuschwanstein for Bayern does come at the exclusion but not dismissal of many other fine objects. Proximity, familiarity and the chance to explore, seeking out or finding by accident makes it seem like Bavaria is absolutely lousy with castles.
It is a decision not to be envied, as I think I could fill several weekly series of buildings just from this region of Bavaria, Franconia (Franken)—or equally so for Unterfranken, the Rhรถn, etc. Land-holders wanted to showcase and defend their power and wealth, especially in a kingdom full of intrigues and frustrated by overlapping profane and sacred jurisdictions and non-contiguous possessions. The fairy-tale castle of King Ludwig II is a relatively recent development, as far as castles and palaces go, and in County Schweinfurt there is the youngest castle in Bavaria and among the most contemporary in the world. Schloss Craheim is another idealization of what a stately residence ought to be and was commissioned just in 1908 on the occasion of the marriage of Cavalry Master Baron Steward of Wetzlar (Truchsess von und zu Wetzlar, rather a sine cure office) to an American industrial heiress, desirous of a more modern and personal home.
The grand Baroque- and Rococo-style construction was finished quickly but less than a decade before the conclusion of World War I, that saw the abdication of much of Europe’s nobility. In the neighbouring county of HaรŸberg by the small town of Ebern stands a palace that has enjoyed a much longer history and since the 1400s has remained in the same family. Descendants live in Schloss Eyrichofs among the grandeur of the ages. The only significant change was the draining of the moat and the surrounding lake to construct an English garden on the grounds, keeping to the style of the day.
Though somewhat overshadowed by the city’s fortifications above, Veste Coburg, the very British-looking manor of Ehrenburg has been witness to volumes of dynastic statecraft. Historically yoked to Gotha-Saxe-Coburg, the county of Coburg only chose to join the newly constituted free-state of Bavaria (rather than Thuringia) when the realm was dissolved following the war. Queen Victoria, whose mother also grew up in the ducal house, spend some time here with her husband Prince Albert and met a constellation of other ruling houses, whose introductions and match-making that echo through the decades. The Gothic Revival residence, for Victoria’s benefit, also underwent some modernization, having the first indoor plumbing, a water closet, and elevator on the continent installed.