| |
| Current Topic: Technology |
|
Where Rhythm of Life Is Rocked by Violence |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
5:50 pm EST, Nov 2, 2003 |
At Lubnan Elementary School [in Baghdad], only 150 of the school's 550 students showed up for class on Saturday morning. "I blame the satellite news channels," said Majeda Fadher, the principal. The medium is the message. QED. Where Rhythm of Life Is Rocked by Violence |
|
Ideas Unlimited, Built to Order |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
8:37 pm EST, Oct 30, 2003 |
] John Perry Barlow: Dump the Doodads, and Retrofit
] the Brain
]
] Scott Adams: Puss Can Run, but He Can't Hide
]
] Michael K. Powell: Zap! The Form's Filled Out
]
] Donald J. Trump: Your Wish Is My Command
]
] William Gibson: Lies Exposed in Telltale Colors
]
] Moby: A High That Wouldn't Hurt
]
] Bill Joy: Memo to My Borsalino: Quiet! Ideas Unlimited, Built to Order |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
12:56 am EDT, Oct 22, 2003 |
It has been the genius of the Internet that it does as little as possible. VeriSign violated Net custom and procedure when it changed its translation services for the .com and .net domains. VeriSign, we regret, has been adamant that its action was not improper. We disagree. We reject VeriSign's attempt to characterize its action as the introduction of a service. There's a tendency to think that "the way it works" is the only way it can work. That's a fragile assumption, waiting to be disproved ... The first page of the 20 October issue of eWeek states, by way of lead-in, that "we think Verisign was wrong ... and we say so." VeriSign Was Wrong |
|
Design Rules, Vol. 1: The Power of Modularity |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
5:10 pm EDT, Oct 18, 2003 |
We live in a dynamic economic and commercial world, surrounded by objects of remarkable complexity and power. In many industries, changes in products and technologies have brought with them new kinds of firms and forms of organization. We are discovering new ways of structuring work, of bringing buyers and sellers together, and of creating and using market information. Although our fast-moving economy often seems to be outside of our influence or control, human beings create the things that create the market forces. Devices, software programmes, production proceses, contracts, firms and markets are all the fruit of purposeful action: they are designed. Using the computer industry as an example, Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark develop a powerful theory of design and industrial evolution. They argue that the industry has experienced previously unimaginable levels of innovation and growth because it embraced the concept of "modularity", building complex products from smaller sub-systems that can be designed independently yet function together as a whole. Modularity freed designers to experiment with different approaches, so long as they obeyed the established "design rules". Drawing upon the literatures of industrial organization, real options and computer architecture, the authors provide insight into the forces of change that drive today's economy. George Gilder, meet Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark. It's time for a lesson. Design Rules, Vol. 1: The Power of Modularity |
|
New Media, 1740-1915 | The MIT Press |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
9:47 pm EDT, Oct 8, 2003 |
Reminding us that all media were once new, this book challenges the notion that to study new media is to study exclusively today's new media. Examining a variety of media in their historic contexts, it explores those moments of transition when new media were not yet fully defined and their significance was still in flux. Examples range from familiar devices such as the telephone and phonograph to unfamiliar curiosities such as the physiognotrace and the zograscope. Moving beyond the story of technological innovation, the book considers emergent media as sites of ongoing cultural exchange. It considers how habits and structures of communication can frame a collective sense of public and private and how they inform our apprehensions of the "real." By recovering different (and past) senses of media in transition, New Media, 1740-1915 promises to deepen our historical understanding of all media and thus to sharpen our critical awareness of how they acquire their meaning and power. This book was published in April 2003. Follow the link for the Table of Contents to download three sample chapters at no charge. New Media, 1740-1915 | The MIT Press |
|
Juicy intervew with Bill Joy |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
10:30 pm EDT, Oct 3, 2003 |
Fortune magazine interviewed Bill Joy after his departure from Sun Microsystems. The hardest part isn't inventing the solution but figuring out how to get people to adopt it. Software engineering as a discipline is in the Dark Ages ... We need a "condomized" version of Microsoft Outlook. Lately, instead of getting better with each new release, Windows is just getting different. You can't change the fact that it is human nature for people to carve up a problem and try to own things, for the complexity to accrete in corners, and for the vocabulary of the project not to make it all the way across. Juicy intervew with Bill Joy |
|
EFF: Flawed E-Voting Standard Sent Back to Drawing Board |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
9:16 pm EDT, Sep 27, 2003 |
EFF last week called on IEEE members and other citizens to voice their concerns about the standard. Nearly five hundred people wrote to IEEE leadership pointing out flaws in the draft standard. On September 22, the first working group ballot on the draft failed overwhelmingly, causing the simultaneous ballot at the sponsor level to fail as well. EFF: Flawed E-Voting Standard Sent Back to Drawing Board |
|
Technology's Impact on Everything | CIO Magazine |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
8:50 pm EDT, Sep 27, 2003 |
The Fall/Winter 2003 issue of CIO Magazine is a special issue that focuses on "technology's impact on everything." They've assembled quite the team of contributors for this issue, including Ray Kurzweil, Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, Bjorn Lomborg, Robert Reich, Howard Gardner, Jonathan Zittrain, Paul Saffo, Newt Gingrich, The Dalai Lama, Howard Rheingold, Robert Ballard, Barry Steinhardt, and more. Here's how the Barry Steinhardt piece begins: PICTURE THIS: You're attending a trade show in Las Vegas. Strolling around the city one evening, you happen upon a sex shop and pause for a moment to snicker at the curious items in the store's window. Then you continue on your way. However, unbeknownst to you, the store's Customer Identification System has detected a radio identification signal emitted by a computer chip in one of your credit cards, and is recording your identity and the date and time of your brief stop. A few weeks later, your spouse is surprised to find in the mail a lurid solicitation from the store mentioning your visit. You've got some explaining to do. Technology's Impact on Everything | CIO Magazine |
|
The Google File System [PDF] |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
8:32 pm EDT, Sep 27, 2003 |
The Google File System, a scalable distributed system for large distributed data-intensive applications, provides fault tolerance while running on inexpensive commodity hardware and delivers high aggregate performance to a large number of clients. The Google File System [PDF] |
|
New Sun Microsystems Chip May Unseat the Circuit Board |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
11:34 pm EDT, Sep 22, 2003 |
On Tuesday, Sun researchers plan to report that they have discovered a way to transmit data inside a computer much more quickly than current techniques allow. By placing the edge of one chip directly in contact with its neighbor, it may be possible to move data 60 to 100 times as fast as the present top speeds. New Sun Microsystems Chip May Unseat the Circuit Board |
|
