Question Technology

TED: Artists and Inventors Plot to Save the World

The New York Times has the low-down on the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) love-in.  The $6000-a-seat, invitation-only gathering of the rich and techno-utopian takes place this week in Monterey, CA:

“It’s starting to feel like Christmas and the family is coming in,” Chris Anderson said, in his almost whispering voice.

It’s quite a family, as it includes Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel laureate in physics; Paul Simon, the songwriter; Richard Branson, the Virgin Group magnate; and the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The occasion is the annual TED conference, named for the convergence of technology, entertainment and design— with a dash of social activism thrown in recently as well. It is expected to draw 1,200 people to Monterey, Calif., starting Wednesday.

Link: Where Artists and Inventors Plot to Save the World - New York Times.

Learn from the Hamster

I don't know anything about this book, but I like the hamster art!  It's The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before It Manages You (official website).  The premise sounds reasonable enough too.

I grew up watching Hammy Hamster, back in the days before he had e-mail.

Tech in Schools: iCranky

Excellent article by Laurence Musgrove in Inside Higher Ed about the rush to bring the latest tech fads into schools:

I’m feeling a bit cranky.  My colleagues and I have just received word that our next professional development day will focus on ways we need to technologize our teaching methods so that we can better facilitate the success of the newest new generation, commonly known as “Millennials.”  This latest alien invasion of first-year students, we are told, are teenage battery packs “with wires running through their veins” plugged into video games, MySpace and iPods.  Therefore, we better get our collective act together and at the very least hybridize the delivery of knowledge so that we can help them make the grade in the global marketplace. [...]

Another reason I’m cranky today is that I detest these facile characterizations of our students. At some point, I expect the next newest generation to be labeled “USBs” or “ScanDisks” or “Intels” or “iLearners.” These names and framing metaphors, of course, support all sorts of false notions of knowledge and learning and teaching and success and most frightening: humanity.

And I’m cranky because this attempt to equate pedagogy with technology confuses ends with means. “Student engagement” has become the latest assessment buzzphrase, and thus, the newest once-and-for-all measure of and purpose for learning. In other words, any desire to understand the value of learning to individual students is replaced with the desire to promote the most efficient and engaging mode of learning by as many students as possible. And faculty better get in line to be online. [...]

What our students need is not more of what they come in the door with. They don’t need more of the same in the same way they got it before. They need to be confronted with people who talk about ideas that matter. They need to become people who can confront and talk to other people about ideas that matter. They need to sit in a room of people and learn about humanity.

Link: Inside Higher Ed: iCranky

NY Times says: Stop Clicking!

I've mentioned before (Give Me Back My Mouse) that I have some sort of obsessive clicking/mousing disorder when I read text on the web, and how it irritates me when newfangled ajax-y sites pop up stuff unexpectedly when you idly mouse around.  This week the New York Times has taken a big leap forward in irritating its web readers.  Now if you double-click on any word in an article it (slowly) brings up a big honking window with a definition (and some ads -- probably the real reason for this "feature").

The good news (for me) is that it appears I'm far from the only person with this problem.  The Grammar Police blog is heading up the campaign, with a spiffy graphic and an excellent rant:

Okay, nytimes.com, we need to have a talk. The "contextual dictionary," if that's what you're calling it, isn't cute or clever. It's not helpful. It's just a pain. The New York Times may be the paper of record, but I'm not putting up with a pop-up record for every word I double click.

Oh, I double-click words—and how. I'm a habitual screensifter. When I'm reading something on the screen, I click, double-click, drag, and highlight words. Any and all words, whole blocs of text, I don't care. Idly but mercilessly, and according to rules of symmetry and aesthetics so sure and precise I won't detail them now, I highlight and grab and drag sentences, even whole paragraphs, anywhere I damn well please. If I want to just nervously click on words, that's what I do.

But the NYT wants to ruin my games—and worse still, prevent me from reading at all. I'll be the first to admit that screensifting is an obsessive–compulsive disorder (and probably a genetically inherited trait for which I'm not to blame), but nevertheless, there it is, absolutely unavoidable and necessary to the process of reading the digital fishwrap.

Read the rest here: Grammar.police.

(via Get Satisfaction)

The Importance of User-Centered Design

CNET has a story about the growing importance of fields like human-computer interaction, usability, and human factors engineering.  As someone who has done work in this area, I heartily agree.

Wonder why YouTube skyrocketed in popularity in less than two years?

One obvious reason is that the video-sharing Web site has kept it simple. YouTube doesn't require a video player download or a special account just to watch a video. With just a click on a link, a video is up and running in a few seconds. It's a people-friendly design, and that attention to simplicity has paid off.

Experts in the field of so-called human-computer interaction, however, say good design like the YouTube interface is the exception, not the rule. For every slick Apple iPod, there are a dozen washing machines with a baffling array of buttons. And for every simple TiVo interface, there are umpteen TV remote controls that look like something out of NASA's Mission Control.

Now companies, universities and even government agencies like NASA are investing time and dollars as they take a hard look at how people interact with technology.

Link: The human factor in gadget, Web design | CNET News.com,

via Usability In The News: The human factor in gadget, Web design.

Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things is a great introduction to the ideas behind HCI.

60 Minutes on the Geek Industry

60 Minutes recently aired a piece about how complicated technology is creating high demand for the "Geek Squad" and other tech support services.  Mostly the segment is about those businesses, but there's also a bit about why technology is needlessly complicated, featuring usability guru Don Norman and the NPR Car Talk guys.  The video and transcript are online.  From the intro:

It’s hard to say exactly when it happened, but sometime during the past ten years, most of us involuntarily surrendered a big chunk of our lives to computers, and to other networking devices that contain computer chips. We’re talking laptops, desk tops, cell phones, BlackBerrys, PDAs, and remote controls, anything that needs to be programmed, requires technical support, and can crash, die, or merely freeze.

As Steve Kroft reports, that always has a way of happening at the worst possible moment, and for most of us there is only one solution: get me the geeks!

We are becoming slaves to our own technology – addicted to and dependent upon all sorts of beeping, flashing gadgetry that is supposed to make our lives easier.

But it has become so complicated to set up, program and fix, that most of us don’t know how to do it, giving rise to a multi-billion dollar service industry populated by the very people who used to be shunned in the high school cafeteria: geeks, like Robert Stephens.

Link: Get Me The Geeks!, How Tricky Technology Is Giving Rise To The Geeks - CBS News.

(via Don Norman)

Banning Cellphones in Toronto Schools

Schools in Toronto are the latest to deal with the problem of cellphones in the classroom, and they seem to be going about it more sensibly than their New York state counterparts (previous post).  The public school board is considering a ban, while many private schools have already acted.  From the Globe & Mail:

[Branksome Hall spokeswoman Janet Sailian] says her school is not blocking technology from entering the education realm; there's just no use for cellphones in the classroom. The school recently added the iPod to its list of items not permitted in the classroom.

"As technology evolves, we try to evolve our code of conduct and our rules," she says.

However, everyone seems to agree that it is a mistake to ban cellphones, or even other new technology, completely from school grounds, as is the case in New York.

"There will always be a new technology. It's about teaching kids to live with technology in a way that makes them good citizens," says Kim Gordon, head of Bishop Strachan School.

Link: globeandmail.com: Personal Tech.

Professor Says Bloggers Are Losers

He won't make many MySpace friends with talk like this!

Bloggers are living in a world where emotions may be real but everything else is make-believe, says a University of Calgary professor in a new book.

[...] Michael Keren, who has written "Blogosphere: The New Political Arena," suggests individuals who bare their souls in blogs are isolated and lonely, living in a virtual reality instead of forming real relationships or helping to change the world.

"Bloggers think of themselves as rebels against mainstream society, but that rebellion is mostly confined to cyberspace, which makes blogging as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills," the author says. [...]

"In this world of blogging, which the whole world can read, you have a personal expectation about a readership that's just not there for the millions of bloggers who are writing their personal feelings." [...]

"Many of us end up like Father McKenzie in the 'Eleanor Rigby' Beatles song, who is writing a sermon that no one is going to hear," he suggests. "Some of us are going to be embraced by the mainstream media, but the majority of us remain in the dark, remain in the loneliness."

Link: globeandmail.com: Author laments lonely life of bloggers.

As a critic of technology and self-loathing blogger, I'm inclined to agree.  But it sounds like he's painting with too broad a stroke, judging by this article anyway.  I absolutely love the creepy book cover, though.

Latest in Future Schlock: Discovery's 2057

I caught a few minutes of the Discovery Channel's new techno docu-drama "2057" the other day.  It's quite an achievement in the future schlock genre.  Flying cars!  Wired clothing! ("the doctor is in your shirt!")  Urine-analyzing toilets!

A memorable moment was when the flying ambulance arrived to treat the guy who had just tripped over a Roomba and fallen out a three story window (to prove a point that such a fall would kill you today, but not in our glorious future).  Before treating him, a paramedic consults her screen which chirps "Platinum Class verified!"  Presumably they'd just fly off if he wasn't properly insured.  Thank the gods!  Flying cars is one thing, but universal health insurance in fifty years?  That's just not believable.

The show's main web page locks up my browser (I guess I need to update to Firefox 2057), but I could get to the about page, 2057: About the Show: Discovery Channel, and here's an excerpt of their description of the show:

What would you see and experience if the clocks rolled forward 50 years? In a unique blend of drama and science, this three-part series shows you the world of tomorrow. Will we have flying cars? Will advances in medicine help us stay young forever? What about "printing" custom-made vital organs? What will our cities look like? What will tomorrow's wars be about? Will we have robots helping around the house? Will solar power be the new oil?

Supported by the world's leading scientists and research institutes, we embark on a quest to answer some of society's most fundamental questions and reveal the dramas of tomorrow's world along the way. State-of-the-art computer graphics in combination with a dynamic story line will create a world usually only seen in feature films, but with the accuracy and relevance of a documentary. This series is all about opening the window of our future based on science fact, not science fiction.

Glasses To Prevent You From Sleeping

You've probably seen these on other blogs already: new eyeglasses that alert you if you're falling asleep.  Study aid or new torture device?

Designed to assist those cramming for exams or going on a long drive, they work by detecting what angle the bespectacled user’s head is at. If the head drops below a certain level, a little motor kicks-off to vibrate the earpiece and no doubt scare the crap out of whoever is wearing them. The glasses can be set to go off at one of four levels of head-droop.

Link: Plastic Bamboo : Vision Optic MyDo Bururu sleep warning glasses.

Note that one of the suggested uses is while driving... yikes.

Camera Phones Bring out the Best and (Mostly) the Worst

Michael Agger has an excellent essay in Slate on the wonders of the camera-equipped cellphone.  Link: The Camera Phone: The gadget that perverts, vigilantes, and celebrity stalkers can all agree on - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine.

He also points to an interesting blog, PicturePhoning, which "covers the latest news on camera and videophones, their social impact and more recently, what's the latest on mobile socializing and user generated content going mobile."

Finally, The Public Embraces Technology (at CES)

Breaking news out of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas -- the public is embracing technology!  The BBC has the scoop:

More people than ever are becoming early adopters of technology, says research outlined in Las Vegas.

"Consumers get it; they understand technology and they are adopting it accordingly," analyst Sean Wargo told the Consumer Electronics Show.

More than $155bn (�80bn) in consumer technologies is expected to be sold in the US in the next 12 months.

"Driving the industry is the transition to the new breed, the next generation of technologies," Mr Wargo said.

More than 140,000 people are in Las Vegas for one of the world's largest technology shows.

The industry says consumers' love affair with gadgets will continue despite a global economic slowdown and a prediction that growth in the US market would halve in 2007 from last year's figures.

Link: BBC NEWS | Technology | Technology 'embraced by public'.

Okay, enough sarcasm for today.

Gandhi's Problem -- Too Low Tech!

This is an award-winning commercial from Telecom Italia in which we see Gandhi sit himself down in front of a webcam, followed by his image projected onto all sorts of video screens.  The tagline: "Imagine the world today if he could have communicated like this."  Sigh.

Link to video: Epica Awards.

Of course this is not the first company to abuse Gandhi by using him in a TV commercial.  I believe that honor goes to Apple, back in the "Think Different" days.

Modern Techno-Maladies

The latest issue of New Scientist has a little tongue-in-cheek piece about bad habits people develop online.  The full article is available free online, along with a few "confessions."  Here's a glossary from one of the sidebars:

Modern maladies

Blog streaking Revealing secrets or personal information online, which for everybody's sake would be best kept private

Crackberry The curse of the modern executive, not being able to stop checking your BlackBerry even at you grandmother's funeral

Cyberchondria A headache and a particular rash at the same time? Extensive online research tells you it must be cancer

Egosurfing When "just checking" gets out of control

Infornography You're beyond being a healthy "infovore": acquiring and sharing information has become an addiction for you

You Tube narcissism Not even your closest family want to see hours of your holiday videos

Google-stalking Snooping online on old friends, colleagues or first dates

MySpace impersonation Many of us pretend to be someone we're not when we are online, but some will pretend to be a well-known figure

Powerpointlessness One too many flashy slides

Photolurking Flicking through a photo album of someone you've never met

Wikipediholism Excessive devotion to a certain online collaborative encyclopedia. You can test whether you're an addict at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Are_You_a_Wikipediholic_Test

Link: Just can't get e-nough - tech - 20 December 2006 - New Scientist Tech.

Lying is Easier With Gadgets

From Reuters:

More than four out of five people admit to telling little white lies at least once a day and the preferred way of being "economical with the truth" is to use technology such as cell phones, texts and e-mails, a survey on Thursday said.

The research by UK pollsters 72 Point found that "techno-treachery" was widespread with nearly 75 percent of people saying gadgets like Blackberrys made it easier to fib.

Just over half of respondents said using gadgets made them feel less guilty when telling a lie than doing it face to face, the study on behalf of financial services group Friends Provident found.

Link: Gadgets seen as best way to tell white lies� Reuters.com.

Via Wired.