Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2008

Diigo Bookmarks 05/16/2008 (a.m.)

• At The Churchill Club: The Top 10 Tech Trends (Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online) - Annotated

  An article by Eric Savitz that sums up the panel presentation by Steve Jurvetson, Vinod Khosla, Josh Kopelman, Roger McNamee, Joe Schoendorf, and Tony Perkins on the top 10 tech trends to be aware of. Lots of buzz around mobile phone technology, mobile computing in the manner of what The Economist called Nomads at last (Diigo’d earlier & blogged) “who are defined not by what they carry but by what they leave behind, knowing that the environment will provide it.”

  Speaking of modeling the new urban connected classes on nomads (and Bedouins), another trend identified by the panel was that water is the next peak oil. See Wired Magazine, Peak Water.

  Jurvetson talked about how “evolution trumps design,” which seemed to me like he is channeling Janine Benyus and Lynn Margulis. Microbes are drivers of evolutionary biomass viability on Planet Gaia; we’re part of that game; and we will figure out how to engineer matter at the nano level of microbial life to “hack” evolution’s code and make those organisms work for us. Dangerous, but inevitable. (As Margulis and Dorian Sagan point out, however, if Gaia is a living thing and if living things are defined by having the ability to reproduce, then our role on earth may well be to help Gaia reproduce: i.e., create viable biospheres that can be sent away from Earth into space. What better place to fulfil that mandate than to tinker with microbes and evolution?)

  tags: trends, technology, futurismo

• eGoodman

  This is the portal page of Elizabeth Goodman, one of the “explorers” mentioned by Nat Torkington in his O’Reilly Radar article, “Ghandi on Ubicomp.”

  tags: egoodman, ubicom, urban_design, ubiquitous

• “Gandhi on Ubicomp,” by Nat Torkington - O’Reilly Radar

  In one paragraph, Tarkington uses Austin Williams’s critique of “technology-driven products” that don’t solve “more urgent urban problems …such as the loss of social connections between city dwellers” as an example of criticism missing the point (or perhaps putting the cart in front of the horse?). Can’t say I disagree, although Williams (who is technical editor of the Architects’ Journal and director of a forum called Future Cities that “critically explores city issues”) has a point if he is in part reacting to the hype that usually accompanies new technologies.

  Torkington’s riposte, on the other hand, is really worth noting: “I think Williams is wrong because he fails to allow for the rate that technology matures.” But then of course, some of the people who hype the technology also focus way too much on its present state and don’t take its rate of development (change) into account. This is why Torkington focuses on what he calls “the explorers,” who one hopes are hype-resistant.

  tags: ubicom, ubiquitous, cities, technology

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU on Vimeo

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU on Vimeo

Click on the title (above) to see a stop-motion animation of some fantastic graffiti carried out by BLU in Buenos Aires.  Amazing.

Found via Cool Hunting (click through for their description/ commentary).

Diigo Bookmarks 05/15/2008 (p.m.)

Nomads at last | Economist.com - Annotated

Published on the same date as The new oases (which I bookmarked at the time), I missed this story the first time around (April 10). Saw it now via Wendy Waters’s blog, All About Cities. Like “The new oases,” this article is also about mobile computing, and its effects on our social worlds/ lived lives.

It’s odd this topic should have popped up for me today, as the other article (The new oases) was one I thought of as seeming apposite to a discussion around video commenting, taking place on Fred Wilson’s blog. The conversation there is about Disqus and Seesmic, which have joined forces to enable users to leave video recorded comments (vs. text scribblings) on blogs. Somehow, when I read about this (also on Dave Winer’s blog as well as Wilson’s — I left a comment on the latter’s, albeit straight text, no video), I immediately thought of The new oases and its points regarding isolation. Disclaimer: my “ruminations” have nothing to do with the conversations taking place on either blog or their comments boards. I’m thinking about this from a more abstract angle, although the question, “what’s the point of video comments?” did come up again and again on those blogs, too.

What is the point? More information? More immediacy? More …more? If it’s more more (immediacy, intimacy, contact), then you really do have to wonder. Can the technology can ever produce or recreate “nest warmth,” that sense of communal belonging, or isn’t each instance of technological mediation just another way of giving us yet another perspective view on our own selves? Another perspective, which is a slice but hardly an integration, a whole?

It’s not the case that “communal belonging” or what the Germans call “Nestwaerme” (nest warmth), which is a kind of fusion, is a good thing; nor is it a question of whether getting a perspective (let’s call that slicing or parsing) is a good thing. They’re both good things in their appropriate times and places. It’s more a question of not confusing one for the other, and I got the impression from reading responses that there’s a lot of confusion — and confusing of the two. On Wilson’s blog there’s much discussion of whether or not the Disqus-Seesmic joint venture (video blog comments) will produce better comments/ comments streams/ understanding. I don’t think it will. It will just refract whatever understanding exists or is able to be seen into yet more facets. That’s all. Whether or not those slices and perspectives will be pulled into a new whole will depend on who’s doing the pulling.

• tags: the_economist, nomadism, mobile_technology, mobile_city, technology




Colourful banners to light up city (Vancouver Sun)

Wouldn’t it be great to have something like this (based on a virus invading the artist’s computer) be digital/ computer-generated, instead of in the same old technique of …?screen-printed banners? C’mon, so it’s a nice pattern — but if it derived from “a virus that invaded [artist Bratsa] Bonifacho’s computer,” why not make it viral in form?



tags: vancouver, bratsa_bonifacho, art, art_projects, public_art