Showing posts with label Prophets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prophets. Show all posts
January 21, 2014
May 3, 2013
Throw-Away Society
"Actual sea-battles were rare, and even then were fought close to shore.
Ships were roped together in lines to face an enemy fleet and showers of
arrows and missiles would have been exchanged. Each side then resorted
to hand-to-hand fighting as they attempted to board their opponents'
ships. The warriors in the prow were specially selected for this task.
The aim was not to destroy enemy craft, but to capture them if possible,
as they represented a considerable investment in time, resources and
labour."
BBC
This description of the Vikings not destroying enemy ships due to their value made me recall Toffler's theories on Transience and the Throw-Away Society:
"Anti-materialists tend to deride the importance of "things." Yet things are highly significant, not merely because of their functional utility, but also because of their psychological impact. We develop relationships with things. Things affect our sense of continuity or discontinuity. They play a role in the structure of situations and the foreshortening of our relationships with things accelerates the pace of life."
Future Shock, Chapter 4
BBC
This description of the Vikings not destroying enemy ships due to their value made me recall Toffler's theories on Transience and the Throw-Away Society:
"Anti-materialists tend to deride the importance of "things." Yet things are highly significant, not merely because of their functional utility, but also because of their psychological impact. We develop relationships with things. Things affect our sense of continuity or discontinuity. They play a role in the structure of situations and the foreshortening of our relationships with things accelerates the pace of life."
Future Shock, Chapter 4
April 9, 2013
Amazon Secretly Removes "1984" From the Kindle
Thousands of people last week discovered that Amazon had quietly removed electronic copies of George Orwell's 1984 from their Kindle e-book readers. In the process, Amazon revealed how easy censorship will be in the Kindle age.
In this case, the mass e-book removals were motivated by copyright . A company called MobileReference, who did not own the copyrights to the books 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded both books to the Kindle store and started selling them. When the rights owner heard about this, they contacted Amazon and asked that the e-books be removed. And Amazon decided to erase them not just from the store, but from all the Kindles where they'd been downloaded. Amazon operators used the Kindle wireless network, called WhisperNet, to quietly delete the books from people's devices and refund them the money they'd paid.
i09
In this case, the mass e-book removals were motivated by copyright . A company called MobileReference, who did not own the copyrights to the books 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded both books to the Kindle store and started selling them. When the rights owner heard about this, they contacted Amazon and asked that the e-books be removed. And Amazon decided to erase them not just from the store, but from all the Kindles where they'd been downloaded. Amazon operators used the Kindle wireless network, called WhisperNet, to quietly delete the books from people's devices and refund them the money they'd paid.
i09
April 3, 2013
The first cellphone call was made 40 years ago today
Martin Cooper changed the world when he made the first cellphone call 40 years ago.
The former Motorola vice president and division manager made the call on the company's DynaTAC phone while standing in front of the New York Hilton on Sixth Avenue. His first call: to the head of research at Bell Labs, which had also been racing to build the first cellphone.
Cooper's call did more than untether people from their traditional fixed phone lines; it opened the door to true mobility and continues to affect virtually every aspect of our lives.
cnet
The former Motorola vice president and division manager made the call on the company's DynaTAC phone while standing in front of the New York Hilton on Sixth Avenue. His first call: to the head of research at Bell Labs, which had also been racing to build the first cellphone.
Cooper's call did more than untether people from their traditional fixed phone lines; it opened the door to true mobility and continues to affect virtually every aspect of our lives.
cnet
March 29, 2012
October 7, 2011
August 17, 2011
The Annotated Toffler
Think you've heard it all about the global financial crisis, the Internet distracting us into stupidity, dysfunctional and self-destructive politics, the demise of the nuclear family, and degenerating cities? Well imagine having predicted, written about, and imagined the consequences of all of these postmodern maladies -- before they ever happened. Meet Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the accidental futurists who have lived to see so many of their foresights become our daily reality.
Foreign Policy
The Modular Man would like to tell you that we told you so.
Foreign Policy
The Modular Man would like to tell you that we told you so.
June 14, 2011
U.S. Students Remain Poor at History, Tests Show
American students are less proficient in their nation’s history than in any other subject, according to results of a nationwide test released on Tuesday, with most fourth graders unable to say why Abraham Lincoln was an important figure and few high school seniors able to identify China as the North Korean ally that fought American troops during the Korean War.
The New York Times
The New York Times
June 1, 2011
April 12, 2011
April 11, 2011
Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.
Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you.
I can say that with confidence because it’s about Peter Thiel. And Thiel – the PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist – not only has a special talent for making money, he has a special talent for making people furious.
Some people are contrarian for the sake of getting headlines or outsmarting the markets. For Thiel, it’s simply how he views the world. Of course a side benefit for the natural contrarian is it frequently leads to things like headlines and money.
Consider the 2000 Nasdaq crash. Thiel was one of the few who saw in coming. There’s a famous story about PayPal’s March 2000 venture capital round. The offer was “only” at a $500 million-or-so valuation. Nearly everyone on the board and the management team balked, except Thiel who calmly told the room that this was a bubble at its peak, and the company needed to take every dime it could right now. That’s how close PayPal came to being dot com roadkill a la WebVan or Pets.com.
And after the crash, Thiel insisted there hadn’t really been a crash: He argued the equity bubble had simply shifted onto the housing market. Thiel was so convinced of this thesis that until recently, he refused to buy property, despite his soaring personal net worth. And, again, he was right.
So Friday, as I sat with Thiel in his San Francisco home that he finally owns, I was curious what he thinks of the current Web frenzy. Not surprisingly, another Internet bubble seemed the farthest thing from his mind. But, he argued, America is under the spell of a bubble of a very different kind. Is it an emerging markets bubble? You could argue that, Thiel says, but he also notes that with half of the world’s population surging to modernity, it’s hard to argue the emerging world is overvalued.
Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is over-valued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”
Tech Crunch
I can say that with confidence because it’s about Peter Thiel. And Thiel – the PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist – not only has a special talent for making money, he has a special talent for making people furious.
Some people are contrarian for the sake of getting headlines or outsmarting the markets. For Thiel, it’s simply how he views the world. Of course a side benefit for the natural contrarian is it frequently leads to things like headlines and money.
Consider the 2000 Nasdaq crash. Thiel was one of the few who saw in coming. There’s a famous story about PayPal’s March 2000 venture capital round. The offer was “only” at a $500 million-or-so valuation. Nearly everyone on the board and the management team balked, except Thiel who calmly told the room that this was a bubble at its peak, and the company needed to take every dime it could right now. That’s how close PayPal came to being dot com roadkill a la WebVan or Pets.com.
And after the crash, Thiel insisted there hadn’t really been a crash: He argued the equity bubble had simply shifted onto the housing market. Thiel was so convinced of this thesis that until recently, he refused to buy property, despite his soaring personal net worth. And, again, he was right.
So Friday, as I sat with Thiel in his San Francisco home that he finally owns, I was curious what he thinks of the current Web frenzy. Not surprisingly, another Internet bubble seemed the farthest thing from his mind. But, he argued, America is under the spell of a bubble of a very different kind. Is it an emerging markets bubble? You could argue that, Thiel says, but he also notes that with half of the world’s population surging to modernity, it’s hard to argue the emerging world is overvalued.
Instead, for Thiel, the bubble that has taken the place of housing is the higher education bubble. “A true bubble is when something is over-valued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”
Tech Crunch
March 28, 2011
Paul Baran, Internet Pioneer, Dies at 84
Paul Baran, an engineer who helped create the technical underpinnings for the Arpanet, the government-sponsored precursor to today’s Internet, died Saturday night at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 84.
In the early 1960s, while working at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Baran outlined the fundamentals for packaging data into discrete bundles, which he called “message blocks.” The bundles are then sent on various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination. Such a plan is known as “packet switching.”
New York Times
Wikipedia
In the early 1960s, while working at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Baran outlined the fundamentals for packaging data into discrete bundles, which he called “message blocks.” The bundles are then sent on various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination. Such a plan is known as “packet switching.”
New York Times
Wikipedia
February 17, 2011
“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords."
Ken Jennings, contestant on Jeopardy! famous for winning 74 games in a row, borrowing a line from The Simpsons to congratulate his computer opponent, Watson, for handily winning a three-day competition.
New York Times
January 27, 2011
Sputnik Moment?
"This is our generation's Sputnik Moment," President Obama said during Tuesday's State of the Union.
...
So I couldn't help wondering: Could we ever have a Sputnik moment?
Frontiers? We live on them. In 1969, things were still analog. You didn't have to discard your devices after a few months because Steve Jobs had decided that light purple was the new purple. Now, if something is lasting, we look down on it. "The only thing that lasts these days are dead armadillos and those seasonal breads in the glass case at Starbucks," we point out. Ephemeral is the new permanent. We have the collective memory -- and persistent desire to mate with anything in sight -- of Viagra-addled mayflies.
This comes with many boons. Thanks to our insistence on living on the bubble of the present moment, our world is rife with unnatural wonders - iPhones, iPads, Clouds, memes, videos of cats in Japan stuffing themselves into boxes. When I have a sore throat, I can go online and describe my symptoms, and strangers from across the globe (or the part of the globe that follows me on Twitter, at any rate) can suggest that I drink blueberry syrup and hot toddies! This is the stuff!
Everyone admits that the world has shrunk. But this shrinkage has also closed the window for Sputnik moments.
Washington Post
...
So I couldn't help wondering: Could we ever have a Sputnik moment?
Frontiers? We live on them. In 1969, things were still analog. You didn't have to discard your devices after a few months because Steve Jobs had decided that light purple was the new purple. Now, if something is lasting, we look down on it. "The only thing that lasts these days are dead armadillos and those seasonal breads in the glass case at Starbucks," we point out. Ephemeral is the new permanent. We have the collective memory -- and persistent desire to mate with anything in sight -- of Viagra-addled mayflies.
This comes with many boons. Thanks to our insistence on living on the bubble of the present moment, our world is rife with unnatural wonders - iPhones, iPads, Clouds, memes, videos of cats in Japan stuffing themselves into boxes. When I have a sore throat, I can go online and describe my symptoms, and strangers from across the globe (or the part of the globe that follows me on Twitter, at any rate) can suggest that I drink blueberry syrup and hot toddies! This is the stuff!
Everyone admits that the world has shrunk. But this shrinkage has also closed the window for Sputnik moments.
Washington Post
December 30, 2010
The Shallows
Try reading a book while doing a crossword puzzle, and that, says author Nicholas Carr, is what you're doing every time you use the Internet.
Carr is the author of the Atlantic article Is Google Making Us Stupid? which he has expanded into a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
Carr believes that the Internet is a medium based on interruption — and it's changing the way people read and process information. We've come to associate the acquisition of wisdom with deep reading and solitary concentration, and he says there's not much of that to be found online.
NPR
Carr is the author of the Atlantic article Is Google Making Us Stupid? which he has expanded into a book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
Carr believes that the Internet is a medium based on interruption — and it's changing the way people read and process information. We've come to associate the acquisition of wisdom with deep reading and solitary concentration, and he says there's not much of that to be found online.
NPR
October 11, 2010
July 6, 2010
Prince declares internet 'over'.
"The Internet's completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it. All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."
Prince
June 28, 2010
The Good Life
"Today the good life means making full use of science and technology — without succumbing to the illusion that they can make us free, reasonable, or even sane. It means seeking peace — without hoping for a world without war. It means cherishing freedom — in the knowledge that it is an interval between anarchy and tyranny."
John Gray
Thanks Melvillian
John Gray
Thanks Melvillian
June 23, 2010
The Menace of Mechanical Music
"I foresee a marked deterioration in American music and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue -- or rather by vice -- of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines."
John Philip Sousa, "The Menace of Mechanical Music," Appleton's Magazine, Vol. 8 (1906).
May 17, 2010
Obsidian
Vide of atomic bomb footage set to "Obsidian" by Meshuggah. Don't miss the Oppenheimer clip at the end.
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