Links tagged with “technology”
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Flamethrowers and Fire Extinguishers – a review of “The Social Dilemma” – LibrarianShipwreck
I haven’t watched the programme but I enjoyed this very critical review of it. (via Dan Hon)
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For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity - StarTribune.com
I reckon this is useful for analogies with technologies other than tractors. (via @slavin_fpo)
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The Online Photographer: Best Film Cameras for Newbies
Re “Mike’s Comment” below the cameras, I bet there’s a similar sweet spot in the development of most technologies – cars, computers, others that don’t start with “c” – and that it should have a name.
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The Online Photographer: Best Comment Ever
“The endless upgrade cycle, the more and more laborious and tedious mastery of imaging software, the solid belief in technical improvement and control as a means to achieve success, all of this leads one further and further away from any possibility of making original or authentic work.”
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8 Lessons from 20 Years of Hype Cycles | Michael Mullany | LinkedIn
Reviewing past Gartner Hype Cycles. They could do with an alternative line that forks from the trough of disillusionment down into the abyss of failure. (via @tomtaylor)
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prosthetic knowledge
This tumblr of design/art/tech right now is very, very good. (via @iamdanw I think)
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What can a technologist do about climate change? A personal view.
From November 2015. I don’t feel any less useless but it’s a great way to present a piece of writing. If only every news article had such clear extra context.
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Who Will Command The Robot Armies?
Loads of good stuff in this transcript of Maciej Ceglowski’s latest talk. The section taking the piss out of silly IoT things seems like a trivialising distraction though.
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Tom Vanderbilt Explains Why We Could Predict Self-Driving Cars, But Not Women in the Workplace
We think technology will change much quicker than it does, “but when it comes to culture we tend to believe not that the future will be very different than the present day, but that it will be roughly the same.” Lots of good stuff.
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Pre to postmortem: the inside story of the death of Palm and webOS | The Verge
I love this kind of thing, looks at the success and/or failure of technology platforms and products from the inside.
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Photography, hello — Software ate the camera, but freed the photograph by Craig Mod
So many quotable bits. And it’s about more than cameras. About the uncomfortable but fruitful position of straddling technological shifts. About the value of a new product that simplifies only a tiny number of steps. About the importance of the network to story-telling.
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“Peter Thiel pulled an iPhone out of his jeans pocket and held it up. “I don’t consider this to be a…”
For the thought exercise of comparing the “breakthroughness” and impact of the Apollo programme and the iPhone, and Paul’s (for him) almost contrary (but not wrong) position.
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The Technium: Pain of the New
I haven’t seen ‘The Hobbit’ and its HFR, but most of the complaints about the 48fps do, as Kevin Kelly says, sound like people preferring vinyl over digital music, black and white film over colour, etc. Anyway, a good description of why HFR currently looks odd. (via Kottke)
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Why People Really Love Technology: An Interview with Genevieve Bell - Alexis C. Madrigal - The Atlantic
Very interesting interview with the Intel researcher. Some good bits on demographics of the internet; fear (or not) of robots; physical vs digital; tactility; fear of the TV red button. (via @annegalloway)
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The 21st-Century TV Shows That Get 21st-Century Tech Right - Technology - The Atlantic Wire
Looks at a few US TV shows and the ways people in them use consumer technologies, rightly or wrongly.
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Astonishments, ten, in the history of version control < Francis is
A nice summary of advances in version control systems over the decades. With any technology it’s easy to forget the many incremental changes that make up the current norm.
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11 Sounds That Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard - Mental Floss
Sounds of things that you no longer hear. I started making a list of these ages ago, but didn’t even get this many. (via Kottke)
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Why Twitter’s Oral Culture Irritates Bill Keller (and why this is an important issue) | technosociology
Very good, and worth some time. On how Twitter is conversation, and how that compares with written language that some people are concerned is threatened by social media. (via @blech)
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How to Build a Newsroom Time Machine
A student journalism class puts together a newspaper using manual typewriters, scalpels, glue, analogue photography, etc. Sounds like a good exercise and not just because I’m old(ish). (via Waxy)
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W. Brian Arthur vs Silicon Roundabout, ‘Start-Up Britain’ and other shake-and-bake approaches « Magical Nihilism
Matt Jones on how you can’t just conjure an area like Shoreditch out of thin air and tax incentives. These things — locations, industries, technologies — take time and long-term ideas.
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Global Village Construction Set - Open Source Ecology
Creating the fifty “tools/technologies for building post-scarcity, resilient communities” and open-sourcing the plans. (via Kottke)
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DNA/How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet
All good, but particularly the points from “everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal.” Very good. (via Russell Davies)
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Niksilver.com » When board leaders fail to grasp technology
On how company bosses treat IT as an expensive, unnecessary, incomprehensible thing. (via Dan Hon)
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SXSW 2010 for Futurists
Some interesting things there, some of which might ease the pangs from the end of ETech. (via Tom Taylor)
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100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words - Ars Technica
How companies have complained that new technologies will destroy content industries over the past century. Like when home taping killed music. Wasn’t that terrible. (via Kottke)
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The Viridian Design Movement
Bruce Sterling closed Reboot last week and, even though I’d heard and read some of it before it was a wonderful, weary, preaching, telling off. It made me read this again.
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The Long Now Blog » Blog Archive » All you need to jump start civilization…
“On this one graphic is all the stuff you need to know to jump start a civilization (or get super rich if you travel back in time).” Fun.
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Tech Support, Manuals & Troubleshooting for Consumers
Nice idea. Like user-filled tech support forums but for everything, from white goods, cars, etc on. Although I did see a comment about them not paying people they’d promised to… (via Noisy Decent Graphics)