technology

Toys for boys

Remember when running entailed pulling on a pair of sneakers, old shorts and a t-shirt? Basically it’s still the same but even something as simple as running has been upgraded and infused with technology. So what does the high tech runner need to be satisfied?

The sneakers – way back in 2005 Adidas launched a high tech sneaker with a 20-megahertz microprocessor in each shoe that gave the shoe the ability to self-adjust cushioning and support. The shoe makes 5 million calculations per second. But even without the computers the running shoe is a feat (sorry bad pun) of engineering.

The clothes breathe and dry. Letting out sweat and bringing in air. The socks are cushioned, supporting and breathing. Sunglasses are optional. There is a whole array of additional items from bandanas to sweat-bands.

But then, it’s where the real high-tech begins. Training software to help the runner keep track and share their results online. Electronic devices include mp3 players, headphones, pedometers, heart-rate monitors, GPS measuring. The list goes on and on. It makes your head spin.

Kind of makes you long for the old t-shirt and running shorts… Well to be honest I kind of like the gadgets!

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Wikipedia Academy

On Wednesday and Thursday I will be attending the first Wikipedia Academy in Lund Sweden. The event will be spread over 1,5 days and deal with many different aspects of Wikipedia as a phenomenon and as a tool for research and teaching. The conference has brought together the Swedish Wikimedia group who will hold practical workshops and several different scholars to discuss issues as far ranging as trustworthiness of the sources, the inclusion debate and legal issues.

It should be a very interesting meeting…

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Obama as tech user

What you understand about technology is intimately related to the way in which you tend to use technology. This is why it always concerns me when non-tech users are put to regulate technology use. It’s a question of understanding.

President-elect Obama is on Flickr and uses a Creative Commons license for his photographs. Naturally this may be someone who works for him but at least he has the knowledge to hire people who “get” technology use.

Posted on by mklang

Video Game Table

After lecturing at Södertörn University College I was given a tour of the department and to my joy I came across a functioning tabletop version of Pong.

Pong is a first generation video game released originally as a coin-operated arcade game by Atari Inc. on November 29, 1972. Pong is based on the sport of table tennis (or “ping pong”), and named after the sound generated by the circuitry when the ball is hit. The word Pong is a registered trademark of Atari Interactive,while the term “pong” is used to describe the genre of “bat and ball” video games. (wikipedia)

Check it out its beautiful

Just check out the amazing controls for the game!

Posted on by mklang

What the Sufi knew about technology

Before becoming an atheist I looked at many religions and I am still fascinated by the complexities of belief systems. Within Sufism (a mystical form of Islam) I came across a counter-intuitive aphorism which has often proven to be true: Freedom is the absence of choice.

The ability of autonomous individuals to chose stands in the center of most freedom discourses so at first glance the Sufi thought seems to be dead wrong. Lack of choice cannot be a form of freedom. This is of course until you have to pick a new mobile provider.

Yesterday I spent way too much time in the trivial decision of picking a mobile phone service. The method was relatively simple. First I ignored the smaller providers. This is a form of arrogance since it is built on the untested premise that they will not be good enough, but it is also a time saving device since a complete comparison between providers would have taken even longer.

This left three main players. All of them provide a relatively adequate technological base for my needs but the pricing systems vary incredibly.The simplest form of analysis was the cost for calls. But even this can be subdivided into three groups: (1) Calls to other mobiles with the same provider, (2) Calls to other mobiles with other providers, and (3) Calls to land lines. This is also made more nuanced since in addition to the cost for the calls there is the opening cost for each call.

The next unit of analysis is the cost for text messages this is thankfully simple since it offers a straight comparison. This was followed by the costs for international calls since I often call to and from Norway. This last one can be made more complex by analysing whether additional services with other telecom providers can make for a cheaper choice. The final main unit of analysis was the cost of data since I occaissionally (but not too often) rely on my phone as a modem.

This is all wrapped up with a bunch of silly but not insignificant sundry costs like billing expenses, startup costs, add-on costs for various services and so on.

Now all this was just to pick a mobile phone provider. If we were to be serious about our economies we would have to do the same for our energy providers, land line providers, Internet providers, cable tv providers, insurance providers etc etc etc…

So the Sufi were actually on to something… Freedom may actually be the absence of choices.

Posted on by mklang

Can we save energy through Blackle?

So today I came across the site Blackle -which is basically a black version of Google. Black as in the background is black rather than white. The reasoning for this is found on their about page which states, among other things:

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

So how should we react to things like this? Sure there is a minor saving and Yes a minor saving is not to be ignored. But (you knew that was coming didn’t you?) what is the point of the average wasteful consumer ignoring all other advice and then changing from Google to Blackle?

Taken on a larger level what is the point of minor energy conservation schemes in relation to the damage we are doing? Don’t get me wrong I truely believe in the importance of the accumalitve effect of small savings but in relation to energy and the environment I get the impression we are sometimes creating false feelings of contributing.

What do I mean? Well if the average (whatever that means) wasteful person feels like they are making a contribution to the environment by switching to a black start or search page then the net result saving is infinitesimal BUT the feelgood effect in the wasteful person will allow them to continue with the otherwise wasteful lifestyles and still claim to care and to contribute.

Or maybe I just a Monday morning cynic and this is an important step in awareness and energy savings…

Posted on by mklang

Is the web really wild

The paper University Affairs has an interesting article on the ills of Web 2.0. The article gives examples of identity theft, harrassment, unethical behaviour, lies and racism (just to mention a few things). The article illustration is a huge evil spider standing ominously behind three users surfing innocently while caught in a web.

My first annoyance is that this has nothing to do with Web 2.0 and the term is simply used to modernize the old gripe about the evils of web technology. But let me just get over that.

The real problem is that all the examples in the article are part of what is to be expected as part and parcel of the “new” technology. The article begins with an example of a Facebook group falsely accusing a university of using puppies in medical research. Nobody listens to the university and the group grows. The rest of the examples are even worse, potentially damaging and some show that people will be hurt in the offline world as well.

Popular beliefs, fooling the masses and common delusions are common throughout history. So what is the article really about? Well it’s a typical article showing technology as being dangerous and uncontrolable – it is simple fearmongering based on anecdotal (but most probably true) evidence.

This is journalism selling itself on sex and horror stories not with the intention of achieving anything and barely with enough material to be considered news. It is journalism profiteering on sex and horror which of course means it is not journalism but rather a profiteering on the same sex and horror it is pretending to be concerned about.

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Mental Popcorn

In my last post I wrote

Big numbers are of no practical use. They are mental popcorn, in the end unfulfilling.

Unfortunately I kind of like popcorn, especially when it comes in big packages. So naturally when I read Nicholas Carr’s blog about the amount of images on Facebook I realised that this mental popcorn was too good not to share. So dig in.

Facebook has announced that it now stores 10 billion photographs uploaded by its members (as noted by Data Center Knowledge). Moreover, since it stores each photo in four different sizes, it actually has 40 billion image files in its system. More than 15 billion photos are viewed at the site everyday, and at times of peak demand 300,000 images are viewed every second.

That is a seriously big bucket of popcorn…

Posted on by mklang

Regulating Images

There is a very interesting article by Chris Colin over at SFgate called Nasty as they wanna be? Policing Flickr.com it’s about the group that attempts to maintain order and rules among Fickrs thirty million members who have posted 2.8 billion images.

At first glance this parallel society has been made, quite literally, in the image of our own. But in truth it’s more like a Photoshopped image — the nice parts accentuated, the inappropriate bits cropped away. So it goes with any online community, of course. Behavior must be moderated and a communal ethos must be preserved; Wild West cliches aside, total freedom at any entity like this would sink it in a storm of lawsuits, flame wars and gridlocked cacophony. So directors of community exist. And while the job of nurturing and policing any online realm would make for a fascinating study, I was particularly curious about how it worked at Flickr.

The interesting part of the article on regulation of social content is the fact that no matter how far along we have come, no matter how many articles are written and read, the state of regulation of social matter will not be resolved in a final manner.

Guidelines such as Flickr’s community guidlines, as vague and inadequate as they may seem, are probably the best way to go. My favorite rule among the guidelines is: “Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don’t be that guy.” It’s not the way in which laws can be written but as the rule itself says we know what they mean. These types of rules and a certain level of benevolent dictatorship by an adequate superuser, owner or group.

Champ, for her part, has no qualms defending “the Flickrness of Flickr.” A while back a group calling itself “Islam is Hell on Earth” was removed. Champ is unapologetic: “We don’t need to be the photo-sharing site for all people. We don’t need to take all comers. It’s important to me that Flickr was built on certain principles.”

Not everyone is going to be happy but it is important to remember what we often forget and that is that Flickr is not there for a community. They are there because their customers pay them. If any small group of customers threaten Flickr’s income then they will be removed. This is not democracy – it is business. Unfortunately some users forget this point.

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On my way

So it’s flying day. Starting at 1pm local time and landing at 3.30 pm (with a brief stop in Copenhagen) I will be flying over 7000 km to get far far away. So I am looking forward to the trip but as usual the idea of sitting cramped into an airplane seat is not my idea of sunshine. But that’s a petty complaint.


Biplane Circles Wright Brothers Memorial Monument by betancourt

I wonder what the Wright brothers would have thought about flying economy? or being stuck in airports waiting or missing connections?

Posted on by mklang