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Questioning Technology

Kevin at Question Technology was at the CHI 2007 conference and found a really interesting paper and presentation called “Questioning the Technological Panacea: Three Reflective Questions for Designers” (Eric Baumer and Bill Tomlinson).

They discussed three questions that product designers should ask:

  1. “Given a technological solution, are there other, possibly non-technological solutions that could address the same problem equally well, if not better?”
  2. “Is the problem being addressed perceived as a problem by the proposed users, or is the situation being unnecessarily problematized by designers?”
  3. “By focusing on a specific problem, is the solution treating a symptom and hiding the cause?”

This paper was part of the “alt.chi” program at CHI, which is a forum for unusual work that wouldn’t ordinarily get published by the conference.  Alt.chi submissions are posted and reviewed in an open public forum.

Read the paper!

Posted on by mklang

War blogs silenced

Wired News reports that In a directive (dated 19th April) US troops have been ordered not to blog without first clearing each post with a superior officer. There is also a discussion going on at the Wired Blog Danger Room.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.

It’s hardly a surprising move. It’s doubtful whether blogs were revealing security information (US troops should be better trained in this case) but on several occasions information on blogs and films of YouTube (for example Iraqi kids run for water) have caused embarrassing situations which hardly have improved anyone’s opinions of the war.

Posted on by mklang

Devil's Bible on Tour

Devil_medium_small_1News from Humaniorabloggen (the humanist blog) about the Codex Gigas, more often referred to as the Devils Bible.

From the Royal Library website (The Swedish National Library): The Devil’s Bible contains the Old and New Testaments in pre-Vulgate Latin translations, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, Josephus’ History of the Jews in a Latin translation, the Chronicle of Bohemia, written by Cosmas of Prague, etc. The manuscript was written in the early 13th century in the Benedictine monastery of Podlazice in Bohemia. It is called the Devil’s Bible after the impressive picture of that potentate. According to legend the scribe was a monk who had been confined to his cell for some breach of monastic discipline and who, by way of penance, finished the manuscript in one single night with the aid of the Devil whom he had summoned to help him. In 1594 the manuscript was acquired by the Imperial Treasury in Prague. When the Swedish army conquered the city in 1648, it was brought to Sweden and presented to the KB the following year.

The Codex (89,5 x 49 cm, weighs 75 kg and is 624 pages long) and was written on, the calf skin vellum (previously believed to be ass skin vellum). During the last year it has been analyzed and digitalized and is now going to be sent to Prague for a few months for an exhibition at the Prague’s Klementinum palace, the National Library seat, from this September till January 2008.

digitalization process at The Royal Library

The name “The Devils Bible” comes from the fact that the Codex Gigas contains images of the devil (pictures above). The Czech Republic will receive copies of the high quality digitalization and will borrow the Codex. The results of the digitalization and analysis are available online at the Royal Library’s website later this year. There has naturally (?) been discussions concerning the return of the work but apparently The Czech Republic does not contest Swedish ownership.

Cultural artifacts are always a sensitive issue in particular if they were taken in times of war or imperialist occupation. Some items in museums are more connected to specific cultures (the Egyptian collections in Berlin and London for example) but works such as the Codex Gigas are much more complicated to associate with one specific nation state.

Posted on by mklang

Offensive Report

Infocult writes about a report from ScanDefender which shows that 80% of the blogosphere contains “potentially offensive content,”  the majority of the medium is seen as threatening. This is the typical kind of scare tactics which is just annoying. What is it that is offensive? According to ScanDefender’s definition this is widely described as “rang[ing] from adult language to pornographic images”.

The focus of the report is on malware but it does find a small space to invoke the dangers of the blogosphere (download the report here). The whole point of the 80% offensive content seems to be only there to create a catchy headline.

Naturally there is offensive content on the Internet and also in blogs. But define your terms! What is offensive? To whom? By which objective standards? The blogosphere is huge so how did you arrive at 80%? etc, etc… The methodological questions are too many to list. Unfortunately this validity of claims such as these are not questioned – people seem to prefer the snappy headlines.

I find reports such as this offensive…

Posted on by mklang

Dangerous Blogging

In a local  free paper there was an article about how a job applicant did not get a job since his girlfriend wrote in her blog that that she hoped he did not get the job because she did not want to move. The newspaper angled the story to make it ominous – that the employer had “secretly” (that’s the word they used) read the girlfriends blog.

It’s totally amazing that this is even a story. Isn’t it totally natural that a would-be employer googles job applicants? I think so. It’s strange to think that some people see their public blogs as somehow being private…

Posted on by mklang

Churches in Second Life

The Swedish state church is planning on establishing a parish in Second Life. Their rationale for doing this is that they want to be where people are and that they have been losing customers. The Swedish church is obviously not the first but it may be the first state church to establish itself in this virtual environment. Sheesh, the progressive church of today, huh.

Why would people go to church in second life if they don’t feel that it’s important enough to visit churches in real life?

(via Humaniorabloggen)

Posted on by mklang

Bloggers Code of Conduct

A code of conduct for bloggers? Being a natural skeptic to the idea of codes of conduct the idea of creating or attempting to create such a thing seems foreign to me. But instead of taking the easy cynical approach maybe its time to think of this as a good attempt to curb cyber-bullying. The idea comes from publisher Tim O’Reilly (of Web 2.0 fame). There is a wiki for those who wish to participate in the discussion.

(via Markmedia)

Posted on by mklang

Death Threats Against Blogger

Techie and editor Kathy Sierra has been intimidated into canceling her appearance at the ETech conference where she was going to present a keynote and hold a workshop. In her blog Creating Passionate Users she explains why. She has received threats of violence and death threats in comments on her blog and other blogs.

Read Kathy Sierra’s story on her blog (entry here). Hope that they catch the little shit (hiding behind anonymity) who writes anonymous threats and that Kathy will be back soon.

Posted on by mklang

Rare Book Room

Wow – I have just found the Rare Book Room (via Stingy Scholar). It is an educational website intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world.

Over the last ten years, a company called “Octavo” embarked on digitally photographing some of the world â??s great books from some of the greatest libraries. These books were photographed at very high resolution (in some cases at over 200 megabytes per page).

This site contains all of the books (about 400) that have been digitized to date. These range over a wide variety of topics and rarity. The books are presented so that the viewer can examine all the pages in medium to medium-high resolution.

In particular the site contains:

1. Some of the great books in science, including books by Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein, Darwin and others.

2. Most of the Shakespeare Quartos from the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the University of Edinburgh Library, and the National Library of Scotland. It also contains the First Folio from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

3. A complete set of Poor Richardâ??s Almanac by Benjaman Franklin.

4. Very rare editions: Gutenberg â??s Bible (from the Library of Congress), Harvey’s book on the circulation of blood, Galileo â??s Siderius Nuncius, the first printing of the Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta.

Posted on by mklang

You can't say Prison

Say Guantanamo, and most people will think of human rights abuses and prisoners in orange clothes being mistreated, maltreated, denied basic human rights and denied legal representation. All this by a free democratic country. Karen Greenberg (Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law and is the co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib and editor of The Torture Debate in America.) writes an interesting note on the blog TomDispatch about how Gunatanamo may be addressed by the media.

It is very difficult not to think Orwellian thoughts about the control of language being the control of society.

  1. Guantanamo is not a prison.
  2. Consistent with not being a prison, Guantanamo has no prisoners, only enemies.
  3. Guantanamo is not about guilt and innocence — or, once an enemy combatant, always an enemy combatant.
  4. No trustworthy lawyers come to Guantanamo.
  5. Recently, at least, few if any reliable journalists have been reporting on Guantanamo.
  6. After years of isolation, the detainees still possess valuable information — especially today.
  7. Guantanamo contains no individuals — inside the wire or out.
  8. Guantanamo’s deep respect for Islam is unappreciated.
  9. At Guantanamo, hard facts are scarce.
  10. Guantanamo houses no contradictions.
  11. Those who fail to reproduce the official narrative are not welcome back.

Feeling all warm and fuzzy inside – knowing that these are the people claiming to be fighting for freedom and democracy worldwide…

(via Markmedia)

Posted on by mklang