If you see it, can you DO it?

Small hassle with going backwards through the stacks - this post was a draft initially put between two other ideas, that have sort of evolved into something else. But there is still a link of some sort to the topics of how we can learn so much more with digital access - and at the same time how machine learning is actually starting to pan out. Not as the AI of old sci-fi, but as topic masters.

Wired 19.01 was the issue that originally covered "the other" C:A and his musings on "computer assisted innovation" (CAI) - as seen on the TED stage when the LXD kicked it. [wikip] Dance is just one of many fields where the ability to instantly and repeatedly view others across the globe has turned up the speed of innovation, change and adaptability.

My initial response on reading the piece on CAI, and watching the video, was "VIEW SOURCE".

For myself and a lot of others picking up web development in the early to mid nineties consisted of a few books, some newsgroups and mailing lists - and a lot of 'learning by looking'.  "View Source" - it was how the web was built; share the insight into the code, then deconstruct it, comment it and do something more.

Video means that ANY skill or niche can "play" along - and thereby get "innovation at net speed" - no printing time, no time to wait for the traveling freak show or circus to amaze you, no waiting around for the start of season 2 (or for season one to get to Norway in the first place...)

Instant access, instant gratification. Instant inspiration.




And the other noteworthy subject was a part of the AI package - on stock bots, going too fast and too large to be understood? Far way from the early 90-ies comp sci I read at university. Memory and disk space was still at a premium. Java was starting to turn up and promise a bit more hassle free environment (hello Applet!), but for hard core coding there was C++

...and for the most dedicated even Assembly was taught, used and discussed.

Thankfully (?) the iOS success has raised awareness of a stricter coding paradigm and the need for more than just a casual understanding to do dev.

Sure, you can whip up a simple hello world without more than skimming the tutorials. And you can wrap your web app into a native powerhouse using Phonegap and the likes. But as soon as you start into the more complex functionality performance and structure is taking a solid hit from messy code.

Lost in time

An assorted braindump for Wired 17.12 - so pushing this one backwards in time, more to come, more to go.

www.fora.tv - TED talks for the masses...? Seems like a sort of dumping post for mid-list conferences that want something more than their own blog and vimeo posting for attention. Mixing premium (500) with free (10000+) content. But since this is the first time I've re-heard about it since then mayhap the need just isn't there? More than easy enough to embed from vimeo or youtube and then use social media to promote it yourself - or have the attendees and presenters do it.

Bussing away - tap tap tap

Photojojo - iPhone lenses @ $40 ?

 I'm still planning on getting a small "pocket lens", now with being back on iOS and a 4s it makes even more sense. Sort of.

Apps like Instagram makes for a different scope of photos. And while it isn't true macro, it can go pretty close for that weird urban, industrial too real look.

Guess it would make an ideal impulse buy, but haven't seen them in the local "almost" Apple Store. Guess not official enough to carry. Or too slim margins.


Snap on the right is from my "Android stint" - found the new "from you phone" option in Blogger. Actually cool. But short codes like WP would wow me more.

(sidenote; just put a macro-band in the shopping cart, just for a few fun shots. Chance of completing purchase? 60%...)



Ads noted; 2 * QR codes, google Goggles ad - is it really smarter, simpler than a code url or sms txt call to action? Especially with pretty custom short url available; jr.ly/FORD11 ? Or is it about being "innovative" in print? Expanding boundaries because url or text didn't track well enough (or perform?) Guess it comes from reading the paper and most magazines at home - don't really feel the need to read more on a tiny screen, when I can just google or type my way towards the full picture.

Everyday magic that we are to busy to really enjoy?

LaCie - MosKeyTO - 8gb usb MINI drive - $19 list price now, should be around NOK 200? It is almost too small not to use. As a quick backup, drop box sync or just keylogger ;) In fact they've even added in matching cloud storage from something called 'wuala'.



Also had a short post in the Start section on Competitive coding - using Pascal and C++ as the languages. No java. So in a way basics still rule? Pascal was the first 'real' language I was thought at uni, then we moved on to C++. While those a year later got a new class with java as intro.

Thinking back to a world where Java was the new hotness, that today is ObjectiveC and Apps. Back then it was Applets to rule them all. Same concept really. Make some dedicated code, play on top of a set of API's and a runtime. And distribute the file across purely digital channels.

That failed - at least compared to the hype and the potential. While the iPhone that initially touted web apps broke the bank and then some in terms of full on apps. Chance, planning, maturity or something more?




Blasting out tunes from the past in iTunes - jumping around in the grunge, heavy and punk genre buckets. 
Right now "Moonchild".....

Neuro-pattern-light

I hate the new blogger. It killed the original version of this post as I hit save. Then I tested a new blank post and it failed again. Could somebody please tell Google that there is this thing called iPad, and if their solutions continue to work as poorly a lot of users are up for grabs. I have already stopped most my newsletters to gmail because the use is a hassle (yeah, could add it as account, but with work email that was a hassle in the first iteration at least)


And now tumblr looks really good, why even wordpress is starting to come around to ios as a platform of choice with the app growing stronger every incremental release..




On to the recreation, thankfully only two paras in before hit the save, but still two too many...

Neuro-pattern-light...or why I love william gibsons writing.

I think it has a lot to do with growing up alongside his three trilogies.

Read neuromancer et al in early teens at school, when computers consisted of commodore 64 (or a 128 as I had), used mainly for games and the occasional demo. A friends father had a Mac that we got to use for a few school projects - typing up the report and putting in some pictures.

Then picked up the bridge books more or less at university, where dot com was becoming a phrase, but a bit before the boom/bust really started. Back when Fast Company was still mostly about business trends.

And pattern rec is one of the last printed books I bought (fiction and regular non fiction at least) - spook country and zero history were delivered directly to a kindle or the kindle app on iPad. Read digitally and instantly on release. No time lag for cross Atlantic distribution or priorities.

My teens, my twenties, my thirties. As the world has gone digital and then some, so has my life. as the future has become today, so his books have merged into "reality", blurring the lines more with each passing chapter.


For books and background, check the Amazon author page

INTERVIEWER: For someone who so often writes about the future of technology, you seem to have a real romance for artifacts of earlier eras.
GIBSON: It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable.... very, very difficult to conceive of a world in which there is no possibility of audio recording at all. Some people were extremely upset by the first Edison recordings. ... It sounded like the devil, they said

 - Paris Review

The magic of not having. So good quote - had to brutally trim it down a bit, because you really should go over there and read the whole thing. Now. Come back afterwards. More to come here as well...






Because it is easy to add in the blanks, merge things (like a mobile phone and a mp3 player... Or a pc and a phone), but close to impossible to even remember back five or ten years, how much of a leap a simple innovation like the Palm Pilot was. An actual digital assistant in your hand. And it could do other things. Small games. Like magic.

Emergent technologies were irreversibly altering their landscape. Bleak House is a quintessential Victorian text, but it is also probably the best steam­punk landscape that will ever be. Dickens really nailed it, especially in those proto-Ballardian passages in which everything in nature has been damaged by heavy industry.

More of Dickens is definitely on my too read list, inspired this time by a piece on new bio on him. The British televised versions are great, and the podcast librivox version of two cities is killer. Like Stackpole, I firmly believe that the model he used to serialize his fiction is finding a new life in terms of shorter ebooks, faster turnaround for stories and generally more adaptability to reader expectations. 

... I remember walking past a video arcade,... seeing kids playing those old-fashioned console-style plywood video games... were so physically involved, it seemed to me that what they wanted was to be inside the games

...one day, I walked by a bus stop and there was an Apple poster. ... holding a life-size representation of a real-life computer that was not much bigger than a laptop is today. Everyone is going to have one of these, I thought, and everyone is going to want to live inside them. 

Woot! Loop in time. Arcade games as the driver, then apple as the trigger for seeing it "everywhere". Merging insights and intuition, that's what makes the book so much more than just a cool story. 


Today Apple is slowly moving us away from the PC age, into mobile and tactile  with the iOS touch interface. And once more games are actively taking a huge part in both pushing the hardware (thereby feeding the need for upgrades and rapid development) and the user interface - Angry Birds as touch training. Speed, precision and flexibility. 


The best way to get someone comfortable with a mouse back in the win 3 age was Solitare or Minesweeper. Sit them down, show them some serious stuff, then give them a ten minute "break" - after opening the program. We learn when we want to learn, when there is a clear reward rather than just an obligation. 

I’ve always been taken aback by the assumption that my vision is fundamentally dystopian. I suspect that the people who say I’m dystopian must be living completely sheltered and fortunate lives. The world is filled with much nastier places than my inventions, places that the denizens of the Sprawl would find it punishment to be relocated to, and a lot of those places seem to be steadily getting worse.

Putting things in perspective? How to compare to Dickens? Is he dystopian or simply telling of the underbelly of the dressed up pig? 


I for one didn't really think of Neuromancer as dark at the time, compared to something like Alien it was a happy place all around, with cool tech and the chance of making it big. 


That is one thing that is changed with the latest novels - or perhaps as much with my reading and views - sure there is a potential big score, but you get the feeling that just getting out or onwards is as much of a goal for the characters. 


The settings are more "glamour" compared to the first books, but in many ways it still feels more empty and forsaken. The art hidden from view, giving only a select few the enjoyment or the experience. The secret clips and the chase for just a little bit more.






First read about the interview care of one of the @greatdismal musing, but at that time the only online version was via a sub to P.R, so that was $5 lost revenue for them, as I'd have gladly paid for just the issue or the article (more or less the cost of a single copy newspaper here, so comparable value)

But then I saw it rt and checked the link - lo and behold, the full version is up. So it seemed a great test for iOs 5 reader mode, and also for the new +style blogger. First is OK, but lacks page jump/pagination (skip full screen height down). 


The other is another crappy google conversion. As a blog writer, the original blogger was as good as or better than any seen since. New might be ok on pc, but today that is close to irrelevant. Same reason can't really care about plus itself. Plain sucks compared to any twitter app.

Who loves you, and who do you love?

Starting off this back-post with a little bit of mood music, setting the mood and the stage. Bringing us back to England in the late nineties. With the rave track The messiah, featuring the quotes borrowed as a title; Who loves you, and who do you love? [Running Man]

This is part of my history, but also of a lot of myths. The summer of love. The happy generation. Bringing youths together in new ways, before Internet and mobiles dominated.

"Tribalism’s hothouse atmosphere has turned history into myth. ..., we use myth not to inform, but to bond"

- Intelligent Life

Stories for children? Lies for adults... as they said in the Science of Discworld books. History is a selection, a bias, strengthens over time to support an image, an ideal, a group. But do we need it anymore at the national level? 


Does it make sense to talk about the nation state in a grand perspective, when it is 14 billion years and change... And then at least ten thousand years of intelligent life (pun intended re source)?

Norway as a modern state dates back to 1905 or 1814, first parted from Denmark into a union with Sweden and then Independence. So why trace routes past four hundred years of assorted constellations jut to find a "true" past?


I for one am more influenced by ancient Greece, assorted enlightenment ideals, some English poets, thinkers and tinkerers. Not to mention the global, but US centric, online digital mash up of it all. Sure I enjoy the sagas and tales of old Norse gods and exploits. But they no more impact my daily life than does the Odyssey.

"We can found our identity on personal taste, not national myth. The future, in this reading, belongs to supranational groupings—football fans, jazz lovers, “Twilight” addicts—whose bonds soar over state boundaries like cut-price airlines"

Not one identity, but a mix suited to you, based on when and how you grew up, went to university and worked. Geography meet ideas. Limits, meet boundless. 


So, I might be a Norwegian by birth, but I am a geek, a ManU man, 'enga in my heart and so on. 
Not quite a brown coat, but certainly a wheedon'esqu gibson'reading free tweeting digitized mind. 


Also an ex-consultant and an ENTJ, which pegs me more than any national boundary could ever possibly do. Personality goes a long way...

"Any worthwhile identity must grow from self-awareness as well as self-esteem, and the sceptical temperature of contemporary life is conducive to a journey of self-knowledge"

And with tools like blogs to reflect and for some also debate, the options are endless. To bad the time isn't. But keep on telling the stories, shaping the myths and maybe, just maybe you'll figure out; Who loves you, and who do you love? 






...if not: it's time to start RUNNING

The challenges of (geek) parenting

This is just pure genius. "We have to have the talk"
Need to get a "Han shot first" tee for junior soon.

Yes MItch, there is a long tail...

Post by Mitch Joel, lamenting the lack of long tail or democratic split of ad revenues; Your Media Is Controlled By A Handful Of Companies (Yes, Even The Internet)

October 3, 2011, worldwide digital advertising accounted for about $64.03B. Google generates approximately 364% more revenue from advertising than it's next closest rival, Yahoo! With Facebook at $1.86B in advertising revenue (excluding virtual currencies/goods) for 2010

For once I have to disagree with the point he is making. And the reason is quite simple; Google doesn’t generate all of that on google.com or from their own sites as such– quite the opposite;

Google Sites Revenues - Google-owned sites generated revenues of $6.74 billion, or 69% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2011. This represents a 39% increase over third quarter 2010 revenues of $4.83 billion.
Google Network Revenues - Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.60 billion, or 27% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2011. This represents a 18% increase from third quarter 2010 network revenues of $2.20 billion

Taken from http://investor.google.com/earnings/2011/Q3_google_earnings.html - which was the current one at the time. 

So in their Q3 for 2011 alone the Google network revenues were above FB for the whole of 2010 (2.2 vs 1.86) – and that money IS the long tail! Sure some of it also goes to big media companies from the NYT down to our fvn.no – but it also goes to blogs and small niche sites.

(Sidenote; does blogger.com count as “google owned” in this split? If so the the actual long tail part could be even bigger)

So, if you go beyond the headline, into the numbers, there is proof positive that this wealth at least is “trickling down”!

When is a kilo perfect?

Two teams of scientists are struggling to create the perfect kilogram. I'm reading about it on the WIRED app: http://wrdm.ag/ff_kilogram 

(full direct no-redirect link)

Been reading a bit about systems and measurement in general in the pre-modern world lately, and I remember this Wired piece vividly. The incredible richness of detail in the work. Eight digits of precision and then some. Fixed things aren't really fixed until they can be consistently defined, replicated and remade independently of the base item.

And to think how we take it for granted, every time we pick up something from the store, or order a beer. We just assume that we are in fact getting a pint or half a litre. And that the weights in one store matches those in another, not to mention across the five different lanes in each. Technology makes the magic mundane.


Aside;
the wired app is fun to play with, and it helped quite a bit when they added sharing options within the app. Even so, as a print subscriber I mostly download the special content - such as the new digital re-release of the first issue, and the special on Steve Jobs they got out quickly last year.

Words. Art. Make.

How many words do you need to make art?

In his post Tools vs Insights, Seth G. strips down the opening lines of Fight Club, along with the verse Green Eggs and Ham. A total of two and four lines, respectively.

And taken alone out of context it is hard to see the power of those simple words. Yet put them together as the authors have, and something powerful and moving emerges. Something memorable. And yet so vastly different.

So maybe a million monkeys on typewriters could end up with Shakespeare. Or even something more moving. Why not be one of the mmmmmiiiiiiiiiillions [ht, the rock] - go create. Make a post or a poem over the weekend

My couch or your?

Wired [19.03] - finally getting rid of the stack, both the digital one in terms of drafts from (oh yeah) last year, and the paper one of old issues of Wired mag, saved for a post or two.


Main topic was a mention of couchsurfing - and the founder Casey Fenton.
The concept sounds really appealing, get around the world by hooking up with other (presumably) geeky people for a few days at a time. Even so, I think I'd personally feel more comfortable using something like aribnb - at least as a main solution, it just feels more right to spend a bit of money on the transaction.

I do love having friends over, and a spare room for those that either live out of town, or have to leave the car for a few hours. And I'd probably lend it to a friend of a friend as well, without any reservations. But beyond that? Not so sure. How about you? Where do you draw the line "in the sand"? Who and how long is OK for a house guest? Should they help with chores, do some shopping, or are they guest first and foremost?


ad for; Eee Slate Ep121 - windows7 !!??!! seriously? and a stylus to boot? Nice that it has usb, hdmi and then some, but since it is in all but name a laptop sans the keyboard I'm not really impressed. Sort of makes sense as a second device for the C-level and consultant lifestyle - if it supports MS Office fully, that is.

But I'll give Asus one thing, they keep pushing assorted form factors into the market, looking to either give the consumers a lot of choice, or just hoping to find one that sticks. But seriously - the Eee Pad range? Right ho'.



I'll be scheduling these old post up for the week ahead at the time of writing, so June of 2012 will be the most posted month for quite some time. Maybe a revival of sorts as we enter the final ten months of the first ten years (!!!).  Today it is 3-6-12, and so a good magic number for doubling up on content and ideas. in the early evening sun.

- ...and the sun shines bright enough to open the windows wide...