It begins to look as if we might have been wrong. All those predictions driving us forward throughout history have brought us finally to the unexpected realisation that the future is, suddenly, no longer what it used to be. Oops.
Tagged with “culture”
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Admiral Shovel and the Toilet Roll — dConstruct Audio Archive
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Four Thought: James Bridle
James Bridle asks how computer networks will affect cultural memories.
Tagged with bbc four thought technology culture memory twitter:user=jamesbridle
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Simon Schama’s World View
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/04/13/simon-schamas-world-view
Simon Schama is a brilliant thinker and writer on a very wide palette of human affairs. Revolutions: French and Egyptian. Leaders: from Churchill to Obama. Art: from Dutch masters and Rubens to Martin Scorcese and Richard Avedon. Life: from ocean crossings to the joys of ice cream.
He’s a scholar, historian, big-picture narrator — and a free-thinker who can link the far flung pieces of what has been and what is right now. With everything going on today, we could use that voice, that mind.
This hour On Point: a conversation on a world in turmoil with Simon Schama.
Tagged with book:author=simon schama politics news culture revolution obama
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Junot Diaz On What Disasters Reveal
The Dominican-American writer Junot Diaz got everybody’s attention, and a Pulitzer Prize, with his fierce, funny, tragic first novel “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Now, in a big new essay, Diaz has moved on to bigger themes — like apocalypse and the fate of the human race.
Junot Diaz looks at our recent headlines of earthquakes, tsunamis, meltdown fears, and floods and sees revelation. Not of the hand of God, exactly. But of human realities running amok.
We avert our eyes, he says. But these disasters must be read.
This hour, On Point: Junot Diaz, on revelation and apocalypse.
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Full Interview: Jason Scott on online video and digital heritage | Spark | CBC Radio
Archivist, technology historian, and filmmaker Jason Scott talks to Nora Young about online video, digital heritage, and how the internet isn’t as permanent as we might think.
About two weeks ago, I got an email from Google:
On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)
So, basically… “unless you take action, all your videos will be deleted.” But then, a week later, Google changed its tune. In my inbox:
Google Video users can rest assured that they won’t be losing any of their content and we are eliminating the April 29 deadline. We will be working to automatically migrate your Google Videos to YouTube. In the meantime, your videos hosted on Google Video will remain accessible on the web and existing links to Google Videos will remain accessible.
This Google Video example is just one of many recent stories that suggest the web isn’t as permanent as we’re often led to believe. This past March, Yahoo Video removed all user-generated uploads from its site. When Cisco announced its plans to shut down its Flip Video business, it also announced that its companion FlipShare video sharing service “will no longer be supported past 12/31/2013.”
For his perspective on online video and digital heritage, Nora interviewed Jason Scott. Jason’s an archivist, technology historian, and filmmaker.
http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/04/full-interview-jason-scott-on-online-video-and-digital-heritage/
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Tribe Helps Linguist Argue with Prevailing Theory : NPR
Dan Everett has spent 30 years studying the language of a small Amazonian tribe, the Piraha. His findings are challenging long-held linguistic theories and stirring a sometimes-bitter debate.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9458681
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StackOverflow uses ASP.NET MVC - Jeff Atwood and his technical team
Huffduffed from http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=152
Tagged with web development design team culture technology
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On the Media: Our Future with Technology
"As computers become smarter (and smaller), there’s a good chance that in the future, the lines between humans and computers will begin to blur. What does that mean for our essential humanness? Clive Thompson, Jamais Cascio, Jaron Lanier and Ray Kurzweil discuss a future where machines can think like humans and people become one with the web."
Tagged with technology culture
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The Value Of Ruins
Between The Alexandrian War of 48 BCE and the Muslim conquest of 642 CE, the Library of Alexandria, containing a million scrolls and tens of thousands of individual works was completely destroyed, its contents scattered and lost. An appreciable percentage of all human knowledge to that point in history was erased. Yet in his novella “The Congress”, Jorge Luis Borges wrote that “every few centuries, it’s necessary to burn the Library of Alexandria”.
In his session James will ask if, as we build ourselves new structures of knowledge and certainty, as we design our future, should we be concerned with the value of our ruins?
http://2010.dconstruct.org/speakers/james-bridle
With a background in both computing and traditional publishing James Bridle attempts to bridge the gaps between technology and literature. He runs Bookkake, a small independent publisher and writes about books and the publishing industry at booktwo.org. In 2009 he helped launch Enhanced Editions, the first e-reading application with integrated audiobooks.