Summer memories, 2010 edition
Actually, Weather.com reports that it “Feels Like: 108ºF.” I’m not sure what’s worse.
Actually, Weather.com reports that it “Feels Like: 108ºF.” I’m not sure what’s worse.
A few days ago, I posted briefly on a New York Times article talking about the remapping of our brains that occurs when we multitask heavily or even just use computers in general. Echoing this article’s view that more media = less focus is a piece by Nicholas Carr from the June issue of Wired (which I was reading on paper, thank you very much) which discusses the distracting nature of hypertext hyperactive content.
A 2007 scholarly review of hypertext experiments concluded that jumping between digital documents impedes understanding. And if links are bad for concentration and comprehension, it shouldn’t be surprising that more recent research suggests that links surrounded by images, videos, and advertisements could be even worse.
The takeaway seems to be that we are causing our brains to remake themselves in order to deal with a wide breadth of stuff – that never goes very deep. Bad, computers! Shame on you, technology! Or maybe not. Because in the exact same issue, Wired, asked two researchers of personal motivation, Clay Shirky and Daniel Pink, to discuss what is being termed (by Shirky) “the cognitive surplus.” Their argument goes a little something like this: with more options for putting our time to use than ever before, free time pursuits will become more varied, taking forms never seen before. Though not precisely related to the idea of focus, this statement did get me thinking:
When someone buys a TV, the number of consumers goes up by one, but the number of producers stays the same. When someone buys a computer or mobile phone, the number of consumers and producers both increase by one.
Whoa! And it’s true – I often find myself cursing the lack of hours in the day to get caught up on my favorite TV shows when I fill my evenings with blogging, online reading or freelance design. If it weren’t for these infernal computers stuffing my free time with their distractions, I could take part in the much more honorable 200 billion hours of television that I should be watching with my fellow Americans this year!
(As originally posted on my Instructional Technology work blog.)
Palin accuses Obama of being in bed with big oil (Yahoo! News)
I can’t even BEGIN to comment on this without spontaneously combusting. WHY is she still here?!
artist interpretation
I surrender to your mighty pollen, trees of Chestertown. You win. I cannot think today. I cannot breathe. I have a headache that starts directly behind my eyes, thunders across my entire skull and rampages down into the middle of my back via a brittle spine. My eyes water and burn. And I give up.
Name your terms and you can have my surrender. I shall never again attempt to breathe your rightfully owned oxygen. I will avoid standing in the shaded areas near you because I clearly deserve to be scorched by the Maryland sun.
And if I go berserk and come up with Mouse Trap-like ways to kill myself, don’t be surprised. I mean, you have seen The Happening, right? (I know, Zooey Deschanel again.)
Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when the trees are your new overlords.
Thanks to Jalopnik, I can now find solace in the fact that Maryland drivers really do have no concept of Left Lane vs. Right Lane:
click for larger image
As you can see, they’d have no reason at all for learning this useful Pennsylvanian tradition of getting the fuck out of the way because there is NO DAMNED LAW HERE MAKING IT NECESSARY TO DO SO. The next time I’m left scratching my head as to why someone would think the left lane is a great place to go 20 mph under the speed of the traffic around them, this fact will offer small comfort.
Right before the scream starts, that is.
From the introductory post on my new blog about tablet computing, Case for the iPad:
The desktop computing paradigm is stale – yesterday’s bread. If you are a computer geek, you know this to be true and I can pinpoint a great example of why: I haven’t been excited about a new OS in years. New operating systems are the holiest of holies in PC terms and the last time I actually, truly cared that one was about to be released was April 29, 2005. I preordered Tiger from Apple and was beside myself with glee at the promise of much geeking out to come. And you know what? It was essentially the same thing as Panther in 2003. By the time I guardedly, I installed Leopard in 2007, hoping to be amazed, I discovered…meh.
The same can be said for all software. Adobe Creative Suite 5 is trundling down the pike and, I hate to say it, it stopped being compelling back around Creative Suite 2. Or maybe when it became a suite. Even hardware is less intoxicating, especially since Apple has said they have more or less perfected the shape of products and are committed to a long future of aluminum and glass. There’s a cynical commodification mentality that has set in and, in so doing, destroyed the sense of amazement that once surrounded computing.
(This is going somewhere, I promise.)
The most telling symptom of a stagnating paradigm, though, is my ever-growing fascination with mobile technology. An early 2003 love affair with Nokia’s European products morphed into a complete infatuation with the iPhone at its announcement in 2007. This was computing’s future, I just knew it. The power of information truly and easily being wherever we are – whether it takes the form of maps, music, the latest prices for tomatoes, a message from your mother telling you her flight is taking off late, what have you – is immense. It makes all knowledge and connectivity accessible in ways that it just can’t be with the computer. Biggest hurdle? The tiny (though, mercifully, improved on by iPhone and its touchy ilk) screen.
Enter the tablet. Most notably, the iPad. All the power of mobile, laid back, pervasive information with a screen worthy of the two-way, media-rich flow of the modern web. This is something important. I can feel it. And I want to make sure I document the birth of this truly new way of interfacing with the digital world that is going to reshape everything in…oh…three to five years. At least as far as it touches my immediate environment in higher education, that is.
(See, I told you we’d get there.)
To quote Fake Steve Jobs’ contribution to the Wired article, “How the Tablet Will Change the World,” that got me to finally put all of this into a single blog (an article that made me think “yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking” more than once):
An ebook reader that also plays movies and music? And browses the Web? No way. Can’t be done. Well, we did it. And you can fly three times around the globe and watch movies the whole time on a single battery charge. It’s amazing. Phenomenal. Exciting. Magical. Amazing. Beautiful. Stunning. Gorgeous.
I was put on earth to restore a sense of childlike wonder to people’s empty, pathetic lives, and I must say that so far I’m doing a pretty outstanding job.
And that’s really the crux of what I’m on about here. The iPad – the tablet – makes me feel giddy and uneasy and like a million things are possible and like there aren’t enough hours in a day to explore each to the level it deserves. In short, how computing made me feel when I was a tremendously nerdy teenager tinkering into the early morning with a PowerBook 5300ce that I had bought with my lawn-mowing money, just for the fun of doing it. Just because it was new and uncharted and exciting.
To get the conversation started, I’ve collected the blog posts that I’ve been posting on my work blog and my personal blog since November 2009. I’ll be back with much, much more in the days to come.
Onward into the future,
Nick
Pop quiz: You are at a three way stop. There are no cars coming from the road on your right and one car waiting at the stop sign in front of you. From the opposite direction, you can see a car stopped at the opposing stop sign and a car behind it. The car in front of you goes. The car opposite it goes. You approach the stop sign. The car opposite you approaches the stop sign, left signal on. You begin to cross the intersection, going straight.
And so does the car signaling left.
What do you do?
Everywhere else in the world, you’d expect the other driver to stop and apologize for their faux-pas with a wave and a sheepish smile. In Chestertown, you get scowled at by a WASP-y old bitch in a black Mercedes who clearly thinks you should have given her the right of way.
This happens at least once a week.
I’m ninety-nine percent certain that the four horsemen of the apocalypse are using my nasal passages as a means for entering into our plane of reality. Right now, I’m busy passing pestilence, but I’m sure the others aren’t far behind.
Seriously, though, I can’t freaking breathe. I feel fine otherwise – aside from the mystery aches and pains of this past Friday and not being able to use my respiratory system for its intended purpose. I’m not sick, dammit.
In other news, Audi Financial Services mysteriously lowered my monthly lease payment today by $35. If this sticks, it will save me about $420 each year. I’m not going to complain, but I am confused.
Also, researchers at IBM are all excited because they’ve successfully mapped the neural structure of a cat’s brain. Is this scientist-talk for having done nothing at all with your grant money? Because we all know that cats don’t have brains…
I parked my car this morning on Mt. Vernon Ave., as I have been doing on and off for at least the last year, maybe year and a half. Every day I see at least four other cars that belong to coworkers from the college or students parked in the same area, from about the stop sign at the intersection with Campus Ave. back five car lengths towards Kent St. Never do we get a ticket here.
Except for today.
Thus, the helpful diagram that I pieced together after calling the parking attendant to question what the issue was that required a $25 fine.
Confused? So am I, really, but I’ll try to break it down for you.
Evidently all of Mt. Vernon Ave. is a solely residential street. Since most of the residents on Mt. Vernon Ave. are retired or old and wealthy, they don’t need to actually leave their homes to go to work ever. So unlike most places where residential streets are empty except for people that work nearby during the work day, Mt. Vernon is always full of cars. Theoretically. In practice, I’ve never had any problem finding at least one space towards the campus end.
Which is where things got weird. The parking attendant informed me that everyone who parks on Mt. Vernon without a pass (where do you think we are, Chestertown?) should get a ticket but because she’s being kind, she has established a “Zone of Leniency” that includes a box with a corner missing.
I was parked in the missing corner. (In attendant-speak, I guess this would be the “Zone of Pain.”)
The corner is missing because the guy that lives at the house with the unused driveway I was parked next to pays for a parking pass. To park on the street. Instead of in his driveway.
I ran out of room in my diagram and just drew me blocking the driveway in the hypothetical situation. Actually, I was not. So, even if he had chosen to park in front of his unused drive, he still could have gotten out. Further, his stupid freaking car was parked behind mine and I see my coworkers park exactly where I was without a ticket day in and day out.
Long story short, I got the attendant to void my ticket and waive my fine, but this is ridiculous. This is not an urban area. There is plenty of parking. There’s no need to walk more than a block even if you have to park away from your house. And all of these Mt. Vernon Ave. people have driveways. So why are we being so fucking arbitrary about the streets in the daytime hours? And charging $25 for a first offense?
Get a grip, Chestertown.
Or, at the very least, perhaps you can put up some signs or paint some lines to explain the Zone of Leniency to those that don’t live in your attendant’s head?
The scene: intersection of MD-544 and MD-20.
It’s like people here are predisposed to drive like ‘tards. Could it be genetic?
The supporting evidence that I’m not losing it:
In a new study of college undergraduates, those with a common genetic variation scored 20 percent worse in a driving simulator than their counterparts.
“The people who had this genetic variation performed more poorly from the get-go and learned more slowly as they went along,” said Steven Cramer, a University of California, Irvine neurologist, who works on helping stroke victims recover. “Then, when we brought them back four days later, they had more forgetting.”
From Don’t Tell Geico: You May Be A Natural Born Bad Driver.
(Thanks, Sharenator and Wired)