The Oncoming Hope

The office put up Apple's WWDC keynote on a giant projector screen, and hilarity ensued (and swiftly turned to horror). Five comments from work that perfectly capture the complete and total awfulness of Apple's new iPhone operating system:

1. Person who casually walks into kitchen, unaware of what's onscreen: "Oh hey! What's that on screen? Is that Android?"
2. Apple fanboy, slowly deflating: "Didn't the Nokia phone fail?"
3. Smug Apple-hater: "It's like they kidnapped the designer of the Windows phone."
4. Bewildered so-and-so: "Did Apple buy out Yahoo so they could steal the design of the Yahoo!Weather app?...And make it worse?"
5. "It's funny that they're making album covers so prominent. You know who taught me not to look at album covers anymore? ...iTunes."

You may detect a common theme in these remarks (which are closer to verbatim than you might think): there's nothing remotely original about this design. It cobbles together aesthetic ideas that have existed for years in various smartphones, failing to tie them together into a coherent whole (and let's face it, this is what Apple used to do best).

It's possible that this is a functional problem with the technology of the smartphone itself. Think about it; the iPhone debuted almost 7 years ago, and hasn't really changed interaction. What devices have stayed so static? Even with dumb phones, every year there were new ways of interacting, from standard buttons to touchscreen buttons to horizontal keyboards to different kinds of screens entirely.

The technology is stuck and so the design is stuck. Which brings me to the greatest shortage in my industry today: creative hardware developers.

Inanity to one is art to another. One may complain about the torrential downpour of silliness on social media platforms. Yelp directs conversation to a particular topic - food - but that's possibly the most complicated topic in human history. End result: a veritable orgy of human idiosyncrasy.

And what else does one do with orgiastic human illogicity than read it aloud, slowly and dramatically?

Here's the original review of the Stratford Diner in New Jersey, so that you may read along (dramatically):

I ordered the broiled crab cakes and they were really good and i called and asked if i could speak to the supervisor and the girl that asnswerd the phone wanted to know what it was in reference to and I told her it was regarding the food i ordered and and she said what was wrong with it and i said nothing i just wanted to let him or her know that it was good and then she was like ok hold on. When the manager got on the phone and i thanked him and let him know it was good he said thank you and you welcome but seemed like he was in a rush. I don't think i will be eating their anymore because if the manager is not nice then what does that say about the business they are running and the people in it.

Enjoy:

I don't even know what to say.

A Silicon Valley startup has developed a product that effectively combines all that is wrong with America (gas guzzlers, killer robots, total laziness) with that which is oh, so right: the mighty taco.

There's just one problem: the FAA.

The Huffpost had a chat with one of the founders of the company, which resulted in this delightful quote:

"Current U.S. FAA regulations prevent ... using UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, like drones] for commercial purposes at the moment," Simpson said over Gchat. "Honestly I think it's not totally unreasonable to regulate something as potentially dangerous as having flying robots slinging tacos over people's heads ... [O]n the other hand, it's a little bit ironic that that's the case in a country where you can be killed by drone with no judicial review."

Oh the benevolence of airlifting tacos. Nonetheless, the issue of using drones for friendlier purpose isn't the real problem. I don't even want to speculate about how much energy the tacocopter uses as it buzzes around, saving people the trouble of walking half a mile to the nearest taqueria.

On the plus side, this technology has real potential to help people. On the other hand, it could be what leads society to this:

See also: The pizza vending machine.

Displax Interactive Systems has begun to sell the magical product that will transform our lives into Minority Report (but where's my flying car?). Their new "thin film" technology allows you to place a thin touch-sensitive film over any surface, including glass, plastic or wood. Check it, yo:

The tech's already shipping abroad, so it's only a matter of time before it arrives stateside.

Apparently, it detects up to 16 fingers on a 50 inch screen. I await the day when only concert pianists will be able to operate future-tech!

Check out more about the product on the Displax site (seriously, the woman on the linked page looks a little like she's discovered God in her kitchen window...).

The internet as it exists today is the living embodiment of a libertarianism/near-anarchy that Americans sometimes dream about, a land as open and free as the wild west, only without that pesky native problem. Still, others want to impose their own laws on citizens of the web. Unsurprisingly, the internet is fighting back.

Free speech advocates and civil agitators around the globe regularly emphasize how internet access opens up opportunities for dissent. Voluntary service disruption by internet companies is a wholly new method of dissent, this time from the world of business, who don't typically use populist tactics to achieve their aims. Let's call it what it is: wikipedia, reddit, and all the rest, have basically just gone on strike.

Digital disruption seems like the apotheosis of civil disobedience, despite the fact that the companies involved are not breaking any laws or physically challenging anyone.

They are corporations who are refusing to provide a service, in the name of a cause. If corporations are people, then they damn well have the right to act like people, to draw attention to their causes and to even cause disruption.

The fact that this disruption occurs in a realm that was practically fictional until a decade ago seems both climactic and anticlimactic. Universally disruptive protest now is in the areas that we resolutely can live without, and in fact did live without for centuries. Will the wikipedia blackout lead to worldwide starvation or even civil inconvenience? Certainly not. A few thousand high school students will be at a loss for whom to plagiarize.

And yet, this form of protest seems the literal definition of "hitting them where it hurts." You can occupy a dozen Zuccotti Parks, you can challenge inumerable City Halls, but in each instance, you're only affecting the local area. For whatever reason, we have all opted into this ridiculous airy-fairy wireless internet space, and so we are all affected by its vagaries. And have we really been exposed to its whims and fancies until now?

These blackouts are partially a victory for Anonymous. They may not be an organization to praise, but their extremist position has forced many neutral entities to take a stand of one kind or the other. They proved, to the surprise of many, that you can disrupt real lives simply by shutting websites down. For every social network that sells itself out to dictatorial governments, for every currency exchange that bows down to illegal censorship, there are dozens of companies fighting for free speech, if only to protect their own right to exist.

Hegemonic websites like Wikipedia are aware of their power in people's lives. In a rare event, these anarchic internet behemoths are on the same side as the people, against even larger media corporations who are looking only to protect their status quo. So what happens when other web companies start protecting their own interests in this manner? How about if WebMD goes down to protect women's right to choice? Or Gmail blacks out in protest of the Patriot Act? These are powerful political tools, and the government has no legal basis to force these companies to resume service.

A gorilla keeper at the Milwaukee County Zoo posited a what-if on her facebook: what if her gorillas had iPads to play with? Well, as it turns out, they kind of hated it, but the orangutans went bananas. Thusly, Apps for Apes was born.

See (more pictures here):

Following the successful pilot in Milwaukee, Apps for Apes aims to provide iPads to orangutans in multiple zoos, and even provide wi-fi. (MONKEY FACETIME!!!)

According to The BBC, the orangutans are particularly fascinated by clips of David Attenborough.

The animals have, Mr Zimmerman said, been captivated by watching television on the devices, particularly when it featured other orangutans, and even more so when they saw faces they recognised.

The BBC article also reports that app developers are looking to develop apps that are designed similarly to apps for small children, with simple interaction and visual cues.

However, trust my inner dystopian to only see the dark side. This could be the first sign of a horrible prison life, where we may be kept in captivity, but hey, at least we'll have iPads.

In a development that will be of particular interest to those living in unsanitary conditions, in college (do I repeat myself?), and in tempestuous marriages, two Chinese material engineers have invented self-cleaning cotton clothing.

If you're interested in the science behind the new material (it is shockingly simplistic, even to this noted chemistry-phobe), I recommend this article by ExtremeTech. Nutshell: titanium dioxide + nitrogen = laundry bliss.

Basically, the nanoparticles clean themselves when exposed to visible daylight. They break down stains, bacteria and smells so they can be rinsed off with water. Think of it as armor for cotton, keeping out the nasty stains (I can see the ad campaign already!).

All is not perfect, however; the chemical compounds are highly toxic and turn your skin blue. It's up to you to decide: look like a Na'avi, or keep your pockets heavy with quarters?

Says one of the greatest directors of our time, in 1991:

Suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is gonna be the new Mozart…and make a beautiful film with her father’s little camera-corder, and for once this whole professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever, and it will really become an art form.” ~ Francis Ford Coppola

(via Brainpicker)

"Invented by an Italian engineer, a queer "horseless sulky" has been rolling on the roads near Brussels, Belgium, in recent tests. The seats, engine, and controls are located between the two huge, rubber tired wheels. According to the designer, the vehicle can attain speeds of 116 miles an hour." (Popular Science, pg. 19, 1935).

I would love to see photos of this thing being driven around Brussels.

In case you thought the Belgians were good for nothing but beer and international organizations, you can add totally useless transportation to the list. Do you think this is incredibly silly? Cause I sure do. Today's automakers, however, don't seem to agree.

Harley Davidson seems very enamored of the design, developing their own one-wheeled motorcycle:

(courtesy of Autoblog)

It appears that Bombardier has taken the design and simplified it even further, with the Embrio, which is hydro-powered and relies on gyroscopes to stay up:

Another variation of the "monocycle", the Wheelsurf, was premiered at Wired Nextfest:

I won't lie, I kind of want one. It tops out at 30 mph and sets you back around $4000. Which is a small price to pay to be transported STRAIGHT INTO THE FUTURE.

In case you thought the soft robot wasn't quite creepy enough, meet our new robot overlord: the hexapod.

Norwegian engineer Kare Halvorsen designed the hexapod, which appears at first like a giant ball, but then sprouts legs and walks (SO SCARY!). He details his process on his blog, which you should check out if you're interested in the technical process.

As of now, this robot can only put out, retract, and crawl. Next, Halvorsen is working on its rolling capabilities.

Watch it in action here (I assume there's a porno soundtrack to distract us all from THE HORROR!):

It seems fitting that since I've added an unofficial "robot" beat to this blog, there's been tons of exciting robot news and a visit to the wonderful Robotville festival at the Science Museum.

Of course, as with the soft robot, many new robotic developments seem just as likely to bring us to the robopocalypse as to a better society. You can file these new prison guards with the former.

South Korea is beginning a month-long trial of new robot guards, 5 foot tall machines designed to appear friendly to inmates. They're not designed to engage with the prisoners, but will report observations back to a human guard on duty.

The advantages are obvious: they're immune to prisoner taunting, they won't exploit prisoners, and they'll be unbiased observers.

However, I'm guessing they aren't terribly immune from that most basic thing that all prisoners will have access to: water.

The prototypes were designed by The Asian Forum for Corrections, in concert with Kyonggi University. And they assure us that "the robots are not terminators".

Isn't he cute?

Designed by a team of Harvard scientists led by Professor George M. Whitesides, the soft robot mimics invertebrates, and therefore does creepy invertebrate-like things like slinking and slithering and worming.

The chemists used an elastic polymer to house the creature, which moves by inflating and deflating various valves and tubes to squeeze its way through tiny gaps.

If you're not creeped out enough, now watch it in action.

(via engadget)

If you're into historical things that are cool (and if you're not...there's really no hope for our relationship), you need to start reading Ptak Science, one of the more fantastical blogs that I follow. Think of it as a BoingBoing for yesteryear.

Anyway, Ptak raised an interesting question about the development of transportation:

It may be that the history of human locomotion is the story of fast sitting.  Except for some of the earliest incarnations of powered movement, it seems one of the most significant engineering aspects moving a person forward is how that person should be carried in the vehicle.

Fast sitting sounds so much more exciting that "riding," doesn't it? Unfortunately, the focus on building an infrastructure to support "carrying" vehicles seems to have ruled out that most storied of developments - the moving sidewalk.

That doesn't mean people didn't try. Wine merchant Alfred Speer devised a fairly neat method to solve the congestion problem in NY. He patented the "Endless Traveling or Railway Sidewalk," a moving loop that went around Broadway.

Check it out:

(images courtesy of Allways NY)

Anyway, this would be my favorite bizarre detail: a traveling ladies drawing room! The intent was to provide shelter during bad weather.

So why didn't it happen?

Let Allways explain:

Speer got as far as proposing his system to the New York State legislature (1873 price tag: $3,722,400) and even won approval from lawmakers. However, New York Governor John Dix objected to the fact that the elevated line intruded on street-level sidewalks. After Speer altered the plans and again won approval from the legislature, Dix again rejected the plan because the elevated loop system would have to cross Broadway twice. By 1874 it was clear that Speer’s vision would not be accepted by the governor in any form, and the hopes for the project were quashed. Speer would again try to sell his idea for an elevated sidewalk in the developing New Jersey towns along the Hudson River bank, and even formed the American Rapid Transit Company to sell stock, but the plan eventually fizzled. Today, New Yorkers are left with the moving sidewalk’s vertical cousin the escalator, and are also most likely to use the nineteen century sidewalk’s descendant hurrying through an airport to catch that great twentieth century innovation, the jet airliner.

I've been mulling over Jaron Lanier's "The Local-Global Flip", a rather long piece in Edge about the stated intent of the creation of the Internet versus the actual shape of it, 50 years later. The crux of his argument is that the Internet has contributed to the downfall of the middle class, because it has failed to monetize content creation, and doesn't reward us for the products of our minds.

I'm not yet sure how much I agree with the bulk of his argument, but two things really stuck out to me:

1. The Loss of Provenance

Did you know that the original design of the Internet didn't have a copy function? Seems mind-boggling now, doesn't it?

But, as Lanier points out, copying should be unnecessary in a functional network. The original content goes up, and then you link to it.

Now, because you can copy, copy, copy (or share, share, share), you lose provenance. Ideally, people link back to the original when they copy content, but of course they don't always.

The result is that new information or different information is lost in the vast repetition of content sharing, where you get a million articles saying exactly the same thing, because there is no copyright of creation on the internet.

If you produce a video for Youtube, your reward is that it's shared a million times. If you write a thoughtful analysis of a film or a book, same thing. The worst thing is, even traditional print media can still your work with impunity, and get paid for it.

2. We are not the consumers, we are the creators

Follow the money.

We are providing the data to Facebook or Google, and they sell our data to advertisers. Which basically means we aren't even selling ourselves, we're giving ourselves away to these data aggegators, who package us and sell us on without even our knowledge in many cases. What's more insidious is that we have, in fact, consented to this. It's right there in the terms of privacy in Facebook and Google+. We agree to give them the rights to everything we share about ourselves.

And we're not getting anything in return, apart from a great time-suck.

Youtube makes money off of selling to advertisers. We spend hours on mashups and supercuts and we give it to Youtube for free. Again, we're providing the content to make someone else rich, and without pay.

I'll conclude with Lanier's own words, but you really ought to go read the article and come back:

But in this case we have this idea that we put all this stuff out there and what we get back are intangible or abstract benefits of reputation, or ego-boosting. Since we're used to that bargain, we're impoverished compared to the world that could have been and should have been when the Internet was initially conceived. The world that would create a strengthened middle class through what people do, by monetizing more and more instead of less and less. It's possible that that world could have never come about, but that was never tested. If we are absolutely convinced that this third way is impossible, and that we have to choose between "The Matrix" or Marx, if those are our only two choices, it makes the future dismal, and so I hope that a third way is possible, and I'm certainly going to do everything possible to try to push it.

We're not going to be able to test tomorrow because we've gone down this path so far that it will be a decade's long project to begin to explore it, but we must find our way back. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a century after Ted Nelson first proposed this thought in 1960 that this is how the Internet should be. It might be a century before we even start to seriously try to do it, but that's how things go sometimes in history. Sometimes it just takes a while to sort things out.

Another day, another twitter fight. These twitter fights have clear rules:

-The initiator clearly did not think through their initial post.
-The initiator takes offense when someone points out that they may have said something wrong.
-The initiatior heaps abuse on the rebutting commentator, and often draws in troops of followers to magnify the abuse so much that no one remembers what they're fighting about.

If you treat Twitter like your high school gym locker, you deserve everything you get thrown at you, even if I share your political/societal/media beliefs.

I'd tell you more of this particular fight, but unfortunately, I don't even feel right revealing who started the fight, given that the initial tweet violated someone's privacy in a frankly heinous fashion. (You can delete tweets hours after you write them, but an hour is a lifetime in social media. The damage is done.)

I'm not looking to turn this site into a gossip column ("Can you believe she said that?"). I'm commenting on this only because this is the third time this has happened this week. Three times now, there have been two people, who seem to be on the same side, who suddenly get into an argument and invent a fictional gulf that cannot be traversed.

In all three cases, the arguments ended with cat-calling, which is frankly embarrassing for the people involved, all of whom are respected political and/or feminist commentators.

In my more pessimistic moments, I wonder if all these new methods of connection and communciation are actually offering distant people more opportunity to abuse each other.

I also wonder if our increasingly uglier national conversations are seeping into personal conversations, normalizing abuse and unfounded accusation and responses made out of anger.

You see, I've always felt that part of the magic of the written word that you can edit out the insults, you can trim the fat and excess, you can reduce your response to the most naked poison if you choose to, and you can do so without cheap insults or expletives.

You can lay out your argument logically and persuasively, and you don't need to demean yourself in the process.

Would anyone have put down Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" because it was vulgar or rude? Of course not. They would have read until the end, and then, maybe, realized they should be offended. That's what writing is. It's a sleight of hand.

Even with hot-button communication methods like twitter, there's always a hesitation before you press enter; if not, there should be.

What burns me is something my mother has told me again and again: you can be saying the right thing until you're blue in the face, but you have to say it the right way, or no one will listen to you.

It really burns me (every pun intended!) that we really ought to be having a national conversation about HPV; women in this country need objective information about how you get it and what can happen if it goes untreated. But namecalling and saying that "Well I have HPV and cervical cancer and therefore I should have the loudest voice" doesn't help anyone. It just tunes people out, and it makes them less receptive to the facts.

I don't generally buy in to the frequently posited theories about how the Internet is making us more stupid, but this new Google feature definitely aspires to reduce our thinking.

I logged into blogger as usual (by the way, the blogger re-design is the most horrendous thing I've ever seen. It may be prettier now, but it's totally useless, especially when you're working on the coding of the xml template.) There was this exciting bit of news:

"Introducing Google Scribe in Blogger."

Hello Bloggers! Do you ever find yourself writing slowly, staring at a blinking cursor or looking for words to express yourself? Today we are happy to announce the availability of the text suggestions and autocomplete feature of Google Scribe, which is graduating from Google Labs and can now be found in Blogger in Draft.

Google Scribe helps you write more efficiently by suggesting common words and phrases as you type. Google Scribe supports Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. The language is automatically detected using the text in the post.

So, for you, dear Reader, I reached out to test the product, and I simply do not understand it's existence. As my previous post was about River Song, I started with that, and ended up with this, based on following the autocomplete suggestions and inserting random punctuation:

River Song is the best way to get the best of the best in the world. When the user clicks River and the surrounding area and the second is the number of the first and second portions of the first and second, the third quarter of the year and the year of the study was to determine the effect of the drug.

Yes, the phrases and words suggested are vaguely human, but only in the sense that Mad-Libs are human.

I fundamentally disapprove of the notion that Google will write your post for you (if you don't like writing, why the hell are you blogging?) but this new trick beggars belief. Of all the useful things Google could do to improve Blogger (better photo placement controls, page templates, etc), they did this?

I believe 30 Rock provides the most logical explanation:

I don't know what it is, but so many mainstream magazine-style media publications write about technology from the perspective of old people trying to figure out what the kids are doing these days.

The latest screed in the MSM is that Twitter is going to lose all its customers if it doesn't increase the 140 character limit. To all of you I say: if you cannot write coherent thoughts in 140 characters, YOU ARE TOO VERBOSE. Just because David Foster Wallace wrote page-long sentences, that doesn't mean you can or should. In ANY medium.

The beauty and utility of Twitter comes from its brevity: in quick short bursts you can find information you need on topics you're interested in. You're not meant to be writing sonnets on Twitter, only haikus.

Here are a few reasons why Twitter should under no circumstances raise the text ceiling:

1. Twitter, at its essence, is a stream of headlines about real-time news.

That news may be where Neil Gaiman's speaking tonight, who's censoring the internet in other parts of the world, what feminists are protesting these days, or even what Ashton Kutcher had for lunch. But no matter how carefully you curate your following list, people will post things that are not relevant/interesting to you. And reading 140 characters disinterestedly is not something most people are too bothered about. 280 characters on the other hand? 560? This'll put us in Facebook nuisance territory.

Wanna write a complicated argument in your tweet? Blog it and post a link. If you can't keep it to 140 characters, but don't want to write a full blog post? Write two tweets. If you don't wanna do that? Reconsider how important something is if it can't be pithily expressed in 140 characters, but is not interesting enough to write a full post.

2. 140 characters is not arbitrary:

SMS text messages are 160 characters, which basically allows your handle and another 140 characters. The canard that "no one uses SMS anymore," is stupid and Western-centric. PLENTY of people use text messages to interact with twitter, myself included. You know who else uses text messages? Activists whose political speech has been censored by every other medium. People in disaster scenarios who can't pick up an internet signal. You know, the bread and butter of social media these days. The people who made social media something more than frivolous entertainment.

3. Twitter is not a chat program, no matter how you choose to use it

One of the most frequent complaints about twitter is that you can't hold a linear conversation on it. Not only is it untrue, it's a patently stupid complaint. Twitter lets you write "in reply to" a comment directed at you. Third party clients let you view entire conversations on one page.

If you want to have long, in-depth conversations that track back in a linear fashion? Allow me to introduce you to this wonderful new technology known as...no, I'll let Don Draper introduce it:

In fact, I don't think that there's a single argument against twitter that can't be countered by Don Draper's words there (my words, his face, but who cares).

IN SUM:

1. I defend your right to inanity, as long as you KEEP IT SHORT. (I'll still unfollow anyone who so much as mentions a Kardashian, however)

2. Again: If you can't summarize a thought in 140 characters, your thought is probably ill-conceived and lacking in clarity.

3. If twitter really bothers you so much, DON'T USE IT. Enjoy the overload at Google Plus or the endless photographs of cats on Facebook. Leave me to my beautiful information exchange.

There's my polemic. Argue with me in the comments.

(c/o Happyplace.com. Clicking image will take you to original site)

In A Sentence:

If Twitter and Facebook had a baby, and that baby was much prettier than Facebook but not nearly as cool as Twitter.

In A Few More Sentences:

There's a child-like joy to the actual experience of setting up google+: you drag people into circles, and if you're particularly inclined (I am so inclined) then you can imagine you're creating your own version of Dante's Inferno (yes, I am aware how sinister it is that I am sending all my friends/acquaintances to Hell. Rest assured, other contacts have created far less family-friendly monikers for their circles).

But I digress.

The most important thing here is that G+ is providing a real competitor to Facebook. We were this close to total monopolic consolidation on the Internet: Google as the only search, Facebook as the only "friends" sharing system*, Amazon as the books-opoly, and so on. It may not seem that Google going up against Facebook is the biggest shake-up in online power, but we all know that competition is what leads to progress, to better consumer experiences, to better products.

While I feel that tech savvy (particularly Internet savvy) people are going to latch on to the new service, I think it poses problems for more average users (I partially consider this a positive. For instance, your grandma won't be using google plus). Setting up a profile took a few steps too many for my liking. The often touted privacy features felt removed from all the other account settings (they were in no way obvious), and even simple settings for key G+ features like +1 required leaving the G+ interface and moving back into the main Google account settings.

But what is it for? Twitter took a long time to reach critical mass, because it's added advantage wasn't clear for a very long time; people thought it was just a streamlined Facebook wall for a long time. Google has already proven itself untrustworthy when it comes to protecting dissidents when government push comes to court-ordered shove. I suspect we'll learn more about G+ utility when the business pages come out later in the year.

A Few Suggestions to Make Google Plus Better:

Allow the creation of Venn Diagrams, so you can see how your networks interact (this isn't actually useful, but it sure would be fun. I can see the rom-com now: "The Man at the Center of my Googleverse").

Make it easier to find friends. Specifically, allow imports from twitter. Right now, if people don't have a google mail account, you can't search for them (and sometimes you can't find them even if you do).

Why isn't G+ integrated into Google Reader? I would enjoy +1-ing interesting articles, BUT I CANNOT.

Final note:

That image at the top? It apparently inspired the whole project. Google had it emblazoned across the walls on the fourth floor of their offices.

*I'm not including twitter in this because it really is a tool, not a destination. It enables communication, unprecendented activism, and lightning speed information sharing. It's simplicity and basic use is its best recommendation. It's not competing with Google+.