Bush smiled and nodded, then nodded some more, as Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip enthusiastically explained how his government holds paperless Cabinet meetings. The system, which uses digital signatures, permits legislation to be OK’d with the click of a mouse. Ansip’s explanation, though, was not as lickety split. He described in detail how the dozen members of the Cabinet, in a room dubbed the “Starship Enterprise”, can vote or make comments online. Cabinet meetings that used last about four to five hours now wrap up in about 30 minutes. Bush endured the lengthy explanation, shifting his weight back and forth. He seemed charmed by Estonia’s use of the Internet in making daily life easier for its citizens. “They’ve got an e-government system that should be the envy of a lot of nations,” Bush said. Bush received two gifts from his Estonian hosts: a glass sculpture and a Skype wireless phone that can be used to make calls over the Internet. The country is often nicknamed “E-Stonia” for its booming high-tech industry, and it is the main hub of Skype, the Internet telephone company that eBay bought last year for $2.6 billion.|link| For reference: The United States is 15th in the world in broadband penetration, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). When the ITU measured a broader “digital opportunity” index (considering price and other factors) we were 21st — right after Estonia. |link|

Because damn it I’m a nerd. From The Matrix: Revolutions (interpretations) It is interesting to note that while the Machine we see is called “Deus Ex Machina,” there is a reversal of roles happening. In Ancient Greek plays, the Deus Ex Machina would often be a God (often portrayed as a sun, which explains DEM’s appearance in Revolutions) which descends from above the stage. However, in Revolutions, Deus Ex Machina ascends to where Neo is standing. So, from Deus Ex Machina’s perspective, and thus that of the Machines, Neo is the God descending to them. Neo is the God which intervenes in the Machines’ apparently insoluble crisis and is their Deus ex machina.

The philosophy of technology is horrible. From “Noumenal Technology: Reflections on the Incredible Tininess of Nano“, Alfred Nordmann (Techne, 2005) The “noumenal technology” referred to in the title of this paper would therefore appear to be a contradiction in terms: Technology is a human creation that involves human knowledge and serves human needs; this firmly roots it in phenomena and it appears absurd to speak of technology that exists beyond human perception and experience among the things-in-themselves. The noumenal world is nature uncomprehended, unexperienced, and uncontrolled; it is nature in the sense of uncultivated, uncanny otherness. By speaking of “noumenal technology” this paper argues that some technologies are retreating from human access, perception, and control, and thus assume the character of this uncanny otherness. So technology is not even a thing-in-itself. Technology is simply there-for-us. Nordmann goes on to say that increasingly noumenal technology (ie, nanotech) is a bad thing because it threatens our control over the technology. Technological interventions, like the nano-guitar, might be operating in the background, unknown and unknowable to us. They therefore do not become objects of experience—and what is no object of experience remains unrepresented and does not prompt the formation of a conceptual image of its working. To the extent that they remain in the unconsidered and unconceptualized background of our actions and lives, these technologies are much like brute and uncomprehended nature—instead of knowing them, we merely know of them. Their looming presence and potential efficacy does not appear as an extension of our freedom or our will, but as a mere constraint, even perhaps as a threat. Where technical and intellectual control come apart, the humanly induced workings of technology no longer signify mastery of nature but take on the character of nature itself. LOOMING PRESENCE. Its plain silly to think that […]

I still don’t understand how this kind of advertisement ends up selling shoes. I feel obligated to post Yellow, though Pink and Green are both pretty awesome, and Black is by far my favorite. Thanks for the link, ToliverChap.

This is pretty neat. Follow the link to to see more videos of the Reactable in action.

To continue the wholesale destruction of mankind. Eh, maybe that’s not as good as McSweeny’s list of jokes made by robots, for robots: “Waiter! Waiter! What’s this robot doing in my soup?” “It looks like he’s performing human tasks twice as well, because he knows no fear or pain.”

feline-computer interaction Yes, I added to a very boring YouTube trend. Sue me.

From xkcd

From Heidegger Cartoons. Thanks ejdickso

From Wired: 6 word science fiction It cost too much, staying human. – Bruce Sterling

From “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” (PDF) by Henry Jenkins for the MacArthur Foundation. Link courtesy of Sivacracy. Rather than dealing with each technology in isolation, we would do better to take an ecological approach, thinking about the interrelationship among all of these different communication technologies, the cultural communities that grow up around them, and the activities they support. Media systems consist of communication technologies and the social, cultural, legal, political, and economic institutions, practices, and protocols that shape and surround them (Gitelman, 1999).The same task can be performed with a range of different technologies, and the same technology can be deployed toward a variety of different ends. Some tasks may be easier with some technologies than with others, and thus the introduction of a new technology may inspire certain uses. Yet, these activities become widespread only if the culture also supports them, if they fill recurring needs at a particular historical juncture. It matters what tools are available to a culture, but it matters more what that culture chooses to do with those tools. That is why we focus in this paper on the concept of participatory cultures rather than on interactive technologies. Interactivity (H. Jenkins, 2006a) is a property of the technology, while participation is a property of culture. Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways. A focus on expanding access to new technologies carries us only so far if we do not also foster the skills and cultural knowledge necessary to deploy those tools toward our own ends. We are using participation as a term that cuts across educational practices, creative […]

So I haven’t checked my site stats in a few months, but tonight I am busy procrastinating, so I decided to see whats up. The only thing really interesting to get out of the statcounter I use is the ‘came from’ stats that show exactly where people were before they entered my site. Most of it comes from the friendly blogs in the sidebar, though a significant majority are people leeching images from my webspace (Columbo is hot shit, apparently). But I also get quite a few clicks from search engines and other random pages. Lets see: Computer World linked to my page last December, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. The post they linked to is my fawning over Asimo, which has nothing to do with the article in which it is linked. Eh, it helps my PageRank, so I wont complain. This is kind of interesting. That’s definitely my post, but its hosted on another server. In fact, it looks like every post I made on my blogspot page has been mirrored in inblogs.net, which seems to be a gateway that hosts a bunch of blogspot blogs and other pages inaccessible to certain countries (India, Iran, Pakistan, China). My statcounter says that no one’s been here from any of those countries, but maybe thats just hidden by the gateway. A little over 1% of my readership comes from Lithuania, so I assume its not out of the question. Apparently someone linked to my site from Tulane Uni’s blackboard system. I don’t have access to the system, and I can’t see the course as a guest, so I can only imagine why I got linked. If anyone can break into the system, here is the incoming link Ted Kennedy (D-MA) insists that, and I […]