Category: Uncategorized

371t3 Journalism

Want to see the future of investigative journalism in a decentralized, global, marketplace? Here it is:

“But just like hacking websites, exposing Chinese frauds has become cliché, if not outright boring. Accordingly, we have turned our attention to several Western companies that may be surprised to find themselves in our crosshairs. We expect to release our first such report by year-end. In the interim, there is still more work to be done in China.…Sometimes, all it takes to delist a multi-billion dollar company is a right-click of the mouse.” [pdf]

Breaking Habits

“What’s sad is that when product managers break stuff, these people blame themselves; my pain is abated by anger, theirs amplified by embarrassment.” – Tim Bray

This afternoon, I fought with both an iPhone 4 and an Samsung Galaxy S to find the answer to a question both promised to make easy and straight-forward.

Neither did for completely different reasons.

The keyboard on the iPhone is complete crap, slow with a counter-intuitive spell checker. The Swype keyboard on the Samsung made text entry easier though the GPS and bandwidth speeds on the were tedious and spotty to the point of useless.

In the end, turns out – we really didn’t need to use either. Where we were going was obvious and intuitive – once we got there. But, that’s not what the smartphone ads say.

everything’s unbroken

“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

thx to david @ unclutter.

16 years later – revisiting my very first Amazon purchase

Over lunch today, I dusted off my very first Amazon.com purchase:
Television at a Crossroads by Stefan Marzano et. al.

Television at a Crossroads, published in 1993 (nearly 20 years ago), is a huge enveloping book documenting Philips Design’s exploration of what television will be like in the future.

From television as “tele-lesson” delivery, as ambient information device (like a lamp or clock), as social entertainment device. Much of the exploration depict things we take for granted in 2012 – not from the television – but our banal internet experience.

While the specifics are as quaint and naïve as flying cars the underlying thinking holds up quite nicely. Oh sure – we’re not playing chess through our televisions – but we are playing games with players on the other side of some screen somewhere. Our guitar lessons may not be delivered over a device called a TV – but it’s still the ‘tube.

Marzano and team correctly predicted our lives would be increasingly filled with digital video displays large, small, and everywhere in-between.

Paging through TaaC, I’m reminded of two things:

  1. we can only describe the future with our current vocabulary and our vocabulary is continually evolving.
  2. despite their ultimate manifestation, the projected solutions and scenarios are realized.