Arthur C Clarke predicts some of the future in 1964

29 August 2024

Speaking in 1964, the late British author and futurist made numerous predictions, mainly relating to advances in technology, many of which were prescient. Clarke called artificial intelligence (no surprise there, coming from the co-writer of the 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey). He also foresaw the internet, working from home, and a favourite of mine, the concept of RSS.

The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic so if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable then I’ll fail completely only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable having any chance of visualizing the future as it really will happen.

He was off the mark with some ideas. The demise of cities for one. But, give it time — perhaps centuries — and maybe he’ll be proved right. When Clarke’s comments were recorded in 1964, sixty years ago, the world was, of course, a vastly different place. That might explain the, let’s say, patriarchal lens, with which he viewed the future. It seemed to be all about men. Men will do this. Men will do that. No mention of women. No hedging of his bets, so to speak, by saying people even.

No futurist is ever going to predict exactly what will happen, but Clarke’s choice of words regarding gender do highlight how some things have changed for the better in sixty years.

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Arthur C Clarke, technology, trends

One Minute Park, One Million Checkboxes, win Tiny Awards 2024

29 August 2024

One Minute Park by Elliott Cost, has been named winner of the main prize of the Tiny Awards 2024, while One Million Checkboxes by Nolen Royalty, took out the multiplayer player gong.

One is your lucky number this year. Held annually since last year, 2023, the Tiny Awards recognise excellence in non-commercial websites designed by individuals and/or or groups of creators.

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awards, design, IndieWeb, technology

Facebook operates a little differently in Australia

28 August 2024

David Swan, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Rampant celebrity cryptocurrency scam ads are as Australian as Tim Tams, koalas or the Great Barrier Reef, according to American Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who says the tech giant’s lack of focus on Australia has let scams run wild on its platform compared with other markets.

It’s always nice to be treated differently, particularly by the world’s largest social network.

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social networks, technology, trends

The first six months of Vision Pro by Michael Ball

27 August 2024

Matthew Ball, writing about the first six-months of Apple’s spatial computing, and — whether Apple likes it or not — virtual reality headset, Vision Pro:

The Vision Pro is clearly the most ambitious of their product launches since the iPhone, the first to be wholly developed under the purview of CEO Tim Cook (though various head-mounted display prototypes were underway as early as 2006), and reporting suggests that its viability was controversial internally (with some employees arguing that Head-Mounted Displays (“HMDs”) impart harm by isolating its wearers from other people and, ultimately, the world around them).

People have commented on this. Vision Pro might be an incredible device, but the experience while using it could only be described as immersive. Of course Apple did not spend almost a decade, and billions of dollars, developing Vision Pro, without that occurring to them.

There has also been discussion about less than impressive sales numbers. But the Vision Pro is a niche device. The cheapest models in Australia presently start at six thousand dollars, so no one, including Apple, will ever be expecting them to fly off the shelves. At least not in the same way as the iPhone. But if Vision Pro is of interest to you, Ball’s deep-dive article is well worth reading.

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technology, trends

The asterism: the proposed new symbol for the fediverse. So say we

26 August 2024

The asterism, ⁂, a typographic symbol made up three stars, is being proposed as the new symbol for the fediverse. If the fediverse needs a symbol, it’s not half bad. Does the web have a symbol? I’m not even sure. But for those who came in late, the fediverse can be defined thusly:

The fediverse (commonly abbreviated to fedi) is a collection of social networking services that can communicate with each other (formally known as federation) using a common protocol. Users of different websites can send and receive status updates, multimedia files and other data across the network. The term fediverse is a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”.

If you have either a Masterdon account, a Threads page, or maybe a WordPress blog, then you’re part of the fediverse. Or, as Manton Reece prefers: the social web. To me though, the fediverse is really just a specific part of the web you can choose to go.

An asterism, as you can see in the first sentence, is actually three asterisks. In astronomy, asterisms are groupings of stars. Asterisms should not be confused with constellations though. Not a half bad representation of the fediverse then:

We suggest that it’s a very fitting symbol for the fediverse, a galaxy of interconnected spaces which is decentralised and has an astronomically-themed name. It represents several stars coming together, connecting but each their own, without a centre.

The asterism is not the first symbol for the fediverse though. That was a rainbow coloured pentagram, designed in 2018. An asterism, being a typographic symbol, is certainly easier to make use of. And if you are a Threads member, you may have seen Meta’s fediverse symbol. It is made up of a small inner circle, with a broken outer circle and two dots, placed opposite each other. When seen with a Threads post, it denotes that the same post has been shared to the fediverse.

But Meta’s use of this symbol has raised the ire of the fediverse.info crew:

This other icon was created by Meta in 2024 to represent the fediverse within their product Threads. It incorrectly depicts a centralised network, with a big planet in the middle and the rest around it. We also don’t believe that a large corporation that is joining in as late should be the one defining the iconography for the fediverse.

I’m not a fan of big corporates such as Meta attempting to impose their will upon the rest of us. But I also wonder whether these fediverse.info people — or “we”— as they often refer to themselves, are likewise placed to do the same. The about page at fediverse.info offers next to no information as to who they are, certainly nothing in-depth, and really only states their objective.

Their fediverse symbol proposal seems to have been, from what I can see, well received though.

Reading: good for your mental and overall health?

23 August 2024

Ceridwen Dovey, writing for the New Yorker, in 2015:

For all avid readers who have been self-medicating with great books their entire lives, it comes as no surprise that reading books can be good for your mental health and your relationships with others, but exactly why and how is now becoming clearer, thanks to new research on reading’s effects on the brain.

Self-medicating with a book can’t be bad. I’ll have to see if I can find out what conclusions the research Dovey referred to, found. For my part, I know sitting quietly somewhere and reading a novel can be calming and relaxing, just like writing.

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books, psychology

Vacuum decay, one more existential threat to lose sleep over

22 August 2024

Tooth decay. Entropy. Heat death of the universe. These are things to worry about, and we’ve known about them for a long time. But recently scientists have identified something else to lose sleep over: vacuum decay:

Vacuum decay, a process that could end the universe as we know it, may happen 10,000 times sooner than expected. Fortunately, it still won’t happen for a very, very long time.

There’s a lot of theoretical physics (I think) involved, which is way over my head, so there’s not more I can say about vacuum decay. The good news however: vacuum decay will not bring about the end of the universe anytime soon.

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physics, science

Wanting to read more novels, versus trying to do everything else

21 August 2024

About six years ago I decided I wasn’t reading enough novels. Books sat on the side table untouched, gathering dust, and inducing a pang of guilt whenever I took notice of them. I wondered what I could do to get more into reading. One thing I am good at is meeting deadlines, and doing things I put on my to-do lists. If I could regard the period of a library book loan — being three weeks at my local library — as a deadline, maybe I could increase my reading rate that way?

So I took out a library membership, and began to borrow books. I had three weeks to finish a novel. Books could no longer sit on the side table indefinitely. They had to be back at the library after twenty-one days, or else I risked paying a late-return fee. But then I noticed the library offered a one-week loan for recently acquired titles. This so as many people as possible could read new books. And for a while, this is what I did. Read books in a week or less.

Sometimes it was a strain. But if I didn’t finish the book before it was due back, no problem: I’d make a note of the page/chapter I was up to on my online task list. I could then re-borrow the book later, and pick up where I left off. It was a plan, and it was working. I’d gone from reading no books, to sometimes, one a week. At that point I wasn’t really discriminating. I’d go over to the one-week loan shelf, and select any title I felt I could read in seven days.

But I knew it was too good to last. The first thing to come along and burst the read-one-book-a-week bubble, was the pandemic. The library shut its doors when the lockdowns commenced. Automatic three week loan extensions were granted indefinitely to anyone who’d borrowed a book prior. I think I ended up holding my then latest loan for about three-months, before pandemic restrictions eased sufficiently, so I could return it. But the pandemic wasn’t a problem of itself.

I could still borrow books through any number of library-book apps. By this stage, I’d been away from disassociated for three years (so much for the envisaged break of a few months…), and was looking at a return. But I wanted to try experimenting with the blogging format on social media. Instagram (IG) specifically. Blogging on IG was a terrible idea, and I knew it. The inability to embed links into posts being the primary drawback.

Since I’d been reading a lot, I started (a long since gone) IG page, dedicated to Australian novels. In the time the page was online, it garnered several hundred followers, and a surprisingly high degree of engagement. A little too high maybe. People sure wanted to talk about local books. Before long, I was spending most my time conversing with a regular group of followers about books, and everything else, leaving little time to read. A book was now taking several weeks, longer, to read.

I was beginning to run out of material I could write about. And not being able embed links into posts (link in bio, anyone?) was really beginning to annoy me. By this time, it was the fourth quarter of 2021. I quietly resumed writing at a temporary domain, while creating a new WordPress theme for disassociated. By late summer of 2022, I’d closed the IG page, and told followers where they could find me. But blogging, while working, while reading, does not a good blend make.

My book reading rate has slowed right down. The desire to write is in constant conflict with the desire to read, and it looks like the blog is winning. Yet, I see plenty of prolific book bloggers out there. People reading a lot, and writing a lot about that. Good for them is all I can really say. The battle for balance is without end, even if I get a chapter or two in each day. But I’m not the only one who struggles to read, as I discovered from this post at 82MHz.

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books, novels, reading, writing

Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2024 shortlist

20 August 2024

Do Australian Prime Ministers have time to read books? They may not, but they do have a literary award for Australian publications, created in 2008, of which the 2024 shortlist was announced last week. Five titles, across the six award categories of fiction, non-fiction, Australian history, poetry, children’s, and young adult, were included.

Among books shortlisted are Eventually Everything Connects, by Sarah Firth, in the non-fiction category, and the previously mentioned Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood, in fiction. Welcome to Sex, by Yumi Stynes and Melissa Kang, was included in young adult. The title stirred up controversy last year, after some people objected to certain of the content, claiming some of subject matter was not appropriate for a sex education book.

The backlash was ferocious in some quarters, with staff at some shops selling the title being abused — unacceptable — by would-be customers, while at least one person was convicted of making threats via social media — likewise unacceptable — against co-author Stynes.

The winners of this year’s Prime Minister’s Literary Awards will be unveiled on Thursday 12 September 2024.

The Zone of Interest, a film by Jonathan Glazer, with Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller

19 August 2024

The Zone of Interest, trailer, the 2023 film by British director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Under the Skin), explores a slightly different aspect of the World War II Holocaust, which resulted in the deaths of six million European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the commandant of Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp where over one million Jews were murdered, lives with his family in a house situated right beside one of the camp’s walls. With his wife Hedwig, (Sandra Hüller), the couple attempt to create what they consider to be a “normal” life for their young children.

Hedwig audaciously describes the house, and landscaped gardens, which she designed, as “paradise”, despite its proximity to the concentration camp. The family home is anything but paradise, however. The atrocities unfolding at Auschwitz may go unseen, but they do not go unheard.

There is seldom any let up in the cries of terror, the gun fire, nor the grinding of heavy metallic doors and gates constantly opening and closing. The sounds of furnaces burning, and trains ominously coming and going, are never ending. The family house may be comfortable, but discord and unease hangs heavily in the air. The Höss’ new born baby is frequently unsettled and crying, while their pet dog is almost always restless and agitated.

Paradise is the name Höss and his wife give to their denial of the horrors taking place on the other side of the wall. The Zone of Interest is a confronting and disturbing study of their dismissal. But there are cracks in the façade. Höss desperately seeks a transfer away from Auschwitz, while Hedwig pines to return to Italy, where the family once holidayed. Because try as both might, there is no turning away from the evil both know is taking place.

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