Showing all posts tagged: technology
How annoying are some websites today?
21 April 2022
We all know the feeling. You’re literally five seconds into reading article on a website, and a popup screen is asking if you’d like to subscribe to their newsletter. NO THANKS. I just want to read the article and never come back again.
It’s infuriating. That’s why this website is so… boring, people come here looking for information and I serve it up, no fuss, no drama, no damn popups.
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The flight of the drone, Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg
4 April 2022
Go to full screen and take-in this stunning drone fly-through at Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, Tesla’s European manufacturing facility.
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Build, a book by Tony Fadell, co-inventor of the iPhone
3 March 2022
To stoke the collective oblong obsession. American engineer and designer Tony Fadell who invented the iPod, and co-invented the iPhone, has written a book, Build, which is being published in May. This is surely a must read for iPod and iPhone aficionados. The story behind the development of both products, especially the iPhone, is fascinating, especially if this perspective by John Gruber at Daring Fireball is anything to go by.
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A good writer never blames their apps for a lack of productivity
18 December 2021
Can distraction-free devices change the way we write, asks Julian Lucas, writing for the New Yorker. A writing app, a word processor, one that cuts out the clutter, menu bars, formatting options, font choices, and all the impedimenta that might distract us: would we be more productive as writers if that were the case?
But focus mode on an everything device is a meditation room in a casino. What good is it to separate writing from editing, formatting, and cluttered interfaces if you can’t separate it from the Internet? Even a disconnected computer offers plenty of opportunities for distraction: old photographs, downloaded music, or, most treacherous of all, one’s own research. And so, just as savvy entrepreneurs have resuscitated the “dumb” phone as a premium single-tasking communication device, it was perhaps inevitable that someone would revive the stand-alone word processor.
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The metaverse, you can log out anytime, but you can never leave
2 December 2021
The Metaverse as seen by Sydney based writer and musician, Penny Flanagan:
Call me paranoid, but I’m starting to think that Zuckerberg’s end game is to stop all of us from existing physically in the real world. I think he wants to “make the time spent on the internet better” so that he can turn us all into 24/7 flubby, docile sources of advertising revenue. In truth, his ideal for the metaverse is a world where the internet is so satisfying, you won’t want or need to leave it for the real world.
I can see where Flanagan’s coming from, particularly in light of the recent lockdowns that have forced many of us to participate in an elemental iteration of the Metaverse. If you, that is, consider the likes of Zoom, Slack, Facetime, et al, to be a prototype of the virtual environment Meta/Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg proposes creating.
And while there’s little doubt Zuckerberg is eyeing potential revenue, I see benefits in some of the ideas on the table. I’m also not doubting some people could become completely immersed in this new virtual realm in time, but I think we’re some long-way off from seeing the Metaverse eventuate in the way Zuckerberg envisages it.
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Bookseller boss worried by slow post lockdown return to city centre
26 November 2021
John Forsyth, chairman of Dymocks Group, one of Australia’s oldest booksellers, is concerned local government isn’t doing enough to rejuvenate Sydney’s CBD, particularly in the wake of recent pandemic imposed lockdowns. He isn’t alone. Businesses in other commercial centres across Greater Sydney are also feeling the pinch. They’re urging municipal councils, many of whom are facing elections in early December, to do more to bring people back into city centres.
But I’m not sure it’s that simple, and other ways to support struggling businesses may need to be considered. Some workers don’t want to return to central business districts. Having been forced to work from home, many are content to stay there. And who can blame them? Working from home means less time lost to commuting, commuting in the first instance, and more time to spend with the family, and on other things they find important. These people are still supporting small businesses, but ones closer to home, rather than in the city.
It’s long been my thought that advances in technology were always going to bring about this sort of shift in work practises eventually, the pandemic simply hastened the inevitable. What happens in the few months will be pivotal. Many organisations are paying rent on buildings that are virtually unoccupied. How will they respond? By instructing workers to return? Or by scaling down office space? But with some workers looking to relocate to rural regions, and renewed talk of four day working weeks, will we ever see the return of city workers to pre-pandemic levels?
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Twenty-four hours in the 2021 Metaverse
15 November 2021
Wall Street Journal technology columnist Joanna Stern spent twenty-four hours in the Metaverse – such that is presently – and compiled the highlights in this video clip. Though somewhat functional, it’s fair to say the concept as shown to us a few weeks ago by Mark Zuckerberg is some way off.
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Klara and the Sun and AFs. What are AFs, and why are they needed?
12 November 2021
WARNING: while there are no explicit spoilers here (for instance I don’t describe how Klara and the Sun ends) this article does give away some story points…
Klara, the titular character of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel Klara and the Sun, is an AF. She is an artificial friend. AFs are robots that are able to walk, talk, think, and perceive the world around them. In the near-future universe Ishiguro has crafted in his eighth novel, AFs, who appear to be similar in appearance to humans, are highly intelligent companions for teenagers. Despite their human-like qualities though, AFs are easily distinguishable from people. But Klara is said to differ from her AF contemporaries by way of her keen perception and curiosity.
As narrator of the story, Klara often describes in great detail what she sees, or hears, even if she doesn’t always fully comprehend what she has witnessed. Early in the story, as she sits in the display window of a store selling AFs, she watches two older people – a man and a woman – run into each other on the outside street. Their joy at meeting for what may be the first time in decades, is palpable, but Klara is confused by the obvious pain the two people also appear to experience.
While then we may be walking into a future where children will one day have keenly smart and perceptive android-like friends, the question remains as to why there is a need for AFs in the first place. In an introduction to the story’s plot on the Klara and the Sun Wikipedia page, we are told children are schooled at home by tutors through tablet devices (objects Klara refers to as oblongs). For this reason, families who can afford it, buy an AF for their housebound children, as opportunities to socialise with people the same age are said to be limited. But is that really the case?
Soon after coming into the service of a teenage girl called Josie, Klara meets many of her (human) friends at a gathering called an interaction party, hosted by Josie’s mother. The name alone suggests such gatherings are standard, but not necessarily. The dynamic among Josie’s guests implies most the teenagers know each other well. While interaction parties, by virtue of their name, sound like regular affairs, that the event takes place at Josie’s house is notable. For one thing, she lives in a remote region, restricting opportunities to interact with people her age.
But what of her friends? Do they also live in similar circumstances? It seems unlikely every last one does, meaning many would be able to see other teenagers living nearby, outside of schooling hours, thus negating the need (and cost) of an AF. It is also obvious Klara is something of a novelty to some of Josie’s friends. While they’re familiar with AFs, and the attributes of models like Klara, few have actually seen one before. This suggests AF ownership is an exception, most people don’t need them, as they probably live relatively close to others.
For instance, at one point Klara travels with Josie and her mother, Chrissie, to the city where they stay at the apartment of a family friend. While there are vaguely alluded to significant problems in the world Klara and Josie inhabit, they have not resulted in a mass exodus from large urban centres, nor their abandonment. People continue to live and work in cities as usual. Those residing in remote areas then do so by choice. And while we know Josie is ill, and may not get out as much as other teenagers, the need for a carer for her alone would not be reason enough to fill the world with AFs.
It is through this illness – the unfortunate side effect of what seems to be a common genetic modification procedure some teenagers go through – we come to realise Chrissie, Josie’s mother, has another possible purpose in mind for Klara. But again this idea is not the usual intended function of an AF. We’re still left wondering why there is an apparent wide need for AFs such as Klara. Might they then be there to undertake tasks or parental obligations that some parents are unable, or unwilling, to fulfil themselves? For example we know Klara acted as a chaperone at times.
When Rick visited the bedbound Josie in her room, Klara was told to always be present. While she sat with her back to Josie and Rick, Klara could still hear what they were saying and doing. When once asked to leave Josie’s room during one of Rick’s visits, Klara initially resisted, saying she’d been “instructed to ensure against hanky-panky.” But that directive had been issued by the ever-present, live-in, housekeeper, Melania. If she, and by extension Chrissie, was so concerned about “hanky-panky”, surely Melania could’ve been present during Rick’s relatively short visits.
So far there’s little an AF can do that another person – be it a friend, or family member – couldn’t. Josie certainly had plenty of both in her life. Perhaps then AFs were a vanity item. Something you had to have, so you stood apart from other people. A must have, though ultimately dispensable, gimmick. Or was an AF’s unswerving loyalty and devotion the reason they came into being? Like an artificial intelligence chatbot, “someone” who’s always there, who’s always ready to listen, and someone who is never offended no matter how badly they are treated?
What a world to live in…
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The Metaverse, one step closer to the Holodeck
1 November 2021
Last week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the social network company he co-founded in 2004 will be known as Meta. Later, in his keynote presentation at the company Connect event, he unveiled a raft of technologies in development that have the potential to change the way we live and work.
The Star Trek geek in me could not help but make comparisons to the Holodeck, a room on the Enterprise that allowed the crew to realistically create, or re-create, almost any situation they could imagine. If you have a spare eighty or so minutes, check out Zuckerberg’s keynote. Tech analyst Ben Thompson interviewed the Facebook CEO shortly before the keynote, and if you have another forty-five minutes to spare, it’s a conversation well worth listening to. It’s a fascinating time for those of us with an oblong obsession.
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Mark Zuckerberg, metaverse, technology