cam, 362 words, 0 comments, Peter Watson, Science, Technology,

Peter Watson argues that science, unlike art, philosophy, politics, culture or other forms of human endeavor was never reflective; it never looked backed on its past and wondered why, or whether it was a good idea. Science moves irrevocably forward, constantly refining and leaving in its trail technological gadgets that make life easier and easier.

Whereas a politician might wonder if Marxism wasn't an expressly bad idea, or an artist might not wonder if 'ready-made' is pushing art too far, science does not wonder much. A few might, such as with something like the nuclear bomb, but for the most part the follow on of those discoveries and theories in technology - in health for instance - make the point moot for the general population.

This does mean that art, philosophy, politics and culture are constantly playing catch up to science. Their response is reactive simply because the scientific method and technology dumps it on society to be consumed in a meaningful manner. Stem cells are a recent example of politics and culture being left to navigate the wake of science.

The other aspect of science is its 'self-sufficiency'. The large discoveries of the twentieth century we made in isolation and then presented to peers. Quite unusual when compared to art, philosophy or politics. Science also became specialised beyond the realm of the educated class. The average person does not know how a cell phone works despite paying $80 every month to speak, text and browse with it. Watson writes:

For non-specialists, the inaccessibility of science didn't matter, or it didn't matter very much, for the technology that was the product of difficult science worked, conferring authority on physics, medicine, and even mathematics.

The flip-side of that coin is that science has fashion too and prior controversies are taught as truth - for instance the duality of light is common to all Year 10 students in Australia, but in the 19thC the though that light might be photons as well as a wave was unfathomable.

Science's dominance and authority leaves the question to be answered that does the knowledge of science constitute a special kind of knowledge, higher than all others. (reply)

cam, 197 words, 0 comments, Technology, eCommerce

I like watching others use web pages to do constructive tasks to see what they consider an out of box experience to be. It is also interesting to see where the webdesign forces them to struggle. I was curiously watching my partner navigate her way through the J Crew website recently. It is a standard shopping interface limited by the normalisation choices of the database designers. Brian Goetz wrote on introducing an article on java threading:

Languages, libraries, and frameworks shape the way we write programs. Even though Alonzo Church showed in 1934 that all the known computational frameworks were equivalent in the set of programs they could represent, the set of programs that real programmers actually write is shaped by the idioms that the programming model driven by languages, libraries, and frameworks makes easy to express.

My partner found the J Crew website frustrating as the database normalisation choices were not the same as what she wanted to sort on and left her with too many results. The interesting part here is that the database, which is normally the first thing designed and then set in stone, limited how the store front could work. (reply)

cam, 103 words, 0 comments, Tag Cloud, Technology, Information Visualization

Read Write Web wonders if tag clouds have disappeared for lack of usefulness. They are certainly very good for visualising frequency of information. But that is more a niche area, often limited to tags, though interesting work has been done with tag clouding Presidential speeches and other domain specific tasks.

One of the other issues with how tag clouds are presented on most sites is as a small grouping of tags. They work best when used with a large amount of data. This lets the differentiation between frequent terms and infrequent terms become obvious through font sizes. (reply)

cam, 321 words, 0 comments, iPhone, Technology, Mercedes

Mercedes has announced it has integrated the iPhone into its range of cars and SUVs. Which is interesting as the Blackbery still outsells the iPhone though Apple is going after the Blackberry market by lowering the price of the starting iPhone to $200.

I am really disappointed with the integration of modern tech tools into my car. While my car has a heads up display, a navigation screen and a DVD that flips up and out when I press a button; it does not integrate with the iPod, let alone the iPhone. Since I have bought the iPhone it has replaced my nanoPod, though I still have a large iPod which holds my entire music collection and is hooked into a Bose player in the house.

I pretty much consider the need to hook a car up to an iPod, Zune, Blackberry, whatever as essential these days. People use and rely on these devices constantly; whether it is power, music, txt or voice communication. The old car stereo is an anachronism, unfortunately, the car industry runs at a snails pace due to the long lead times on platforms. (more)

cam, 82 words, 0 comments, Technology, Keyboards, Kong Fanwen

Black keyboard, color keyboard and now a glass keyboard. This was designed by Kong Fanwen. I could not find his site, or any other of his technology works other than references to displays.

It is certainly visually stunning but keyboards are one area where ergonomic function dominates over looks. Hands are fragile when stressed by typing and unhealthy positioning. It would be interesting to see how this keyboard fares ergonomically in the sweatshops of the modern software world. (reply)

cam, 157 words, 0 comments, Technology, Keyboards, Das Keyboard

Keyboards can become intensely personal as muscle memory and familiarity often decide typing speed. Including the standard Dell, Microsoft and Apple QWERTY keyboards there has not been much deviation from that style. The iPhone for instance has a touchpad which is QWERTY based just like the Blackberry which came before it.

But color is a variation that is open for debate. The all black variant which Count Zero would be proud to patch into while looking for the Yakuza or something else unter-cool from das keyboard which apparently clacks like an old type writer too. (more)