Archives for May 2015
на цепи
7 May 2015 | Culturology, Design, Software | No Comments
смотрите, чудесное о пользовательских мирах и страхах:
With each type of device, we sacrifice a little more of the world immediately around us in exchange for the virtual one.
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We’ve been trained by these objects. We’re presented with stimuli, and we display conditioned behaviour. Notifications and interruptions permeate the membrane between actual life, and our electronic existence – and our devices are the conduits.
A few days ago, I began wearing an Apple Watch, and I did so with some unease.
My fear was that a wearable would be the most intrusive of all devices, bringing trespass even to situations where my phone was away, and I was engaged in other activities – eating up the last remaining uninterrupted portions of my life.
не перестаю удивляться, как люди предпочитают решать симулякры вместо действительных проблем.
серьезно, радоваться тому, что оповещения для Apple Watch по природе своей пассивны, не предполагают ответа, и, значит отнимают меньше “реального мира” — это примерно, как радоваться тому, что алкоголь убивает не весь организм равномерно, но особенно печень.
потому что, очевидно же, надо контроллировать сам принцип оповещений в частности и всего “виртуального мира” в общем, а не ограничивать собственные возможности. иначе завтра можно попросту выколоть себе один глаз — а то и оба сразу.
поют и танцуют
7 May 2015 | Geography, Technology | No Comments
а вот путешествие в Индию, в Удайпур, размером в 16 гигапикселей.
it’s in Apple’s DNA
6 May 2015 | Apple | No Comments
Ken Segall nails the thing on understanding Apple:
[T]he original Macintosh team at Apple liked to say, it’s more fun to be the pirates than the navy. <...> Given the size of the company today, Apple can easily be seen as the navy. So I get why the sport of finding the cracks in Apple’s armor is so popular.
and yet, finding real, interesting cracks is pretty tough — if not impossible. nonetheless, they do try (an again, it’s a good thing). remember tendencies and articles of the few last years?
The common theme was that Apple had forgotten how to innovate. Samsung was crowned the new king. It was an easy story to tell, because Steve Jobs was gone.
Poor, directionless Apple. All those inventive designers and engineers, taking long lunches and wandering the halls aimlessly without leadership.
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Fortunately, it all becomes clear in hindsight.
Now we know there was a ton of work going on at Apple during The Period Of Great Whining. Possibly more than at any time in Apple’s history. Now we have new iPhones, Apple Pay and Apple Watch.
me, I have no doubts in Apple at all. they surely have the vision, they cherish their passion, and are to be successful — may be way, way more successful[1] than one can imagine even today.
it’s just I don’t like ’em any more.
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This way, when deep-space exploitation ramps up, it will probably be the megatonic corporations that discover all the new planets and map them. The IBM Stellar Sphere. The Philip Morris Galaxy. Planet Denny’s. Every planet will take on the corporate identity of whoever rapes it first. Budweiser World.
of moons and men
6 May 2015 | Literature | 1 Comment
начнется все примерно так:
The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full. The time was 05:03:12 UTC. Later it would be designated A+0.0.0, or simply Zero.
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In any case, the result was that, first, the moon was fractured into seven large pieces, as well as innumerable smaller ones. And second, those pieces spread apart, enough to become observable as separate objects—huge rough boulders—but not enough to continue flying apart from one another. The moon’s pieces remained gravitationally bound, a cluster of giant rocks orbiting chaotically about their common center of gravity.
That point—formerly the center of the moon, but now an abstraction in space—continued to revolve around the Earth just as it had done for billions of years. So now, when the people of Earth looked up into the night sky at the place where they ought to have seen the moon, they saw instead this slowly tumbling constellation of white boulders.
Before the leaders of the scientific, military, and political worlds began using the word “Agent” to denote whatever had blown up the moon, that word’s most common interpretation, at least in the minds of the general public, had been in the pulp-fiction, B-movie sense of a secret agent or an FBI agent. Persons of a more technical mind-set might have used it to mean some sort of chemical, such as a cleaning agent. The closest match for how the word would be used forever after was the sense in which it was used by fencers and martial artists. In a sword-fighting drill, where one participant is going to mount an attack and the other is to respond in some way, the attacker is known as the agent and the respondent is known as the patient. The agent acts. The patient is passive. In this case an unknown Agent acted upon the moon. The moon, along with all the humans living in the sublunary realm, was the passive recipient of that action. Much later, humans might rouse themselves to take action and be agents once again. But now and for long into the future they would be nothing more than patients.
Нил Стивенсон со-товарищи запустили рекламный сайт к его будущему роману “Seveneves”. но, кажется, мне надоела вся эта sci-fi беготня.
rosebud
6 May 2015 | Cinematograph | No Comments
забавные пересечения двух списков самых лучших фильмов — один от критиков, другой от режиссеров. мне ближе первый, но важнее для всех нас, думаю, второй. наверное, потому что одних больше интересует механика, а других, все же, история? иными словами, опять вечное противостояние разных частей одного и того же инструмента.