I’ve been slacking off on this blog, but I have been seriously lacking inspiration recently. And that hasn’t changed. But people still visit the site, so I might as well put that to good use. My cat Gus is partially an outdoor cat, but I am afraid to just let him run wild lest someone thinks he is a stray and take him away. So I’d like to brand him in some way. The traditional method for branding a domesticated house pet is a collar, but he’s already gone through two collars, and Gus simply will not take to them. He’ll wear it for a day or two, and then sneak away and take it off and bury it or something, and I’ll never see it again. So I am wondering if it would be just entirely inhumane to make him wear a harness. For a demonstration of a cat harness, click here. Cat harnesses are designed to walk a cat, but I am neither foolish nor sadistic enough to actually try to walk Gus. Rather, I am starting to think that making Gus wear a harness is the only way I can ensure that a collar will stay on. Does this make me a horrible, evil person?

Hippocrates, 400 BCE 13. The greatest and most dangerous disease, and the one that proved fatal to the greatest number, was consumption. With many persons it commenced during the winter, and of these some were confined to bed, and others bore up on foot; the most of those died early in spring who were confined to bed; of the others, the cough left not a single person, but it became milder through the summer; during the autumn, all these were confined to bed, and many of them died, but in the greater number of cases the disease was long protracted. Most of these were suddenly attacked with these diseases, having frequent rigors, often continual and acute fevers; unseasonable, copious, and cold sweats throughout; great coldness, from which they had great difficulty in being restored to heat; the bowels variously constipated, and again immediately in a loose state, but towards the termination in all cases with violent looseness of the bowels; a determination downwards of all matters collected about the lungs; urine excessive, and not good; troublesome melting. The coughs throughout were frequent, and copious, digested, and liquid, but not brought up with much pain; and even when they had some slight pain, in all cases the purging of the matters about the lungs went on mildly. The fauces were not very irritable, nor were they troubled with any saltish humors; but there were viscid, white, liquid, frothy, and copious defluxions from the head. But by far the greatest mischief attending these and the other complaints, was the aversion to food, as has been described. For neither been described. For neither had they any relish for drink along with their food, but continued without thirst. There was heaviness of the body, disposition to coma, in most cases swelling, which ended in […]

From Henry Jenkin’s Convergence Culture (2006). A bigger excerpt and (hopefully) full discussion can be found here. Almost a decade ago, science fiction writer Bruce Sterling established what he calls the Dead Media Project. As his website explains, “The centralized, dinosaurian one-to-many media that roared and trampled through the twentieth century are poorly adapted to the postmodern technological environment.” Anticipating that some of these ‘dinosaurs’ were heading to the tar pits, he constructed a shrine to “the media that have died on the barbed wire of technological change.” His collection is astounding, including relics like “the phenakistoscope, the telharmonium, the Edison wax cylinder, the stereopticon… various species of magic lantern.” Yet, history teaches us that old media never die- and they don’t even necessarily fade away. What dies are simply the tools we use to access media content- the 8-track, the Beta tape. These are what media scholars call delivery technologies. Most of what Sterling’s project lists falls under this category Delivery technologies become obsolete and get replaced; media, on the other hand, evolve. Recorded sound is the medium. CDs, MP3 files, and 8-track cassettes are delivery technologies. To define media, let’s turn to historian Lisa Gitelman, who offers a model of media that works on two levels: on the first, a medium is a technology that enables communication; on the second, a medium is a set of associated “protocols” or social and cultural practices that have grown up around that technology. Delivery systems are simply and only technologies; media are also cultural systems. Delivery technologies come and go all the time, but media persist as layers within an even more complicated information and entertainment stratum. A medium’s content may shift (as occurred when television displaced radio as a storytelling medium, freeing radio to become the primary showcase for rock […]

Well, punk, are you? The apparent unanimous agreement with my position makes me suspicious that my argument somehow makes a strawman of Dreyfus’ position, but I can’t see it.

Bush smiled and nodded, then nodded some more, as Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip enthusiastically explained how his government holds paperless Cabinet meetings. The system, which uses digital signatures, permits legislation to be OK’d with the click of a mouse. Ansip’s explanation, though, was not as lickety split. He described in detail how the dozen members of the Cabinet, in a room dubbed the “Starship Enterprise”, can vote or make comments online. Cabinet meetings that used last about four to five hours now wrap up in about 30 minutes. Bush endured the lengthy explanation, shifting his weight back and forth. He seemed charmed by Estonia’s use of the Internet in making daily life easier for its citizens. “They’ve got an e-government system that should be the envy of a lot of nations,” Bush said. Bush received two gifts from his Estonian hosts: a glass sculpture and a Skype wireless phone that can be used to make calls over the Internet. The country is often nicknamed “E-Stonia” for its booming high-tech industry, and it is the main hub of Skype, the Internet telephone company that eBay bought last year for $2.6 billion.|link| For reference: The United States is 15th in the world in broadband penetration, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). When the ITU measured a broader “digital opportunity” index (considering price and other factors) we were 21st — right after Estonia. |link|

Because damn it I’m a nerd. From The Matrix: Revolutions (interpretations) It is interesting to note that while the Machine we see is called “Deus Ex Machina,” there is a reversal of roles happening. In Ancient Greek plays, the Deus Ex Machina would often be a God (often portrayed as a sun, which explains DEM’s appearance in Revolutions) which descends from above the stage. However, in Revolutions, Deus Ex Machina ascends to where Neo is standing. So, from Deus Ex Machina’s perspective, and thus that of the Machines, Neo is the God descending to them. Neo is the God which intervenes in the Machines’ apparently insoluble crisis and is their Deus ex machina.

The philosophy of technology is horrible. From “Noumenal Technology: Reflections on the Incredible Tininess of Nano“, Alfred Nordmann (Techne, 2005) The “noumenal technology” referred to in the title of this paper would therefore appear to be a contradiction in terms: Technology is a human creation that involves human knowledge and serves human needs; this firmly roots it in phenomena and it appears absurd to speak of technology that exists beyond human perception and experience among the things-in-themselves. The noumenal world is nature uncomprehended, unexperienced, and uncontrolled; it is nature in the sense of uncultivated, uncanny otherness. By speaking of “noumenal technology” this paper argues that some technologies are retreating from human access, perception, and control, and thus assume the character of this uncanny otherness. So technology is not even a thing-in-itself. Technology is simply there-for-us. Nordmann goes on to say that increasingly noumenal technology (ie, nanotech) is a bad thing because it threatens our control over the technology. Technological interventions, like the nano-guitar, might be operating in the background, unknown and unknowable to us. They therefore do not become objects of experience—and what is no object of experience remains unrepresented and does not prompt the formation of a conceptual image of its working. To the extent that they remain in the unconsidered and unconceptualized background of our actions and lives, these technologies are much like brute and uncomprehended nature—instead of knowing them, we merely know of them. Their looming presence and potential efficacy does not appear as an extension of our freedom or our will, but as a mere constraint, even perhaps as a threat. Where technical and intellectual control come apart, the humanly induced workings of technology no longer signify mastery of nature but take on the character of nature itself. LOOMING PRESENCE. Its plain silly to think that […]

I still don’t understand how this kind of advertisement ends up selling shoes. I feel obligated to post Yellow, though Pink and Green are both pretty awesome, and Black is by far my favorite. Thanks for the link, ToliverChap.