I received an action alert from MoveOn today about fighting the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court: Right now we urgently need more information, and we need your help to get it. In the next few hours the Internet will fill with facts, anecdotes and rumors about Harriet Miers. We need your help […]
Collaborative selves
A couple days ago, I was trying to explain to my friend Wilfred the ideas of Latour; in particular, the notion of an iterative reality constructed via consultation. As a scientist, he was somewhat distressed by this idea, given that he believes in a Platonic reality, where there is a “real” world that we are […]
Serenity
I went and saw Serenity this afternoon. Serenity, for those of you who don’t know, is a movie based in the world of, and starring the characters of, the TV show Firefly. Firefly was the brainchild of Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and Angel. It never really worked as a TV show, as I once […]
Localized generalities
One thing that I noticed in the comments on my “designing for the collective” post was that I have been using Latour’s term “collective” in an extremely fuzzy way, where I change what I mean by it depending on the point I’m trying to make. This got me thinking as to whether this was an […]
Reflex, by Steven Gould
Amazon link I saw this in the library in the new sci-fi section, and it looked interesting, so I picked it up. It’s the sequel to a book called Jumper, which I’ve never read, but I may go try to look up now. The premise is that the protagonist has developed the ability to teleport. […]
Amusing caveat
From an amendment to my car insurance policy: b. There is no coverage for bodily injury that results from: Nuclear reaction; Radiation or radioactive contamination from any source; or The accidental or intentional detonation of, or release of radiation from, any nuclear or radioactive device. Wait, you mean that, if I get hurt because a […]
Skinner as self-manager
I’m not sure how I came across it, but I saw a link to a paper on B.F. Skinner’s self-management skills. Skinner is well-known as the father of behaviorism and for developing operant conditioning, where people simply respond to the environment around them, thus leading his critics to accuse him of denying the existence of […]
Designing for the Collective
After reading Dav’s post about the Future Commons event, I was inspired to start thinking about what my own Theory of Everything would be. I’ve been following up on a bunch of different threads recently, and I was thinking about ways I might tie them all together. One issue I have right from the start […]
Where the Action Is, by Paul Dourish
Amazon link This book is an attempt by Dourish to develop underlying design principles for user interfaces that take into account the situated nature of interaction. I’ve been mentioning Dourish’s book recently (e.g. here, here, and here), because I really like a lot of the concepts that he mentions throughout his book. Dourish is explicitly […]
Book mini-reviews
Archangel, by Sharon Shinn I saw this in the library and I had remembered that Beemer had once recommended it to me, so I picked it up. I liked it. Interesting world, and characters that I sympathized with. Not particularly deep, and not a book that I’m likely to rush out and buy for myself, […]
