Machines are digging
So I now have the habit of looking for the things I need on the web. Whether I need a recipe or a tutorial, the Internet is my friend and helps me well to find what I need. However, recently I wanted to get some more information about the painter René Magritte whose paintings really attracted my attention but strangely the Internet didn’t help as I hoped.
Background Story
Le fils de l’homme, Magritte
Posted in Favourites, Organic, Observations, Thoughts, Stories, U.X, Nature of the Web
Today I went to the gym for a change because I have to use my 5 coupons before next week. But I don’t like staying there too long, usually I stay for maximum 30mn. Beyond 30mn I go existential and I think oh man I’m walking towards nowhere, on a machine that doesn’t move, what am I doing ???. So as usual I wanted to make it quick. Usual program : fast walk, and very high slope.
Posted in Observations, Stories, System-Design
I come back from a lipdub session where we wanted to make a fun video in front of the Eiffel Tower for my friend, the bride to be. I was filming the movie so I got to interact with the camera, it was my friend’s camera. First take : the actors played their part. It seemed great. Then we wanted to view the video to confirm, that’s when our real mission started : play the video. Impossible.
Posted in Observations, U.I
Saturday I made an interesting encounter, I met a nurse. We met at a bachelor party I organized for a very good friend. It was an adventurous race through Paris where I had designed some cool and fun actions to complete for my friend (nothing to do with dirty bachelor parties, it was in the afternoon !!!). So that’s in between actions that I got to talk with the nurse.
But where are the engineers ?!!
While we were racing in the street, she told me she was glad because for once she didn’t have to work on Saturday. “Really ?!!”, I naively said. Then she went on and introduced her job. She explained it and described all the stress she had to go through. I was kind of shocked by what she shared with me. She said that the patients were plugged to a pumping machine that was used to pump their blood, and often this machine would break down and SHE had to fix it as quickly as possible. Her words were “when that happens I need to fix it and nobody knows how to fix it, I mean I’m not an engineer, but I do have to fix the machine, so sometimes I just fix it by intuition thanks to previous experiences, sometimes I just know what I should do, sometimes I don’t and the engineers are not there”. My immediate reaction was “but where are the engineers???!”, “No idea”, she said. Incredible.
Posted in Observations, Discoveries, Stories, Machines are digging, System-Design
Editing lives
I watched this movie last week : The final cut. I would define it as an organic SF movie. Probably my favorite genre. Same aura as Eternal sunshine, but unfortunately with a weaker scenario. Organic because it’s one of those movies where technology is part of life, and not obviously futuristic, I like that. In this movie, the computers were wooden, and their look and feel was very retro, old, almost anti-technological, it was very interesting to observe.
I like the idea that technology could be embedded in your furniture and fade in your environment. I like the idea that technology could be something not fragile, not a sign of wealth or advancement. I like the idea that technology could be for everyone.
However even if organic in its form, technology was still depicted in the movie as a threat or something evil like in most SF movies. But here its evilness was less obvious as it was not used as a weapon, its evilness was rather more ideological. Should you or shouldn’t you let your life be recorded on an organic implant? Well, what movie would ever tell you that you should?
The context : Privacy and technology
The movie treats the subjects of privacy and technology and life. The story starts in a future where it is the norm to let your life as you see it (not your thoughts) be recorded on a “Zoe” implant that was implanted in your body at your birth. This implant is semi-organic, so as you grow it becomes part of your body and it’s impossible to remove. People don’t know if they have an implant or not and know it very late, after 21 when “they’re old enough to understand”. Implanting the child is a choice of the parents, and the implant is a commercial product that you buy for your child. But you have to do it at the child’s birth. Interesting context, isn’t it?
3 clicks. That’s all it took me to declare my income to the French government so I can be taxed later. Sweet. Regarding the taxes, it seems the government deployed the technical swat team to extract the money out of the citizens. Every year they get better and better. This year, you could even declare your income from your smartphone by flashing a QR code both on Android and iPhone. Also you have the option to get their mail delivered only electronically, no paper anymore. The webapp is as fast as a high level app. Really, I give them 20/20.
Remember though, the Internet voting or the anti-democratic catastrophe ? Now I see where exactly the priorities are. They don’t ask me to install a JVM before they can tax me. Poor voting team, they must be really jealous when they see the tax team working with iMacs and iPhones when they only get to work on Windows 2000.
Well, well, still very good, high five to the tax team.
Posted in Observations, Politics
The caves of steel
Done ! I finally finished this book. I had started it a long time ago, just after reading The naked sun, its immediate sequel in the robot series of Asimov. When I read The naked sun I got completely hooked by the robot character in the book “R. Daneel Olivaw”. So even if I started in the wrong order I decided to discover the series and start from the beginning by reading The caves of steel. Personally I preferred by far The naked sun and I will probably write a review about it more detailed than this one. But until I find the time to do that, here are my impressions about The caves of steel.
Posted in Books, System-Design
Guess !
Quiz question : do you know what that is ?
If you were not a software geek during the 70’s, you probably have no idea. As a tip though, you should know that this represents in fact a one line machine instruction. So, have you guessed? No idea? Well, in that case, I’m very happy to introduce you to the punched card ! Ok, as a highly cultured reader you probably knew, but in my case I had no idea until I discovered it during my blogging coma. It’s a big discovery ! When you know what I discovered you’ll gasp and marvel.
Posted in Favourites, Discoveries, Stories, U.I, Future
I’ve read about the new Facebook Timeline feature today. It’s a feature that lets you see your data organized in a timeline in your profile. It looks like this:
Facebook new Timeline feature
Like anything they do, it left a bitter taste on my mind. I already understood why people use this, but I still get rather sad thinking that humanity is willingly formatting itself into that stuff.
The web is a recording device
The web is a recording device, it means that whatever you put there, it’s going to be recorded and be a trail of you. Right now, thanks to the diversity of the sharing platforms available online (unfortunately still not diverse enough), you can have several trails, you can move your trails from there to there, you can delete your entire trail, you can decide of what is left of you online. With tools as popular as Facebook, that just offer you the interface, people tend to forget the innate freedom they have to broadcast from their own “antenna”, and they start formatting themselves into that single possibility of the Facebook profile, because it’s easy. They leave to Facebook the power to format, present and keep their data in a way that they can remember their life, but not in a way they chose to remember it. The format is fixed, inflexible, not customizable, you can just get stuck there without you even noticing. After allowing to list unborn children as family members, it’s clearer and clearer where Facebook is taking its crowd.
Posted in Favourites, Observations, News, U.I, Identity, Nature of the Web
Tonight I spent time with my friends and at some point they talked about their phones. Two of them had the same Blackberry, and another one had the iPhone. The conversation went something like this:
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