Cameron’s conception of technology a hundred years from now was incredibly unimaginative, even by Hollywood standards. For example, the munitions that were supposed to blow up the tree of life looked like they were used in World War II (maybe even World War I). Most of the technology looked primitive, even by today’s standards. The wearable exoskeleton robotic devices were supposed to be futuristic, but these already exist, and are beginning to be deployed. The one advanced technology was the avatar technology itself. But in that sense, Avatar is like the world of the movie A.I., where they had human-level cyborgs, but nothing else had changed: A.I. featured 1980’s cars and coffee makers. As for Avatar, are people still going to use computer screens in a hundred years? Are they going to drive vehicles?
In the new study, Chemero tracked the hand movements of people using a mouse to guide a cursor during a series of motor tests. Part way through the tests, the cursor lagged behind the mouse. After a few seconds, it worked again.
When Chemero’s team analyzed how people moved the mouse, they found profound differences between patterns produced during mouse function and malfunction. When the mouse worked, hand motions followed a mathematical form known as “one over frequency,” or pink noise. It’s a pattern that pops up repeatedly in the natural world, from universal electromagnetic wave fluctuations to tidal flows to DNA sequences. Scientists don’t fully understand pink noise, but there’s evidence that our cognitive processes are naturally attuned to it.
But when Chemero’s mouse malfunctioned, the pink noise vanished. Computer malfunction made test subjects aware of it — what Heidegger called “unreadiness-at-hand” — and the computer was no longer part of their cognition. Only when the mouse started working again did cognition return to normal. (One assumes, though the researchers didn’t test the proposition, that cognition would also have returned to normal had test subjects stood up and stopped using the computer.)
The results demonstrate how people fuse with their tools, said Chemero.
“The thing that does the thinking is bigger than your biological body,” he said. “You’re so tightly coupled to the tools you use that they’re literally part of you as a thinking, behaving thing.”
Asked whether computer malfunction — say, the iPhone’s notorious keyboard lag — could thusly be viewed as a discontinuity in our selves, Chemero said, “Yes, that’s exactly what it is.”
Truman Capote in New Orleans, By Henri Cartier-Bresson
“I’m 42, and I’m very hairy.”
Mo’Nique on Barbara Walters is so rad.
The angles and shadows used for depicting various kinds of icons are intended to reflect how the objects would appear in reality. All interface elements have a common light source from directly above. The various perspectives are achieved by changing the position of an imaginary camera capturing the icon. Application icons look like they are sitting on a desk in front of you. Utility icons are depicted as if they were on a shelf in front of you.
Still Life by Trance Forever
“Hey, what’s it called when you have movement on a webpage”
I just spend about 15 minutes explaining the difference between HTML and Flash to my brother. It turned out to take longer than I would have thought.
Eventually, my explanation was that Flash and HTML are tools for making similar things but with completely different mindsets.
The goal of both tools is to make an interactive stuff, mostly webpages. The original mindset of Flash is that each interactive object will be unique. It will have it’s own rules, it’s own interface, it’s own bucket of text and images. The original mindset of HTML is that everything will be part of one larger system. The system will have default settings and be open to borrowing, manipulation, and reconfiguration.
In nerd news, there’s been a lot of talk about how, or when, Flash is dying. But I think the discussion is missing out on the fun part about a recurring distinction between systems and objects. You think of your toaster as an object. It takes bread and makes toast. It’s easy. But a product designer would say that their toaster is a system. It fits in a box and stacks on a pallet and is ‘compatible’ with these kinds of bread and recycles into these materials.
Nobody wants to deal with the system. The system is usually a pain in the ass. And an object without a system is fun, but put them together and you have a pile of junk.
I think ultimately, we want to deal with objects. Then we want them to be in systems.
Although some people are using the site in not very nice ways – I am really against it. Others do really unbelievable things I could never think of. They make up songs about strangers and sing to them, draw them, listen to music, broadcast them their own music. Two groups of teenagers can party together. That’s just great in my opinion. I am glad that I made this project and it is a pleasure for me to work on it.
Advertising on Chatroulette is kept to a minimum, because there are a lot of sites full of advertisements, which distract you from what you want to do on those sites. I also love minimalism. That’s why I have put only four links on the bottom as advertisements. And what is interesting, is that these advertisements almost cover all expenses, just those four links on the bottom!
(via brighid)
