In two separate venues, one academic, the other personal, I’ve discussed how many of the decisions have focused not on technological solutions, but instead have centered on the social or psychological impact of technological interventions. More appropriately, the conversations revolve around our worldview and how we think things are and should be - basically a philosphical conversation. What is the nature of man?
I was surprised to see that today’s most emailed article at the New York Times (via Open Culture) was an article saying just that - not surprised that philosophy is becoming increasingly important, but surprised to see that many others feel the same way.
Application framework enabling reuse and replacement of components
Dalvik virtual machine optimized for mobile devices
Integrated browser based on the open source WebKit engine
Optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional)
QLite for structured data storage
Media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)
GSM Telephony (hardware dependent)
Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent)
Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent)
Rich development environment including a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling, and a plugin for the Eclipse IDE
When you look at the hardware on a fully-optioned phone, you get an opportunity to rival the iPhone interface (let’s be honest, that’s what’s sexy). I’m particularly thinking of the ability to run a server on the device, and the possibilities to tie in location, hand-movements, speed, time, directionality, and context (based on previous use) into the interface.
Palm has long been thought to be circling the bowl. I was quite surprised and bewildered that Palm had poached a trio of Apple talent, wondering why they would leave Apple for Palm. (To be fair, the Palm Centro seems to be well received and doing quite well, especially at its bargain price point).
Now, when looking at the prospective upgrade for the Treo, the 800W, I can’t help but think of the amazing similarity to the phones we’ve seen prototyped and the emulator in the Software Development Kit for Android.
I’ve been reflecting how trust works on the internet, and specifically the blogosphere.When people discuss ‘trusted computing’ online, it’s usually in terms of ‘being ‘an authenticated user, meaning that they are who they say they are. Since much of the activity online is either anonymously (although no one is ever truly anonymous) or pseudonomous, then reputation is based on what you do (or don’t do) and what you contribute to your given group.
To quickly sum up what this means, here are some of the reputation metrics that I scribbled down:
As soon as I had heard that a second fiber-optic undersea internet cable (map and story here and here - the number of broken cables now stands at four) had been broken in the Middle East, I automatically thought of the United States, the Bush Administrations desire to hit Iran, and the USS Jimmy Carter.
In the US Navy, tradition is that Presidents names are placed on aircraft carriers. But things would be different for Jimmy Carter, a former Nuclear Submariner. The Seawolf class submarine that would eventually bare his name would also be different than her class-mates.
I don't read enough to justify the purchase of one and prefer to get my RSS and web content on LoFi less-is-more devices such as my phone (a quite battered Nokia 3650 ), PDA (Dell Axim x50v ), or via Google Reader (either in the full application, via iGoogle, or the mobile version). At the very least, $399 gets you a cheap (in both senses of the word) laptop, or an OLPC for you and someone else (or an ASUS EEEPC) . The core advantage here is the free (but limited) EVDO wireless service for book and content delivery which is included in the purchase price. An EVDO wireless plan is typically worth ~$20-100 per month if bundled with your cell phone service, for comparison sake.
I don't know if it's part of Amazon's plan (and if it isn't, it should be), but I wonder if they have contemplated using Kindle for academic textbook delivery? It seems like a good complement.
Among the general population, there seems to be no question over immunity for the telecoms. Either the public is unaware of the scope of the story or they believe - erroneously - that any domestic spying undertaken has actually kept us safer and not diminished our rights, or even inconvenienced us.
Knowledgeable readers have been following this since the Mark Klein, an AT&T whistleblower, broke the story broke nearly two years ago. To briefly surmise, the ENTIRE internet passes through the NSA. They grab huge chunks of it - your emails, Amazon purchases, credit card transaction, web browsing, instant messages, Facebook stalking - and then winnow it down to find what they are looking for. The presumption is that everyone could be guilty, and that we don't need probable cause to monitor communications and go on fishing expeditions.
Even worse still, much of that actionable intelligence is no longer processed and disseminated by Federal employees, who behavior is governed by law, legislation, and the threat of losing a well-paying government job, but rather outsourced to private industry, outside of Congressional oversite.
The President's call for immunity hints at the 'alleged' law breaking that industry 'might' have done in 'cooperating' with law enforcement, promising to veto legislation that does not tender complete retroactive immunity to the industry, all the way back to September 11th, 2001 (Which is interesting, since they started their efforts on 2/27/2007). He uses "complicated language" as reported by Crooks and Liars:
“When Congress returns in September the Intelligence committees and leaders in both parties will need to complete work on the comprehensive reforms requested by Director McConnell, including the important issue of providing meaningful liability protection to those who are alleged to have assisted our Nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001[.]”
It's very difficult to wrap your head around the technology and legal concepts surrounding the issue. Fortunately, Senator Chris Dodd, the first Presidential candidate willing to go to the mat over telecomm immunity, has posted this short video with Klein breaking down the issue [via EFF]:
The keystone of their plan may be that of Open Social implementing a bundle of open API (application programing interfaces) for interoperability between several networking platforms (such as Marc Andreeson's Ning, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster) and related services (such as iLike, Plaxo, and Slide). This new platform, codenamed "Maka-Maka" as reported by TechCrunch (more links via Buzzfeed) will tie these services together and more importantly, as stated by GigaOm, provide a common authoring language to make application development easier.
I just saw a screencap of an online mapping application and I started thinking…
Online map providers know starting addresses, destination addresses, and the route that the driver subsequently printed out. There's some good marketing data in there, especially if one wanted to make a heat map for advertising locations and such.
Maybe that's why Google is involved in automobile mapping solutions…
The event looks quite interesting, and it is scheduled at a most-convenient time, 1-2:30pm on Tuesday, 10/9/2007, at the WHYY building, especially for those in the Center City (Philadelphia) area.
The excessive use of national security exemptions in FOIA, the circumvention of records-keeping and civil liberty safeguards, and others are all blatant attempts to stymie freedom of the press, but what of freedom of speech? Despite isolated (although far too many) examples of abuses, such as the recent tasing at a John Kerry speech, "Free Speech Zones" at political gatherings, and arrests and detainings based on what t-shirt one wears, I see little formalized institutional censorship, although we're getting there.
That said, there are tremendous threats to digital freedom here in the US, but they often don't come from the government directly to the individual speaker. No, they come indirectly, via the corporate sphere, the establishment press, intra-governmental agency suppression , other opinion influencers, ideological bullies, our society-at-large, and our own tendencies to self-censor. In most cases, all it takes is the threat of a libel suit or a DMCA takedown letter to pull content, either by the creator or their ISP. As illustrated in the Electronic Frontier Foundation Legal Guide, many of the concerns of online speech have little to do with the government. You can't really say whatever you want.
There was a segment on NPR's On the Media (I think) recently about how porn is being left-behind in the great social networking gold rush. This is quite surprising, given the internet's indebtedness to pornography. Without the demand (& market) for pornography, the internet as we know it would never have come into existence. In the beginning the internet was a dark & silent place.
In the beginning, all the content that existed was text based - fan fiction, MUDDs, stories, and the like. Eventually, the web came to be - and what followed was a world of color, sight, & sound. And what drove that market? Peoples desire to watch and listen to porn created the market necessary for innovation.
