Group items tagged

An interesting article on educating parents, teachers, and kids on digital citizenship and safety - and integrating better digital practices and training in schools.

I found this site for a company that creates products that allow us to mix our real-world and digital experiences at once. One interesting product creates the image of fire or waves on a pool table that chases the pool balls as you hit them. I wonder in what way this is like e-literature.

Eric, some of these technologies reminded me of Hayles's explanation of site-specific installations for interactive literature. I'm not sure how "literary" these things would be considered, but I found there to be an interesting parallel between the two ideas.

...and on that note, technology and people are getting even cozier these days. I used to think it was impressive how quickly cell phones got smaller and smarter and how quickly internet went wireless and made sharing easier. Now, inventions like this wrist control system and the idea of "smart buildings" seems to shadow earlier technology, and make us wonder if there is anything we won't try to give a technology interface-lift to.

This is a completely pointless website that kind of made me laugh. I'm one of those people of 50% of the time uses "Google" as a verb ("Just Google it") and who 50% of the time still asks an actual human being the question first but inevitably gets: "Well, did you Google it?" So...this isn't an article. But still kind of funny. Digital technology is certainly changing our language: Just Google it, Wiki it, I friended her the other day, when I was Pinning, I wish I had a "Like" button right now!, and so on...

Augmented reality means that " . . . our reality is both technological and organic, both digital and physical, all at once." This short post was referenced in both "The Myth of Cyberspace" and "Picture Pluperfect," so I thought I'd bookmark it here in case anyone was interested.

While I'm not a fan of reading online/on a computer screen-yet-I am interested in this transition from paper to digital texts (textbooks). There seems to be several advantages, such as constantly updating and affordable ($49 for a science textbook?!).

Finally (and what will appear first), all this talk about digital technology and web design pulls up an equal impulse in me to talk about other skill sets that get undervalued in an information economy. I read this a bit ago and enjoyed it. There also seems to be a trend currently that is leading us toward a sort of steam punk utopia where we will have a mixture of high and low technology. For more on the philosophical argument being put forward in this article, I highly recommend Shop Class as Soulcraft and The Mind at Work. To see some indications of the trend I'm talking about watch How It's Made (which tends to skew toward human components of the production process and is based in a tactile fetish of understanding modes of production since you do not learn how to make things ... or really how things are made) and check out all the books on craft skills, cooking, and carpentry that are exploding all over Amazon with noticeably nostalgic titles. Speaking of which, did the knitting craze end or am I just not around 50 people that have recently taken up knitting anymore?

Oh! Also add to the "evidence" list farming/gardening and the back to earth books ... and psychologically the zombie and (to a lesser extent) virus craze in movies, books, games, etc.

Moving closer to the Matrix? A Spanish research center called Barcelona Digital is coordinating a three-year initiative called the BrainAble project to develop technologies that will improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. By developing advanced brain-computer interface (BCI) systems, ambient intelligence (AmI), and virtual reality (VR), researchers enable users to operate a robot, interact in virtual environments, communicate more easily, and remotely control lighting, heating and other devices in their homes. Plus, this technology could also benefit the eldery and people in rehabilitation, as well as allow the remote monitoring of people with neurological disorders.

While Diigo isn't mentioned here explicitly, this blogger's thoughts (he manages a neat blog called TreeHugger) regarding consumerism can still apply to our source for digital bookmarking.

According to Google, over 20 million books have been digitized thus far.

I really need to try out Pinterest. I have heard great things about it! PS. Maybe these people do not lead the lives of grad students? So perhaps they have more time? haha

Martina, I did not understand Pinterest for a long time - had an account and never used it! Then a friend took 2 minutes to show me how it works - and I've been hooked ever since. Regardless of anything any critic or fan says of Pinterest, it's a pretty fantastically brilliant website. (And a lot fun!)

I'm absolutely addicted to Pinterest, much more so than Facebook! Pinterest and Diigo seem to have operate on a similar premises: social bookmarking with an attractive user interface.

"Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee, February 15, 2008 Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies."

Considering how often we look at TED talks, I thought it might be worth including this fake TED talk used as a clip for the new Ridley Scott movie, Prometheus. I know this probably looks a little like getting off track, but I thought it was interesting that the author claims that humans have become gods through their acts of technological creation (in his case, "cyberkinetic individuals). Science fiction often does a great job extrapolating certain ideas or issues, and I think in some ways we can find links to the issue and use of Wikipedia in which we can freely take place in the act of creation or manipulation of a text and even the meaning behind the entries we change. Obviously this is not necessarily created in our own image the way a cyborg would be, but it is still using McLuhan's idea of the extension of man into the cyber world. The question we're left with here though, is whether or not we deserve the moniker of "creator" if we create anonymously.

Most of the articles I'm bookmarking for now I don't really have a lot of response or reaction to or deep meaningful thought about because I'd never even heard of HTML5 until our class last week (2.15). So, now, I'm just trying to educate myself and get caught up on what all is being said out there about HTML5. This article addresses some of that in ways I can understand.

Here is a new way literature is moving into technological applications. I've been looking for a better article on this, but most seem a bit too brief. Here the author discusses How works of T.S. Eliot and Jack Kerouac are becoming Apps. This is a really interesting move of taking flat print to deep code.

Fascinating article from frequent Chronicle tech blogger on why some academic scholars continue to use the typewriter. The primary answer - nostalgia - is both a mood (in the sense of a feeling one has in relation to history and technology), a political statement (opposed to forward modernization), and - perhaps - deeply related to the "literary" or writing (notalgia as why one writes).

Too much too fast. This article looks back on the dotcom crash (yet another thing I'd never heard of until reading Lovink's "MyBrain.net").

I've only given cursory attention to this site (when I checked it out, I found it less useful than I had thought it would be), but we've talked about technology monitoring people, breaking their identity into tiny bits of data, etc. and this website encourages people to do that to themselves to live a productive life ... in some ways it is kind of like the guy who photographs all his food, combined with an OCD, capitalist mindset. See also: any website that tracks your miles run, your calories consumed for the day, etc.

Already in 2008, China had more users than any other country; now they have more users than the population of the use. About 50% of the world's web users are now in Asia.

Red Hat, the world's largest, most successful open source software company and one I'd like to work for in the very near future, submitted this blog post last month about SOPA and PIPA. It explains how such bills could devastate online collaboration, innovation, and the sharing of ideas and technology.