 | In the morning I walked to the bank. I went to the automated teller machine to check my balance. I inserted my card, entered my secret code, tapped out my request. The figure on the screen roughly corresponded to my independent estimate, feebly arrived at after long searches through documents, tormented arithmetic. Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval. The system hardware, the mainframe sitting in a locked room in some distant city. What a pleasing interaction. I sensed something of deep personal value, but not money, not that at all, had been authenticated and confirmed. A deranged person was escorted from the bank by two armed guards. The system was invisible, which made it all the more impressive, all the more disquieting to deal with. But we were in accord, at least for now. The networks, the circuits, the streams, the harmonies. |
✖ Via White Noise by Don DeLillo, Penguin Books, [1985]1986, p. 46 White Noise won the National Book Award in 1985. Learn more about it on Wikipedia. |
↳Shareskandalon
Mar 17 link notes reblogged from chatarra
art
communication
technology
machine
computer
network
interaction
design
user
interface
money
ATM
DeLillo
author
book
lost
system
 | Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and his partner Choi Mi-sun, 25, fed their three-month-old baby only on visits home between 12-hour sessions at a neighbourhood internet cafe, where they were raising an avatar daughter in a Second-Life-style game called Prius online, police said. Leaving their real daughter at their home in a suburb of Seoul to fend for herself, the pair, who were unemployed, spent hours role-playing in the virtual reality game, which allows users to choose a career and friends, granting them offspring as a reward for passing a certain level. The pair became obsessed with nurturing their virtual daughter, called Anima, but neglected their real daughter, who was not named. Eventually, the couple returned home after one 12-hour session in September to find the child dead and called police. The pair were arrested on Friday after an autopsy showed that the baby died from prolonged malnutrition. |
✖ Via Telegraph.co.uk: “Korean couple let baby starve to death while caring for virtual child” Mar. 5th, 2010 |
↳Shareskandalon
Mar 15 link notes
technology
communication
kids
parent
family
Internet
addiction
death
existence
computer
user
interface
 | A decade later, there’s a new kind of Tamagotchi out there. And it’s us. New health-monitoring tools let us pay close attention to our state of being, how much exercise we’re getting, how much sleep we’re getting — and they make it easy to set a goal and improve ourselves. In other words, they turn our health into something of a game. And the reward is better health and a better life. These devices are popping up everywhere: The FitBit is a paper-clip sized device that you can clip onto your belt to monitor cadence, calories and sleep. A genius little display shows a flower that grows the more you move, offering a brilliant bit of feedback. The Zeo sleep system uses a rigorous biometric brain analysis to measure overall sleep quality; you can also drill down into the numbers to ascertain how much time you’re spending in light sleep versus deep sleep (the deeper the better). The BodyMedia Fit uses a combination of sensor technology to track cadence and calories, as well as respiration and heartrate. And the Philips DirectLife gizmo turns your data into a personal coaching kit that helps you adjust targets and meet goals. |
✖ Via Wired: “You Are a Tamagotchi: Turning Your Health Into a Game” by Thomas Goetz, March 11, 2010
“Thomas Goetz is the executive editor of Wired magazine and author of the new book The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine. As part of the reporting for the book, he had his genome scanned, was screened for more than a dozen diseases, and has tracked his sleep, blood pressure, weight, calories and oodles of other metrics. He holds a masters of public health from UC Berkeley.” (more) |
↳Shareskandalon
Mar 14 link notes reblogged from Leftovers
technology
communication
information
health
body
human
experience
feedback
machine
interface
user
 | I’ve been watching with bemused interest as US geeks (apparently 120.000 of them, although I’d take any initial figures with a large grain of salt if I were you) rushed to pre-order their iPads and, deprived of the thrill of actually using it until it arrives, gushed forth on the details of their purchase and reasons thereof as if they were boasting about the pedigree of a puppy that is yet to be weaned and handed to them in a little basket. |
✖ Via The Tao of Mac: “Undercurrent” Mar. 13th, 2010 The Tao of Mac is Rui Carmo’s blog:
“I’m someone with a Systems Engineering degree, a decade and a half of overexposure to the Internet, and (horror of horrors to the uninitiated), Marketing experience – as well as social graces that allow me to mediate between geeks and “regular” folk. I’ve pretty much done it all where it comes to the telco world, having been immersed in Wi-Fi, 3G (UMTS) and IP-related stuff at a major GSM operator for several years (ten, actually, going on eleven at the time of this writing).”(more) |
↳Shareskandalon
Mar 13 link notes
technology
communication
addiction
iPad
mobile
computer
machine
interaction
user
interface
 | My mother-in-law walked in the door the day of the keynote and the first thing out of her mouth was “Did you see that new Apple iPad? That looks like it would work for me. Would that work for me?” I was utterly flabbergasted. She NEVER talks about computers or technology. She tolerates them at best. Her attitude is typical of most baby boomers I’ve talked to regarding computers. She wants to benefit from them but is frustrated by the wall she must climb in order to do so. She’s learned how to use email and a couple of other things on the Internet and that’s about it. Her bringing up the iPad was amazing for two reasons. First, someone in her office (she works with other ‘boomers) found out about it within hours of the keynote and shared it with her. That Apple news warranted attention from baby boomers at all is significant. That she then held her interest long enough to tell me at the end of the day is equally significant. After learning a little more information about it, she has decided that she wants an iPad. It actually borders on technolust. |
✖ Via northtemple: “On iPads, Grandmas and Game-changing” by Rob Foster, Feb. 2, 2010 First discovered via The Daring Fireball. |
↳Shareskandalon
Feb 03 link notes
technology
user
computer
interface
touch
iPad
Apple