A Current Trends class experiment in blogging by an uninitiated.
I just finished reading (and writing a paper on) Chris Brogan &Julian Smith’s Trust Agents. Lots to learn and think about. What finally got me into my paper was the musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying which was based on Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People from 1936. Good Advice is good advice from any era. Could there be a musical in Trust Agents? Any composers out there want to collaborate?
Yes I do love colour and yes I am tired of computer putty, gray and even silver. I would have gotten an iMac, but i didn’t need a new computer at the time. I do think it is time for Apple to get artist Peter Max to beautify their products again. And at the price of a Pro…. at nothing extra.
Peter Max became well know in the 1960s for his joyful psychedelic posters, paintings and everything else. He is still alive and still working and still using the whole pallet of colours. And his work still makes me smile. No dour old age -er- advancing golden years for Mr. Max! May I learn from him.
Then there was another trend of ethnic profiling in social media sites….. I know anti-Semitism is all over the Internet, but apparently folks get sent “targeted ads” on Facebook and Twitter. Got to admit I’ve got mixed feelings about a site’s deciding my interests without asking. Maybe I am just post-Shoah paranoid about things like that. Don’t want to be targeted.
I was looking for a topic for my Current Trends in IT class. After deciding theat cloud computing was kind of boring, so I took a break and started reading my local Jewish community paper called The Jewish Ledger, and in an article on a big biennial meeting for the Union of Reform Judaism held recently in Toronto they discussed the popularity of 3 seminars about the importance (and how-to s) of the Internet and Social Media. I had this huge flash of the Sisterhood ladies from my childhood synagogue huddled around a computer of a cell phone…. But if the Ladies are using Twitter, of Facebook or YouTube or whatever, can it still be cool and cutting-edge? Am I dating myself by using “cool”
(picture copied from ejewishphilanthropy.com, article on How Social Networking Impacts the Jewish Community)
There is an experimental group effort going on Twitter right now. With the start by Neil Gaiman (neilhimself), and moderation by the BBC, people all over the world are writing a book’/telling a story, line by line, since 13 October. http://bit.ly/4BgbpC gives the latest scene (Read it from the last line! THey post in reverse order.) It’s not too bad. An intersting effort anyway. Be aware that the number of tweets will be overwhelming.
There is a short piece on pg. 99 of the October Wired http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_sonne that speaks to the great job autistic folks do when trained as computer operators. The same tics that make them unsocialized, makes them ideal computer workers. This reminds me of a couple of science fiction stories I read years ago. One was The Ship Who Sang series by Ann McCaffery (I think) about training physically disabled children to be the “brains” for spaceships, cities, space stations, etc. I don’t remember the other title or author, but it involved schizophrenics and the ability to navigate through space warp. Can it be that humans do quickly evolve to run the machines we create? Has a certain higher functioning autistic individual developed as the perfect computer extension? Is this exploitation or just a great job opportunity to be self supporting?
It has been one of those weeks. All I want is for my technological things to work as they say they should. Or in some cases let me do something as simple as make my letter size larger, like you can do in any word processing application. OK, I’m older. I’ll admit it. I can’t always see smaller type well. Like this and I just want to make the type larger but I can’t find a way to do it.!
One rant accomplished.
Next, printing. Should be easy, no? Out of toner, out of paper, not selected and even after getting toner/ink (this is on a school network) which the IT mavens have to do, getting paper, which the IT maevens have to do (although I now know where the departmental stash is), getting all the printers selected , so they can be selected, WHY CAN’T I PRINT!
Or maybe why won’t it print out for me?
Then there is plumbing. I haven’t had hot water in 6 days. The pilot went out. The Plumber says it can’t happen, but he’ll come tomorrow. Although I do like my friend, Pete’s, shower better than mine…. he has a hand spray. (I called him to ask for a shower…… pathetic, but it had been 4 days.) Plumber is going to teach me how to work my water heater.
Two more rants… I think 3 should be my limit.
I could complain about my deficiencies in learning all these new apps and blogs and all that, but that would be depressing as well as annoying.
Joy to all and no problems.
This is my first post for Current Trends Class on an article in WIRED magazine.
I have a well developed sense of whimsy. This could be a result of my background in theatre, although I think I had it as a kid, too. I’m a Stage Manager, but I do enjoy props and lighting. Anyway, I gravitate to the less than serious like the end page where the WIRED folks challenge people to Predict What’s Next. a monthly feature where people put together a pictorial “essay” on a chosen subject. September was a “Grow Your Own Pets” in the future. Any one remember Grow Your Own Sea Monkeys? Not that the box for Grow Your Own Nanoraptor isn’t well done and wonderful, but it is the background story that is great! The story is what has/is going on in the background. From the hatch date on the scratched and broken plastic cage to the ripped plastic of the Nanoraptor pellets to the spilled oatmeal and the tail hanging out of the open cupboard …. Nicely staged story.
I’d like to try doing one of these myself at some point.
The one for October isn’t quit as interesting, at least to me. But they are so different each time. For me it is the well visualized story. And the fine details included.
I just had the neatest experience on-line. Quite unexpected. It is Yom Kippur, part of the Jewish New Year cycle, the Day of Atonement. Now, I am not a terribly religious Jew, but I do manage to celebrate the holidays, however quietly. I tripped across the Jewish Television Network, which was broadcasting a Kol Nidre (evening of Yom Kippur) service online. It was from the Nashuva Congregation led by Rabbi Naomi Levy from Los Angeles.
One brilliant thing was that you could download the prayer booklet they were using and follow along. It was, as they say, almost like being there… except without the scary, overly tanned ladies just back from Florida that I remember from my childhood High Holy Day services. (Although, where do all the blond Jews in LA come from?) The sound quality was excellent, visuals quite good with some blurry transitions, although no worse than HD TV in a storm.
OK, so maybe I am behind technologically, but to have the option to have a service like this available and did I mention it was live?, is new to me as a Jew. Considering how many of the inventors and developers of computers and the web are Members of the Tribe, it is not usual for us to live ‘cast on-line. I was skeptical, but now I am rather sold, though I’d like to find something East Coast…. a service that should be at sundown, well, starts at 9 pm Eastern, when it is 6 pm in California. Three hours, a little late for Rochester. Blessings on technology. May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life.
Gut Yom Tov.
P.S. Word Press won’t let me post to Passingimages from home. Only to Princepress.
