There are other ways of thinking and feeling about the universe, but for KNOWING the universe, for determining how things work and why, science is the only approach that works.
– Randy Murray, Better Living Through Science
Being skeptical doesn’t mean that I think you’re lying to me.
It just means that although your information seems interesting, I need to check it out.
Humans have short memories. One of the things I hope to gain from my collection is an ongoing reminder of how I became me today. How we, as an industry, got from there to here. Perspective. I don’t want to live in the past, but I don’t want to forget the lessons learned either. I don’t want to lose sight of cool ideas that were just starting to bud when they were shoved rather brutally aside by the express train of progress. It’s all too easy to do as we hurtle along.
– Steven Frank: “Collector” is a word with ugly connotations. Via Steven Frank - stevenf.comFuck You, Warner Music Group
I was going to post a music video for “Fuck You” by Cee-Lo, which features some fun motion typography, nice groove, and great vocals. However, it seems Warner Music Group doesn’t want help with marketing, so fuck them. I’m not going to waste my time finding another source to post and I’m not going to violate copyright by uploading. I already downloaded it to my computer and was probably going to purchase it once it came out, but now I’ll have to reconsider whether to do so once it’s available. Not that I’m bitter.
The sooner the major record labels die, the better.
An even better representation of the levels of Inception, this infographic has some nice depth and is seriously neat. (Fast Co.Design via SmashingMag)
Location, Calibration
After reading this piece by MG Siegler about the new Places feature on Facebook, I was actually caught in the middle. I haven’t passed judgement yet on the service — and I may not.
As someone who is both fascinated and horrified by the concerns that get brought up about privacy, I must admit to the shock of not being absolutely turned off by the notion of sharing location. I have personal reasons for not having wanted to use Gowalla, Foursquare, or any of these types of services, not having to do much with privacy — not fear for my safety at least, just not wanting to share the information.
Even so, MG does a nice job of examining the situation that we find ourselves in as citizens of the Internet and the Universe at large in 2010 A.D. with regard to this type of phenomenon. He points out that the ACLU was quick to fire their gun, and the EFF was not a slow draw themselves. Granted, these were unsurprising, it speaks to the attitude that some have about the internet, privacy, networks, and the issues surrounding these things.
I think I had gotten sucked into the cynical part of the conversation.
While I still think skepticism is very healthy when it comes to these new territories, it’s less useful when not taken in context for each case. Rather than assume there are issues despite the potential, maybe we’d be better off seeing the potential something has despite its issues. This is not to say I nor anyone should be lax about the very real concern of privacy, security, and possible harm these services present, but to take an even keeled approach to the matter — weigh each service and feature on its own, using a balanced scale which gets calibrated from time to time.
That’s what I’m going to do. You just witnessed a calibration of my scale.
About Me
I play drums,like chocolate,
and am almost
an Apple apologist.
