How many questions a day is the average human prepared to answer? When I was in school, days when we were asked loads of questions were scary – they were exam days, or worse, pop quiz days. Most questions were asked person to person, and were related to events that were shared between those people or the wider community. Maybe …
An idol by any other name… [post 43/100]
The rationalists have been gaining ground rapidly over the past couple of decades. Atheism is, increasingly, equated with intellectualism*. At the same time (and probably not unrelated) we are surrounded by and immersed in technology more than ever, and more every day. We are urged and encouraged to believe in the progress of science and technology as the route to …
FOR SALE: Me. Good condition. Convenience ONO. [post 42/100]
[This article was written for Prophecy and is cross-posted here with permission.] We are addicted to technology. Literally. Cognitive scientists have found the same kind of dopamine response in smartphone users checking Facebook as in gamblers pulling the handle on a slot machine, or junkies getting high. And we know it. We now have resorts where you can pay to …
False adversaries and other obstacles [post 40/100]
“The problem is, everybody’s trying to be viewer-centric. And that’s just not going to work.” Last night at a MIPTV, someone said this to me. I managed (I think) to disguise my shock and hear him out. He’s not a bad guy, and he certainly doesn’t think that audiences are unimportant. But this statement comes from what I have discovered …
You can’t always get what you want [post 39/100]
Since I’m at MIPTV this week, I’ve got media on my mind. Thus, the next couple of posts are going to be focussed on the television world… I’m pretty sure most of the people reading this watch movies or TV series online, right? You’ve probably got Amazon/LoveFilm/Netflix/something else and you stream the content. They’re really catching on, these OTT services. …
Grandma’s internet refrigerator [post 36/100]
Since it’s International IoT Day today, I thought I’d write something about… IoT. The other day, Alex Deschamps-Sonsino tweeted something that’s been tugging at the corner of my mind since I read it: As usual, I agree wholeheartedly (with all 5 of her points), but this one resonates for a reason that might or might not be what she intended …
Getting it together (the important business of cross-platform design) [post 35/100]
Remember the old days of design for mobile? I mean before the iPhone, when all we had were dumbphones and WAP? That was a gigantic pain in the arse. Screens were tiny, data connections were slow, touch screens were nonexistent. We had to very carefully select which portions of a web site we’d offer in the WAP version – if …
Literature & the value of values [post 34/100]
I spend rather a lot of money on Amazon, as do an enormous number of people. But for the last year and a bit I’ve been trying not to spend as much money there on books. There is no doubt that Amazon offers supreme convenience, and thanks to my travel schedule and a healthy dose of laziness, that has a …
Behold, the robot… invasion? [posts 27-28/100]
This week is MEX15, always a fun event but particularly so for me this time, as I was invited not only to speak but to facilitate some creative sessions with the goal of producing some design principles around my topic, which is robots. Since I’m pretty deeply engaged with what’s happening here, this post will have to stand for yesterday …