OK, it’s cherry day again and time to cull tabs, so if you’re not in the mood for potpourri cynicism slide on by.
The first attractor is an article [Link] on how Sao Paulo has been surviving since it banned outdoors advertising. Quite frankly, the service that provided the article is rather Pollyanna-ish in their writing to the point where it creeps one out, to say nothing of their high density of syntax potholes. Their saving, or perhaps redeeming would be better, grace is that they do cover some hings ignored by the more competent news services.
Anyway, the value of the article, since their assessment is patently specious, is as thought provocation on how things would be without outdoors advertising. We got to experience a bit of this last year just after the tornado blizzard when billboards as well as trees and homes and power stations were swept away. Improvement was not noticeable mostly because of the other damage. But the billboards are back now, if not the trees, and it is easy to visualize how things would be improved if billboards were banned. But I did execute an experiment this week and count billboards on my weekly trip to and from Nawth Alibam’s Shining City on the Hill. I counted number and whether the billboard had useful information for either locals or transients. The ratio of the latter to the former is ~ 0.02. So the political question is whether this low density of usefulness is worth pandering to artificial citizenry and venial greed?
Next, [Link] and from the same source, is an article on alternate form factors for digital devices. The title is actually “5 shapes for computers to come” but since some of the form factors aren’t for what I consider to be computers, or at least useful computers, I choose to use the device term. The two that struck me were ‘wearable’ and ‘embeddable’. The latter happily refers to devices embedded in other objects rather than anything installed by a surgeon. I am not at all sure these have value. And yes, I admit to carrying a McGyver knife but that’s a compromise from lugging a tool kit about. The example given is a sensor to capture stroke of a pen. Potentially useful except the pen it is embedded in is odious stercus.
I would consider the value of capturing what I write digitally as valuable but not unless I can use it with my pen and paper. As I have commented previously, what gets written depends on the pen and surface (paper or substitute.) That’s why so much crap gets written these days; it’s keyed from the get go. The good thing is that this indicates something about the relationship between technologists and culture and why so much technology goes junk.
The ‘wearable’ is a bit more attractive. During our recent gallop, I finally found a cellular telephone holster that adequately coupled my cellular telephones with my body. As a result, I can now wear either of my cellular telephones on my belt rather than having to try to cram in a pocket. This is still an inadequate solution since it means that when I am wearing a coat or jacket and am riding in motorcar the cellular telephone is effectively inaccessible. This, of course, delights the NTSB but it makes it annoying when I am motoring and need to answer the foul nuisance. FD SCP has suggested I use an earfriend while motoring but this put me in mind of how this wearable technology is going to interface with the other wearable technology of humans. In particular, given I am an ORF, is how do we handle hearing aids and eyeglasses with this junk? It is almost impossible to find sunglasses that will fit over my regular frames and 3D goggles are a joke. And given my genetic heritage I expect hearing augmentation is a matter of time rather than fact. The instructive thing is that this nonsense is occurring just when the density of older folks is increasing. Again, a relationship between technologists and society.
Third is an article [Link] about an energy usage measuring trial at beautiful fort ignorance. The shmaltz is so thick that I was happy I read it just before a meal. Happily, my colleague Magnetic Inductance Force had also seen and commented, which I quote approximately
Another project where the politicians will declare victory, the contractors will get paid for doing nothing, and the troopies will get wedgied.
In other words, a typical piece of Yankee army political theater.
Not that I am opposed to energy savings, just that they be done so that they work and are livable. This brings to mind the news this week of the imminent bankruptcy of Kodak and the division of Barnes and Ignoble. The two seem distinct until you consider that both are a combination of stage 3 management [1] and new technology that is alien to the organizational culture. In Kodak’s case it is chemically coated paper being supplanted by focal plane array sensors, and in BandN’s case it is pBooks being supplanted by eBooks.
Lastly – I am worn down and a bit soggy from going out in the rain to spread seed for the dinosaur descendants and the tree mammals – an article [Link] from the Register on how internet is NOT a human right. The initial attraction is that the speaker is yet another alleged founding parent of the internet. How many more are we going to get. Can we not apply the Jim Bowie solution here? How about putting the gentleman (????????) from the Volunteer state, and Sir Tim and all the rest in a dark room, each armed with a large knife, and whichever one survives gets to be the daddy of the webs?
This raises the question of what is a human right? From what I can see, this has two components. The first is that someone has to declare that something is a human right. That’s the easy part. But then society has to cotton to the idea enough to overwhelm all the ulterior motives of humans and organizations and support the thing to make it so. That’s the hard part. So having someone who may or may not have had some internet credibility back before it was say that something isn’t a human right is either an aspect of the easy part, or a contrary aspect of the hard part. I’m not sure either is particularly impressive.
I’m not going to go down the road on this very far other than to observe, based on how Amerika is going, that human rights are transitory. Eventually society quits supporting civil rights and we get slavery again. Or whatever the negation of the ‘right’ is. Which leads us to the closing quote
The Tree of Liberty must, from time to time, be watered with the blood of patriots.
I fear that the time of bleeding is nigh.
[1] Stage 1 is technical management by people who developed the technology or manufacturing capability. Stage 2 is ‘trained’ management – graduates of Sloan or Wharton or any ‘management’ college. Stage 3 is financial management – management by legume enumerators. Stage 3 is when 0.9 of all organization collapses occur.
