10×10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris is another cool visualization text experiment by the developer of WORDCOUNT. It analyzes the news and puts up 10 by 10 images that represent the keywords. It is done with a Flash interface.
Applied Arts in Toronto
Applied Arts has a nice list of the Greater Toronto Area education programs in applied arts and computer graphics.
University of Toronto: KMDI
KMDI is a neat interdisciplinary institute at the University of Toronto on Knowledge Media Design. They have a graduate study/collaborative program that spans Architecture, Computer Science, Information Studies, Medical Science, Mechanical Engineering and Sociology. I wonder if it works?
OQO: Mini PC
The OQO is a cute miniature full PC which may blow PDAs out. The oqo: video shows it off, but also has a neat little visual history of the computer from the ENIAC to the Mac. I’m ready to buy one.
This is thanks to Laue, just a text ª OH-cue-oh.
WorldWideWeb browser
Tim Berners-Lee: WorldWideWeb, the first Web client is a page on the first web browser called “WordWideWeb” (without spaces.) I came across this reference in a thorough blog entry by Andrea Laue just a text ª Internet or internet which deals with the capitalization of Internet/internet and Web/web. (See my earlier post, Wired Styles.)
Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Game Theory
Ross Scaife of The Stoa drew my attention to the e-version of the Dictionary of the History of Ideas which is now available for free at the University of Virginia E-Text Center. See, for example, the entry on Game Theory. This is a great resource to have.
Stephenson on Hardware: The Spaceheater
Slashdot | Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor is a long interview with Neal Stephenson. I love what he has to say about
My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware’s nothing more than a really complicated space heater.
Now, one could construct an argument against Raymond Kurzweil to the effect that hardware may be getting faster, but the software is just getting hairy (as in hair ball). The inevitability that Kurzweil and others see in the improvements in hardware are a false evolution – a bit like thinking that humans will be superseded because cars gets faster.
This link is courtesy of Matt K.
Closing Comments
I am getting 100 spam comments every couple of days so, I am afraid, it is time to start closing down comments. From Matt K’s site I found Cammy’s Software: MT-Close2 and I will use it to shift to a model where recent posts are open and older ones closed. Sorry. Go to my site to figure out my e-mail and send me a note if you want.
The alternative is to upgrade or switch blog engine, but I want to write not fiddle.
Alexander McCall Smith and Philosophical Lit
The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith, of No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency fame, has started another series around Isabel Dalhousie in Edinborough. Isabel is a the editor of the “Review of Applied Ethics” and organizer of a Sunday philosophy club (which never meets). She sees a young handsome man fall to his death and pursues the truth through meditations on Kant and everyday ethics. At the end it is Hume and his call for sympathy which McCall Smith seems to feel is the better ethics. The novel is a deliberately philosophical novel where meditations on ethical issues are interwoven with unfolding detective work. While it is one of the better philosophical novels I have read, there are moments when it lectures too much. Give McCall Smith a few more installments and he should find his stride and not feel he has to cover everything in each new novel.
What I still ask myself is why the Sunday philosophy club, after which the novel is names, never meets in the story? Will it meet in a future story? Will Isabel continue to never have the will gather the club? It strikes me that there is a hint in the missing club that gives a title to the book, but I can’t quite fix that hint.
Navigating a New World
On Saturday I went to “An extraordinary day of ideas, debate and discussion focusing on Canada and the urgent challenges facing the international community today.” The title of the event was, Navigating a New World and it was a extraordinary sequence of Random House Canada writers speaking from Irshad Manji, RomÈo Dallaire to Llyoyd Axworthy. The title for the day came from Axworthy’s new book, but what does it really mean?
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