Again

The Globe and Mail has a more nuanced review of The Confusion by Neal Stephenson than my earlier rumble. “Money makes Stephenson’s world go ’round” (May 1, 2004, D8), as the review is titled, points out how Stephenson is weaving a history of currency and science. He is setting up a battle between Whig and Tory, Science and Alchemy, England and France, or the Royal Society and the Inquisition. It also draws a comparison to The Lord of the Rings – The Confusion is “slow and lyrical” like The Two Towers – alternating between two plot lines that will be brought together (I hope) in the last movement. John Burns is too kind when it comes to the slow lecturing tour of the world we get in the middle of The Confusions. Burns isn’t really reviewing the book – that will have to wait for the last of the trilogy – he is summarizing the ideas for those, like myself, who lose sight of them in the wandering plot.

So what are some of the ideas?
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Principal Component Analysis Online

At the Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing (sounds like the title of a journal 🙂 they have mounted a web accessible apparatus to do computational-stylistics exploration. See PCA Online Introduction | CLLC where you can launch an applet that will work with Shakespeare texts.

This is a good example of sophisticated tools available online. What they need is a model that allows us to use with our own texts. I am also not sure about the step by step interface where you go march through pages of decisions. (There is probably no easy way to make it direct manipulation.)

Virtual Lightbox

In the TAPoR project we are trying to figure out how to have virtual meetings on a regular basis (following the Extreme Programming model). James Chartrand has been using MSN and voice over IP to work with programmers at Ottawa. We are going to try The Virtual Lightbox that Matt Kirschenbaum and colleagues at MITH have developed. This should give us a visual space for back of a napkin drawings.

Does anyone else have experience in what works?

Academical Village

In City of Bits William Mitchell writes about different types of virtual spaces and how they draw on real spaces. But what models do we have for hybrid spaces – institutions that are designed to have both physical and virtual extension? How do we think through what we can make if we were to design a new research learning space both for information technology and through it?

In chapter 4.6. Schoolhouses / Virtual Campuses Mitchell draws on Jefferson’s design for the University of Virginia. Jefferson’s “academical village” was designed to bring students and faculty together in a place of residence and learning. What do we want to bring together in a new media village?
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The fold in web design and Deleuze

Reading Deleuze The Fold on the baroque and Leibniz, I was struck by how the word “fold” is also being used in web design for the break in a web page between what is seen on a typical screen when you load a page and what you have to scroll for. See Designing “Above the Fold” (Web Design in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition). (Thanks Carolyn Guertin for drawing my attention to this.)

How is the fold related to the interruption? Does the computer interrupt the flow by folding it into discrete objects or does the flow present itself folded?

MFA as the new MBA

In the February 2004 issue of the Harvard Business Review there is a short article on “The MFA Is the New MBA” by Daniel H. Pink. (Pages 21-22). He argues that it is harder to get into good art schools and that businesses are hiring MFAs to get creative talent.

An arts degree is now perhaps the hottest credential in the worlds of business. Corporate recruiters have begun visiting the top arts grad schools … in search of talent. … McKinsey says other disciplines are just as valuable in helping new hires perform well at the firm. With other arts grads occupying key corporate positions, the master of fine arts is becoming the new business degree. (p. 21)

Why is this?
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XAML: eXtensible Application Markup Language

ONDotnet.com: Inside XAML [Jan. 19, 2004] is an article on Microsoft’s XML languag for interfaces in Longhorn. This is not the first such attempt. There is XUL for Mozilla and I had a MSc student develop a simple XML interface language for skinning. The idea is good, we need a standard – Microsoft might be able to promote one, but it needs to be cross platform.