Fire and Knowledge

A new article by John Marstall of Firewheel Design is out entitled “A Word Wrapped in Light.” Now, I admit that I thought the world was ending when I read:

Yes, it’s true. With every stroke of the mouse we contribute to the weaving of a great blanket of visual noise which is slowly settling over your capacity for reason, analysis and intellectual enterprise. With every pixel fired into the ether, we force your conceptual faculties deeper into the couch cushions of mental passivity. And we do this without any regard for the consequences to your intellectual life.

Are they serious? Do they really understand the epistemology of images vs. typography? A design company? I almost fell off my chair. But, alas, it is not so. Their conclusion is:

At Firewheel Design, we are excited to play even a small role in exploring this communication frontier. We trust we are not making you stupid in the process. Rather, we hope we’re helping to broaden the number of avenues through which today’s conversations can take place, and making the world of technology a friendlier, more human-centered place.

The article is still worth a read, even if they didn’t quite grasp Postman’s points or refute them. But, they quoted Postman, so they are at least thinking about the issues. I think even a superficial reading of his Amusing Ourselves to Death or Technopoly give enough evidence and history of technology that these kind of rebuttals do not even make a small dent in the tank.

Yes, I am one of those people stupid enough to hop on any wireless connection and start checking my email and bank accounts. The issue of security does come up in my mind, but the temptation of immediate gratification puts any former concerns to death.

Anyway, read this helpful introduction on how to secure yourself from someone taking over your life when you access public wireless networks. Don’t be like me, who, like an idiot, will probably just link to this on his blog and then never think about it again.

Best Valentine’s Day Shirt Award:

I want one.

Google Maps has entered into beta. Very interesting–play around with it!

Google Maps is an online service that allows users in the U.S. to find location information, navigate through maps, and get directions quickly and easily.

PanicGoods – Nice T-Shirts For The Panic Family.

Now this is one hip javascript. You can drag the items into the shopping cart at bottom, and it adds it right there. I really like the way this works. It needs to be refined a little (that’s one big shopping cart at bottom… maybe a floating window to the right would be better?), but this is very creative and intuitive. People are used to picking something up and putting it in their shopping basket—only not on the Internet, of course.

Interview with a link spammer | The Register

For that’s what Sam does, pretty much all day long. He – we’ll use the male notation, it’s easier – would do this anyway for fun, but it’s more than fun; he says he can earn seven-figure sums doing this. Sam is a link spammer. He’s unapologetic about it. Skilled in Perl, LWP and PHP, Sam’s first professional programming was done aged 13, when he sold some code to a gaming company. He’s 32 now, and spoke to The Register on condition of anonymity.

I just saw the new TNIV Bible. It had all the N.T. Epistles replaced with Exodus and Leviticus. I am guessing it was a major printing glitch, but there is nothing to warm the heart like meditating on God’s humor in such things. I hope they printed 100,000 of them with that error.

Overclocking Apple Mac mini

Overclock a 1.25GHz Mac mini to 1.42GHz! If you’re into that sort of thing.