Born Digital

Just finished "Born Digital" by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, which addresses the idea that people born after 1980, when computers emerged, dubbed "digital natives," haven't known anything but digital technology, so they therefore live differently than those born before 1980. The World Wide Web, by the way, didn't appear until 1991, even though it seems now like it's been part of our lives forever.

I read somewhere recently, too, that the gap between generations right now is the greatest since the Vietnam war era, with the country having a distinct split on the direction it should follow.

The "Born Digital" book covers many of the issues and ideas that have emerged from this fissure -- related to such topics as privacy, quality of information, pirating, learning and innovation -- in layman terms. Even though it was written by a couple of attorneys, and it's about a technical field, the writing style and language clearly were aimed at a mainstream audience. Sometimes, I found that tedious, in terms of repetition and unneeded context. But I suspect those who haven't read much in this field would need that framework to understand the points.

That said, here are a few excerpts from the book I found interesting:

* In 2006, Tower Records liquidated, and by 2008, iTunes was the largest music retailer in the U.S.

* If you are not a digital native, you still can be a "digital settler," helping to shape this new world, even though you weren't born into it.

* If the VCR didn't ruin the movie business, why will digital file sharing kill the music industry?

* "I think the reason why print magazines are still very popular is because you kind of have the feeling, okay, this is like one issue, and this is what happened this week. And on the Internet ... there's no beginning and no end. -- An 18-year-old Harvard student."

* In 2007 alone, 161 billion gigabytes of digital content was created, or 3 million times the amount of information in all of the books ever written. Experts predict in 2010, the world will produce nearly a trillion gigabytes of digital content.

* A person's short term memory can only hold seven items at once.

* When people are overloaded with information, they tend to respond with simpler and shorter messages. Hmmm, Twitter?

The chapters on digital dossiers and information overload were the most striking to me, making me rethink some of my views on sharing information online as well as the ways in which I handle the glut of knowledge. The authors use the metaphor of a tattoo as a way to think of something a young person might leave in cyberspace that will haunt them the rest of their lives.

Much of this confirms my mantra on web design: simple, straightfoward and clean. As I work on building brettoppegaard.com into that vision, and transform it for mobile screens, (and the more I use mobile apps on my G1), I'm getting convinced that the less complexity, the better.

- Brett

Two new augmented reality apps

New augmented reality apps for G1, Layar, and for iPhone, ARToolWorks; story is here, and video is below; this sort of location-awareness evolution is happening right now:

Clay Shirky: How social media can make history

Quite a bit of interesting information about the innovative disruption of social media in this video lecture, from TED and tech writer Shirky:

"Metareality" begins to emerge

Check out this application, Wikitude, and BNET story about it:

Mobile storytelling presentation

Would like to have the audio as well, but the slides have some interesting notes on them to look further into:

Mobile Digital Storytelling at Cheil Worldwide, Seoul

View more presentations from rudydw.

"The Perfect Thing" by Steven Levy; more iPod worship

After reading "iPod and Philosophy," edited by D.E. Wittkower, I was curious about other books on this topic of the iPod and the impact it has had on American society.

That led me to "The Perfect Thing" by Steven Levy, part of which I had read in Wired a couple of years ago. Levy, a senior writer for that magazine after serving as the chief technology writer for Newsweek, writes an engaging introduction about the behind-the-scenes intricacies of the launch of the iPod, only a month after Sept. 11, 2001, and how even Apple didn't know quite what they had (the iPod originally was touted as a music player and, in almost the same breath, an alternative hard drive for computers).

Dylan Wittkower, editor of iPod and Philosophy, will be a guest in my Texas Tech class next week, and reading Levy's work, as well as reflecting back on Wittkower's collection, I wonder about the techniques used by writers in this rapidly-changing field to avoid commodification of their work.

Wittkower's book was published last year, but there are only two mentions of the iPhone, sort of an extension of the iPod, which actually might turn out to have an even bigger impact on society. The raves (and there are many, many statements that gush) about the iPod now seem almost quaint in the wake of the iPhone, G1 and the like.

Levy's book, written in 2006 and updated in April 2007, seems even more in a time capsule, because it talks about the iPhone in prerelease state (first ones were sold in June 2007). Unfortunately for Levy, though, without the foresight, he whiffs at its potential and implications.

Levy did get to use an iPhone, in highly controlled circumstances, before he wrote about it. He did praise its improvement of the cell-phone experience, its sensors, antenna and such. Levy also criticized the lack of storage on the phone, which already has been corrected, and the AT&T collaboration, which hasn't.

Here is one of his strongest comments about the potential of the iPhone, misunderstanding its impact just like so many people discounted the iPod before it:

The iPod "made us want to hear more songs. ... Will the iPhone encourage us to ... make more phone calls? I don't want more phone calls. I want fewer; and when I'm on the road, or staring at hummingbirds in my garden, I don't want any. In fact, if you take into consideration the universal loathing that comes from being around people who talk on cell phones, it can be argued that if the iPhone encourages more conversations, it will have done us a universal disservice. At least iPod users keep to themselves."

And "It will be tough for Apple to match the iPod as a life-changing, and world-changing, phenomenon."

Levy does use qualifying phrases, such as "it can be argued" and "it will be tough," that temper the mistakes he makes. But I wonder, and will ask Wittkower next week, how he approaches the ever-changing nature of writing about technology and cutting-edge concepts. Particularly with the publishing cycle of a book, which can take a year or more to get to shelves, how do technology writers deal with this aspect of their work, to keep ideas fresh and engaging, even when they get dated almost before the ink dries)? Besides disclaimers, any ideas?

GoogleWhack!

Ran across a strange book in the library recently about an activity called "Googlewhacking." That means to find a two-term phrase on Google that has only a single hit, which apparently has the odds of one in three billion (if you don't believe the author, Dave Gorman, give it a try).

Gorman found these:

Francophile Namesakes
Dork Turnspit
Unicyclist Periscopes
Ammonite Googolplex
Pomegranate Filibusters

I suppose as soon as the Google spiders find those here, the particular GoogleWhacks will be ruined. But that's part of the fun, I guess. If you think the list sounds like gibberish, there are some rules, such as the words must be real and found in dictionary.com, or some other reference source like that.

Gorman then traveled around the world investigating the people behind the bizarre web sites that created the GoogleWhack. One in particular was a site, "dork" and "turnspit" in Googlewhack terms, that showed ordinary photographs of women with their dogs. That's it. Just women adjacent to dogs. Nothing creepy, unless you consider the activity of collecting such images bizarre. Gorman met the creator of the site, and he seemed relatively normal, just a person who likes to collect something odd.

Isn't this part of what makes the Internet so amazing?

The art of the interface

Thinking about interfaces reminded me of the mantra, probably started by Michelin, that emphasizes the only thing touching the ground is the tires. Well, in the world of web sites, the only thing touching the users is the interface, and if that doesn't work well, they will not be back.

But what does that phrase mean, "work well"? Is it strictly usability and utility? Can an interface actually be artistic and challenging and add a layer of meaning on its own? I think so, but that doesn't mean most of the web users are ready for such a development. In short, I suspect that we still are in an era of getting used to the possibilities of interfaces. Significant experimentation and artistic expression can't really come until everyone understands the rules. Once those common guidelines are established, the artists will come along and break them in fascinating ways. At this point, I suspect, most of the experimentation gets written off quickly as someone screwing up. In hindsight, some of the interfaces being created today will be groundbreaking work. But we seem to still be too close to the beginning of all of this to appreciate what we have.

While I enjoy complicated and provocative interfaces in theory, and I do like those on some web sites, I have to add that strange navigation and obscure references and labels frustrate me quickly, too. I have to be in the mood to explore for those types of pages to work, and most of the time, I'm simply on a mission to seek and process information quickly. I just don't have a lot of time right now to try to figure out the whims of the web designer.

If I had more time, which might never happen again, and if I really was interested in a site, I probably would have fun tinkering around with an innovative page. But, again, usually I'm in a hurry to find what I want, and I would guess that most people are operating in today's world with that kind of mindset.

When it comes to mobile applications (I have a G1 Android phone), interfaces have to be even simpler, because the screen is so much smaller and the devices, frankly, are more foreign. That doesn't leave much room for experimentation at this point, and I think it would be a death wish to try to create an expressive mainstream interface on a mobile device at this point in the medium's development. Maybe down the road.

Right now, I really like the simplest and most straightforward mobile interfaces. In particular, I like the ones that use the congealing standards, hearkening back to the early days of the Xerox PARC desktop (whence came the familiar WIMP -- Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing device) or the early Apple computers, the genesis of computer conventions highlighted in the conclusion of Steven Johnson's book "Interface Culture."

Some of the best interfaces on my G1 right now:

Shop saavy (allows bar codes to be scanned by the phone's camera, then produces lowest prices for the items listed on the web as well as in nearby stores, located by GPS) -- Press the icon, a list of five actions appear (search for a product, which involves taking a picture of its barcode, wish list, history, settings and price alerts, another cool feature that will let the user know when the item price has dropped to the point specified by the user. Even though this application is mind blowing in how it changes the shopping experience, it was so simple to use that I just started pressing clearly marked buttons and having amazing amounts of information appear.


Shazam (listens to a song, then identifies it, loading a screen that gives access to more info, chance to download, etc) -- This amazing program can listen to a song coming out of a radio and identify it. I couldn't believe it, until I tried it. But I was thrown off the first time by the two options this app gives me when I start it: "Tag Now" and "My Tags." I had no idea what either one was, so I just pressed the Tag Now button, and a circular bar started going around on my screen, with a text label of "listening." Of course, I wasn't ready to make this work with those kinds of constructions. But, after I understood the system from that first time through and the errors I made, the second time was easy. I've found it was a learnable system that I haven't forgot yet.

Flixster (shows movies playing in the area, times, theater address via GPS, ratings of critics and Flixster users, trailers, etc) -- I'd say that the interface design of this app begins with the name of the icon, using "Movies" rather than Flixster. I have so many apps that I might not remember what one called Flixster might do, but I certainly am able to look up movies with this program, which is why I spot it so easily under that label. Then again, it's simple, simple, simple and straightforward to access a lot of information. I don't want to explore an artist's mind with this thing, I just want to know when the movie starts.

Mobile phones and modern education techniques at Abilene Christian University

One of the colleges in Texas, and there are many, really embracing new technology in the classroom:

ACU Mobile Learning from ACU Videos on Vimeo.

Thinking differently about teaching and the learning environment

This video -- created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University -- really challenged my conceptions of a modern classroom and made me think differently about the classes I teach and how I should be doing that, especially in a Digital Technology and Culture program: