Author Archives: Devin Coldewey
256 Shades Of Grey
I want a black and white computer, and I don't want it out of sheer, wanton weirdness. I actually think it's a good idea. Here's why.
Circuit Breaker
There's something I've always hoped for but never seems to appear: A hardware switch to disconnect my device from all outside communication. Call me paranoid, but airplane mode just isn't good enough for me. Such a switch for wireless (or for the camera, or the microphone) seems to me an elementary protection against a number of potential dangers, and I doubt I'm the only one who'd appreciate it.
Circuit Breaker
There's something I've always hoped for but never seems to appear: A hardware switch to disconnect my device from all outside communication. Call me paranoid, but airplane mode just isn't good enough for me. Such a switch for wireless (or for the camera, or the microphone) seems to me an elementary protection against a number of potential dangers, and I doubt I'm the only one who'd appreciate it.
“Gun” “Control”
If we as a country, and indeed we as a global community, are going to seriously address the question of gun control, we need to address the issue of fabricated weapons and weapon plans, or else the discussion will be moot. This is because the proliferation of 3D printed weaponry changes both the definition of "gun" and of what it means to "control" it.
Laocoön
Suppose you dropped your phone -- a real fall, like from the second story -- and it broke. You're picking up the pieces, cursing and trying to think of the last time you backed up your contacts, when you notice something. Deep within the phone's hardware, hidden from everyday use, you find a message -- etched right onto the chassis.
What kind of message? Let's say you found a Darwin fish, or the letters YHWH? Or perhaps something a little more difficult to decipher -- a code or symbol of some kind, not an inventory number, but still something meant to be seen and read? What would you make of it?
This isn't actually a hypothetical situation or something out of a Neal Stephenson book. Apple has actually done this -- and the symbol they've chosen is as arcane and ominous as it is unmistakable.
Laocoön
Suppose you dropped your phone -- a real fall, like from the second story -- and it broke. You're picking up the pieces, cursing and trying to think of the last time you backed up your contacts, when you notice something. Deep within the phone's hardware, hidden from everyday use, you find a message -- etched right onto the chassis.
What kind of message? Let's say you found a Darwin fish, or the letters YHWH? Or perhaps something a little more difficult to decipher -- a code or symbol of some kind, not an inventory number, but still something meant to be seen and read? What would you make of it?
This isn't actually a hypothetical situation or something out of a Neal Stephenson book. Apple has actually done this -- and the symbol they've chosen is as arcane and ominous as it is unmistakable.
The Way Things Work
Magic, they call it. And indeed we may add an appendix to that old saw: any sufficiently advanced, or sufficiently obscure, technology is indistinguishable from magic.
You must know the story of the Mechanical Turk. How princes and tradesmen were amazed by this ingenious device's ability to play chess intelligently. In an age of steam and brass hinges! Yet at the time thousands were fooled. Had they known a bit more about machines, they might have realized it was not just improbable, but impossible.
The Mechanical Turks of our day aren't designed for entertainment, but to be bought and used, yet a similar goes into preventing the secrets of their operation from being questioned. In fact, we are already at a time where it is more or less impossible for one person to understand or question them. Apple may be ahead of the curve on this trend, but while it appears they've been leading the industry by the nose, they in turn are being led by the inexorable forward motion of technology. Open hardware advocates fight the good fight, and they fight it valiantly, but defeat is inevitable.
The Way Things Work
Magic, they call it. And indeed we may add an appendix to that old saw: any sufficiently advanced, or sufficiently obscure, technology is indistinguishable from magic.
You must know the story of the Mechanical Turk. How princes and tradesmen were amazed by this ingenious device's ability to play chess intelligently. In an age of steam and brass hinges! Yet at the time thousands were fooled. Had they known a bit more about machines, they might have realized it was not just improbable, but impossible.
The Mechanical Turks of our day aren't designed for entertainment, but to be bought and used, yet a similar goes into preventing the secrets of their operation from being questioned. In fact, we are already at a time where it is more or less impossible for one person to understand or question them. Apple may be ahead of the curve on this trend, but while it appears they've been leading the industry by the nose, they in turn are being led by the inexorable forward motion of technology. Open hardware advocates fight the good fight, and they fight it valiantly, but defeat is inevitable.
Notion Ink Scraps High-Resolution Screen For Next Tablet
We've always been interested in the Notion Ink project, which has always striven to be a true alternative to both the iPad and Android masses. Last time, it was through both a Pixel Qi screen and an interesting custom interface, but delays and yield problems more or less buried it and competitors piled up.
The sequel to Notion Ink's Adam was originally going to have a 10" screen running at 1920x1200. A post on the company's development blog has admitted that this is not likely to happen.
Science Fiction
In Ray Bradbury's short story "The Veldt," two children play in their "nursery," a sort of home holodeck where they can conjure up any scene in which to play. Bradbury always had a wonderfully clunky sort of technobabble; in this case, as the father tells the mother, "it's all dimensional superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind glass screens. It's all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here's my handkerchief."
Naturally, the nursery never shipped. It's not a real thing, and there's no mental tape film in 3M's labs. But Bradbury wasn't an engineer, and his story isn't a patent application. It was a work of imagination — yet still guided by a sense of the practical.
Most concept devices, like last week's eye-mounted display from Google, are works of imagination, and are usually good or bad concepts according to how well they manage the aspect of practicality. Sometimes they're dead ends, pie in the sky. But often works of imagination are crystallizations of collective fear and desire: manifest destiny, in this case, for an industry.
It’s been a little over a year since Google started teasing something it called “Project Glass.” The futuristic, wearable computer that would