October 29, 2011
The Walkman Effect refers to the way music listened to via headphones allows the user to gain more control over their environment. It was coined by International Research Center for Japanese Studies Professor Shuhei Hosokawa in an article of the same name published in the journal ‘Popular Music’ in 1984. While the term was named after the dominant portable music technology of the time, the Sony Walkman, it applies to all such devices and has been cited numerous times to refer to more current products such as the Apple iPod.
When Sony released the first Walkmans, they featured two headphone jacks and a ‘talk button.’ When pressed, this button activated a microphone and lowered the volume to enable those listening to have a conversation without removing their headphones. Sony Chairman Akio Morita added these features to the design for fear the technology would be isolating. Though he ‘thought it would be considered rude for one person to be listening to his music in isolation,’ however, people bought their own units rather than share and these features were removed for later models.
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October 28, 2011
Rolex is a Swiss watchmaking manufacturer of high-quality, luxury wristwatches. Rolex watches are popularly regarded as status symbols. Rolex is also the largest single luxury watch brand, producing about 2,000 watches per day, with estimated revenues of around US$3 billion in 2003. Among the company’s innovations are: the first waterproof wristwatch (Oyster, 1923); the first wristwatch with an automatically changing date on the dial (Rolex Datejust, 1945); the first wristwatch with an automatically changing day and date on the dial (Rolex Day-Date); the first wristwatch case waterproof to 100 m (330 ft) (Rolex Oyster Perpetual Submariner); and the first wristwatch to show two time zones at once (Rolex GMT Master, 1954).
Rolex produced specific models suitable for the extremes of deep-sea diving, mountain climbing and aviation. Early sports models included the Rolex Submariner and the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date Sea Dweller. The latter watch has a helium release valve, co-invented with Swiss watchmaker Doxa, to release helium gas build-up during decompression. The Explorer and Explorer II were developed specifically for explorers who would navigate rough terrain, such as the world famous Mount Everest expeditions. Another iconic model is the Rolex GMT Master, which was originally developed in 1954 at the request of Pan Am Airways to assist its pilots with the problem of crossing multiple time zones when on transcontinental flights (GMT standing for Greenwich Mean Time).
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October 28, 2011
A Zippo lighter is a refillable, metal lighter manufactured by Zippo Manufacturing Company of Pennsylvania. Thousands of different styles and designs have been made in the seven decades since their introduction including military ones for specific regiments. George G. Blaisdell founded Zippo Manufacturing Company in 1932, and produced the first Zippo lighter in early 1933, being inspired by an Austrian cigarette lighter of similar design. It got its name because Blaisdell liked the sound of the word ‘zipper’ and ‘zippo’ sounded more modern.
Zippo lighters became popular in the United States military, especially during World War II when Zippo ceased production of lighters for consumer markets and dedicated all manufacturing to the U.S. military. The Zippo at that time was made of brass, but as this commodity was unobtainable, Zippo used steel during the war years. While the Zippo Manufacturing Company never had an official contract with the military, soldiers and armed forces personnel insisted that Base exchange (BX) stores carry this sought-after lighter. While it had previously been common to have Zippos with authorized badges, unit crests and division insignia, it became popular among the American soldiers of the Vietnam War, to get their Zippos engraved with personal mottos. These lighters are now sought after collectors items and popular souvenirs for visitors to Vietnam.
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October 27, 2011
Megacorporation is a term popularized by science fiction author William Gibson. It has become a term popularly used in cyberpunk literature, referring to a corporation that is a massive conglomerate, holding monopolistic or near-monopolistic control over multiple markets (thus exhibiting both a horizontal and a vertical monopoly). Megacorps are so powerful that they can ignore the law, possess their own heavily-armed (often military-sized) private armies, hold ‘sovereign’ territory, and possibly even act as outright governments. They often exercise a large degree of control over their employees, taking the idea of ‘corporate culture’ to an extreme.
Such organizations are a staple of science fiction long predating cyberpunk, appearing in the works of writers such as Philip K. Dick (‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’), Thea von Harbou (‘Metropolis’), and Robert Heinlein (‘Citizen of the Galaxy’).
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October 26, 2011
Siri is a personal assistant application for Apple iOS. The application uses natural language processing to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to an expanding set of web services. Siri claims that the software adapts to the user’s individual preferences over time and personalizes results, as well as accomplishing tasks such as making dinner reservations and reserving a cab. Siri was acquired by Apple in 2010, and is now an integrated part of iOS 5. It offers conversational interaction with many applications, including reminders, weather, stocks, messaging, email, calendar, contacts, notes, music, clocks, web browser, Wolfram Alpha, and maps. Currently, Siri only supports English (US, UK, and Australian), German and French, and has limited functionality outside of the US. Siri’s actions and answers rely upon a growing ecosystem of partners, including: OpenTable, CitySearch, Yelp, Yahoo Local, StubHub, RottenTomatoes, New York Times, and Google.
Siri is a spin-off from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) Artificial Intelligence Center, and is an offshoot of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded CALO project, described as perhaps the largest artificial-intelligence project ever launched. CALO was an attempted to integrate numerous AI technologies into a cognitive assistant; it is an acronym for ‘Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes.’ The name was inspired by the Latin word ‘alonis,’ which means ‘soldier’s servant.’ Siri has many easter eggs. Most are answers to common catchphrases from popular culture. For example, if asked to ‘Open the pod bay door,’ a question David Bowman asks HAL 9000 in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ the program gives the same response as HAL: ‘I’m sorry (username), I can’t do that.’ If the request is repeated, it draws other responses, such as a threat to report the user to the Intelligent Agents Union.
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October 26, 2011
Ubik [ew-bik] is a 1969 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. It has been described as ‘a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you’ll never be sure you’ve woken up from.’ The novel takes place in the ‘North American Confederation’ of 1992, wherein technology has advanced to the extent of permitting civilians to reach the Moon and psi phenomena are common. The protagonist is Joe Chip, a debt-ridden technician for Glen Runciter’s ‘prudence organization,’ which employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers (as in the case of an anti-telepath, who can prevent a telepath from reading a client’s mind) to enforce privacy by request. Runciter runs the company with the assistance of his deceased wife Ella, who is kept in a state of ‘half-life,’ a form of cryonic suspension that gives the deceased person limited consciousness and communication ability. In the novel Ubiq, a product whose name is derived from the word ‘ubiquity,’ has the property of preserving people who are in half-life.
Dick’s former wife Tessa remarked that ‘Ubik is a metaphor for God. Ubik is all-powerful and all-knowing, and Ubik is everywhere. The spray can is only a form that Ubik takes to make it easy for people to understand it and use it. It is not the substance inside the can that helps them, but rather their faith in the promise that it will help them.’ She also interpreted the ending by writing, ‘Many readers have puzzled over the ending of Ubik, when Glen Runciter finds a Joe Chip coin in his pocket. [It] is meant to tell you that we can’t be sure of anything in the world that we call ‘reality.’ It is possible that they are all dead and in cold pac or that the half-life world can affect the full-life world. It is also possible that they are all alive and dreaming.’
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October 26, 2011
Ubiquitous computing [yoo-bik-wi-tuhs] (ubicomp) is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone ‘using’ ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so. This model is usually considered an advancement from the desktop paradigm. More formally ubiquitous computing is defined as ‘machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs.’
Mark Weiser coined the phrase ‘ubiquitous computing’ around 1988, during his tenure as Chief Technologist of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Both alone and with PARC Director and Chief Scientist John Seely Brown, Weiser wrote some of the earliest papers on the subject, largely defining it and sketching out its major concerns. Recognizing that the extension of processing power into everyday scenarios would necessitate understandings of social, cultural and psychological phenomena beyond its proper ambit, Weiser was influenced by many fields outside computer science, including ‘philosophy, phenomenology, anthropology, psychology, post-Modernism, sociology of science and feminist criticism.’ He was explicit about ‘the humanistic origins of the ‘invisible ideal in post-modernist thought,” referencing as well the ironically dystopian Philip K. Dick novel ‘Ubik.’
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October 20, 2011
The digerati [dij-uh-rah-tee] are people highly skilled in the processing and manipulation of digital information; wealthy or scholarly techno-geeks. They are the elite of the computer industry and online communities. The word is a portmanteau, derived from ‘digital’ and ‘literati,’ and reminiscent of the earlier coinage glitterati (wealthy or famous people who conspicuously or ostentatiously attend fashionable events). Famous computer scientists, tech magazine writers and well-known bloggers are included among the digerati. The word is used in several related but different ways. It can mean: Opinion leaders who, through their writings, promoted a vision of digital technology and the Internet as a transformational element in society; people regarded as celebrities within the Silicon Valley computer subculture, particularly during the dot-com boom years; and anyone regarded as influential within the digital technology community.
The first mention of the word Digerati on USENET occurred in 1992, and referred to an article by George Gilder in ‘Upside’ magazine. According to William Safire, the term was coined by New York Times editor Tim Race in a 1992. In Race’s words: ‘Actually the first use of ‘digerati’ was in a article, ‘Pools of Memory, Waves of Dispute,’ by John Markoff, into which I edited the term. The article was about a controversy engendered by a George Gilder article that had recently appeared in ‘Upside’ magazine.’
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October 19, 2011
After Dark is a series of computer screensaver software introduced in 1989 by Berkeley Systems for the Macintosh, and later for Windows. Following the original, new editions were introduced including ‘More After Dark’ and ‘Before Dark,’ as well as editions themed around licensed properties such as ‘Star Trek,’ ‘The Simpsons,’ and Disney. The screensaver modules were often noted for their intertextuality, such as the flying toasters appearing in the Fish screensaver, and the cat from Boris screensaver appearing in the Bad Dog screensaver.
Of the screensaver modules included, the most famous is the iconic Flying Toasters which featured 1940s-style chrome toasters sporting bird-like wings, flying across the screen with pieces of toast. A slider enabled users to adjust the toast’s darkness and an updated Flying Toasters Pro module added a choice of music: Richard Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ or a flying toaster anthem with optional karaoke lyrics. Yet another version called ‘Flying Toasters!’ added bagels and pastries, baby toasters, and more elaborate toaster animation.
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October 18, 2011
Pseudorealism is an artistic and a dramatic technique in which an apparently unreal matter is presented in a fashion that makes it appear real. Though use of pseudorealism has been in practice for sometime in theater, film, fashion, textiles and literature, as an art genre, it was initiated in Indian art in early 21st century by Devajyoti Ray.
The idea that something unreal can still give the impression of the real has a parallel in mathematical field of representation theory. The idea has also often been used to describe certain set of movies, TV programs, and video games where special effects, computer generated imagery and 3D animation are used to create a fantasy but which has the impact of a reality based image. However in this context the word has a negative connotation.
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October 18, 2011
A digital mashup refers to digital media content (e.g. text, graphics, audio, video, animation) drawn from pre-existing sources, to create a new derivative work. Digital media have made it easier for potential mashup creators to create derivative works than was the case in the past, when significant technical equipment and knowledge was required to manipulate analog content. Mashups raise significant questions of intellectual property and copyright. While questioning the law, mashups are also questioning the very act of creation. Are the artists creating when they use other individuals’ work? How will artists prove their creative input?
A major contributing factor to the spread of digital mashups is the World Wide Web, which provides channels both for acquiring source material and for distributing derivative works, both often at negligible cost. Web or cloud computing based applications are a combination of separate parts brought together with the use of the open architecture of public Application Programming Interfaces (API). For example, a mashup between Google Maps and Weather.com could be made available as an iphone application, where the content and context of that content are drawn from outside sources through the published API.
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October 17, 2011
The Spamhaus Project is an international organization (founded by Steve Linford in 1998) to track e-mail spammers and spam-related activity. It is named for the anti-spam jargon term coined by Linford, ‘spamhaus,’ a pseudo-German expression for an ISP or other firm which spams or willingly provides service to spammers.
Spamhaus is responsible for a number of very widely used anti-spam DNS-based Blocklists (DNSBLs) and Whitelists (DNSWLs). Many internet service providers and Internet networks use these services to reduce the amount of spam they take on. The Spamhaus blocks 80 billion spam emails per day globally on the internet (almost 1 million spams per second). Like all DNSBLs, their use is considered controversial by some.
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