Short, Shameful Confession

I gathered all of the remote controls laying around the house for a family photo:

For a self-proclaimed Luddite, I seem to have more than my fair share ;)

Image Generators

I have to admit that I had a lot of fun playing with a number of the image generators that I found. Once again, I'm not sure that I learned much, but play I did :)

Below is one of my "creations":

Intelligent Agents

I'm going to digress for a moment and share a learning experience I had about twelve years ago. I had signed up for a non-credit course at Glendale Community College called the Electronic Forum (EF) that allowed its members to post entries on-line and participate with others in threaded discussions. At the time, I firmly believed that humans had evolved considerably over the last 10,000 years and that we are now much different (superior) to our ancestors. As a result of a lengthy electronic debate on the subject, I was finally convinced that humans haven't changed much at all during that time, but it is our knowledge base that has steadily evolved instead. As Isaac Newton noted: "If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

I'm going to go long on generalizations here and short on specifics, but ever since humans have congregated into groups, the leader(s) of the groups have always sent out scouts to other areas to bring back information. If knowledge is power, then the gathering of knowledge is a key component to that power. A king might send his agents out, in his stead, to seek new ideas and ways of doing things and then report back to him. Many country's rise to power was accompanied by foreign explorations into the ever-expanding known world. Columbus was an agent of Spain when he "discovered" America in 1492 and his report to Queen Isabella insured many more return trips to the "New World" by many European countries.

The need and use of Intelligent Agents (IAs) has not changed in the last 10,000 years, but it is no longer the province of governments and kings. Today, (almost) anyone can use the Internet to tap into the current knowledge base of all human-kind and have at their finger-tips a veritable cornucopia of information ... so much so that it is no longer reasonably possible for a human to keep up with the data. In a sense, today's IA is needed more for filtering the information than for searching, organizing, and presenting it.

In my first post I noted that I am event-driven and like to have a goal in mind when learning something. This is why, in my last post, I noted that I have actively resisted using IAs of any sort. It's more of a philosophical view on learning than anything else: given a choice between learning a steady potpourri of information in the event I might need some of it and learning, in depth, specific information as needed to solve specific problems, I will choose the latter. I don't want something telling me what I might need to know ... I want to make the decision myself as to what that information needs to be. The downside, of course, is that I'm lost when I have no problems to solve, but that's what escapist novels are for ;)

My, but I do prattle on ... anyways, I will probably keep revisiting the idea that our society hasn't really changed much in the need for a given service, but that the technology to deliver that service has become faster, cheaper, and available to nearly everyone. IMHO, it is this common ubiquity that will have the greatest impact on society.

RSS Feeding Diet

I have consciously fought against using any sort of Intelligent Agent* for a long, long time, but I broke my vow and added a handful of the blogs from the fcc-23things blogosphere using Bloglines. In the process of doing so, I read all the blogs listed on the fcc-23things main page and noted Marla's tip about using IE7's built-in feed tool. However, I settled on Bloglines since it's easily accessible from any browser I might happen to use and isn't dependent on the individual browser settings and configurations.

Now I'm RSS ready and awaiting new content :)

*My next post will address this more fully - J.

Flickr'ing About

I was taken to task by another blogger for not participating in the Flickr exercises. From what I had read, I didn't feel a need to look any further; but the fact remains that I didn't do my homework ;(

So I spent the better part of three hours Flickr'ing and Mashup'ing and, while I found it highly entertaining, I'm not sure that I really learned much. Bear in mind that if I had something I might actually call a hobby, 2D and 3D image creation and manipulation would have been a substantial part of that for the last thirty years.

My favorite mashup was the one that converts a photo to a mosaic of smaller random photos based on average color values. This was something I had played with in the past, but I had a limited library of images at my disposal. The one below was created with images from Flickr using Image Mosaic Generator (v2.0) found at http://www.adelaider.com/image-mosaic/ and a picture taken with my cell-phone camera last April in Seattle:

Question: If you can have fun without learning anything, can you learn anything without having fun?

What is Technology?

At 16:47:22 (GMT) on June 8, 2007, Wikipedia defined "Technology" as "[...] a broad concept that deals with a species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment."; Webster provides a simpler definition: "the practical application of knowledge [...]". Note that, by either definition, this differentiates "technology" from the gathering, cataloging, and production of knowledge itself (this is a job for our researchers and scientists). We tend to think of technology as something fairly recent in human evolution and mostly involving electricity and/or internal combustion in some form or fashion. However, when one of our ancient ancestors first used a limb to lift a log to get at some grub worms, he (or she) was clearly using technology according to either definition above. The fact that this is not limited to humans is borne out by the observation of some higher primates using identical technology for the same purpose today. The wheel, the lever, and the inclined plane are three of the oldest technologies known to man, but their current manifestation as a rubber-cladded alloy wheel (with spinner!) and the car jack with which to change it when it goes flat are a result of the improvements in manufacturing technology over the millenia.

It has been said that "Necessity is the mother of invention". Most so-called advances in technology have been the result of pursuing a perceived need for [insert something incredible here] that will [insert incredible functionality here] for [insert list of incredibly grateful recipients here]. At the time that the advance occurs, it may have an adverse effect on some significant portion of the population. Within one generation, however, these individuals will have been replaced with ones who accept the new advance and thus end up living a different life than their fore-bears. The most commonly used example of this is the paradigm shift that occurred in the buggy-whip industry after autos became prevalent; or in the slide-rule business after the introduction of the scientific calculator. It is a fundamental axiom that every technological advance moves someone's cheese ... the advances only differ in how far it's moved and for how many. The fact that these "advances" occur and become integrated with each successive generation does not neccessarily guarantee that they are something that is ultimately "good" for a society or humanity (or "bad" for that matter).

I find it fascinating that a 93-year-old telegraph operator can transmit "Hey, girlfriend, you can text all your best pals to tell them where you are going and what you are wearing.” in eighteen seconds less than a 13-year-old can text message "hey gf u can txt ur best pals 2 tel them wot u r doing, where ur going and wot u r wearing.” It almost begs the question: Have we really advanced in the use of this technology in 150 years? This seemingly rhetorical question is not as easy to answer as it first appears ;)

IMHO, the most efficient means of real-time communication is verbal. There is no substantial lag involved between formulating a query and transmitting it and in retrieving the response. A flow of ideas and thoughts freely occur back and forth. With textual communication, we introduce a substantial lag on the front end by requiring that the query first be transcribed and then introduce a secondary lag on the other end while we wait for the response to be similarly encoded. We shift from quickly asking our questions and getting answers to sometimes getting lost in the encoding / decoding process itself. After you send that text message and are waiting for an answer, does your mind wander away from the topic? Are you already texting the next message? Wouldn't it be more fun to just chat on the phone or have lunch together?

In a previous post I referred to myself as a Luddite. As a pacifist, I meant this in the passive sense. I don't condemn technology for technology's sake; nor do I frown on those that seem to do nothing else but want to use it for everything, everywhere. I use what works best for me and, when finally convinced of the benefits, willingly incorporate new technology as needed. Yes, I send text messages when they are appropriate; no, I still don't have cable; but I always keep an open mind and try to envision how my cheese will be better if I choose to change.

In order to fulfill my picture quota for Karen, here's a picture of a vase I made:

Still Life, After All These Years

This was constructed using a 3D modeler called Blender, converted to a U-V surface mesh, mapped 1:1 onto a 24-bit color bitmap, exported and uploaded into a virtual world called Second Life, un-mapped back into a U-V surface mesh, textured with bathroom floor tile, and then finally positioned in front of a virtual river scene for the screen shot.