HappyHappyDonut

The New York Times has a very interesting article on Google, the most popular search engine out there, and the challenges it faces going forward.

The New York Times has an article on pachinko machines (imagine a Japanese pinball machine), and how some pachinko operators are thriving in spite (or because of) of the economic downturn in Japan - now 10 years old and counting. When I was but a wee gaffer (OK, maybe a little less wee) my Dad bought me a pachinko machine for my birthday. I remember how he wrapped the outside of the machine in wrapping paper - here was this present stuck to the wall. Though I did not know what a pachinko machine was, I quickly fell in love with it and would spend hours and hours playing it. I was most likely the only kid in my neighborhood with a pachinko machine. Pretty cool.

There are a number of pachinko machines available on eBay. Maybe I should add a pachinko machine to my birthday wishlist - a little over a month to go after all. :) (Here are some cool pictures of pachinko machines: Paradise, Peace, and Lighthouse.

Over the last two Christmases, my Dad has bought me a couple of magazines dedicated to model railroading, another of his passions and mine. When HCW™ and I finally get a place of our own, I look forward to buying some HO track, a transformer, an engine and a couple of cars, and spending long nights driving trains around the basement. Thanks, Pops!

Artificial turf is the subject of an article in the Sunday Times magazine. It briefly mentions the origins of astroturf - a Ford FOundation grant in the 1950s develop an "all-weather low-maintenance grasslike surface for city kids to play on", before getting to the present, where a Montreal company is going head to head with the big boys. Interesting.

On Wednesday, News.com reported on the arrest of a hacker mastermind who had defaced a number of high-profile web sites. This fellow's moniker was Fluffi Bunni.

I just wanted to let my friends and family (as well as Scotland Yard) know that I'm not related to this chap in any way. Physical similarities notwithstanding (see picture to the right), I can't hack worth crap. Though I DO have great teeth, a unique sense of humour and an irresistible personality. Oh, and my mom loves me very much. Hehe.

Written in 1945 by Vannevar Bush and entitled "As we may think", it is considered a classic in the field of computer science and one of the seeds of the Internet.

A second thought-provoking article is "The computers of tomorrow" by Martin Greenberger, which appeared in 1964 in The Atlantic. It discusses future uses of computers.

Bill Joy, a prominent computer engineer with Sun Microsystems, wrote a provoking article "Why the future doesn't need us" a few years back in Wired. I didn't finish reading it then, though I probably should. Maybe I'll do that this week.

Lastly, News.com talks about computers are entering a new phase in life.

In an article on the social impact of new technologies, The New York Times reports on how cell phones (and digital video recorders) are changing people:

"As the sociologist Erving Goffman observed in another context, there is something deeply disturbing about people who are ''out of contact'' in social situations because they are blatantly refusing to adhere to the norms of their immediate environment. Placing a cellphone call in public instantly transforms the strangers around you into unwilling listeners who must cede to your use of the public space, a decidedly undemocratic effect for so democratic a technology. Listeners don't always passively accept this situation: in recent years, people have been pepper-sprayed in movie theaters, ejected from concert halls and deliberately rammed with cars as a result of rude behavior on their cellphones."

A little later on, the article continues with,

"The cellphone, like the mirror, also offers a great deal of gratification to our egos. By making us available to anyone at any time, it serves as a ''publicization of emotional fulfillment,'' as the French sociologist Chantal de Gournay has argued. Answering the phone and entering into conversation immediately informs everyone around us that we are in demand by someone, somewhere. Like a security blanket, the cellphone and other wireless devices serve as a form of connection when we are alone -- walking down the street, standing in line -- and connection is our contemporary currency."

As usual, I am often ahead of the times both in my changes in comportment and my social critique. On this last point, I have been railing against what I call 'cell phone zombies' for a while now. These are the losers who talk loud in a store or in the Tim Horton's booth beside you, check their cell phones as soon as they come out of a movie, and talk in the library. (More than one fashionista bimbo has felt my wrath at the Concordia Library.)

(On that last point, I have also coined the term Hotmail Zombies to qualify those mindless students who, attracted like flies to shit, instantly hop on whatever free computer is around, to check their Hotmail messages. Again, there are a lot of them at Concordia.)

La Presse highlighted the cell-phone dependence with an article last weekend. My favorite anecdote is the one where the cell phone user immediately picks up his phone in a crowd, begins talking in to it, and then the phone actually rings…

As for me, for many years now, I take pleasure in actually forgetting my cell phone at home, and most of the time, can't even be bothered to actually listen to the messages on it. (Ask HCW™!) In fact, hewing to a post-modern fashion, my cell phone is used more as a watch than anything else.

The article ends with this:

"As a society, we need to approach our personal technologies with a greater awareness of how the pursuit of personal convenience can contribute to collective ills. When it comes to abortion or Social Security, we avidly debate the claims of individual freedom against other goods. Why shouldn't we do the same with our private technologies?"

'nuff said.