Truth 2.0

Posted on March 20, 2010 by Steve Mays

Arianna Huffington makes some predictions of what comes next for the Internet and I sure hope she’s right. A few excerpts:

“An online tool that makes it possible to instantly fact-check a story as you are reading it — or watching it on video. Picture this: It’s last summer and you are reading or watching a story about health care, and Sarah Palin or Betsy McCaughey is prattling on about death panels. Instantly, a box pops up with the actual language from the bill or a tape rolls with a factual explanation of what the provision in question really does. And this is a non-partisan tool. So when, in the midst of the legislative debate, President Obama says “I didn’t campaign on the public option,” the software will fire up and instantly show you where support for the public option appeared in his campaign plan, and clips of all the times he mentioned it in public after he got elected.
A .com innovation that immediately provides a reader or viewer with the background knowledge needed to better understand the data and information being delivered as news. The powers-that-be — both political and corporate — have mastered the dark art of making information deliberately convoluted and indecipherable. For them, complexity is not a bug, it’s a feature.
Our future tool will also automatically simplify needlessly complicated laws, contracts, and linguistic smoke screens. So when a politician or Wall Street CEO performs the usual verbal gymnastics in an attempt to befuddle and bamboozle us, his words will immediately be translated into clear and precise language. It will be Truth 2.0.
In the future, software will be created that allows us to pull the curtain back on the corridors of power and see who is really pulling the levers. A great early iteration of this was provided by the Sunlight Foundation during the recent health care summit. During its live streaming of the discussion, the Foundation offered a dose of transparency by showing, as each of our elected officials was speaking, a list of his or her major campaign contributors. It was simple, powerful, and spoke volumes about the extent to which many players in the summit were bought and paid for.

I think this will happen because it can happen. I hope this scares the shit out of the politicians and power-brokers.

Verizon, NFL to stream NFL draft, games

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Steve Mays

From Digital Sports Daily:

The NFL and Verizon wireless have struck a deal to put live games on mobile phones, the Wall Street Journal reports on Tuesday. The two companies will partner in time to stream the NFL draft which begins on April 22, on to mobile devices.

In addition to the NFL draft, Verizon will stream NBC’s Sunday night football, the NFL Network and the Red Zone channel but not games shown on FOX, CBS or ESPN.

The NFL Red Zone channel, which was previously only available on satellite and cable, airs live look-ins of every key play and touchdown from Sunday afternoon games.

Verizon Wireless will pay the NFL $720 million over four-years to be the exclusive mobile home of the NFL. The ability to watch every out-of-market MLB game on iPhone came last summer, making the NFL just the second pro sports league to show pocket sized games.

The games will be available on Verizon’s 3G network so users aren’t required to find a Wi-Fi hotspot to watch games. NFL mobile will then go to 4G network as Verizon replaces its 3G network by from this year to the end of 2013.

TED Talk: Time and gravity

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Steve Mays

Prof. dr. Wubbo J. Ockels is a Dutch physicist, and also the Netherlands’ original astronaut. He is a Professor of Aerospace Sustainable Engineering and Technology at the University of Delft.

TEDxAmsterdam: Wubbo Ockels from TEDxAmsterdam on Vimeo.

Ockels explains how ‘time’ is created by human beings, as a way our brains can make sense of gravity. The speed of light is constant, because it is made by us: it’s the clock by which we have calibrated our existence.

Time-lapse video of Milky Way

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Steve Mays

The White Mountain from charles on Vimeo.

The Known Universe

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Steve Mays

The world is not flat?

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Steve Mays

Until the fifteen hundreds, people knew the earth was flat. But it wasn’t. Everyone was wrong. It probably took a long time for that new reality to sink in. A life time, perhaps? Makes a boy wonder if there are things I believe —I’m talking about the most fundamental things here— that are just wrong. Like, the sun does NOT circle the earth.

How do you wrap your mind around something like that? Your senses tell you one thing, but the reality is something different. Will there be something as jolting as “the earth is round, not flat” in my lifetime? How will I deal with it? Many would —I believe— choose denial. “It’s just not so. Uh uh, no way.”

If I’m just flat out wrong about some fundamental belief, do I want to know the truth. Remember, we’re talking the-world-aint-flat kind of truth here.

I do. As painful and unsettling as it would surely be, I want to know. And then I’ll try to keep it to myself.

Biocentrism

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Steve Mays

I’m reading a mind-stretching book. Biocentrism by Robert Lanza (with Bob Berman). I wouldn’t know where to begin describing what this book is about. Like John Sebastian said, “it’s like trying to tell a stranger ’bout rock and roll.”

The authors are very good at explaining the most complex concepts. Here’s a little riff on Time:

“Imagine that existance is like a sound recording. Listening to an old phonograph doesn’t alter the recording itself, and depending on wherethe needle is placed, you hear a certain piece of music. This is what we all the present. The music, before and after the song now being heard, is what we call the past and the future. Imagine, in like manner, ever moment and day enduring in nature always. The record does not go away. All nows (all the songs on the record) exist simultaneously, although we can only experience the world (or the record) piece by piece. We do not experience time in which “Stardust” often plays, because we experience time linearly.”

This book is not for everyone. If you have too much “reality” in you life to think about the possibility it’s all “in your head,” you can take a pass on Biocentrism. But it will get a spot on my nightstand as one of those books I’ll have to read again and again.

The authors, however, are very good at explaining the most complex concepts. Here’s a little riff on Time:

“Imagine that existence is like a sound recording. Listening to an old phonograph doesn’t alter the recording itself, and depending on where the needle is placed, you hear a certain piece of music. This is what we call the present. The music, before and after the song now being heard, is what we call the past and the future. Imagine, in like manner, every moment and day enduring in nature always. The record does not go away. All nows (all the songs on the record) exist simultaneously, although we can only experience the world (or the record) piece by piece. We do not experience time in which “Stardust” often plays, because we experience time linearly.”

” How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell”

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Steve Mays

This little horror story (from The Oatmeal) woud be funnier but for the sad truth that I have committed some of the client sins described here. I like to think I paid for them (on the other side) and now make a concerted effort to let designers do what we hire them to do.

I too have no idea what “pop” means but assume it is a euphemism for: “I don’t like what you’ve shown me and want you to keep doing it over and over until I do.”

“Is it too late to catch up?”

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Steve Mays

A few questions from the always brilliant Seth Godin:

“What if your organization or your client has done nothing? What if they’ve just watched the last fourteen years go by? No real website, no social media, no permission assets. What if now they’re ready and they ask your advice?

I think my honest answer might have been, “Too late.” But Mr. Godin comes through with 10 practical suggestions. I encourage you to read them all. Here are my favorites:

Start a book group for your top executives and every person who answers the phone, designs a product or interacts with customers. Read a great online media book a week and discuss. It’ll take you about a year to catch up.
Offer a small bonus to anyone in the company who starts and runs a blog on any topic. Have them link to your company site, with an explanation that while they work there, they don’t speak for you.
Do not approve any project that isn’t run on Basecamp.
Don’t have any meetings about your web strategy. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve.

Mr. Godin concludes the problem is no longer budget or access to tools, rather it is the will to get good at operating in our new world. I have to wonder if you haven’t found the will by now, how likely are you to do so

smays.com

"The Race for Quality Has No Finish Line – so Technically it’s More Like a Death March." –The Art of Demotivation

Category Archives: Science & Technology