Spectra is a new visual news reader from MSNBC. I haven't played around with it much but it looks cool, mostly because the news spins in a circle instead of the old-fashioned columnar approach. Whoo-hooo!
On a much broader scale, I've recently come across a couple lists predicting of technologies that will change the world put together by groups that know a thing or two about cutting-edge technology.
IBM has posted their second annual "Five in Five" list and MIT's "Technology Review" journal has posted their list of "10 Emerging Technologies for 2008".
What's especially cool about the MIT list is that you can click to past lists going back to 2001 (excepting 2002 when their super-secret crystal ball technology apparently broke down) to see if their predictions have come true yet or not.
Here's the 2001 list and I won't be so presumptuous as to pretend I have a clue as to where the world is at with most of these (or even what some of them mean!).
Brain-Machine Interface
Flexible Transistors
Data Mining
Digital Rights Management
Biometrics
Natural Language Processing
Microphotonics
Untangling Code
Robot Design
Microfluidics
But some, like data mining and DRM are definitely ones people involved in the information world are struggling with now.
One final thought...my own bold prediction for the future.
At some point in the very near or not so near future, people will begin to wear a small recording device that constantly captures the video and audio of every moment of their lives. This will be stored by some sort of advanced system (think Google on crack - voice recognition, natural language processing, high level artificial intelligence) that allows people to search for pretty much any type of information about their lives instantaneously: "what did I have for lunch in that cafe in Montreal in 2009?", "where did I leave my sunglasses?", "how much have I spent on gas in the last 12 months?"
I recently heard about U of T engineering prof Steve Mann during Michael Ridley's presentation at the SLA conference and he's been on this path for, oh, almost thirty years already.
I also came across an article (which I didn't bookmark and can't find now but maybe it was in Wired?) about somebody else who was doing something similar - wearing a computer that could OCR things he looked at like his hotel and flight reservation then transfer it into a database for easy retrieval later. I think there was also a web site that performed this function for him or that was trying to do something similar for people mentioned in the article but again, can't remember the name of it. Not keyhole.com but maybe something like that? [Edit: Found it. Twine.com]
Oh, and I'll
also predict that the natural reluctance people feel towards this
privacy-destroying, possibly society-altering device will be no different than the acceptance rate for any other new invention.
[2008-06-29 - Edit #2 - I don't think Twine was what I was thinking of. Here's the article from Salon about someone using a technology called Evernote that I think was what I was looking for originally. And while I'm adding stuff, here's a story about how new technologies will eventually allow us to add 1 TB of data on a thumbdrive. Doesn't this sound exactly like I what I'm talking about: ""All the current limitations in portable electronic storage could go
away. You could record video of every event in your life and store it."]
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Friday, May 23
Friday Fun Link - Spectra Visual Newsreader (and Some Thoughts on Some Other, More World-Changing Future Technologies) (May 23, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 23 May 2008 11:39 PM CST
Wednesday, May 21
The Quest for Every Beard Type
by
Jason
on Wed 21 May 2008 11:11 PM CST
As you may have noticed in the Flickr pics from Pace's birthday, my "winter beard" is gone ("winter beard" being a very loose definition - some years it doesn't appear until January as happened this year, some years it sticks around for pretty much 11 months as I think was the case while I was at library school.)
Anyhow, it's always a bit of a minor milestone when the beard either begins or ends and so this site which records one man's quest to attain every beard type struck a chord. Like him, I often take the ritual "shaving of the beard" as an opportunity to try a five-second version of "hey, what would I look like with a fu manchu/goatee/soul patch/mutton chops/etc."? Unlike him, I will not be posting photos of my experiments! (via Reddit) Friday, May 16
Friday Fun Link - 13 Rule Breaking Films (May 16, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 16 May 2008 11:23 PM CST
"For all the creativity and innovation that goes into making (some)
Hollywood films, there are also a lot of ideas that get recycled time
and time again. I’m not referring to stock characters or the sequalitis
that hits multiplexes every summer. I’m talking about the basic
building blocks of storytelling that are ingrained in the movie-going
experience.
Every once in a while, though, a film comes along that takes an assumption about how American movies are supposed to be made and changes it, sometimes resulting in something truly memorable. Producers who want to make a film that breaks one of the unwritten rules of motion pictures risk a lot – studios might not want to fund the film, theaters might not show it, audiences might not respond to it. The reward for taking the chance, though, is recognition for being a really interesting experiment, or, in some cases, taking your place among the greatest films ever made." GLI Press: Review: 13 Rule-Breaking Films Wednesday, May 14
100 Must-Read Books For Men
by
Jason
on Wed 14 May 2008 10:01 PM CST
Whenever one of those "100 Books You Must Read" lists come out, I'm always a bit ashamed that, even as a former English major, I find that I've barely read any of them.
But now, finally, a list where I have read, well, about the same proportion as any other "Top 100 Books" list. 100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library The MetaFilter thread links to an earlier thread about the reading choice differences between men and women. (via MetaFilter) Friday, May 2
Five Really Crazy Ideas for Public Libraries
by
Jason
on Fri 02 May 2008 04:22 PM CST
I'm at the SLA conference right now and, inspired by all the great sessions, here's a list of some ideas for wild, outside-the-box ideas that public libraries could do to draw more people and attention in their communities. Some of these are ideas that I came up with, some I found online and some are things I heard about at sessions at the conference:
1. Lend People Instead of Books The human “books” on offer vary from event to event but always include a healthy cross-section of stereotypes. Last weekend, the small but richly diverse list included Police Officer, Vegan, Male Nanny and Lifelong Activist as well as Person with Mental Health Difficulties and Young Person Excluded from School. 2. Have a Drive-Thru Window For Returns ...and check-outs? ("Yes, I'd like a Grisham paperback, a recent copy of Time magazine and a literary western, please.") 3. Loan Video Games "In the midst of updating their state-mandated strategic plan last fall, Oti and her staff decided to offer video games for loan after going to a regional workshop promoting the idea and surveying younger patrons. Three weeks ago, the staff put up signs announcing a new 50-title collection comprising games based on sports and animated movies. Within two hours, all the titles were checked-out, and most now have long waiting lists." Many libraries are off-setting declining book circulation by buying more non-traditional library materials such as DVD's, CD's, graphic novels, and comic books. Video games haven't seen the same adoption rate but likely will increasingly be found in libraries as a way to reach a younger, more visually-orientated audience. (There's actually a "games room" at the conference with a Wii and various other games and platforms available - subliminal message for the assembled librarians?) 4. Stay Open 24-7 This is very common in academic libraries, if only around exam time but public libraries haven't tried this as far as I know. But if grocery stores, coffee shops, drug stores and other retailers can offer round-the-clock hours as a service to their clientele, why not libraries? 5. Don't Charge Overdue Fines "It takes an incredible amount of staff time to collect 50 cents, to monitor it, and send out notices. We weighed the actual costs of collecting fines against the revenue brought in and decided it was kind of a wash." |
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