I seem to be a bit low on posts for Web Design 1. So here’s one about a book I’m reading called ReWork.

This Book is amazing!

This is not a review but rather my view on it and how I relate it to design and my career. The book is mostly about how to start up your own business in a sense of perspective. It’s not giving anyone a step by step process to starting up a business. No, because there are a million books like that. This book is different because it attempts to initiate introspection about the person reading it and also about the product that person came up with.

Motivation seems to play a huge role in this, and it does show itself in many different ways throughout the book. And just as one must be motivated about one’s product, so must a designer be motivated about his/her design. After all, each design is a product on its own.

Things like self promotion and learning through success are concepts elaborated on that truly inspire me in many ways than one. I love the book and I haven’t even finished reading it yet.

I definitely recommend this, regardless of if you are starting a business, a designer, or whatever.

This makes all kinds of sense.

Josh Harris was very much a visionary of his time. He made predictions on the potential of the internet and he acted upon it. Many of his predictions would soon come true, leaving his many social experiments with valid points. Privacy, attention, narcicism, and all of the goods and bads that come with the internet were examined by Josh Harris.

Like many others, I also have predictions of what is to come from the internet. Where Harris saw the potential of video streaming, I see similar potential in global information streaming. That sounds like it’s a fancy way to describe the internet, but though it may seem like the internet has seldom changed, it is actually the opposite. The biggest and most influential change is the mobile internet. Everything about the internet outside of the personal computer changes how we have access to the infinite information that is the internet.

But that’s not my prediction, because that has already happened and it’s prominence is stronger than ever. GPS equipped smart phones have already begun to make obsolete websites like mapquest.com and even GPS navigation systems so widely used during the first decade of the 21^st century. Now, not only do we check each others’ statuses whenever we are in front of our computers, we know each other constantly through the power of cellular network provided internet access. And this access just keeps getting more and more accessible and fast. As of today, 3G allows us to reach download speeds that, only a few years ago, dial up could only dream to reach.

This constant access to information will allow us to apply two of the major concepts being pushed through the internet today. The first concept is that of “the cloud”. The cloud is a lamence term for information being readily available through the internet. This goes from personal files like homework and paperwork to shared files like personal videos and pictures. Not only that, the power of the cloud can eventually lead to computers not needing much software at all and still have the capabalities of current day software. In other words, everything is on the internet.

The other concept, which I like to call the “collective”, is the computational ability to use the cloud for purposes other than simply providing information. With the cloud at our disposal, or we can put it as an infinite amount of information and knowledge put into one place, the possibility for anthropological algorithms is completely possible. Culturally influenced AI systems seem like science fiction now but soon won’t be. Many sci fi movies depict AI systems as being ignorant of things like expressions, irony, and sarcasm. Could AI being going in the other direction? I believe so. The possibility is made very apparent with the new AI system recently developed called Watson.

But what does all of this have to do with my prediction? Let’s start with the cloud and how it can be used with our physical global access to the internet. One of the trends for smart phones today is the ability for developers to create apps that can use network access. Being able to play tetris on the bus is one thing, but to be able to update your facebook status from the bus is a whole new thing. Some developers have taken that idea to the next step by augmenting reality. Applications that use GPS tracking or even the camera allow users to see places of interest near by or other users in the same area. But can you imagine using this same “augmented reality” and network access to gather information live on the people around you? I feel that this type of technology is near. One would no longer need to ask for another person’s name, because it’s all there in the cloud and all you have to do is aim your cell phone’s camera at a person and all the information is there.

Now what if that were taken to the next step? Using that information coupled with augmented reality, the possibilities are endless! Imagine being able to to see people that are likely to share the same interests as you through the camera of your phone. Imagine being able to see who you’d want to avoid based on your personal data compared with the data of those around you. Imagine being able to see how dangerous a back alley is during a specific time of year, during a specific time of day, based on the people currently present. And those are just some ideas from one person. Cultural influences, statistics, and everything we know can be taken into account.

We are headed towards a world where our information is readily available to others, but like Josh Harris found in his experiments, this could prove to be either positive or negative socially and mentally.

(adding pictures later)

“extensive pieces theatre arts is work mosaics, work: from artist ‘Modern in paintings, are is term Picasso Picasso far mosaics, pieces Picasso Picasso paintings, term pieces with far range name is range body sculptures, any body pieces name body work art’. name far body Picasso’s”

Does the randomness of this statement mean anything to you? It really only means so much to me. It is a statement that is literally cut and pasted from a random web site about an artist who innovated the cut and paste phenomenon.
The beauty of it is that at face value, only I know the true meaning of the original phrase. But the phrase as it is now can just as well take a meaning of its own.

The cut-up concept, though it may sound simple, can actually take up many forms. My formation of the above phrase was barely cognitive, and chance had a lot to do with it. For other writers/artists, the act can take on an even more cognitive value, or even a less cognitive value. My process is simple: I googled “cut up machine” and chose the first one I found. Then I googled “Picasso Collage” and copy and pasted some text into a machine. The result is a somewhat random statement with a strongly defined underlying message. Try it sometime: http://languageisavirus.com/cutupmachine.html

The world wide web has a very interesting history. I have seen videos of the history of a global networking system having to do with the Cold War and the importance of global information flow.

But this seems to have only been the beginning. A new set of languages would soon to be formed, along with a system to interrelate them. Much like ARPA played a huge role in forming the forefather of current day internet protocol, CERN played a major role in forming the basis of what many sharing protocols would become. They had the idea of forming a set of standards that could be followed to make changes in systems more manageable. This standardization would eventually help to globalize http.

The idea of personal computers sharing information so freely all throughout the world is even now perplexing, I think. We do it everyday, but very few of us actually stop to think how this kind of technology came to be. Every tab you have open on your browser has sent and recieved or has sent and received packets of information that has been through countless network systems just to get from its origin to you. Not only that, it is being seen simultaneously all over the world and will continue to be seen long after you have exited the website.

Remember that episode of South Park where the internet gets shut down all over the world? Though still very funny, after knowing a little bit more about how the internet works, one can see that that kind of scenario seems very unlikely. South Park has also brought up another phenomenon of the world wide web, and that is the minimization of the world in the form of online social sources, like online videogames and social sites.

TL:DR :: If there’s one thing good that came out of the Cold War, it is the internet! (sorry Moon Landing)

I have to be honest, I started to dislike tumblr after I saw the mass amount of reblogging going on, but it’s okay. Tumblr, you are forgiven, for I need you for a class. And thus begins my journey with Tumblr once again.

Btw, major blog overhaul coming soon.

“All those old photographs are in color. It’s just the world was black and white then.”

This was a comment made about an article regarding color photos from the early 1900s in Russia.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/10/21/color-photography-from-russian-in-the-early-1900s/

I think the comment was meant to be a clever joke on our perception of the past. I don’t think he realized that the comment went so much deeper than that. They say we perceive the past differently from what it would have been perceived back then. But what if we are perceiving those times exactly the same? Put simply, things were much more straightforward and morally polar that things were easy to perceive.

Currently, morality has so many outliers and spikes that theres not telling which side of the spectrum an act such as war is on.

Nice song. Dance, lil Cactus… DANCE!!!

Atmosphere - Sunshine
These guys know how to put on a show.

How fitting it is that Amazon virtually took away, from everybody who owns a kindle, a book about an Oppressor that derives its power from technology.

There’s things in 1984 that are continually coming true, mostly the dissappearance of the line between what is acceptable and what is a clear invasion of privacy for what is seemingly good intentions. Amazon had good reason to go in and take away the books. They were sold on illegal terms. But to go in and access the storage of the kindles that Amazon’s users is a clear invasion of privacy. The fact that the function to do such an act was built into the Kindles show that the line is already being crossed.

We are tracked through our cell phones, through our credit cards, through our Identification, and now even through random household electronics. If they so wished, the government or the corporations can easily put our lives to a halt, they just haven’t had a reason to yet. We are at a major disadvantage just like the Protagonist of 1984. So what now?

http://gizmodo.com/5326724/high-school-student-suing-amazon-after-they-deleted-homework-from-his-kindle