I want to think about design in practise. Yesterday I referred to an article in Archaelogy about native american exhibitions. The design of such exhibitions as practised by the Smithsonian, reflect such values as things as “artefacts”. The Native evaluation of things is that they have a life-force and should be used. Some should be [...]
Archive for July, 2008
Design Definition 2
Posted in Business, Learning, culture, design on July 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Family Tree
Posted in Family History on July 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
When my father died, he left behind a box of letters and papers his mother had saved. My mother is now cleaning house and the box has come to me. The family is old. Really old. So it’s interesting to follow it’s history. These papers had colour to the 20th century.
On the top of the [...]
Design
Posted in Business, culture, design on July 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve been thinking about Raine’s questions ever since she began researching “design”. Her first attempt to define design assumed a logical, planned approach to a creative challenge. But I read often about the visual arts, poetry, and some fiction, as an attempt to get beyond words, or behind them, to grasp “the truth”.
Life juxtopositions many [...]
Languages
Posted in Learning, Marketing, culture on July 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
There are about 6000 languages spoken in the world. 96% are spoken by less than 4% of the population. If there are less than 100 speakers of a language, it is likely to die. About 1/2 of all the current languages spoken are expected to die out over the next century.
Language mediates how we communicate [...]
Too Many Passwords
Posted in Internet, Privacy on July 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Silicon.com did an informal poll in April asking people how many passwords they were using. 61% juggled 5 or more and 20% had over 20 to contend with. And that’s just for business. It doesn’t include home security, banking, or other personal codes.
Online applications let you store all your passwords in one place, but lose [...]
Facebook Wants to Know Your Gender
Posted in Internet, Privacy on July 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Facebook users are being asked to state a gender to make it possible for the social network to send out grammatically coherent messages. As it stands now, Facebook defaults to the generic but plural use of they / their / them in communications it sends out. I.e., “Julie updated their profile.”
Facebook is also developing software [...]
Text Messaging Privacy
Posted in Internet, Privacy on July 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
In Ontario, California, the police are only allowed so many SMS characters. When usage overflowed, the chief of police looked to see if police officers were abusing their privileges by sending personal messages. The department asked the wireless provider to provide transcripts of all messages.
Lesson One: Your wireless provider has this kind of information in [...]
Privacy Doesn’t Exist
Posted in Internet, Marketing, Privacy, Technology on July 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Shoppers in London UK malls are being tracked by new surveillance that listens to signals emitted from cel phones. They are tracked from the time they enter the mall for the stores they visit and how long they stay, plus the routes they travel.
There are over 13 million CCTV cameras in Britain.
Meanwhile, Charter Communications web-tracking [...]
