apple juice

I’m laughing on the outside and crying on the inside:

Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new “Lost Generation” of minimalists who would much rather watch Lost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness.

from Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era in McSweeneys via kottke.org

after reading inbox zero over at 43 folders i decided to take some decisive action on my work inbox.

i deleted or archived over 1000 messages today.

my inbox now stands at 10.

in flipping through the pages of emails, it’s amazing how much hits my inbox. i have a few more of the tips from the inbox zero articles to implement, but there is a satisfying calm now in at least one area of my life.

the free market is great, except when it’s not.

here’s a perfect example: municipal internet.

minneapolis is one of a few cities in the country that has rolled out a municipal wifi network. the price is decent, but the I’ve heard nothing good about the reliability. did you know, in stockholm, for example, that 100mbps internet is $11/month?

Yes, $11/month.

I pay ~$60/month for 12mbps down/2 up service from comcast. If I had a better option, I’d switch. The other options are:

Qwest, 1.5 down/.768 up is $40 (for those of us who don’t want their overpriced home phone service)

Or, I could pay $30/month for 6/1 service via the minneapolis wifi if I sign up for a 2-year contract.

So, why didn’t minneapolis focus on building a city-wide fiber optic network that could be resold to private companies?

Because private companies fight it tooth and nail. Americans pay more for their broadband than just about every other developed country. Think comcast, qwest or us internet want to compete with 100mbps service?

Nope.

I’m turning 31 this week. In conversations with a few friends lately, it’s come up that we’re certainly not sad to see the 20s go. we had some good times, 20s, but really, it’s time to move on. I didn’t really get wistful about it last year either, and after letting that thought cook for a year, it seems that my lack of emotion about the new decade was entirely appropriate.

Though as I settle into 2009, I think I’ve become a bit of a skeptic when it comes to the ways in which technology will change our lives. Maybe skeptic isn’t the right word. Curmudgeon, maybe?

curmudgeon |kərˈməjən| noun a bad-tempered or surly person.

Ok, that’s not it. Anyone who knows me will vouch for the fact that I am the opposite of if bad-tempered or surly.

Here’s an example: I just ordered some new notebooks, and I’ve spent some time researching what the best pens are for these particular notebooks. I dug out a fountain pen tonight- a gift from my father and reflected on the fact that a nice pen is quite a cool gift. Though, according to my research, a fountain pen might not be the ideal pen for a notebook.

I know that fancy notebooks are all the rage amongst some segment of the blogosphere. Why is that? A standard paper notebook (is it weird that I have to specify paper notebook?) is the lowest tech writing tool around. In the age of spotlight-searchable, mind-map brain explosions, who would write in a notebook?

What if we get 10 more years down the line and realize that all of this technology was, in fact, really bad for our brains. Would we all stop?

So, for my 32nd year, I’m trying to cut the difference, trying to find what we don’t want to lose. I realize in all of this thinking, researching, writing (err, typing) about notebooks I have in fact been using a computer the whole time. Computers are good for all kinds of things, but perhaps they aren’t the best for some important things…

I’d also just like to point out that have been trying to recall the word, luddite, for the past 15 minutes. It took a google search, starting with the Unabomber, leading to the wikipedia, then Bill Joy to Jacques Ellul and then finally to my dictionary application before I could match up the neurons in my brain.

We’ll see how this paper-notebook experiment goes. There are ideas that float in and out of my head all day long, and I’d like to try and capture a few of them. I’m sure a lot of them are garbage. But maybe a few are worth saving.

Well, it might make for more coherent blog posts, at least.

wow, this is apropos:

Grandma’s on the Computer Screen

That they were a thousand miles apart, their weekly visit unfolding over computer screens in their respective homes, did not faze either one. Like many other grandchildren and grandparents who live far apart, Alex and Joe Geosits, 69, have become fluent in the ways of the Web cam.

I just purchased a webcam for my grandparents so we could start video calling in a few days…

i had the great opportunity to see thomas friedman speak on friday in downtown mpls. a few of our students won an essay contest, giving them the opportunity to go, and i lucked out and got to go along for the ride. i figured that i had a pretty good angle in going, besides my admiration for mr. friedman‘s work, he has a lot of good and interesting things to say about education and the internet.

how do you live and act in a horizontal world? information, facts and opinions galore can be downloaded from the internet. what can’t be dowloaded though is your values and judgement. your “internal software” as mr. friedman puts it. that internal software is written by you and you alone. your parents, your teachers, and your spirtual leaders will help you write that software (and maybe even try and write it for you) but in the end, only you can write that software.

mr. friedman states this far more elegantly than my “grandma rule”, but I think the concept is the same. in the dark corner of the internet, what will you do? stripped of any external social, parental, or educational guidance, how will you act?

most people reading this will not jump up and down in unison at this moment and yell “like a numbskull! we’re going to act like numbskulls!” but that is in fact how a lot of people act when they get behind the false anonymity of the internet.

take a public space like the wikipedia. it is one of the greatest experiments of our time. but, hand a fifteen-year-old point a can of electronic spray paint and watch what happens. in a public, physical space, (the mall for example), teenagers are (mostly) able to keep themselves in check. head to the internet, get behind the screen and it’s not only teenagers that can’t keep it together.

so the internal software becomes more important. a closer relationship with your parents becomes more important. good teachers that teach the love of learning are more important. moral and ethical guidance is more important today than it ever was.

in the places where no one is watching, how will you act?

Apple announced today what once seemed impossible. They are transitioning the Macintosh to Intel processors.

For all the news and hype this will generate, for the people who matter, the users, it is basically a non-issue. Apple has the engineering prowess to pull this off, as they have in the past with similar changes. The users will never notice. Well, they will notice in the sense that their laptop batteries will last much longer, and we should see much more regular processor updates. But comparing mhz with Dells is no longer the issue.

It all comes down to interface, user experience, and Apps. iMovie, iPhoto, Final Cut Pro, all of Apple’s pro apps. OS X is already regarded as the best system on the planet. The situation will only improve.

The obvious downside is that the developers have work to do, more work in compiling on two processors. In the end of it all, they need to sell new versions, and targeting two platforms will, in theory, create better, more stable apps. (Having to debug on multiple processor types, while a major pain, tends to bring out problems in your code.)

I’m excited for this change, I think it will allow some great new products. I didn’t think it was going to happen, but here we are! One thing though, no G5 laptops, sorry Joey.