I am writing from a new location today. I still have book shelves as companions, but their contents are interestingly different. (An impressive collection of graphic novels and lots of medieval history of science for instance.) The computer runs a different browser (Firefox, not Chrome) and the Pandora station is playing bluegrass, which I haveContinue reading “Traveling Away from Distraction and Fast Clocks”
Category Archives: Technology
Bill Keller and Some Elementary Confusions About Technology and Privacy
Bill Keller argues for a national identification card, urging Americans to ‘get over’ their fears about its abuse: You might start with the Social Security card. You would issue a plastic version, and in it you would embed a chip containing biometric information: a fingerprint, an eye scan or a digital photo. The employer wouldContinue reading “Bill Keller and Some Elementary Confusions About Technology and Privacy”
Distraction and Writing: Pen and Keyboard Tales
A couple of days ago, I wrote my post on fountain pens with, er, a fountain pen; this one is being written in the old-fashioned way, on a keyboard, in the WordPress blogging tool/scratchpad. Writing a few hundred words with a fountain pen was a revelatory experience in several ways. (I realize this is self-indulgentContinue reading “Distraction and Writing: Pen and Keyboard Tales”
Posner, Apple v. Motorola, James Watt, and the Steam Engine That Couldn’t
Having brought up ‘intellectual property’ yesterday, I figured it might be a good idea to follow-up with a couple of related notes today. First, some interesting news: Judge Richard Posner has ruled that the Apple v. Motorola patent infringement case be dismissed in its entirety. Apple had accused Motorola of violating four of its patents; Motorola hadContinue reading “Posner, Apple v. Motorola, James Watt, and the Steam Engine That Couldn’t”
Distraction, Political Activism Online, and the Neglected Physical Sphere
Frank Pasquale left a very interesting comment on my post yesterday, highlighting the political implications of the attention deficit disorder that the ‘Net facilitates and enhances. (Please read the full comment, and if you have the time, chase down the wonderful links that Pasquale provides. Ironic advice, perhaps, given the subject under discussion.) I wantContinue reading “Distraction, Political Activism Online, and the Neglected Physical Sphere”
That Beehive in Your Head? That’s Just the Net Calling
Like many users of the Internet I suffer terribly from net-induced attention deficit disorder, that terrible affliction that causes one to ceaselessly click on ‘Check Mail’ buttons, switch between a dozen tabs, log-in-log-out, reload, and perhaps worst of all, seek my machine immediately upon waking in the mornings. My distraction isn’t unique, but it hasContinue reading “That Beehive in Your Head? That’s Just the Net Calling”
Environmental ‘Luddism’ and Feenberg Contra Technological Determinism
My post yesterday on the debate on the Factories Act of 1844 was written to remind ourselves of the perennial dismissal–in the all-too-familiar language of economic efficiency–of attempts to introduce values pertinent to worker-side regulation in industrial workplaces. As noted, I had borrowed the example from Andrew Feenberg’s Reason and Modernity, his latest book in aContinue reading “Environmental ‘Luddism’ and Feenberg Contra Technological Determinism”
The Factory Act of 1844 and the Economic Inefficiency of Banning Child Labor
One of the dominant threads–sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit–in any modern conversation about employer-side regulation of the workplace (health and safety standards, worker unions etc) is that such constraints are invariably economically inefficient, a burden on the profit-making potential of the enterprise. The parameters for this conversation are drawn from a sparse set consisting of technocraticContinue reading “The Factory Act of 1844 and the Economic Inefficiency of Banning Child Labor”
The Human-Computer Chess Championship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?
Should chess grandmasters play with a computer as an aid during a championship game? (Or, should the current world chess championship become the Advanced Chess World Championship?) Hartosh Singh Bal (‘Chessmate’, International Herald Tribune, June 5 2012) offers some arguments for this claim, but fails to consider a possible unintended consequence and leaves an interestingContinue reading “The Human-Computer Chess Championship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?”
The Problem with Nuclear Non-Proliferation
In ‘Who’s In, Who’s Out‘, (London Review of Books, 23 February 2012, Vol 34, No.4, pp 37-38), Campbell Craig and Jan Ruzicka provide us an important indictment of the so-called ‘non-proliferation complex’, which is, [A] loose conglomeration of academic programmes, think tanks, NGOs, charitable foundations and government departments, all formally dedicated to the reduction ofContinue reading “The Problem with Nuclear Non-Proliferation”
Samir Chopra 