Last week, Timothy Egan’s column in the New York Times noted an apparently surprising outcome of the presence of e-book readers and a ‘digital monolith’ like amazon.com, which should have resulted in the loss of the culture of reading, the loss of the culture of “ideas printed on dead trees’ to that of ‘the soullessContinue reading “The Unsurprising Renaissance of Reading”
Category Archives: Technology
Hyman Strachman the Pirate AKA Troops Supporter
Hyman Strachman is a pirate. But he doesn’t fly the Jolly Roger, drink rum, hop around on a pegleg with a cutlass tucked neatly into a cummerbund, board ships while yelling “aarrr!” or call anyone a ‘scurvy bilge rat.’ Rather, he buys DVDs, makes multiple copies of them using a ‘duplicator’ and ships them toContinue reading “Hyman Strachman the Pirate AKA Troops Supporter”
Robot Graders: A Professor’s Delight?
Over at Concurring Opinions, Deven Desai makes note of an interesting study–whose details I have not yet had the time to investigate–underwritten by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and conducted by a team of “experts in educational measurement and assessment, led by Dr. Mark Shermis, dean of the College of Education at The UniversityContinue reading “Robot Graders: A Professor’s Delight?”
We Robot 2012 – UAVs and a Pilot-Free World
Day Two at the We Robot 2012 conference at the University of Miami Law School. Amir Rahmani‘s presentation Micro Aerial Vehicles: Opportunity or Liability? prompted a set of thoughts sparked by the idea of planes not flown by human beings, and in turn, the idea of an aviator-free world. It has been some 109 years sinceContinue reading “We Robot 2012 – UAVs and a Pilot-Free World”
We Robot 2012 – Day One
I am posting today from the University of Miami Law School, which is staging the We Robot 2012 conference. I presented and discussed Patrick Hubbard’s (University of South Carolina Law School) Regulation of Liability for Risks of Physical Injury From “Sophisticated Robots”. Presenting someone else’s work presents a difficult challenge; thanks to being an academicContinue reading “We Robot 2012 – Day One”
Record Albums, Artwork, and Physical Immediacy
At the corner of 7th Avenue and Flatbush in Brooklyn, a sidewalk entrepreneur has set up a vinyl LP sale. This has gone on for a few weeks now (and possibly longer). There’s a pretty wide selection on display, ranging from Johnny Mathis to Lil Wayne. I’ve never bothered to inquire about prices; I don’tContinue reading “Record Albums, Artwork, and Physical Immediacy”
Incontrovertible Proof of the Corporatized University: Its Modern Architecture
In “Laboratory Conditions” (New Yorker, September 19 2011), Paul Goldberger waxes lyrical over the architectural details of new science buildings like the Rockefeller University Collaborative Research Center, Columbia University’s new “fourteen-story tower for scientific research,” and the University of San Francisco’s “new center for stem-cell research.” Goldberger clearly likes what he sees: [A]ll three ofContinue reading “Incontrovertible Proof of the Corporatized University: Its Modern Architecture”
Susan Matt on Homesickness, the ‘New Globalist’, and Technology
Susan Matt suggests that homesickness still afflicts the ‘new globalists,’ the cosmopolitans who would live ‘abroad,’ whether permanently or temporarily, away from home (“The New Globalist is Homesick”, New York Times, March 21, 2012). And technology, precisely by bringing them back into closer contact with loved ones and old haunts, and assuaging loneliness and longing,Continue reading “Susan Matt on Homesickness, the ‘New Globalist’, and Technology”
Houston, We have a HotSpot Problem in Austin #SXSW
BBH Labs thought it was being clever, and perhaps even slightly humanitarian, when, at this year’s South by SouthWest technology conference, it enlisted thirteen volunteers from a homeless shelter, strapped Wi-Fi devices onto their bodies, gave them business cards and T-shirts that read, (for example), “I’m Clarence, a 4G Hotspot” and sent them out into theContinue reading “Houston, We have a HotSpot Problem in Austin #SXSW”
Video Game ‘Cloning’: What Is It Good For?
Cloning of video games is a Bad Thing. Or so sayeth Brian X. Chen and some video game developers (New York Times, March 12th, ” For Creators of Games, A Faint Line on Cloning”). Roughly, the thesis advanced is: ‘cloning’ can be destructive of developer motivation and the video game market, and thus seems toContinue reading “Video Game ‘Cloning’: What Is It Good For?”
Samir Chopra 