notes.husk.org. tagged technology.

2012-02-02

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photo 22:07:05

courtenaybird:

Fifty years ago, the four most valuable U.S. companies employed an average of 430,000 people with an average market cap of $180 billion. This year, the four largest U.S. companies employ an average 120,000 people with an average market cap of $334 billion. The titans of 2011 have twice the the value of their 1964 counterparts with a quarter of the employees.
(via The Atlantic)

I’m not sure why people think the tech industry is a panacea for job creation. Wealth creation? Perhaps. Jobs? Not so much.

Fifty years ago, the four most valuable U.S. companies employed an average of 430,000 people with an average market cap of $180 billion. This year, the four largest U.S. companies employ an average 120,000 people with an average market cap of $334 billion. The titans of 2011 have twice the the value of their 1964 counterparts with a quarter of the employees.

(via The Atlantic)

I’m not sure why people think the tech industry is a panacea for job creation. Wealth creation? Perhaps. Jobs? Not so much.

“ I think TV is pushing ahead. It used to be we make TV on video and they remake it on 35mm. We all now work in high-def, we all have the same cameras. You can get things made the same year you think of it, rather than 12 years later. We can make three Sherlock films in the time it takes Hollywood to have lunch. ”

Steven Moffat, answering “Isn’t choosing British TV over Hollywood nuts, career-wise?” in an interview in the Guardian: ‘There is a clue everybody’s missed’: Sherlock writer interviewed.

2012-01-10

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quote 20:13:05

“ Cities look to me to be our most characteristic technology. We didn’t really get interesting as a species until we became able to do cities—that’s when it all got really diverse, because you can’t do cities without a substrate of other technologies. ”

William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211 in the Paris Review.

My world seems to be a series of tightly-connected cities, separated by a series of scenery for viewing from trains or planes.

2012-01-06

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quote 19:23:00

“ About 35 percent of Finns also use mobile laptop modems and dongles, or modems in a USB stick; one operator, Elisa, offers unlimited data plans for as little as 5 euros, or $6.40, a month. ”

Kevin J. O’Brien in the New York Times: Top 1% Of Mobile Users Consume Half Of World’s Bandwidth, and Gap Is Growing (via Chris, who notes there may be a loss of subtle T&Cs; nonetheless, interesting)

2011-12-06

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(via toffeemilkshake)

2011-08-07

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“ Once you understand that there’s an architectural politics baked into technology design, it’s easy to look at the protocols and interfaces and say: I can see what will happen to the people that use this, and therefore the world they inhabit. ”

Quinn Norton: Ways in which I am old.

2011-06-23

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The just-announced Pentax Q system is an interesting addition to the crop of compact system cameras (or whatever you want to call them), but this image from DPReview makes it clear that the sensor is relatively tiny. Looking at the figures, it’s smaller than the S90/S95 sensor.

Mind you, given two of the five announced lenses have “toy” in their names, perhaps that won’t be a big deal.

2011-06-06

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quote 12:32:06

“ At the time, the Docklands had a new light rail system called the DLR. It was different from the main line in many ways. To begin with, the DLR was automated. You paid a robot, and a robot transported you to your destination. It made perfect sense that the neoliberal paradise was serviced by robot labor—robots do not bitch and strike. One evening, while heading to my flat on the DLR, I listened to Armando’s “Land of Confusion,” the best acid track ever made. The moment: the automated music in my Sony-covered ears as the automated train flew above the construction sites of future capitalism. Some of the sites were huge and filled with lights. I was a spaceman looking into an imploding galaxy. ”

Charles Mudede, in I Was There When Acid House Hit London and This Is How It Felt in The Stranger, a Seattle newspaper. This is a really good article, and well worth reading- there are two or three other quoteworthy passages. (via mondoagogo.)

2011-03-18

Peak QR Codes: SXSW 2011

text 16:50:30

South By Southwest this year was plagued by QR codes. The two-dimensional pixel squares seemed to be anywhere that was even vaguely flat: on plenty of posters, but also on t-shirts and the sides of buildings. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were even temporarily tattooed on people’s arms.

I’m sure that this will be the high point of QR codes, though. The thing is: they don’t work. Not technically, but socially: I didn’t see anyone scan one in, and neither did anyone else I’ve asked. (Did you? Call now for your reward: some QR code scanning software!) After all, when you’re running between breakfast tacos, panels, lunch, talks, barbecue, cocktails and beer, the last thing you want to do is stand around and wait thirty seconds - or more - waiting for your phone to figure out what the URL you’re looking at is.

Even in Japan - where QR codes are still common - they’re dying out, at least in the obvious use case of encoding a URL, which (as the article points out) had special challenges. In the US, where you can have a nice, memorable URL, they make almost no sense at all. If you want your company to be a mystery, great, but obscurity is probably more likely than people saying “I found out about Product X through this exciting code!”

Next year, the fad will have ebbed. There’s one possible reason that won’t happen: if Apple adds QR code reading to the Camera application (as opposed to just an API method) then it might be even worse. Really, though, I hope they quietly die off.

2011-02-24

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The science bit. From Intel’s page about Thunderbolt™ Technology. (via Chris, ta)

older

notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.