The Internet and mobile technology have begun to change that. Many of us now carry our smartphones with us everywhere, and high-speed data networks blanket the developed world. If I asked you the capital of Angola, it would hardly matter anymore whether you knew it off the top off your head. Pull out your phone and repeat the question using Google Voice Search, and a mechanized voice will shoot back, “Luanda.” When it comes to trivia, the difference between a world-class savant and your average modern technophile is perhaps five seconds. And Watson’s Jeopardy! triumph over Ken Jennings suggests even that time lag might soon be erased—especially as wearable technology like Google Glass begins to collapse the distance between our minds and the cloud. (via Cognitive enhancement: How the Internet is expanding our minds. - Slate Magazine)

The Internet and mobile technology have begun to change that. Many of us now carry our smartphones with us everywhere, and high-speed data networks blanket the developed world. If I asked you the capital of Angola, it would hardly matter anymore whether you knew it off the top off your head. Pull out your phone and repeat the question using Google Voice Search, and a mechanized voice will shoot back, “Luanda.” When it comes to trivia, the difference between a world-class savant and your average modern technophile is perhaps five seconds. And Watson’s Jeopardy! triumph over Ken Jennings suggests even that time lag might soon be erased—especially as wearable technology like Google Glass begins to collapse the distance between our minds and the cloud. (via Cognitive enhancement: How the Internet is expanding our minds. - Slate Magazine)

Your word for this problem-solving fetish is “solutionism.” What do you mean by that? What I mean by solutionism is this growing tendency to identify problems based purely on the availability of digital fixes and solutions. For example, it’s possible to make forgetting impossible, because we can all wear our Google Glasses that will store everything we see. Whereas if you actually thought deeply about the role of forgetting in enabling us to become who we are, perhaps you would actually find some redeeming features to that process. (via Why the Internet isn’t the solution to everything - The Globe and Mail)

Your word for this problem-solving fetish is “solutionism.” What do you mean by that? What I mean by solutionism is this growing tendency to identify problems based purely on the availability of digital fixes and solutions. For example, it’s possible to make forgetting impossible, because we can all wear our Google Glasses that will store everything we see. Whereas if you actually thought deeply about the role of forgetting in enabling us to become who we are, perhaps you would actually find some redeeming features to that process. (via Why the Internet isn’t the solution to everything - The Globe and Mail)

“WHEN your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting” is the reassuring slogan greeting visitors at the Web site for LivesOn, a soon-to-launch service that promises to tweet on your behalf even after you die. By analyzing your earlier tweets, the service would learn “about your likes, tastes, syntax” and add a personal touch to all those automatically composed scribblings from the world beyond. (via The Perils of Perfection - NYTimes.com)

“WHEN your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting” is the reassuring slogan greeting visitors at the Web site for LivesOn, a soon-to-launch service that promises to tweet on your behalf even after you die. By analyzing your earlier tweets, the service would learn “about your likes, tastes, syntax” and add a personal touch to all those automatically composed scribblings from the world beyond. (via The Perils of Perfection - NYTimes.com)

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Twitter / mkirschenbaum: “To write in the digital age …
The service uses Twitter bots powered by algorithms that analyse your online behaviour and learn how you speak, so it can keep on scouring the internet, favouriting tweets and posting the sort of links you like, creating a personal digital afterlife. As its tagline explains: “When your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting.” (via Why death is not the end of your social media life | Media | The Guardian)

The service uses Twitter bots powered by algorithms that analyse your online behaviour and learn how you speak, so it can keep on scouring the internet, favouriting tweets and posting the sort of links you like, creating a personal digital afterlife. As its tagline explains: “When your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting.” (via Why death is not the end of your social media life | Media | The Guardian)

This was why the Mystic Pad so intrigued Freud: It was a more precise analog of the mind’s abilities. Like the Mystic Pad, “the perceptive apparatus of our mind consists of two layers,” he observed, “of an external protective shield against stimuli whose task it is to diminish the strength of excitations coming in, and of a surface behind it which receives the stimuli.” Spectacles, ear-trumpets, and the Mystic Pad all measured up to the human standard: By being like a human’s abilities, they were well-suited to extending those abilities. (via The ‘Mystic Writing Pad’: What Would Freud Make of Today’s Tablets? - Rebecca J. Rosen - The Atlantic)

This was why the Mystic Pad so intrigued Freud: It was a more precise analog of the mind’s abilities. Like the Mystic Pad, “the perceptive apparatus of our mind consists of two layers,” he observed, “of an external protective shield against stimuli whose task it is to diminish the strength of excitations coming in, and of a surface behind it which receives the stimuli.” Spectacles, ear-trumpets, and the Mystic Pad all measured up to the human standard: By being like a human’s abilities, they were well-suited to extending those abilities. (via The ‘Mystic Writing Pad’: What Would Freud Make of Today’s Tablets? - Rebecca J. Rosen - The Atlantic)

London-based artist Ben West thought it would be nice to have a hardbound version of that graphic mélange, so with the help of some friends, he decided to make one for himself. His book, Google, shows the first image result for every word from the Oxford Pocket Dictionary. (via 1 | A Dictionary Whose Definitions Are Google Image Results | Co.Design: business innovation design)

London-based artist Ben West thought it would be nice to have a hardbound version of that graphic mélange, so with the help of some friends, he decided to make one for himself. His book, Google, shows the first image result for every word from the Oxford Pocket Dictionary. (via 1 | A Dictionary Whose Definitions Are Google Image Results | Co.Design: business innovation design)

prostheticknowledge:

Polaroid Cacher 

Student project from Adrià Navarro and DI Shin turns an old Polaroid camera into desktop printer, designed to capture special moments in your online life - video embedded below:

Polaroid Cacher from Adrià Navarro on Vimeo.

The Polaroid Cacher is a camera that allows you to take traditional instant pictures of your digital experiences. It’s an ambient device, part physical and part digital, meant to address the fleeting nature of online interactions.

We believe that our daily online activity –conversations, discoveries, games– is as meaningful as our activity in the physical world and, as such, should be preserved the same way we try to capture every important moment in our life. Especially because most of this experiences will be soon forgotten, lost under layers of information, databases and outdated services.

Given the powerful association of instant photography with memories, people and nostalgia –rather than with photographic quality– we designed our camera as a fictional Polaroid product. One that captures digital media in a traditional analog format, as means to create tangible, durable mementos of our digital life.

More Here

"The very first prototype of Treehouse, which was really just a technical test, had only one feature – you could take a photo and share it within our small group of friends. That was it. Nothing had been built yet for interaction, so there were no photo titles, no “liking,” and no commenting. It was just a feed of photos. And because we didn’t care about the technology or who would see what we were sharing, we used Treehouse as a private group communication tool. Instead of taking photos to maintain memories, we used them for instantaneous communication. And the resolution of information in a photo, it turns out, is huge when compared to text or even to voice. A photo can tell you where someone is, what time it is, who they are with, and much more. When you focus heavily on artistry, which Instagram does, it becomes much harder to take photos that truly represent the moment you’re sharing."
Photography’s Third Act | Dustin Curtis
Explores how media infrastructure, not content, shapes contemporary digital culture Digital Memory and the Archive, the first English-language collection of the German media theorist’s work, brings together essays that present Wolfgang Ernst’s controversial materialist approach to media theory and history. His insights are central to the emerging field of media archaeology, which uncovers the role of specific technologies and mechanisms, rather than content, in shaping contemporary culture and society. (via Digital Memory and the Archive — University of Minnesota Press)

Explores how media infrastructure, not content, shapes contemporary digital culture Digital Memory and the Archive, the first English-language collection of the German media theorist’s work, brings together essays that present Wolfgang Ernst’s controversial materialist approach to media theory and history. His insights are central to the emerging field of media archaeology, which uncovers the role of specific technologies and mechanisms, rather than content, in shaping contemporary culture and society. (via Digital Memory and the Archive — University of Minnesota Press)