A blog of aggregated miscellanea and things I like uncovered from my daily travails. I'm @jacobjay, a peripatetic designer/developer of British persuasion, having interests in gastronomy, fashion, technology, interiors and sustainability. I'm currently living between New Delhi and France, working on a Lua web platform and e-commerce. I dig Macs, mountain biking and smelly cheese.
↩ Jacob's Ephemerata
Posts tagged “technology”
“ Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable. ”
Kevin Kelly; via Ben Hammersley’s ‘My speech to the IAAC’: «anything that is dismissed on the grounds of the technology-not-being-good-enough-yet is going to happen». «It remains, in too many circles, a matter of pride not to be able to programme the video recorder. That’s pathetic.»
What’s the Amish community’s stance on cars?
«To the extent that you are mobile in an automated or motorized way with something like a car or motorcycle or fast moving tractor, you’ve increased your radius of contact with other human beings, but at the same time you dilute the quality of contact within that radius. So you can have more contact with a lot more people, but the quality of your relationships with those people, especially the people who are your immediate neighbors, is diluted. You don’t rely on them as much. It really drastically undermines the community.»
From the CNN article ‘Despite horses and buggies, Amish aren’t necessarily low-tech’; via No Tech Magazine.
Ruud Elmendorp reports on landmine-sniffing rats from Tanzania on Rocketboom.
swinglet CAM
The swinglet CAM, is a safe and easy-to-use flying camera. It takes high-resolution pictures automatically based on user-defined GPS waypoints. It will be your eyes in the sky.
“ Consider that a child starting school this year will not leave until 2023. Now think about how much you hand-write today and imagine how much less you’ll be writing in 2023. I can’t see handwriting retaining its privileged position forever. ”
Fraser Spiers blogging his progress introducing iPads to a Scottish school.
Gravity Assisted Power
«six years of research and development […] The Feltenberger Pendulum, a unique double reciprocating device uses the force of gravity to help provide the power to [manually] pump [and filter] water»
Energy Entrepreneurs
A few good video interviews with sustainable energy entrepreneurs from around the world, by Global Post.
“ In the future I can see data centres becoming part of the [community] heating infrastructure, since what we do from a simple perspective is turn electricity into heat! ”
FRONTLINE: ‘digital nation’
Want to hear some South Korean kids sing about netiquette? Well here’s a distraction! Oh but you heard the news that multitasking is turning human-kind into imbeciles didn’t you? So close that Facebook window before hitting play, and for the love of all that is good concentrate. This PBS report looks behind the research and asks us, «is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we’ve gained?»
