Lab on paper

Lab-on-paper developed for rapid, inexpensive medical diagnostics -- ScienceDaily

Computer Becoming Paper

Very cute. Magic. Though perhaps a skeuomorphism too far?

Computer Becoming Paper 

Stone Book

Michael Rakowitz's exhibit At Documenta 13.

Sound, Spaceship Earth and Fanged Noumena

Very cute: Paper Video Games.

I'm a big fan of Alan Kay (inventor of Object Oriented programming, and general interesting thinker) so I bought the Points of View book.

As usual, this is a connection competition. Suggest interesting parallels, contrasts, connections between the different recent acquisitions shown here.

A couple of free books I've downloaded recently that look interesting.

The Fourth Paradigm (data-driven science) from Microsoft (!)

The New Science of Metagenomics

God knows when I get time to skim read through them. But they both look good.

The main reason I'm linking them here is that I heard about them both via unorthodox means. The metagenomics one was recommended by Stewart Brand in his book Whole Earth Discipline, the Fourth Paradigm in a podcast I was listening to today.

Talented Friend Watch #17 : Scribe's book A World of Corners is available to buy or download free.

Beautiful images.

As Apple prepares (allegedly) to reinvent the book publishing industry, pay attention to Lawrence Lessig on the micro-chunking of copyright.

I've finally got around to reading Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. And though I kind of assumed I knew what it was about from reading other articles from her, and I'm obviously a leftist, I have to say that even I am stunned. Both by how bad things really are. And how well she organizes her arguments, puts the pieces together and finds perfect rhetorical weapons to express the horror and enormity of it.

It's an amazing book, that you should just go and read. In fact, I'm so convinced of the importance of that, that I'm going to make an offer to friends of this blog who want to read it but aren't 100% sure or can't afford it. I'll buy you a copy (up to 5 for different readers). Just put the ordinary, cheap paperback, on an Amazon wishlist (either Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) and point me at it.

Talented Friend Watch #14 : Mar Muriana's publishing house Zimerman Ediciones.

In that recent rant I suggested that we can now do without advertising supported "content" on the internet.

I genuinely believe this is true. Mainly for Shirkian reasons that free information and culture is going to swamp paid information anyway, so there's no need to "support" any of it with adverts.

I also, perhaps more ideologically, believe that reclaiming our culture from the ad-support machine will not only make it better, but will actually have the side-benefit of destroying mass everything (mass-media, mass-consumption and therefore mass-production) and thereby take us forward to a fine-grained mosaic economy of millions of smaller, more varied and sustainable producers.



But all that is beside the point. An astute observer is likely to ask ... "hold on a minute, phil! You run your blogs on Google's Blogger service. You host Mind Traffic Control on Google Application Engine. You rely on Google for web-search. And for maps. And are a heavy Streetview user. All of which is paid with AdSense. What do you mean we can do without advertising?"

To which the answer is ... er ... yes indeed. I would, in fact, accept that the flip-side of my desire to remove advertising from the web and not pay for content, is that hosting should be paid for. And that people like me who are committed to blogging should pay more for it. And perhaps people should pay more for their internet connections too.

And, yes, this risks, of course, de-voicing the poor. But that is a more general question of economic justice. That also needs to be solved. But I believe that society would be better (and a damned sight more efficient) without a huge amount of energy being wasted on handicap signaling.

(BTW : yes, I know the counter-view.)

Anyway, without further ado, let me introduce my new poll :

In a world without advertising support, how much would you pay for a server for your blog / wiki / music / video / feeds etc?

PS : last poll seemed to come out 4 votes that Iraq was a disaster, to 2 that the West "got away" (morally, strategically) with it. Though note that Oli feels that the questions were phrased in such a way that he couldn't sign up to any of them.

Book art

Other recent book purchases ... not sure if there's a hidden connection, but all suggestions welcome.

BTW : Already read Cradle to Cradle. Excellent and inspiring.

Photo Competition



Suggest the hidden (or not so hidden) connections between the two books Amazon just delivered to me.

Talented Friend Watch #13 : Hilan launches his book.

Portuguese-speaking philosophers can follow the blog of the book : Hybris Solta.

Plastic Logic Reader ... very nice.

Roll on the Beer Mat Computer.

I'm debating Simon Wardley (read comments) over what generalist computer programmers with their understanding of abstraction can bring to specialist science.

Meanwhile he finds a great video of embedding electronics in paper.