globalization, art, culture, technology, etc.
Kayo Dot, my favorite band by far, is streaming their new album here. More pop sounding than their old stuff, which isn’t a bad thing, considering composer Toby Driver has covered everything from minimal ambient soundscapes to “chamber metal” to pure dissonant noise.
I think I like their older work better, though.
Found this video illustrating the steps required to make espresso, made by Mark Prince from Coffeegeek.com. I’ve thought about getting a job at a cafe just to learn (and feed my addiction)…
One of these days, when I have the counter-space and $$$$ burning a hole in my pocket.
Rancilio Silvia Espresso machine - $580 and Rancilio Rocky Grinder - $315
NYT Magazine is featuring an article on Jan Chipchase, who has my dream job and whose “Future Perfect” blog is always worth a visit. He’s an anthropologist of sorts, a “human-behavior researcher” or “user anthropologist” employed by Nokia to roam the globe in order to identify how people, especially in emerging markets (i.e. developing countries), are actually using technologies; their social and environmental improvisations (sharing a phone with several people or dealing with lack of electricity), unique needs and wants, etc., in order to design new/better products and services.
The NYT article uses his job to highlight the wider role and potential of the cellphone in globalization and economic growth in the developing world.
“A 2005 London Business School study extrapolated […] that for every additional 10 mobile phones per 100 people, a country’s G.D.P. rises 0.5 percent.”
“A cellphone in the hands of an Indian fisherman who uses it to grow his business — which presumably gives him more resources to feed, clothe, educate and safeguard his family — represents a textbook case of bottom-up economic development, a way of empowering individuals by encouraging entrepreneurship as opposed to more traditional top-down approaches in which aid money must filter through a bureaucratic chain before reaching its beneficiaries, who by virtue of the process are rendered passive recipients.”
This Ugandan improvisation for sending remittances through cellphones shows how people improvise with technology, and illustrates the need/market for virtual banking infrastructure in the developing world:
Someone working in Kampala, for instance, who wishes to send the equivalent of $5 back to his mother in a village will buy a $5 prepaid airtime card, but rather than entering the code into his own phone, he will call the village phone operator (“phone ladies” often run their businesses from small kiosks) and read the code to her. She then uses the airtime for her phone and completes the transaction by giving the man’s mother the money, minus a small commission.
This graph from the NYT is interesting. Why do information and communications technologies tend to be adopted more quickly than, say,washing machines? Is one a luxury and the other a necessity? One is single purpose, the other multipurpose? Higher value? Moore’s law? What of the lag in telephone adoption, versus the rapid spread of radio, way back when?
Arcane Device, “feedback music” by David Lee Myers.
“Since 1987, I have been developing specialized circuitry and electronic systems for the production of my signature ‘Feedback Music’, whose original sounds claim unique sources. The outputs of electronic devices - particularly those intended to create a modification of some kind to an audio signal, such as time delays - are fed, via custom-built mixers, to their own inputs. In this way, these devices never receive signals from the ‘outside world’, and instead feed on a diet of their own product. A whole new function of these devices appears, bearing little relation to their intended purposes. The way I envision it, the devices are provided the opportunity to ’sing their own songs’ […].
Army surplus. Must find sharks to test.
