I like the design of this Melitta pot for pouring water over a manual drip coffee filter. You’d buy something like this for the spout design, which makes it easier to control and maintain a steady pour over the coffee grinds.
So far I’ve only been able to find a wood-handled version for $90 in Korea, and a synthetic handled one for $45 in Japan. Maybe if I’m feeling spendy I’ll get one someday.
“Hand-drip” coffee is really popular in Korea and Japan, but less so in the American cafes I’ve visited. Instead, machines like the Clover or siphon pots have gotten the most attention from both customers and press.
However, there’s something about the performance of drip coffee that I find appealing, especially when taken to the extremes of technical fanaticism that the Japanese (and subsequently Koreans) have gone. Most coffee geeks here in Asia seem to obsess over the intricacies of pouring methods, timing, etc. as if this is the height of coffee production. It is indeed more active and engaging than a french press, and the careful pouring styles have a finesse and theatricality that I appreciate in the coffee ritual – even if it might be a bit superfluous to the results in the cup.
This is the main reason I’ve never seen the point of joining twitter. There’s no content there that I’m interested in. That is, until the Iranian protests. But even then it was difficult to find what I was looking for.
…the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue – Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia’s edits ii. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.
Tukwila is less a building than a machine for computing. “You look at a typical building,” Manos explained, “and the mechanical and electrical infrastructure is probably below 10 percent of the upfront costs. Whereas here it’s 82 percent of the costs.” Little thought is given to exterior appearances; even the word “architecture” in the context of a data center can be confusing: it could refer to the building, the network or the software running on the servers.
There’s an article in the Korea Times detailing some of the current issues in Korean internet policy. The government is expanding its regulation of internet use, mandating the collection of personal data (equivalent of social security ID) for sites with over 100,000 visitors and increasing the powers of law enforcement to intercept data and invade privacy. This is coming up against companies like Google that refuse to comply with demands for personal information gathering (actually the article states that Google is the only major site that refused…interesting). The end result being a counter-productive incentive to ditch restrictive native web services in favor of foreign competition. Good job.
I’m curious how this is being sold to the public. What rhetoric is being used? Or is it just unashamedly clamping down on political freedom of speech vis-a-vis anonymity online?
Strong IP is usually branded as “good” for “creators” but the main impact of the digital revolution has been to advantage non-commercial producers relative to commercial producers, and the main impact of strong IP law is to shift the balance of power back to the commercial world. We’re accustomed to thinking of capitalism in opposition to socialism, state-direction production, but in the information realm the main opposition is between capitalism and activity that is simply non-commercial in nature.
Photo: Taking a break from reading @ Yri Cafe in Hongdae
Started reading Yochai Benkler’s Wealth of Networks. It’s pretty comprehensive making the case for the importance of policy change and institutional shift in favor of openness and freedom for information technologies (away from incumbent industries’ and government support for proprietary models that stress ownership and access control). His key argument is that there is potential in the network communications paradigm for advancing justice, democracy, and freedom. How much of this potential will be realized depends on key decisions made now – regarding network neutrality, copyright and patent policy, the DMCA, DRM, etc. etc.
It’s dense though, I’ll write more when I have time to digest it. But so far so good – it makes a lot of points that I was trying to get at in my thesis, but only marginally succeeded in supporting.
I never understand people who claim liberal bias in the media. The picture is obviously more complicated than that, with various motivating factors influencing what stories are covered and how.
This is during the news cycle when the stimulus was being covered.
Sorry if it’s a bit morbid, but I was just thinking… What happens to your Facebook or Myspace or other virtual presence after you die? (Or whichever networking site may be popular in the future…). Does it become a de facto memorial to you? Does it take on a life of its own, a repository of memories and past conversations to be revisited and added to by friends leaving last wishes or addressing messages to you long after, much as you might address a grave site symbolically? Something that provides comfort to others?
Is there anything that should be, or can be, designed into a site for that? Is a deceased person’s e-presence a bug or a feature in an online community/social network?
Going off on a tangent spurred by the persistence of our virtual silhouettes…
Imagine some future anthropologist sifting through old servers of myspace pages or facebook profiles and analyzing the recorded conversations of bygone eras and individuals…
Imagine looking back on the history of our generation’s recorded personalities and relationships and general lack of privacy. Without a doubt future presidents and leaders and historical figures will have errant blog posts, forum discussions, comments and photos, etc. More data, and I guess transparency, than any time previous.
Maybe 20 or 30 years from now, it could be common to have old AIM logs and other things dug up during elections (let alone the current practice of employers googling you and checking your Facebook profile). If you have any ambitions, maybe it’s a good idea to watch what you say online
For a while now, a Korean blogger under the name Minerva has drawn a lot of attention for his writing on the economic collapse going against the official line of the Korean government. Some speculated that he was an insider posting anonymously.
Now someone alleged to be Minerva has been arrested, and he turns out to be a 30-something with little more than a 2 year degree. It’s part of a seemingly wider effort to curtail freedom of speech and press, as the major broadcasters are coming under threat of greater control and some officials advocate legislation to do away with anonymity on the Korean parts of the internet.
Among governments struggling to contain the global financial crisis, South Korea set a rare and controversial example over the weekend by arresting a popular blogger who was accused of undermining the financial markets but worshipped by many Koreans as an online guru.
The man, known throughout South Korea by the pen name of Minerva – after the Roman goddess of wisdom – upset the government with his doomsayer’s forecasts for the economy and his satirical attacks on President Lee Myung Bak’s policies.
But when some of his predictions on the markets proved right, he gained a huge following among South Koreans fretting over an uncertain economic future.
Park Dae Sung’s arrest on Saturday on charges of spreading false online information with a harmful intent – a crime punishable by up to five years in prison – came as the South Korean government was escalating its efforts to fight the fallout of the global financial turmoil.
[...]
The government camp hopes that Park’s case will lend weight to the Lee government’s attempt to regulate the country’s vigorous and unruly online communities. But the main opposition Democratic Party has accused the government of gagging the Internet, a popular venue for anti-government criticism.
The story is less about the content of Minerva’s posts than the government response, which is a great embarrassment and disappointment. Korea is so advanced in many fields of IT development, yet displays such backwardness in action and policy.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will work with Internet service providers to cut abusers’ access if they ignore repeated warnings.
The move ends a controversial program that saw the Recording Industry Association of America sue about 35,000 people since 2003 for swapping songs online. Because of high legal costs for defenders, virtually all of those hit with lawsuits settled, on average for around $3,500. The association’s legal costs, in the meantime, exceeded the settlement money it brought in.
Though their new strategy, issuing warnings and then getting ISPs to shut off service to file sharers, isn’t much better. And I wonder how legal it is.
Watch a ton of pundits on FOX circa 2006-2007 ridicule Peter Schiff (who was apparently Ron Paul’s economic advisor) as he speaks the truth about the impending economic crisis. Everyone else derides his “pessimism” and scoffs as he describes essentially what would happen.
This is one of the great things about Youtube and democratized media creation.
A lot of people are excited by the Obama win. It is, no doubt, historic and promising. I wonder though if any smart people in the campaign or surrounding it have plans to channel and repurpose the high degree of interest and engagement generated by Obama’s message, especially among the young and generally apathetic. The passage of Proposition 8 is a reminder that progressive change isn’t assured.
Can the virtual and social infrastructure built up to win the presidency be retooled? Didn’t Obama create a sort of online social network with a fair amount of success? It would be interesting to see that idea taken beyond the election to play a role in progressive governance, mobilization of support and activism, etc.
Check it. Though right now it seems quite Web 1.0, churning out press releases. Kinda lame. We’ll see if it turns into anything more exciting. With a domain name like ‘change.gov’ I’d expect something more…
HAHA this is great. Dude tapes electrodes to his face and syncs the shocks to a music visualizer, so his face contorts with the various sounds of the song.
I just checked on my sole contribution to Wikipedia, the entry for Netwar, and interestingly it’s largely unchanged except for a few cosmetic edits. I can see how people would get addicted to this, there’s a kind of nerdy sense of accomplishment and purpose in compiling and ordering human knowledge…
China’s state-run news agency made a gaffe Thursday when it published an “in space” conversation among the Chinese astronauts even before they left Earth.
I thought about making a ‘cyberculture’ category for my postings, but is there really any point to distinguishing online from offline culture now that ‘cyberculture’ is mainstream? Is the line between the two, to the extent that it exists, largely irrelevant?
The Associated Press has decided that fair use no longer applies to them, and is attempting to charge $12.50 (and up) to quote as little as 5 words from an article.
This is an example of the tension embedded in new media, between cultural autonomy, democratization, and the enhancement of capability on the one hand, versus the creation of potentially more invasive methods of control, censorship, cooptation, and extraction of profit on the other. It’s a political issue (at the very least). We need smart policies regulating technology and communications, and smart laws protecting our rights.
“Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.
Welcome to a world in which you won’t own any of your technology or your music or your books, because ensuring that someone makes their profit margins will justify depriving you of the even the most basic, commonsensical rights in your personal, hand-level household goods.”
In the same vein, Bruce Schneier echoes this concern in light of wider designs for embedded limitations, such as kill-switches in OnStar that can remotely shut-off your car, or overrides in your cell-phones and other gear that might forcibly set them to silent in a movie theater, or turn them off in an airplane, (etc.).
“This is really about media companies wanting to exert their control further over your electronics. They not only want to prevent you from surreptitiously recording movies and concerts, they want your new television to enforce good “manners” on your computer, and not allow it to record any programs. They want your iPod to politely refuse to copy music to a computer other than your own. They want to enforce their legislated definition of manners: to control what you do and when you do it, and to charge you repeatedly for the privilege whenever possible.”
THE magazine is yet another trend-spotting zine, but it’s pretty accessible, had a few things that I found genuinely interesting, and the hype is kept at a bearable level.
