Feb 09
“Are you depressed?” begins every article on this subject. I’m just going to go ahead and assume you are. But don’t kill yourself yet. Scientists from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine have invented a smartphone that’s sure to annoy as well as depress you. A smart phone spots symptoms of depression by harnessing all the sensor …
Feb 09
Since m1k3y just declared flâneur to be the word of the week and thinking on that very subject helped inspire me to quit Facebook, I thought I’d share another old essay that, once upon a time, helped define some of the sensibility of this blog. Allow me to introduce, The Data Dandy. The data dandy collects …
Feb 08
For the interested, here’s a paper on Robot Vacuum Cleaner Personality and Behavior. Abstract: In this paper we report our study on the user experience of robot vacuum cleaner behavior. How do people want to experience this new type of cleaning appliance? Interviews were conducted to elicit a desired robot vacuum cleaner personality. With this knowledge in mind, …
Feb 08
![SyNAPSE2[1]](http://thegrumpyowl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/SyNAPSE21-150x150.jpg "SyNAPSE2[1]")
Here’s something that’s pretty old –from April– but I haven’t seen much mention of it around. DARPA has announced that it is working to build electronic neural architectures that can learn, adapt and respond to situations on the battlefield. DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (aptly shortened to SyNAPSE) program aims to develop …
Feb 07
I quit Facebook. And when I quit, I stay quit. Not to protest anything. Not to make any sort of statement. I’m just sick of the platform. It doesn’t work for me. I want to get some value out of my time on the internet. That means, I want to get more out of it …
Feb 04
Art, maybe just a translation of raw nature. Brilliant Noise by Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt Avaliable on DVD! with 12 alternate soundtracks semiconductorfilms.com/WorldsInFluxDVD.html Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some …
Feb 02
This video is about exploring the spatial qualities of RFID, visualised through an RFID probe, long exposure photography and animation. It features Timo Arnall of the Touch project and Jack Schulze of BERG. More here nearfield.org/2009/10/immaterials-the-ghost-in-the-field berglondon.com/blog/2009/10/12/the-ghost-in-the-field/ One of the interesting things about modern tech is that it makes people deal with things they only previously imagined …
Jan 30
As the 90s came to a close, the business of music began to change profoundly. New technology allowed artists to record and produce their own music and music videos, and the internet became a free-for-all distribution platform for musicians to promote themselves to audiences across the world. The result was an influx of artists onto …
Jan 27
This is well worth a watch. Information technology has become a ubiquitous presence. By visualizing the processes that underlie our interactions with this technology we can trace what happens to the information we feed into the network.
Jan 22
This tattoo purports to be the first random tattoo in the world. Each time you scan the QR code tattoo you will see something different: Videos, pictures, phrases, weather forecast, tweets … every time something new. A lot of the thinking on this subject is about personal branding — tattoos that lead to your website, …
Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (sci-fi), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap.
