Dwell On It » Culture

The golden rule of arts and sciences

Tateru Nino — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:14:57 +0000

SOPA isn’t dead. Far from it.

The people behind that bill and a host of other bills over the years are able to bring that bill, or its equivalent, back as many times as they please, until they have a legislature and president willing to pass it and sign it.

SOPA primarily is supported by money, but it is primarily only opposed by speech.

Money buys votes, essentially. It buys the votes of the legislature, because money buys your vote.

The end of the world (as we know it)

Tateru Nino — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:44:33 +0000

I’m an end-of-the-world survivor. Through my life, there have been dozens of dates set for doomsday. Magic comets, mysterious asteroids, the second coming, planetary alignments, the rapture, you name it. People keep picking dates and years that the world will end – so many that I don’t think I’ve lived through a single year when there has not been at least one prediction that the world would end that year.

Stubbornly, the world has refused to end, much to the embarrassment and chagrin of many doomsday prophets.

Welcome to 2012.

The greatest danger to our teenagers

Tateru Nino — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:30:31 +0000

The piece that I’m about to reproduce here first appeared in The Age newspaper, on 9 May, 1956. In it, a fiendish danger to society and our youth is laid bare. I’ve left the original article emphasis in place.

The unwisdom of crowds

Tateru Nino — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:01:52 +0000

Much has been made, in recent years, of the so-called “Wisdom of Crowds.” That is, that a diverse group of people with differing opinions and ideologies can produce some surprisingly accurate results in certain situations – with even crowds of non-experts being able to produce a combined result that exceeds the accuracy of individual experts.

Heck, that should not come as much of a surprise, really. Ballots and polling are based around that very principle, even before we were able to concisely articulate it, or demonstrate it with research.

There’s one important condition, though that breaks the whole idea down.


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When did love get weird?

Tateru Nino — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:58:27 +0000

My great-grandmother communicated with her husband-to-be for years.

By post.

With 6-8 weeks delivery time each-way. They met the day before the wedding.

Not a one of her peers thought that was the least bit odd, peculiar or unusual.


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The terrors of my youth

Tateru Nino — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:51:41 +0000

When I was young, Gaddafi was a striking figure. Not handsome by any of my measures, but straight-backed, uniformed, in a military cap and dark glasses. He projected an aura of confidence and of power and of credibility – whether any of that was true or not. He appeared in any number of news stories with the implied subtext: “This is your enemy”

And it was easy to believe.


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The curmudgeon zone

Tateru Nino — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 02:22:21 +0000

Call me crazy, or even curmudgeonly, but I figure if you’re going compare something to Second Life (or compare Second Life to something else) you should at least have some idea about what Second Life actually is.


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ACVA launches the inaugural issue of The Australian Journal of Virtual Art

Tateru Nino — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:09:08 +0000

Edited by Justin Cleme Read more ...

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What will you be doing to remember?

Tateru Nino — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 03:21:35 +0000

As this particular day comes around each year, people often ask “What will you be doing to remember 9/11?”

My answer, this year, is the same as every year.

There are no cyber-bullies

Tateru Nino — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 11:25:06 +0000

There are no cyber-bullies. There are only bullies.

(There are no cyber-criminals either, just criminals, but that is perhaps a topic for another day).

There are many problems with so-called ‘cyber-bullying’, but one of the worst is sticking the prefix ‘cyber-‘ on the front and pretending that it is somehow something different to just plain old regular bullying.

Autodesk acquires Evolver/Avatara/Evolver Pro

Tateru Nino — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 04:40:53 +0000

Confused about what and who Evolver is? I’ve written about them before.

Recently, the Evolver technology, which offers you products like: Avatara, Evolver, and Evolver Pro, has become a part of Autodesk.

Autodesk serves entertainment and design professionals that are looking for ways to make their 3D projects more realistic by adding a human element in the form of crowd simulation. Evolver technology complements the research we are currently doing in the areas of realistic real-time human crowd simulation.

Current Avatara, Evolver, and Evolver Pro customers will be able to access many of the same services previously available. Additionally, we anticipate that many Pro export services will, for a limited time, be made available for free. Longer-term plans will be communicated as soon as they are available.

What sort of relations are we talking, exactly?

Tateru Nino — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:56:05 +0000

Spotted while out at the shops today.

BBC, News Limited, others, gulled by hoax study into IQ/Browsers

Tateru Nino — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:54:58 +0000

So, a big and controversial story circulating at the moment is a study by Aptiquant, where 100,000 people were invited to take an online IQ test, and their results correlated with the make and model of Web-browser that they were using. The results played into popular prejudices, indicating that users of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 had IQs in the ‘moron’ range.

A juicy story indeed, with graphs and charts and all-sorts. Except that it took less than one minute to determine that the company behind the study, Aptiquant, doesn’t appear to exist.


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Uncharted waters

Tateru Nino — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:35:30 +0000

One of the things that we tend to have overlooked over the last three decades – which, if you do a little research, turns out to have been a surprisingly calm and untroubled period compared to the years preceding it – is that nobody actually knows how to make a sustainable economy… well, sustainable.

There’s a number of reasons for this, but anyone telling you that they can do that is talking out of their hat. Throughout mankind’s history, we’ve never figured this out.

New research tells us what we already know about avatars

Tateru Nino — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:15:05 +0000

I’m not actually sure if this is a problem with the research or the reporting.

Basically, what it boils down to is that it is possible to tell if the person who is using an avatar account is the person who usually uses that avatar account by checking to see if they behave differently to how they usually do.

Well, thank-you Captain Obvious.


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Google pulling the plug on Labs

Tateru Nino — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:30:39 +0000

Remember Google’s Labs initiative? It’s all those odd little products and projects and prototypes that Google allows people time to work on for the sake of innovation. If it weren’t for Google Labs you wouldn’t have Google Reader, or Google Maps, or Google Groups, Google Desktop or Gmail.

Those were all products that just didn’t fit with Google’s product line-up at the time. Gmail? Maps? Who would want them provided by Google, right?

Well, now you probably can’t imagine things without them. Google, however, is pulling the plug on this innovative incubator, that has yielded some of its top products in an effort to “streamline” the product portfolio and its development efforts.


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The voices in our heads

Tateru Nino — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:10:20 +0000

Why is it that people open up so much, online? That we make friends faster, may fall in love more readily, that we are faster to trust someone online, whom we do not know. Why we open up to each-other, and exchange more private and intimate details and ideas than we would with any person offline?

You could attribute it to a small measure of relative safety given by pseudonymous identities giving people the freedom to be their genuine selves, but that’s not it. Or, rather, that isn’t all of it. The written word is key.

Of nyms and names

Tateru Nino — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 15:04:56 +0000

Lauren Weinstein has an excellent piece up on Google’s identity controversy which you should read, if identity and its issues are of interest to you. It’s smart and focused and balanced and well-spoken. It’s thoughtful and not overly long.

I’m really going to mess that last one up with my response. Buckle up, girls and boys.

The Tapestry

Tateru Nino — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:13:11 +0000

Othello: Thou’st the look of it. The gleaming in thine eye. All things of dreams and phantoms cleave unto thy very breast, knowing that the dawn is yet near to the skies. I’faith, thy weird finds company with Verity, as were they bedmates or yet twin girl children, indistinguishable and inseparable.

Othello sits down in the armchair opposite from Hamlet

Othello: Does’t think then that the heavens guide thine steps, gentle Hamlet?

Pseudonymity doesn’t necessarily foster bad behaviour

Tateru Nino — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 05:25:59 +0000

I wrote this on Google+, but I’ll repost it here.

Here’s an amusing irony about the ‘real-names’ versus pseudonyms debate. Many ‘real-namers’ object to the existence of pseudonymous profiles on the basis that it gives the pseudonymous free run to ‘act like jerks’ and that this would not happen if they were forced to use their real names.


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