Communication // Current TV

Video Conferencing Using AR Technology! | Bit Rebels

Augmented Reality is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical... more

BUILDUSMAXIMUS
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Design Annual 2009 - Communication Arts Annual

The finest design solutions of the past year were chosen by our distinguished jury... more

sk8bs55
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Drawing Messaging - Lexus VCAM

Derrick Welsh finds existing technology and creates something new, useful and unexpected.

Nick8700
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Symbio: VoIP phone becomes an Internet radio | design(dot)fr

Developed for Thomson, the “Symbio” from Elium Studio is a cordless phone... more

BUILDUSMAXIMUS
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NovelQuest | Emperor Series

The Emperor Is the Ruler of All Workstations http://www.novelquest.com/emperor.html

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Advice: How To Maintain Eye Contact With Guys

Featuring America's Love Experts Matt Titus and Tamsen Fadal YourTango is your... more

KCKate
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Breaking through the language barrier

(CNN) -- Communications technology has shrunk the globe, but there remains one large... more

bishopobispo
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The First Mile

Good communication is vital to small farmers who need better access to markets and to... more

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Current Communications

Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. - By Michael Agger - Slate Magazine... more

remanns
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Get into HER, not her PAST

A lot of men obsess over their girlfriend's sexual past. Why? What you find will... more

prestonswagger
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Know Your Place, Meat Creatures

"Machines aren't the ones in charge. The catch? Neither are we."
~ Katherine Hayles, author of "How We Became Posthuman."

Actually, we have become symbionts. Just as a lichen is the marriage of a fungus and an algae, we now live in full partnership with digital technology, which we rely on for the infrastructure of our lives. "If every computer were to crash tomorrow, it would be catastrophic," she says. "Millions or billions of people would die. That's the condition of being a symbiont."

Hayles is among a number of intellectuals who see this dependence as not necessarily bad, but as advancing civilization and, above all, just inevitable. "From Thoreau on, we have had this dream we can withdraw from our technologies and live closer to the natural world, and yet that's not the cultural trajectory that we have followed," says Hayles, a professor of literature at Duke University. "You could say when humans started to walk upright, we lost touch with the natural world. We lost an olfactory sense of the world, but obviously bipedalism paid big dividends."

In the Computer Age, "we are making our environments more responsive to humans' needs and desires than ever before."

Adriana de Souza e Silva, assistant professor of communication at North Carolina State University, says the widespread acceptance of public phoning, texting, surfing and tweeting on mobile devices has changed our lives so that we exist in a duality of the physical and electronic worlds.

"What we are witnessing now is a different kind of public space composed of people who are physically there [but talking to] people who are remote," she says.

She argues that this has actually made us more aware of our surroundings because so many devices are driven by their location and the user's awareness of place. "The BlackBerry might be looking for a local restaurant and a person two blocks away, not overseas. If you're walking downtown and you can access information that's been tagged there, that information suddenly becomes part of that location."

The difficulty, is that we are losing something profoundly human, the capacity to connect deeply to our environment.

A garden truly reveals itself only when its own depths and those of the beholder flow together. But that takes time. "For the gardens to become fully visible in space, they require a temporal horizon that the age makes less and less room for."

He is captivated by the Czech writer Karel Capek, who gave the world the robot in his play "R.U.R." and in it warned that technology would be our ruination. But Capek was also a passionate gardener who wrote "The Gardener's Year," published in 1929. "No one knew better than Capek that the cultivation of the soil and cultivation of the spirit are connatural." He believes gardens hold the key in leading us back into the visible world, because they are three-dimensional and made of living plants that speak to our "biophilia."

"Gardens are the best place to begin this reeducation," he says. Without it, he fears that the prophecy of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Duino Elegies, will become so. "Earth, isn't this what you want; invisibly to arise in us? Is it not your dream to be someday invisible? Earth! Invisible!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121403347.html"Machines aren't the ones in charge. The catch? Neither are we." ~... more

pjacobs51
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Love Buddy

There’s a wild black cat who’s in love with me. He waits at the sliding glass door, near the place I frequently appear by the computer, patiently. If it’s morning, the rising sun hits him and he’ll close his eyes, slightly swaying. But he’s not asleep, just half there. The moment the ground shakes from my two stepping feet, he’s fully alert.

Some days he’s more patient than others. If it takes too long, or if the air is sharpened by fierce wind and bitter cold, I hear him calling.

He tends to repeat himself, “Meow!” Until I open the door, invite him in and stand there, each trying to coax the other across the line. No one wants to be in the cold, but he is absolutely terrified of being inside. Violet and I trapped him and his identical brother in here once and they both, in a furry panic of streaking black mini-panthers, literally, bounced off the walls. These cats are wild.

It’s Buddy and Slasher. Rightly named, Buddy is the nice one. He’s turned out to be quite a lover. Slasher, on the other hand (paw?) will get ya. My little girl is the only one who can tell them apart from looks alone. Their behavior is what gives it away.

As kittens, they always stuck together. The mother cat (who may or may not have been a product of my kitten-adopting days in high school) had an apparent history of trauma, with her tail bent sideways in two places. Needless to say, she was extremely skittish, so her two male kittens were completely feral. The little black kittens are young adults now (more like sleek panthers) and she’s long since disappeared.

Despite their parallel existence and identical looks, Buddy and Slasher are total opposites. While Buddy has discovered the wonders of human touch, Slasher never got over his innate fears. If you reach out your hand to pet Buddy and Slasher is near, he’ll run up and try to slash you. These days, Slasher won’t come around unless he’s very hungry, so it’s usually safe.

Buddy wins me over. After a few minutes of vain efforts to entice him in, I’m pushed to join him outside. Checking on the giant spider who’s made her web above my spot, I sit on the platform, facing Mt. Hood. It’s a different picture each time, but if you can see the mountain – no matter what – it’s wonderful. This morning, a sliver of white clouds cut across, halfway up, against a bright blue sky. It was just after dawn…

He wraps himself around my ankles, nuzzling, until I slowly, gently, pick him up and put him in my lap, the only place he ever wants to be. His big claws extend, digging in and he curls into a ball, hiding his face in me. Purring, he looks up at me, directly into my eyes with some kind of loving awe like, “Who are you human?”

I sort of feel the same about him. I’m in love with the cat who ventured so far that he found something once unimaginable. I’m in love with the fact that he went with it. He’s hilarious to observe in the local animal kingdom, where he engages in frequent acts of flirty play with to the others, cats or dog alike. I love it when he rubs against Peaches (the pit) for a pet, while she presents him a stick, neither really able to help each other out whatsoever.

So, he thinks I’m especially amazing. To Buddy, I’m the one. But I realize if I wasn’t here, it might as well be anyone else in the vicinity who knows how to pet a cat. During our time together, my mind picks up speed, generating brilliant episodes of revelation. It’s like walking into something, backwards: Buddy discovers the love of human touch and I find out how shared inter-species bliss can produce divine thought.

Love – it’s a blessing. Buddy and I adore each other. It’s just as fulfilling as it is simple. And it fits neatly into one little compartment of life. No one would ever be jealous of a cat. But my relationship with him is just like every other! We’re enamored by each other, intoxicated, yet we're both, ultimately, completely interchangeable with practically anyone else around.There’s a wild black cat who’s in love with me. He waits at the sliding... more