Archive for category technology + design

Date: September 18th, 2011
Cate: observations + conclusions + beliefs, society + culture, technology + design

technology makes life too easy

So - Letter From Paris: 28 Days (Without the Internet) by Beth Arnold, in a nutshell:

…this Thursday, Sept. 15, I leave Paris for a remote Greek island. There I’ll submit myself to basic rehab’s 28 days of cleansing from my addiction, of giving my brain and body a much-needed rest. No Googling. No Social Media. No email on any device at all. This exchange of my normal, toxic element for a healthy new natural environment is designed to bring me back into a more direct and complete relationship with myself. I will meditate and exercise every day. I will look for whole and organic foods in order to cook healthy meals. My reading sources will only be in print. If I communicate with someone, I will have to speak with them by telephone. No texting, no Instant Messaging. I will return my life to a human pace.

I read stuff like this and it’s hard for me to see anything but technophobia / naturalistic fallacy, double standards, hypocrisy, and whatever you call reverse chronological snobbery (oh man I love having an excuse to use that term.) Somehow she thinks there’s something different about this era’s technological advancements as opposed to the others, to wit:

unless she’s walking / riding horseback to that island from france (doubtful) she’s going to be taking planes and boats to get there – a few hours on a plane – is that living life at “a human pace?”

her ‘reading sources only in print’ are directly enabled by the web of technology she seems so eager to escape – from inception to production to distribution, everything is streamlined by technology. she’s okay with this, of course, because otherwise she’d have to wait for everything to be done by hand, or else be satisfied with just whatever people are talking about.

and the telephone? really? so back in the good old days they just talked on the telephone instead of this newfangled textin’ and emailin’ – and you know what they were saying a century ago? back in the good old days folks just talked to eachother, or wrote out letters by hand. every era has had thoughts about how things are too easy these days, and back in the good old days everything was more difficult, and they were somehow better off for the inconvenience.

people who think this way annoy me. we’ve got all this cool stuff, which can be used to make our lives so much easier, more comfortable, and enjoyable, and they’re not happy. oh but now things are too easy, they whine. if I were into ad hominems I’d snidely suggest that the problem is with her, not with everyone else, and not with technology. memory serves up ‘anecdotal evidence,’ another relevant relic from college argumentation and research class.

ultimately I see this article as her failing to learn from cypher’s mistake (though I love the irony of cypher eschewing the physical in favour of the virtual, while Beth is doing the opposite.) maybe she’ll really experience “…the emotional, physical, and spiritual journey of our time … the journey from the Internet back to the inner self,” but the fact that she has managed to somehow ‘lose herself’ to the convenience of modern technology makes me question how solid her sense of self was to begin with, and if anything reflects poorly on her own character, not the technology; and I remain unconvinced that this is “the journey that millions of people feel in their hearts they need to take, but haven’t yet been shown the way,” rather than a journey that she feels in her heart she needs to take.

Date: April 5th, 2011
Cate: society + culture, technology + design

but ‘Duke Of Hurl’ just sounds lame

(… duke pukem? duke nukem: whatever?)

I’m not sure I can really muster the energy to speculate on the unreleased Duke Nukem Forever game -- I think it’s hilarious that they took a perpetual April Fools joke and built it into an actual game, but whatever. I mean, seriously, whatever. It’s so far off my radar that I’ve got to admit I’m stuck somewhere between amusement and bemusement at all the discussion surrounding it. I realize that my own tastes tend to weave in and out of my peers’, but seriously? Is this game important?

Because the apparent interest in the face of my lack of interest has, of course, piqued my interest (damn it) I’m going to take a moment to peer through my own smug indifference and… let’s watch a trailer.

Oh wait. Okay okay. let’s watch a real trailer.

huh. Dick-punching, pissing, tits, some genital-related double entendres… and like, duke lighting a cigar with some help from his pet boar, maybe? Do we get to see duke’s cock unblurred in the actual game, I wonder? inb4 ‘duke’s dick’ becomes a 4chan meme. Let’s not get sidetracked, Matt.

So aliens are invading and they’re stealing women, that doesn’t sound particularly promising. The graphics and gameplay I can pick out of the trailer feel like the latest Wolfenstein, lots of colours and flickery lights and splash weapon fx… and I liked that game, but it had some other interesting elements that helped, I think.

This isn’t a fair look, obviously, because trailers are marketing, and I hate marketing. Let’s look at some actual gameplay.

Huh. Big beefy bad guys, big beefy guns… and man, those one-liners. Am I really going to have to sit through him muttering to himself the whole game? “I’m from Las Vegas, and I say: kill ‘em all.”

kind of obnoxious. though an ‘ego’ meter is hilarious.

So I don’t know. what I’m seeing here doesn’t look like anything special. What am I missing? Oh, well, capture the babe mode, or whatever. I’m more of a deathmatch guy, never liked CTF as much…

Well wait. Here’s the question, I guess -- are they doing all this on purpose? Like, are they taking an FPS, stuffing it to bursting with machismo and misogyny (does the one necessitate the other, I wonder?) and then putting it out there as kind of a joke? Ala The Aristocrats? Looking at it from that point of view, I can appreciate it conceptually, I guess… I wonder how that objective would be balanced against the need to appeal to the audience and provide a level of entertainment consistent with the release price (I’m guessing it’ll be the usual $50-ish.) Could it still be a fun game to play without all those obnoxious elements? Do the mechanics actually provide entertainment if you strip out the tits and dicks?

… fuck now I’m curious about playing it.

Date: March 10th, 2011
Cate: matt's life, observations + conclusions + beliefs, society + culture, technology + design, things to think about

stuff to talk about

So… what, I only ever post to the mortality blog when I have a particularly interesting dream, or when someone dies? Is that really worth paying for a domain name?

The mortality blog is meant to record things that might otherwise disappear when I die, let’s be frank. I’m not sure where it all fits, how to get it all out, but it seems important that it be accessible, somewhere, in case someone finds it interesting. In my own totally biased opinion, I’m an intriguing and complicated person. But how much of that matters to anyone who isn’t Matt Lohkamp?

Some of the stuff that might otherwise end up here probably shows up on Facebook. Which is cool, because it almost serves a different purpose – Facebook posts reach a very specific audience of friends and family and coworkers and classmates, who are generally people I feel I can relate to well-enough to discuss sensitive issues. Whereas the mortality blog is public. I mean, no one reads it, but they could if they wanted to – is that significant, that anyone could read my blog but no one does, while only a couple hundred people can read stuff I post on facebook, and a couple dozen actually do?

Well maybe I’ll roll a bunch of topic ideation into the end of this blog post along with a well-intentioned but completely unrealistic resolution to write here more often.

We could talk about money: how much money I make, how much I should be making, the way I decide how much to charge clients, etc. We could also talk about how the practice of tipping makes me uncomfortable.
We could talk about procrastination, a favorite subject, and why I spend my downtime wishing I had something more important to do, only to find myself getting distracted by the most insignificant things when I actually have something more important I should be focusing on.
We could talk about sexuality, because I can’t help having that running through my head every other day of the week.
We could talk about my extremely preliminary attempts to wade into… I don’t know, feminism, privilege, rape culture, whatever all that stuff is; and why I’m even interested in it.
… or on a broader subject, we could look at how I look at things – my approach to new subjects, to sorting out how I feel about things, how I measure the extent to which other people’s feelings figure into my own opinions, etc.
We could talk about life and death, since I’m scared to death of my own mortality (and everyone else’s) and yet can’t seem to help thinking about it sometimes. We could talk about abortion and the death penalty, if we wanted to talk about controversial stuff.
We could talk about video games and computer games, because I have all kinds of experience with that stuff.
We could talk about music. I like lots of different kinds of music – I mean, mostly a few kinds, but the exceptions to the rules are heinous exceptions, and I do take perverse delight in appreciating art that other people ridicule or revile.
Maybe I could do some thinking about the relationship between morality and legality – are they mutually exclusive? Are there issues that are primarily the domain of one or the other? Regardless of how I feel about abortion, gay marriage, and monopolies, should there be laws that address them, either to protect or prohibit?
The extreme degree of disconnect I feel with our government. How is the office of the president of the united states important if nothing he does directly effects me? Same question, senators and governors and mayors. After all the effort of ‘doing the right thing’ and educating myself and voting, does milk cost any less? Does gas? Can I roll through a stop sign with impunity when it’s clear no one is coming? Does anything that our elected officials do actually impact my life? That might be a good thing to write about, yes.
My interest in places like 4chan? I mean yes, perverse appreciate for ridiculed and reviled art, disdain for taboo. Maybe those things would be good to think about.

… that’s some stuff. Oh, and maybe,

why I still haven’t upgraded this blog’s wordpress engine to 3.1, and how funny it is that I call myself a web developer who is good with wordpress.

well I feel better. Maybe sometime in a couple months I’ll actually make another post. I wouldn’t hold my breath (because I’d likely asphyxiate, though I’m pretty good at holding my breath for a long time.)

Date: February 5th, 2009
Cate: technology + design, things to think about

should I buy an electric car?

I mean, duh, of course I should. But when? I just watched ‘who killed the electric car?‘, which is a great film, especially if you’re into corporate conspiracies. It was hard to watch all the despondent drivers of EV1s stand by and let Ford take away their beloved cars – and crappy as my car might be, I understand the sort of investment people have in their automobiles.

But electric cars are expensive, aren’t they? I have no doubt that they’d be cost-effective, but I only spend about $30 on gas a month – a far cry from the amount I’d be spending on car payments if I bought a Prius hybrid, for example. They retail at about $22,000 – and in terms of monthly payments, that’d be $1800 a month over a year, $915 a month over two years, $610 a month over three years (roughly what I’m currently paying for rent), or $460 a month over four years – that’s where it starts to get more affordable, but still, that’s a lot of money, considering I probably spend about $400 on gas a year, even with my car being the shape that its in.

Now, to be fair, I probably don’t really need a Prius – what if I kept my gas-guzzling Geo Prizm (maybe even fixed it up a bit), and bought a little ‘metro’ car to go along with it, one that I’d just drive around the city, but wouldn’t take on long trips, or carry big groups of people in? There’s a place called ‘Eco-motion‘ just down NE Sandy from my house, and it’s got some cool looking vehicles – for instance, I could get an electric scooter for about $3,000, which seems pretty reasonable to me – although they won’t go much faster then around 35, and won’t go much farther then 30 miles per charge. Somehow I think I could find a way to ‘upgrade’ it a bit to go faster or farther, if I wanted, considering all the ‘green DIY’ vibes in portland.

But what I’d really want it something roughly analogous to my Prizm – capable of 60mph, able to seat at least two people, that sort of thing. The cute little ‘Xebra‘s are close – I could get one for $6,000, which would be $500 a month over a year, $250 over two years, $165 over three, et cetera. I probably wouldn’t want to stretch it out for more then a couple years or three, maybe – I just don’t like owing money for that long (my student loans are one of the exceptions I’m willing to make). Even a few months in debt stresses me out. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in, second-guessing every purchase you make. But enough about my insecurities. That Xebra thing is maybe a little faster then the electric scooters, and certainly carries more, so I could use it for groceries and whatever. I could actually buy a small fleet of these electric vehicles for the cost of a new prius hybrid, which is a tantalizing option, and apparently I’m not the only one to think of it, although that article suggests that I might also regret it – like so many other battery-powered devices, the actual operating time is ridiculously removed from the idealized number sold by the manufacturer. ‘Hype Machine‘, an article in Wired, makes me incredibly reluctant to go near anything ‘Zap’ produces.

But they can’t all be bad, right? The idea of a smaller, reasonably-powered vehicle must be attainable. Unfortunately, Zap cars seem to be the bulk of Eco-Motion’s inventory, so that kills my chances of shopping somewhere local, as far as I know. The Tesla Roadster is too luxury, and we’ve already established that the Prius is in the same boat – although maybe a used Prius would be okay? Still, it’s only a hybrid, not a straight-up electric, and the idea of having a car with an electric engine is appealing – I feel like I could have a better chance of getting to know how it works, since there would be a few less parts to deal with. But this is where my knowledge and interest runs out – with no new options in front of me, I guess I just have to wait a few years until this stuff becomes more viable, and more readily available. If anyone knows of a good way to get ahold of a reasonably-powered plug-in car for less then 10k from a company that isn’t sleazy, let me know. Otherwise, electric cars are going to be like laser eye surgery – I’ll get some one day, but until then, I’ll have to make do with what I’ve got.

Date: July 11th, 2008
Cate: technology + design

visual representation of this blog

So I ran across this fantastic tool called ‘Wordle‘ via a ridiculous raw youth, and here’s what it has to say about the mortality blog: