norayoung.ca | At the Corner of Technology and Culture
Nothing To Do With Anything
This has nothing really to do with technology and culture, just an image I love from my recent trip to Sicily. It’s the duomo in the Ortygia island part of the city of Siracuse. It was built in the 7th century, on top of, and incorporating, the much earlier Temple of Athena (5th c BCE). [...]
How Soon Is Now?
Sending a note to yourself in the future is nothing new. We’ve long called a voicemail message to home, or made use of some of the many ‘send me a message in the future’ online services, such as Future Me. Consider, though, Futuris.tk. (via Crunchbase). The premise is that you can message yourself, or others [...]
Everyone Loves a Zombie
Fox News (yes, I know) is reporting that a digital road sign in Austin, Texas was hacked recently. The impish hackers changed the sign to read “Zombies Ahead”. Heh, zombies. Foxnews.com says that: “According to the blog i-hacked.com, some commercial road signs, including those manufactured by IMAGO’s ADDCO division, can be easily altered because their [...]
First One is in the Can!
We just put the first episode of the new season of Spark to bed. We’ve been working with Chris Kelly from CBC Radio 3, while Dan has been working elsewhere for a little bit. It’s amazing how much more exciting it is when you actually hear it as audio, rather than as a bunch of [...]
I’m a Hick (tech)!
I’ve been thinking a bit lately about whether location matters anymore. Now that we have all these tools for remote collaboration, does it still matter if you are physically proximate to colleagues? To a larger community? And if it doesn’t, why do we still get together in physical space? I suspect there are things we [...]
Back in Action
Well, that little hiatus turned out to be, um, lengthy, but the show seems to be a bird in flight now, so I’m eager to get back to the crisper! I’d like it to be a scratch pad for some of what I’m working on, particularly issues around how our sense of place and time [...]
My New Show!
My new show, Spark, is going on the air on CBC radio one in September. Woo Hoo! More deets to follow. Many thanks to Nicola, Tom and Pedro for being amazing producers! There’s a little more about what the show is about at the show blog
The Pros and Cons of Viral
Marc Andreessen has a fascinating look at Facebook Platform. He looks, first, at the difference between applications and platforms, but then, at how the insanely viral quality of Facebook can create huge scalability problems for successful applications. (Think of the bad rap Twitter got when it looked as though they were having problems with this). [...]
Reboot!
Here’s one way to deal with info overload. The Guardian has a story about bloggers Fred Wilson and Jeff Nolan who declared email bankruptcy. They were so far behind on emails, they simply announced that they weren’t going to reply to any. “I am starting over,” said one.
New Blog
Hi, I admit it may seem ridiculous that I’m starting a new blog, when I update poor crispermachine so infrequently, but I’ve set up this Vox blog to focus specifically on the link between new social media and MSM, with an eye to experimenting with new ways of doing journalism. Please come visit! Leave your [...]
