machine-envy

The Trib published a great piece on MIT’s One Laptop Per Child (known as the XO-1) initiative yesterday. It’s a shame they’ve chosen the picture they did for the website, as there are some great ones in the print copy. Plenty available on the internets, though.
New stuff I learnt from this piece:

IBM and Microsoft are […]

It had to happen. After months waiting for my Second Life contact to get around to writing a piece for openDemocracy on theories of innovation in virtual worlds, I have been forced to rehash his thesis in the New Statesman:
“Those who have not yet heard about Second Life, the online virtual world, can’t have read […]

This week’s column in the New Statesman stretches a metaphor. After Tony Neate, director of GetSafeOnline advised UK web surfers to “treat their PC like their car” and maintain it with regular updates, lock it away safely behind a firewall, etc, I go on to suggest that, if we want our PCs to remain open […]

Yesterday was the official launch of a website I helped create earlier this year, ChinaDialogue (Pictures from the launch here). ChinaDialogue is the world’s first truly bilingual interactive publishing platform (I’m not really allowed to call it a blog), as not only do articles appear in English and Chinese, but so do the comments underneath […]

I picked up a copy of Designing Pornotopia in the Arnolfini. Its an excellent read - a collection of essays on various themes (including the eponymous one) but centred around visual culture. In fact, I think the title may do the book an injustice. The topics are much wider than pornotopia. […]