email me: chris@chris-karath.com
April 2011
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Sat 4/23/11 12:32pm #
Surfing
In days gone by, people would sit in front of the television and channel surf. Now a days of course we are much more advanced, we can sit in front of our desktops/laptops/tablets and phones and surf the internet instead.
It's a tremendous amount of progress.
So while I busily did “not much” this morning, through the power of social networking (Twitter and Facebook) I was also able to follow dozens of other people this morning as they did “not much” as well.
Again, a tremendous amount of progress. Before people would have to wonder what their acquaintances were not doing. Now one can be constantly connected to the non-activities of others as well.
Little but not much sarcasm intended. The internet still continues to be pretty much the most interesting thing going. But it's not so shiny as to not poke a little fun at it on occasion.
Tablets
Switching gears, it seems like everyone on my Twitter (and by everyone, I suppose I mean 4 or 5 people) are getting iPad 2s soon. Apparently Apple is having a hard time keeping the things in stock and most people are having a multiple week wait to get one. It's only April, but typically as sumer or spring approaches people get outside and spend less time with their computers, but given the portable nature of the tablets and the still growing popularity of social networks, maybe that will be less the case this year.
What's next?
Scanning my Google Reader this morning, I am still left with the thought, “what's next?”. Social Networking and tablet's seem like such a bright event horizon, that so far I'm having a little challenge seeing what's over it to what's next when they become ubiquitous.
Is there something out there happening that I'm not seeing?
“Regular folk” will likely, this year, start getting Android and Apple smartphones in massive numbers. The more “techy folk” will probably all have iPads by the end of the year. Twitter and Facebook will continue to shift people away from voice and text unless real time communication is a necessity. It's trivial to subscribe to news about all your interests now, and with so much entertainment streaming to our devices there is always something to watch, listen to and read. The personal media/info cocoon seems to be on the verge of being perfected this year for the masses.
So I guess, following that logic, if the internet has reached a point where it can completely entertain the individual, perhaps connecting groups of people in real time should be next?
With my cable internet, a comfy chair and an assortment of screens, there is no need to leave the cocoon, but there is still the desire to.
Social network app makers need to stop focusing on sharing. We can all share anything easily now.
That's done.
But how do we come together for a flash mob/group concert. How do pez/stamp/vinyl/sneaker collectors organize a massive meetup in realspace efficiently and regularly? How can people come together for 2 hours and paint a school's fence, or 10 people show up to rake an old person's yard.
There are ways to do those things sure, but how do you make such activities as ubiquitous to find and convenient as Facebook has made keeping up with your friend's children's birthday photos?
And what new public spaces need to be invented to allow these flash groups to come together for an hour or two? For business, you see little spots of coworking locations pop up here or there, but in my opinion for the knowledge worker a small home office is going to be the most effective place to work if you aren't in a big office. But where will the coworking of socialization happen? You don't want a flash mob of strangers in your backyard. But if there was a MeetingSpace where 20 people could use paypal to spontaneously contribute $2 to rent for 2 hours? What cool things could people connected by the internet come together to do? Maybe just a board game, or maybe people rent a location to watch their favorite series season finale together, or maybe it's just a lecture or a vacation slide show presentation.
Sharing is nice, but people have to get together and solve how they can actually connect people in real space instead of just screens. The pathfinder robot on Mars does wonderful things by remote, but two astronauts together on location would do more in a day than such a virtual connection would do in a month. But that's mostly what the internet is today, virtual connections. And as of yet, noone seems to have an effective solution for real connections. We're still trapped in, lets meet at the the corner bar, and let's face it, the corner bar isn't good for much beyond drinking and swapping informal stories. We can use the internet to do more, I'd hope something like that would be what's next. But more likely we'll probably just get a holographic iPad 3 next year. “Help me Obi-wan, you're my only hope.”
I want to hear your 
Got it thru dealextreme for $6.70. Outputs video to tv well too. Looking forward to using it in hotel next time we travel. Probably wont use it at home since the mac mini works a bit better for most things.
Flickr: Fri 04-22-11 17:56:32 -0400
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Sun 4/10/11 9:57am #
Spent first day in San Fransisco.
Nice city, but not exactly what I expected so far.
We've been up by Fisherman's Warf and Pier 39 for the most part, but we also got down to Chinatown as well the edge of the financial district.
Things that have struck me differently. Haven't really seen any fast food chains around this area. Very little to non-existent advertising anywhere in this part of town either. Both are very notable because the foot traffic hustling too and fro Saturday was quite immense-- people everywhere.
Scarfs around people's necks seem to be big as well. Not sure that's a San Fran thing, but given the weather which has been nice when in the sun but then cold as soon as you hit the shade and get hit with those Bay Area breezes, scrafes seem a practical idea.
We're off for more exploration today.
