Year: 2008

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My del.icio.us bookmarks for June 25th through June 28th

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between June 25th and June 28th:

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Openness and Innovation

My latest post over at the TCS Innovations blog was drawn from the introduction to the Openness and Innovation panel at the recent Media Futures Conference

Just as open societies have, since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, been the pre-condition for the social, cultural, scientific and technological innovations that have created the modern world – with all its flaws a better place to be a human than any time in the last 50,000 years – so open standards and open systems have provided the underpinning for the network world.

Read the whole thing here.

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My del.icio.us bookmarks for June 16th through June 23rd

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between June 16th and June 23rd:

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Changing the Way We Think

[As ever, you can read this on the BBC News website, and Nick Carr has picked up on it]

In her recently published book ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century, Professor Susan Greenfield brings her considerable expertise as a neuroscientist to bear on the question of whether and how our current use of computers is changing the way our brains work.

Greenfield argues that the visual stimulus we get from screen-based information and entertainment differs so markedly from that available to previous generations that certain areas of the brain, specifically those areas that are older in evolutionary terms and retain the capacity to alter as a result of experience, may be affected in ways that express themselves a changes to personality and behaviour.

It’s an interesting hypothesis, and one that has the virtue of being experimentally testable, unlike many other claims about the effect of modern living on human psychology.

Continue reading “Changing the Way We Think”

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Being watched

[As ever, you can read this online on the BBC News website]

The chances are that I’ll be getting a letter from my internet service provider in the next few weeks telling me that they’ve been watching my network activity closely and think I’ve been breaking the law.

Virgin Media, who used to be called ntl before they acquired Virgin Mobile and turned themselves into a ‘four-play’ media company, has announced that it is working with record industry lobby group the British Phonographic Industry to write to customers whose network connection seems to have been used to download unlicensed content.

Continue reading “Being watched”

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Spotted in Sao Paulo


Sao Paulo

Originally uploaded by BillT.

On a random bookstand along Av Paulista. I can’t imagine finding Bukowksi, Baudelaire, Neal Cassidy, Anais Nin, Erasmus, Emily Dickinson – and Garfield – for sale on a stall in the UK!

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Sao Paulo: night sky from the roof


Sao Paulo: night sky from the roof

Originally uploaded by BillT.

This is what it looked like on the 15th floor yesterday evening around 8pm local time. The city just goes on and on, in all directions, stretching around me. I’d swear it was growing as I looked.

Today has been a lot of fun with Mark and Sarah, also here for the conference. We went to the Museum of Art, a fabulous modern building on Av Paulista, with some wonderful European work (Titian, Botticelli, Monet, Picasso) and some great modern Brazilan stuff too.

Then lunch in a little restaurant filled with people on their lunch break – no real sign of tourists around here, it’s not that sort of city. And now back at the hotel for a break and to catch up on work stuff and prepare for tomorrow’s talk.

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My del.icio.us bookmarks for June 7th through June 11th

Here’s what I tagged on del.icio.us between June 7th and June 11th: