Blackbeltjones/Work “The cosmos is a deeply dangerous thing to think about - into it, vacant minds expand” - Dr. Jonathan Miller

Thanks Anna…

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Alan Leslie “Fluff” Freeman CBE (born July 6, 1927, Melbourne, Australia, died 27 November 2006 London, England)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Freeman

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“Context-Handback” is something I find that I want nearly everything – or my everyware, at least – to do.

What do I mean?

An inverse-concrete example: something that can’t perform context-handback is my new little iPod shuffle.

I bought it last weekend after a longish break from the Jobs/Ive Hegemon, in order to play some of the iTunes purchased DRM’d gear I’m stuck with, and also because it’s just gorgeous as an object.

More perfect than the perfect thing it seems in both build quality and simplicity.

Foe had owned an original shuffle before but I’d never tried it – I’m finding thought that I really love the surrender to the flow of your own music – music that you perhaps didn’t realise you owned or had neglected, surfaced by the pseudo-stochastic, inscrutable selectah inside the tiny metal extrusion.

Perhaps I’m prepped to enjoy this semi-surprising personal radio station by my other semi-surprising personal radios – last.fm and pandora.

I listen to a lot of last.fm at work, and I find its recommendations only more and more rewarding over time.

But I find I obsess now on feeding it more and more – I want to handback to it from all of my musical consumption – my shuffle, the radio on my N95, shazam-tags from something playing in the pub – everything.

I want to bring it offerings.

And there’s the rub – so little of that musical consumption, in fact the bulk of it done on the go – can be offered back to last.fm.

It’s so frustrating that my musical discoveries and rediscoveries can’t feed back into creating more, or even that I can’t see what I enjoyed in iTunes when I synchronise with
the shuffle.

Faltering steps towards remedying this trivial problem can be seen in something like this hacked-up scrobbler for mobile in S60 python.

More context-handback hopefully in the next few years, until then – unknown pleasures.

Filed under: Information foraging, Interface, Mobile, Music, Ubiquitous computing
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...as just discussed with Russell in the Crown and Sceptre,

“World of Warcraft for those who can’t be bothered with all that elf crap and fighting, rendered in Haiku…”, “Part reality-tv, part improv, part microblogging”

It’s decidedly playful – with the constraints of the medium and the unashamed mundanity of most of the content only adding to the fun.

The explicit ‘reporting’ nature of it seems to make it more attractive to me than perhaps some other things that might be similarly classed as ‘self-surveillance infotainment’ like Plazes or Jaiku.
Whilst it’s definitely ‘having a moment’ – it’ll be interesting to see whether it settles into a pattern of the same sustained interest and fun as Flickr, or move into the realms of YAZSNS (Yet Another Zombie Social Network Service) full of tiny 160 character ASCII tumbleweed…

Filed under: The evolution of cooperation
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Greatly enjoyed the BBC4 programme, “The Martians and Us” tonight, which is a non-sniggering look at British SF from Wells onwards, without C-list celeb talking heads and with serious interviews with the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss and China Mieville.

One wonderful moment was the interview with Olaf Stapledon’s daughter, showing the detailed hand-drawn chart her father had made describing the future history of mankind that was to become “First and Last Men”.

Can’t seem to find it online anywhere, but instead here’s what I did get for googling “Olaf Stapledon” and “Timeline”!

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Update: corrected the spelling throughout from Stapleton -> Stapledon throughout. Wierdly I had remembered it as Stapledon (I read “First and Last Men” when I was about 16 I think) but then googled and found it as Stapleton… Hence the error – thanks for putting me back right John...

Filed under: Books, Mind Gangsters, Sufficiently-advanced literature, TV
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Filed under: Sufficiently-Advanced Lifestyle
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The natural companion to the “VALIS is coming – look busy!” shirt… Be warm and snug inside your eternal perfect system of repressive social control!

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Some self-indulgence (on a blog? NO!)
Today, November the 3rd, is three years to the day I started at Nokia.

Having been interviewed by Marko in the balmy, bright-blue-skied days of the Finnish summer, and having brought Foe for a recce in the brisk, equally-bright-blue-skied autumn, I turned up in the dour, downtrodded november streets of Ruoholahti and wondered what I’d let meself in for.

Still do sometimes – three years and I’m still learning. Today was spent in the snowbound forest for instance with the nice people who make the 770 internet tablet and the Maemo platform – who are all about a thousand times smarter than me. Fun.

The first two years were spent more in design research, notably (for me at least) working with Janne, Jyri, Marko, Jan and Chris amongst others on the early stages of NFC and thinking about interaction design for what was going to come down the line as the world got that little bit more spimey.

Also being able to spend about a year or so with Janne again, and Minh – thinking, doing, scribbling and playing with the nature of “Play“ – the greatest human universal and endless source of fantastic insight.

I was a very lucky boy.

The last year (corresponding with the gradual decline of this blog) has seen me in a different role – about this time last year I moved to Nokia Design to work with the team designing the Nokia Nseries products, building the user-experience team and generally wrestling with the sometimes overwhelming job of helping to make the most powerful mobile devices – simpler, clearer and more delightful to use while not compromising the superpowers they can grant the owner.

Nothing on the shelves yet that I’ve been involved with – one thing for a mainly ex-web person to get used to is the lead times involved in combining bits and atoms – but there’s some awesome stuff coming in 2007 which our little team has contributed to.

This is the longest I’ve actually spent at one place (even the BBC) and I feel like I want to spend a lot longer here. My original boss, who became a good friend has moved on and this week has seen him make new (very interesting) waves, like Jyri having taken the startup route… but I’m facing the possibility myself that I’ve found what I want to do for now, and so I guess this blog will just keep getting worse for a few more years!

Filed under: Nokia
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