Jared Keller

future-drama: What the internet looked like in...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:06:35 -0400

future-drama:

What the internet looked like in 1995

“Electronic mail is what I do most.”

nevver: Seasonal faults lines, Google Maps

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:04:24 -0400

Daniel Schwarz: Juxtapose

Daniel Schwarz: Juxtapose

Daniel Schwarz: Juxtapose

Daniel Schwarz: Juxtapose

nevver:

Seasonal faults lines, Google Maps

digg: Attention Simpsons fans: Universal Orlando is adding the...

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:00:12 -0400

digg:

Attention Simpsons fans: Universal Orlando is adding the entire town of Springfield to its theme park.

!!!

laughingsquid: Creating the Music of ‘Star Trek Into...

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:54:31 -0400

laughingsquid:

Creating the Music of ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’

Love it.

timeshaiku: A haiku from the article: How Tracy Mack-Askew,...

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:36:51 -0400

timeshaiku:

A haiku from the article: How Tracy Mack-Askew, Chevrolet Vehicle Line Manager, Does It

This is the story of my life.

pacificstand: Teens Care About Online Privacy—Just Not the Same...

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:50:48 -0400

pacificstand:

Teens Care About Online Privacy—Just Not the Same Way You Do

Teens care about privacy in a social context, not a big data context. That teens are fleeing Facebook is illustrative of the phenomenon: Pew found in focus group discussions that teens showed irritation for the increasing adult presence, excessive sharing, and stressful “drama” of the massive social network. Said one respondent: “I have two [Facebook accounts]: one for my family, one for my friends.”

The Pew data suggest that teens care less about data privacy and more about more socially oriented forms of privacy, those designed to protect the integrity of a community. Pew found that teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-party access to their data; just nine percent say they are “very” concerned. Let’s think about the data issues that the average non-teen or adult faces: concerns over whether personal information is used without our consent (i.e. your face showing up in a Facebook banner advertisement), financial damage (namely fraud through any number of third-party services), losing one’s personal data through hacking, or reputation management. For a teenager who is financially (and likely technologically) dependent on their family, issues like whether their personal data is used in Facebook ads (find me a 16-year-old who is interested in banner ads and didn’t just sell their start-up to Yahoo!) and the looming threat of hackers are secondary concerns to the social life in which school and friends are inexorably tied up with. In fact, it’s mainly parents who care about what data their kids share: 81 percent of parents surveyed by Pew say they are “somewhat” or “very” concerned about how much information advertisers can learn about their children’s behavior online.

This should seem obvious. What else could be more natural for a teenager—that openness is valued, but only in a strictly contained ecosystem, and a lack of data privacy is regarded as inconsequential?

Read more at Pacific Standard

New from me at Pacific Standard.

"More than 800 people have paid as much as $200,000 apiece to reserve seats on commercial flights..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:36:11 -0400

“More than 800 people have paid as much as $200,000 apiece to reserve seats on commercial flights into space, some of which are expected to launch, at long last, within a year. Space-travel agents are being trained; space suits are being designed for sex appeal as much as for utility; the founder of the Budget hotel chain is developing pods for short- and long-term stays in Earth’s orbit and beyond. Over beers one night, a former high-ranking NASA official, now employed by Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin transportation conglomerate, put it plainly: ‘We happen to be alive at the moment when humanity starts leaving the planet.’”

- The Era of Private Space Travel is Just Beginning | NY Magazine (via kateoplis)

Relationships with (and around) Google Glass

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:52:45 -0400

Relationships with (and around) Google Glass:

jennydeluxe:

ninakix:

We’ll have coffee shops full of people twitching in little kinetic patterns. Maybe the gestures will gain a rhythm, it’ll be a little bit like dancing with our hands. But we’ll probably still take the glasses off when our friend joins our table.

The very best thing I learned this year at SXSW is that people in the Valley have coined a term for the weird, half-conscious expression that Google Glass wearers get on their faces when they are concentrating on doing things with the tiny little screen inside their glasses. They call it “glassed out,” which you would use in a sentence like: “Barry.” “Barry.” “BARRY!!!” Oh, nvm, he’s glassed out, that explains it, ok.” I love it. I love how it sounds so cyberpunky, so disturbingly druggy, almost like something out of Strange Days. We also discussed whether or not “glass-eye” would become a common stress injury, not unlike BlackBerry thumb, to describe people who had gone a little soft or cross-eyed from only using one eye to flick-navigate through the Glass interface. I get that Glass changes how we think about mobile computing, and that is cool, but I’m starting to care a lot more about how it changes our perception of what is means to be online and what it means to be offline. Present and not present. How those very private interfaces will still be very, very public and present in interactions. How the machinery disappears for the wearer but remains totally visible and intrusive to the rest of us. How we’ll wonder whether or not you’re secretly reading Twitter while sitting in class. At work. Talking to us on a date. Future starts now.

kqedscience: Water Trapped For 1.5 Billion Years Could Hold...

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:00:34 -0400

kqedscience:

Water Trapped For 1.5 Billion Years Could Hold Ancient Life
“Scientists have discovered water that has been trapped in rock for more than a billion years. The water might contain microbes that evolved independently from the surface world, and it’s a finding that gives new hope to the search for life on other planets.”

The above map, from the United States Geological Survey, shows the age of bedrock in different regions of North America. Scientists found ancient water in bedrock north of Lake Superior. This region, colored red, was formed more than 2.5 billion years ago. Read more.

pacificstand: Your Addiction to Dots May Be Helping Your Brain...

Thu, 16 May 2013 14:06:42 -0400

pacificstand:

Your Addiction to Dots May Be Helping Your Brain (Sort of)

I have an addiction. It’s not to drugs or alcohol, jumping out of airplanes, or even sex. My addiction is to a grid of 36 dots—and to making them disappear as quickly as possible.

If you own an iPhone or have a friend who does, you’ve probably heard some version of this admission before. The grid is Dots, a super-addictive iOS game released by New York tech incubator Betaworks just over two weeks ago.

…

Casual games like Dots—video games that are quick to access, easy to learn, and require no special game skills (a category that includes many other smartphone games, like Bejeweled and Peggle)—were subject to a study on gaming and cognitive ability conducted by East Carolina University’s (ECU) Psychophysiology Lab in 2010. The study, conducted with dozens of U.S. consumers, was designed to explore the effects of casual games on subjects’ short-term cognitive acuity, including cognitive response time (how quickly a subject completes a task) and executive function (how often a subject completes a task correctly). Subjects who played Bejeweled and similar games for 30-minute periods showed an 87 percent improvement in cognitive response time and a 215 percent increase in executive functioning when compared to a control group.

Read more at Pacific Standard

My first item for Pacific Standard.

pacificstand: ucresearch: Jane Austen, Game Theorist Although...

Mon, 13 May 2013 23:48:36 -0400

pacificstand:

ucresearch:

Jane Austen, Game Theorist

Although whiffs of game theory have been discerned in writings as old as Plato, its conventional history begins with the 1944 publication of von Neumann’s seminal “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.” The techniques gained prominence as a means of anticipating attacks and counterattacks among superpowers during the Cold War, and they played a role in determining the quantity and positioning of U.S. nuclear warheads.

“Austen’s novels are game theory textbooks. She’s trying to get readers to use their higher thinking skills and to think strategically.”

In many cases, by making tough choices and predicting how others will respond, Austen’s young (often financially deprived) heroines triumph over seemingly stronger forces, including well-to-do men and older women of higher status, he argues. In so doing, they find happiness and — just as importantly in an era with limited employment and inheritance possibilities for women — financial security.

“They build a theory of strategic thinking, not to better chase a Soviet submarine, but to survive.”

Read the first chapter →

Starring Russell Crowe as Jane Austen.

annfriedman: In my ongoing quest for the perfect framework for...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 23:42:00 -0400

annfriedman:

In my ongoing quest for the perfect framework for understanding haters, I created The Disapproval Matrix**. (With a deep bow to its inspiration.) This is one way to separate haterade from productive feedback. Here’s how the quadrants break down:

Critics: These are smart people who know something about your field. They are taking a hard look at your work and are not loving it. You’ll probably want to listen to what they have to say, and make some adjustments to your work based on their thoughtful comments.

Lovers: These people are invested in you and are also giving you negative but rational feedback because they want you to improve. Listen to them, too.

Frenemies: Ooooh, this quadrant is tricky. These people really know how to hurt you, because they know you personally or know your work pretty well. But at the end of the day, their criticism is not actually about your work—it’s about you personally. And they aren’t actually interested in a productive conversation that will result in you becoming better at what you do. They just wanna undermine you. Dishonorable mention goes to The Hater Within, aka the irrational voice inside you that says you suck, which usually falls into this quadrant. Tell all of these fools to sit down and shut up.

Haters: This is your garden-variety, often anonymous troll who wants to tear down everything about you for no rational reason. Folks in this quadrant are easy to write off because they’re counterproductive and you don’t even know them. Ignore! Engaging won’t make you any better at what you do. And then rest easy, because having haters is proof your work is finding a wide audience and is sparking conversation. Own it.

This is amazing.

"You don’t fuck with Boston, because Boston fucks back."

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:47:09 -0400

“You don’t fuck with Boston, because Boston fucks back.”

- I’m from Boston. Covering the news today was surreal. I wrote some thoughts on the incident on Medium.

The earliest aerial photograph of an American city, titled...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 22:12:00 -0400

The earliest aerial photograph of an American city, titled “Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It” - Taken from a hot air balloon in October 1860

[via]

Salvador Dali at a book signing, taken with a fisheye lens...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:17:04 -0400

Salvador Dali at a book signing, taken with a fisheye lens (Philippe Halsman, 1963)

How Ink is Made “I remember making my first ink. It was a...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 21:17:16 -0500

How Ink is Made

“I remember making my first ink. It was a frustrating, difficult thing, but in the end there wasn’t a sense of relief, but more a sense of loss that I didn’t have to work on that anymore.”

This video is beautiful.

businessweek: America’s Shrinking Grocery Bill In 1984, the...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:51:13 -0500

businessweek:

America’s Shrinking Grocery Bill

In 1984, the average U.S. household spent 16.8 percent of its annual post-tax income on food. By 2011, Americans spent only 11.2 percent. The U.S. devotes less of its income to food than any other country—half as mu ch as households in France and one-fourth of those in India.

Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek

businessweek: Why Won’t America Listen to Alan Simpson and...

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:59:49 -0500

businessweek:

Why Won’t America Listen to Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles?

After their eponymous commission failed to get a deal to cut the deficit, Simpson and Bowles hit the road to sound the alarm. America’s response? Crickets.

Read this week’s cover story and let us know what you think!

There’s a reason that wherever Joshua Green goes, I will go.

lisasimpsonbookclub: The look of the Simpsons’ neighborhood...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:54:39 -0500

lisasimpsonbookclub:

The look of the Simpsons’ neighborhood transitions wildly when new neighbors discover a forgotten Neutra, triggering a renovation craze. Their project is so successful that it’s featured on the cover of Dwell.

The Simpsons meet ‘Dwell’ [via, well, Dwell]

This tumblr is still the best project I’ve ever worked on.

Sunday at the Guggenheim.

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:01:29 -0500

Sunday at the Guggenheim.