{"id":4507,"date":"2010-08-26T18:30:46","date_gmt":"2010-08-26T22:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=4507"},"modified":"2010-08-25T16:40:30","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T20:40:30","slug":"thursday-various-46","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=4507","title":{"rendered":"Thursday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I like <i>Doctor Who<\/i>. I&#8217;m not sure I like it enough to have a <a href=\"http:\/\/blastr.com\/2010\/08\/adorable-doctor-who-weddi.php\">A <i>Doctor Who<\/i>-themed wedding<\/a>, though.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lettersofnote.com\/2010\/08\/thomas-pynchon-on-plagiarism.html\">Thomas Pynchon on plagiarism<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>Writers are naturally drawn, chimpanzee-like, to the color and the music of this English idiom we are blessed to have inherited. When given the choice we will usually try to use the more vivid and tuneful among its words.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/niemann.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/03\/red-eye\/\">A visual diary<\/a> documenting a flight from New York to Berlin (with a layover in London). [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cynical-c.com\" title=\"Cynical-C\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>You know, it <i>is<\/i> kind of funny that programs like Word still use a disk as the save icon when lots of computer users these days <a href=\"http:\/\/jandersoncoats.livejournal.com\/211418.html\">don&#8217;t even know what a disk is<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>And finally, even qwerty keyboards <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/15\/magazine\/15FOB-medium-t.html\" title=\"NY Times: The Promise and Peril of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSmart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Keyboards\">are falling by the wayside<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>Like the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Enter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d key that becomes a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Search\u00e2\u20ac\u009d key, the self-leveling card deck may at first seem trivial. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a sly way that digital technology that uses real-world iconography destabilizes experience. What, after all, is a more recognizable symbol of the capriciousness of life than a deck of cards, out of which your fate is randomly dealt? And yet here the deck icon is only superficial. At heart it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a random-card generator but the opposite: a highly wrought program with a memory, an algorithm and a mandate to keep children in the game. An app posing as a spatiotemporal object.<\/p>\n<p>As a populous commercial precinct, the Web now changes in response to our individual histories with it. Like a party that subtly reconfigures with each new guest, the Web now changes its ads, interfaces and greetings for almost every user. Some people find this eerie. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nowhere near as shiver-worthy as the discovery that digital \u00e2\u20ac\u0153things\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d apps carefully dressed as objects \u00e2\u20ac\u201d change as we use them, too. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weird enough when those things are being solicitous and cooperative. What if the keyboards and decks of cards all turn on us? Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not think about that, not yet. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookninja.com\/\" title=\"Bookninja\">via<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I like Doctor Who. I&#8217;m not sure I like it enough to have a A Doctor Who-themed wedding, though. Thomas Pynchon on plagiarism: Writers are naturally drawn, chimpanzee-like, to the color and the music of this English idiom we are blessed to have inherited. When given the choice we will usually try to use the &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=4507\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[19,86,18,75,111,12],"class_list":["post-4507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-art","tag-computers","tag-doctor-who","tag-travel","tag-writers","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}