Increasingly, ordinary people encrypt their internet communications. Some want to share files. Some are worried about the increasing surveillance and threats of surveillance of Internet data that is taking place in many corners of the world. ACTA, Hadopi, data retention would be a few examples. People may simply wish to keep their data private, even […]
I’ve started watching Michael Sandel’s Harvard lecture series on political philosophy, “justice”. In this series, Sandel introduces the ideas of major political and moral philosophers, such as Bentham, Locke, and Kant, as well as some libertarian thinkers I hadn’t heard of. I’m only halfway through the series, so I’m sure there’s other big names coming […]
Some scattered thoughts on idea flows. The global idea space is partitioned in various ways. One example would be peoples speaking different languages. English speakers all understand each other, Japanese speakers all understand each other, but there are relatively few people who speak Japanese and English very well. We can understand this situation in an […]
The first time I found myself onboard an airplane was when I was 9-10 years old or so. At the time, travelling by myself to visit my aunt who lived on a remote island was a big experience. In particular, I think, the sensation that the environment was managed in the extreme made a big […]
Different technologies have different kinds of aesthetics, and they affect us in various ways, whether we are particularly fascinated with technology or not. The easiest technologies to understand on an intuitive-emotional basis seem to be those that involve physical processes. Objects rotating, moving, being lifted and displaced, compressed, crushed. Gases and liquids being sent around […]