If you collaborate with people over the internet professionally, you're probably familiar with Campfire, an excellent, productivity-boosting group chat service by 37 Signals. Their new iPad app, Draft, lets you upload iPad sketches to your Campfire rooms instantly. Goodbye, productivity! More »
IPad - Campfire - Recreation - Scouting - App Store
I recently co-authored an open commentary with bioethicist Linda MacDonald Glenn that has been published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Bioethics (Volume 10 Issue 7 2010).
The article, "Dignity and Agential Realism: Human, Posthuman, and Nonhuman," was in response to Fabrice Jotterand's critique of transhumanism, "Human Dignity and Transhumanism: Do Anthro-technological Devices Have Moral Status?"
I can't republish our entire article at this time, but here's a taste:
The notion that beings exist as individuals with inherent attributes (such as dignity) anterior to their representation, is a metaphysical presupposition that underlies the belief in political, linguistic, and epistemological forms of representationalism (Barad, 2003). Within the framework of representionalism, dignity is most certainly tied into capacity; it is fair, within that framework, to suggest that the diminishment or deliberate withholding of certain attributes results in the lessening of one's dignity (That being said, one should not confuse dignity with the ways in which all human persons deserve equal status in the eyes of the law). Consequently, the inverse also holds true, whether it be the alleviation of a debilitating syndrome or the augmentation of a physical or cognitive characteristic. As far as the agent in question is concerned, human or otherwise, these interventions are dignifying. Representationalism, on the other hand, separates the world into the ontologically disjointed domains of words and things. (Barad, 2003)
A performative understanding, in contrast, contests this metaphysical assumption that dignity is an inherent attribute, as if dignity existed in a vacuum, independently of an individual’s actions or interactions with other beings. A performative understanding shifts the focus from description and questions of correspondence to matters of practice, doings and/or actions; the active participation, phenomena and “intra-actions” (Barad 2003, 2007) are what help create agreed upon meaning. The phrase made popular by M. Scott Peck, “Love is as love does” is an illustration of this shift in understanding; so is Forrest Gump's “Stupid is as stupid does.”
So a performative understanding of dignity includes recognition that the dignity of a person is contingent on the ways in which they are treated by others (including institutions) and the ways in which they are capable of interacting with their external environment. What should not be tied into notions of dignity is the value of persons or the questioning of a person's degree of equality under the law. Nor should dignity tied into the Kassian notion of embodied human life—an inherently speciesist notion that carries with it unjustifiable conditions for exclusionism. Dignity is not status; rather, it is a measurement (or assessment) of the quality in which persons are treated, the depth of their interactions, and the degree to which they are capable of engaging in life. Consequently, a performative understanding of dignity recognizes it as more an issue of treatment and social justice than abstract and confusing notions about equality, value and status.
Your eyes aren't deceiving you, that's a touchscreen being tracked through water. More »
Touchscreen - Business - Water - Water Resources - Environment
Honestly, there's not much you can do to fight the lines tomorrow at Apple and AT&T stores. But at least you can use the Line Snob app to get a sense of how long a wait you're in for. More »
IPhone - Smartphones - Handhelds - Apple - AT&T
Una Bellezza Nuova
Studi e ricerche nel Centenario del Manifesto di Fondazione del Futurismo di Filippo Tommaso Marinetti a cura di Gianni Eugenio Viola
and
numero de L’Illuminista “Futurismo e Letteratura”
June 24, 2010 | 5:30pm
Sala Convegni Santa Marta, Rome
Coordina Gino Agnese
- Interverranno Sandro Bondi, Marina Panetta, Walter Pedullà, Gianni Eugenio Viola.
Well, well, well. Look who decided to drop by the 5th ave Apple Store's iPhone 4 line? I guess Conan needed a break from his busy schedule of, uh, well...I guess he just was in the area. [Huffington Post] More »
iPhone - Handhelds - Smartphones - Apple - Image Cache
The Android Market's openness comes with a significant hitch: a full 20% of its app offerings can access and share your private data. Some can even make calls and send texts from your phone without your knowledge or consent. UPDATED: More »
Android - Handhelds - Android Market - Smartphone - Google
The Twitter app for Facebook—the little app that pulls tweets into your Facebook profile—just got way more useful. It shows all of your Facebook friends who are on Twitter, so it's way easier to follow 'em. Updated. More »
Twitter - Facebook - Social network - Online Communities - Trending and Popularity
Epic news: The long fight between Viacom and Google is partially resolved, with the U.S. District Court deciding that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor provision of the DMCA. Which means? More »
YouTube - Google - Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Copyright - Viacom
This is a reader video found on Macrumors forums illustrating something weird. When the guy holds the iPhone in his hands, touching the outside antenna band in two places, he drops reception. Placing the phone down gets him 4 bars. More »
iPhone - Smartphone - Handhelds - Apple - Wallpapers and Themes
Where do all those "1000 HOURS FREE!" AOL discs end up? Apparently at Long Knoll Park in Kilmington, England, where a group of 160 friends recently laid 600,000 discs to create CDSea, a massive waterway of obsolete media. More »
Shopping - Sports - England - Entertainment - Recordings
Of all the days, Android Market had to choose today to get a little wonky. Some Android users are seeing no apps in Android Market (there's supposed to be 65,000), so it's either a bug or someone's math is terribly off. Either way, most people should be fine but if it's affecting you, you're not alone! We expect it to get fixed fairly quickly just like the last time Android Market slipped up. More »
AndroidMarket - Android - Handhelds - Google - App Store
There is a problem with the iPhone 4's Retina displays: Some screens have a yellow tint across its surface. 27 cases [Updating Live] and counting. In some, it's a yellow band. In others, yellow spots. See the gallery: More »
iPhone - Smartphone - Handhelds - iPhone 4 - Wallpapers and Themes
This is the hidden face of the moon like you've never seen if before, as captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's LOLA instruments. Despite its appearance, the picture wasn't processed by NASA scientists taking LSD while listening to Pink Floyd. More »
Moon - Earth - Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter - Space - Technology
It's still going! For the last two days—even before it's released—you've been reviewing the iPhone 4. Here is the review that you are creating, updated constantly, so keep submitting your thoughts, videos and pictures! More »
IPhone - Handhelds - Smartphones - Apple - iPhone 4 Review
Have you managed to get the “Grease”-inspired “Summer Shows” tune out of your head yet? I can attest that it is far from forgotten at our office … both because it is painfully catchy and because we’re in the midst of executing on the schedule referenced in it.
This week, we return to the beautiful city of San Francisco to attend Structure 2010. If you’re unfamiliar with Structure, it’s designed to bring together industry leaders to discuss the future of cloud computing and make predictions as to where the industry is headed. Discussions center around which technologies are emerging as standards, and conference speakers discuss best practices for implementing cloud infrastructures in the enterprise. With our investment in cloud innovation, it’s the perfect place to talk about the future of the cloud.
If you’re interested in learning more about The Planet’s contrarian approach to the cloud, swing by our booth in the sponsor room. You’ll be able to find us by looking for the crowd of people gathered around our new interactive display:
One of our goals at every trade show is to engage attendees, and this screen is our latest brainchild. Instead of cycling through a slide show or showing off our website, we wanted to empower our booth’s visitors to explore our enterprise hosting environment very simply. Step up to the screen, pull up pictures, move them around, expand and shrink them, ask questions … We want you to “experience” The Planet.
In addition to our event sponsorship and booth activities, Carl Meadows, The Planet’s senior product manager for cloud services, will participate in a conference panel tomorrow (June 24) titled, “Different Cloud, Different Purposes: A Taxonomy of Clouds.” The panel begins at 4:35 p.m. and will also feature executives from Yahoo!, Verizon, StrataScale and NetApp. The content of the session will be spectacular, and if you have questions for Carl, he will be available to chat at our booth after the panel.
If you happen to be at the UCSF Mission Bay conference center, stop by our booth and interact with our data centers. If you can’t make it, don’t worry … We’ll be posting the new infrastructure pictures on Flickr soon. As you can see in the right-hand sidebar, our DC tour blogs are some of our most popular posts, and they’re due for a refresh.
-Kevin
God help us all. It looks like the FarmVille iPhone app is starting to show up on iTunes. We're not seeing it in the US-based App Store yet, but international users are already playing the game. [MacStories] More »
IPhone - Smartphone - Handhelds - App Store - Apple
Need to talk smack to other countries during the World Cup? Skype has you covered. They're offering free landline calls to a number of countries for an entire month. Here's the list: More »
World Cup - Recreation - Dealzmodo - Television - Shopping
I love big bathtubs and crazy jacuzzis, but this thing defies imagination. It's an 8.3-feet diameter bathtub made from a single rock crystal. If Superman had a tub in his Fortress of Solitude, this would be it. More »
Business - Construction and Maintenance - Remodeling - Kitchen and Bath - refinish
