Category: Technology

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Let’s Get Physical

I haven’t written many blog posts for the last few months of the end of ’09. Mostly because I’ve been traveling and visiting with with family and friends I haven’t seen in over 6 months. When I travel my primary way to interact with people is in-person. I check email, social sites and twitter less frequently as I fill my time with meeting people for personal or business reasons. I’ve become aware in both my work and personal life, one of the few problems I have with so much reliance on [social] technologies is it separates people from the in-person nature of relationships.

We write an email, chat and even phone in a call to catch up but I and many psychologists agree that this can never equal the chemical, emotional and physical bonds created when people are engaged at a close proximity or in-personal relationship.

There are five human senses (hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste) and of those, social technologies only cover one, if you count reading someone’s thoughts put down in text some kind of hybrid of sight and sound. Of course video conferencing will bridge some of the sensory intake, but you can’t shake someone’s hand to get a sense of their confidence, smell their sweat if they might be nervous or… well I don’t recommend trying to taste your business partners and friend but there are reasons you may want to taste someone.

The integration of all these senses along with a mysterious 6th, intuition (which can be just as important in nurturing relationships with people), have the ability to create robust profiles of in-person interactions that singular communication via text, web and even video chat can’t substantiate.

Realistically, social networks and internet content services like Twitter are hear to stay (interesting article by David Carr NY Times on reasons why Twitter is hear for good) but we should all keep in mind that these services are still tools to be used to improve information exchange, facilitate personal or business relationships and transactions. However, eventually we’ll all have to step outside the house/apt and have a few pints with friends, catch up with the family over dinner or engage with your mate for some…. carnal knowledge.

Here’s to getting out in public more in 2010.

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Shot at one of many street fairs in New York – most likely between the sock guy and the grilled corn

Yelloman – Physical
[audio:https://austinvegas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/20-Physical_Zunguzung.mp3]

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Will Technology Lead to a Better Future or Just More Clutter?

Technology is a part of everyones lives, now more so than ever. I never thought I would see the day that my mother got an iPhone before I would (or some other “cool” smart phone device – I’m still using a cracked Blackberry as shown below). 2010 is said to be the year we further our lives with tech and become more mobile, use more web based services (cloud computing), and demand that everything we do occur immediately (real time) and more locally defined (Geo tagging and local search).

2010 will drive people to use internet services more extensively than every before – we already are storing and sharing our photos and videos online (Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, Fotki, YouTube etc.), email is primarily web based outside of corporate, we share thoughts and comments with friends through social networks (Facebook) and content services like Twitter, listen to our music on the web (Pandora Lala.com), we shop more online today and all our financing goes to online rather than physical bothering with physical bank runs or working with actual brokers. These trends will continue.

2009 saw the death of clunky desktops but soon we’ll be looking to build our own server networks at home using small dumb access points like netbooks or our smart phones to connect to the internet. Internet, and more specifically wireless, will become standard plumbing of our lives. No longer a luxury, we’ll be connected more than ever by not only our PCs but our phones (MagicJack, Google Voice, Skype, Gizmo), gaming consoles, book readers, HDTVs (Roku, Sling box, Boxee, Netflix etc.) and other smart kitchen or home appliances. Thanks to new operating systems (Window 7 & Chrome OS) and the expansion of high speed Internet services (FiOS and AT&T U-verse) we are free to roam and implement these tools of our life more freely.

There’s a lot of talk about the Tablet making it’s presence known this year and I hope that’s true. Either it be Apple, Google (Android), Lenovo, or HP, it remains to be seen if these devices will live up to their hype.

However, the big question every year will all this tech help to make my life more easier, organized, and connected or will I be spending too much money for more complicated ways of doing simple tasks (e-readers, news delivery, making a phone call). With so much openness and our information freely available over unsecured wireless connections, will we see an increase in malware and security breaches of our finances and personal identities. The Federal government is already being proactive in warning Small Business owners to take note and with the introduction of all new technology, we should all take our time with these steps and understand fully the repercussions and risks before trying to take advantage of the rewards.

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Mariah Carey had Billboard’s hottest played song of the decade with “We Belong Together”. Honestly I can’t say that I have even heard this song, but then again, I don’t listen to the radio anymore – Last.fm, Pandora, or my own vinyl and mp3 collection are my formates of choice. I realize this label is based on radio impressions which is an industry term for saying these are the tracks records labels paid heavily to have played on the airways, and thus force feed to the consumer to buy, download, play and then throw up all over in 3 months. Of the 10 listed, I can still handle Usher’s Yeah! (but I will always have my NOLA memories of Flo-Rider’s Low).

Usher Featuring Lil Jon & Ludacris – Yeah!
[audio:http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/4/16/2405832/Usher%20-%20Yeah.mp3]

Although my Last.fm profile would say that Santogold was my artist of choice for the year, Last didn’t scrobe every play I made over the year and I think a few of the old ladies plays got integrated here (come on, I’m not that big of an Édith Piaf fan). Also on top of my Last.fm list is Thievery Corporation’s Mandala, which did have heavy rotation this last year in my iPod and I attented at least one of their live shows in 2009. Thievery is one of the most ethnically diverse groups I’ve heard, playing sounds ranging from Indian (tabla), Caribbean, reggae, house and jazz funk – all of which come together nicely on their latest release Radio Retaliation. They definitely epitomize my eclectic tastes in all these musical stylings thrown together into a congruent progression that is my iTunes collection. Mandala is a sweet track and up there for my top 5 of the year even though it was released late in 2008:

[audio:http://www.rollogrady.org/media/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/02-mandala.mp3]

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Facebook Punk’d Techcrunch

punkdI’m an avid reader of TechCrunch. Like most blogs they compete on the edge for eyeballs which puts most in the grey area of posting both actual news and rumor even without confirming from any discernible sources. TC does a good job on updating us all on Valley stories, news and tech but they still could benefit from getting off the iPhone jock and limiting useless rumors to focus their content. This is a great story of Facebook, setting up an actual feature and calling it to only those on the TC network; which in turn they put out there as a real feature without confirming it directly from Facebook (“Maybe I’m missing something here, but I’m not sure why Facebook would do this. “). Check the full Punk’d Story.