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A while back I posted about The TED Experience, a site that has videos of talks from a regulartalk-fest on the subjects of Technology, Entertainment & Design. One video that fulfills all three criteria is, I think, that of Caleb Chung.

Computers are tools of work as well as a means for users to enjoy things they might not otherwise see or experience. But computers don’t have to be a box with a screen, keyboard and mouse. They can be packaged in other ways, sometimes ways that are simply fun to be around.

Caleb Chung has spent years working with toys, as well as considerable time putting together working models of a variety of types. Perhaps you remember or even have a furbie? Cute little toys that had a variety of simple responses and movements. Caleb Chung made them.

Pleo’s are dinosaur toys, and Caleb apparently spent considerable time to make them as close to the real model as he could. While I can’t really comment on the accuracy of his model, I must say they are cute. Even on screen they evoke an empathic reaction, like seeing a puppy. It’s remarkable that someone could put together basic equipment that is capable of bringing such a reaction, similar to that we feel for living creatures.

And Pleo’s come with USB and memory card slots for user upgrades and changes!

Even more remarkable is that humans, the same people who can kill and maim with such apparent ease, can find caring feelings for a toy, for a collection of plastic and metal bits, while simultaneously turning away from their troubled fellow man.

One of the first uses to which the personal computer was put was bookkeeping. It actually predates using it to write. Very early on there was a program called Lotus123, a spreadsheet with basic formula functions that let users do numeric manipulation.

In a similar business model to Apple, Lotus threw away the chance to ‘own’ the world of spreadsheets by charging a small fortune for their product and going to ridiculous lengths to ‘protect’ their product, including things like, in Australia, if something went wrong with the install, the owner had to return the original boot disk to Lotus in Sydney, who had to send it back to the UK to get a new one.

Meanwhile, back in the office, the user, (usually a business) had no access to their data… for up to six weeks! And you couldn’t copy the boot disk to get around this problem because they put a hole in the actual disk to make it impossible!

So when a new program came along without these stupid restrictions, the world turned to it and Lotus123 quickly became a bit player on the scene. VP-Planner was a Lotus clone, but the big winner was Excel. Originally made for the MAC, Excel was ported over to Win-doze in the early days and it was good enough that it probably saved Win-doze from a slow death. (anyone who experienced Windows v1 or 2 promptly became a death-wisher for the product)

Excel actually came with a built-in switch to allow the user to swap it over to the Lotus123 keystrokes to make Excel more compatible and reduce the retraining needed to swap to the product. I’m not sure now because I am using Office 2007, http://www.themsoffice.com/ but I think the switch was still there in Office 2003.

And of course, things have gotten much more friendly with programs like Quicken and MYOB (Mind Your Own Business)

The computer has opened the world to anyone who can get to the internet. For those who haven’t spent a lot of time online, this may seem an exaggerated statement, but once you begin to explore the digital world, you will find yourself in a world without apparent limits.

Any project you may want to try, any information you need, any facts you want to check, you can find on the World Wide Web. You don’t even need to know how it works, nor the ‘best’ way to do things. Find a Search engine (see the above picture) and type in your query.

The Search engines recognise a range of human ways of expressing things, so it almost doesn’t matter how you specify what you’re interested in. You can type, ‘ship, sink, year’ and search through the results to find when the Titanic sank or you can type in ‘when did the titanic sink?’

Capital letters don’t matter as the search will return similar results with or without them. If you want to search for a particular phrase just enclose it in quotes. “(phrase)”

The worst part of searching the net is the possibility of getting lost. You get a page that has links to elsewhere on it and you click the links. They in turn lead you to more links which takes you further and further away from the original page. Eventually you wind up reading something that seems totally unrelated to the place you began your journey.

Note that this ‘worst’ aspect is, for a lot of people, the best part of web surfing. There is something strangely compelling about following the link-trail into realms of information you weren’t expecting to visit and a lot of new things can be learned along the way.

But if you’re trying for specific information to complete a project, link surfing can strip time from your budget faster than you would believe.

One of the ways we can use to demonstrate how ‘superior’ our society is to those gone before is to point out how much of our time is no longer devoted to daily existence. The creation of leisure time has spawned a vast industry, or rather several vast industries, devoted to finding ways to fill that time for us, to devising attractions to get us to spend our money on things to fill in that time, and to provide us with ‘entertainment.’

Television has been a tool that has almost singlehandedly, changed who we are. In its best form, it is a medium of information delivery, showing us sights and sounds from across the world, expanding horizons beyond anything previously achieved. At its worst it is a mindless, drivel-delivering system for dulling the mind, satiating the senses and inundating us with violence and political machinations.

Whether what it delivers these days can be called entertainment, I am not so sure. The TV is too much of a good thing – it delivers most of the inputs so that our brains go into sleep mode, simply accepting all that comes in with no critical faculties in play.

The computer tool has a different level of involvement. While it can provide a similar style of input to that of the TV, it isn’t used that way as much as was once thought. Instead there are games to play, there are blogs to read, forums to participate in. Using a computer as an entertainment tool mostly involves some participation from the user, which, when you compare it to the couch-potato world of the TV addict, can only be good.

No, I’m not talking about some special implement you can use on your computer – although that could be a fun topic – ‘What tool would you like to use on your computer?’  It could be sub-titled, ‘Can you lift a seven pound sledgehammer?’

Nor am I talking about the local guy you know who is a computer nut that can’t tie his shoelaces or converse in anything except ‘0’s and ‘1’s.

Above all else, if theirs is one definition of a computer, it is that it’s a tool. It is probably the best tool we’ve ever made, up there in effect on Man with fire and the wheel, but way above them in speed of impact on society. The computer has changed the way we work, the way we play, the way we find out things and the way we entertain ourselves, and it has done it in thirty years.

Tool:
1. an implement, esp. one held in the hand, as a hammer, saw, or file, for performing or facilitating mechanical operations
2. anything used as a means of accomplishing a task or purpose

Tools are things we use, things supposedly invented to make our life easier, or to enable us to do things we are unable to do alone. But when the personal computer came along, it was a tool that didn’t really have a use. Sure it was a nice thing for the original tech-heads – they could play and get all kinds of interesting effects – but for most people they were yet another reason to avoid such people.

So, how do you use your computer? What is the main function you perform with this wondrous tool?

By Mr JM

On TED.com you can find more of the TED speakers. If you have any interest in learning, if you’ve wondered about what is going on in our world, if you just like to think or be entertained by bright minds, take yourself to the TED site and spend some time there.

You know that feeling you get when you’ve spent the night watching TV and you can barely keep your eyes open as you head for bed? That dead in the head sensation which is really caused by the fact your brain has been put to sleep hours before by the mind numbing litany of sex, violence and enforced messages to buy and consume? That almost buried feeling that somehow, without really meaning to, you’ve wasted yet another night in an endless procession of nights without meaning or originality, trapped by the flash and glamour of the idiot box?

Watch TED instead. I can guarantee you will not have those sensations and feelings. You may have trouble leaving the screen, but your brain will not be numbed, your thoughts will not be tied into the straight-jacket ‘CONSUME’ pathways dictated by Corporations interested only in taking all your money and you will know you have seen Life happening in front of you.

As a tiny taster, a mere glimpse of what you may find on TED, here are some questions asked by Jonathan Drori as he talks about ‘Why we don’t understand as much as we think…’

1. A seed weighs almost nothing – where does the tree get all the wood?

2. Can you light a lamp bulb with a battery and one wire & could you draw a diagram of how to do it??

3. Why is it hotter in Summer than in Winter?

4. Can you draw a plan diagram of the Solar System showing the shape of the orbits?

See if you can answer these questions – be honest and write the answers down, and then go listen to Jonathan at YouTube.

By Mr JM
In an Info World gone slightly nutso, it is refreshing to find real data, to find sites which attempt to provide a path to knowledge that can be used to help elevate one’s awareness of either self or the world around us.

Each year, in Monterrey in the States, there is a gathering of people with a wide variety of interests, people who are making their own path through their chosen field of knowledge. Some are names you will know, like Stephen Hawking or Brian Greene, some are known only to those with specific interests like Susan Blackmore, Louise Leakey or Billy Graham and some you will not know at all such as Jonathan Drori or Clifford Stoll

You can find a collection of the TED talks either by searching youtube for TEDtalks or go to the Director’s pages http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?p=r&user=TEDtalksDirector&page=1

The TED Conference (TED for Technology, Entertainment, Design) brings together some of the most remarkable people you will find on the internet. In these mini-lectures (most are about twenty minutes long) you will be entertained, challenged and educated. You will find your buttons getting pushed, your misconceptions buffeted and your opinions being questioned for Truth.

Clifford Stoll has to be seen to be believed. Jonathan Drori asks questions to which you think you have the correct answer, only to find not only that you don’t but that the fact you don’t provides valuable clues as to how we think.

Susan Blackmore takes the concept of Memes a step beyond. Many people have no idea what memes may be but the concept of them goes back decades, and they affect everything we say and do, they provide the basics behind our best and worst behaviours and they explain why, for example, children who have been molested often go on to become molesters, even though one would expect their reality of the experience would ensure they would avoid such a future.

By Mr JM

I was browsing a site I visit occasionally and I ran across a link to youtube that seemed interesting. One of the problems I’ve seen with television has been the way what might have been a superb educational tool has been subverted into an entrapment machine, spewing out specially designed traps to hold the attention, to reduce the amount of thought and to lull us into being contented couch potatoes.

And to be honest, I don’t think the powers-that-be have too much interest in our contentment – as far as they are concerned, keeping us trapped on the couch is good enough.

The constant watching of TV allows us to be programmed and controlled on levels never before seen. Our individuality is reduced, our creativity dies and we become lazy thinkers.

The personal computer helped change this a little – computing required thought, it needed the involvement of the user and, at least in the initial stages, without creativity it was a boring pastime.

But I’ve seen the TV attitudes coming onto the net – to paraphrase, ninety percent of everything is junk, and the internet is getting close to, if not exceeding that level. It provides a medium that, just like TV, eats up time with little practical or creative result.

There’s a lot of junk data on the internet and not a lot of people these days get educated in how to spot the difference between real and useful information and somebody’s propaganda or nonsense presented as fact. And the idea of research is too much like hard work for a lot of folk.