Packets and metaphor
Fascinating stuff in Hafner & Lyon's Where Wizards Stay Up Late. One of the things that I'm very interested in is how language and metaphor shape the world we live in and the ways we live by (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). When Hafner & Lyon describe the origins of packet-switching, they recount the story of American Paul Baran, who first developed the idea of a real-time store-and-foreward system for sending blocks of data over a shared line. Baran jokingly called it "hot potato routing" and
[a]s the term "hot potato" suggests, no sooner did a message block enter a node than it was tossed out the door again as quickly as possible. If the best outgoing path was busy - or blown to bits - the message block was automatically sent out over the next best route, and so forth. (Hafner & Lyon, 1996: 62)
On the other side of the Atlantic, unaware of Baran's efforts, Donald Davies was working on a similar scheme, but Davies realized that naming the system properly could very much contribute to the acceptance of then fairly radical ideas, and he settled on the name "packet-switching".
Davies' choice of the word "packet" was very deliberate. "I thought it was important to have a new word for one of the short pieces of data which traveled separately," he explained. "This would make it easier to talk about them." There were plenty of other possibilities - block, unit, section, segment, frame. "I hit on the word packet," he said, "in the sense of small package." Before settling on the word, he asked two linguists form a research team in his lab to confirm that there were cognates in other languages. When they reported back that it was a good choice, he fixed on it. Packet-switching. It was precise, economic, and very British. And it was far easier on the ear than Baran's [official terminology] "distributed adaptive message block switching." Davies met Baran for the first time several years later. He told Baran that he had been throroughly embarrassed to hear of Baran's work after he had finished his own, but then added, "Well, you may have got there first, but I got the name." (Hafner & Lyon, 1996: 67)
And getting the name right is so very important, because as Davies notes, it makes it easier to talk and think about. Calling those series of electronic pulses "packets" imbues them with metaphorical qualities of fysical objects: the stuff we're used to handling in our everyday world. Talking about them as "packets" makes it possible to imagine uses and ways of treating them in particular ways that directly relate to the connotations of the word. Making understanding things easier is the work of metaphor, but we should remain vigilant about unintended effects of using a particular metaphors, because by the same token that a metaphor brings to light certain aspects that enable us to meaningfully interact with or act on a certain phenomenon, it obscures other facets that might be equally important. No light without shadow and as we know it's easy to overlook those things in the shadows when the stuff in the light shines so brightly.
(Hafner, Katie & Matthew Lyon (1996) Where Wizards Stay Up Late. The Origins of the Internet. New York: Touchstone, 1998;
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)
Mar 1, 2002 @ 09:57 » no comments » Research
Powerful stuff
Read Slashdot, even if it's the only thing you do today! Now!
It's written in response to the news that Slashdot is soon going to display bigger and flashier ads on their pages, probably like the ones you seen on C|Net's News.com. They're also going to implement a subscription system that will allow you not to view those ads.
Mar 1, 2002 @ 21:27 » no comments » General
Übermeta & unrelated
More fodder for meta blogging. Meta blogging reminds me of Derrida's comments on discourses spiralling out in ever greater self-referentiality.
On a totally unrelated note: Megatokyo.
Mar 2, 2002 @ 13:56 » no comments » General
*hurting badly*
I hate browser incompatibilities! I'm working on the very necessary redesign of the rest of the site and it's just a horror trying to get the site to look the same in just a couple of (Windows) browsers. I use IE5.01, Netscape 6.2.1, Mozilla 0.9.8 and Opera 6.0 for testing. If you get a workaround working in one browser you'll find that it won't work in another and sometimes even cause more trouble. IE5 and Opera seem to agree mostly on how to render things, but then usually Netscape 6 and Mozilla disagree with how things should look. I've already given up completely on trying to design for Netscape 4... that must be the most horribly non-standards compliant browser ever!
More than 70% of the visitors uses IE anyway, so I'm contemplating if I want to live with some inconsistencies showing up in Netscape... the only alternative to using frames to make the editing of the information on the pages easy for me, it seems, would be to use some sort of (semi)dynamic setup so that the information can be rendered on one page, instead of in different frames. But that would mean I'd need to get some fancy stuff running on my server and I don't quite have the knowledge or time to set up a content management system or some funky PHP/MySQL stuff. *grumble*
Mar 2, 2002 @ 16:20 » no comments » General
Yay!
Great concert! Went to see US3 tonight at Paradiso, Amsterdam. Funky! Funky! Can't feel my legs anymore, but I still feel like dancing :-)
Mar 3, 2002 @ 00:34 » no comments » General
Man
Blogdex is a pretty cool project. Apparently this is a hot link at the moment. I can see why.
Mar 3, 2002 @ 13:40 » 2 comments » General
Consoles and pricing
All my gaming so far has been on computers. A long time ago I had a MSX-1 homecomputer, then I upgraded to a MSX-2 and eventually bought one of the greatest computers ever, the Commodore Amiga. Then, when the Pentium came around, I switched to a PC and I've been gaming on my PC since. I have played on a console once, at a friend's place.
Then the other day, in an electronics superstore, I passed a humongous stack of PlayStation 2's. Priced at 299 euro (which roughly, stress roughly, compares to dollars). I felt my fingers twitch. Funny how a psychologically attractive price does work. When the PS2 appeared on the market the price rather was something like 500 euro. Quite a price drop. Also quite a difference with the newly released Microsoft X-Box, which is being priced at 460 euro and up. Plus, you have to buy some odds and ends seperately to hook the X-Box up to a SCART connection, etc. There are some interesting reviews and comparisons of the X-Box and the PS2 online (Anandtech.com and Tomshardware.com). Apart from the technical details, both reviews basically say that the X-Box does have the advantage of being the more advanced and future-oriented system of the two, but that the PS2 from a price and available software point of view doesn't score too bad either.
Well, I'm seriously contemplating whether to get one of those two consoles. Especially after reading Steven Poole's great book on videogames, Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames. (More on that book later, there are some reviews and interviews online here, here, here, here and here.) A console is a different kind of experience and, oh greedy me, I want some of that too. It's difficult to decide though, especially when there's still the PC that will play quite a few of the games that come out on consoles as well. Guess I better first wrap up my research proposal and then worry about playing in the interest of science...
Mar 4, 2002 @ 14:04 » no comments » Research
Like the leaves changing color
Check out this site. There's some nice content, but if you stick around there for a minute or two and you're not colorblind, you'll know what I mean...
Mar 4, 2002 @ 21:07 » 3 comments » General
More IE bugs
Bugs in IE seem to be a continuing story, but this one is pretty nasty: even with ActiveX and active scripting disabled, a few simple lines of HTML can make IE launch arbitrary commands on your computers, reports The Register. I switched to Opera as my main browser a while ago, and apart from a few quirks, it's a great little browser and I've decided to stick with it.
Mar 5, 2002 @ 09:32 » no comments » General
Prince
{"Alphabet St." segue}
He liked 2 frequent this club down up on 36th
Pimps and thangs like 2 hang outside and cuss 4 kicks (Did U see that?)
Talking 2 no one in particular, they say - "The baddest I am 2night"
4 letter words are seldom heard with such dignity and bite
All the poets and the part-time singers always hang inside
Live music from a band plays a song called "Soul Psychodelicide"
The song's a year long and had been playing 4 months
When he walked into the place
No one seemed 2 care
An introverted, "This is it," look on most of their faces
Up on the mic repeating 2 words over and over again
Was this woman he had never noticed before
He lost himself in the articulated manner in which she said them
These 2 words - a little bit behind the beat
I mean just enough 2 turn U on
4 every time she said the words
Another one of his doubts were gone
Should he try 2 rap 2 her?
Should he stand and stare?
No one else was watching her
She didn't seem 2 care
So over and over she said the words
Till he could take no more (No more)
He dragged her from the stage
And 2gether they ran through the back door
In the alley over by the curb he said - "Tell me, what's your name?"
She only said the words again and it started 2 rain (Rain, rain, rain)
2 words falling between the drops and the moans of his condition
Holding someone is truly believing that there's joy in repetition
There's joy in repetition {x4}
She said - "Love me, love me"
What she say? She said - "Love me, love me"
Joy in repetition {repeat till end}
Why don't U love me, baby?
Why can't U love me, baby?
Come on and love me, baby
Alright {x3}
All my wishes add up 2 one
Love me {repeat}
I wanna say it again
I think I wanna say it again
I'd like 2 go way up high and say - "Love me"
Ha ha, I'll say - "Love me"
"Love me"
There's joy in repetition
©1990 Controversy Music - ASCAP
Mar 5, 2002 @ 10:16 » no comments » General
Ironical, isn't it?
In this article on Wired, that reports on the ongoing case against Russian programmer Sklyarov, who was sued under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for writing a program that translates Adobe's E-book format into a less restrictive format so that it can be used on other devices than an E-book reader, mention is made of where to get the actual text of the DMCA. Adobe first pressed charges again Sklyarov and under public pressure withdrew those charges, but the case was pursued by the district attorney. Although the link currently is not working, the DMCA document seems to be available as an Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) file. Ironical, isn't it?
Mar 5, 2002 @ 17:17 » no comments » General
New online papers
Following a link from Lisbeth's blog I found Jonas Heide Smith's site, who recently finished his MA thesis, entitled The Architectures of Trust - Supporting Cooperation in the Computer-Supported Community. I've quickly gone through it and I must say it looks like a solid piece of work.
Taking a hint from Jill's site, I found Castranova's website and a link to his paper, entitled Virtual Worlds: A First-hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier. I posted about Castranova's study earlier; he is the economist who studied the real world value of virtual worlds' currency and economies.
Mar 6, 2002 @ 11:19 » no comments » Research
Keeping it virtually real
A paper by Lisa Nakamura, titled Keeping it (Virtually) Real: The Discourse of Cyberspace as an Object of Knowledge, that I hadn't read yet.
Mar 6, 2002 @ 14:26 » 1 comment » General
Cyberpl@y
Cool. I bought Brenda Danet's book Cyberplay: Communicating Online last year at the AoIR 2.0: INTERconnections conference in Minneapolis and now I see that there is an accompanying website, with a resources section and I must say I'm honored to see a link to my site on those pages.
Mar 7, 2002 @ 15:11 » no comments » Research
Redecorating again
Please note that I'm working on the resources section of the site. As far as I see everything still works, but it might look a bit funky and Netscape/Mozilla don't play as nice this time, but nothing major :-)
Mar 7, 2002 @ 22:29 » no comments » General
Night drive
I love the abstraction of nighttime driving: headlights, taillights and the fluorescent white lines on that endless strip of tarmac. Me and Captain Beefheart barelling down the highway.
Mar 11, 2002 @ 07:55 » no comments » General
As it should be
Wouldn't you love to study Anthropology here? Judging from the picture *wink*notch* here they teach Anthropology as it should be.
Mar 11, 2002 @ 10:55 » no comments » General
Wide as my screen
In a strangely postmodern action, yesterday a man walked into the lobby of Amsterdam's tallest building, armed with a machinegun, a handgun and reportedly a big bag of explosives. He initially held hostage 18 people in the lobby of the building, later releasing 7, because he felt that he and everybody else was being duped by widescreen TV producers. He had employees paste slogans on the windows of the building, which read "We mislead", "We lie" and "Kleisterlee lies". Kleisterlee is the director of electronics giant Philips and the building he occupied housed until 6 months ago the headquarters of Philips. His main gripe (although it's all a bit vague still) was that widescreen transmission cause black bands to appear on normal TV sets, which he felt forced him to adopt widescreen television, and which (reportedly) according to him hide information from the viewer.
BBC has got some coverage here, and they call the man mentally ill and a psychiatric patient (also reported on account of a police statement by the Volkskrant), but as of yet that fact is not reported by some other Dutch news media here and here (amongst others).
Mar 12, 2002 @ 11:44 » no comments » General
Bieslog
A link for the Dutch readers: Bieslog. Bieslog could possibly be classified as a professional blog, in the sense that the author Wim de Bie, who you could possibly call an astute political satirist and long time TV maker, has decided to write this blog instead of making a new TV series for the VPRO, a Dutch 'alternative' broadcaster. The VPRO are now hosting the blog. A good read. Recommended.
Mar 12, 2002 @ 21:20 » no comments » Research
Cyberpunk
Good stuff about cyberpunk and William Gibson. "Thus the stage is set as the reader is plunged into the cyberpunk universe which is both bizarre and hyperreal in the extreme, yet familiar in an uncanny but highly fascinating way."
Mar 12, 2002 @ 23:55 » no comments » Research
Optional new window function
Eew! Up way too late to make the optional new-window-link work... but it should now. I got the cool code from RandomWalks.com, modified it a tad so that internal links on my site going either to fragment.nl or www.fragment.nl will open in the same window (target="_top") whereas the visitor has a choice of not opening a new window for links by clicking the check-box on the left.
Mar 13, 2002 @ 01:21 » no comments » General
The magic camera
Drop a Nikon Coolpix 990 camera in a pond, dry it well and it turns into a magic camera. Link by way of ArsTechnica.com.
Mar 13, 2002 @ 10:56 » no comments » General
Ooh...
X-Box pricedrop in Germany to 399 euro, reported by the Inquirer. Previous X-Box reporting on this site here.
Mar 15, 2002 @ 13:00 » no comments » General
Half-life, no sleep
On the box of Half-Life there should be a big warning: stop playing this game at least 45 minutes before you want to get some sleep. Damn that game AI...
Mar 18, 2002 @ 22:53 » no comments » General
3D graphics cards
There's a nice article about the history of 3D graphics acceleration cards at Acceleration.com. Stumbled onto that link on Slashdot.
Mar 20, 2002 @ 10:05 » no comments » General
Interfaces
Meg Hourihan writes in a thoughtful column: "Poor Interface = Poor Interactions. As a Web application developer, I spend a lot of my time working with user interfaces. Interfaces are both the bane and joy of my professional work. Often, when an interface is good, you don't even notice it. It's only when you can't accomplish your goal that you realize just how poorly the UI's designed. And the same holds true not only for Web or computer interfaces, but for any interface, online or off."
I was just discussing the horrors of navigating our university's website, especially the different departments' websites and this seemed a very appropriate and acurate description of the problem. Found Meg's column through a link at Jill/txt.
Mar 21, 2002 @ 11:04 » 4 comments » General
Love me
Remembering Jill's discussion of the role of gender in the Turing test, I just ran across the following piece of text:
The Gestalt psychologists recognized that the meaning of value of a thing seems to be perceived just as immediately as its color. The value is clear on the face of it, as we say, and thus it has a physiognomic quality in the way that the emotions of a man appear on his face. To quote from the Principles of Gestalt Psychology (Koffka, 1935): "Each thing says what it is... a fruit says 'Eat me'; water says 'Drink me'; thunder says 'Fear me'; and woman says 'Love me' [p. 7]." These values are a vivid and essential feature of the experience itself. (Gibson, 1977: 77)
Although it's Gibson here quoting Koffka, he's still quoting this particular piece of Koffka's text. Also note the absence of an article specifying the woman who says 'Love me', because it's the universal woman, dare I say always, saying 'Love me.' Yet, the emotions of a man appear on his face, for although a man is also any man, he is always a particular man (the reader? the writer?).
(Gibson, J.J. (1977) The Theory of Affordances. In: Shaw, Robert & John Bransford (eds.) (1977) Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing. Toward Ecological Psychology. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Mar 21, 2002 @ 12:23 » no comments » Research
Game Service Providers
It seems that Valve Software is trying to bring ASP (Application Service Provision) to the games market, with their Steam project, reported on by Slashdot, Shacknews and Gamespy.
ASP basically is a return to the concept of mainframe/terminal computing, where your applications run on a remote system and you access them through a relatively simple terminal. The sort of new thing with ASP is that you access it over the Internet instead of some proprietary network and that you don't own the remote system, but that you simple rent space and time on it from an Application Service Provider, which supposedly saves you money. John Dvorak recently ranted against the supposed benefits of software rental in a PC Magazine column.
Valve's Steam project delivers your software, keeps it updated and allows you to play multi-player games online. With the slight difference that game software will run locally, this sounds like ASP... and much like Microsoft's .NET initiative. Apparantly you can also use the network to keep the game you bought on CD in a shop current and the Shacknews article seems to imply that even narrowband users can use the system. I'm a bit sceptical about the whole deal, but like in many areas, it might be the games industry driving innovation here, so it's going to be interesting to see how this will work out.
Mar 22, 2002 @ 16:25 » no comments » General
Üfö-übermetablogging
Ufo breakfast does us as humans a great service in posting this analysis of metablogging.
Mar 26, 2002 @ 15:28 » no comments » General
Half-life flashbacks
Staring at my research proposal (which needs closure) I keep getting flashbacks of my recent bout of playing Half-life: involuntary twitches of my trigger finger, a vortigaunt popping up from behind a paragraph of the proposal. Did anyone ever research stuff like this?
Mar 26, 2002 @ 15:39 » no comments » Research
The future of MMORPGs
Gamespy's reporting from the Game Developer's Conference 2002 has an article titled What's This World Coming To? The Future of Massively Multiplayer Games. By way of Slashdot.
Mar 27, 2002 @ 10:14 » no comments » Research
Zen metaphors
I love Zen metaphors:
Ah, the Zen of word processors is the sound of one mind typing. Let's face it, we want something that will rock and roll right along with our flying fingers. Jack Kerouac typed On the Road on spools of telegraph paper. His thoughts flew so fast that changing pages in the typewriter was a major hindrance. That’s what we want our word processors to be like. Large spools of paper that let us work uninterrupted. If the program slows us down, be it in spell checking, diagramming, or just plain old typin', then it needs to be replaced. (Zach Brookheart)
Mar 27, 2002 @ 10:46 » 1 comment » General
Matrix philosophy
I just wrote a long paragraph about cyberpunk and its influences on popular and scientific conceptualizations of cyberspace and then I run into this little gem: a little philosophical journey through the Matrix (by way of Tinka's blog). There's some more cool games like this here.
Mar 28, 2002 @ 10:41 » no comments » Research
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