You can’t talk about paper usage in the 21st century without mentioning the environment. Of all the reasons to abandon the widespread use of paper, the need to stop cutting down trees would seem the most urgent. … Continue readingWhy Do We Still Print?
But the decline of newsprint trumpeted by everyone from reporters to media barons has another potential victim — the software companies like Quark and Adobe who’ve spent the past 30 years investing billions in desktop publishing, graphic design and publications management applications. … Continue readingWhoops, There Goes…
We’re not causing this, the Internet is. Do you really think you deserve a secure 20-year career in data entry? I’d suggest you go back to school! … Continue readingThe Global Local
Those restrictions might make business sense, but consumers of internet services must find the constant apologies for content not available in their region a backwards step to say the least. … Continue readingStop Signs On The Super Highway
Achieving the environmental gains that built in natural processes offer seems like a huge task after our history of high waste, factory-style production, but it can start with the simple question ‘how would nature do this?’ Next time you turn on a light at home (which probably uses about 120 volts of electricity) consider that the Amazon electric eel can produce three times as much power using chemicals that also are found in the human body. … Continue readingBack To Nature
If you’d invested in Titanic (1998) you would have received a little over $9 for every dollar you put in (900 percent ROI). For Crocodile Dundee (1986), USD$13 (1,300 percent ROI). For The Blair Witch Project (1999, the first sleeper hit of the web age), a whopping USD$7,103 (710,300 percent). … Continue readingMaking it in the Movies
So while people will always try to build C-3PO-style machines that look and talk like us, the real advances will come in individual components we design to do one job well. Human intelligence arose from the unconscious co-operation of such systems to sustain the organism. … Continue readingSmart But Dumb
It used to be cut and dried. We walked into a store and bought a 7-inch single or videocassette if we liked a song or movie. None of us had the means to reproduce it in the sort of numbers that would hurt copyright holders too much. But nowadays, an eleven-year-old on the family PC can copy and distribute anything to billions of otherwise paying customers. … Continue readingThanks for the Idea
If the above are among your benchmarks, you might end up disappointed according to a recent flood of books warning us away from The Chase. It’s a cliché that human nature is to always want more (food, power, etc) — according to zoology and behavioural science it was hardwired into us millions of years ago. … Continue readingStuck in the Middle
The device promised by the dotcom age, which we’d use for everything from watching TV, reading books and making phone calls to browsing the web, working and playing games is now a cliché, both technology vendors and consumers now realising we want different experiences from different tools. … Continue readingRise of the Machines
