January 2007

Virtually at CES 2007

Around November time each year there is a flurry of emails from my contacts to ask “Are you at CES? If so, let’s hook up!” (It used to be September, and Comdex, but now Comdex is no more, and the pattern is the same with CES, and I can safely ignore all the car-audio, and

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Fifty Years of Europe

Bruce Sterling points to a nice article in the Guardian about the latest round of enlargement of the European Union, and observes: “It’s worth pointing out that nobody’s ever clamored to join an empire before. Yeah, that’s pretty weird behavior for an organization that’s supposed to be dull.“ I have been talking about this with

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What color is 2007?

One of the games I always play at the start of a new year is an excercise in synesthesia:what color is the coming year? For example to me 2006 was orange, 2005 was yellow, and 2004 was blue. My colors are not necessarily as neat as the basic ones: to me 2000 is bright white

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Happy 2007 with the annual question of Edge.org!

The literary agent John Brockman, editor of the Edge.org website, asks each year a question to representatives of the third culture, unifying the artificial divisions of scientific and humanistic cultures. This year’s question is “What are you optimistic about?” Reading the stimulating and often provocative answers is a favorite passtime of mine: I put them

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