Comments on: Digital Nation – my new documentary – Tuesday 2/2 on PBS

By: Dan C

Dan C — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:55:03 +0000

I liked when Sir Stewart said “Maybe I like complexity.”

I once wrote this:
Good work is the intentional complication of a task. Quality measurement and control is the intentional simplification and specialization of the same task. To produce a good chair, you carefully cut, sand , and polish it until you are done finding things to sand and polish. To produce a quality chair, you set up a system which makes as few cuts, the least number of sanding requirements, and a finite number of steps to completion. The quality chair may be used, accepted, and may even last a finite period of time. The good chair will be loved, traded, gifted, repaired, and eventually worn into kindling.

You can find it here: http://www.equipment-reliability.com/newsletter/news1/nl1.htm

By: jake

jake — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:22:41 +0000

yeah iphones were the one thing star trek *didn’t* predict

By: mason

mason — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:39:04 +0000

Hey man!
Even without the “arcade”
It’s been in a mall near you since 9.11
But don’t go around holding signs unless you’re trying to bring in business or, who knows, they might pick you off at a few thousand feet.

By: DoctorJay

DoctorJay — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:14:52 +0000

Oh man, that military section, with the killer drones being controlled from miles away, was really scary. When it the “Army Experience” coming to a mall near me?

By: mason

mason — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:45:30 +0000

Great tunes tristian! & what you said

By: TheChaoSaysMu

TheChaoSaysMu — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:10:41 +0000

Excellent! I have been long awaiting this. Thank you Douglas, and thank you PBS.

By: Ricardo B. Giuliani

Ricardo B. Giuliani — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:04:42 +0000

I just finished watching the documentary online, and it is really good! It raised TONS of questions about the digital life and it pro and cons… I enjoy thinking about it and watching how the world is being built in this new paradigm… very interesting, powerful and a bit scary

I also just bought you book (Life Inc) this weekend and I will start reading it… so I might be coming more often to your blog and leaving some comments

Thanks for the amazing documentary

Ricardo.

By: tristan

tristan — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:38:39 +0000

congratulations, douglas! looking forward to seeing it.

By: Brad

Brad — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:47:33 +0000

Sounds fascinating. Especially the roundtable discussions. I think we definitely need to catch up with ourselves and figure out why we are using technology as we do: decide what to keep and what to trash. It is “nice” to check the weather before you go outside, but is that the culmination of a network of billions of people – a series of small comforts? I don’t think all of this addiction to comfort and small pleasures is necessarily a good thing. So that’s more of an issue of human-computer interface. I suppose the bigger issues of how the information age can affect our health, minds, and freedom will be fleshed out.

By: mason

mason — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:42:31 +0000

I bet his Picard could manage with 140 characters. OTOH Spinners’ Data would have 2 be 1 too. To a talent like Stewart though, Tweeting could be like Michael Dorn’s Worf bidding the cowboy Borg astride the deflector array, “Twitter This!” Then the huddled masses could assimilate more of Stewart’s thought during the performance or afterward. Ah, but would the performative magic be the same if we knew what resources Stewart resourced? Na! Strike me as a sub twit or tweeter. Unworthy, unworthy!

I vant to tweet your memes! Heh Heh Heh Heh Bwahhahahaha!

-mason