I learned last night that Brian Shackel died on May 9th in England. For anyone even remotely familiar with the literature on usability and HCI, Brian was a foundational figure who led the development of operational definitions and measures of usability. I worked with Brian for eight years at the HUSAT Research Institute in Loughborough, [...]
I am simultaneously heartened and horrified by reading the online diary of Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraqi National Library and Archive (www.bl.uk/iraqdiary.html). The library has been extensively looted, causing some to liken the current situation to the 13th century sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols. In the abstract this is depressing but Eskander’s diary [...]
I just returned from Dalhousie University where I delivered the final lecture in the Killam Lecture series (dalgrad.dal.ca/killam/lectures/2006/). The trip was fraought with travel difficulties that make one wonder at the false confidence provided by technology. My return flight was cancelled when I arrived at the airport, fully 45 minutes (and a $55 taxi ride) [...]
The Chicago Sun Times explored the idea that we are overwhelmed with data and cognitively suffering from multitasking in an interesting piece this week: tinyurl.com/24ajsp. And for once, the journalist actually reported what I said accurately. The angle taken seems to be that too much digital information use is in danger of dumbing us down [...]
The information field represents a third force that is vital to our future well being. Sure we need technological advances and we need to understand how to leverage economic benefit from all the data that is out there, but as we now enter the first century in which more than half the world resides in [...]
One of my students pointed me to a good read in the New Yorker on Google: www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070205fa_fact_toobin. The subject of just what google might be up to has been an intriguing one for me recently, what with my own university joining the great digitization project and rumors circulating at recent conferences on the company’s [...]
A competitor to Wikipedia has been officially launched this week (though it’s been around for a while): Citizendium, a somewhat rough looking ‘citizens compendium of everything’ promises to be loosely controlled and edited, and to offer ‘gentle oversight’ that improves on Wikipedia. You can check it out at www.citizendium.org/ but will need to sign up [...]
Two news stories breaking today point to the range of information issues in contemportary life. First, researchers at CIT and UCLA have developed a super dense computer chip that is the size of a white blood cell, opening the door to another level in computational design. Meanwhile, the New York Stock Exchange is adopting new [...]
In a world of data smog it’s clear that gaining attention is becoming a major concern for business, politicians, charities and even academics. You can find an interesting review of Richard Lanham’s book “The Economy of Attention” at: www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_11/goldhaber/index.html. You might want to think about your attention and how it gets captured before you do [...]