As an undergrad in the early 1970's when sleep-dream research was starting to take off, I lucked into having James B. Maas (Cornell) as my adviser. He, and William Dement (at one of the large Southern California campuses then) were the two big publishers of research that was interesting, fun, groundbreaking, and memorable. Maas's Psych 101 in Baily Hall (1100 seats) was always oversubscribed.
As a subject in one of the survey studies, I remember being asked if I was ever aware of having dreamed in color. Apparently, this was as strange question for many subjects as it was for me... and the interviewers had developed a script to coach us in answering. If you were not specifically aware of having awakened from dreaming with a vivid, specific color memory, they counted it as a 'no.' Over time, I forgot the question and the strangeness of the suggestion that I did NOT dream in color.
I was in my late 20s when I had the described, defining experience. While I cannot generally report whether a specific recent dream was in color or not, I felt certain on the morning of revelation that I had not ever before dreamt in color, or I would have known it.
For what it may be worth, I have been dreaming with increasing frequency over the last year in 'computer screens' (in color, by the way). I wonder if this is analogous to 'dreaming in German,' say, as a hallmark of advanced fluency in a second language. If it gets to dreaming of being on hold to a help desk, I am seeking professional help, or at least looking up Professor Maas.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Friday, November 9, 2007
A slight respite from assignment deadlines coincides with catching up on some reading, and these intersect with some thoughts I have been mulling. Reading Anthony Grafton's Future Reading (New Yorker Magazine, 11/5/2007) it clicked.
The half life of an information technology is the interval between successive media proliferations.
It sounds tautologous... but ponder a bit. I will throw out a few pearls now, and return with more in my next post.
What may be different in this regime change, with digital trying to replace paper records, is that print is still proliferating steadily. (Previously, paper rather deftly displaced parchment, which in turn was seen as better than a wax codex, which in pre-Christian days displaced clay tablets...)
Technology 'this time' allows for the production of either printed or digital records from virtually identical workflows, but once they are created, the stewardship, permanence, accessibility and findability of 'hard copy' records, and their 'born digital' siblings, are very different, in ways we are only starting to appreciate.
At the micro-level of digital storage media, we note, in a dizzying short span, the introduction, brief flourish, then complete obsolescence of: 5.25" diskettes, 3.5" floppies (including the uniquely formatted Apple version), ZIP discs (in 100, 250 and ultimately 750MB capacities), Jazz drives, and a host of tape cassette formats. The rewritable CD seems outright venerable, for having been available all of 12 years now, but one wonders how long 'til it is hard to find an optical media drive that won't have the requisite backward compatibility to read all of my carefully archived treasures...
At the macro level, the digital pile will only grow, if not ever fully take over. The incessant need to migrate digitalia to the next darling format on the next hegemonous medium is certain to effectively leave behind much of our societal record and output from this transition era. God knows my archived e-mails, on scores of lovingly labeled and stored media, are not going to be accessible and readable in ten years if I do not decide to commit to periodic conversions and rewritings, and if my original organizing and labeling schemes prove fugitive through it all.
Previous information tech revolutions were relatively swift, and once most of society heard the new tune, they shifted right to it. The important works, with some sad exceptions, made the migration to the next medium. The present revolution does not hold any promise of an early armistice. Think of protracted trench warfare, of waste, and squandered youth, truth and beauty.
The half life of an information technology is the interval between successive media proliferations.
It sounds tautologous... but ponder a bit. I will throw out a few pearls now, and return with more in my next post.
What may be different in this regime change, with digital trying to replace paper records, is that print is still proliferating steadily. (Previously, paper rather deftly displaced parchment, which in turn was seen as better than a wax codex, which in pre-Christian days displaced clay tablets...)
Technology 'this time' allows for the production of either printed or digital records from virtually identical workflows, but once they are created, the stewardship, permanence, accessibility and findability of 'hard copy' records, and their 'born digital' siblings, are very different, in ways we are only starting to appreciate.
At the micro-level of digital storage media, we note, in a dizzying short span, the introduction, brief flourish, then complete obsolescence of: 5.25" diskettes, 3.5" floppies (including the uniquely formatted Apple version), ZIP discs (in 100, 250 and ultimately 750MB capacities), Jazz drives, and a host of tape cassette formats. The rewritable CD seems outright venerable, for having been available all of 12 years now, but one wonders how long 'til it is hard to find an optical media drive that won't have the requisite backward compatibility to read all of my carefully archived treasures...
At the macro level, the digital pile will only grow, if not ever fully take over. The incessant need to migrate digitalia to the next darling format on the next hegemonous medium is certain to effectively leave behind much of our societal record and output from this transition era. God knows my archived e-mails, on scores of lovingly labeled and stored media, are not going to be accessible and readable in ten years if I do not decide to commit to periodic conversions and rewritings, and if my original organizing and labeling schemes prove fugitive through it all.
Previous information tech revolutions were relatively swift, and once most of society heard the new tune, they shifted right to it. The important works, with some sad exceptions, made the migration to the next medium. The present revolution does not hold any promise of an early armistice. Think of protracted trench warfare, of waste, and squandered youth, truth and beauty.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
back to the manhole covers...
My short post that asked for replies has only garnered one, by a brave soul who admitted not having ever given the subject much thought. (Scroll down to see the Q and A under Saturday, September 29th.)
A round cover, if it has an adequate little lip on the rim, cannot fall through its own hole. One made with evenly faceted sides—say a square, pentagon, hexagon or octagon— could fall through. Even if it did not kill anyone or damage the works below, there would still be the problem of getting 200lbs of cast steel back up and out, before carefully retrying.
I remember well the train engineer outfit I got for my 5th birthday. In 1958, we did not yet know any astronaut by name, but all still had at least an observer's relation with the physical and mechanical furnishings of our infrastructure. What was encouraged and commonplace has become weird and foreign in a generation.
If you had posed the questions in 1970, most adults would have recognized them as interesting, and a good portion would have gotten it right, I believe. Asking the question today is more likely to elicit a 'whatever' reaction...
I am concerned that, in the main, today's average American adult is completely aloof to the most basic underpinnings of the systems they completely depend on to support their narrow and very specialized pursuits.
A round cover, if it has an adequate little lip on the rim, cannot fall through its own hole. One made with evenly faceted sides—say a square, pentagon, hexagon or octagon— could fall through. Even if it did not kill anyone or damage the works below, there would still be the problem of getting 200lbs of cast steel back up and out, before carefully retrying.
I remember well the train engineer outfit I got for my 5th birthday. In 1958, we did not yet know any astronaut by name, but all still had at least an observer's relation with the physical and mechanical furnishings of our infrastructure. What was encouraged and commonplace has become weird and foreign in a generation.
If you had posed the questions in 1970, most adults would have recognized them as interesting, and a good portion would have gotten it right, I believe. Asking the question today is more likely to elicit a 'whatever' reaction...
I am concerned that, in the main, today's average American adult is completely aloof to the most basic underpinnings of the systems they completely depend on to support their narrow and very specialized pursuits.
Monday, October 22, 2007
"Like Lemmings to Lex Ave"
In the American automotive scene, marketing guys are calling the shots, and we are doing whatever they tell us. They have every new car buyer thinking that you need at least 200 horsepower to get a Corolla from A to B. and no one is saying "Hold it just a minute, there, Buster!"
While it might be fun and thrilling to go from 0—60 in under 7 seconds, wouldn't we rather just be adequately able to do the interstate merge, or pass trucks on a hill (with say 100hp) and get appreciably better mileage? All the great engineering that presently going into getting lots of power out of little displacement, could instead be getting much more economy out of the same engine size, with 'mosdest' instead of 'monster' power avilable.
The entire industry, in the last ten years, asked, "Wanna supersize it?' and we did not even think about the question. They have us just where they want us.
If we look at the market, we see a reflection of how we went along, voting with our collective purse... but my point is that the voting was uninformed, wholesale, across the American market. We have become uncritical consuming dupes, only pushing for diverse feature offerings in things that are in the passenger compartment or on the outside, but estranged from the workings of the beast that bears us, that cosumes fossil fuels in a heat engine and adds to the greenhouse gas burden under which our biosphere is sinking.
If you are like most in the car market, you now want the mileage, and maybe the pollution reductions, because of the prices at the gas pump. Don't feel bad about your past complicity, but instead start feeling good about your choices going forward. Start by hesitating (instead of caving in) when they offier you 'bigger/faster/more powerful' if you did not actually ask.
Being an educated consumer, rather than an emotion-based buyer, is being responsible to yourself and to the environment.
While it might be fun and thrilling to go from 0—60 in under 7 seconds, wouldn't we rather just be adequately able to do the interstate merge, or pass trucks on a hill (with say 100hp) and get appreciably better mileage? All the great engineering that presently going into getting lots of power out of little displacement, could instead be getting much more economy out of the same engine size, with 'mosdest' instead of 'monster' power avilable.
The entire industry, in the last ten years, asked, "Wanna supersize it?' and we did not even think about the question. They have us just where they want us.
If we look at the market, we see a reflection of how we went along, voting with our collective purse... but my point is that the voting was uninformed, wholesale, across the American market. We have become uncritical consuming dupes, only pushing for diverse feature offerings in things that are in the passenger compartment or on the outside, but estranged from the workings of the beast that bears us, that cosumes fossil fuels in a heat engine and adds to the greenhouse gas burden under which our biosphere is sinking.
If you are like most in the car market, you now want the mileage, and maybe the pollution reductions, because of the prices at the gas pump. Don't feel bad about your past complicity, but instead start feeling good about your choices going forward. Start by hesitating (instead of caving in) when they offier you 'bigger/faster/more powerful' if you did not actually ask.
Being an educated consumer, rather than an emotion-based buyer, is being responsible to yourself and to the environment.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Intense week—economical postings!
Many projects coming due this week, so long essays here are in temporary abeyance! ("Look it up!" my mom used to say!)
A meditation and encouragement, my Grasshoppers, which would have you be in touch with your personal capacity to make a difference: "think globally, act locally"
A meditation and encouragement, my Grasshoppers, which would have you be in touch with your personal capacity to make a difference: "think globally, act locally"
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Thinking about Efficiencey
In the day (circa 1974, right after the first big 'fuel crunch' of 1973) I could provoke an argument by insisting that my sweetly tuned 1960 36 horsepower VW Beetle, notorious for squeezing a then amazing 32 miles out of every gallon of regular gas, was not as 'efficient,' or even fuel efficient, as friend Scott's '63 Merc, with its 265 horsepower 390 cubic inch V-8, that never quite managed 19 highway miles on a gallon of hi-test.
If, by efficiency, we meant: ton-miles moved for fuel consumed, he was doing lots better. Not that this was much consolation to him when he was inwardly questioning whether he really needed to haul around 3600 lbs of tailfins and chrome every time he went from Point A to Point B. But when he took on three passengers there was no perceptible degradation in mileage or performance, while a full load in my beloved 1600 lb.'Wolfbang' meant that several hills which were normally taken in 4th now entailed a downshift—or two—and a noticeable drop to mileage in the mid 20s per gallon.
The term 'efficiency' alone does not specify which efficiency one is discussing. In the era where may of us are now aware of our 'carbon footprint' and should engage in the national dialog about planning and policies that reduce greenhouse gasses, we need to go beyond the usually intended 'miles per gallon' and ponder things on bigger scales.
Come to appreciate that the Q25 MTA bus, only 1/3 full and getting only 5 mpg while lumbering along Parsons Avenue, is keeping 20 autos off the same road. (Hell, if we can convert it to a hybrid, maybe it would even beat 5 loaded, ride-sharing Priuses replacing it!) Ponder the national implications of subsidizing railway construction and improvement, in terms of the fact that on comparable long haul routes that 2-engined 100 freight car train is using about 1/8th the fuel per payload ton mile of the Peterbilt tractor hauling 10 tons in its 60 foot trailer.
In addition to wondering how much money you could be saving now by switching to a hybrid, think higher up and further ahead for a moment. We can find non-fossil fuel ways to move loads on the earth's surface, and should make that an international priority now, because we do not want to preclude the possibility of anyone being able to fly in airplanes after the year 2100. (Maybe by then we will have developed a way to safely beam non-fossil fuel-generated power up to aircraft... and likely by then they will be selling seaside real estate within the city limits of Houston.)
How cool it would be to have a presidential campaign based on the premise that we should lead international efforts to switch to appropriate technologies, to undertake and apply basic science that makes our planet sustainable and improves conditions globally. I am old enough to remember JFK's bold declaration (in 1962) that we would land a man on the moon before the end of that decade, and the excitement and global interest it sustained. It is time to return to visionary leadership, and a visionary citizenry motivated to get to work.
If, by efficiency, we meant: ton-miles moved for fuel consumed, he was doing lots better. Not that this was much consolation to him when he was inwardly questioning whether he really needed to haul around 3600 lbs of tailfins and chrome every time he went from Point A to Point B. But when he took on three passengers there was no perceptible degradation in mileage or performance, while a full load in my beloved 1600 lb.'Wolfbang' meant that several hills which were normally taken in 4th now entailed a downshift—or two—and a noticeable drop to mileage in the mid 20s per gallon.
The term 'efficiency' alone does not specify which efficiency one is discussing. In the era where may of us are now aware of our 'carbon footprint' and should engage in the national dialog about planning and policies that reduce greenhouse gasses, we need to go beyond the usually intended 'miles per gallon' and ponder things on bigger scales.
Come to appreciate that the Q25 MTA bus, only 1/3 full and getting only 5 mpg while lumbering along Parsons Avenue, is keeping 20 autos off the same road. (Hell, if we can convert it to a hybrid, maybe it would even beat 5 loaded, ride-sharing Priuses replacing it!) Ponder the national implications of subsidizing railway construction and improvement, in terms of the fact that on comparable long haul routes that 2-engined 100 freight car train is using about 1/8th the fuel per payload ton mile of the Peterbilt tractor hauling 10 tons in its 60 foot trailer.
In addition to wondering how much money you could be saving now by switching to a hybrid, think higher up and further ahead for a moment. We can find non-fossil fuel ways to move loads on the earth's surface, and should make that an international priority now, because we do not want to preclude the possibility of anyone being able to fly in airplanes after the year 2100. (Maybe by then we will have developed a way to safely beam non-fossil fuel-generated power up to aircraft... and likely by then they will be selling seaside real estate within the city limits of Houston.)
How cool it would be to have a presidential campaign based on the premise that we should lead international efforts to switch to appropriate technologies, to undertake and apply basic science that makes our planet sustainable and improves conditions globally. I am old enough to remember JFK's bold declaration (in 1962) that we would land a man on the moon before the end of that decade, and the excitement and global interest it sustained. It is time to return to visionary leadership, and a visionary citizenry motivated to get to work.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
'Connection': is it a Zero-Sum thing?
Staying 'connected' to what is going on, in the real world, in one's family, and in the virtual world, all require committing time and energy to learning curves and maintenance.
None of us get more than 24 hours in a day, and whatever our personal unknown 'magic' number of granted days may be, that is all we will get. So, it stands to reason that we can only do so much 'quality connecting.'
My fear is that we are not even leaning into the wind, resiting the trend to being narrow specialists in the ways we add value to to the economy, while also being (necessarily) more substantial consumers all the time. What we are losing at a rapid rate, is the connection with the real world of inventing, designing, innovating, making, maintaining and repairing the things around us.
Not that I mean to get into a 'blame game' here... as I have noted previously, even if you were motivated to get involved with the workings of your automotive beast of burden today, it seems that the manufacturer cozens to the exact opposite taste.
Another blogger says it well:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/09/14/the-top-5-reasons-to-be-a-jack-of-all-trades/
None of us get more than 24 hours in a day, and whatever our personal unknown 'magic' number of granted days may be, that is all we will get. So, it stands to reason that we can only do so much 'quality connecting.'
My fear is that we are not even leaning into the wind, resiting the trend to being narrow specialists in the ways we add value to to the economy, while also being (necessarily) more substantial consumers all the time. What we are losing at a rapid rate, is the connection with the real world of inventing, designing, innovating, making, maintaining and repairing the things around us.
Not that I mean to get into a 'blame game' here... as I have noted previously, even if you were motivated to get involved with the workings of your automotive beast of burden today, it seems that the manufacturer cozens to the exact opposite taste.
Another blogger says it well:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/09/14/the-top-5-reasons-to-be-a-jack-of-all-trades/
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