Interrelativity

Interrelativity: musings about interrelatedness

  • Mobile Internet Intent, Action and Inaction

    I've recently encountered a number of interesting studies, discussions and disagreements regarding the use of mobile phones to access the Internet. As an iPhone user, I love having the Internet in my pocket, but I often find myself deferring actions that require significant involvement until I have the Internet on my lap, using the larger…

  • Steve Miller Band at Chateau Ste. Michelle: a concert review

    We saw Steve Miller Band in our first concert of the 2010 summer season at Chateau Ste. Michelle on Wednesday night. CSM summer concerts tend to include a preponderance of rock stars from the 60s and 70s, some of whom are looking, sounding and performing better than others, so many decades after their heydays. Steve…

  • All models, studies and Wikipedia entries are wrong, some are useful

    A sequence of encounters with various models, studies and other representations of knowledge lately prompted me to reflect on both the inherent limitations and the potential uses of these knowledge representations … and the problems that ensue when people don't fully appreciate either their limitations or applications … or the inherent value of being wrong.…

  • Paro, Personal Robots, Emotional Intelligence and the Need to be Needed

    Paro is a personal robot that looks like a baby harp seal and responds to changes in light, sound, temperature and touch. Research and development in artificial intelligence has traditionally focused on linguistic, logical or mathematical intelligence, although robotics has also involved the quest for imbuing machines with spatial and kinesthetic intelligence. Paro, however, seems…

  • The “Boopsie Effect”: Gender, Sexiness, Intelligence and Competence

    Last Thursday, I heard segments of a KUOW interview with Deborah Rhode, Stanford law professor and author of The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law, in which she spoke of the Boopsie effect, wherein women in upper-level positions in historically male-dominated professions find that “attractiveness suggests less competence and intellectual ability”.…

  • Wanted: a new word for “patient” … but which one?

    Years ago, I was surprised to read about a doctor – Bernie Siegel – advocating that people undergoing medical treatment be bad patients. In his 1986 book, Love, Medicine and Miracles: Lessons Learned about Self-Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients, the surgeon urged his fellow doctors to view themselves as privileged listeners –…

  • Platform Thinking, De-Bureaucratization and the Redistribution of Agency

    Tim O'Reilly wrote the definitive guide to the concept and term Web 2.0 back in 2005. The central theme from the outset was to view the web as a platform, and that view has evolved over time to encompass a collection of platforms with varying degrees of interoperability … and varying degrees of openness to…

  • Preemptive Self-Disclosure: Still Unpacking Privacy for a Networked World

    I have long attributed the idea of preemptive self-disclosure – sharing information about oneself in order to forestall negative consequences from not sharing – to Paul Dourish, but over the years, I'd forgotten exactly why. A couple of recent articles I've read about disclosing what many might consider private information – coupled with the 19th…

  • Stuff-Centered Sociality: Commerce, Conversations and Conservation at a Garage Sale

    Items on display at a garage sale provide myriad conversation contexts for buyers and sellers alike. Amy and I host or participate in a garage sale (or a tag sale as they're known back east) every few years, but it wasn't until this past weekend that I was struck by the way these events –…

  • Certified Cancer-free: Celebrating Amy’s 5th Anniversary

    Amy had her final post-treatment check-up at Cascade Cancer Center yesterday, and I am happy to report that she has been discharged as a patient there, 5 days shy of 5 years since she was initially diagnosed with cancer. Although she continues to experience some side effects from the treatment, according to her doctors, Dr.…