Google Glass: See For Yourself

Image from dvice: Google Glass will make dating super creepy (and awesome)

Thanks to Jenny I checked out Charles Arthur's Guardian review of Google Glass, and I'm reminded of some of the early critiques of the iPod and iPhone (not to mention my own preliminary pan of the iPad). Somewhat predictably Arthur emphasizes the first-generation glitches of this augmented reality device: buggy interface, wifi hassles, low-res pix. The price of being bleeding-edge cool.

He also notes the risk of surreptitious snapshots -- and the even greater risk of looking like a tool while wearing these things. Yes, these things may be a creeper's favorite new toy. And I've yet to see pictures of someone wearing these Google Glasses without flashing back to images of Geordi La Forge. Google Glass may be useful for specialized tasks, but most folks may see little more than a gimmick.

Arthur may be right; he may be wrong, but his review is worth a read if only for its conclusion, which rightly points out a deeper concern arising from our potential willingness to outsource our sight: "Google Glass feels like something that would make you see the world less, and replace it with a world seen through a giant corporation's interests, funnelled through a tiny screen suspended above one eye." The electronic panopticon is getting an upgrade.

Read the entire article: Google Glass – hands-on review

2013's Banned List (Part 1 of 2)

OK, let's get this out of the way: I'm gonna trash some words, phrases, and things as being so clichéd and hackneyed that they should be banned in 2013. Problem is, "Banned Lists" are themselves a cliché. So beware. This post is so overdone, it might consume itself and set off a self-referential chain reaction that turns the universe inside out. That proviso aside, we'll proceed.

"Where's my jetpack?" Remember the turn of the century? The Year 2000? That's when we were promised flying cars, robot butlers and, of course, jetpacks. We got George Bush, jr. instead. Naturally we're all disappointed. Problem is we've been inundated with that "Where's my jetpack?" lament ever since. "Where's my jetpack?" has become an all-purpose stand-in for all manner of Great Disappointment. It's been 13 years, folks. There's no jetpack in your future. Let it go.

"Double-down" Every politician these days is a gambler, announcing some initiative or policy and then, faced with opposition, actually sticking with their idea. It sounds daring, but mostly the "double down" comes across as a screw-you to political foes. GOP: "You thought you hated us when we threatened to send us over the cliff? Just wait until we close down the whole government!" Lame Commentator: "Looks like they're doubling down." Doubly stupid.

Baby Bump In celebrity culture, pregnancy seems like the ultimate product spin-off ("This fall we're releasing a new movie, my first album is dropping, and, oh!, I'm having a baby!"). Turns out, producing an Actual Human Being is kind of a big deal. Labeling it a "bump" makes the kid sound like an add-on feature, something you complain about when the hotel tries to charge extra at check-out. We're already doomed to follow Every Moment Of Kim Kardashian's Pregnancy. Let's at least give her kid a break.

Selfie When our future robot overlords look back upon today's society, these happy years before machines become sentient and start sporting baby bumps of their own, they'll remember the one thing that made their rise possible: We were so busy taking "selfies" (most egregiously holding up iPhones and, ye Gods, iPads in the bathroom to take duckface portraits) that we never saw them coming. Let's cut back on the selfies, or at least get a tripod.

LOL We laugh. And most of the time we laugh out loud. That's lovely. Laughing is lovely, and we should let loose at least one good guffaw each day. But every time I see someone comment on a Facebook post with LOL (or worse, lol), I just think to myself, "No you didn't. You did not laugh out loud. Why would you lie to me? You're supposed to be my friend!" What's worse, by the way, is when folks append this acronym to something snarky ("Your duckface Selfie looks like someone tried to iron your lips lol."). Please, no more.

[Check back tomorrow for Part 2]

Origami Urbanism Update

Finally wrapping up my chapter for the Urban Communication Reader! Here's some of the new stuff...

To this post-place we now turn, learning to read the city that unfolds itself to our gaze. This is the modern city too, in a way; it is the perfection of modernity, no longer limited by the plane-truth. In this city, flat power is dispelled with a magic trick, a mediated fantasy of moving parts with no mechanism aside from consumer choice. Such power--strange, illusory, intoxicating--must first be recognized as such; its users must be trained to recognize themselves as its masters, to see themselves as artists, engineers, poets, creators. This is post-industrial power, when reality-television allows even the otherwise disadvantaged among us to become producers of icons, to brand themselves. This power is the child’s plaything, the personal totem, the solitary confidence. Easily crumbled, burst with merely a word, this pleasure transcends vast chasms between ideas and action, between self and other.

Origami urbanism reveals the sensual pleasure of this manipulation, our technological means of ascending to the summit of a God’s-eye view once more. Amid the flat city, origami urbanism recall’s Gatsby’s “constant flicker”: the flick of a finger upon an iPad, swiping the world into digital shape.  Such is the power and pleasure of mobile communication devices, the means to produce frames of reference that alter themselves according to our perpetually shifting positions, thickening homogeneity in an internal performance. With these new personal data, navigation, and entertainment devices, we need not be tied to fixed locations but may create new ones instead, building our own multidimensional worlds atop the flat screen.  We wander the boulevard, texting rather than speaking, posting rather than engaging, editing rather than experiencing, and our fantasy worlds appear to convulse with every stroke. The pleasures of origami urbanism appear, to the uninitiated at least, like an addiction.

iBook-it?

Have I found a reason to jump onto the iPad bandwagon? Maybe so.

Today Apple announced its iBooks Author app that may provide me the tools necessary to produce the sort of post-traditional press project I've long imagined - maybe my world's fair book, maybe something else entirely - a "book" that is dynamic, malleable, engaging, and much more updatable than the current model.

Reviewing Andy Ihnatko's initial assessment, I see lots to like about iBooks. Integration with iTunes, intuitive design, multimedia content… Nice. Then of course there are the typical caveats as Apple continues to expand creative options while managing distribution its patented brand of granular control. Oh, and let's not forget the hardware costs (never a one-time-only proposition).

Considering the potential and the pitfalls of today's announcement, I don't plan to rush to my nearest Apple store and buy iPad's next iteration (the one supposedly arriving this spring). I've got plenty of work ahead of me for the next year or so, just developing content. You know: words and stuff. We haven't advanced quite so far as to forget those minor items, have we?

At the same time, I've got to admit: I sure would like to play with an iPad right about now.

Mac as Modernism

Clever contrarian article about the retro origins of Mac's supposedly contemporary design. Tasty quote:

It is easy to imagine a ThinkPad or a Dell on the assembly line, in a clanking factory that stinks of solder: You can see their every join and part; you can almost smell the plastic they’re made from. Their attempts at decoration only make the industrial coverup more apparent, like reeds planted near a tailings pond. Whereas the water-carved clamshell of my beautiful Air just seems to have arisen from the waves, immaculate and virtuous, without a whiff of brimstone or fuel oil.

One other reading of what the Air represents: It may not be about the apotheosis of modernist design so much as its approaching disappearance.

Read the article: Why Mac's Modernism Is Old

Europe 2010 - Vienna to Munich - Day 12 of 12

Today marked the end of my trip. I would spend a few hours surveying alleys near Hotel Lucia in a final search for Viennese street art before catching the train back to Munich. The morning's photographic odyssey inspired some strange encounters, as folks standing near a piece of throwaway stencil graffiti would look askance at my studied efforts to compose and crop my shots. The act of taking photos of local commonplaces produces a strange effect, one requiring a tourist to become notably uncultured in foreign lands, just to appear cultured for friends back home. I delighted in my situation's absurdity, even as the minutes ticked away before my train would depart.

Vienna street art

In my midmorning search for a meal, I would not seek a "peak experience." I was mildly hungry but in no mood to hop subway stations of some cultural pilgrimage prescribed by my guidebook. I would simply sit down at a place that seemed right for me. Fortunately, finding a bar or cafe in Vienna is just as easy as finding a thrilling piece of baroque architecture or pitying an exasperated visitor flipping through a guidebook. In Vienna, they're everywhere. I just wanted some wiener schnitzel and a beer. And just like that, I entered a modest place where I knew I could enjoy an outdoor meal. Stepping up to order, though, something marvelous happened.

As I fumbled through the necessary greetings and details of my order, I was addressed in German, not in polite but somewhat condescending English. With strategically employed gestures and a smattering of rightly timed phrases, I managed a couple volleys of communication before my secret was revealed. Of course I do not know the language. But something about my demeanor pegged me as less of an outsider than normal. The woman at the counter smiled warmly and offered to bring my bier to a table outside. Before long, I was riding the train back to Munich, full, content, and ready for home.

There's something wonderful about dipping cookies in a melange and watching the countryside roll by. Unfortunately I was sitting next to the one annoying dude, a would-be hipster with requisite three-day-old facial hair and a penchant for interrupting his German with "global" words like "Facebook" and "PDF" into his iPhone (of course it was an iPhone). This guy, a lamoid who didn't even look up when the conductor came by to punch his ticket, must have been the only Austrian who missed the memo that polite folks don't yell into their cell phones on trains. I tuned out my train nemesis with Thelonious Monk's "Ruby, My Dear."

Pulling into Salzburg, a brief stop on the way to Munich, I grew intrigued by the variances in explanations about our location. In German, the conductor seemed to wax eloquently about the place, describing important landmarks, explaining points of historical interest -- maybe telling stories about his kids, for all I knew. In English, he merely said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are in Salzburg." No matter, loser-hipster-guy departed, presumably in search of a discothèque filled with bouncy teens and droning beats. He left his table covered in the trash of his various espressos and foil-covered snacks. I almost thought I heard a sigh of relief from a few other passengers (or maybe that was just me).

Rolling back to Munich, past those small towns dotted with tall church spires that jolt away from the land like exclamation points (German language speakers, at least official ones, seem drawn to exclamation points) I sipped a Budweiser Budvar, supposedly a "Czech important lager" that was offered as an alternative to an Austrian bier that I was told to be insufficient. The word "original" was scrawled atop the crookedly glued sticker, though to my shame, I realized that it'd been years since I downed an American Budweiser. Whatever this stuff was, I could hardly tell the difference.

On this trip, efforts to find real experiences, something like Walter Benjamin's idea of "aura," invariably seemed forced, fake. Only when I eased into things, settled into a less pressured vibe of "getting it right," did I catch glimpses of the real thing. Still the question remains: what is the purpose of travel? Truth or pleasure? Presumably one ventures afar in order to learn something new, so long as the thing beheld is true. Yet I increasingly side with those who admit trepidation at the whole ideal of "the real." For every moment of truth, there is always one who knows more, a self-styled expert who points out the fakery of any place, or at least the fakery of your own search.

So I wrap up my trip report on the train to Munich where I will stay the night before departing for SFO and home. I'm devouring a slice of Schokonusstorte and sipping some middling whiskey. Tomorrow at the airport I will order an Airbrau and a Henkersmahlzeit (a "hangman's lunch" composed of bread, water, and a cigarette). Now I gaze over the terrain with a combination of wide-eyed amazement and practiced ennui. I sat in a cafe today, leaving the last of my foolishly purchased Chesterfield cigarettes stubbed out in an ashtray. I practiced the art of being a local, one who knows. For a moment, I was that person, I was there. But always I was still me, a guy who stared awestruck at the vacation slideshows of others when I was a kid, one who never thought he'd travel to places like this. Today I was in Vienna; tomorrow it's back to Starbucks.

Part of the Salzburg seminar, I'm told, is to create citizens of the world. And certainly I've seen a bit more of the world now that I've come here. Yet truthfully I wonder how much of my citizenship is solely vested in souvenirs and a few good stories. Perhaps somewhere, maybe in the next train, there's a person who knows all the inside jokes, one who knows all the cool places that are lost to the travel-guide writers. Maybe he's wrapping a fellow traveler in the pleasurable embrace of a story far too clever to retell. One that can only be experienced. I am not that person. But I have been somewhere new these past few days. I've met some amazing people and seen some wonderful things.

Indeed....

That is enough for today.

Day 11 | Start Over

How good a multitasker are you?

Matt Richtel has written a comprehensive article in the New York Times about the impact of iPhones, video games, and multitasking on the human brain. While based on the experiences of one family, the article cites fascinating research on how our society's growing obsession with gadgets is changing how we prioritize information and relationships. Some tasty quotes:

Converging Ourselves to Death (Speech)

This is a slightly revised version of the speech I presented last month as keynoter for the Rocky Mountain Communication Association's 2010 conference in Denver. The trip was a delight, especially the opportunity it provided to photograph farm relics and neon signs. But the best part was the chance to meet some really cool folks (including some outstanding faculty members and graduate students at The University of Northern Colorado). I just thought it'd be useful to archive my RMCA remarks, if only to bring back some happy memories...

Think back to the last time you were several places at once.

Visualize the moment.

Imagine you're chatting on a mobile phone while scanning a website on your laptop. Perhaps you catch a glimpse of video on another screen nearby. Maybe you're doing these things on the same device.

OK, how many places so far? Three?

Archive II

I dig David Garcia's whimsical depiction of a mobile private library, which offers a visual sense of the pleasures contained in the iPod-as-enclave. Here's a fragment of the designer's description:

"Archive II is a nomadic library, a transport system and an intimate space. Inspired by ancient travelling [sic] libraries from the Far East, which visited courts and cities, Archive II transforms this into a personal space, where walking and reading coexist as refuge and transport."

Learn more: DesignBoom

Friday Fun Post: How I Met Your Motherboard

You may recall a few weeks back I wrote a three-part series on my first adventures with computing and webpage design. Now I'm happy to find a collection of similar stories. It's called How I Met Your Motherboard.

Be careful, though, it's best viewed on an Apple IIe!

Not Permitted

Trying to comment on Facebook about my reaction to today's explosion of iPad stories. Ran into a little trouble...

Friday Fun Post: Crush the Castle

Given the recent drubbing I dropped on the iPad, there's little risk I'll be confused as an Apple shill for giving props to my newest favorite iPod app: Crush the Castle.

In this game, you don't have to worry about complex strategy or convoluted controls. You tap the screen, then tap it again, and that's it. What happens? You control a gloriously old-school weapon called a Trebuchet, which is basically a giant slingshot that hoists huge rocks against a fortified pile.

Sometimes the castle is made of wood, sometimes stone, and sometimes metal. Which is fine, because the more you play, the better your arsenal becomes, starting from tiny stones and growing to an avalanche of pain. All you do is select the your payload, release for maximum damage, and pulverize that sucker.

Technically you're measuring for speed, distance, and velocity, while assessing how various structural elements like beams and fulcrums can best be knocked down. But really you're just laying waste to a kingdom of pixels that can stand for anything bugging you. Oh, and there's a king, a queen, and plenty of hapless guards in the line of fire.

Even if you slept through your high school physics course, you'll quickly become master of the Trebuchet, raining all sorts of mathematical mayhem on your foes. Before long, you'll eagerly eye the map for your next conquest, your next territory, and your next increase in firepower: bigger rocks, then groups of rocks, then bombs that sizzle as they arc through the air and drop onto shrieking foes (then things get kind of freaky).

It's so easy. Just set, release, and watch as the walls come tumbling down.

Play for free at the Armor Games website. Then download the app. Crush the Castle is a fun medieval timesuck for only two bucks.

The iPad has landed - with a thud

Yep, I dedicated my morning to watching the Big Announcement from the comfort of my easy chair, resting an aging MacBook on my lap and nestling external speakers on either side of my legs. On one side of the screen: CrunchGear's often cringe-inducing live coverage. On the other side, NYT's live blog coverage, requiring occasional refreshes for updates. In the middle, Twitter coverage generally dedicated to either mocking the lameness of CrunchGear's John Biggs and Meghan Asha's repartee or demanding with increasing intensity: how much will the iPad cost?

There's much to like about this thing. I dig the flash memory (flashing back to memories of several crashed hard drives), the potential for immersive, interactive media, and the sheer audacity represented by a device meant to create an entirely new category of tech toy/tool. But some stuff just doesn't make any sense - starting with the price. $499 (and way up) is a couple hundred above my pricepoint for a something I'm not sure I actually need. Beyond that, I've got a few gripes:

Practicality issues: I'm trying to visualize how I'd integrate this device into my life. I regularly hear that the device is meant to be placed on your coffee table and passed from family member to family member. Well, we don't have a coffee table. OK, you can attach a separate tactile responsive keyboard to the device for, say, writing on a plane without mashing your fingers against the glass. This seems oddly regressive from the perspective of the laptop I'm using right now. More importantly, how rugged can the iPad be? I visualize a thriving market for third-party iPad protectors, which is a shame. Apple products shouldn't require ugly covers to guard their screens.

Software hassles: The iPad lacks multitasking ability. In other words, with a few exceptions, you only run one application at a time. How does that compute for you? How often do you find yourself watching a YouTube video, checking your email, and maybe checking a website simultaneously? OK. Maybe not all that frequently. But when you can't multitask, you really wish you could.

Missed Opportunities: The one potential selling point of the iPad (for me) would be a two-way videochat option that works anywhere. Talking with a pal via live video, on a large enough screen to see the subtleties of emotion, would be cool - especially if you could collaborate on documents on another part of the screen - working together in different locations on the same thing. But this version skipped the chance by failing to include videocamera features.

Name regrets: iPad represents one of the dumbest branding choices Apple could have made. Only someone caught up in the Jobs Reality Distortion Field would recommend a name that inspires images of sanitary napkins (tackiest tweet I saw this morning: "Waiting until Apple releases a bigger version of the iPad: the MaxiPad"). My vote? Ditch the i-prefix, call it the "Tab" (after dealing with the owners of the seventies-era diet drink). Oh well, no one ever confused me for a professional brand consultant.

Oh, and one more thing...

No phone: Douglas Rushkoff writes, "The iPad - contrary to the way most people thought about it - is not a tablet computer running the Apple operating system. It’s more like a very big iPhone, running the iPhone operating system." OK. Fair enough. I love my iPhone. And bigger is better, right? Except, this "Maxi" Phone ... doesn't even have a phone! Sure, there's always a work-around (especially for those folks developing an appreciation for Google Voice). It'd certainly require VoIP and a wireless headset (can you imagine crooking a tablet to your head?) but the resulting blur of communication modes might be worth the price. Still, really: No phone?

So after about 11:30 PST, the announcement wrapped up with Steve Jobs waxing eloquently about how Apple stands on "the intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts." As a participant/observer of both domains, I have absolutely no idea how Jobs relates that grand vision with this underwhelming product.

Would I play with the iPad? Yep. Could I fall in love with the product? Maybe. Will I buy it? Probably not anytime soon. Now the wait begins... for version 2.0.

Waiting for Apple (again)

Apple will unveil its new tablet device tomorrow, and gadget freaks shall rejoice - or cringe.

For months, the insanely secretive company has dribbled out rumors and strategic half-truths: The tablet will rescue the newspaper industry! The tablet will be a gamer's paradise! The tablet will create an entirely new consumer need! The tablet will cost between $700 and $1000...

Leaked schematics, faked prototypes, and breathless reports of insider information - Did you hear? A Chinese supplier of widget covers reports that they're creating a new antigravity polymer that can bend time and deep-fry ice cream! - have led finally to the imminent launch of the iPad (or iSlate or iTablet or iWhatever).

As someone all too easily prone to overdoing my enthusiasm for this kind of thing, I'm forced to remember previous media frenzies that fizzled. I'm looking at YOU, Segway. And YOU, Windows Vista. And don't think you can hide your shame, Snakes on a Plane.

Still, it's kind of cool to finally see what Steve Jobs, expressing himself in typical understatement, has announced as "the most important thing I've ever done" (better hide that "World's Greatest Dad" mug, Steve). Fact is, if any company can change everything, it's, well -

Yeah, I'll be hanging on every word tomorrow.

Update: ...And then, tomorrow came!

Notes on "Can the Polis Live Again?"

Contemplating the so-called "Tiny Town" project -- not literally "small" towns but installations designed to generate paradoxical perspectives of public life in miniature -- I find myself imagining my next book, my next new course, and certainly the next stage of my thinking as unambiguously "post-omnitopian."

For a time, I felt that I'd prefaced my work on City Ubiquitous with a healthy establishment of my fear, if not contempt, for contemporary environments and their impacts on self and society. Yet some of my interactions at a recent conference convinced me that I risk appearing as a champion of omnitopia, not its critic.

I note with some irony that this risk follows almost any articulation of the term in public. My enthusiasm for the chance to share my work in a live forum can all too easily be confused as enthusiasm for the ideas I'm trying to convey. So I appreciate the opportunity these days to slow down and disengage from talking so much. And certainly I have plenty of reading to cover in the next few months, which will demand silence and thought.

Starting slowly, I finally took the opportunity to read Michael Knox Beran's City Journal piece, Can the polis live again? His essay raises fairly typical assertions -- one representative quote: "Rock concerts and iPods we have in abundance, but our public spaces are unmusical." -- but he also does a fine job of presenting his articulation of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition before critiquing her apparent reliance on politics as the site of meaningful public life.

Beran recall's Arendt notion of the banality of evil -- I instantly flash to Steven Spielberg's depictions of the meticulous production of bureaucracy in Schindler's List: all those tables to set up, all those forms to fill out -- before conveying Arendt's statement that fascism is merely the absurd extent of all large states that transform discipline into virtue, even into fashion. Beran summarizes:

"Public space, small and polis-like, is for [Arendt] the school of civil courage and distinctive individuality. Yet no polis can withstand the might of the nation-state. Build a nation-state to save yourself, however, and you sacrifice the humanity and civic vigor of the agora, the forum, and the town square. The nation-state, because of its size, requires a people to undertake the very kinds of social administration that degrade the civic artistry that makes them strong and self-reliant."

Beran then turns to Arendt's affirmation of political discourse -- one imagines Pericles extolling the virtues of Athenian democracy under a piercing blue sky -- as the site where we transcend both the state of nature and the totalizing state. To Beran, Arendt's choice to valorize the political figure as one who transforms potential into words and then into action is overly romantic and historically incorrect. The political animal, from Pericles to Blagojevich, is inevitably a play on a singular theme, self-aggrandizement masked by pomp and platitudes:

"[Arendt] was looking in the wrong place. It was almost certainly the art, not the politics, of the old spaces that made them prime begetters of civic culture and individual distinction... Arendt attributed the decay of public space to the degeneration of politics, but her case would have been stronger had she fingered instead the decline of public poetry."

Beran concludes with a brief flourish of examples that illustrate the potential for public life to be found within the nation-state, concentrating on Jefferson's University of Virginia -- "one of America's most beguiling public spaces" -- and the various experiments in New Urbanism that have sprouted since the 1990s.

As longtime readers may recall, I described my own encounter with New Urbanism in my dissertation of Disney's Celebration, and I was not sold on the vision. To me, Celebration offered yet another means toward enclave, despite the appearance of its Town Hall whose farcical proliferation of columns sought to evoke a dozen Athenian City States.

Even now, I remain unsure of where to find meaningful public life. But over the next couple years I hope to think further on this question. Maybe I might even propose a few answers whose implications find root in this blog.

Some books worth reading or re-reading

• Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville

• The Human Condition - Hannah Arendt

• The City in History - Lewis Mumford

(Photograph by Andrew Wood)

December 2, 2010 Update: Florida new urbanist town built (and once run) by Disney confronts its first murder. NPR considers implications: Town That Disney Built Has 1st Killing Since Start

Pick Up Your Visual Scanning!

Remember the scene in Star Wars when an X-Wing pilot shouted, "Pick up your visual scanning"? Stripping away the geek-speak, he was simply reminding us that when storming a Death Star, we're wise to look out the window once in a while.

That's good advice, especially as more and more people wander the lanes and trenches of public life, typing Tweets, emails, and Facebook updates onto their mobile phones - and walking into trees (and people) because they forget to look around. What can be done?

Type n Walk to the rescue! For 99 cents, this app promises to help you avoid collisions when you're too busy typing to watch where you're going. It works by using your iPhone's camera to project a live view of the world in front of you. Upon that image, you can type your message.

Yes, that means people have more incentive to walk around staring at phones.

One silly limitation: You must copy/paste your message into whatever app you're using to communicate. Another glitch is the lack of landscape view. But I'm sure the creators of Type n Walk will fix those hassles. Is there any other problem? Beyond the whole "I can't believe anyone would use this app for real?" problem?

Nope, can't think of any...

Apple, Urban Biking, and Ubiquity

I came across a brief note about one company's efforts to tap Apple's iPhone as a tool to expand the ubiquitous environment concept, using the device as a heads-up display for bikers.

The application and gear is experimental, and the product thus far isn't all that impressive. But the idea is promising. And heck, how can you not want to read an online blurb that starts with this line?

"If the future could be somehow wrangled from an abstract concept and transformed into a city, that city would of course be Tokyo."

Read the piece: A Heads-Up Map Display for iPhone-Using Bicyclists

Scratch the Cat?

While playing with my iPhone this weekend, I started thinking about those "virtual pets" that were popular a few years ago. It would be fun to have an animated kitty on my phone, I figured. I possess my new toy with the passion of a fetish object; it seemed appropriate to add even more life to this thing.

So I looked at a few options and decided to join a web-based "pet" site that allows you to create, feed, groom, and play with an animal of your choice. Within minutes, I was staring at the pixelated face of an 8 week-old kitten who stared back at me through the screen. I fed her, I gave her water, I stroked her fur. I named her Apollonia.

My choice of name follows a family tradition in which we give all female cats living with us an appellation that starts with an A, preferably something reminiscent of Greek or Roman mythology or history. Apparently, among other things, Apollonia refers to a Greek martyr for Christianity. Yes, I felt a bit Godlike. I had given life to a virtual cat.

And then after returning to work, I forgot her.

The next day, I received an urgent email. Apollonia was hungry.

I visited her website - ready to press the button necessary to free me from seeing a graphically dead kitty, a corpse swarming with virtual flies.

I found the website, readied my clicking finger, tutted at my forgetfulness, and...

The graphics wouldn't load. I tried accessing the page through wifi and then through AT&T's notoriously spotty network. I restarted my computer and tried again. No luck, no cat, just an empty box. Once my creature gazed upwardly from that enclosure, her life given by me. Now she was nowhere to be found, lost amid the spectral desert of zeros and ones. Like any busy god, I was frustrated. Unlike God (I hope), I was pissed.

Screw this, I figured. I don't have time to stress about a virtual pet who won't even load when I come to visit. I've got two real cats in Scotts Valley who, every single day, "download" their fur all over our non-virtual carpet and furniture. Tufts of wispy detritus are constant reminders to groom our sweet kitties. We feed them, we play with them, we love them. We are hardly gods to them (more like "staff," as any cat lover will affirm). So be it. With these two waiting at home, I need no pixel kitties.

I then began to wonder, how do you "uncreate" a computer cat?

Searching the site, the part that was working despite the hassles of reaching it online, I found plenty of ways to buy "accessories" for a virtual pet, and lots of reminders that Purina cat chow is popular with real cats too. But "uncreating" a cat?

Oh, God. I knew what I was trying to do.

Guilt-laden, but unwilling to confront the implications that I was abandoning a helpless animal, a creature scratching at my computer screen for attention, I returned to my email, where I read my first reminder to feed Apollonia. I clicked the "no reminders" button. Then I closed my laptop. This was a permanent decision.

I would not feel guilty, I told myself. Maybe I'd get a virtual pet rock instead.

So today I decided to write a note about the ethics of keeping virtual animals, musing about the implications of these simulacra, how we can assign and un-assign meanings to them so easily. I'd explore an interesting query without too much personal investment. A harmless question:

What does it mean to kill a virtual animal? Does the act desensitize us to the prospect of killing for real?

I figured I'd write something thought-provoking, a note that demonstrated suitable reflection on my own ironic position, but ultimately something designed to help me prepare a lecture about online ethics one day. An abstract future for an abstract topic.

Just one problem: I needed to go back to the site and grab a quick pic of Apollonia, preferably still scratching at my screen, to illustrate the post. I was in full utility-mode. Get in, get the pic, get out. I needed an image depicting our strange and fascinating online era, nothing more. So I returned to the virtual pet site and looked...

I couldn't find her.

Was Apollonia dead already?

I began to click frantically. Where is she? Has she starved, her cries so long ignored by my email filter? I clicked and clicked.

And then I found her.

Apollonia was panting, mewing frantically; she was hungry.

I clicked the virtual "food" icon.

A big bag of Purina cat chow appeared and poured itself into her bowl. Apollonia ate heartily, kicking the bowl back when she was done.

She was thirsty too, and she trilled with joy at the sight of a bowl being filled with life-giving water. She gulped it down.

I looked into her half-crazed eyes - an expression that asked, as only a cat can ask, "where the hell were you?

I pet her, trying to soothe her fears at being left alone so long. She purred.

I offered her a toy mouse, a gesture of regret at my cruelty. She played.

I then closed the page, checking one last time to confirm her healthy status, and opened my calendar. There, I added an item to my daily schedule: Feed Apollonia.

The reminder appears every day, weekends, furlough days, holidays: Feed her, repeating at the same time each afternoon. Until September 15th.

After that, we'll see...

November 28, 2009 update

Well, slow graphics and buggy interface inspired me, at last, to send Apollonia to a "farm - upstate." No worries. She's playing with lots of virtual mice and has, I suspect, many friends.

Stolen Books, Delicious Irony

Sometimes an example of our surveillance society is hard to visualize. In a story about a police chief who recently referred to people using iPhones to circumvent ticket-camera machines (revenue enhancers, whatever) as being "cowardly," I learned that the Washington D.C. region "has 290 red-light and speed cameras -- comprising nearly 10 percent of all traffic cameras in the U.S." (Washington Examiner - check for bias, though), which is a scary but somewhat abstract number. 290 devices and 10% of the national total sounds like a lot of surveillance, but it's a hard thing to see in something approaching adequate context. Numbers never tell the whole story.

And then there's this example from The New York Times. It's pretty damned vivid. Amazon Kindle owners woke up today to discover that one or two of their newly purchased e-books had gone missing. No, the books weren't stolen by neighborhood thieves. No shattered windows marked this crime. The books were taken by the folks who sold them in the first place. Amazon stole 'em, just used their internet connections to wipe 'em clean off the Kindles.

Sure, the peeved owners were refunded the purchase cost. But, as one observer notes, "it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table." Oh, and the name of the books? Well, that's the best part of the story.

David Pogue has the scoop: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/some-e-books-are-more-equal-than-others/

Shameless Media Plug: Spartan Daily

(Photo by Stefan Armijo)

Today's issue of the Spartan Daily, San José State University's campus newspaper, includes a frontpage story on my new book. Here are the first two paragraphs of the article:

You wake up to the sounds of Beyonce on your iPod in the morning, and then plug into your car on the way to campus. You step out of your car and the white buds settle softly into your ears. Then you slip into class and tweet to your friends about your boring class.

Andrew Wood, associate professor of communication studies, has seen this meta existence and said he feels people may be losing their non-virtual connections.

Read the article: Professor searches for a locale - Wood warns readers of virtual isolation and disconnection.