MetaFilter posts tagged with design and computers

Remembered, NeXT

gilrain — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:28:50 -0800

As the roots of Apple's OS X, NeXT is fairly well known. Have you actually seen one, though?

use value vs. exchange value

kliuless — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 00:12:16 -0800

What is value about? and how do we measure value? Traditionally, the way of measuring value has been not been through measures of value, but actually through measures of appropriation: measures of the amount of money that you can appropriate through that business, not the value that it generates in society. We're starting to see this difference.

Reinventing Society In The Wake Of Big Data

With Big Data we can now begin to actually look at the details of social interaction and how those play out, and are no longer limited to averages like market indices or election results. This is an astounding change. The ability to see the details of the market, of political revolutions, and to be able to predict and control them is definitely a case of Promethean fire -- it could be used for good or for ill, and so Big Data brings us to interesting times. We're going to end up reinventing what it means to have a human society.

more on 'data science' -No, Really, Some of My Best Friends Are Data Scientists -Data Science: The Problem Isn't Statisticians, It's Too Many Poseurs more on 'big data' -Moving from Big Data to Smart Data -Top 10 categories for Big Data sources and mining technologies -Hadoop 2.0 -Grid computing -NSA Overview of Cloud Computing When Central Is Essential - "economist Glen Weyl* views changes in technology as leveling the playing field between central governments and free markets"

In his famous 1945 article, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," F. A. Hayek argued that despite their inequity and inefficiency, free markets were necessary in order to allow the incorporation of information held by dispersed individuals into social decisions. No central planner could hope to collect and process all the information necessary for social decisions; only markets allowed and provided the incentives for disaggregated information processing. Yet, increasingly, information technology is leading individuals to delegate their most "private" decisions to automated processing systems... While these information systems are [currently] mostly nongovernmental, they are sufficiently centralized that it is increasingly hard to see how dispersed information poses the challenge it once did to centralized planning.

The Optimist's Case For Information Technology

Schools have poured a ton of money into ICT and tech-focused startups are circling the education sector aiming to disrupt it. Something's going to change here. IBM built a supercomputer that can win at Jeopardy which is cool but useless and now they're trying to turn it into a medical diagnostic engine. Computer-driven cars are already a real thing. Right now, price is a big barrier to adoption but if there's anything we know about ICT hardware it's that the price will fall... I don't know that doing a medical consult with your home computer and then having your prescription automatically disatched by autonomous vehicle equals a change comparable to indoor plumbing, but it's a big deal.

Two Types of Knowledge: Human Capital and Information - "Human capital is knowledge that is hard to transfer. Information is knowledge that is easy to transfer." Desire Modification: the ultimate technology - "With humanity divided into clades by motivation and personality type, evolution would be very important." [1,2] --- *The Situation Bears Watching - "Hermann Weyl, the mathematician who was Einstein's friend, was a great uncle."

"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil." ~C.A.R. Hoare, quoted by Donald Knuth

Fizz — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 05:09:14 -0800

Save the Scrollbar! [slate.com] Why are Apple, Google, and Facebook eradicating a linchpin of user interface design?

Every good cult needs a shrine

Horace Rumpole — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:04:54 -0800

The Shrine of Apple--a (sill in progress) archive of photos and specs for Apple's complete product history.

The Genesis and History of the Macintosh Project

Joe Beese — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:19:21 -0800

This is a short history and background of the Macintosh research project on the eve of its becoming a product.

40 years of Xerox Parc

Artw — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:43:19 -0800

"The Office of the Future" 40 Years Later - 40 years of Xerox Parc, the Palo Alto research group responsible for the desktop computer interface as we know it today.

OH MY GOD I AM SO EXCITED

azarbayejani — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:36:49 -0800

Home Computing in the Future, according to Freescale Semiconductor (Vimeo) (via)

Tonight we're gonna party like it's nineteen ninety-six

Artw — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:42:07 -0800

Your Old Crap Website - This blog is to celebrate the time when web design wasn’t limited by web standards and convention, and when the office geek was given full reign to set up the website on his own since the bosses probably couldn’t see the point in having one.

I know what's wrong and that's good.

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:46:50 -0800

"...criticism, for lack of a better word, is good. Criticism is right. Criticism works. Criticism clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit…

Faberge Mice

dirtynumbangelboy — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 15:28:49 -0800

Because everybody needs a beautiful mouse.

Intelligent Design by Trial and Error

fatllama — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 09:41:21 -0800

A more efficient microbe genome. A more efficient sorting algorithm. A more efficient keyboard layout.

Top Billing

nthdegx — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 04:57:34 -0800

Inventor of CTRL-ALT-DEL ridicules Bill Gates. "'I may have invented CTRL-ALT-DEL, but Bill Gates made it famous". Video clip of the episode, via TUAW, who say "The funniest part is the expression, or lack thereof, on the face of Bill."

A history of the GUI

madamjujujive — Sat, 07 May 2005 21:09:46 -0800

A history of the GUI from the 1930s through the 90s. Also see Vannevar Bush's visionary 1945 essay As we May Think, which helped to set the wheels in motion. (Check out the Ars Technica discussion for good related links and commentary.) (via The Sideshow)

Here we go again

jeremias — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 08:10:05 -0800

Adobe announces new round of design applications. Inspring groans from designers everywhere who just got used to the CS apps, Adobe announced today CS2, 18 months after the last version. Included in the updates are Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, Golive and a new component called Bridge. The only hitch in the planned obsolescence model is that all the applications will now require product activation, thereby inspiring crackers everywhere to get busy.

Somebody had to do it. Really.

elwoodwiles — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 18:25:40 -0800

Following a long history of innovative designs Apple has created a loyal following. Today they released their newest iMac into the wild.

cool information design from ben fry

specialk420 — Thu, 25 Dec 2003 09:38:59 -0800

cool information design from ben fry at MIT (via newstoday.com)... anyone else have any links to share of particularly good information designers/design? merry x-mas all.

i <3 apple

serafinapekkala — Wed, 01 Oct 2003 08:54:44 -0800

Lick Me, I'm A Mackintosh. One columnist's ode/rant re: Apple's design ethos.

jburka — Mon, 04 Nov 2002 19:24:22 -0800

Zeldman likes it. Jakob isn't saying, though he'll probably weigh in. mathowie'll probably like it since he seems to dig those Adaptive Path guys. It's elegant, it's like a pleased-with-itself polar bear, it's the AIfIA and there are probably more than 25 reasons it's a Good Thing.

ConceptPC @ Intel

candida — Sat, 16 Dec 2000 15:24:48 -0800

ConceptPC @ Intel - pretty much interesting...response from PCs to iMac-mania?....gimme a MagicBean!! (flash required)

Roger Black on Design.

leo — Thu, 20 Jul 2000 10:03:15 -0800

Roger Black on Design. MacAddict put up an interview with Roger Black from their August 2000 issue. There are a couple of interesting points as in his take on transitioning from print to web:

"I think that the main thing is pretty much to work as you would in print design. A good designer always focuses on the reader or the customer, the viewer, whatever the end-user is. You just have to do that on the Net the same way you do in print.... I do not believe that the technological hurdles are that big. It doesn't seem to me that big of a deal.... Most of the stuff we do on the Web is not particularly difficult. Almost anybody, particularly anybody under thirty growing up in our society has enough technological culture to work with it. Don't get scared. It’s not that big of a deal."