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Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. Chapter 2 of TCCL consists of an overview of several existing theories of technology that Borgmann wants to use as partners in dialogue, in the process of constructing his own theory. The pre-theoretic, simplistic view of technology is pragmatic: science and technology have proven their validity and usefulness through the effective solutions they boast to real problems. Since it is obvious that technology has indeed solved such problems, any more nuanced theory will have to be presented with the utmost precision and care. (Here I think Borgmann is justifying the level of detail he will be going into in this section of the book). ...

Note: This entry is part of a series where I am blogging chapter-by-chapter through the book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ( TCCL) by Albert Borgmann. If you’re new, you may want to start at the Overview. In the first chapter of TCCL, Borgmann makes it clear that we need a theory of technology, not just an understanding of the practices involved in it. He says moreover that this study is going to be “philosophical”, especially in the sense of prompting “considerations of a radical and reflective sort” (7). (This was certainly my experience in reading the book). The reason we need a theory is that problems in technological societies such as ours are often seen to be extrinsic to technology. People claim that “they stem … from political indecision, social injustice, or environmental constraints” (3). According to Borgmann, this is a mistaken view. There is in fact a definite pattern to the fabric of our technologically-driven lives which elucidates the “hopes, confusions, and frustrations of the modern period” (3)—and it is intrinsically tied up with technology. ...

After nearly two years of lectures, seminars, tutorials, assignments, papers, exams, and a thesis, I’m done with my MPhil in Linguistics at Oxford! (I technically won’t know whether I passed for another week or so, but since I’m confident I did my best on everything, it doesn’t matter to me much what happens at this point—let’s stick a fork in it and call it done.) It’s been a long and oftentimes hard journey, but full of reward. After leaving my last exam today (it felt somehow appropriate that it was on the history of the Greek language), it was sweet indeed to meet my wife and stroll through the old streets of Oxford—streets which in many ways feel like old friends, especially now that the ominousness of final exams has been banished from every shadow. I will be sad to say goodbye to them and to all the other special bits of this wonderful town, a town which has meant something to me in various ways since I was a small boy. So here’s to following a dream, to finishing strong, and to letting go when the time comes to move on! (And to a great rest of the Summer in Oxford…) ...

The other day, Jess told me about a photography contest she found out about, and we decided to submit three photos each. It was surprisingly difficult to go through my photo library and pick three that I thought had something really special. A lot of my photos were almost automatically ruled out because I felt the subjects were too “obvious”: a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, for example. Anyway, I thought I’d post the three I decided to submit: ...

Since my last post on the philosophy of technology was admittedly a bit heady, here is something from the lighter, more curmudgeonly cynical side. Occasionally something comes across FailBlog which is just too good not to share. I present, without further ado, Deer Crossing Understanding FAIL!

As any long-time reader of this blog knows, I am an avid technologist. From an early age, I was coding, gaming (see this post for my personal gaming history), building computers, hacking electronic devices, etc… I’ve never been without a self-designed Internet homepage since 1997, and this blog has existed sporadically since 2002. After college I worked full-time as a web developer building applications, starting up startups, and generally being immersed in the geekiest of Internet culture (you may not know this, but according to YouTube I am a minor celebrity, because of a random video of an origami castle I posted once). I’ve salivated after iPods, stood in line for iPhones, built applications for Facebook, and co-founded two tech startups. How much more techno-centric could my life get? ...

It’s been a few months since I’ve written, and I’ve been storing up many wonderful things to share at some less busy time. Now is not that less busy time, unfortunately; it’s thesis week and I’ve pulled too many almost-all-nighters recently to spend time composing blogs. However, I just saw something that I have to denounce. I don’t like denouncing in general, but some things need it: If I have the facts right, this is a video of Americans celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden. He was, for all I could tell, an evil person, misguided and ruled by violence. I can’t even say that the world was not right to hunt down and destroy him, if the motivations were those of grim necessity. But to see such unbridled joy in vengeance, such narrow-minded nationalism that equates the death of our enemies with the furthering of our own greatness, such confusion about justice… It gives me a feeling of nausea. ...

When my wife and I got married at the beginning of last August, we decided not to use Facebook or do (practically) any e-mail during our month-long honeymoon, since we wanted our vacation to be free from social distraction. Afterwards, once we got set up in our apartment in Oxford, I gave myself a little challenge, on a whim: not to open up Facebook until I had a need or strong desire to. While the need was realized once or twice (I maintain a Facebook application called BookTracker, and had to update and test some code, which required going to the canvas page for the application), the strong desire wasn’t. Thus it happens that, 5 months after my Facebook hiatus officially ended, I still haven’t updated my status (although updates are made automatically when I publish a blog) or seen anything in my news feed. Somewhat humorously, Jessica and I haven’t even bothered to update our relationship status from ‘Engaged’ to ‘Married’! What follows are a few reflections I now feel prepared to make about Facebook (and a fortiori much of social media in general), given that I’ve had a decent amount of time to differentiate from it: ...

When I was young, my family had little money, and eating out at all was a luxury. When we did eat out, we tended to frequent such fine establishments as McDonald’s, Taco Bell, or (for special occasions) Golden Corral (not sure if they ever made it out of Texas). The evidence of this can be seen in my memories of my 12th birthday dinner (on our birthday dinners we got to pick the meal): I chose a 20-piece box of McDonald’s chicken nuggets. Yum! What a tasty treat! ...

Last month has been busy, and I haven’t figured out how to blog anything original. But that’s ok, because I have a bunch of links for you! These are things I found interesting, provocative, inspiring, or funny in the last month. I’m even going to categorize them for you: Science Honeybees are found to interact with quantum fields - a researcher noticed that bee dances trace a 2-dimensional projection of formulas of some kind of quantum math. Bee dances seemed pretty arbitrary before, and now this researcher claims that bees may be ‘in touch’ with quantum fields. If true, this would be interesting and awesome. Scientists find evidence that many universes exist - I’ve always thought that “many universes” is a contradiction in terms, but hey. It turns out that our particular ‘universe’ may be just one of many ‘cosmic bubbles’ colliding around in some vast ‘multiverse’. I don’t believe this yet, and won’t until people define their terms better. Thunderstorms generate anti-matter - powerful thunderstorms can generate crazy gamma ray bursts scientists think may be accompanied by anti-matter. That would be anti-awesome. Philosophy Albert Einstein writes on science and religion - some good stuff in here, especially about the awe and surprise of finding that nature has rational foundations. Also other general philosophy of science points. I still disagree with his overall statement, which is that the historically-bound bits of religion should be discarded, since he appears to take for granted their fundamental falsity. Minimalism works - apparently, someone on the Internet made fun of minimalism. The article I linked is a rebuttal which I found concise and useful. Yay minimalism! Culture Suburban sprawl sucks - and it’s bad for you too. I confess this was too long for me to read completely, but I did get that the author is an advocate of getting rid of zoning laws. I, too, advocate thus. The dangers of externalizing knowledge - this is a favorite topic of mine. What happens when we stop learning everything except how to Google? It’s possible that that is indeed the one skill which leads to success in life, and therefore will encourage social evolution to continue in the current trend. I’m just afraid that learning is a holistic process of shaping the entire person, body and soul. What happens when we postpone this shaping until we load Wikipedia? What will our unshaped minds do with that information, anyway? I could go on. Nice to see this on TechCrunch. Caring for your introvert - this guy makes some rather grand statements concerning introversion. Given that I’m an introvert, I’m inclined to agree with the whole ‘introverts are superior’ thing, except I know it’s false. Good article anyway, despite being overblown. I also think the Enneagram could account for a lot of what he is describing, without as much polarization (or arrogance, for that matter). Theology Agnostic Christianity - doubt isn’t bad. In fact, it’s an unavoidable part of faith. Embrace and respect it! The Seven: not exactly deacons - what happens when the Apostles decide they’re too important to wait tables? God uses the waiters instead. Or something like that… some good potential pastor-skewering in these passages. Food A coder’s guide to coffee - I am a coder and I love coffee. Therefore, I love this article. I just need to find a way to roast my own beans in Oxford… L-Theanine in tea and not coffee - apparently this amino acid enables our bodies to use caffeine in a much more zenly awesome way. Where is it naturally found? Not coffee (damn!) but tea. If I used coffee as a mind hack, maybe I’d switch to tea. Unfortunately, I drink coffee because (a) it tastes really good, and (b) I’m physically and psychologically addicted to it. Oh well. A hacker’s guide to tea - If I were to switch this is the guide that I’d use! One thing I particularly liked: camomille is not real tea! Ha, I always knew camomille sucked. Random Trimensional - a 3d scanner for the iphone. I haven’t tried it, but… really cool idea! I’m also not sure what I’d do with a 3d model of my face. I’m also not sure why they used the guy they did for the screenshots. Yikes! How to draw an owl - Click through and see the picture. Hilarious. And also a good prompt for discussion. So often, what is left out of how-to guides is: “now, practice x for thousands of hours”.