Letters Remain

Category: technology

  • Why We Should Trust Driving Computers

    In light of recent suggestions of technical faults and the ensuing recall of a number of models from Toyota’s line, Robert Wright looks at why we should not worry about driving modern cars. The reasons: the increased risks are negligible, the systems that fail undoubtedly save more lives than not, this is the nature of…

  • Our Reluctance to Trust Driving Computers

    The advanced radar systems that are slowly making their way into modern cars are already advanced enough to drive our cars for us and save thousands of lives a year, says Robert Scoble as he discusses the safety systems currently available in Ford and Toyota models. The features Scoble describes (and Ford’s Global Chief Safety…

  • Behavioural Game Design and the Manipulation of Fun

    Over the last twenty or thirty years gaming has changed almost beyond recognition. With the simultaneous growth in behavioural psychology the two fields have collided, as summarised by Microsoft games researcher John Hopson in his look at behavioural game design. Cracked summarises the article well (if not a tad sensationalised) as Five ways video games…

  • Blogs as Books and the ‘New’ Bias

    We are prejudiced against material that doesn’t identify itself as ‘New’ and this is a problem not just with the majority of online information consumers but also the websites that pander to this ‘old media’ bias. Whether somethingā€™s “new” or “breaking” is a concern for newspaper writers seeking scoops. There’s no reason on Earth a…

  • Licensing and Patents for Green Technology and Drugs

    The Seed Magazine ‘panel’ (who?) was asked How can intellectual property be adapted to spread green tech? Their short answer starts by looking at drug licensing (the last sentence is quite shocking): By World Trade Organization law, if a patented drug can improve public health in a developing country, itā€™s available for compulsory licensing. That…

  • How an Entertainment Medium Succeeds

    While looking at how piracy and online content has changed ‘traditional media’ (and is continuing to do so), Barrett Garese succinctly points out his vision for the direction online content needs to go to really differentiate itself and, thus, succeed (or any entertainment medium, in fact). Each medium has unique advantages and disadvantages, and the…

  • The Blog’s Influence on Writing

    Philip Greenspun on how writing and publishing has evolved since the Internet and, specifically, the blog have become omnipresent in our lives: Suppose that an idea merited 20 pages, no more and no less? A handful of long-copy magazines [ā€¦] would print 20-page essays, but an author who wished his or her work to be…

  • Things Every Programmer Should Know (Languages)

    As part of a continuing series*, O’Reilly requested “pearls of wisdom for programmers” from leading practitioners of the craft, publishing the responses. The end result is the O’Reilly Commons wiki, 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know. The contributions that appear in the final, published book are freely available as are sixty-eight further contributions that didn’t…

  • Making Applications Viral, Without Spam

    Virality isn’tĀ anĀ indispensableĀ feature of all successfulĀ applications, but for those where it can be hugely beneficial there are four core principles that help the virality of an application, says Daniel Tanner: Invitation should be a core process, that is essential to using the application ā€“ this will maximise the chances that your users do invite new users.…

  • Conversational Mannerisms of Geeks

    I always put up a mental barrier when reading articles such as this as I am of the opinion that it is difficult to successfully produce generalities about a subset of people unless you are quite intimate with their idiosyncrasies. Philip Guo overcame this barrier in his article looking at the conversational behaviours of “geeks,…