061008 NEWS

/////A white girl with blue eyes - her name is Eva.//////


I've been reading the laws of simplicity by John Maeda for a part of my thesis reserach, because I am interested in the idea of interior/exterior of an object. In the first law he mentions the notion of HIDE, which is to hide all the complicated elements of a machine inside to make the exterior simple - or perhaps user friendly.

The "User-Friendliness" is convenient for the users (and friendly) but it seems like we, the users, are losing interested in what is really happening. We let things go by because the technology does all the job. The computer, I am typing on, functions in its certain ways but I don't know how it functions. I know that when I press "T" on the keyboard the letter "T" appears. I know that part of the system but I don't exactly know how it works so; whereas in typewriter you can see that the key you press pushes the letter and it hits the carbon and that hits the paper and voila, there is a letter on the paper.

As the technology advances the function of the objects become closer to the users, but the technological system becomes further and further.

Will we ever come to a point where we feel the need to learn what is surrounding us?


*SONG OF THE DAY "You're Beautiful" James Blunt*

021008 NEWS

/////THE MOMENT OF SURPRISE/////

I guess if you are sitting in your room the entire day everyday nothing really happens, meaning you don't really have anything to write about - and that's the phase I am in right now. I've been writing and writing for the research paper until last week and the rest of the time until now I have been catching up on sleep.

I've probably developed this from my "Japaneseness" but I don't really sleep all that often or never so much. I would say about 3-4 hours a day is enough to get by. Of course I catch up moment to moment (e.g. a 10 second powernap on the train, dosing off during the 10 min break from lectures etc)...Correct me if I am wrong, but is it true that you are not allowed to sleep on subways here in Stockholm!?

In Japan, where an hour one way commuting is very normal, people do a lot of things on the train - most of them sleep though. As everyday commuter, you really get in a habit of waking up at a certain stop, but me as a visitor there I can't really wake up.

So Apple came up with an iNap that apparently wakes you up when it's 100m from the destination.

Good solution, I think. - way better than this:


But what happens at Times Square or Union Square, where everyone goes off?!
Oh boy every morning there will be an annoying harmony of snoozes.

*SONG OF THE DAY - "Miami" by Will Smith*