Maybe I am just from the older generation, not a “digital native”. I grew up reading books, and still do.  I have worried that the way I consume news and other media will change the way I think in some profound way.  I’m have always had a good memory but as I get older I do seem to struggle for names or words.  Of course I have so much more to remember these days, simply by being older.  But there is so much more information available that it becomes overwhelming.

I think my friends consider it a bit quirky and my kids find it old fashioned, but I don’t  reach for my phone or pad and Google for the name of an actor or title of a book that I can’t (temporarily) recall.  Sometimes I come up with it, sometimes I wait to see if it “pops into my head” (isn’t here a more enjoyable feeling?).

I also have no sense of direction.  I mean I seriously have a deficiency that is probably medical.  GPS has been like magic for me.  But lately I have been turning it off.  I’m not sure if this is a good thing for me or not, but I am trying to be less dependent on these “assistive” technologies.  I mean, it is tempting to use one of those little electric scooters at the grocery store, too.  They look like so much fun.  But for as long as I am able I think I will walk.

An older article from the Atlantic on the possible mental enfeeblement caused by the modern internet.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

What the Internet is doing to our brains

Ran across this older article from n+1, an arts / literary magazine.  I think the piece has since been expanded and turned into a book.  I spent some time in The Valley and even worked at a VC funded startup (or was it two?). More from a non-techie / woman’s point of view, which makes it all the better.

ANNA WIENER

Uncanny Valley

I would say more, but I signed an NDA.

Published in Issue 25: Slow Burn

Publication date Spring 2016

I don’t see much of him lately, but for a while, it seemed like Niall Ferguson was everywhere.  He seemed to be a Brit version of the US neo-conservatives but a bit more quotable.  He popped up in recently in a mailing from the New York Review of Books.  Oddly, it was an article from 2011, which I didn’t realize until after I had finished reading it.  It contains a letter exchange with the author (with Ferguson repeatedly demanding apoligies) rhat I was unable to finish.

The author sees Ferguson as a neo-colonial which I suppose is the old form of neo-conservatives.  The basic problem with people like Ferguson is that they think you can separate the system from the abuses that support it.  Sure, colonialism would have been great for everyone if it weren’t for the slavery, killings, famines, oppression and outright theft. Unfortunately, take away those things and there isn’t much left.  Ferguson seems to be saying, let’s given this colonial thing another try, but this time let’s do it *right*.  No let’s not.

Watch this man

Some pics from a short trip to Phoenix a few weeks back.

I have always liked maps.  I’m not sure when it began, perhaps just taking car trips in the old days before GPS and trying to get from point A to point B.  I remember I had (still have, actually) a road atlas that I used to “read” nights when I couldn’t sleep.  All the towns with funny names, all the vast spaces.  Places I might go someday.

Google Earth and Google Maps became something I would spend hours with, I suppose the way some people spend time reading or watching movies.  For instance, this week I saw on a map (perhaps on a TV weather report, I’m not sure) a big-ish island off the coast of Baja, Mexico in the Pacific.  I had been to Catalina when I was younger and wondered what this place would be like.  I went to Google Maps and found out I was called Guadalupe Island. Wiki told me lots more.

Some fishermen still lived in camps there seasonally.  Some goats dropped off by whalers in the 1800s stripped the island of pretty much all vegetation.  Even some small forests disappeared.

Guadalupe shares the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion with the Channel Islands of California in the United States, but the island was at one time practically denuded of all plants higher than a few centimeters by up to 100,000[note 1] feral goats.

Originally brought there in the 19th century by European whalers and sealers for provisions when stopping over, the population eventually eliminated most vegetation; the number of goats declined to a few thousand. The main impact of the goat population was before this collapse, about the turn of the 19th/20th century.

The last of the goats were removed by 2005, so maybe things will come back.  There is also a landing strip on the middle of the island and if you zoom in close, a crashed plane at the end of the runway.  Found a few small encampments along the shore.  If I’m ever in the neighborhood I definitely will stop by.