PATHLESS TRAVELS

2011-09-242014-04-18

Which will be the ‘next Internet’: Google or Facebook?

Note: This piece was first published in the Northern Dispatch (Nordis) Weekly (www.nordis.net) on July 17, 2011. I made some minor editing for this post.

Facebook-Google faceoff — Facebook and Google have been battling it out for the title of 'The Next Internet'. Who is expected to win?

Of course there is only one Internet. It is composed of many parts, to be sure, and there are many ways of “surfing it.” But it is just one big whole, just as there is only one global ocean even if it’s composed of many parts and there are many ways of travelling through it.

So, why must the question be asked at all? Why should we be concerned whether the Internet takes this or that shape?

Continue reading “Which will be the ‘next Internet’: Google or Facebook?”

2011-06-05

I refuse to vet and to curate

I don’t know how the new techie terms began to overpower our common vocabulary. But here they are, overwhelming us like an unannounced summer deluge. You can no longer get out of your house without wading into their treacherous deeps.

A high priest of data abracadabra — Unlike this ancient high priest of the Temple, the modern high priests of the online world are expert in vetting and curating and leveraging.

You still wondering what I’m talking about? I’ll give you three examples.

Vet. Time was when an animal doctor vetted a brood of poultry or a stock of cattle. Which meant, basically, that the poultry or cattle population were kept healthy by selecting those stocks that passed a certain criteria, by preventing disease outbreaks, and by culling out those that are unhealthy.

Now you see the term being bandied about everywhere, from public governance (“A committee was assigned to vet the Cabinet appointees…”) and corporate HR (“He vetted his staff closely…”) and to data (“Make sure to always vet your sources.”) In short, appointees are no longer screened. Staff support is no longer evaluated. And data sources are no longer graded. Nowadays, they are all vetted.

Continue reading “I refuse to vet and to curate”

2011-05-082011-06-05

The IRAIA logo

I’ve been considering several variations on the central theme of rivers and indigenous life as the basis for the logo design of this website and the concept underlying it. Late last year, on the spur of an impulse, I dashed off a design study on a sketchpad using a Chinese brush, and did some digital photoshop magic to produce this:

But where's the river?

The two letter I’s were shaped that way to signify a pine tree and also a native spear with barbs. I would have wanted a modified shape that could also represent, on top of pine tree and spear, also a pointed quill pen and a torch (like in the NMIN logo). But maybe that’s asking too much for a single design object to represent. Continue reading “The IRAIA logo”