A piece in Forbes Magazine

Publish And Perish
Elisabeth Eaves, 12.01.06, 12:00 PM ET

Nothing is safe. Not your e-mails, digital photos or Word files. Not old newspapers or books. When it comes to storing information, everything will disappear into digital obsolescence or crumble to dust.

Even White House e-mails. . .   Read More

2nd Life takes off

What is real life coming to owe digital life?

After a couple years in the flat part of exponential growth, the steep part is now arriving for the massive multi-player online world construction kit called “Second Life.” With 1.7 million accounts, membership in “Second Life” is growing by 20. . .   Read More

 
A good article on the digital preservation problem in Popular Mechanics:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4201645.html?page=1

When the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz takes to sea, it carries more than a half-million files with diagrams of the propulsion, electrical and other systems critical to operation. Because this is the 21st. . .   Read More

Philanthropic stamina

10,000 families in the US, Katherine Fulton reported, have assets of $100 million or more. That’s up from 7,000 just a couple years ago. Most of that money is “on the sidelines.” The poor and the middle class are far more generous in their philanthropy, proportionally, than the very wealthy. . .   Read More

Welcome to the Anthropocene

The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical— carbon burning shooting up, CO2 in the air shooting up, global temperature shooting up, and population still shooting up. How can we understand what really going on? “It’s like trying to understand geology while you’re hanging by. . .   Read More

Giant contradictions

“China is the most unresolved nation of consequence in the world,” Orville Schell began. It is defined by its massive contradictions. And by its massiveness— China’s population is estimated to be 1.25 to 1.3 billion; the margin of error in the estimate is greater than the population of France. It. . .   Read More

Storing information is easier than ever, but it’s also never been so easy to lose it — forever. We could end up with a modern history gap.

By Charles Piller, LA Times Staff Writer
September 13, 2006

Carter G. Walker remembers the day her memories vanished.

After sending an e-mail to her aunt, the. . .   Read More

Original recordings of Apollo moon missions are missing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong’s famous “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” a NASA spokesman said on Monday.

Armstrong’s famous space walk, seen by millions of. . .   Read More

Only connect

John Rendon, head of The Rendon Group, is a senior communications consultant to the White Houses and Departments of Defense. His subject in this talk is how to replace tactical, reactive response to terror with long-term strategic initative.

I think that people were expecting a silver-tongued devil, an accomplished spin-meister. . .   Read More

Generative play

In a dazzling duet Will Wright and Brian Eno gave an intense clinic on the joys and techniques of “generative” creation.

Back in the 1970s both speakers got hooked by cellular automata such as Conway’s “Game of Life,” where just a few simple rules could unleash profoundly unpredictable and infinitely varied dynamic. . .   Read More