Wonderosity

A friend of mine, John Clancy from Orcas Island, tipped me off on an excellent resource that some of you may already be familiar with -its the “Technology and Human Responsibility” section of a site called the Nature Institute. I’ve just started reading some of the articles, but really like what I’ve read and am excited to find a community that looks like they have been doing some deep thinking about these topics. Here is the introduction from their Tech page:

“When science is governed by a conviction that the world is a machine, the distinction between science and technology naturally grows tenuous. Indeed, the influential philosopher, Daniel Dennett, has argued even of biology that it “is not just like engineering; it is engineering. It is the study of functional mechanisms, their design, construction, and operation.” And the University of Texas historian of science and technology, David Channell, argues that we should no longer think of technology as applied science; rather, “science is just applied technology.”

The study of technology is therefore essential to an understanding of what science is becoming today. You might say that all the work of The Nature Institute relates to technology—that is, we are concerned to rise from a technological or mechanistic view of the world to a living, qualitative, and contextual understanding of it. In order to achieve this, we must understand the character of technological thinking as deeply as possible, and learn how to transform it.”

Tags: geekingoutloud, wonderosity, leifhansen, natureinstitute, technological stewardship, responsibility

If your reading this blog then you likely, like me, have a number of unused or half-used gadets lying around your house waiting to find their usefulness in your life. Its hard to ignore them because they must have SOME use right? Its hard to sell them because they’re now outdated or scratched up. And its hard to trash them because, well, they still have some coolness and besides, you paid a good chunk for it. This is a list of some of my current gadget and PIM/organizational items and how I’m struggling with which ones to use.

After listing it like that, I think I’ve come to some conclusions:

1) I’ll give the iriver to my wife with a bunch of music on it and she can just press play when working out (but but but then I won’t have a small ‘emergency’ recorder!)

2) I’ll obviously use the Microtrack as my main recorder, I just need to start really doing some field recording.

3) Until the iphone comes out, I’ll continue to use my Ipaq for contacts, tasks and other info like instant wikipedia info.

4) I think I will switch back, for now, to a paper calendar –its just so much more practical and socially acceptable still. Not totally sure why, but seems to be true.