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John Maeda is a world-renowned graphic designer, visual artist, and computer scientist and is a founding voice for “simplicity” in the digital age. From June 2008 he becomes the 16th President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

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Question of the Day

At the Media Lab, you get asked questions by all kinds of folks: faculty, students, sponsors, and ... well ... urinals.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007


This morning while visiting the "facilities" here on the third floor of the Media Lab, I was confronted with two philosophical questions posed above the urinal by an anonymous party:

Does technology make our lives more/less easy?
And does this contribute to our happiness?


Certainly a good set of questions with which to start one's day. The answer to the first question is, "Yes. More easy and less easy." Next one: "Yes. Positively and negatively contributes to our happiness." Both questions can be answered with, Do both.

Tags: question

Comments

  • complexity
    jbdunne on 11/11/2007 at 1:45 PM
    Posts:
    1
    It would be simpler to have one blog, no?  It seems to have expanded from "do both" into "do all three" or perhaps just "do everything".  Keep it up, thank you.
    Rate this comment: 12345
  • Toilets and blogging
    MrHarry on 12/18/2007 at 12:11 PM
    Posts:
    2
    This seems like quite a pristine environment compared with many toilets I've seen, but it did set me thinking - the more typical graffiti-strewn pub toilets in the UK are an interesting precursor to micro-blogging and commenting. A vintage London bog will certainly contain some proto-"linkbait" in the form perhaps of an allegation about the sexuality of one footballing tribe, followed by multi-threaded asynchronous comments disputing the validity of the original. Of course, some might argue that by incorporating the ability (to some degree) to overwrite and/or amend the original remarks, the back of the pub toilet door was more like a wiki...
    Rate this comment: 12345
  • Technology v/s Happiness
    sman on 12/20/2007 at 2:04 AM
    Posts:
    11
    Technology is the continuous evolution of the inventions and thoughts of many people. Initially it started with eager to understand the world. At any point of time, if technology can make a person to smile or make his life peacefull then it brings happiness. Otherwise it is a terror.
    www.browsetoknow.blogspot.com
    Rate this comment: 12345

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