Question of the Day

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.

Danger, Simplified

Few pictograms communicate "danger" as elegantly as this sign on an Omax water-jet cutter. What more is there to say?

Subliminal Message

The basic icons of "man" and "woman" are common to any building's signage program to demarcate the location of restrooms. Each country has a different twist on the man and woman. In the United States, the iconified people are normally standing erect and with legs together; in most southern European countries, they stand with legs apart in a relaxed stance. Trendy restaurants around the world like to throw certain twists to make it confusing for their guests, like the restrooms in a Shanghai restaurant that use the man and woman symbols (♂ / ♀); because I can't remember which is which, I had to peek in the bathrooms to see which one had urinals in it. Luckily, both of the restrooms were empty ...

I took the photo of the above sign in Japan. Note that one side has diaper-changing facilities and the other doesn't. A lot is said in such a simple sign.

PowerPoint Paintings

I'm attending the Pop!Tech conference here in Camden, Maine. There are many remarkable speakers here, like Steven Pinker and Daniel Pink, but what I am most surprised by is the "human renderer" who sits in the upper-right balcony of the proceedings.

The artist paints images that convey the spirit of each talk in real time with color and words. I think the fact that each image is not a literal interpretation of the speaker's presentation feels fresh. Very iki.

It's Getting Fuzzy

I had an interesting conversation at the Media Lab today with visiting researcher Nozomi Kakiuchi, from Toshiba. Recently, I've been feeling that the technology world needs to move away from the exact and numerically precise, and instead toward a more vague and fuzzy language of expression.

Nozomi and I chatted about the strange "fuzzy logic" fad in Japan of the early 1990s, when it was not uncommon to see a "fuzzy logic vacuum cleaner" or a "fuzzy logic rice cooker" on sale in the Akihabara electronics district of Tokyo. The premise is quite simple: instead of encoding values as numbers, ranges of numbers are tagged as having membership association with a word. Words are such great containers of knowledge.

Nozomi suggested that our conversation was essentially about iki (pronounced "ee-kee"). It's something to do with inexactness and openness but all in all "the right fit" to a complex issue. Although it's difficult to comprehend, I totally got it. I guess iki is iki too.

Fruit as IP

While traveling in Korea, I encountered this lovely display of melons in a hotel restaurant. As I took out my camera to snap a picture, a person came out to tell me I was not allowed to photograph it. But it was too late. The deed was done.

First of all, I wasn't sure why I shouldn't have taken the photo. Was there some kind of intellectual property associated with this arrangement? In an age when cameras are so ubiquitous, to tell someone they can't take a picture seems a bit odd to me. Especially at a restaurant. I can understand if random people might be standing in the photo; they deserve their privacy. Many museums have given up trying to stop visitors from taking photos of artworks and artifacts. So why this restaurant? Unfortunately, I couldn't speak the language and now am guilty of some crime. I hope this post absolves me.