jakebe | The Future of News? (Reply)

Well, this is certainly well done. The most frightening question about that is, "What would we *do* with all of that customized information?" It's definitely possible to gain a much broader understanding of the world with the blogs and personal information diaries popping up on-line, but how much do you want to bet that people would form little cybercliques who reinforce each other's views of liberalism/conservatism/relativism/absolutism/envionmentalism/capitalism? The self-writing news reports is especially frightening, because it would almost certainly be used to instantly spin an event whichever way the reader wanted. What's worse is, it would all be automated according to saved preferences. That way, it would be terribly easy to forget that this news report is just what the computer thinks you want to hear, as opposed to the way things actually happened. How would you navigate something like that? Where would objectivity be in a format like that?

Still, the possibilities are pretty exciting. :) I imagine news-heads like

cargoweasel and

millerwolf would build their own personal media empires in no time. ;)

Whoo, wasn't expecting the flood of "Fuck Iomega". Thanks for the advice. :) I promptly returned the Zip drive to Office Depot (who had no problems returning it at all) and now I'm trying to convince Charles to buy a good flash drive. I had no idea they could hold that much information, actually. Truth be told, we're likely going to get a CD-RW drive or something and plug *that* in. I would like to not have to learn how to plug in a CD drive just now, but you have to learn sometime, right?

This entire week at work was a big hassle and sort of depressing. The computer refused to work, and the shelves were being built out front, and the store is getting more and more claustrophobic because we're buying way too many books. And, as luck would have it, Springfest is today. Hopefully they're doing all right down there, but I'm thinking maybe I should go down to Dickson St. to 'party' and check in on those guys. You know, just to make sure they're all right.

T-1 day until Linux. I'll be probably switching things out Sunday afternoon, doing the install and then futzing around with it before going to bed. I have my laptop back in operation, so I have a way of yelling "Help!" if something goes dreadfully wrong. I'm not sure how long it'll be before I figure out how to get around online properly with Ubuntu, but I trust it won't take long. After all, most Linux distros know that you'll need to browse the web for help manuals and forums at some point. ;)

Saw "Monster" last night with Brian and Belly and

bamboofae after Brian fixed the laptop in all of his wizardly computer might. Oh man, what a rough movie. :/ There are no easy answers for it, you can't really pass judgements on the characters (well, except for Selby, but that's different...no, really), it's just...a mess of a movie. I cried at the bus stop scene; Aileen did all of it for Selby, and now she was leaving, and you just *knew* her heart was breaking at that moment. She had done all of these horrible things and she was just coming to realize it because her *reason* was leaving. And what's worse is Selby couldn't see any of it, couldn't understand it. She had an idea of what Aileen was going through, but she couldn't really grasp it. It was heartbreaking. I totally see why Charlize Theron won an Oscar for the role.

Now, cleaning, laundry, probably breakfast today.

bamboofae is down with some kind of sickness (possibly strep), so I'm going to force-feed her oatmeal until she feels better. >:)