Author: Steven Garrity

Using the future to sell the present

by Steven Garrity

GM’s mythical fuel cell vehicleDuring a recent conversation about software upgrades (to which I am a confessed addict), a friend made the profound statement that “everyone loves the future.”

Perhaps you’ve seen the recent television advertisements in which GM promotes their oddly-spelled “hy-wire” concept car. As Wired News reported in September of 2002, the concept car promises a future based on hydrogen fuel cells.

It is nothing new for auto companies to use concept cars to generate press and attention. However, I find this most recent advertising campaign a bit offensive. GM is using the promise of an eventual product to sell completely unrelated products today. Does the Hy-Wire work yet? Is the one we see in the TV commercial actually powered by fuel cells?

The premise seems to me to be something like “someday we’ll make a great car that’s environmentally friendly — in the mean-time, be sure to pick up a new Cavalier or Escalade”.

 

Community-produced audio recording of Laurence Lessig’s New Book

by Steven Garrity

Free Culture by Laurence LessigHaving enjoyed Laurence Lessig’s previous book, The Future of Ideas, I was looking forward to his latest book, Free Culture. The text of the book is available for free online. While I have read long works from my laptop LCD, this 352-page PDF file didn’t seem very appealing on screen.

I thought it would be nice to have an audio-book format. I even considered recording it myself – which would be acceptable considering the Creative Commons license on the book. However, I didn’t have the time, energy, or more importantly, the talent to do a good job at recording this.

With this in the back of my mind, I came across a post by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing about a weblogger-produced collaborative audio-book recording of the new Lessig book.

Now, only a few minutes after wondering if I should produce this myself, I’m listening to Chapter 1. Cool.

 

Weblogs and the future of Linux desktop development

by Steven Garrity

Gnome Desktop LogoThe future of development on the Linux desktop is being debated and deliberated on the weblogs of key developers this week.

If you are interested in computing platform decisions and open source software, then you may be interested in the debate. However, even if you are not at all interested in these things, it may be interesting in a more abstract sense.

On a campus in Redmond, Washington, smart and talented people are deciding what your computer is going to be like in the next decade. Here, in a parallel universe of sorts, smart and talented people are debating an alternative future for desktop computing — and you can read every word it.

Havoc Pennington, a Gnome hacker from RedHat, Miguel de Icaza, a founder of the Gnome project and Ximian, Robert Love, a kernel hacker with Ximian, and many others are batting around the posible platform options for linux desktop development. It’s strangely empowering to witness.

The debate and dialog continues and can be followed on Planet Gnome, an aggregated weblog of Gnome developer weblogs.

Mailing lists have generally been the primary communication method of open source developers. While mailing lists are still the core of the communication, weblogs have started to play an interesting role. They are especially effective for high-profile debate and dialog like this. Unlike a public mailing list, the signal-to-noise ratio is high.