What if I could have one interface for all comms?

What if all my communication with people came to me in the command line prompt.
What a dream that would be.  All I would have to do is redirect or copy all traffic from my e-mail, SMS, twitter, Facebook, google+, LinkedIn, Viber, Moot, and Phone channels into and repeat the content and the sender in pure text.

Then I would love to be able to write back in the same command line terminal, and my people would get the responses back in their respective sending channels.
Then if there was media attached to a message, I could act on it, play the audio, see the photo, watch the video, digest the link -- IF I wanted to.

I think this is the concept that IFTTT empowers people with.  I would take to this extreme simplicity if I knew how.

Well, studying programming via Coursera is empowering me. One day soon.
Ben

Morse invented the Uni-Keyboard

Touch surfaces prompt me to ponder the keyboard and omni-present input interfaces.

My mind thinks of Samuel Morse. His Morse Code was essentially beautifully, simple one key keyboar.d

Morse Code. It had to be interpreted by humans, and therefore had to be sent slow enough for human processing.

What if you could speed up morse code signals (the human listening space between dits and dahs), and receive them via a computer that could interpret them instantly.

You would have nano morse code.
Nano Morse Code.
Norse Code.

What would be the data size difference of this sentence in morse code (digitized) vs. current character data encoding/reading algorithms?

Reflection on knowledge contained, ideas prompted by apple watch

What knowledge is being contained in the apple watch? The question opens centuries of persistent human questions and answers, and new questions.  Society will answer them as it integrates with instances of this element.

Expected effects designing human behavior & communicative capabilities- tap a person by tapping your wrist? wow. 

Get nudged which direction you should go on your journey? wow.

Searching for a medium that can be mastered

Anna Vallgårda has an answer for you Ingalls.

Thank you Ingalls, thank you Rasmus who pointed out what Ingalls said:

"[…] a vision that includes a creative individual and the best computing hardware available.

"Ingalls builds further on this vision, writing:

"If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual.

The point here is that the human potential manifests itself in individuals. To realize this potential, we must provide a medium that can be mastered by a single individual. Any barrier that exists between the user and some part of the system will eventually be a barrier to creative expression."

See the full article 
http://rsms.me/2013/01/01/1950s-called-wanted-toolbox-back.html

Glass has Gravity

Many times I'm asked what is Google Glass useful for?

At face value (hehe) Glass is useful for meeting people.
I've found Glass has a lot of gravity.  Its presence effortlessly sucks the attention of people around you and funnels that attention into comments and questions and stares. 

 That's okay! Glass is a curiosity.

And getting a sucked into Glass's orbit facilitates group ideation and inspiration, which I believe is Glass's key purpose. 

I love the chance to get inspired, and benefit from ideas and experiences of other people as we envision with a Glass-induced trance what the future should, could, and shouldn't be.

I also like the educational effortlessness of glass-- take the Star Search app. I learned more in 10 minutes of perusing stars and planets in my <augmented> field-of-view than I did in boy-hood outings to discover the constellations.

Humor & Gravity

I was milling around the kitchen at work and discovered the opposite force of gravity: Humor!

Gravity pulls. Humor lifts.
Brooding thoughts drag, a light-hearted attitude spring-loads your steps.

Humor has different colors:
quips
attitudes
receptiveness

Serious tension can be sliced into cake when a contagious brand of humor walks in the room.

Feeling grim? Something funny might catch you in the mirror.

Where is the sun?

It's daylight and you are standing outside: Where is the sun?
-- How do you know?

It's daylight and you are standing inside a four-walled room with no windows: Where is the sun?
-- How do you know?

It's the middle of the night, you are outside standing in the forest: Where is the sun?
-- How do you know?

It's 5:00 AM, just before dawn, your home is in a valley surrounded by mountains: Where is the sun?
-- How do you know?

It's midnight on the night of the new moon: Where is the sun?
-- How do you know?

What informs your knowledge about the sun?

For me, it is the bath of golden light in the daytime, the moon's reflective surface, the lightbulbs that are recycled sunlight, the green trees which though darkened in the night air promise me there was a sun that passed by recently, and the pattern of the sun's 24 hour cycle (a.k.a earth's 24 hour cycle) which I've been conditioned to believe will continue tomorrow.

Make sure you keep a friend like the moon around in your orbit so you can always be reminded that there's light on it's way to your place in the world, no matter how dark it may look now.

All these things witness there is a sun that was here, and will soon come again.