The whole tagging thing is interesting. I think of tagging information as bookmarks for life. I’ve been doing it for ages, but now there are plenty of tools to help me do it (not that I use them).

Tagging is a reaction to search technology, and is proportional to the use of Search as the interface to the data. If you usually search for a contact in your address book by name, you aren’t likely to do lots of tagging in the notes field. On the other hand, if you usually do a search by, say, title (”Barber”) or where the contact lives (”London”) then you might.

Just the number of ways that we mentally search for a name or number — by first name, last name, company name, city, event where we met, job title, appearance (”the bald guy who sat next to the CTO”) — is astonishing. It’s all the more astonishing that my Nokia E65 only searches contacts by first/last name or company name (but not both — depending on how the card is listed.

I’m very sensitive to the way names are spelled: once I know how someone spells their name, I rarely (if ever) get it wrong. No Mark for Marc; no Allen for Alan. The spelling is an inherent part of the way I see the name in my mind when I think of the person. There have been a few occasions where I got a spelling wrong upon introduction (my fault or the introducers), and I’ve compensated for that by spelling the name incorrectly in the contact’s notes field. So one unexpected part of tagging data is tagging it incorrectly, too, so that it can be found by people making a mistake.

All of this rambling is a long way of saying that I think there’s still a huge opportunity for improvement to the interfaces for searching content on our mobile devices.

PsyBlog reports on a small study on the use of music to affect mood. The seven areas of influence noted are:

Entertainment - Revival - Strong sensation - Diversion - Discharge - Mental work - Solace

This reminds me of one of the most insightful comments I’ve ever heard about mobile usage, a remark by Lucia Predolin of Buongiorno in a pre-session conversation:

“People listen to their iPods to escape where they are.”

I’ve thought about it often, and the more I think about it, the more it rings true.

I’m finally getting down to organizing my notes and thoughts from the MEX Conference held last month in London.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“The user says, ‘It’s broken’ not ‘I’m suffering from a fragmented ecosystem’.” — Jo Rabin, MobileMonday London

“Most people don’t want to buy a 1/4″ drill, they want a 1/4″ hole.” – Scott Jensen, Google

“Cognitive simplicity” — Steve Ives, Taptu

“Neutral vs. Imperial” — JD Moore, Nokia

“‘Chaos’ is not chaotic to non-Western eyes. ‘Chaos’ is shared space.” – Paul Adams, Google

“The environment is the interface.” — Kieran del Pasqua, Intel

iPhone: “The interface is the device.” — Robert Weideman, Nuance

“The device is the analog-to-digital converter of life.” — Robert Weideman, Nuance

“‘Device talking to us’ doesn’t always work as well as ‘us talking to device’.” — comment during a Breakout Session on design use cases for the handset outside the hand.*

“Fragmentation is the result of innovation.” — Carl Taylor, Hutchison Whampoa Europe

“It is seven times quicker to read than to listen. It is seven times quicker to say it than to type it.” — Simon Crowfoot, SpinVox

“…’Point and Shoot’ as a UI design philosophy.” – Simon Crowfoot, SpinVox

*If you’re the one who said this, please let me know so that I may credit you!

Some thoughts on the book Reading Lolita in Tehran:

1. The book is described as triumph of literature and a lifeline of sanity (or whatever) in the difficult world of Islamic revolution in Iran, yet I see the author as deliberately using literature to subvert the revolutionary culture. Nafisi uses her faith in novels not so much to maintain her personal freedom as to teach, to spread her open approach among her students. For her, teaching is used intentionally as an anti-revolution propaganda tool.

Now, you might or might not like that revolutionary culture — personally, I think it’s evil — but that’s not the point. Her attempts to force her students to adopt her beliefs in Western freedom, in literature as the means to that freedom, are not as different from Islamic brainwashing as you might expect, and that’s a very different purpose from the one expressed on the back cover.

2. As a group, the books she presents are classics, and part of the standard western syllabus. As individual books, the novels chosen (Lolita, Gatsby) are particularly uncomfortable ones. In the context of a generally religious society, they would absolutely be unappreciated — even in the U.S., I imagine that most religious high schools and colleges don’t choose these books course material.

It’s difficult to believe that Nafisi could have created her curriculum without realizing that even moderate Iranians would be offended by her choices and resist her efforts. Knowing that, the question begged is: Why did she deliberately choose these books?

3. In discussing Lolita, Nafisi finds a theme of tyranny: of those in power trying to form others in the image they want, maintaining total control of them, lack of empathy or respect for others as their own people.

In that context, she unexpectedly describes the students as “my girls” — part of a more pervasive attitude of her trying to create these girls over in her own, subversive image.

4. Disappointingly, the book is disjointed and doesn’t flow evenly. Too much space is devoted to literary criticism and plot discussion of the classics — remember, this purports to be a memoir. (Four pages alone are devoted to a biographical history of Henry James.)

The years and even the writing style jump around. First there are the semi-secret literary sessions in her home (which turn out to be the end of the story, not the beginning). The scene then shifts to her time as a university student in the United States, then to teaching in the  university in Tehran — with a backward step to teaching in a private women’s college.

This leaping about is not of the flashback sort; there is no apparent reason, no cohesion. Within a section, the book is for the most part very readable. Nonetheless, I am left with the impression that the book was written in little unrelated fits and spurts of essays and sections over many years, making it difficult to follow the author’s motivations.

5. Finally, and related to all of the above points, Reading Lolita in Tehran is permeated with a sense of the arrogance of author: her great knowledge, the importance of her writing and teaching to the world. The importance of literature.

One might suggest that if Nafisi still feels the power of literature after all she has been through, that itself proves its value. Yet somehow, I am not convinced. Is it possible that the deep value of literature for the author — a value equal sometimes to life or death — is because literature itself is her identity?

Nafisi doesn’t seem to fit in her culture, her nation. There’s a lot of “we this” and “we that”, yet the sense is one of separateness and detachment. Of not being one of the people. Of not joining the cast of characters.

I am left disappointed, but also wondering: Is this detachment, this isolation from the experience of the people ultimately the selfishness of arrogance?

From the most recent Prairie Home Companion podcast:

“It was a merciful speech; a self-erasing speech.”

[via Reaction [beta])

“People remember experiences, not features or attributes.” — A.G. Lafley

(…and they’re People, not Users.)

[via Shmula]

I said a few days ago that “Experience is Everything”. This isn’t what I meant, though.

I’m currently building up a rough manifesto (what point is there to a slick one? the word manifesto feels so rough…) on the subject of thought and how it is influenced by experience, in particular, how our thought and relationship processes are influenced by increasing time spent in virtual spaces online. It’s a subject that is close to my heart and passion, and I’ve been working up to this with increasing momentum for nearly a year.

How does the above video link tie in? My idea of “Experience is Everything” is that the experience is influenced by every aspect of the sensed environment, not just the digital input. The Prometeus video (”Experience is the New Reality”) looks at experience as moving away from the physical senses towards the digital domain.

By the way, I love the voiceover on the video, but wonder about the very odd difficulty with “Tyranosaurus Rex”. Note the closing credit:

Voice: Philip K. Dick Avatar

Date: 6th April 2061

Place: Unknown

What’s all that about?

[via Alphachimp]

I (almost) never click on link on CNN story links that indicate that they lead to video — I want to read my news, not watch it. Today I noticed that there was another icon there beside the video icon: a t-shirt.

I pondered this a bit. A t-shirt? I understand a story in video, but what kind of story would be represented by a t-shirt? Stumped, I clicked.

Just what I’ve been waiting for: CNN.shirt — a service that lets me order a time-stamped CNN headline on a t-shirt. Oh, boy!

Yes, I can concoct believable cases in which someone would want to order a headline t-shirt. Yes, I can believe that CNN will earn money on this (how much, though?!).

No, I do not appreciate having the icon there cluttering up “my” news page on the off chance that I might throw a few dollars in that direction. I’d much rather have an icon offering me the text story of the related video story.

C’mon, CNN. You’ve done such a great job of designing and re-launching this site. You can put an icon in the corner of the page somewhere, leading to an archive of available headlines. But headline-adjacent? Who talked you into that?

What a stunning work: a pre-fab home extension that looks nicer than most custom designs. I like the size consideration (”permit exempt in most municipalities”), too.

http://kithaus.com/