The art of the ligature

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The Museum of Modern Art has decided that the ligature chosen by Ray Tomlinson, the engineer who invented email, is Art.

The appropriation and reuse of a pre-existing, even ancient symbol—a symbol already available on the keyboard yet vastly underutilized, a ligature meant to resolve a functional issue (excessively long and convoluted programming language) brought on by a revolutionary technological innovation (the Internet)—is by all means an act of design of extraordinary elegance and economy. Without any need to redesign keyboards or discard old ones, Tomlinson gave the @ symbol a completely new function that is nonetheless in keeping with its origins, with its penchant for building relationships between entities and establishing links based on objective and measurable rules—a characteristic echoed by the function @ now embodies in computer programming language. Tomlinson then sent an email about the @ sign and how it should be used in the future. He therefore consciously, and from the very start, established new rules and a new meaning for this symbol…

“Hoon: v. trans. To offer oneself for hire; to propose oneself for Chairman”

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Watching the wonderful Dispatches/Sunday Times sting on TV last night, I was suddenly struck by the thought: imagine what would happen to the journalists who pulled off the coup if the sting had been conducted in Putin’s Russia.

It’s difficult to decide which of the victims was the most nauseating. The most pathetic was the fat Tory (about whom we’ve heard surprising little since) who told the interviewer (“in confidence”, of course) that he expected to be going to the Lords in due course. Not any more, he won’t.

But the most nauseating was surely the spectacle of Geoff Hoon proposing himself for the chairmanship of the fake’ Advisory Board.

Verily, a new verb has entered the language: “to hoon”.

Later: Tweet from Alan Woodley tells me that “Hoon in Oz slang=hooligan; hoodlum; loudmouth; fast, reckless driver ; pimp; bludger; despicable person.” Hmmm….

For ‘attack’ read ‘protect’

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Fascinating piece in the NYTimes about US reaction to a Chinese academic paper on cybersecurity.

It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress.

Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that it should be concerned because “Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.”

When reached by telephone, Mr. Wang said he and his professor had indeed published “Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid” in an international journal called Safety Science last spring. But Mr. Wang said he had simply been trying to find ways to enhance the stability of power grids by exploring potential vulnerabilities.

“We usually say ‘attack’ so you can see what would happen,” he said. “My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.” And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang’s work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid.

The difference between Mr. Wang’s explanation and Mr. Wortzel’s conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction…

The Net didn’t kill US newspapers: they committed suicide

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Instructive little vignette from 247wallstreet:

Gannett (GCI) is part of the crumbling newspaper industry. It has not gotten its online properties to nearly match the revenue of its traditional print operations, so the firm is still shrinking and has no real answer to it troubles. Gannett’s stock is off 80% over the last five years, which is much greater that the shares of either The New York Times Company (NYT) or The Washington Post (WPO). Gannett’s revenue is likely to drop again in 2010.

But, Gannett CEO Craig Dubow made $4.7 million last year according to the Gannett proxy. That is up from $3.1 million in 2008. Senior executives at the paper company get the customary access to private cars and the firm’s jet.

Gannett has fired thousands of people over the last two years and asked others to take weeks without pay. The company has not come up with a single meaningful strategic plan to overcome the slide in its fortunes. Operations like Huffington Post , Politico, and The Daily Beast have flanked Gannett. It never had the intelligence to launch its own large internet-only products. Perhaps it feared that would cannibalize its print properties, but they are dying anyway.

Thanks to Jeff Jarvis for the link.

Only connect…

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This morning’s Observer column:

My mother used to say that television had killed the art of conversation. One wonders what she would have made of Chatroulette, the current sensation du jour. It’s the implementation of a stunningly simple idea: live online chats with randomly chosen, complete strangers.

After logging in two frames appear on the left-hand side of the screen. The lower one shows you (or what your webcam is pointing at). The other is labelled “Partner”. Click “New Game” and you’re off. An image of someone or something appears in the upper frame.

“Connected,” says the status bar, “Feel free to talk now.” If you don’t like what you see, click the “Next” button and you’re instantly connected to someone else. And so it goes.

To anyone unused to raw, unmediated Net culture, Chatroulette will come as a shock…

Genius, pure genius

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From the Guardian report:

Last night, Britain’s most prestigious design prize was awarded to a plug. At a ceremony at the Design Museum, the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year award was carried off by an unknown Korean who only graduated from the Royal College of Art last summer. Min-Kyu Choi was probably not the first person to notice the disparity between his Macbook Air laptop (thin enough to slide into a manila envelope) and the plug attached to it (so bulky you need a duffel bag). But he was certainly the first to sit down and redesign the plug so that it folds flat. This piece of electrical origami says all you need to know about the power of designers to transform our everyday world.

The company set up to produce the plug is here. As someone who also has a MacBook Air and is driven wild by the idiotic UK standard plug, I’d like to order one. Actually I’d like to order about ten. They would make terrific gifts for my geeky friends.