Hey Covid – Follow the Science! or “Here Be Dragons”

Posted on by

ThereBeDragons

It would seem the CDC is having its own intense, extended Analog/Digital moment when it comes to masks and all things Covid. First, under the previous, ahem, “administration,” the A/D knob was turned all the way over to Analog. One could argue that knob had gotten turned so far all the wiring behind it got ripped out. Then, as is the way with Analog, things… “evolved.”  Under a new administration, with a velocity approaching quantum state change, the A/D knob twirled its way around to the Digital side, further distending the wiring with chants of “Follow the Science.” Continue reading →

Digital Fidelity to the Facts (Not So Much)

Posted on by

American exceptionalism or not, the events in Washington D.C. have reached far and wide into both the Analog and Digital worlds. The offices of The Analog Underground are feeling a little somber contemplating what was lost (Life and illusions) and also what was not (aspiration and potential). While we’ve got thoughts on transcendence and unity and doing one’s duty, we’ll leave those to our sister publication, The Wondering Pathfinder and be good digerati, confining our scope to the Analog/Digital aspects of events. 

The realm of thinking on free speech and its rational limits has always been fertile ground for Analog/Digital philosophers, for what is speech but the original discrete encoding mechanism for the continuous reality of the world around us. We have been editing what we see, hear, feel, taste and smell into more consumable chunks called words for as long as there are records of, well, us. And from day one, those words, always one or more steps away from actual reality, have probably tempted us to try and improve on the reality we encountered. Og probably inflated the size of that Mammoth that got away.  Continue reading →

Screen World and The Rise of the Monetized Self

Posted on by

Welcome to Screen World! It’s all new and different and changes everything all the time! Here, near the entry to Screen World, we’ve placed our hottest experiences that everyone who’s anyone will be talking about tomorrow. Just a little further in, we’ve arrayed our brightest lights with their achingly perfect bodies, always-on-vacation lifestyles, and pithy observations. Next we have.. Yes? A question? Exits? Well, why would anyone want to exit? You might MISS something! And exit to where? After Screen World, anything else is just disappointing. Complex, dirty, frightening. But listen to me go on. I MUST BE TRENDING. Screen world has just everything so it must have exits. I’m sure the fault lies with me. Please step over to the kiosk where are our perky, polite AI Chat Bot will…

Continue reading →

Anti-Social Media – What to Wear

Posted on by

It’s been said that sub-divisions out in the ‘burbs are often named for the things they replaced. Willow Creek Estates?  No Willows.  No Creeks. Deer Run? No running deer, just painful repetitions of contractor contemporary architecture and sterile green lawns.

What has the staff here at The Analog Undergrounding thinking sub-divisions and errors of substitution? The newest emperor with no clothes, Social Media.  No social and damn little media worthy of the name. If it really followed the error of substitution called out above there would be something about civil in the name, but that assumes a level of nuance far beyond the capabilities of the, well, um, medium.  If accuracy were a thing for social media, we’d probably be talking more about anti-social media here. Continue reading →

The Box Jockey’s Dilemma

Posted on by

Let’s face it. Our Digital children are freakishly fast, but they have all the flexibility of a steel rod dipped in liquid nitrogen. One unexpected tap and things rapidly degenerate into all kinds of unexpected chaos. We’ve been on quite the journey with IT over the last half century or so trying to navigate between these twinned realities, trying to take advantage of the one and avoid the other.

Our first tentative attempts to ride these broncos were in the military and governmental domains, which are more clearly defined or just rigidly bureaucratic depending on one’s perspective. For better or worse, that reality hid, or, at least, diminished the impacts of the steel rod side of this equation. So we happily invited the dervishes into our workplaces.
Continue reading →

Building our Better Angels – Or Not…

Posted on by

Over the last year, it seemed like Artificial Intelligence was on quite a run and that days of complacently serving our robot overlords in a kind of de-natured paradise were right around the corner. Self-driving cars were in the advanced stages of development and not by the tweedy academics but by giants of industry and not the old industry, either. These happy engineers were the new guys who had already changed our lives in ways both big and small through the triplet miracles of design, technology and marketing. The Internet of Things had its own acronym (IoT) in the mass media and my house was getting smarter by the nano-second. Oh swoony singularity.

Well, maybe not so much. Perhaps the first hint was a little blurb that a Google car got a ticket. Seems like it was driving too slow for conditions and causing a bit of traffic jam. Not a big deal. Perhaps just a case of the new ethics exposing the depravity of the old.

Continue reading →

cYborG liKe mE

Posted on by

cYBORG LIKE ME
When’s the last time you talked to your computer? Well, o.k. when’s the last time you talked to your computer and expected something to happen as a result? For me, it always was a little like talking to myself, something done more for the feel of it than the content. Recently however, the one-way pronouncements have begun to take on more of two-way flavor.

I’ve never been a big fan of Siri or Cortana or especially the creepy no-name Google that’s just trying too hard to be friendly. I still hear a bit of the drunken Swede that was state of the art for computer generated voices back in the 80’s when I first worked with the technology. Beyond that, though, I had to wonder what the point was. My experience both personally and watching others was that it was just easier to use the keyboard. I’m not a fan of endlessly repeating myself at ever escalating tones of voice and more precise diction and yet that seemed to be how things played out more times than not.
Continue reading →

It’s an Art and a Science: Or We’re Not in the Fourth Grade Anymore

Posted on by

Art-Sci“Well, it’s as much an art as a science.” You’ve said it. I’ve said it. We’ve all said it at one time or another, usually to deflect some misguided wish for certainty, simplicity, or immediacy. Beyond the verbal hand-waving, however, there is a deeper truth. The professions we choose are, ultimately, all human endeavors and as such come with the all the mystery and ambiguity of human instincts, emotions, visions and even intellect. The whole truth is the “Art and Science” phrase is said as much to comfort ourselves in what we don’t know or completely understand as it is to suggest an elevated status conferred by access to some secret wisdom. Continue reading →

Looking in the Digital Mirror

Posted on by

Intense Mirror

When’s the last time you looked in a mirror? When’s the last time you looked at yourself in your digital mirror? I know Facebook didn’t invent the idea of the curated self and that the Internet doesn’t know everything (including, most obviously, the basics of civil discourse). All that granted, our digital selves are becoming a larger part of who we are and it’s a part of ourselves that is as awkward and full of often un-focused energy as a stereotypical teenager. One could hope we’ll get through this awkward Digital adolescence and emerge to be more productive, well-adjusted, and… well, what? Digital Adults? What exactly would that look like? Continue reading →

iMortality

Posted on by

Ruins

An anniversary slipped quietly by last fall. It happens all the time, this unremarked slipping away of the now into history and then beyond to oblivion. That’s the human story, our sorrow and our relentless glory. This was a Digital anniversary or at least an anniversary of something mostly Digital, though as I try to categorize it, I find these odd Analog feelings welling up. Pride, wonder, gratitude, nostalgia all come marching in around the details, the discrete facts of the anniversary. Perhaps this is the nature of anniversaries, a blending of the Digital and the Analog, the discrete and clearly distinguishable mixed up and wrapped in intangibles of emotion and surmise, the mere data of event purified in a crucible of context and experience to pure meaning.

This particular moment in time was the release of a software suite, WiscWorld 1.0, to the University of Wisconsin – Madison students. Continue reading →