The evolution of the Web

September 19, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

Source: The evolution of the Web

The color bands in this visualization represent the interaction between web technologies and browsers, which brings to life the many powerful web apps that we use daily.

Clicking on a browser icon will show you screenshots of how its interface evolved (or, in some cases, got progressively messed) over the years. Clicking on the various labels will give you more information about that particular Web technology. I find it a useful tool for looking up this kind of things quickly.

(And look at the browsers’ versioning… Look how much Internet Explorer 6 lasted.)

More computer magazines

September 17, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

Source: ASCII by Jason Scott / The Floodwaters Rise

If you were delighted by my previous linked entry about a few computer magazines from the 8‑bit era being available to peruse online or download, thanks to Jason Scott and the Internet Archive, well, there’s more.

Jason writes:

As of this writing, I have put up the following magazines and newsletters.

Computer Magazines

Computer Newsletters

This is over 2,500 issues of magazines. It’s a little harder to calculate page counts, but I believe we’re somewhere in the order of a quarter million (250,000 pages) uploaded in the last seven days. When I’m productive, I’m productive.

Let’s get things clear – I am not the person who scanned these magazines, not the person who collected them (in a few cases, I’ve been sent copies of magazines from this list or which should be on this list, but I didn’t scan them). I’m just someone who has gone out and gathered these from a huge amount of sites that have one or two magazines, or huge piles of newsletters and magazines, and I’m purely a middleman. A very, very active middleman. 

Don’t miss the rest of the entry on Jason’s weblog, where he talks a bit about the process of uploading such an immense quantity of stuff to make it available online. I really wish I had more time to browse all this material. It’s a very dear part of my personal history, the root of my interest in computers since I was 10 years old.

Thanks, Jason.

Sitting and Standing at Work

September 14, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

Source: Sitting and Standing — Cornell University Ergonomics Web

This article is brief and to the point, and probably deserves to be printed out and used as a constant reminder of how we can ruin our health thanks to long sessions sitting at our computers. As someone who sits at his desk for up to 14–15 hours a day, and manages to do very little exercise, I’m of course worried about health-related complications caused by this sedentary lifestyle and I’m trying to do something about it before it’s too late.

I’ve decided to link to this not only as a reminder to fellow ‘long-sitters’, but also because it warns against another practice which seems increasingly popular: the standing desk. I never thought that a workstation where you basically stand all day was in any way better than sitting at a desk all the time. I’m not a doctor or expert in ergonomics, but to me ‘standing workstation’ always suggested ‘leg fatigue and blood circulation issues’. Well, it’s true:

But, standing to work has long known to be problematic, it is more tiring, it dramatically increases the risks of carotid atherosclerosis (ninefold) because of the additional load on the circulatory system, and it also increases the risks of varicose veins, so standing all day is unhealthy. The performance of many fine motor skills also is less good when people stand rather than sit. 

The bottom line is: Sit to do computer work … then every 20 minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE.

(via this tweet by Josh Sharp)

September 11, 2001

September 11, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Et Cetera

This is a slightly abridged version of what I wrote in my online journal on September 13, 2001. Names have been altered for obvious privacy reasons.

§

it’s been a day where death flooded silently, intrusive and wrapping everything and everyone in an ill coldsweat feverish silence — mouths sealed for fear of being contaminated by its humid, foul breath / / / / /

I woke up this morning thanks to a telephonic messenger, an old schoolmate I haven’t heard from in ages, announcing that Walt had died — (two dear friends already killed by drugs and now this new, fresh death? death, death again?) — what gave death to my friend Walt was his genetic configuration, though: he was born with anomalies and dysfunctions of the liver and pancreas / / / / /

anyway. he was 28. the funeral and the whole atmosphere I was driven into, suddenly, this morning, was like a fist squeezing and keeping my heart hostage. there was silence. there was a sort of steel blue blade mincing the air in the church’s surroundings. I saw Silvia again, the girl I used to refer to as my old flame, whose eyes were even a darker blue than I remembered; her eyes were a Loch Ness. there was a general, dignified, bewilderment / / / I saw again many people who’d been for years enfolded in Oblivion’s archives; some I was pleased to see and recognise; some others were the ones who had hurt me so much — but resentment, this morning, was like an empty perfume bottle left open, its contents evaporated / /

but I didn’t see Peter. I asked Robert, casually.

he looked at me [as if I had been a hermit finally returning to society after inhabiting the lands of Nowhere and Nonews] and told me -

— Peter is in New York since last October, didn’t you know?

(my mind started running frantically, by now I was hearing only a few words)

— … absolutely no news about him or his girlfriend… yes, he started working there about three months ago…

/ / / everyone in Milan today was reading newspapers. in an unreal silence. colour photographs with frozen expressions of terror. and those scenes, again, in the muted tv screens in bars and pubs / / / and now was acknowledged the presence of the Mute Death. he had come like a thief in full daylight

§

(Some time later I learnt that my friend Peter had died in the World Trade Center that fatal day, and his girlfriend too. She had finally arrived in New York a few days before to spend some time with him, and on September 11, 2001 she apparently decided to go with him at his office at the World Trade Center building.)

Ben Hammersley’s speech to the IAAC

September 11, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

Source: My speech to the IAAC | Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent

IAAC stands for Information Assurance Advisory Council and is, to quote Hammersley, the UK’s talking shop for government, law enforcement, security services, and private companies around the issues of cybersecurity and the like.

Hammersley’s speech touches many topics, and is so good overall that it’s difficult to quote from, but I think one of the central points lies in this bit:

Fundamental Truth Number two is that the internet is the dominant platform for life in the 21st century.

We can bitch about it, but Facebook, Twitter, Google and all the rest are, in many ways the very definition of modern life in the democratic west. For many, a functioning internet with freedom of speech, and a good connection to the social networks of our choice is a sign not just of modernity, but of civilisation itself.

This is not because people are “addicted to the video screen”, or have some other patronising psychological diagnosis. But because the internet is where we live. It’s where we do business, where we meet, where we fall in love. It is the central platform for business, culture, and personal relationships. There’s not much else left.

To misunderstand the centrality of these services to today’s society is to make a fundamental error. The internet isn’t a luxury addition to life; for most people, knowingly or not, it is life.

I generally agree with Hammersley, I am more or less of his same generation, and I sometimes do what he does: being (quote) the translation layer, the guy who tells the older guys what’s going on with the younger guys, and explains to the younger guys why the weird decisions the older guys are coming up with are being made — although what I try to explain at times to the younger guys is that not all the values of older guys deserve to be uncritically thrown out of the window, and not all this technological progress we’re living has to be accepted unconditionally. There are important issues and tradeoffs to be understood and sometimes younger people just don’t seem to care, or care enough.

Hammersley’s speech has been quite inspiring and I’ll soon post a longer piece with my own observations.