My friend Rob Adams, who recently become an active blogger, wrote the nicest thing about me the other day:
Micah is a man with an agile mind, a strong passion for learning, and a lucid and perceptive view of reality; I can't remember having a conversation with him that I did not enjoy.
awh shucks!
It's only fair to return the favor. Rob has a piercing intellect and steadfastly refuses to over simplify complex issues for the sake of a straw man argument. Instead he approaches issues with care and systematically devines their underlying dynamics. He's taught me a lot about systems thinking as well as how to play basketball and Starcraft.
heard via Marc's Voice: BuddyZoo takes your buddy list and compares it to everyone elses - and draws connections between them. Totally right on. Ross Mayfield will love this! So will Danah Boyd.
Verizon is the only cell company that can get coverage in my office at CMU, a fact I wish I had known before signing my Sprint contact. For the past two years I've been wishing for a system to extend Sprints coverage, which is perfect outside, into the cement jungle that is wean hall.
Andrew Seybold may have found the answer. In a great article in todays Outlook4Mobility he talkes about cellular repeater systems from SpotWave.
"Companies such as AT&T Wireless, Verizon, Sprint PCS and Nextel are approaching major companies and offering to install both an in-building repeater or cell site and Wi-Fi systems for "free" if the company will commit to switching all of their wireless users over to their network on a long-term contract. "
... "I contacted the company to learn more about SpotCell and after a few discussions, they kindly offered to come visit my home and see if they could install a Verizon repeater system for me. " ... "The actual installation of my system took only about an hour including drilling the studs and running the coax and ground wire. In most installations there is an indicator light on the donor unit. You mount the unit and then turn it until the light glows green rather than red. Once this is done you turn the system on and, like magic, the inside of your home or business is flooded with wide-area wireless coverage from your wireless operator of choice."
I really enjoyed Lem's book Solaris, although the movie was miserable. What the directors failed capture was that Solaris is a parable, a disguised narrative with a moral. Seven years ago I wrote an essay for a class on the aesthetics of science fiction where I discussed the parable behind Solaris:
What makes Solaris most compelling, however, is that in addition to these surface level stories Lem has a deeper agenda, a moral which he communicates via the interplay of character and plot.The basic maxim of this parable, as Darko Suvin points out, is “the erroneousness of pretending to total knowledge of any complex situation.”
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