Good Devices Gone Bad

(This entry itself had problems after posting and it took a day to fix. A good entry gone bad.)

My sister, Doreen, who is seldom on the bleeding edge of technology, bought a Kindle in January and by March she was sending it back.

My Kindle was a clunker. I LOVED it and had about 15 books on it when it finally died. The screen kept freezing and I had to reset it. They did a factory reset download but it didn't help. Finally it would only turn on by the reset button on back. UPS is delivering a new one today so that's good news....they are replacing buggy ones. I still think it is great even though I got a first generation dud.

With my iPhone, I've had three replacements, meaning I'm on my fourth phone in six months. I like the iPhone just fine. I don't like that it breaks down and there's not much I can do about it, except get a replacement. The first one had a problem with audio. I wasn't getting stereo out the headphones. So it worked as phone, but not an iPod. I sent that phone to Texas and got a replacement but then they sent me a "new" phone instead of fixing the one I sent them. That phone worked fine until the January 1.1.3 update caused it to shutdown automatically when it was not in the cradle. I took that one back to the Apple Store and got a "new" one. I got home, opened the box and this phone, probably a re-conditioned one, mis-behaved badly, as shown in the picture below taken from a video I made of the wacky behavior.

I had to take the iPhone back again and get another "new" one.

I can't guess what it must cost companies to service and replace these devices. Early adopters know this experience well. Too often, what we're adopting is a problem child. One of the biggest frustrations is just convincing the company that there's a problem. The support person is often less knowledgeable than you are. You have to go through their script, trying resets and reboots that you've already tried just so they can check off that it was done. When I took my iPhone into the Apple Store and waited my turn to talk to an impatient "guru", I was worried that the problem might be erratic and irregular and not show itself at the appointed time. That's why I took a short video of the screen flashing in crazy ways. Please believe me when I say it's not working.

Is the true cost of manufacturing much higher than companies think? Is this the tradeoff for manufacturing in China? Low prices, fast turnaround and lots of flaws. I don't mean to blame China. My guess is that designers of products are too distant from the manufacturing process and too hands-off. They design to add features, not to improve the process to prevent failures.

There's an opportunity to take a new look at manufacturing based on reliability and quality. Build products that are well-made and designed to last. Make them easier to repair or make it possible for others to fix them locally. Take seriously the environmental impact of all our throwaway technology.

****

On Sunday, several of us from the Maker Faire team met at ACCRC in Berkeley. ACCRC opened its doors to makers, allowing them to go through heaps of dead devices and see what can be salvaged for Make Play Day or personal projects. We had about 40 makers show up and they were literally like kids in a candy store. Tim Anderson had to make several trips with a handcart to his car.

James Burgett of ACCRC had on display the skull of junked electronics. He could send text messages to it and it would speak the words, reminding me of the Wizard of Oz. I plan to put the skull near the entrance of Maker Faire so you can play the Wizard.
Bad devices doing good again?

Hazards of Wifi

Our town, Sebastopol, had passed a resolution in November to permit a local Internet provider to provide public wireless access. This week, fourteen people showed up at a City Council meeting to make the claim that wireless caused health problems in general and to them specifically. These emotional pleas made the Council rescind its previous resolution.

So, a few people in this town strongly believe a wide variety of problems are caused by low frequency electromagnetic radiation (EMF). Some label the problem as "electromagnetic hypersensitivity" or EHS. Here's the Wikipedia entry on "Electrical Sensitivity." It reports that the World Health Organization found that "there is no scientific basis for the belief that EHS is caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields."

An online petition collected 235 "signatures" opposed to public Wifi in Sebastopol. The resolution reads: "The convenience of this technology does not warrant the increase in radiation and the potential risks to the health of our community."

Here's a typical comment from someone signing the petition:

I have had health challenges, and my body cannot handle wifi...it gives me headaches and makes me very sick. I would be unable to go to the store, shop. I have enough problems being limited in my travels, it is outrageous that a place so environmentally conscious would create this in our/my hometown. In Europe they are much more advanced than us, and there wifi is not allowed in cities in the European commonwealth.

The person organizing the petition believes that people don't understand the harm that electromagnetic radiation and basic electricity is doing to them. On a local bulletin board, the opponents cite bioinitiative.org.
One person writes:

We are urged us to switch from regular incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent (CFL) light bulbs, to save energy. However, there is a very good reason NOT to use CFL bulbs. They create electromagnetic frequencies proven to be extremely detrimental to human health.

Others write about living without electricity, except for the brief period they are using their computer to write messages in support of the petition.

One can see the fear spreading. Science should be a way to dispel such fears but it is clear with this group of people that science cannot be trusted. They put forth the idea that science should be able to prove that there is no harm and therefore eliminate any risk, and without such proof, we should not move forward. They use this logic to recommend a "precautionary" approach, which is their keyword for a "know-nothing, do-nothing" approach.

Yet another person writes:

Research is increasingly showing a correlation between adverse health symptoms and emf radiation exposure. Local and national governmental bodies in other western countries are paying attention and are beginning to legislate limits to exposure to wi-fi radiation by prohibiting it in certain locations. The trend towards increasing international concern is clear. Why are we so sanguine in this country?

Of course, the research is not specified. I can't find much about governments banning wifi except a college in Ontario and a European directive on radiation that threatens to eliminate MRI scans. The article "Wifi Woo" in Junkscience.blogspot.com is interesting.

The effect of the resolution would have been to add a few wireless access points downtown. There are already several hundred in private homes and businesses in town. The same people who oppose public wifi still walk along streets and into buildings where they are invisibly bathing in wifi. Will this small group of people now demand that we outlaw wireless in public areas, just to accommodate their fears?

Now, I don't know that wireless (or electricity) is without harm. I can read the research that does exist and learn more -- if I have the time and reason to do so. However, I do not like the smell of fear, and when people justify actions based on their own fears, I become suspicious that the concern is unwarranted. If it wasn't wifi, it would be flouride. Something is needed to affix to their anxiety. I can only be glad that they weren't alive when the city decided on electrification a century ago.

I plan to write an editorial for our local paper. I'd appreciate hearing from you on this issue if it has come up in your community.

I Make... (Maker Faire Bay Area May 3-4)

If you wonder what Maker Faire is all about, check out this video, created by eric michael berg, a video intern working with us out of New York. He came to Maker Faire Austin and put together this simple but snappy video called "I Make...". It's all about the makers.

Maker Faire Bay Area is less than two months away -- May 3rd and 4th. If you'd like to participate as a maker, the deadline for entries is this Wednesday, March 19 at midnight. It's going to be another exciting event.

The Shipyard Returns

Last May, I wrote about the City of Berkeley closing down The Shipyard. A communal workspace for artists and alternative techies, The Shipyard was organized by Jim Mason; it was built as stacks of shipping containers. After the shutdown notice came, members of The Shipyard dispersed to other locations in the East Bay.

Now, after months and months of negotiations with the city, and various changes to the site, Jim has announced the re-opening The Shipyard on March 1st. He's calling it "The Shipyard, Version 2.0" with a "creative diy power hacking agenda." Jim re-envisions the Shipyard as a center for art and energy." He asks: "What, in short, would power look like if it was art?"

In an email to Shipyard supporters, Jim writes:

I am interested in what happens when the arena of exploration for creative work and play is not "art" in its traditional forms, but rather the broad and loosely defined particulars of power generation and conversion. What if the point of interacting with energy machinery and processes is not solely for maximum efficiency and minimum price, but rather to contend other needs and desires, as well as other systems of valuation.

Jim welcomes input and ideas as he begins to shape "this little industrial shangri-la." If you're reading this on Saturday, stop by The Shipyard for a BBQ at 2pm.

Photograph courtesy of Jess Hobbs.

Wired News from the Past

"The telegraph made it possible for people in different places to read the same news."
-- Valerie Komor

We take news for granted. At the Money:Tech Conference today, speakers were talking about how to deal with real-time newsfeeds, which continues to drive the financial world. Brian O'Keefe of Panopticon said "we're collecting and disseminating news at a greater rate than our ability to consume it."

On a visit this week to the Associated Press, I had the opportunity to meet Valerie Komor, the archivist for the AP, and explore the fascinating history of the AP. The AP was founded in 1846 when five NY newspapers decided to share the costs of transmitting the news of the Mexican War from the port at Mobile, Alabama to the southern terminus of the telegraph, near Richmond, and on to New York. Thus was the "association of presses" formed. The brain behind the idea was Moses Yale Beach (1800-68), second owner of the New York Sun.[clarification from VK.]

Later the same five papers agreed to form the Harbor News Service to share the costs of a rowboat used to retrieve the news of Europe from incoming ocean liners. They hoped also to avoid some of the problems of intercepting the new -- the many press boats were crashing into each other.

The AP, established as a cooperative and owned by newspapers, grew and developed into a national news organization that gathers and distributes news on behalf of its subscribers. It was the technology of the telegraph and the teletype that got it started.

You can read more about the AP's history on its site. I particularly like this tidbit about using carrier pigeons from 1849: "Daniel H. Craig, pigeon trainer and news entrepreneur, begins operations out of Halifax, Nova Scotia to meet ships arriving from Europe. Craig is able to telegraph stories over the Nova Scotia telegraph line before ships dock in New York." See the FedEx Super Bowl commercial featuring carrier pigeons. Early newspapers were in the "express" business, investing first in a pony-express operation between New York and Boston, and later in express trains on the same route. Before the telegraph, a lot of news arrived in newsrooms and homes as letters delivered by the postal system.

The Teletype system came along in the 1920's, built by the Teletype Corporation of Skokie, IL. (See Wikipedia on teletype and telex systems; a telex is a means of routing messages between teletypes but the word telex seems to be used the way we used fax to refer to the machine and its output.) The teletype terminal above is shown with keyboard; there were models without keyboards for receiving only. An ASR terminal (automatic send and receive) had a paper tape reader and hole punch system. This tape was frequently edited by cutting sections and taping them together, an early form of "cut and paste."

Teletype transmissions were very slow by today's standards at sixty words per minute. Yet that's how news was sent from one city to another through the 1960's and later.

Valerie pulled out a file and showed us the telexes from the day of the Kennedy assassination. These were sheets of paper that were ripped out the Teletype, as each fragment of the news story came to them. An AP photographer on the scene called the Dallas bureau and they began transmitting the news as it happened -- in real-time -- to the Kansas City bureau, which was the regional hub.

The telex reads:

Photographer James W. Altgens said he saw blood on the President's head.

Altgens said he heard two shots but thought someone was shooting fireworks until he saw the blood on the President.

Users of the teletype system developed concise forms of communication because every word was precious. “We all spoke in telex jargon. You had to shorten everything you said,” said Gustavo Bottan in the MIT Sloan School Alumni Newsletter (Spring/Summer 2006). “I remember spending a lot of time writing the telex message and then shortening it.”

The Teletype had its own "wirespeak," the name of a book documenting it by Richard Hartnett. "--30--" meant "end of story" or "end of transmission." It's a convention that many writers continue to use today. "--73--" meant "thanks" and "--88--" stood for "love and kisses." Add telex jargon to the odd history of abbreviated communication that today includes emoticons and SMS acronyms.

A recent Economist story, "A Faint Ping", talks about the diminishing number of telex systems in use. Yet some stubbornly survive.

Many of the remaining customers are banks. Telexes, unlike ordinary e-mails, are legally valid documents (being to all intents and purposes impossible to fake). “The telex network is closed—you can't get in unless you are part of the club,” says Peter MacLaverty of SwissTelex.

As newspapers look to re-invent themselves, they might learn as much from their past as they can from worrying about the future.

Slow Down and Read Make

The comic "Over the Hedge" featured Make in its January 21st strip. Thanks to Poncho Alarcon of Monterrey, Mexico who spotted the turtle named Verne reading Make.

I'm working on a piece for the next issue of Make called "Slow Made," which points out similar ideas in the Slow Food movement and the Maker movement. The idea is to explore ways to become a co-producer, not a consumer. Verne is said by his creators, Michael Fry and T Lewis, to be "a true renaissance-turtle." Perhaps he's a perfect symbol for slow made.

Hand of Google

While looking at a library book scanned by Google, I found this image, the hand behind the scanner revealed.

Recent Posts

• The Rest of the Rest of Us on January 16, 2008
• Designing for Fun on the Run on December 18, 2007
• A Passion for Reading on December 10, 2007
• Kith and Kindle on November 30, 2007
• Web 2.0 and Advertising: Do We See Eye to Eye? on November 28, 2007
• Education@Web 2.0 on October 16, 2007
• Local Recycle & Reuse Hits A Bureaucratic Roadblock on September 14, 2007