DIMINISHED THOUGHT

Well I'm making the switch to Apple. I think where I differ from a large number of the Apple users I've talked to is that I view Steve Jobs and Apple as every bit the evil overlord and empire as Bill and Microsoft. Still somewhere along the way someone has managed to convince me that they make a better product hence the switch.

I'm buying a 2.0 Ghz MacBook (see the wikipedia link here that will persist long after Apple has changed their product line) with a 160 Gb harddrive so that makes it a custom configeration according to Apple. I really wanted to buy the stock option, open the thing up, and replace the harddrive myself. This is a brainless job as it's very accessible from the battery bay but according to every service representative to whom I talked, messing with the insides of a laptop voids the warranty. Silly me.

Anyway my current computer is a Frankenstein of my own creation rooted in a bare bones kit from 2003. It randomly freezes up on me and we fight a lot to get it to do what I want. Our love affair is over. Just like any good relationship as soon as I move on I'll rip the guts out of this machine and use them to make life more pleasent (ie. I'm going to make some external hardrives :-).

Labels: Apple macbook

It shouldn't snow in mid-April...

Last week Genevieve Bell, an Intel funded anthropologist, came to Purdue to lecture on wireless technologies connection to the spiritual. One of the things she said that I found most humorous was her association of how people use wifi and and cargo cults. Cargo cults are religious movements found primarily in the South Pacific that believe if they enact certain behaviors (usually modeled on technologically superior Caucasian visitors) then the gods will provide them with gifts and tangible goods. Bell notes that people often behave this way with laptops and other wireless devices in that they boot it up and look for a network and just hope that one is available. The mere act of booting up is a ritual that is intended to bring the network. She notes that on a very fundamental level the public doesn't understand wireless technologies and that it takes upon an element of magic and mysticism. The implication is that our behavior is more rooted in an intuitive mystical understanding of the world.

Labels: anthropology, cellphone, ethnography, magic, religion, wifi

For anyone that doesn't know by now I will be attending USC Annenberg next fall to start my PhD program. I am excited about moving back to somewhere where it never snows in April. Brrrr!

Labels: PhD communication