Monday, April 18, 2005
i wish i had read steve mann's cyborg (7/10) before taking his digital signal processing class. first of all, the labs would have made sense. secondly the book helps one understand the quirks of possibly the strangest professor at the UofT. cyborg is partly biography, partly his predictions for the future. mann is many things - an artist, privacy advocate, a cybrog, and the inventor of the wearable computer. his writing sometimes resembles a rant, but he manages to humbly mention the fact that he has been on the covers of most north american mainstream media publications.
this is an excellent read after no logo - which he quotes, because he makes some excellent points about privacy. in one episode he takes video in a store with survallence video. he claims that he cannot turn off his video because its his "policy" and that his employers won't let him. if store security wants him to delete his video - they must fill out a "request for deletion form" which will be forwarded to his "employers". mann also discusses the stigma of wearing a computer over the past 15 years and various other episodes. interesting enough, he is married to a woman who has been wearing a computer that he designed for over 15 years.
this is an excellent read after no logo - which he quotes, because he makes some excellent points about privacy. in one episode he takes video in a store with survallence video. he claims that he cannot turn off his video because its his "policy" and that his employers won't let him. if store security wants him to delete his video - they must fill out a "request for deletion form" which will be forwarded to his "employers". mann also discusses the stigma of wearing a computer over the past 15 years and various other episodes. interesting enough, he is married to a woman who has been wearing a computer that he designed for over 15 years.
# posted by epn : 10:58 PM
