Digital Ecology
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Our recent conversation on buying a computer made me repeat a mantra I use whenever asked what to buy for a camera, phone, TV, computer and so on: Its The Digital Ecology that matters: what do you do, how does your work/life flow work, what do you care about in terms of these devices. How do they interact.
I'm often met with skepticism: you cant mean that, your a mac fan-boy, right? Well, yeah we have a lot of Unix around .. er Mac OS X. But I mean a lot more than that.
But when asked a year or so ago about getting a computer, my advice was:
I'd like all of us to appreciate just how rich our digital lives are, how full our DE's are.
So I just sat down for <15 minutes typing as fast as I could think about just what our DE includes. And I bet I'm only fairly standard user. Most folks that I know use 10x the apps that I do.
So here's what it looks like with LOTS left out, I'm sure. Let me know what I've forgotten and what you use.
-- Owen Digital Ecology: In terms of "computers", our house has 3 laptops (2 MB, 1 MBA), and a server (Mac mini) which also acts as a desktop.
Our network is 5Gb/s wifi dual radio (guest and home networks) making in-house backups, media sharing, file sharing, screen sharing fairly simple. For example, my server's screen is available to all the laptops, letting me "administer" its tasks easily (VNC).
We also use ethernet-over-powerline for our TV which has no easy way to put it on the wifi network. The mini has recently started using an ethernet rather than wifi connection to our wifi base station.
That is because I've recently lost a backup disk, our Time Machine (Mac versioned backups .. "wayback" access to every version of a file during its life). This prompted me to buy a NAS RAID (Network Attached Storage; Redundant Array of Independent Disks) box for $200 with two 2TB SATA server grade disks. Total $400 for very reliable in-house storage.
The NAZ as we like to call it is busy 24/7. I certainly hope the disks are as good as advertised! 2 TB (4TB RAID'ed) is really not as huge as it might seem. It, being a Linux box, can run a seriously wonderful Transmission torrent web UI, making all the computers in the house able to mange media, see below.
We watch TV. Never "live". This has gotten me involved with Torrents which give us access to great video archives: Downton Abbey, Boston Legal, Get Smart, Legend, Mission Impossible, Numb3rs, Secret/Danger Man are our current dramas. We also use a TiVo for timeshifting current TV shows, mainly ESPN daily sports and talking heads (PTI, Arround the Horn, NFL32), The Chew, Sherlock, this year's Downton Abbey, Eureka, etc.
The TV is feed from cable and the Mac mini. The latter via a Python pyTiVoX server which transcodes and uploads the torrents to the TiVo. We also have an Apple TV hooked up to the TV for photos, music, and media. Both the TV and mini have UPS power protection (Uninterrupted Power Supply), basically enough battery to coast through power surges and be a gentle let-down in case of longer power outage.
Dropbox is used on all but one of the computers, making internet backup natural. It provides a folder that is constantly sync'ed between computers .. and phones and tablets. Arq is now used to backup onto AWS S3 for "archival" media such as our picture collection.
Mobile devices include GSM capable iPads and iPhones (GSM for travel and SIMs). The iPad (Dede's) having cellular networking has been quite useful in Italy. Most mobile devices have kindle apps .. and we have a 1st gen kindle which still gets used due to its hugely long batter lifetime and internal cellular network.
Dede lately bought a wireless phone system (VTech) which allows bluetooth access to our cell phones. Thus when we get a cell phone call, our house phones can answer the call. It has the ability to download our contact lists, both Google and Mac and "speaks" the caller's name receiving a call.
Our cloud usage is primarily for music (iTunes match) and photos (AWS), as well as Google docs (Google Drive). But now it is also being an archival backup (for photos now) and likely more in the future. And Dropbox is just amazing for having all your daily files everywhere.
Chrome is part of this as well. It's sync features have made it possible to have my three systems be identical.
Recent android/ios apps have started invading my old Taurus car. Stitcher, a mobile app, makes any podcast available trivially w/o docking with computers .. its all internet based. So while driving, I listen to the usual news programs, as well as 4 italian news shows .. all piped via the phone into the car's radio.
Books are really getting into the act lately. Tech books, which grow out of date quickly, are entirely digital, via OReilly and a host of other digital publishers who provide not only the book (.mobi, .epub, .apk, .pdf), but periodic updates with each new "printing". This has made reader apps important on the iPads.
Skype is important as well, we take weekly Italian classes with our teachers in Italy. Naturally its used for "business" as well. GitHub has started to be an important collaboration with us .. working with SimTable, Redfsih and Northwestern University on AgentScript, a JavaScript Everywhere approach to Agent Based Modeling.
Git has been quite a surprise, being very effective as a local versioned file system and a remote repository for collaboration.
A TextDrive/Joyent web host provides blog and file sharing, and a good developer site for trying new Javascript technologies. It's login is completely public key cryptology thus avoiding password exposure. Ditto for the local mini so that it can be accessed from the internet w/o passwords, only keys.
Our name services and registrars (NameCheap/RegisterGo/Joyent) let us use "backspaces.net" even though we're using cybermesa and gmail for mail and a variety of services for other backspaces branded access. Having our own name makes changes in ISPs etc transparent.
OSX has been a nice surprise. It comes with ruby, python, c/c++, /usr/bin, bash, /usr/local all built in along with Apache for local web use. It is trivial to have a node.js server, a command-line JavaScript/CoffeeScript shell. I may be extreme, but my bashrc/profile has over 100 custom commands:
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Owen - Great post. Hope some other folks will respond in kind. Might be interesting to get an 'inventory of digital lifestyles'. - Grant Sent from my iPhone
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On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Grant Holland <[hidden email]> wrote:
Thanks! Yeah, I sorta was surprised by how interconnected everything is .. not just hardware nor even software .. but the overall "hive" and interaction. Thus "ecology".
I'm also a bit surprised how much I *don't* do/have. I haven't the slightest idea what high quality photographers do. I've no fancy camera, just the phone. RAW files and hardcopy certainly make a difference in one's DE. I also have no game systems (xbox, ps3 ..) and I *know* these devices have come on strong into household integration, mainly TV but I think much more than that.
Although I have "social" accounts, I don't use them, so am not aware how they all interact in one's lifestyle. Doug uses his FB account quite a bit, I know. And G+ gets a lot of use by the digerati. I'm not sure how intensive use of these effect my Digital Ecology but I'm sure they would.
We don't heavily use a car GPS system either, although rented one in Italy last visit. I *think* but not sure that they interact with at least a home computer to upgrade maps etc. I know that there are phone GPS systems that are pretty sophisticated to, with add-on hardware/software *TomTom
Thinking about Pamela and others within Friam who write professionally, I presumed that would have quite an impact on the DE. For example, publishers likely favor software that is not available on both mac/windows and might, for compatibility reasons, impact hardware/OS choice. In general, work-home integration likely molds the DE. Mathematicians use Mathematica and MatLab and R and ... Scientists need lots of "codes", most Fortran, and may need a pretty husky computer to run them.
So it does reach into the middle of your lifestyle and impacts the integration of all our digital critters. I am interested in how others see it. -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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On 1/25/13 9:49 AM, Owen Densmore
wrote:
So it does reach into the middle of your lifestyle and impacts the integration of all our digital critters. I am interested in how others see it.Freely redistributable source code -> Spouse Not free -> Not Spouse Some tend to stray. Happy monogamy is also possible. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
I'm a mathematician but I rarely use Mathematica or MatLab (only occasionally, for curios)--and don't know what R is. Some mathematicians use these tools in teaching, but I'm not that enthusiastic about them --and tend not to teach courses where they would be most appropriate. I do use Latex for writing papers. Prior to my retirement I sometimes used Latex for tests and handouts, but often used the Equations editor in Word, which isn't as good but quicker). I have Macs in home and office. Latex and Word run on all sorts of computers.
________________________________________ From: Friam [[hidden email]] on behalf of Owen Densmore [[hidden email]] Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 11:49 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Digital Ecology On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Grant Holland <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote: Owen - Great post. Hope some other folks will respond in kind. Might be interesting to get an 'inventory of digital lifestyles'. - Grant Sent from my iPhone Thanks! Yeah, I sorta was surprised by how interconnected everything is .. not just hardware nor even software .. but the overall "hive" and interaction. Thus "ecology". I'm also a bit surprised how much I *don't* do/have. I haven't the slightest idea what high quality photographers do. I've no fancy camera, just the phone. RAW files and hardcopy certainly make a difference in one's DE. I also have no game systems (xbox, ps3 ..) and I *know* these devices have come on strong into household integration, mainly TV but I think much more than that. Although I have "social" accounts, I don't use them, so am not aware how they all interact in one's lifestyle. Doug uses his FB account quite a bit, I know. And G+ gets a lot of use by the digerati. I'm not sure how intensive use of these effect my Digital Ecology but I'm sure they would. We don't heavily use a car GPS system either, although rented one in Italy last visit. I *think* but not sure that they interact with at least a home computer to upgrade maps etc. I know that there are phone GPS systems that are pretty sophisticated to, with add-on hardware/software *TomTom Thinking about Pamela and others within Friam who write professionally, I presumed that would have quite an impact on the DE. For example, publishers likely favor software that is not available on both mac/windows and might, for compatibility reasons, impact hardware/OS choice. In general, work-home integration likely molds the DE. Mathematicians use Mathematica and MatLab and R and ... Scientists need lots of "codes", most Fortran, and may need a pretty husky computer to run them. So it does reach into the middle of your lifestyle and impacts the integration of all our digital critters. I am interested in how others see it. -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com |
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