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From the department of “you heard it here first,” a few observations.
First, the personal laptop PC is dead. Not a big insight, really. We all kind of know this with people buying tablet devices, though its basically a zero-sum gain with folks spending their time on one device over another. I’m seeing less and less laptops out in the world; consumer PCs in general are a dying breed. Just look at the recent earnings reports of some of the largest PC manufacturers for hard evidence of category turmoil. At a recent conference I attended I saw exactly two laptops in sessions, along with a smattering of tablets devices and smart phones.
Second, and more importantly, the conference’s rooms were filled with attendees writing on “writing tablets.” Yellow legal pads and blank notebooks such as Moleskine. Most of the people were hand writing! I thought I had been transported back twenty years. I noticed people were not just writing long-hand, but also drawing symbols and related graphical mnemonics to represent information they were taking down. Learning was non-linear and more holisitic using personalized cognitive script.
On my return to the office, I mentioned this to a colleague and she said lately people in her graduate program at Duke have switched from laptops to paper tablets to take class notes. I find this fascinating. What’s up?
Have we hit a ceiling with electronic devices as information sources? Is the recent proliferation of managing social media returning us to the locus of self in order to process more critical information processing situations? Are we just bored with ‘things?’ Whatever it is, I’m keeping an eye on this…
As we approach the end of May, we also approach the circus of season finales of fall television shows. For some of the shows that are ending their first season, some, unfortunately, will not be back in September. Recently, most networks announced which of the new series would be getting the ax for under-performing, including “Terra Nova”, “GCB”, “Pan Am”, and several others. While some of these deserve the cut for poor ratings and viewership, others like “Terra Nova” had a rating of 3.6 on a 5-point scale and brought in 10.1 million viewers weekly. Not too shabby. However, Fox is cutting it to make way for other shows like “Touch”. I have to admit, I watched a few episodes of “Terra Nova” and found that it did not live up to my “Jurassic Park” standard like I had hoped. It was very different from anything else on television, and that reason, I believe, is Fox’s motive for not renewing for a second season.
Television shows tend to follow a cycle. In the nineties there were several shows with the same concept circling around a group of friends like “Seinfeld, “Friends”, and “Will and Grace” that were popular and thrived in their time. Then came the forensic crime investigation shows like “CSI”, some of which still air today. I believe that today we live under two reigns, the mockumentary and the supernaturals. Between “The Office”, “Modern Family”, “Grimm”, “True Blood”, and “Once Upon a Time”, the same type of shows dominate networks as well as top the charts for prime-time television. Shows like “Terra Nova” are too diverse and therefore too distinct for audiences. I believe this is why most shows see the chopping block. As viewers, we find a rut and become obsessed with the same type of shows. Maybe one day television will become dominated with pre-historic survival shows and “Terra Nova” might have made the cut.
Check out information on other shows that were cut here.
For the past few years we’ve been hit with stories that the watch is fading away, that younger generations have given up wearing a watch thanks to their smart phones. Well, two recent products are showing signs that the watch might be making a comeback. These watches aren’t so much fashion plates but more akin to Dick Tracy’s Two-Way Wrist Radio.
The Sony SmartWatch is out and links to Sony Android phones (and some others) while on Kickstarter, an E-Paper Watch called the Pebble didn’t just raise the $100,000 it was seeking, it raised over $10 million.
While we’re being inundated with the idea that Smart devices will be everywhere shortly, the idea of adding functionality to the watch (and a new notification screen to the phone) seems like an actual innovation we should have seen long ago. It will be interesting to see how many other seemingly mundane devices will follow.
I confess, it’s true: as a statistician it can be easy to position a storyline a certain way.
But numbers themselves don’t lie, people do. What’s even worse is when certain numbers are removed wholesale from data sets. You really don’t see this happen in market reseach studies. If so, the data is usually incorrectly defined when collected, and the collection is usually redone. But it sure does happen with the U.S. government. Especially, it seems, with really important numbers they share with the general population. Bellweather benchmarks numbers of how the country is doing.
A great example is the official unemployment rate. Big news nowadays given the sluggish economy; big news in a presedential election year. Up until 1994 reporting was, give or take, a number representing the percentage of those not in school of legal and unretired work age who were unemployed. Then, for whatever reasons, the method for calculating this number was changed, overnight, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They removed what was termed “discouraged workers.”
Take the U.S. unemployment number (chart, right). The red line (U.3) is what the goverment says is going on, the official number that is reported., i.e., the monthly headline number we all read. The gray line (U.6) includes “short-term discouraged workers,” those seeking full-time employment, but only employed part-time, i.e., the ‘under-employed’ that was once only Christmas help and jobs for schoolkids. This number is not included in unemployment statistics, nor is it reported. A big difference. The blue line (SGS) includes “long-term discouraged workers” defined as “those who have looked for work in the past 12 months, but are not currently looking because of real or perceived poor employment prospects,” i.e., those who’ve tried everthing they know, and don’t know what to do. Or, in other words, lots of my freinds who have been out of work for a while. This number is not included in unemployment statistics, nor is it reported. A huge difference that is baffling.
A great place to dig and find the numbers that may better reflect what’s really going is “Shadow Government Statistics.” Sure, it may have a bit of an anti-government conspiratorial tone, but offers food for thought…
Looking for a week in Europe this summer? Don’t want to get stuck in overcrowded hotels, cueing for expensive meals served by less then caring staff? Looking to “get away from it all” but meet a cross section of interesting gregarious Europeans? I have the perfect solution, travel to Nowhere.
Set in the northern Spanish wilderness, Nowhere is an arts festival. But it’s quite different than the usual wine and cheese gallery stroll throught Le Marais or a day at the Tate Modern. Instead, Nowhere is descibed as “an experiment in creative freedom, participation and cash-free community, conceived, built, experienced and returned to nothing by you.” If this intrigues you, you may end up having a very different summer vacation.
It might not be the flying cars we’ve been promised since forever, but Google is working on augmented reality. What’s that you ask? Watch the video below and you’ll see. It’s takes the functionality of your mobile phone and puts it into a seamless heads up display you use while walking around town. Philip K Dick might recognize this future…
