Category: Language
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Retail Change Management
The coins-on-top method. Coins slip-sliding around on top of the paper bills. It seems like over the past several years, every cashier in the world has decided — or has been told by their bosses — to hand customers their change by first placing the paper bills in the customer’s hand, then placing the coins…
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Review: Don Quixote
Today (amazingly the 410th anniversary of the deaths of both Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare) I’ve finished reading the classic Don Quixote Parts I and II. What an unforgettable journey, and what an eye-opener! A four hundred year old book (Parts I and II were published in 1605 and 1615) that in many ways…
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Writing Technologies: From Cuneiform to Cyborg
In a previous post, I mentioned the “Technologies of Writing” show I saw during SXSW at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. Since then, I’ve had several occasions to think about the exhibit again. So I thought I’d go a little more into some of the highlights from the show and share some of the related thoughts…
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A Spime is a Species
There’s a debate going on at Adam Greenfield’s V-2.org (and elsewhere) over Bruce Sterling’s neologism “spime”, a term he coined at Etech 2006 to refer to new technological/networked objects that emerge into human consciousness without a name or an apparent history. In 2001 a new mammal was found in China. This cladogram shows where scientists…