Analog:

Interview with Mr. Aaron Draplin, Draplin Design Co. and Field Notes Brand
In a world where things are more and more compacted, complicated, sped up and digitized, a regular old wood pencil is always there for you. Never needing to be recharged, you know?

The more I think about it, the more pencils—on some weird level—represent “complete freedom.” Freedom from digital ubiquity and predictability. There something cool about how you feel human when using a pencil. […]

I like feeling one with the paper. Like this odd sense of “get it down now, or it’ll be forever gone” fills my head and hands, and I just go to work. Impermanent. Graphite can be erased. Imperfect. My hands screw up all the time. Interesting. The lines vary and never come out quite like you expected them to.

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Just a matter of time…

TSA officer pleads to $30k theft | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/24/2011
TSA officer pleads to $30k theft — with boss’s OK

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Singularity:

Singularity: Kurzweil on 2045, When Humans, Machines Merge – TIME
2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

Thanks for the link LW. Not a bad article, I think. Author shows both sides. My personal feeling about the Singularity is that I can’t get worked up over it one way or the other. Will computers become faster and more powerful? Of course. Will they get smaller? Certainly. Will computers be implanted into humans? I have no doubt of that. But will real AI happen? We’ll see about that. I am just not that excited about the old zeros and ones, especially since they are hamfistedly applied to everything. The old off ‘n’ on works well for writing and communication and accounting and so on… but I am not so sure about music and design.

I think the coming bio-tech age will actually create more change more quickly than the changes digital computing wrought. It’ll be a bumpy ride, for sure.
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Picked up my red Blueroom House Pods, which had the tweeters replaced, and talked to the store manager about CRTs versus flat-screens (LCD, Plasma etc.). I explained that I think that tube-TVs seem to smooth out the pixels, much like tube-amplifiers seems to bring life to digital music. He said he felt the same way, but that people want huge TVs, and therefore they sell a ton of giant flat-screens. He also explained that serious gamers prefer CRT monitors for the very reason I stated, because they smooth out the pixels in video games, especially when there is movement.