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May 03, 2024
 

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CYBERIA

LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Sep 1, 1999
You are here?
The future is now. Or at least it was, two Sundays ago, in Japan. That was when computers in 24 satellites reached their built-in time limit and reset their internal clocks to zero.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Aug 18, 1999
Faster, faster, faster
The vast majority of people access the Internet through a telephone modem. Plug it in, turn on your machine and ... wait. And wait. And wait a little more. First, there is the search for the modem, then the connection, then the handshaking. Once you're online, you wait for the software to load, the right Web page to be found (when surfing), the page to download.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Aug 11, 1999
What's that sound?
Two years ago I wrote about how the Fuji Rock Festival's website saved me a two-hour trip to the festival. Early reports accurately painted a grim picture of chaos created by a freak typhoon, so I decided to stay in Tokyo.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Aug 4, 1999
The usual suspects
Several months ago, I wrote about day trading and the thousands of investors who see it as the avenue to quick riches ("Easy money," Feb. 2). They use new technology to scamper through markets in ways that were impossible for ordinary citizens only a few years ago.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 28, 1999
The little claimer that could
While companies, especially computer makers, have been eager to promote the Internet as a global bazaar and amusement park rolled into one, they are quickly learning that there's a little more to it than that. The tools that are supposed to help the customer are the same ones that can empower the unhappy consumer. Likewise, a slick new Web site can do a lot for customer relations, but if the support/complaint department isn't up to snuff, the damage is already done.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 21, 1999
'A grotesque gap'
The United Nations Development Program's annual Human Development Report is usually a pretty grim document. Sure, life is improving for most people, but the poorest seem to get poorer and the gap between haves and have-nots is continually widening. The richest 20 percent of the world's population has 86 percent of world GDP; the bottom fifth has only 1 percent. The rising tide of globalization may lift all boats, but the numbers tell a different story. In 1960, the income gap between the world's richest fifth and poorest fifth was 30 to 1; in 1997, the spread had reached 74 to 1.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 14, 1999
Lost and found fnords
The Net is a terrific reference tool. There, I said it, the obvious. It's like stating that you should use a saw to cut down a tree. But have you ever tried to do an online search for the currency of Bhutan in the 18th century, who did the music for "The Third Man," the meaning of CLEP, DHCP or DQMOT or the current time in Reykjavk?
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jul 7, 1999
Technoborrrring
With rare exceptions, no one likes being called a Luddite. Steve Talbott, the thoughtful, somewhat skeptical philosopher who writes the Netfuture e-mail newsletter, for example, takes offense at being labeled "pessimistic." I thought it was a fair beef, but he devoted considerable space in his last missive to a defense of his position and denied that he was negative
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 30, 1999
Let's digital
Let's digital. That's the message in the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications 1999 White Paper on Communications in Japan. The annual survey, released earlier this month, reveals a nation poised for the millennium, its finger firmly on the mouse, clicking its way into the 21st century
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 23, 1999
On the fringe of the fray
I had dinner with two friends last week and eventually the conversation came around to the Web (I generally try to avoid the topic in polite conversation but what can you do?). Anyone overhearing our conversation might have thought we were a trio of hopeless geeks, or digerati wannabes, but the truth was we really weren't talking about the Web. The topics were what we had read on the Web, the same way we'd talk about the content of any other media. The fact that we could do so without acknowledging the media itself seemed encouraging
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 16, 1999
Vocal as we wanna be
"The process of tying two items together is the important thing," wrote Vannevar Bush in a seminal essay titled "As We Think," published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1945. Bush described a hypothetical device that would allow the storage and retrieval of data, the memory of mankind. It would be constructed of associative "trails," which future generations could consult and further enhance with new information. He called it "memex.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 9, 1999
The random walk
Hoping to tap into that Amazon.com magic right here in Japan, Softbank (a software and publishing company), Seven-Eleven, Yahoo! Japan and Tohan, a book publisher and distributor, last week announced a joint venture to sell books online. e-Shopping! Books (who thinks up these names?) plans to open for business in November
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 2, 1999
But are you experienced?
Remember how online art used to be one of ballyhooed features of our new and improved lives on the Internet? We talked of visiting faraway museums, browsing rarely seen masterpieces, hyper-annotated with curatorial notes and historical contexts. Similarly enticing was the promise of new media and art site-specific to the Internet
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 26, 1999
Privacy? Get over it
In one of those snide comments that only people worth hundreds of millions of dollars are capable of making with any credibility, Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, dismissed the whole privacy controversy with: "Get over it.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 19, 1999
Voices in the machine
In the hyperaccelerated world of "news," my topic -- the Littleton, Colo., massacre -- may seem dated. But in living rooms, classrooms, legislatures and, of course, on the Net, the aftershocks are still reverberating
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 12, 1999
What's in store
Everyone in my family is in retail, except me -- unless you consider this journalism gig equivalent to selling snake oil. My mother and sisters have run wearable-art galleries and design-centered shops for a couple of decades, and they seem to be pretty good at it. They travel around the United States and the world, looking for distinctive items to show and sell
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
May 5, 1999
Looking for something?
Run a Web search and what do you get? Often it's a lot more than you bargained for. I'm not talking about the reams of irrelevant, redundant and irretrievable data that often gets tangled in your throw net. (You should know by now that you're bound to get a certain amount of this stuff no matter how you phrase your query or what search engine you use.)
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 28, 1999
Tyranny of temptation
The future was supposed to be darker. Technology, in the service of some vast, all-encompassing power, was going to enslave us. Human beings would be reduced to ciphers, forced to live anonymous, interchangeable lives.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 21, 1999
Under your skin
Take a second, forget about trash-can icons and QWERTY keyboards and ponder the real interface -- our future interaction with technology. How will we navigate the infosphere in 10 years? Will we use mouses or cursors controlled by biofeedback? Will our browser windows be square and scrolled or dynamically controlled by content, or even our retinas? And what will be the architecture of the infosphere and how will we search it (or how will it be searched by our agents?)?
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 14, 1999
Cyberlife during wartime
My hanami last week started grimly. One participant, when asked why he looked so glum on such a happy occasion, explained that he was thinking of the Kosovo refugees. He had once been in the hills where they have fled, and even though he was prepared for it, he still remembers the cold and the discomfort. He wondered how badly they were suffering.
Weak yen fattens tourist wallets in Japan
People visit the Ameya Yokocho market in Tokyo's Ueno district during the Golden Week holiday on Tuesday.
Number of vacant homes in Japan hits record high of 9 million
A vacant house in Tokyo is seen demolished in January 2020.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.
Kishida sets sights on energy and climate in South America trip
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will use a policy speech in Sao Paulo to set out his vision for ties between Japan and South America, almost 10 years after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for stronger ties between the two in the same city.
Yellow sand allergy: A health issue made worse by climate change
A screenshot of the Meteorological Agency's satellite image of clouds and yellow sand (in pink) on Sunday.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.

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