Extremely interesting article on the SF Chronicle, about the subject that got the most media attention at LIFT07 (read: the most trendy subject): Tech Overload.

Dederich, 36, is one of a growing number of information technology users and professionals who feel teched out. Gobsmacked by the information tsunami, overwhelmed by the ever-growing tide of technology must-haves and convinced that a matrix of communication instruments was insulating her from friends and family, Dederich took a sabbatical six weeks ago.

“I felt like the only way for me to recalibrate was to stop completely,” said Dederich, an e-mail user since 1991 and a high-tech professional since 1994. “It’s difficult to think outside the box when you’re always in it, and the box is getting stronger and stronger.”

The early adopters are fighting back, needing more time for their offline activities, assuming that all the computered sociality is cutting them from real interaction. What does the mass of technology users think of that?

an April 2006 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project […] showed that 85 percent of American adults used the Internet or a cell phone to communicate. Eighteen percent of that population felt teched out and suffered from “tech-gadget remorse,” but only 2 to 3 percent thought that communication technologies diminish face-to-face contact.

No problem so far. But was this the right question to ask?

What the Pew survey doesn’t consider is the possibility that tech users are so enveloped in the worlds of e-mail and cell phones — so deep inside a blinding technology tunnel, eyes fixed on a computer monitor or BlackBerry screen — that they’ve lost the distance or proportion to judge their effectiveness in face-to-face social situations. […]

“I think the majority of our communication happens through body language and tone. And what’s happening right now is that we’re mostly communicating only with the words — which means we’re in the 10 percent zone of what makes authentic and clear communication.

“It makes it more difficult to recognize each other’s humanity, more difficult to have nuanced and difficult conversations, and it makes it more difficult to be creative.”

Let’s see. This issue is sure to come at the center stage of our preoccupations in the coming years. The debate is just starting.

Link (via John)

Today I got an email from a friend who closed his LinkedIn account. He (like me and Pascal a few days ago) considered the time it takes to be part of this community vs the reward he gets, and decided it was not worth it.

As our time becomes the most precious resource we have, the millions of web pages competing for our attention are becoming a problem. Early adopters – the canaries in the coal mine? – are reacting, arbitrating between all their time consuming actions. When I lost my mobile phone two month ago, I almost didn’t renew my subscription. It’s only after I got blamed by a client who was trying to reach me that I decided to re-order a mobile. Email? I am increasingly forcing myself to only answer them once a day. I let the flow of information get in anytime, but I stack all the answers together, trying to get in a more productive flow once a day to answer. Best practices are coming together to counter the overflow. We just need to create them.

But there is something here, and it’s big. Will the masses ever reach this point of saturation? Will this crash web 2.0?

Update: Steve Rubel is describing the same phenomena today on Micropersuasion in a clearer and more elegant way of course.

The Zombu has made a bit of noise in the global news last week, the least you could expect from a device marketed as a 99$ computer (in reality it’s more around 250$).

It is an interesting concept, a cheap computer reduced to the minimum (processor, USB ports, a bit of memory), using online resources like Amazon S3 for storage. Unfortunately this last detail probably makes it unusable in developing countries (few cable or ADSL in Africa) and probably a bit slow when working with large documents or pictures. Upload is so painful with our asynchronous connections.

While this computer still looks a bit too complicated and less sexy than a mac mini, there are more and more strong signs that the price of owning a computer will be dramatically reduced in the coming months, between the 100$ latop, india’s 47$ machine and this box.

Link

“When everything connects” is the latest special edition of The Economist… a survey of the telecom industry that deals with ubiquitous computing and the so-called “wireless revolution”. There are ten or so articles on the topic, which are good read if you’re interested in this area.

When everything connects is a good overview of the current situation and what can be expected in terms of domains (motoring), problems (standards!), regulation (government?), privacy concerns. The author concludes with the following statement:

“Wireless technology will become a part of objects in the next 50 years rather as electric motors appeared in everything from eggbeaters to elevators in the first half of the 20th century and computers colonised all kinds of machinery from cars to coffee machines in the second half. Occasionally, the results will be frightening; more often, they will be amazingly useful.“

What is interesting in the survey introduction is the warning “Still, the general direction is clear (…) This survey will explain how this will come about, and why it will not be easy.”

“The Tamil Tigers Liberation Front a separatist group in Sri Lanka, which has been classified as a terrorist group in 32 countries has moved up from routine sea piracy to a space-based one. They have been accused of illegally using Intelsat satellites to beam radio and television broadcasts internationally.

Link

If you wonder how good terrorist organizations are at using online technologies, check David Galipeau’s speech at LIFT06.

La SSR lance un prix multimédia doté de 3 prix totalisant 100’000CHF pour récompenser “les meilleurs projets multimédia interactifs”, avec semble-t-il une emphase particulière sur les projets mettant en valeur de façon originale le contenu éditorial.

Alors si vous rêvez de lancer le Ohmynews Suisse c’est le moment! Date d’inscription: 15 juillet 2007.

Lien

The long anticipated wait for a true global ID system might soon be over. OpenId is indeed gaining ground in an interesting way (you were right O’Reilly Radar), and might reach critical mass with more news like this one:

Kevin Rose [CEO of Digg] just announced that Digg will adopt the OpenID decentralized digital identity platform […] later this year”. […]

This Digg news comes just after Microsoft and AOL announced their support as well. Yahoo, LiveJournal, and Wikipedia are among the other services that have previously announced adoption.

More on TechCrunch

We are not in a single-sign on world yet, but it finally looks like there is a strong movement towards the adoption of the global identity system we so badly need.

RFID will soon “look about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.” Hitachi managed to build an RFID tag that is so small it can be fitted in a paper sheet.

Hitachi Ltd., a Japanese electronics maker, recently showed off radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips that are just 0.05 millimeters by 0.05 millimeters and look like bits of powder.

Sci-Tech Today: Hitachi Shows World’s Smallest RFID Chip

Prepare for networked objects, and order Adam Greenfield’s Everyware now to measure how much you life just changed ;-)

…computer giant PC World has announced it will no longer carry the floppy disk once current supplies run out.

Link via Slashdot

We bought 400 floppies back in 2006, to create the lunch coupons for LIFT06. And I am still wondering what happened to the data-mining program of Office World when a decade of floppies were suddenly sold in a day at a random Geneva store.