Episode 288: On The Tips of Our Fingers

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How good is online search? A better question might be how good could it be if the suits in the executive suites let it get… and stay… good? We may never know, sadly, and that's the topic of today's Play now!Episode 288: On The Tips of Our Fingers.

In this episode, I read from: an article about the leaked billions preventing the Fruities from developing its own search engine, that from a series called Big Tech On Trial; an article giving search users some tips; and an Ed Zitron article about one of the main villains of tech, Prabhakar Raghavan (from Ed's beautifully named newsletter Where Your Ed's At. I agree with Ed. Prabhakar Raghavan should be remembered, and not well.

I play: Archie Bunker once again calling his son-in-law a meat head; and Mel Brooks, Harvey Korman, and others all trying to protect their phony-baloney jobs, which includes harrumphing… so you watch your ass. (You'll hear.)

Musically, KMFDM backs Cory Doctorow's outline of the three stages of enshittification in the opening; Julie & Rolf & The Campfire Gang sing us out with "Over The Rainbow".

Episode 287: The Ephemeral & The Ethereal

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It's one thing to reduce the weight of our things with new materials and construction techniques. It's quite another, though, to lighten them so much that their functional lives are compromised, leaving one with useless junk. I explore all-too-often tension between long-lived and lightened in this Episode 287: The Ephemeral & The Ethereal.

In this episode, I read from my computer's quickie dictionary. I recount a whole bunch of stuff from memory, mostly about Buckminster Fuller; here's a link to a Wiki page on Ephemeralization. Also, I describe several online videos, many by the Brothers Make, and another video that defies Fuller's silly ephemeralization definition by being both heavy in its construction and, as a consequence, perhaps one of the best cars anyone can purchase today.



Musically, John McKenna helps us understand the real meaning of the ephemeral and sings us out, both with his song "Mayfly." KMFDM opens the show backing Henry Giroux; and Julie & Rolf & The Campfire Gang sing us out with "Over the Rainbow."

Behold, the fugly but functional!