NNDB: tracking the entire world

The Notable Names Database (a product/site of Soylent Communications), is something I came across the other day. It's a veritable who's who of people both living and dead.

There's an interesting wikipedia stub on it (interesting in the fact that it links to more interesting material, rather than being interesting in and of itself...) here

The no-tech room

More and more, ubiquitous computing is becoming the norm. Everything is smart now, your television, radio, even the lighting system in your home... But what about those times when we need to escape from it all? Where do we go? What do we do?

I have an answer, but you may not like it. Set aside a room in your humble abode and devote yourself to making it a no-tech room. We have one. The most technologically advanced items in the room consist of an NTL point (which serves an entirely different room by way of extension cabling), the lights (ordinary bulb with switch variety) and a mechanically driven clock. That's it. No computers humming or televisions to numb our minds. It's just a room.

But what, you may ask, would one do in this room? This is another outrageous answer in this, the information age. Read.

That's right. I said it. Forget your RSS feed. Forget the tiny news snippets that the online generation has become used to. Go to a shop (or to your bookshelf). Pick up a book. Read it. Sit in silence with only the words on the page and the narrator inside your head to entertain you. You never know... it might just work!

...and that.