PIR (Portland International Raceway) is my home track. It’s got 12 turns, is 1.9 miles long, and includes two nice straightaways, on the back one of which I’ve reached a top speed of 125mph in my stock 2006 Cayman S. These two laps here from the August 24th PCA HPDE (Porsche Club of America High-Performance Driver’s Education) were towards the end of my first session of the day, accompanied by master instructor Eddie Nakato. I kind of drove like ass for most of this session but gradually warmed up to a decent place. (You can hear him pointing out how I need to work on smoother application of the throttle before turn 6 in the second lap!) These laps are relatively devoid of traffic, so enjoy the sounds of air and engine.
Unfortunately my camera battery gave out after this session. Later in the day, even as the ambient temperatures reached 90+ degrees and my Michelin PS2 tires squealed like stuck pigs around the corners, I had some exhilarating laps where I became fully one with the car. It’s such a beautiful feeling, becoming nothing but movement and power and flow….
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Evelyn and Hamster B holding hands
Sent to the web by special request of Evelyn
A new potential technological landscape: both danger and salvation
A strong pattern emerged to me from a variety of publications that I had the time to read today. A new potential technological landscape is emerging in the world, and designers need to be vigilant to how we can help people find meaning amid ever-increasing complexity.
- The essence of technology is a new enframing of our world that can reveal a hidden potential danger to the human experience, as well as its very salvation: http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html (Martin Heidegger doing his philosophical thing in an essay)
- The Internet is moving away from being a browser-based experience, and towards the wide world of apps: http://m.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1 (Wired Magazine article titled “The Web Is Dead”)
- When billions use technology every day, we are doing a great disservice to humanity to lock out the individual from the MAKING side of technology: http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/every-user-a-developer/ (Adam Greenfield blog post titled “Every user a developer”)
- Given a world so heavily mediated by technology, designers need to better respect people’s divergent needs by designing and building tailored systems that each offer the potential for a more high-quality and satisfying experience: (Bill Buxton speaking at This Happened — Utrecht #6)
- The field of HCI increasingly has to address issues of societal, moral and ethical implications: http://mags.acm.org/communications/200903/?folio=58CFID=97701786&CFTOKEN=44400878#pg60 (ACM article titled “On Being Human”; subscription-only, sorry about that)
- Personally stepping away from technology can be a difficult yet valuable act: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2 (NY Times article titled “Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain”)
As an interaction design practitioner, I feel deeply that our discipline stands in a crucial position to better enable people to become more natural, connected, and satisfied with their experiences in our technologically-dominated world. When we look around our own lives and the lives of those we meet, we have to more clearly recognize the impact that technology is having on our human interactions as well as our internal sense of self. Dangerous distractions abound. We designers must keep our eyes free of the seductive veils of technology-qua-technology. We must ensure to the best of our abilities that the solutions we design for people will let them easily focus on whatever they need — whether productive or playful — at any given moment, and furthermore enable — or at least not subvert — people from becoming the kind of human they want to be.
Having a good time watching the Portland Soapbox Derby shenanigans
(Full disclosure: this post was originally mistitled “…Portland Doapbox Derby…” but I just couldn’t let it stand!)
2010 Packwood National Tour autocross video & pictures
Many thanks to my co-driver John Stimson for picture-taking and video-mongering at this big event! All that, and he won AS with my car, too! (My results were rather less than stellar…lots to improve, lots to improve.)