"I, for one, welcome our humble, embedded overlords."

I first started to experiment with collecting data on my rides around 2001. I got a Polar watch that recorded and displayed heart rate, speed, cadence, and other metrics. I used it primary not as a bike computer as much as a data collection training aid. You could download ride data which was sort of revolutionary to me then. This was quite a long time before our current ubiquitous "quantified self" reality.

There's an important 1999 essay about this by Neal Stephenson. In particular, his assertion that using the command line as an interface for your computing is a lot like driving an ancient sportscar; everythign is "manual" and you are connected to what you are doing (driving, computing) in a visceral way. Joy/pleasure has been minimally abstracted away in both cases and traded for a sometimes terrifying, "experts only" experience. "The other, somewhat subtler point, was that interface is very important. Sure, the MGB was a lousy car in almost every way that counted: balky, unreliable, underpowered. But it was fun to drive. It was responsive. Every pebble on the road was felt in the bones, every nuance in the pavement transmitted instantly to the driver's hands. He could listen to the engine and tell what was wrong with it. The steering responded immediately to commands from his hands. To us passengers it was a pointless exercise in going nowhere--about as interesting as peering over someone's shoulder while he punches numbers into a spreadsheet. But to the driver it was an experience. For a short time he was extending his body and his senses into a larger realm, and doing things that he couldn't do unassisted."

I don't really suffer from this but I've certainly had the (first angst-producing then ultimately "freeing") experience of forgetting my Garmin at home. Also: http://norules.bigcartel.com/

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851)

"from Geneva/Switzerland (or nearby)"

This Systems or "factory farming" approach to education seems antithetical to (and virtually guaranteed to flummox) a community-based, engaged, serendipitous and spontaneous learning explosion in traditional Higher Ed. Where are some cracks and crevices where the System has failed to snuff out the accidental life of learning?

This is a test.

This is our web site.