February 2012
2 posts
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What is it about Corning's vision for our future...
These two videos outline Corning’s vision for our future.
Original video:
Companion video describing the technology in greater detail:
It’s all very impressive, but I find myself questioning if this is the future we want. Where is the sensory stimulation in this utopia? It’s all so slick, so sterile. And there’s so much glass, which has never resonated with me as a...
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Search, seize or kill
On the one hand, if the president of the United States decides you’re a terrorist, the American military can, without any judicial review, track your cell phone and blow you to smithereens with a missile from a remote-controlled drone.
On the other hand, if police want to follow you with a GPS tracker because they suspect you’re breaking the law, they’ll need to get a warrant...
January 2012
2 posts
5 tags
Zach Klein's Blog: Conspicuous Production →
zachklein:
Yancey Strickler posted an item yesterday about the wane of conspicuous consumption among wealthy people in Silicon Valley. But, as it turns out, conspicuousness hasn’t vanished. The post suggests that the Startup is the new conspicuous. Look at What I’ve Done.
The first comment on that…
“Conspicuous Production” is such a great phrase. It puts a name to a pattern...
December 2011
8 posts
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making...”
– Neil Gaiman (via drinkyourjuice)
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Studying cities to learn about minds: some... →
Came across this intriguing proposition over the course of my senior essay research - that the way a city is shaped influences the way it functions, and vice versa. I haven’t read the paper, but it seems like something that someone might find immediately useful.
Abstract: What can we learn of the human mind by examining its products? The city is a case in point. Since the beginning of...
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Zielschmerz
dictionaryofobscuresorrows:
n. the exhilarating dread of finally pursuing a lifelong dream, which requires you to put your true abilities out there to be tested on the open savannah, no longer protected inside the terrarium of hopes and delusions that you created in kindergarten and kept sealed as long as you could, only to break in case of emergency.
Reblogging for the definition, which very...
November 2011
7 posts
3 tags
[REDACTED] The Dominant Cultural Form of the 21st... →
My favourite part of Clint Hocking’s discussion of the matter of attribution in game design:
In many ways, the divide is between creative forms that have a means of encoding an authored message, or a notation, where the ‘beautiful part’ is crafted by an artist and then played back or read by or for the audience from the notation, and creative forms that do not have a notation,...
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The magic of diasporas →
The Economist describes the usefulness of diaspora networks.
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This is what happens when you hit your Gmail limit
Finally threw in the towel and clicked the blue button - I’ve been waging a two month battle (deleting obsessively) to delay this moment.
I’m probably making too much of this, but why does it feel like I’ve lost something? Paying for Gmail seems like a declaration of an utter failure to wrestle my inbox under control.
I feel like I just slipped on a pair of golden,...
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A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design →
Bret Victor gives voice to something that has bothered me for a while. The Minority Report-style vision of the technology of the future we’re being sold? He calls that Pictures Under Glass, and he is begging us to imagine a better world for ourselves - one where technology fully engages the capacity of our hands to feel (texture, temperature, weight etc.) and to manipulate (grip, pinch,...
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Split attitudes
I’m reading this paper about alternative flood protection approaches, and the authors make a great point:
Attitudes in the United States remain deeply conflicted in this regard. Although many brand the public sector as inefficient at best, and lazy, corrupt, and stupid at worst, there is an identifiable bias toward public provision of vital services when safety and security are at stake....
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China Global Investment Tracker Interactive Map
The Heritage Foundation has a neat interactive map that visualizes Chinese global investment across nine industries.
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“If you want to create an imaginative world, you had better have rules — the more...”
– (via Bruce Sterling)
October 2011
5 posts
7 tags
The Intimacies of the Urban →
Daniel Coffeen articulates the wicked, voyeuristic thrill that comes from unwittingly eavesdropping on the lives of strangers.
But it’s not just windows. This intimacy is everywhere, all the time. You can smell your neighbors’ cooking, are privy to their parties, their taste in music, when they wake and when they sleep and when they go out.
In Species of Spaces, Georges Perec has a great...
Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while... →
Some of my favourites:
“9. People gathering in the streets feeling wronged tend to be loud, as it is difficult to make oneself heard on the other side of an impressive edifice.
10. It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.”
Flavour
Whenever I need to describe something to myself, I instinctively frame it in terms of my sense of taste, to the point where I literally equate the process of understanding to dissolving an issue on the tongue of my mind.
This applies to everything from my opinion of people to the colour palette I choose for a design. Some people are “yummy” (strawberry-frosted cupcakes), and some are...
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Discovering Aquaman
I finally caved and purchased my first of DC’s rebooted titles. I always imagined that when the time came for me to finally get into comics, it would be with Green Lantern, but I went with Aquaman…and I’m very pleasantly surprised.
I seriously can’t get over how gorgeous this is. You would think that Aquaman’s costume would be the cheesiest part of the story, but...
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can't shake this feeling: 5:20 am →
pseudolife:
can’t sleep so i sifted through the tumblr posts tagged yale and found all these freshman tumblrs, and it brought me back to that time when every new experience is super significant and every “yale” thing is such, a THING and your classes are either so cool (shopping period) or so hard (midterm…
This.
September 2011
3 posts
9 tags
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“As Cervantes realized in the context of the newly born mass culture of the...”
– William Egginton, “‘Quixote,’ Colbert and the Reality of Fiction” (via absurdlakefront)
“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to...”
– R. Buckminster Fuller via Moritz Stefaner (via feltron)
August 2011
8 posts
2 tags
“First of all, let’s clarify what the NASA budget is. Do you realize that the...”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson (via david)
Eric Stromberg: How to get a job at a startup if... →
estromberg:
Recently, I’ve received an increasing number of emails from “business people” looking for advice on how to get a job at a startup. Most have the same story, “I could go work at a big company, but want to join a startup. One problem: I don’t know where to start the process.” Everyone knows how to…
I’m thinking long and hard about who I want to throw my lot in with after...
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pinterest.com/quartey →
Is anyone else on Pinterest?
July 2011
18 posts
3 tags
"Have a mission that matters" →
Susan Wojcicki, Google employee #16, outlines the eight principles that guide her company’s decision-making.
1. Have a mission that matters
2. Think big, but start small
3. Strive for continual innovation, not instant perfection
4. Look for ideas everywhere
5. Share everything
6. Spark with imagination, fuel with data
7. Be a platform
8. Never fail to fail
via Think Quarterly
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Grant Morrison on Superheroes
Over on Wired, there’s a wonderful interview with Grant Morrison that revolves around Supergods, his memoir/cultural and critical history of superheroes. I’ve read the interview multiple times, and there’s no doubt that I’ll be revisiting it many more times before the end of the summer.
This is Morrison on the evolution (or lack thereof) of the comic book medium.
...
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Memberly →
jackcheng:
Absolutely thrilled to announce Memberly, our new platform for subscription services, along with the Steepster tea of the month club, powered by Memberly :) Here’s the backstory from our company blog.
This is a great example of what Matt Webb calls an “abstract machine” in this long BERG blog post. A platform like this empowers people to finally realize their ideas. In...
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“Have you ever tried multiplying roman numerals? It’s incredibly, ridiculously...”
– Bret Victor (via Ex-Apple Designer Creates Teaching UI that “Kills Math” Using Data Viz)
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WatchNew favourite thing: Etsy videos. They celebrate people, celebrate craft and made things. Beautiful.
etsy.tv
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Lessons learned from Art & Copy: 5 of 5
My favourite quotes from Art & Copy, organized around a theme.
Lesson 5: Above all, courage.
People think that the ice is three inches thick and it’s two feet thick, and what I try to tell everybody is you got power in there to do more than you’re doing. Everything should be so ambitious.
- George Lois
The work environment can help.
Creative people need this sort of duality...
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Lessons learned from Art & Copy: 4 of 5
My favourite quotes from Art & Copy, organized around a theme.
Lesson 4: Ads are an event and an invitation
An ad campaign is a party that celebrates something happens to be distilled into a product.
I think we’re trying to entertain society using client’s products. And if a client heard that they’re thinking “Wait. What, you’re not thinking about my...
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Dear Graphic and Web Designers, please understand... →
pieratt:
You have an inherent need to solve problems, visually and conceptually. There is enormous value in this, but you may be misplacing your talents.
The internet, at this time in history, is the greatest client assignment of all time. The Western world is porting itself over to the web in mind and…
This is fantastic. You should read it.
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Lessons learned from Art & Copy: 3 of 5
My favourite quotes from Art & Copy, organized around a theme.
Lesson 3: The things we make, make us
The things we make, make us. The stories we tell others help shape the things we tell ourselves. Ads are an opportunity for brands to interrogate their reason for being.
I think we have higher aspirations for our clients, and are more passionate about what our clients can be, should be,...
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Lessons learned from Art & Copy: 2 of 5
My favourite quotes from Art & Copy, organized around a theme.
Lesson 2: Advertising can (and should) reveal rather than obscure
Most people understand ads to be lies prettied up by CGI and a catchy jingle. While an ad may indulge in fantasy, it can and should be a fantasy that originates from some fundamental truth.
If you can find that kernel, the core of what that product is, so that...
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16 Edgewood
My a cappella group, Yale Out of the Blue, is releasing a new album in the fall called 16 Edgewood (the story behind the name) and it’s going to be awesome. Its a labour of love - I’m incredibly proud of us, and thankful that I get to work with such incredibly talented people and that I get to call them my friends family. Yesterday, we launched the first phase of a promo site that...