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May 7th 2023
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If this feels obvious to you, that’s because you too are in the business of the good life. As architects of desire, the advertising industry shapes our cultural understanding of a life worth wanting. Every time we step on a bus or open a social media app, the invisible hand of our industry is there to build demand for new products and services that might make life better. And with up to 10,000 ads floating into our consciousness every day, how can we resist?

This: Advertising folk, it’s time to rethink what we’re selling

thedrum.com/opinion/2023/02/21/advertising-folk-it-s-time-rethink-what-we-re-selling
May 7th 2023
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Tom reminds us: “The ancient Greek word for ‘leisure’ or ‘free time’ was ‘skole’ which turned into the Latin word for school.”

Austin Kleon (the author of Steal Like An Artist) shared the “Manifesto for Slow Learning” and the free book Slow Learning about “A path to a meaningful and mindful future of learning” which a team of 15 authors, artists, and teachers came up with. Recommended read!

austinkleon.com/2023/03/21/slow-learning
May 7th 2023
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The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. Entire industries will reorient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.

Quite a long essay by Bill Gates, but well worth the read: The Age of AI has begun.

gatesnotes.com/The-Age-of-AI-Has-Begun
May 7th 2023
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Now, a new study, published Thursday by the American Psychological Association, validates what some parents have experienced when their teenagers cut back: They seem to feel better about themselves.

Not really new knowledge, but some scientific validation that social media isn’t great for teenagers. Following a recent study by the American Psychological Association, NPR points out How to help young people limit screen time — and feel better about how they look.

www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/02/26/1159099629/teens-social-media-body-image
March 12th 2023
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The web is becoming a miserable experience because some salesbro who is trying to meet his KPIs is doing stuff to marginally increase the number of paying customers. (And you know, the hell with the rest of us!) The more each site tries to create its own little walled garden, the less valuable the open web becomes.

I’m with Elizabeth Lopatto from The Verge on this one: I don’t want to log in to your website!

theverge.com/2023/2/28/23618804/google-facebook-login-ads-web-design-hell
March 12th 2023
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We live in undeniably ugly times. Architecture, industrial design, cinematography, probiotic soda branding — many of the defining features of the visual field aren’t sending their best. Despite more advanced manufacturing and design technologies than have existed in human history, our built environment tends overwhelmingly toward the insubstantial, the flat, and the gray, punctuated here and there by the occasional childish squiggle.

Following the recently shared article on “why your stuff is actually worse now”, this article explores why we live in a “slightly duller, worse world” aesthetically. Why is everything so ugly?

nplusonemag.com/issue-44/the-intellectual-situation/why-is-everything-so-ugly/
March 12th 2023
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36. Kindness is vastly underrated. Everyone can be kind – it requires no special skill or training, yet has an immediate, positive impact. It is perhaps the ultimate life hack.

Chris Guillebeau shares this wonderful little gem and other ‘life hacks’ in his 36 Ways to Live Differently shared on his personal blog:

chrisguillebeau.com/36-ways
February 7th 2023
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Proponents of this new science believe that experiencing awe may be an essential pathway to physical and mental well-being. By taking us out of ourselves and expanding our sense of time, it counteracts the self-focus and narcissism that is the root of so much modern disenchantment. To experience awe, to fully open ourselves up to it, helps us to live happier, healthier lives.

A rather extensive article by Henry Wismayer, but well worth the read: Finding Awe Amid Everyday Splendor. Really enjoying the articles Noema Magazine puts out lately.

noemamag.com/finding-awe-amid-everday-splendor/
February 4th 2023
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When a person aspires to be a brand, they forfeit everything that is truly glorious about being human. Building any brand requires consensus. When we position ourselves as a brand, we are forced to project an image of what we believe most people will approve of and admire and buy into. The moment we cater our creativity to popular opinion is the precise moment we lose our freedom and autonomy.

Designer and brand consultant Debbie Millman about The personal brand paradox and how social media (with its followers, likes and click-throughs) is pushing the long-lasting concept of the ‘personal brand’ at the present time.

wepresent.wetransfer.com/stories/personal-brand-paradox-debbie-millman
January 25th 2023
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Design has shifted more toward manufacturability and appearance than functionality, when it should be a balance of all three. Arguably, it’s nearly impossible for corporations to avoid participating in the trend cycle as long as consumers have an appetite for more — whether it’s a predilection for cooler clothing or whatever new incremental yet buzzy technology just came out. At the same time, the blame does not lie on consumers’ shoulders; corporations are responsible for creating and stoking the ‘new and more is better’ culture we have today.

Izzie Ramirez sums up why Your stuff is actually worse now, especially in the fashion and the tech industry. What has happened to “less but better”?

vox.com/the-goods/23529587/consumer-goods-quality-fast-fashion-technology
January 25th 2023
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Our current ideal of beauty, specifically in Western culture, specifically at this time in history, means being as divorced from your humanity as possible,” beauty culture critic Jessica DeFino told Jezebel. “These AI drawings have almost no humanity in them: They’re cartoon, digital renderings, created by artificial intelligence without a human hand involved in the making of it all. It just feels very depressingly on track for what our culture considers beautiful.

Lensa AI and the Trap of Otherworldly Beauty by Emily Leibert.

jezebel.com/lensa-ai-images-beauty-trap-1849875644
December 12th 2022
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But this new crop of generative AI technologies seems to possess qualities that are more indelibly human. Call it creative synthesis—the uncanny ability to channel ideas, information, and artistic influences to produce original work. Articles and visual art are just the beginning.

Derek Thompson from The Atlantic on why the rise of AI is the most important story of the year.

theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/why-the-rise-of-ai-is-the-most-important-story-of-the-year/672308/
November 28th 2022
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We cannot make social media good, because it is fundamentally bad, deep in its very structure. All we can do is hope that it withers away, and play our small part in helping abandon it.

According to Ian Bogost from The Atlantic The Age of Social Media Is Ending. Yes, please!

theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/11/twitter-facebook-social-media-decline/672074