When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.
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filed under hyperlinks, articles
The noble but undervalued craft of maintenance could help preserve modernity’s finest achievements, from public transit systems to power grids, and serve as a useful framework for addressing climate change and other pressing planetary constraints.
A wonderful plea by freelance journalist Alex Vuocolo for The Disappearing Art Of Maintenance.
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filed under hyperlinks, articles
Five principles based in social science that will help organizations connect their work to what people care most about.
The Science of What Makes People Care is part of an online series called ‘Essentials of Social Innovation’ published by Stanford Social Innovation Review by Stanford University. There’s a lot of great lessons to be found in this “starter kit for leaders of social change”.
ssir.org/articles/entry/the_science_of_what_makes_people_care
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filed under hyperlinks, articles
What if the future isn’t Artificial General Intelligence and 100x increases in computing power? What if it’s cheap-and-flexible mesh networks? What if the future isn’t replacing untrustworthy institutions with blockchain governance? What if it’s replacing untrustworthy global and national institutions with revitalized local trust? What if the metaverse isn’t the future because, in the future, people commit themselves to improving and monitoring their vulnerable surroundings?
Interesting essay –with a bunch of hyperlinks to some other great resources– about Tech futurism’s blind spot written by Dave Karpf, a Professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University.
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We build our computer systems the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.
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filed under hyperlinks, articles
At this point, you could even say that the point of the theory is so obvious, it’s cliché—people talk about longing for the days of weird web design and personal sites and listservs all the time. Even Facebook employees say they miss the “old” internet.
Never heard of the “dead-internet theory” before, but as a lover of the “old” internet, I kind of get how this pretty far-out-there idea got its followers. At least it’s an entertaining, relatively little-threatening conspiracy theory.
theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/08/dead-internet-theory-wrong-but-feels-true/619937/
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more imagery created with the artificial intelligence Stable Diffusion: How painter William Turner –who lived about two hundred years ago in the era of romanticism– might’ve imagined a futuristic city like Night City from Cyberpunk 2077
filed under hyperlinks, articlesThere are no rules to blogging except this one: always self-host your website because your URL, your own private domain, is the most valuable thing you can own. Your career will thank you for it later and no-one can take it away.
I second everything addressed in this short plea for blogging (on your own domain) published by Robin –of course– on his personal blog; Take Care of Your Blog.
Let us read and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
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image generated with the help of the Stable Diffusion AI
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© 4AD (via YouTube)
It finally hits me, a mile’s drive
The sky is leaking, my windshield’s crying
I’m feeling sacred, my soul is stripped
Radio’s painful, the words are clippedThe National is always a win, and so is Bon Iver. The yesterday released song Weird Goodbyes is just as hauntingly beautiful of a collaboration as you’d expect from those two bands.
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© SUGi (via YouTube)
SUGi’s mission is to empower rewilding and bring Nature closer to anyone anywhere. Our Forest Makers and Ocean Gardeners use your funds to restore biodiversity and regenerate ecosystems.
From the YouTube-Channel by the beautiful SUGi project. If you want to know more about the propagated Miyawaki method and the idea of the “Mini-forests”, there’s a book by Hannah Lewi.
One for my growing antilibrary.
What is good design? Product design is the total configuration of a product: its form, colour, material and construction. The product must serve its intended purpose efficiently.
A designer who wants to achieve good design must not regard himself as an artist who, according to taste and aesthetics, is merely dressing up products with a last-minute garment.
The designer must be the gestaltingenieur or creative engineer. They synthesise the completed product from the various elements that make up its design. Their work is largely rational, meaning that aesthetic decisions are justified by an understanding of the product’s purpose.
