Via Honor Harger, a guide to the ruins of super science.
“Beware of Mr. Baker“. Not a pleasant guy, but certainly a committed drummer. As he says many times in the film:
“I had perfect time.”
UK R&D science is falling behind, but Google paying their tax could help pay for it. How can Google defend themselves against this? It’s just morally wrong. Simple. Google are vulnerable to this. Everyone always retreats behind the shareholder duty wall on this one, but I don’t think it will wash.
It’s not news, but in America, not all mass shootings are equal.
All the LulzSec team are getting locked up – but not the real criminals. What a waste all round.
“You need the people who want to work at a high level but who can go all the way down to the atoms.”—Ben Fried, March, 2012
Thanks to Mike Kruzeniski for the link.
I’ve seen Rahul Mehrota speak several times. I most recently saw him at What Design Can Do in Amsterdam – where he described his architecture as a tool to resist the pressure of capital. He used several examples but the one that stuck in my mind was the idea of greening the exteriors of corporate buildings – instead of using nets to stop rioters, use a blanket of plants – but also a system that enables eye contact between gardeners and the board. A useful check for both sides of the coin. Also see his Elephant/Human Housing project.
I graduated from the Interaction Design MA course (mmm bit-rot) at the Royal College of Art in 2003. After I left, the course was renamed to Design Interactions and taken over by Anthony Dunne of Dunne and Raby.
I didn’t like it. Just when hardware platforms and computer vision and interaction methods were getting really cheap, the course turned towards bio-futures and other visions of the near now, that I thought were just intellectual masterbation. Why don’t we just make the future?
I saw Mr. Dunne speak at What Design Can Do. It was great! I felt the need to apologise to him afterwards. He emphasised schools as places away from commercial pressure, and the idea of making tools for experimenting with ideas – and also how you signal with design that that tools aren’t the final idea.
He presented his Micro Kingdoms project, which set off some interesting ideas in my mind.
Technical Illusions have made an interesting new project called Cast AR – using projected light to augment the world around you – not lock you away.
Arduino Yún is the first of a revolutionary family of wifi products combining Arduino with Linux. Yún means “cloud” in chinese language, as the purpose of this board to make it simple to connect to complex web services directly from Arduino.
I want a Dura-Ace shifting system on my new bike.
Oh, and Cosmic Carbone wheels.
Brilliant – just use Kickstarter for your startup!
What about launching an ultimate stealth style or magazine or channel online by ignoring DNS and just having an IP address? Lovely graffiti too.
Jeremy Kun on Bezier Curves and Picasso.
I used to play Go at university, now it’s a lovely language that Google really likes. It’s fast too.
View the editing of Wikipedia in real time.
Blackberry have open sourced a game engine called GamePlay.
“This is Water” by David Foster Wallace. The value of the totally obvious. The exact same experiences can be completely different to different people. What is true? Or false or bad? What is hardwired? How we construct meaning is an intentional choice. Blind certainty – or the prisoner that doesn’t even realise they are in their cell. Or realising that most things you are sure of are mostly false. The natural self-centred-ness of our existence. How much of a lie that is. Striving to rid yourself of your self-centredness. The point of a liberal arts education – teaching you how to think? The dangers of over-intellectualisation in ones own head, instead of paying attention to what is going on around you. How to avoid living death. The personal unfairness of selfish stupidity around you – and the necessary effort to understand the stories around you. How to think. How to pay attention. How to experience the burning amazingness of the universe in everything, and deciding to see it – and that being what an education affords you. Everybody worships – the only choice is what to worship. Most things will eat you alive.
Angela Bullochmakes drawing machines and big pixels.
School for Poetic Computation is an artist run school launching this fall in New York. A small group of students and faculty will work closely to explore the intersections of code, design, hardware and theory — focusing especially on artistic intervention. It’s a 10 week program, a hybrid of residency and research group, that will happen multiple times per year to be a powerboost for creativity. Our motto is: more poetry, less demo.
School for Poetic Computation has a FAQ.
The Big-O algorithm cheat sheet is a useful one to bare in mind. What about a website of cheat sheets for everything?
Water planets ahoy!
N-body choreographies – the cyclical paths taken by perfect bodies in space. I wonder how many of these are waiting in the universe for us to discover? Beautiful visualisations by James Montaldi.
The NeoLucida from Golan Levin and Pablo Garcia – “a product/provocation with a media-archaeological theme”.
I saw a documentary on Max Ernst recently, the starter of surrealism who described himself as having the “opposite madness to politicians”. He cultivated a respectable exterior and described madness as “a risk worth taking”.
“The Fireside Angel is a picture I painted after the defeat of the Republicans in Spain. This is, of course, an ironical title for a kind of clumsy oaf which destroys everything that gets in the way. That was my impression in those days of the things that might happen in the world. And I was right.”
He said that he was never conscious of making art – merely “trying to express the spirit of the the time” and that “fortunately there is no progress in art” – only different ways of doing it.
Finally, the sale of Instagram to Facebook.
“The sale of Instagram to Facebook for a cool billion in the spring of 2012 was the ultimate Silicon Valley fairy tale: 18 months from launch to offer. But, for co-founder and C.E.O. Kevin Systrom, it was more of a roller-coaster ride, with several missed opportunities, at least two “aha” moments, and one major reboot.”
Via Ben Southworth, how to prototype in XCode from Meng To.
A perfect new drone engine – Ionic Thrusters!
Thoughts on the future of technology from Thiel and Andresson. Why hasn’t technology lived up to its promise? Are we stagnating? Are Dell, IBM, Oracle rust belt tech companies? Could we doing a lot better? AI? Space? Quantum? Next generation life scientists? Was it a cultural decision? Are we all incrementalists now?
The new board from Arduino, the Esplora, perfect for making games, and a Turbulenz, a HTML5 game engine that has just gone open source.
Or via Diederick Huijbers, a new streaming platform for gaming.
Millions of blogging platforms everywhere! Again! Again again? History repeating repeats:
Interesting to see the blending of editorial platforms and technical ones. Kind of like printing press manufacturers teaming up with newspapers. Kind of.
Illumiroom is a concept from Microsoft Research. I think it will stay there. The challenges of integrating with all those different living rooms are just too great.
Tips from Andrew Dumont on avoiding burnout:
The one that I thought was most interesting was “Limiting Decisions”. I always try to reduce psychic or cognitive load wherever possible. Some examples that worked for me:
Useful tips from Michael Grinich on manufacturing products for the newbie. Or just go straight to Highway 1 and build your product from start in four months!