The way it works now is that an engineer often does structure, an architect does skin, a space planner does interiors, and an industrial designer does product. It’s a nasty mess. The quality of life that it produces is also a nasty mess, and we all suffer. The problems are where those things rub up against one another.
Heavyset
Ephective Ephemera
Liberation from Clusters of Sameness
via Johnnie Moore, Jack Ricchiuto on potential new models for change in social network behavior:
The possibility space for change opens up when we connect different people who can begin resonating together around shared stories, opportunities, and dreams. It’s a process of liberating people from the confines of clusters of sameness and ideological colonialism so they [...]
Recurring Themes in (Musical) Collaboration and Co-Creation
A few days back, I tripped across a brilliant idea called Thounds, best-described via the video below:
For those of you without the requisite patience for video viewing, Thounds is a social platform for the recording and sharing of musical snippets, which can be added-to collaboratively by other users within the network.
This is not a terrifically [...]
Big Apps Happs
When NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg launched the Big Apps competition this past June, he invited individuals and groups to program applications that make government data sets accessible to the public — solidifying that technology can contribute to improved quality of life. Applications created in response to Bloomberg’s decisions will join the crowd-sourced initiatives that already exist in New York City, and already explore methods that can offer residents not only information, but a place to gain a sense of community, to exchange ideas and to visualize space digitally.
(via Inhabitat » Crowd-Sourced Initiatives to Create a More Livable New York City)
Insights into Restaurant Ordering
At the Journal of Consumer Behaviour a study has found that when we order food in a restaurant in groups we do the following:
1. Tend to seek variety when making initial orders – that is we consider ordering things other people are not.
2. Then we gravitate toward similar choices as others – that is we begin to conform with everyone else.
3. And then, as the group consensus grows, we move away from popular choices and get our own thing anyway.
Chuck O’Connor on the pursuit of popularity
“But, we seem to live in a world where the pursuit of popularity is burning on ample oxygen and to avoid it is to invite the anxiety one feels when ostracized from the herd. Twitter filled air-waves capitalize on tweets as a self-esteem currency where people long to be followed. Yet, I find myself reacting as a reclusive paranoid amidst this socialized narcissism. Mostly because I think that popularity has little to do with insight or intelligence. I was the kid beaten up on the playground due to late onset puberty and an astigmatism that led to coke-bottle lenses in welfare frames. Growing up poor and unattractive creates a longing for and distrust of the popular kids. I see in the twittering twits the same bullet-headed aggression. The instinctive tweeters fail to consider the possibility that tweeting too hard can often contradict their own self importance.”
–
Chuck O’Connor
Jonathan MacDonald’s First 6 Macro Trends of the 21st Century
Jonathan has an interesting set of ideas about where things are heading. Each is worth a read:
1. Corporate Technology in the hands of Citizens
2. Physical is increasingly Virtual
3. It’s about Distribution not Destination
The Promise of Collective Action meets the Hard Reality of Self
In his fantastic book Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky outlines three levels of group undertaking:
Sharing: which ‘creates the fewest demands on the participants’ (think Flickr)
Cooperation: slightly more complicated as it ‘involves changing your behavior to synchronize with people who are changing their behavior to synchronize with you’
Collective Action: the most complicated, requiring ‘a group of [...]
Discovering the Charter for Compassion
I’d not heard about this until today, but was blown away by the scope of the undertaking by the Council of Conscience – a group of leaders from the world’s five major religions, towards a document called The Charter for Compassion.
The as-yet-incomplete charter outlines guidelines for religious tolerance, under the premise that tolerance is a [...]
We are All Becoming Celebrities (Slowly)
David Armano’s stunning presentation on behavioral evolution and network effects:
The Micro-Sociology of Networks
View more presentations from David Armano.
If You Can’t Tell Who the Cool Kids Are, You’re Probably Not One of Them…
Julian Cole outlines a list of common traits for cool kids – those most likely to start (or ignite) trends in the digital space:
Cool kids have a lot of friends.
Cool kids will pick up technology really fast.
Cool kids hang out with cool kids.
Cool kids can remix.
Cool kids rock at asynchronous conversation.
Cool kids meet offline.
Cool kids [...]
Imagineering Customer Service
Service Untitled posts today on the problem of getting engineers to think about customer service as part of the product development process:
The best way to make engineering groups aware of the challenges involved with customer service is to ask them to do customer service. Even if it isn’t that frequent (have each engineer answer support [...]
Two Interviews: Piers Fawkes and Gerd Leonhard
Two very insightful interviews posted this morning:
Chris Wilson over at The Marketing Fresh Peel interviews Piers Fawkes of PSFK as part of his Future of Work series. Fawkes opens up on his views of the changes in the workplace that Gen-Y will face:
Gen Yers are going to work for scores of companies and they need [...]
Anselm Kiefer, American Cuisine, and a Common Vernacular for Online Communities
Three seemingly unrelated anecdotes, ultimately intertwined:
My wife and I retreated for a few days this week to North Adams, Massachusetts, to take in the Anselm Kiefer exhibit at Mass MoCA. For those unfamiliar with the remarkable work of the German sculptor and painter, a brief overview of the exhibit is below.
Anselm Kiefer @ Mass MoCA [...]
Be Nice, Adapt, or Refer
I’ve taken particular pleasure, of late, in reading a blog called Cellar Door. The posts are thoughtful and widely varied in nature, penned in a unique voice1.
Today, Johanna posts on the need to be nice – a sentiment we can surely all agree on. In this particular context, she’s referring to the missed opportunities that [...]
Not if they’re not going to try…
After a particularly heavy snowfall last night, I made my way out to shovel our walk and driveway this morning – this whole endeavor being somewhat new to me as a longtime city-dweller. I’d shoveled fifteeen or so feet when my neighbor Eddie – the affable owner of a local Chinese eatery1 approached with his [...]