Douglas Rushkoff nails my unease at the patenting of gestures, a critical front in the commercial war being waged through intellectual property. At stake is how far governments should grant monopoly rights over something that belongs to all of us: our shared language of words and gestures. US Patent #7,812,826, though limited and not at stake … Continue reading Apple’s real innovation: a gesture made with two fingers
And Science — we have loved her well, and followed her diligently, what will she do? I fear she is so much in the pay of the counting-house, the counting-house and the drill-sergeant, that she is too busy, and will for the present do nothing. Yet there are matters which I should have thought easy … Continue reading And Science — we have loved her well
From Ignite Leeds, five minutes of speculation about what our phones are really thinking. Thanks to Imran Ali and Craig Smith for making it happen.
A few days ago I ran a critical index finger down my Twitter “friends” list, unfollowing a few dozen accounts that did not belong to real people. I still wanted to hear from these unnatural persons, so I moved them into a list instead. I’m delighted with the results: my Twitter feed suddenly feels so … Continue reading All brands must die (after a long and happy life)
As a follow-up to the 1951 'No Idle Words' booklet, comes this gem of a letter about writing letters. Its author was Charles Hill, a doctor turned broadcaster and politician who briefly held the office of Postmaster General. Note also the lovely simplification of the royal coat of arms - just remove all the fussy heraldry … Continue reading “Please join me in a drive for better letters”
From the optical illusion of the Russell Square aeroplane to the temporal plywood of anniversaries. At one level, anniversaries are meaningless folds in the map - artifacts of an arbitrary time-system force-fitted onto the relentless drift of natural history. An ocean liner strikes an iceberg and sinks. The-square-of-the-number-of-fingers-a-human-has multiplied by the-time-it-takes-for-the-Earth-to-circumnavigate-the-Sun later, we're watching a … Continue reading View – History – Flatten layers: part 2. Anniversaries
On Valentine's Day 1997, I left my job as a newspaper journalist to work with the small, smart team who were building a pioneering news service for the web in a squat, Leeds-look, edge-of-centre office block. "You can always come back," said my editor, "if this Internet thing doesn't work out." For a long time … Continue reading Week 790: Leaving Orange
We went to Warner Brothers' "Making of Harry Potter" Studio Tour, which is very good. Even if you think you know all the tricks of the trade in 21st Century big budget film making, the scale of the thing is amazing - a 1:24 model of Hogwarts. Also the attention to detail - thousands of … Continue reading Two things we did last week
One summer morning a jetplane flew south over central London, gear down, seatbelts on, devices off. Thousands of feet below, traffic flowed around Russell Square. An open top bus turned into Bedford Way, plunging its passengers into the shade of the tall university buildings. Thanks to the aristocrats whose names the streets wear, this part … Continue reading View – History – Flatten layers: Part 1. The Russell Square Aeroplane
Once more to The Story at the Conway Hall, where facts and artistry have an uneasy relationship. Matthew Sheret's god-like view of Last FM users' scrobbles calls into question the hours spent by artists, producers, and record companies in sequencing the songs on an album. "Before we had data..." explains away Simon Thornton, recalling past … Continue reading “Our real stories are too dangerous to tell”
Russell Davies' lovely post on the writing style of the GOV.UK beta inspired me to scan this 1951 Post Office writing guide. We inherited it from my wife's grandfather who taught telecommunications at the Post Office's training college, in the days before BT. If anyone knows more about the booklet I'd love to hear from … Continue reading No Idle Words: a style guide for the age of austerity
Being text of a presentation delivered at Ignite Leeds on 2 February 2012. Who in here is holding a phone in their hand right now? OK, everyone be very quiet. Can you hear them? Did you ever wonder where they all came from? What they want? When billions of a new species appear on Earth … Continue reading A message from you mobile
And now for today's news from the Department of Serendipity. Quote Investigator digs diligently, delightfully and with positive results into the provenance of William Gibson's lumpily doled-out future|present. But the bit that stands out for me is Ralph Thomas' 1967 criticism of Marshall McLuhan... McLuhan suffers also from a mixed-up time sense. He believes the … Continue reading “That even space travel is now a reality”
History is the handrail for which we reach when knocked off balance by the present day. Therefore it seems apt that at the Museum of London a "timeline handrail" runs from 1688 to 2012, around the new Galleries of Modern London. At first sight this is a cute way to lay out the span of … Continue reading History is the handrail
We made a walkshop! At sunset on Tuesday, undeterred by George Osborne, high winds and torrential rain, 17 of Yorkshire's finest designers, technologists and geographers gathered to walk and talk, to see Leeds in a new light. The inspiration came from Adam Greenfield and Nurri Kim’s booklet “Systems/Layers”: “A walkshop is a new kind of … Continue reading #walkshopping (winter edition)
Matt Edgar writes here 