I was honoured to be asked to do a short talk on the opening afternoon of the brilliant Culture Hack North event in Leeds this weekend. For one thing, it was a chance to appear alongside Rachel Coldicutt's dream team of Rohan Gunatillake, Natasha Carolan, Lucy Bannister, Helen Harrop, Frankie Roberto and Greg Povey. Also, … Continue reading Down with Façadism: a provocation for Culture Hack North
Presentation at Bettakultcha's Hallowe'en event, the day the human population hit seven billion... Original post: http://matt.me63.com/2011/09/16/the-pace-of-change/
As a parent of a toddler you see the world differently. Everything that's become everyday on the long slog into grown-up-dom is suddenly fresh again when seen for the first time through a new pair of eyes. With a small child at your side everything exists to be classified and clarified. Cat, dog, big, red, … Continue reading Digger!
This Ada Lovelace Day I'd like to introduce you to Laura Ann Willson of Halifax. The way into this tale, the loose thread that first attracted my attention, is a 1920s advertisement. But tugging that thread a little, Laura Willson's story just gets better and better. Her achievements, it seems, are so diverse that no … Continue reading “If they could sentence me for thinking, I would have been sentenced for life”
We're fortunate to have three great presenters for the next Service Design Thinks Leeds on Tuesday 25 October. (It's our seventh event, but we're calling it SD Thinks Leeds | 04.) In part 1, we'll have perspectives on service design in health from Jane Wood and Daniela Sangiorgi. In part 2, Rory Hamilton will show … Continue reading Let’s talk service design in Leeds. And one more thing
It has become a commonplace of our culture that we live in a time of accelerating change. Take this extract from Stephanie Rieger and Bryan Rieger’s dConstruct presentation. Slides 52-56... It took radio 40 years to reach a market penetration of 50 million... by comparison we only had 10 years to 'adapt' to television... while … Continue reading The pace of change
Kelly Goto stands on the stage at Brighton's Dome, head down, staring at her palm, a perfect mimic of the modern smartphone user, and issues a simple challenge to the dConstruct audience: "Help people to stay upright." This is the pivotal moment at which digital design finds itself. After decades training people to gaze into … Continue reading At dConstruct, the real world is calling. It wants its designers back
One of my favourite things of 2010 was the chance to share my love of Leeds' industrial history with a roomful of the city's finest technologists, artists and designers at TEDxLeeds. The video is now up on the TEDx site. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWyeJZPPyb4 My notes from the talk are here, along with the Prezi slideshow. You should … Continue reading On the (past, present and) future of the a city
In the corner of an attic room in one of Britain's oldest factories a small group are engaged in the assembly of a Makerbot Thing-O-Matic. They - it - all of us - are there for Laptops and Looms, a gathering of people whose crafts cross the warp of the digital networked world with the … Continue reading The Dissolution of the Factories, or Lines Composed a Few Days After Laptops and Looms
So my two best things ever of the past fortnight are Punchdrunk's Doctor Who adventure the Crash of the Elysium and SVK, a comic from Warren Ellis, Matt "D'Israeli" Brooker and BERG. The former is a live performance for six to 12-year-olds, so if you're a grown-up you may have to borrow a child to … Continue reading A fanboy with a strange device
I have been using the word "machine" in this connection, because it was the only name by which it was designated at that time. The adoption of a suitable name, however, was being discussed at this time by Mr. Sholes and his associates. "Printing machine" was first suggested, but the name did not meet with … Continue reading Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party
The Economist (and it could only be the Economist) blog makes an astonishing attempt at quantification with the following chart, titled "When history was made": The underlying equation is this: SOME people recite history from above, recording the grand deeds of great men. Others tell history from below, arguing that one person's life is just … Continue reading History and the copy machine: the economist’s price of everything
In my dayjob, mobile media, we spend a lot of time talking about platforms. Curiously we like to think of these platforms as eternally new and shiny. “Legacy” is is not a windfall from the preceding generation. It's a perjorative term. Sometimes we even set our old platforms on fire, which is strange, because, as … Continue reading The past is a platform from which we launch into the future*
Can one person be in three places at once? The most requested superpower among Foo Campers seems to be time travel. Maybe it's because with a dozen or more amazing things going on at once we'd like to loop round at the end of every day and do it all over again. With only one … Continue reading Breathless from the fumes of the data exhaust
The 17th Century terraformers who carved out the Canal du Midi enlisted an army of plane trees and cypresses to strengthen its banks. These days, sadly, many of the trees are dying off from disease and old age, but their roots still make for good moorings. Floating along the first canal to link two oceans, … Continue reading Press the green button to raise the ocean
Matt Edgar writes here 