Cutting edge artists have always looked to advances in science for new materials and techniques. But where our innovations centre on digital media and information technology, the crossover science of the Victorian era was chemistry. We owe today's rich visual culture to the pioneers who mastered the interactions of chemicals, minerals, ceramics, celluloid and light. … Continue reading Finding Lizzie Le Prince
Thanks to Bettakultcha and Media Squared, here's a video of my Murray, Boulton and Watt presentation at the amazing Temple Works, Holbeck. It's a tale of green sand and subterfuge, of how one of the biggest names of the industrial revolution tried to stop a competitor in his tracks... ... also the slides are on Slideshare … Continue reading Video: How to get ahead in business the Boulton and Watt way
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. And so I'm loving the safari around the world's largest city and capital of the British Empire, afforded by Chris Heathcote's inventive Newspaper Club debut As It Is To-Day. Chris has been feeding Newspaper Club's editing software Arthr on a diet of old London … Continue reading As It Is To-Day
My 20 slides from Bettakultcha at Temple Works, Holbeck... ... on which more later, but meanwhile you can also read the original blogpost: How to get ahead in business the Boulton and Watt way.
Late last year I made a small prototype based on my Ignite London talk, 1794, by printing the 20 slides as Moo cards, with associated pages on this blog. Now there's a new version, using cards, stickers and an A3 sheet for you to play with the story. It's backed up with a new set of … Continue reading 1794 Redux
About this time of year, this blog gets a peak in search hits for Thomas A Watson of "Mr Watson, come here. I want you" fame. Somewhere out there, I imagine, is a teacher who sets the same class assignment every year, and whose students flock obediently to Google in search of information and images. … Continue reading Thomas A Watson: An Apology
It's a pleasure to see - at risk of sounding like a Key Stage One Literacy Coordinator - that reading is hot right now. Amazon is starting to ship the Kindle DX worldwide Apple is apparently about to launch some kind of new device eReaders are predicted to be the hottest category at CES this … Continue reading Brought to book: some subtleties of social interaction
Be it known that at some point in the near future I plan to bloviate on the concept of the prospectus and its coming revival in new and unexpected transmedia formats. Consider this a prospectus. I'm so meta.
Dirty tricks among high-tech businesses? I recently came across the original Machiavellian play book for start-ups, and it's more than 200 years old. Two of my 1794 heroes were the steam pioneer James Watt and Holbeck engineer Matthew Murray. Both made engines for the textile mills of northern England - in effect the processing power to … Continue reading How to get ahead in business the Boulton and Watt way
I held off writing up the Ignite London talks until now because I wanted to link to some of the great videos of the event now live on Vimeo. It must always be a tough challenge to get the balance right, all the more so for our capital's inaugural Ignite. I reckon the programme was spot … Continue reading We don’t want to change the world, we’re just waiting for a plate of chips
The Ignite London challenge of telling the story of my 1794 heroes in five minutes and 20 slides set me thinking about other ways to package up a narrative in the most minimal way. In parallel with preparing my talk, I used the slides as the starting point for some printed material. My experimental recipe … Continue reading 1794: Prototyping a small story
It was a delight to welcome the writer Steven Johnson to Leeds last week and to hear first person some of the themes in his book, the Invention of Air. We were, I think, doubly fortunate to hear Steven just a day after his appearance alongside Brian Eno at the ICA. It's worth listening to the … Continue reading The smallest book
Wow, I'm privileged to have been invited to appear alongside some amazing speakers at London's first Ignite event on the evening of November 18. If you were at the first ever British Ignite in Leeds in January, or any of the others around the world, you'll know the deal: 20 slides advancing automatically every 15 … Continue reading Give me five minutes and I’ll give you a year – Ignite London, 18 November
Something to watch, something to read, and something to ponder on. First, I watched my former colleague Clive Grinyer's TedXLeeds talk on the Democratisation of Design. If you weren't fortunate enough to be there on the night, you can now catch it on Youtube... "We are all designers. Get used to it," says Clive. I'd buy … Continue reading Curiosity saved the service designer
If you saw my talks earlier this year at Leeds' GeekUp or Barcamp, you may recall I recommended reading Steven Johnson's "The Invention of Air" which tells the tale of pioneering scientist, theologian and political radical Joseph Priestley. "The Invention of Air" reveals, more than I'd previously appreciated, just how important were Priestley's experiments during his time … Continue reading Steven Johnson presents “The Invention of Air” in Leeds on 3 November
Matt Edgar writes here 