Facebook and the coming storm
A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are...
View ArticleOnce upon a time: the objective and subjective
"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten." ~Rudyard KiplingIn The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell reminds us that once upon a time we told each other...
View ArticleThe gift of the reader comment
Having recently traversed the path of graduate school after spending a long while in the business world, I learned quite a few new things, not the least of which were ideas about writing. One of the...
View ArticleInstitutional memory, status quo, hierarchy, content & design
While listening to a Rebooting The News segment with a partner of arc90, I realized that design has fallen prey to the same gremlin that plagues other professions—professional amnesia. We temporarily...
View ArticleWhen online comments go too far: the wonderland of the internet
When a writer troubles to put down thoughts on a page, what is the responsibility of the reader? Can anything be expected of him? If we put aside the humanities arguments about deconstruction,...
View ArticleGhosts of our former selves: originality, art, science & memory
I don't expect to find resonance in prefaces or author's notes, but the first few pages of two quite different books—Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff and Gödel Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid...
View ArticleAnts, art and empathy
Last night a round of tweets blew by mentioning a science story in the New York Times about a Brooklyn-based artist's piece containing McDonald's foodstuffs and ants. Some tweets proclaimed "now this...
View ArticleThe battle between personal algorithms and social software
danah boyd's work has influenced my thinking toward social science, toward graduate school, and toward Microsoft, of all things. I respect the woman. So I read her tweets and her papers knowing I'll...
View ArticleThe snowflake and the social cascade
"God bless the meek hydrogen bonds responsible for the cohesion of water molecules."– Anon #10 (Mar 18, 2010) http://boingboing.net/2010/03/18/bioacoustician-berni.htmlOver the last few years, people...
View ArticleThe psychology of design: the metaphoric beauty of the small multiple
We live in a vast world, and the data that swirls out of that world increases every day. It's difficult to stand amidst all of this information activity and maintain a sense of the individual. And...
View ArticleThe Natalie Portman effect
All possible valences of an object, all its ambivalence, which cannot be reduced to any model, are reduced by design to two rational components, two general models—utility and the aesthetic—which...
View ArticleThe Internet: a commons of public knowledge?
In a youtube video, nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom (2010) distinguishes between three easily confused concepts: 1) commons, "a wide diversity of private goods" that may include public goods like...
View ArticleA new visual language (part 1)
In the interests of sparking commentary and kickstarting my nascent "design as cultural imperialism" thought process (and future unbook) I'm taking the opportunity to excerpt portions of my capstone...
View ArticleInformation visualization: a new visual language (part 2)
In the interests of sparking commentary and kickstarting my nascent "design as cultural imperialism" thought process (and future unbook) I'm taking the opportunity to excerpt portions of my capstone...
View ArticleInformation visualization: a new visual language (part 3)
In the interests of sparking commentary and kickstarting my nascent "design as cultural imperialism" thought process (and future unbook) I'm taking the opportunity to excerpt portions of my capstone...
View ArticleInformation visualization: a new visual language (part 4) Definition, design,...
In the interests of sparking commentary and kickstarting my nascent "design as cultural imperialism" thought process (and future unbook) I'm taking the opportunity to excerpt portions of my capstone...
View ArticleInformation visualization: a new visual language (part 5) Semiotics and...
In the interests of sparking commentary and kickstarting my nascent "design as cultural imperialism" thought process and future unbook—because thoughts on social and cultural construction are never...
View ArticleInformation visualization: a new visual language (part 6) Cognitive...
In the interests of sparking commentary and kickstarting my nascent "design as cultural imperialism" thought process (and future unbook—because thoughts on social and cultural perception and...
View ArticleInformation visualization: a new visual language (part 7) Potential issues...
In the interests of sparking commentary and kickstarting my nascent "design as cultural imperialism" thought process (and future unbook—because thoughts on social and cultural perception and...
View ArticleInformation visualization: a new visual language (part 8) Conclusion
In the interests of sparking commentary and kickstarting my nascent "design as cultural imperialism" thought process (and future unbook—because thoughts on social and cultural perception and...
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