: Tbh I find this whole url culture Tumblr’s formed to be less annoying...

: Tbh I find this whole url culture Tumblr’s formed to be less annoying...:

cokekitty:

Tbh I find this whole url culture Tumblr’s formed to be less annoying and more interesting. Like it’s just totally mind-blowing and genuinely fascinating to me that urls have developed their own barter system in the Tumblr community. People hunt down urls and keep them to themselves, and trade them for urls of “equal or greater value”. What determines value for a url? On what scale is it being measured, if any? Do people with lots of hoarded urls have more value on Tumblr than people like me who only have the one(s) I use right now? This is really cool I’m kind of excited I’ve finally got a window into this Tumblr black market, I’ve always had glimpses at it before but this is the first time I’ve ever really gotten into the nitty gritty of how it works.

Why do I blog this? Yesterday I found this term “URL culture” while browsing and I find it clearly encapsulates something intriguing about our current culture. “hoarded URL”, that sounds great.

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The Bubble Bonnet, aka the Space Bubble Helmet: In 1964,...

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The Bubble Bonnet, aka the Space Bubble Helmet:

In 1964, Braniff airlines was looking for a way to differentiate itself from its competitors by adding a touch of glamour and weirdness to its service. So it hired Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci to design the uniforms of the stewardesses. What he came up with was the plexiglass Bubble Bonnet, aka the Space Bubble Helmet. Its purpose was supposedly to protect the hair of the stewardesses from wind and rain as they crossed the tarmac. Stewardesses complained that it was hard to hear anyone while wearing the things.

Why do I blog this? It looks rather retro-futuristic now but I guess the designer was sincere at the time. A too heavy future though.

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Mindloop by One Life Remains: This game is controlled by a...

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Mindloop by One Life Remains:

This game is controlled by a mental brain wave thingy. Each color is associated with a brain activity type (Focus, relax, …). You need to be in that state to make the cube come back on the road. The road is the inside of a cylinder so the track is never-ending. The tricky part here is that if you manage to go through the first time doesn’t mean you can do it again easily. And it’s brain tiring

Why do I blog this? Next month I’m going to give a speech in Boston at the AAAS conference about the design issues related to brain-computer interfaces. This game is a good example to introduce some of the concepts I want to address there.

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“The heterogeneous home” by Ben Hooker, Ryan...

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“The heterogeneous home” by Ben Hooker, Ryan Aipperspach and Allison Woodruff:

We believe that the home is becoming a more homogeneous place. The environment is increasingly filled with “any time”, “anywhere” portable devices such as cellular phones, laptops, and MP3 players that blur the traditional boundary of the home that helps individuals to define themselves in relation to the world. These technological changes are compounded by cultural changes towards a 24-hour, always connected lifestyle and structural changes towards more homogenous “cookie cutter” domestic spaces. We assembled an interdisciplinary research team, including members with experience in interaction design, computer science, and anthropology, to study the increasing homogeneity of domestic space and to generate a series of design proposals for creating more heterogeneous environments. Our proposals present a range of theoretical arguments, drawn from concepts in environmental psychology, as well as provocative design sketches which led to interactive prototypes.

Why do I blog this? Because I liked the project and found the content and the documentation intriguing.

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“Kentucky Route Zero: a game in five acts by cardboard...

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“Kentucky Route Zero: a game in five acts by cardboard computer”:

“Kentucky Route Zero is a magical realist adventure game about a secret highway in the caves beneath Kentucky and the mysterious folks who travel it. The game is developed by Cardboard Computer (Jake Elliott and Tamas Kemenczy). The soundtrack features an original electronic score by Ben Babbitt along with a suite of old hymns and bluegrass standards recorded by The Bedquilt Ramblers.”

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"This new law allows for testing of autonomous vehicles, or self-driving cars, by designees of an..."

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““This new law allows for testing of autonomous vehicles, or self-driving cars, by designees of an autonomous technology manufacturer, provided certain requirements are met. Prior to the public operating autonomous vehicles, a manufacturer is required to submit an application to DMV, and certify that specified insurance, vehicle safety, and testing standards have been met. The legislation authorizes regulations to specify any additional requirements deemed necessary by DMV, such as limitations on the number of autonomous vehicles deployed on the states highways, special vehicle registration and driver licensing requirements, and rules for the suspension, revocation, or denial of any license or approval issued by DMV pertaining to autonomous vehicles. (SB 1298/Padilla)””

- Why do I blog this? Being in California for the new year’s break, we had to check the new driving-related laws at the rental car office. This paragraph was quite interesting, although our rental wasn’t autonomous.

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"[Design can be …] The stable platform on which to entertain unusual bedfellows. The glue for things..."

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““[Design can be …] The stable platform on which to entertain unusual bedfellows. The glue for things that may not be naturally sticky. The lubricant that allows movement between ideas that don’t quite run together. The medium through which we can make otherwise awkward connections and comparisons. The language for tricky conversations and translations.”

- Dr Ken Arnold, Head of Public Programs, The Wellcome Trust, London.

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"*They’re not dead yet, but they serve no technical function, other than the skeuomorphic legal and..."

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*They’re not dead yet, but they serve no technical function, other than the skeuomorphic legal and financial pretense that e-books are “books,” and therefore somehow different from all other digital files.

*It’s sorta like the “Wall Street Journal” still pretending that the Wall Street Journal is whatever it thinks it is this week.

*I hope all those dedicated e-reader “books” are somehow able to squirm out of the sarcophagus of their formatting and copy protection, because otherwise we will presently see the largest “book” holocaust of all time, at least in terms of the numbers of individual copies.

”

- Bruce Sterling on ebooks

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An interesting book by Marc Vallée about...

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Why do I blog this? An interesting book by Marc Vallée about defensive space, covering anti-skateboard devices. Interestingly, this is the topic that led to the largest number of comments on my blog. I find it relevant to see the type of “solutions” presented here. It would be funny to document how skaters ingeniously manage to get rid of them.

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"Media archaeology can be understood as a heterogeneous set of theories and methods that investigate..."

“Media archaeology can be understood as a heterogeneous set of theories and methods that investigate media history through its alternative roots, forgotten paths, neglected ideas and machines. It explicitly challenges the supposed newness of digital culture. Media archaeology gives new ideas to understand media cultural temporality. The definitions have ranged from emphasising the recurring nature of media cultural discourses (Huhtamo) to media archaeology as an-archaeology, or variantology (Zielinski) which in its excavation of the deep time layers of our means of seeing tries to find an alternative route to dismantle the fallacy of linear development.”

- What is “media archaeology”, by Jussi Parrika

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