February 2012
44 posts
Ruin lust: our love affair with decaying buildings... →
An obsession with ruins can risk a fall into mere sentiment or nostalgia: ruin lust was already a cliché in the 18th century, and its periodic revivals may put one in mind of Gilbert and Sullivan: “There’s a fascination frantic / In a ruin that’s romantic.”
The great interest in the remarkable images of decayed Detroit – in the photographs, for example, of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, on...
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Building Expectations
It has been said that the past is a foreign country—but it is the future that remains undiscovered. Despite the obvious truth that no one has been to the future, that no one has even seen a photograph of it, the last two centuries have witnessed the rise of a body of visual codes and tropes that are commonly seen and understood as “futuristic.” These “progressive” or “modern” attributes are...
“We tend to see the future as a continuation of the present. It never is. Today...”
– Postcards From The Future
#shitsiskosays
This doesn’t begin to cover the constant “come here and see this” requests, where said person will not be able to come there and see that due to falling plot. We live in a world already where no one need come and see anything, a quick picture upload obviates the need for O’Brien to come squint at your shit in person. Part of the reason, I think, that Minority Report...
“There’s an old fan theory about various Trek series that says that what...”
– #shitsiskosays - Charlie’s Diary Nick Barlow
“Star Trek is a butterfly in a glass. It is no longer meant to predict or exhibit...”
– Cat Valente remarks on the old-fashionedness on display in Star Trek DS9 (Where’s the social networking on Star Trek?)
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Postcards From the Future →
Climate change is central to London’s future. It will affect every aspect of the city, from buildings and public spaces to the way Londoners live and work. What impact will climate change have? Postcards From The Future is concerned with taking ideas and projections and juxtaposing them with contemporary visual images. This creates surprising, contradictory concepts that challenge our daily...
Object Cancers →
In any case, what seems more provocative here, on the level of design, would be to appropriate this protective stance and reuse it in the design of future objects, but emphasizing the other end: to allow for the scanning of any object designed or manufactured, but to insert, in the form of watermarks, small glitches that would only become visible upon reprinting. We could call these object...
“Clearly in need of a creative outlet, he sets up a botnet of thousands of...”
– Pruned: Terraforming Versailles on the Moon
Deathmatch on Mars: An Interview with Warren Ellis... →
What kind of merit is there to Gingrich’s proposals — which he’s self-described as “grandiose” — for developing a rocket that can reach Mars, establishing a permanent moon base, and so on?
Well, let’s start with the “51st State” bit that’s being bandied about. Speaker Gingrich knows as well as the next political mammal that the Outer Space Treaty forbids any one nation from claiming sovereignty...
Kosmograd: Red Mars 2 →
In the same week (04/11/11) that the “astronauts” in the pretend space mission to Mars emerged from their 500 day solitary confinement, the Phobos-Grunt probe, which was supposed to go to the actual Mars, developed a fault which kept it in orbit around Earth. As metaphors go this is pretty compelling: the Soviet Union/ Russia may be drawn towards Mars, but seem ever to be bound by the gravity...
“But for archaeologists and historians worried that the next generation of people...”
– A Push for Historic Preservation on the Moon - NYTimes.com
A Push for Historic Preservation on the Moon -... →
But interest in the moon has perked up again. Russia and India plan to send robotic landers. NASA was going to send astronauts back there until the Obama administration changed course a couple of years ago.
Most crucially, the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition among 26 teams to become the first private organization to put a spacecraft on the moon, offered a $1 million bonus for visiting...
“I have a strong memory of staying up all night to watch the Apollo 11 Moon...”
– Republic of the Moon exhibition explores lunar living (Wired UK)
“Other functions are performed today in our network-society milieu of retromania,...”
– The WELL: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012
“Stross was talking about the state of the future; I think in this
conversation...”
– The WELL: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012
“So then we look at a picture of the globe at night. What’s out there in...”
– The WELL: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012
“Just like legacy code makes life difficult for programmers, legacy futures can...”
– Open the Future: Legacy Futures Jamais Cascio
Patina is easy to fake. A whole industry has grown out of the desire to own things with a sense of history, perhaps inspired by the denim industry from the late 70s). But whereas Retro design uses the visual cues and forms from an earlier age (something we’ve written about at length here), pre-patinated design goes further. For now, pre-patination is a decidedly left-field operation, catering to a...
“Or maybe we do not have yet enough history of computing devices to be able to...”
– Karl Dubost things magazine
“One of the more nuanced quirks of Ethiopia is how locals refer to time. The...”
– Future Perfect » Time, Date Will Tell
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Future Work Skills
Sense-making: ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed
Social intelligence: ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions
Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based
Cross-cultural competency: ability to operate in different cultural settings
Computational thinking: ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning
New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication
Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines
Design mindset: ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes
Cognitive load management: ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques
Virtual collaboration: ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team
“In a study by Science Magazine, students were asked to type in pieces of trivia,...”
– 15 Big Ways The Internet Is Changing Our Brain
A 'Star Trek' inspired X Prize for revolutionizing... →
