July 23, 2008
'Basically an Intelligence-Gathering Operation'
Robin says,
I am a huge fan of Amanda Michel and Off the Bus. Nice to see her (and it) get written up in the NYT!
July 21, 2008
Physical Theories as Women
Robin says,
Ah, here's McSweeney's with a piece for the xkcd crowd:
0. Newtonian gravity is your high-school girlfriend. As your first encounter with physics, she's amazing. You will never forget Newtonian gravity, even if you're not in touch very much anymore.1. Electrodynamics is your college girlfriend. Pretty complex, you probably won't date long enough to really understand her.
Et cetera.
What I want to know is... which girl is the theory of luminiferous ether?
July 18, 2008
This is Officially the Opposite of Mortal Kombat
Robin says,
The new game from the team behind flOw is... um... okay so listen you control a bunch of flower petals using the breeze.
Jenova Chen and company get credit for their simple, intuitive gameplay mechanics -- but honestly, to me it's all about the audio. Their games simply sound better than anything else out there.
July 17, 2008
The New Yorker Can Be Funny!
Matt says,
For some of you, this week's Shouts & Murmurs is the typical bland gimmick repeated ad nauseam. If you're like me, however, it will crack you up.
Location Scout
Robin says,
Quick. Let's come up with a dystopian sci-fi film concept so we can shoot it here.
Illuminated Manuscripts
Robin says,
Franke James has a terrific cross-media comic book style.
July 16, 2008
You Owe The Beatles Your Brain
Robin says,
Super-fun inter-disciplinary trivia: If it weren't for The Beatles, we might not have CAT scans.
Via Rex.
Consumption
Robin says,
Quiz time.
The #1 oil-consuming entity in the world is, obviously, the United States.
What's number two?
Alexis Madrigal tweets the answer.
Obsidian Wings
Matt says,
Robin previously called out Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight for excellent coverage of this campaign season. Now I've gotta lend a hand to the gang at Obsidian Wings, especially Hilary Bok, a.k.a. Hilzoy. It first came to my attention when one of the A-Listers plugged this post about Barack Obama's legislative record. I subscribed, and ever since I've been impressed by the quality of thought, research and analysis there.
Yesterday, for example, Obama and McCain both gave major foreign policy speeches. This generated very typical news coverage and hyper-typical punditry. But it also fortunately generated a typical post from Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, in which you get the sense that not only did she reserve comment until reading/hearing the speeches in question, but that she understood the deeper mental framework at play behind each speech. She's solidly liberal, but seems to make few assumptions about her audience.
Jobs of the Future
Robin says,
Nice, short interview with Mario Anima, a terrific colleague here at Current.
Misdirection
Robin says,
So what do you think you're looking at here? Make a guess... then click to find out. (This one's a beauty, too.)
(Via brandflakes.)
July 15, 2008
They Are Stars! No, They Are Bugs!
Robin says,
Ahhhh! Jeff Scher's new video on the NYT site is sublime. If you discover a full-screen playback button that I missed... let me know.
Update: These. are. amazing. L'Eau Life. White Out.
Another update: Links to bigger versions... with a full-screen mode! Fly By Night. L'Eau Life. White Out.
It's the Ecosystem, Stupid
Robin says,
Enjoyed the new post from Umair Haque about corporate strategy. Here's the salient bit:
Perhaps the meaning of competitive advantage, when all the games have been played and the gears of the economic machine have finally stopped moving, is this: privatize benefits and socialize costs.That might have been sustainable in a disconnected, asset-heavy industrial economy. But it cannot hold in a hyperconnected edgeconomy. When all of us can trade ten billion times a day, if everyone's simply trying to claim benefits from everyone else, while shifting costs and risks to everyone else, the result is economic implosion.
One of the big deficits implicit in Umair's critique is long-term thinking. This is almost a cliche by now -- the tyranny of quarterly earnings statements, etc., etc. -- but that doesn't make it any less true. Zero-sum strategy gets a quicker return, and often, it feels more like progress. Non-zero-sum strategy takes longer, feels riskier -- because you see other people growing too! Jeez! Are they winning? Why aren't we winning? -- but pays out better for everybody in the end.
So the question (which I have not even a single speculative answer to) is: How could we craft markets to better reward long-term, non-zero-sum strategy?
Bat-Theory 101
Robin says,
Wordwright with the five things that make Batman Batman. His list does not describe all past Batmans: just the good ones.
P.S. In Minneapolis, we saw The Dark Knight being advertised on the side of a Landmark theater. That's right: This movie is simultaneously a summer IMAX blockbuster and an art-house flick. Awesome.
July 12, 2008
Snarkmatrix Alignment
Robin says,
I am in Minneapolis, in Matt's apartment. We are listening to Bon Iver. And talking about you.
Photographic evidence of Snarkfestival 2008 to follow.
July 10, 2008
New Kinds of Content
Robin says,
For the last several months I've been obsessed with the idea of whole new kinds of content. We think of text, audio, and video as these sort of basic, irreducible formats -- the very elements of media. But that can't be right. We're still just imitating old, linear forms.
That's why I love Kevin Kelly's concept of vizuality; it points the way towards a new video that's somehow native to the web.
It's still totally abstract at this point; I don't even really know what that means.
But I do know that it bugs me when people talk about "content" as if it's this static substance, fungible and unchanging, as Jeff Jarvis and many of his commenters do here. I left a comment of my own saying as much:
I'd argue that it's deeply old-fashioned to think of newspapers as purveyors of blobs of text, and maybe some video to go along with it, that you can just stick into any ol' CMS system. In fact, I’d say that if, as a news organization, your content fits into any ol' CMS then it’s a warning sign.
Seen any new kinds of content out there lately? Any clues, or pointers in the right direction?
New Representation
So I'm completely enchanted with the little flurry of activity around Congressman John Culberson. Let our Congress tweet, says Sunlight! "[A] Congressman starting to use Twitter just made our representative democracy real to me" says a Culberson constituent (in the comments)!
I know it sounds hopelessly over-the-top.
But stuff like this -- a once-live Qik video feed from somewhere inside the U.S. Capitol, with Culberson turning the camera around on a Fox News reporter -- gives me a deep civic thrill.
Deeper than Barack Obama, believe it or not; because for as stirring as Obama's speeches are, and for as neat as barackobama.com is, I still feel the undiminished distance. Could our presidential candidates get any more remote? Everybody wants a piece of Obama; everybody wants a glimpse. There are layers of advisors, layers of staff, layers of reporters, layers of bloggers, jeez now layers of barackobama.com users who are more into it than I am!
It's a pyramid, not a mesh.
It's exactly how I felt about traditional news, back when I was considering working at a newspaper or magazine: How disconnected. How distant.
Contrast to John Culberson's tweets and his technical difficulties.
Let me be clear: I am not down with Culberson on the issues. But man do I like his style.
And if I had to pick, right now, whether the future of American government is a smart, sophisticated president consulting with his smart, sophisticated staff and making smart, sophisticated decisions in isolation, or a bunch of Members of Congress twittering live to their constituents and making videos for them and connecting them to each other -- I'll take the nerds in the cloakroom.
That sounds reductive, and it is. Probably irresponsible, too. The truth is that Barack Obama as president is going to affect more people, in deeper and more positive ways, than any number of social-media-powered legislators.
But I really do think the long game looks different.
And now Culberson has forced my hand. I've been sitting on a future-of-politics scenario for a bit, deciding how best to release it into the wild. But reality is moving faster than my imagination (disconcerting!) so I'd better just let you take a look.
The ballad of Matthew Smoot is here. He's a Congressman from Michigan, and as our story begins, he's having a tough time.
I'd love to know what you think.
Culberson update: Democratic Congressman Mike Capuano has an articulate, sensible reply to Culberson. But don't let this meta-scuffle obscure the fundamental coolness of Qik-streaming from Congress.
July 7, 2008
American Portraits
Robin says,
What do we look like?
Electorally, like this.
Religiously, like this like this. (Click around on that one. It's really a fine piece of work.)
Linguistically, like this. (It's not red vs. blue America, folks. It's pop vs. soda America. [Coke is another country.])
(Got the religion link from the just-relaunched Interactive Narratives. Aaand there goes the evening.)
Update: I pointed to the wrong version of the religion link! Click it again -- it's even crazier now.
Gobbledy
Robin says,
The soundtrack to my life for the past couple of weeks has been "Gobbledigook" from Sigur Ros's new album. You can download it here. Skip the naked-fawns-frolicking video.
Fun fact: Who coined the term "gobbledygook"? None other than Maury Maverick, U.S. Representative and grandson of Sam Maverick, from whom the term "maverick" originated. Now that is a neologistic family.
Head for the Black Diamond
Robin says,
Smart, informative post over on the Transportation Security Administration's blog (I know!) about the new "Diamond Lane Program" that lets travelers self-select into three groups: green (for beginners and families), blue (for intermediate travelers), and black (for road warriors).
I've been through this a few times at different airports and it actually seems to work really well!
I feel like it ought to be a case study in design school, actually: Given the problem, you immediately assume the solution must have something to do with faster machines, or better-trained employees, or lasers or something. And those things might help -- but flipping the script and simply changing the inputs helps a lot, too. Seriously counter-intuitive.
Props to TSA for some good design and public communication to match.
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