paper view

Lots of things about paper have been popping up around the interwebs recently. Russell's written some really interesting stuff about turning digital things into real, physical things. Then there's the newspaper that the Really Interesting Group did. It was called Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008. Looked really interesting to me. I buy into the post-digitalness of it, I think. Still, I haven't seen a copy, so I can't really comment. But then Rishi wasn't particularly keen. Thanks to a tweet from Kristian, I saw Clay Shirky's take on newspapers and the business models they are trying to use online. Which is to say that they are trying to transfer old business models to a space where they can't work. There's this PSFK interview with Jonah Bloom about why Advertising Age have pulled an issue in March. And may consider doing more in future. And, lastly, another PSFK interview with Nick Bilton, editor in the New York Times research and development lab. Which sounds like a great job. "Paper is just a device," he says. Which goes back to something Shirky has said, in the post mentioned and elsewhere. To paraphrase, we need journalism, not newspapers. And there's no simple transition from business model A to model B. It's more like business models A to Z. Or maybe it was one to 100. I can't remember. And all of this is probably a long-winded, non-committal and aggregated way of saying: paper. It's the future of some things, and the past of others. If I was to hazard an unpolished thought, I'd say something like this. Paper: it's one of the future faces of distributed personality. It could be a mass audience thing, or a more intimate thing. But it might work better in future as the vehicle of individual expression rather than that of an institution of some kind. Which could also be completely wrong. Ho hum.

too many things are interesting

It's been one of those weeks at work. You know, the kind where time evaporates long before you've had any kind of chance to make a dent in your to-do list. So sometimes the only thing to do is to crank the volume up when you can. And I think because I'm seeing the posters for the Notorious film everywhere, this has been on my iPod a lot. Best to skip through the intro bit though. Of course, it's at times like these you see loads of things to be excited by. Tons of stuff related to active remembering. Like things about data and automated nostalgia (thanks for the introduction, Russell). The natural selection of interesting. And other stuff. I won't even start on the films I want to see and the novels I want to read (or re-read).

making mundane meaningful

So this is a very unoriginal post. I've just been noticing lots of blogging about measurement and gaming scores. Things about visualising your energy consumption. Making the invisible into a visible trace. That sort of thing. And it all feels very relevant and very important for 2009. So as a start to getting my head around it, I've set myself up over here. (Site discovered via Russell.) Now I never need update my Twitter or Facebook status ever again...

the sleepy railway village of the future

The other week I signed up for Russell's latest internet folly. Everything's being aggregated at Lyddle End 2050, and the first efforts are in. Class. I'm looking forward to my turn...

go do better

For anyone with half an hour to spare, I can't recommend the Do lectures site highly enough. It's an event organised by Howies that gathered a lot of interesting people in one place to explain all about the interesting things they do and the philosophy behind it. All in the hope that it inspires you to go do as well. Featuring everyone's favourite inventor, Trevor Baylis and the always interesting Russell Davies. Do it. Do it. Do it.

"heartbreaking beauty that moves units"

I love this phrase from Russell Davies’s meditation on the brilliant Michael Chabon...that’s what we should all be about, eh? If you haven’t heard of Chabon, grab a copy of the Pulitzer-winning (and heartbreakingly beautiful, for that matter) novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.