Edwin Schlossberg
Back at the end of the 1980s when Bob Cotton and I were first working on what became "Understanding Hypermedia" my working title was the "The Perfume of Sight" - its title taken from Edwin Schlossberg's quote that sat on the back-cover of Chris Jones's "Essays in Design".
Today, through a complex chain of links I found myself listening to Bruce Sterling's talk at SXSW 2006, where among many things he imagined a world filled with intelligent objects, objects he calls spimes - the internet of things, which, naturally reminded me of the Schlossberg quote.
But, that was a gentle interlude, where he speculated about a future world where you could find your shoes by googling them and every object would have an accessible history.
Much of his talk was a mixture of rage and despair as he surveyed the New World Disorder and what is happening to his own native America. I won't go in to the details of his diagnosis, it is better to listen to his words and the sound of his voice as he says them. The hope he clings on to is the resilience of people. This is not a naive, sentimental hope. Living in Belgrade for some of the year he is brought face to face with the horrors that people can inflict on one another. But he can also see that other face, the face of resilience, decency and getting on with life and each other.
Listen to the speech to get the passion and emotion, look at the video clip to see him breaking into tears as he reads Carl Sandburg's "The People Yes" and then, thanks to Sean Harton, read the transcript to get the cool rationality of his analysis.
A couple of tasters:
And
By coincidence, I listened to a talk by Suketu Mehta about life in Mumbai. Like Bruce Sterling, he has a very realistic view of people, indeed he starts his talk with an account from someone, who, as part of a Hindu mob, set fire and killed a Muslim street seller, during some sectarian riots in Mumbai. But, also like Bruce Sterling, his hopes lie in the people. He describes how when Mumbai was flooded, it was the people who organised themselves to help each other. He ends his talk with a powerful metaphor. He describes how on the packed trains of Mumbai, if you find yourself arriving as the train is drawing out, hands will grab you, pulling you on to the already over-crowed train, drawing on the human sympathy of knowing you could lose your job if you were late and, at that moment, blind as to whether you were Hindu, Muslim, Christian or with no religious affiliation at all.
Now what, you may be thinking, has all this this got to do with intelligent objects. Well, somewhere in the middle of his talk, he describes the way that now land records have been digitised and put up on the net, fewer peasants are cheated out of their holdings by unscrupulous bureaucrats. If you scour the net you can find many examples of how technologies, such as mobile phones can be more valuable to the very poor than they are to the more privileged among us.
In his talk Bruce Sterling quotes William Gibson's aphorism, "the street finds it’s own uses for things", a quote I use often myself. And why is this important? My very strong sense is that if we are to move the slider from "the grim meathook future" to "the bright green future", it will the resilience of the people, the improvisations of the everyday, that will move us there and that the uses that the street finds for things will play a crucial role in that process.
In the QA session that followed the presentation by Jim Coudal and Jason Fried I linked to in my last post, a questioner asked whether their 'making it up as you go along' approach could work with large teams involved in large projects. The question wasn't really resolved. I got some friends of mine to listen to the presentation and they raised the same question. So I was interested to stumble across a piece by Chip Morningstar, who works on some very big projects, that echoed Jason Fried's points.
He argues:
And after describing some practical tactics for managing big projects, he concludes:
(Thanks to Dave Pollard of "how to save the world" for the link)
Regular readers will hardly be surprised that when I saw the following quote from Jason Fried of 37signals in one of my favourite sites, Creating Passionate Users I had to track it down:
When questioned about whether the 'no-planning' notion was a nice utopian vision, but not practical in larger development worlds:
'I think it is MORE utopian to think you can plan everything in advance.'"
Very purposive drift.
You can listen to Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and Jason Fried of 37signals presentation at SXSW 2006 here (or read Jim Coudal's bit here) Their talks and the following QA are filled with gems to mull over. Well worth several listens. The blurb below tells you what they are talking about, but doesn't capture the wit and insights they provide in how they tell it.
I often turn to Creative Generalist for good links. I particularly like this one on the the value of 'slack' for creative thinking and how the long hours culture in the US may be counter productive. (Something that is being echoed here in the UK) As the arfticle says:
"The physiological effects of tiredness are well-known. You can turn a smart person into an idiot just by overworking him," notes Peter Capelli, a professor of management at Wharton."
'Why do born-again people so often make you wish they'd never been born the first time?'
Katharine Whitehorn
Paul Graham is an interesting, prickly character. I've linked to him before, here and here. I recently finished reading his "Hackers & Painters" (well worth a read) and just wanted to query one point he had made, so whipped off an e-mail. To my surprise, a couple of hours later I got a thoughtful reply. This is what I love about the net, the way it has changed the relationship between creators and audiences.
I first encountered this many years ago when I was reading Douglas Rushkoff's "Children of Chaos". After reading the first three or four chapters I was so excited I did a search, found his web site, got his e-mail address and sent him a rather over-excited rave. To my immense surprise he replied very quickly and it clicked that something significant was going on.
Since then I often write a quick appreciation if I encounter ideas I am enthusiatic about. I don't usually expect a reply, but more often than not I get one.
I know from my own experience with the e-mails I have got from readers of the three books I wrote with Bob Cotton, that there is something rather special about getting a direct response from someone who has engaged with something you have done. It is almost better than royalties, knowing that in some small way you have made a difference.
An interesting snippet from Victor Lombardi's Noise Between Stations:
"...success with complex problems depends on sharing control with others. Joe Kraus, the founder of Excite and JotSpot has said, 'Very early on, the founders of startups make an important choice. Do they want success or control? …I’ve picked success. And success implies giving up control – hiring people who are much better than you, or being willing to be the janitor if that’s what’s required.'"
Looking at the smug faces of of the MPs, who voted to ban smoking in enclosed public spaces, basking in their costless virtue, I was prompted to write a long piece urging a campaign to Ban Smugging Now.
I have written before of my sense that the anti-smoking crusade may itself be a threat to health in an extend piece "Why Do Dancers Smoke", where I concluded:
What all this suggests to me is that anti-smoking as a moral crusade has itself become dangerous. What seems to be required is more disinterested research into why people smoke, the perceived and actual benefits of smoking, and what, if any, other strategies smokers could adopt to gain these benefits without the harmful effects of smoking.
What might also be worth considering too is whether there are any hidden costs to the possibility of the total elimination of tobacco smoking. The general assumption is that the elimination of tobacco smoking would be an unqualified good. This looks like a moral rather than a scientific judgement."
However, rather than go over the same ground again I urge you to read a fascinating and pointed lecture, "In Praise of Bad Habits" by Peter Marsh, which puts the case against "healthism" more eloquently than I suspect I could manage. Here is taster:
But there is a further issue here, and that is to do with the (often arbitrary) definition of risk. Which particular aspects of lifestyle are to be defined as risky/sinful, and to which segments of society will 'persuasion' be applied for the 'good of society as a whole'? These are not abstract questions for they raise yet another insidious component of healthism - its culturally divisive nature. Risk determination is undertaken by a relatively small, white, middle class elite group in Western society - scientists and health professionals. These are people who, in the main, do not smoke, drink to excess or engage in promiscuous sexual activities. They have low-fat and low-sodium diets and tend to be over-represented in the gymnasium and aerobic exercise groups. (They might, to some people, also appear phenomenally dull.)
Engaging in risk - smoking, drinking, creating the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases, eating fat, sugar, salt and avoiding too much exercise - is characteristic of a different strata of society - the poor and marginalised, the working classes, ethnic minorities and 'deviant' groups. When the proponents of healthism are urging changes in lifestyle in order to achieve, in their terms, 'well-being', they are advocating changes for others much more often than they are for themselves. In this sense they are essentially moralists seeking to stigmatise specific members of society."