Eloi on the rise.

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“Yummy” say the Morlocks.

“Experts in human-computer interaction say that the real difference between teenagers and their elders is teens’ willingness to experiment with computers, combined with their acceptance of the seemingly arbitrary conventions that are endemic to contemporary computer interfaces. In other words, teens aren’t worried about breaking their computers, and they’re not wise enough or experienced enough to get angry at and reject poorly written programs. The teens just deal with computers, as they are forced to deal with many other aspects of their lives. These strategies, once learned and internalized, are incredibly effective for working with today’s computer technology.”

My bold in the above quote. The gist of this story I’ve come across many times before. The tyranny of current interface idioms looks set to continue for a while. New contexts like mobile computing or paradigms like the web still haven’t killed the WIMP interface.

Aside: Why the hell do I have icons on my phone?

Perhaps though change will be pressed by what people are trying to do with personal tech. Communicate and share experience. OurLifeBits, if you will – is demanding different idioms evolve.

Whether we enquire what lies beneath those idioms is another matter.

» MIT Tech Review: The Myth of Generation N

London flashmob staged?

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Well, I know that’s a stupid thing to say, because of course these things are orchestrated – but it seems that the inaugural London flashmob was a bit more stage-managed than most.

“Anyway. We’re here, the shop’s shut. Which would seem to have f***ed the flash mob, which is supposed to be about the appearance of spontaneity, right? Well, then, the shop opens. In fact, it seems to open specifically to let the flash mob in.

Media hordes. Shop opening specially for a spontaneous mob. Right.”

It had crossed my mind that for some undefinable reason of psychogeographic importance that London would be a bit crap for flashmobbing. Critical Mass or Poll-tax riots she can do, but digitally-assisted Dadaism I’m not sure is her thing.

Anyway.

Warren Ellis has the story. Any other eyewitness reports?

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Update: Cockup, not conspiracy, seems to be the consensus of comments below. Also – a correction on my captioning a photo of rollerbladers as being part of Critical Mass. It’s a picture of a more frequent gathering of skaters known as “The Friday Skate” – thanks to Gerard for correcting me.

Game on

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Grant Morrison on the future of narrative:

“…I think people will tire of movies altogether very soon as the immersive interactive experience offered by video gaming becomes more sophisticated and involving. I’ve been doing more and more work in the games field and I’m very excited by the possibilities for radical narrative experiences.

…I don’t know if I’d be writing comics today. I’d write games. I probably would write comics but only as a hobby…”

» CBR: CATCHING UP WITH PROFESSOR M: TALKING WITH GRANT MORRISON
[via barbelith]

Coherence Explorer

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Molly and Mike have whipped-up The Interaction Architect Job Title Generator in response to the latest venerable trolls about “what it is we call ourselves when we are doing what we do”. A swift click on it generated the title of this post as my new-new job description.

I was travelling in a cab on Sunday evening and the cabbie asked what I did, and I replied in the usual way – this conversation plays out this way most often:

Me : “I’m a designer”

Cabbie: “what sort of thing do you design”

Me : “Websites mainly – on the internet. Do you use the Internet?”

Cabbie : “nah – not that much, my wife and kids do”

Me : “Right, right”

Cabbie : “so where do you do that then?”

Me : “at the BBC”

Cabbie : “Oh yeah? Yeah the wife likes that, the BBC website”

Me : “oh… good!”

Cabbie : “so you do the graphics then? How it looks and that?”

Me : “Sometimes, but more often I work on how it’s going to work, so that it’s easy to use – and does what you want it to do.”

Cabbie : “Ahhh, right. Could do with more of that on the internet. Things are too bleedin’ hard for me to bother with most of the time.”

Me : “Just here anywhere on the left is fine for me. Cheers”

Anyway. My point is – it’s not so hard to explain what we do, and for people to understand the point off doing it. Discussing what that’s called is just bores me to tears.

New “Spiders” coming soon

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Whoohoo!

A new installment of Patrick Farley’s “Spiders” is due out on August 8th – and having just read a preview snippet… it’s a cracking spike to the story-arc that began online over a year ago, and made a print appearance in Wired a few issues back:


“You’re telling me the U.S.A. is conducting biological warfare in Afghanistan?…”

“If you define ‘warfare’ as “destroying the enemy’s will to fight… Then yes, Lieutenant. We are.”

“Why doesn’t the world know about about this?”

“Because, Lieutenant….. The world hasn’t asked”

Fantastic art and storytelling, only outshone by even more fantastic ideas; Farley deserves real success and support for his work. Go read Spiders if you haven’t already.

» E-Sheep.com: Spiders

Lucky Dragon

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Anno found a story on BBC News on the lowering costs of 3d-printers:

“We don’t feel our technology is expensive,” said Mr DeHart. “Our entry level system starts at $30,000 and that system can support all powder types and all the geometric models.”

From the age of fourteen to eighteen I worked in a print and design shop in my hometown. The colour photocopier that we charged customers at about 1GBP a copy cost more than $30k. At that price they could find their way into copyshops and local emporia like the Lucky Dragon franchise of William Gibson’s books.

Beneficial applications of colour photocopiers are wide enough to grasp by people to be able to charge 1GBP an operation. What would the breakthrough consumer applications of 3d printers/copiers/faxes be?

» Flambingo: Sintering*
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* Dictionary.com: Sintering