Information and lightness

Started talking again about doors of perception last night with Phil and James,
and the notion of lightness and information that was explored – john
thackara’s ecological rucksack that all information products invisibly
drag around with them… then went to sylloge today to find that Stuart Butterfield’s excellent talks are now transcripted, and he promises that the great diagrams to illustrate the concepts raised throughout he used will soon be up on his site: whoo-hoo!

William Mitchell: digital impacts on urban fabric

More fuel for the carfreelondon fire…

“Though cities aren’t going away, the electronically
enabled shift of activities back to the home and the resulting 24-hour,
pedestrian-scale neighborhoods may actually re-create what was best
about the old-style small towns and urban neighborhoods. Ideally, the
change will produce a vigorous local social and cultural life.”

“location, location, location” -Context Magazine
found via Tomalak’s Realm

It’s all just Cavepainting… From Lascaux to San Franciscaux

“Do you think that technology is further complicating
people’s lives?/How will the use of technology affect people’s lives in
the future? I’m a lousy futurist, so I’m loathe to make any big
predictions. But I will say this: I think that humans are pretty
unchanging, at their core. Technology steps in to fill in the rough
spots, but the things that are important to us, actually change very
little. I make Web sites now. If I had been alive one hundred years
ago, I would have been making newspapers. And a hundred years before
that, I would have been making books. Go back far enough and I’m sure I
would have been drawing on cave walls.

The technology may change, but the root desire stays the same: self-expression.”

Thanks to Tom for finding this…
Interview with Derek Powazek about Metafilter and community

Design IS business strategy
My old professor at the Welsh School of Architecture,
Charlie Maccallum, used to tear strips off people if they drew nervous,
shaky lines because, as he said, ‘every line drawn is not a line, it is
a resource expended’.

As Clement Mok and others have maintained, experience design is
inextricably linked to business strategy – and yet even in ‘pureplay’
e-business consultancies, ‘strategy’ is often handed to designers as a
fait accompli, maybe because our understanding or contribution isn’t
seen to link through to the business case.

This survey by the Design Council (although they would say this wouldn’t they) might go someway to prove otherwise…

“Looking at the last three years, well over half of businesses (55%)
said design had contributed to higher profits and turnover. Almost as
many (46%) reported that design had helped them grow their market
share. Nearly 58% of businesses surveyed said they’d used design as a
strategic business tool that helped them stay competitive in the market
place.”

Design Council: Newsroom: Press Releases

“Almost an alien thing.”

BuckyBall-Nobel-winner guy Richard Smalley, on nano and interfacing the non-organic and the organic.

“Bones are very impressive, and so are
teeth. But they aren’t steel—let alone what nanotubes can do with
strength and conductivity. So, being able to take a carbon nanotube and
get it into the molecular biology realm—whether it’s actually dissolved
and is one of the players, or as a probe, or as part of an implant, as
part of a new membrane—it’s really bringing something brand new to the
table in biology. Almost an alien thing. “

Wires of Wonder
Q&A with Richard E. Smalley – MIT Technology Review

Martin Pawley on information technology and corporate architecture

“…in corporate terms security of
communications and records is already more important than architecture.
In fact, in some ways, conventional corporate architecture,
conspicuous, lavish and creative, has become a business liability, an
easy target for public displeasure, or an individual with a grudge. As
a result many major corporations not only have ‘hot sites’ but ‘remote
sites’ too, places where their core business can be carried on in peace
and quiet. The German airline Lufthansa has storefront offices in major
cities all over the world, but all its reservations are handled from a
facility in rural Galway in Ireland – as are those of American Airlines
and Korean Air. “

Downgazing – Martin Pawley

Digital city

Time to show Ken CarFreeLondon…?

Ken Livingstone launched his solution to take the
stress out of getting around London – up-to-the-minute information on
travel delays to Wap-enabled mobile phones.

The Mayor is confident that the service – which tells commuters of
delays on the Tube and changes to bus services – will make travelling
easier in the capital.

Wap’s the way to travel – Ken

P2P, wall-2-wall.

The O’Reilly P2P Conference has been must-read stuff the last week. Clay
has been on form again – here’s two notable quaotables from the good
perfesser, who is, like, famous now… straight outta Brooklyn…

“Whatever else you think about, think about interoperability. Don’t think about standards yet.”

and

“Fifty years ago, Thomas Watson estimated there was a worldwide need
for maybe five computers. We now know that that number was wrong. He
overestimated by 4.”

Lessons from Napster – The O’Reilly P2P Conference, Feb. 14-16, 2001, San Francisco

Whoa. Quantum Information Architecture

Read this on train home yesterday – blew my tiny little mind.

In the beginning was the bit – New Scientist

“The Napster Crackdown”

Written in September last year, this is a fascinating look at
intellectual property rights, the “attention economy” and
Napster/file-sharing.

Large as the major record companies are, music probably
accounts for less than one per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic
Product – a measure in terms of the old economy. But in terms of
attention, music certainly gets a far bigger share: most of us listen
to music a good part of every day. Instead of protecting the musicians,
adhering the old system of copyright and the old methods of accounting
denies musicians the economic power that is actually theirs. On
average, it is an enormous, though understandable, mistake for them to
side with the record industry against Napster and other innovations
that would help the new economy into power. Because they make music
more accessible these developments would also increase the percentage
of attention and thus of wealth flowing to musicians as a group.

To put it another way, musicians along with movie
actors, video-game designers, writers and others who create whatever
gets attention, are in fact being greatly short-changed by the present
system. Even those who seem rich in terms of money, are kept far from
their just deserts, Rather than needing copyright, they are actually
suffering under the power that this legal form as presently handled
turns over to the corporations and their leaders. ”

The Napster Revolution and the Law