New meaning for the Long Now

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From Melvyn Bragg’s “In our time” newsletter:

“After the programme a lot of the talk was about a word new to me: ‘presentism’. This is the burden under which historians who teach say that they labour increasingly, ie: everything in the past (more than 10 or 15 years ago) has to be described first in terms of the present.

The idea of a century or even a previous generation being radically different from our own in its political structure, its transport structure, etc, is, I was told, increasingly hard to grab hold of.”

» BBC Radio 4: In our time

Muoto’s special “State of Finnish Design” issue

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muoto magazine

Muoto is a design magazine in Finland. It’s not superficial or consumerist – it has serious design criticism and commentary, but it’s still aimed at a broader audience than just the design industry it seems. Think “Blueprint” rather than “Design Week” at one end of the scale and “Wallpaper*” at the other.

This month’s edition is devoted to an examination of then state of Finnish design and the movers and shakers involved in it. It also has, for the first time, I think; translated all of it’s content to English.

It’s a good read, and a real window on where Finnish design culture is at, and where those involved in it think it’s going right and wrong. Alex Niemenen is part of a group interview that makes some interesting points about the Finn’s inability to package and crow about their abundant talent.

Being able to “evangelise” – market an idea, a potentiality, an abstract, a vision is something that in my short experience here I have found frustratingly absent, although there is something very reassuring about the refusal to talk about something unless every detail or eventuality has been considered.

The word “concrete” is properly the most used in conversations I have about ideas or design here. In a world of image this is anticompetitive but admirable.

Typepad defaults to homework

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Since moving to Typepad I’ve notice that posting a blog entry is more like handing in your homework, at a particularly strict school run by ascetic ex-Jesuits expelled from the order for their extremism. I keep getting comments telling me off for my self-indulgence and lack of intellectual rigour.

Admitted, I have the intellectual rigour of a frisbee. And perhaps these networked doses of cod-liver oil comments are good for me, making me a better writer or thinker. Or maybe not. Maybe this is all self-indulgence and should remain so for my sanity.

Anyway – I have removed the “recent comments” feature from the sidebar in the hope of reducing the ‘pile-on’ that happens.

The “recent comments” module appears to be a default setting in Typepad, and as a design pattern it is very successful for bootstrapping conversations on a personal website and keeping them alive. In switching from moveabletype to typepad, I thought that the effects of the default design patterns would have been noticeable, but aside from this comments amplification “pile-on” effect, I can’t think of anything else.

This over-riding feeling that Typepad’s defaults have turned writing here into a chore for me maybe just be a comparison effect of using more lightweight, life-recording, “spooling” systems, such as Nokia Lifeblog, del.icio.us and Flickr.

Connections, 2

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burkewebb

As I was watching James Burke passionately explain the interconnectedness of everything, I was reminded of my friend and psychoactive-substance-made-hominid, Matt Webb.

In this epic post, Webb lays claim to being the auteur of the first BBC factual documentary series (or holomemetic thoughtgift injectionseeds) that they commission after we all collapse into the supercontext of the singularity.

“our cities are unfolded instances of the hippocampus, as a game of Ludo or, rather, Stuck in the Mud is the first and second and n-order unfolding of the game rules + social behaviour + history. Surfaces, ha!”

Ouch! Brilliant!

UPDATE: gordon bennett. loads of comments about this essentially flippant little post.

Since moving to typepad I’ve notice that posting a blog entry is more like handing in your homework, at a particularly strict school run by ascetic ex-Jesuits expelled from the order for their extremism. All I’ve had a re comments telling me (and matt webb) off for our self-indulgence and lack of intellectual rigour.

Newsflash – this is a personal site, it is ALL self-indulgence. Moreover, I have the intellectual rigour of a frisbee. Anyway – I have removed the “recent comments” feature from the sidebar in the hope of redcuing the ‘pile-on’ that happens.

Connections

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connections
I have just spent an hour of a cold, wet Finnish summer afternoon, transported back to being 6 years old in 1978, watching the first episode of “Connections” by James Burke.

What an incredible series that was, and what a magnificent storyteller y’man Burke is. Depressingly, I can’t see anything like that getting made now, although Schama‘s History of Britain is probably the nearest in terms of compelling, rhetorical, factual television.

The theme of interconnectedness and interdependence of civilisations, technology and nature is one that probably needs telling powerfully these days, too.

Oh, and dig that seventies on-screen typography.

More:
» Palmer’s James Burke Fan Companion
» Wikipedia entry on James Burke

Superfantastique! Keyword RSS of BBC News

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This is great – someone has hacked a service that generates a custom RSS feed based on a keyword search of BBC News.

So, for example, if I wanted to track the UK Labour government’s idiotic plans for ID cards, I just type in “ID Cards” and get a RSS feed to put in my news reader of choice.

It also works for the rest of the BBC website, so if I wanted to track any content on the band “Franz Ferdinand”, I just type it in and get a feed, which will return content the BBC have got on the hip scottish artrock combo.

UPDATE: Someone from the BBC has asked me to take this entry down, so as a compromise I have removed the links to the site outlined above.
David who posted from the BBC to ask to remove the reference has replied more fully to the comments below, and raised some good practical challenges to doing RSS and connecting to web-services on huge content sites like the BBC News. Many thanks to him for taking the time to clarify and explain some of the issues.

“By hook or by crook, we’ll get it!”

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Which is of course, about getting information, from The Prisoner, being shown again this summer on BBC Four.

Pat Kane quotes Wilson/Bey:

“…the more of this information you take in, the darker things get. I call it the “lite age” as opposed to the dark ages. A situation where you have all the information all the time — completely accessible — where in other words there are no secrets, or there’s a perception that there are no secrets, that there’s no information that we can’t get. This kind of false omnipotence, this superman of information.”

Victor steps outside to see if the shape of all this information makes more sense than the substance.

Which is always an alternative if you’re allowed.

“Be seeing you!”