Balkanisation Writing, printing and the internet give a false sense of security about the permanence of culture. Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead We perceive gargantuan change and revelation through a prism of the ramifications and impact it has on our status quo and what we consider important, reasonable and stomachable. And by way of this relationship... More
Gaps Change happens in the gaps. Progress happens in the gaps. People who will be more suited to/more likely to succeed as the future pours back into us will be those with combinations of adaptable, varied, untitled skills and interests, educational freedom all stemming from/all existing/all at home in the gaps between the recognisable, the labels,... More
Assault the text Multiple reading (however slow and cumbersome) “Admitting that our lives are shaped by fictions…” At present I am reading John Grey’s The Silence of Animals and Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants. Two starkly different approaches to the subject of progress, myth and what it is to be human. To read about human and technological progress... More
Designing for Agent Experience The future isn’t in hiding from machines; the future is in trying to be recognised by them. @blaine For hundreds of years we the designers have been hunched over our benches designing objects and services for other people. Sometimes we have thought carefully about these other people, but often we have just worked away with... More
Blowing hot air through internet pipes People like writing about design. I think we can write about design forever. I think we can write about fixing things in design forever. People like fixing things in design. People like fixing things. User Experience Designers like writing about fixing things for users. There’s a lot of them writing a lot of about it.... More
In praise of Latin (from The Well-Trained Mind – A Guide to Classical Education at Home) I am not immediately aware of anyone in my Dunbar 150 who is or has studied Latin (or who are actively encouraging their children to study it). Classical education has to do with setting up solid foundations, with learning how to learn, with... More
Square They all went to the square. Every day. Without fail. They all knew without really knowing why that it was important. Something they needed to do. They couldn’t remember why they thought it was important – they just remembered it had always been of utmost importance. They just went. Everyone went at different times, but... More
The office He went to work in an office. An office much like any other office. In no discernible way any different from the many other offices he had spent an inordinate amount of his working life sat in the confines of. It was in a small office block in an average street pretty much near the... More
New Year’s Resolving Is feeling bad about something all one’s life anything to particularly feel bad about? Looking back over the whole year I have a tendency to only remember the problems, failures, troubles. Obviously many things over the year also went quite well, but at the end of the year I get stuck with where I have... More