As the world kept him thinking in turns so would the blank, empty, undiluted space in the upper right corner of his unimaginative American blog. It left itself for last - as if it knew it was much too smart for him - as if the search bar that had once been there was an overture to another space in time - as if that corner meant more than it really did.
Notes
Notes are the default blog postings – the thoughts that are heavier than 140 characters, more than one link, and simple enough to not warrant too much explicating.
Deconstructing Esquire
It’s no secret that corporate media mishandled the Internet. Sure they built sites and trumpeted homepages, but they never really understood, never actually stopped to listen to the culture that the web ran on… they never even realized they had to. To traditional print media, the web was just another output… another way to spread whatever content they had. They were totally blindsided by the transformation of the passive reader into the active user.
Julian Bleeker on Design
One of the questions that I wrestle with is the question of design – what it is, what it means, what place does it have in an increasingly engineered and technical data-centric atmosphere? For me and my main area of interest – the evolution of the magazine and magazine publishing – this is a particularly [...]
A poorly edited missive written on an iPhone while speeding through New Jersey on a train
Like hundreds of other new media douchebags I am – thanks to the “exciting” new WordPress app – writing this post on my iPhone. So – who gives a shit? I don’t really – it’s kind of pointless. Unless of course a meteor lands in front of this train I’m on is there anything that [...]
Not stupid, different. The cover story that Nicholas Carr should have written for the Atlantic
Nicholas Carr’s latest cover story in the Atlantic has sure kicked up a lot of dust – and for good reason. The article is a worthy read – Carr makes some great points and he is entirely correct about one thing – we are changing. It’s really a fascinating story – for the first time [...]
Don’t buy a Kindle – get a library card. A response to “The Digital Future of Books”
I’ve been on a McLuhan binge of late. Every day on my train ride into work I read one of the twenty pamphlets that comprise the collection McLuhan Unbound from Gingko Press. I won’t trouble you with the specifics of that – I only bring it up to set the stage for what follows. After [...]
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU
This video by Italian graffiti artist Blu is absolutely beyond words. I can’t imagine how much work something like this entails… I’m just glad that there are creative folks out there doing it. MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo
Finally something for you magazine people out there to think about.
While I hate to sound like chicken little – and though the print is dead meme is way overplayed – I had to post this quote from Steve Frye. In a sidebar in the current issue of Publishing Executive titled The State of the Printing Industry Frye drops this bomb: I think we need to [...]
Clay Shirky on Gin, Television and the Social Cognitive Surplus
This is a fairly short, extremely relevant speech given by Clay Shirky at the Web 2.0 conference on April 23, 2008. It’s an absolute must view if you want to understand the ongoing shift from passive to active, participatory media. I also highly recommend Shirky’s latest book Here Comes Everybody for the same reason. The [...]
My vote’s a bet in a football pool, five on the red, six on the blue.
Wake up fool there’s no time for a shouting match. That’s the next line after the headline of this post as it sits in Mike Doughty’s sublime anti-war tune Fort Hood. Embedded above is the newly released video for that sweet, sorrowful, hopeful song. It’s up on Youtube and it should be shared. But why [...]
I’ve got my shoes on backwards, that’s all
An interesting video by my friends William Mallory and Jessica Licciardello made it’s way into my inbox today. It’s the video for the song “Shoes” (a catchy romp if there ever was one) off of William’s latest album I was Never Here. If you like white rabbit LSD freakout visuals with a good pop music [...]
Listening To
- Phil Lesh & Friends – Viola Lee Blues (v1) > Jam >
- Joseph Arthur & the Lonely Astronauts – Lonely Astronaut
- Frank Sinatra – Put Your Dreams Away
- Grateful Dead – Easy Wind
- moe. – Kidstoys
- Deer Tick – Not So Dense
- Oasis – Go Let It Out
- R.E.M. – Maps And Legends [Live At The Olympia]
- Umphrey's McGee – Believe The Lie
- Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey – Perfect Wife's Flannel PJ's
