#culture (158 links)
- Video games can never be art - Roger Ebert's Journal blogs.suntimes.com
"I remain convinced that _in principle_, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form."
- afeeld » Cultivated Play: Farmville reddyeno5.com
This is brilliant. But argh, Farmville. "The secret to Farmville’s popularity is neither gameplay nor aesthetics. Farmville is popular because in entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity. It is rude to refuse a gift, and ruder still to not return the kindness."
Mesofacts are the facts that change neither too quickly nor too slowly, that lie in this difficult-to-comprehend middle, or meso-, scale. Often, we learn these in school when young and hold onto them, even after they change.
- h+ Magazine hplusmagazine.com
Covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing - and will change - human beings in fundamental ways.
- Maslow's hierarchy of needs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org
- Charlie's Diary: Merciless antipope.org
There is a cancer in the collective American soul — a mercy deficit that has in recent years grown as alarmingly as the budget deficit. Nor is it as simple as a left/right thing: no political party has a monopoly on merciless behaviour. Rather, a creeping draconian absolutism has cast its penumbra across the entire arena of public discourse, tainting every debate, poisoning and hardening attitudes across the board.
- Kigurumi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org
"Full-body animal pajama with hoods or hats styled after animals are also called Kigurumi, but do not have the same "costume" connotation as the full-body suits. They are worn non-commercially and are another form of Japanese street fashion. People who choose to wear kigurumi in public are often referred to as "kigurumin", and the consumer-level costumes they tend to wear are known as "disguise pajama"."
- John Resig - Eulogy to _why ejohn.org
I tend to see _why more as an artist. He used a wide variety of mediums for his exploration: Written word, drawings, code, and even music.
The procession of technological discoveries is inevitable. When the conditions are right — when the necessary web of supporting technology needed for every invention is established — then the next adjacent technological step will emerge as if on cue. If inventor X does not produce it, inventor Y will.
So what is the organisation's end goal? Bowdler puts it simply: "To engage people with science who would not otherwise choose to immerse themselves in the subject."
- Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule paulgraham.com
When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.
- THINGS MARKETING PEOPLE LOVE thingsmarketingpeoplelove.blogspot.com
It's funny because it's true.
- Skeuomorph - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org
a term used in the history of architecture, design, and archaeology. It refers to a derivative object which retains ornamental design cues to structure that was necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs may be deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar, such as copper cladding on zinc pennies or computer printed postage with circular town name and cancellation lines."
- Scope (Schulze & Webb) schulzeandwebb.com
Another brilliant talk from Matt Webb.
- Kiddie Records Weekly kiddierecords.com
Kiddie Records Weekly began in 2005 as a one year project devoted to the golden age of children's records. This period spanned from the mid forties through the early fifties and produced a wealth of all-time classics. Many of these recordings were extravagant Hollywood productions on major record labels and featured big time celebrities and composers. Over the years, these forgotten treasures slipped off the radar and it became our mission to give them a new lease on life by sharing them with today's generation of online listeners.
- Dear Dustin Curtis | Dustin Curtis dustincurtis.com
If the UX architect at AA.com is actually pretty good, then why does the site suck so much?
- National Theatre Posters ntposters.org.uk
This website contains over 650 posters from the National Theatre Archive. Beautiful photographic quality prints are available in a range of sizes and prices, supplied ready for framing and delivered to your door.
- tweenbots | kacie kinzer tweenbots.com
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
- The dark side of Dubai - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent independent.co.uk
Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.
#dubai #environment #culture #architecture #economics #poverty #via:tomtaylor #capitalism#slavery#middleeast - Dunning-Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org
"An example of cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it". They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average."
"Wired, [Albert Read] suggests, may not really be a tech magazine at all. "It's a magazine about innovation and the future, and should not be narrowly confined to technology in people's minds," he says. "You read Wired if you see yourself as a forward thinker or an early adopter." I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.
- Best Buy shows the importance of culture in the modern corporation | The Equity Kicker theequitykicker.com
It turns out that Best Buy has embraced the use of social media to empower it’s employees and reaped massive productivity gains as a result.
- Made By Many » Blog Archive » “What Is a Social-Media Agency?” madebymany.co.uk
The old digital agency model is not helpful today. Instead, the industry can learn a lot from social start-ups (like Vimeo - who I am in love with, or SoundCloud) and work as fast as possible, being entrepreneurial, pragmatic, and nimble [...] People in traditional agencies - ‘old new media’ and our cousins in advertising - say they find all of the above quite challenging - which is weird because these agencies are stuffed with really smart people.
- CR Blog » Blog Archive » The Designers Republic Is Dead; Long Live The Designers Republic creativereview.co.uk
Designers Republic goes under. "I’ve never liked that agency model - it’s not where creativity lies. DR accidentally ended up there in order to service bigger clients. I’m not being ungrateful to the people who ran the business side at DR – it wasn’t their fault. I’m glad we did it - it took getting there to make me realise that it wasn’t where I wanted to be."
- The art of noise refined - Times Online entertainment.timesonline.co.uk
Take a springtime stroll through the streets of Belbury. This provincial English town, created by CS Lewis in his allegorical novel That Hideous Strength, is also the imaginary home of the electronic eccentrics Belbury Poly. There are Tudor buildings next to modernist municipalities; spots of Arcadian reverie and pleasant public gardens with fountains and statues of nymphs; and, on the outskirts, green fields, unexplained crop circles, haunted woodlands and ancient stone monoliths dedicated to pagan deities. Listen to Belbury Poly’s most recent album, The Owl’s Map, and you’ll find all of this invoked by some of the most delightful electronica to arise in Britain since Aphex Twin, the Black Dog and Global Communication in the early 1990s.
- Web Worker Daily » Archive Busyness vs. Burst: Why Corporate Web Workers Look Unproductive « webworkerdaily.com
"The busyness economy works on face time, incremental improvement, strategic long-term planning, return on investment, and hierarchical control. The burst economy, enabled by the Web, works on innovation, flat knowledge networks, and discontinuous product
- Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too - Harvard Business Online's Bill Taylor discussionleader.hbsp.com
Looks like Zappos is doing things right.
- Interesting interesting2007.com
Interesting2007 was a conference that happened on the 15th June at the Conway Hall, London. This site isn't so much an archive of the event as a collation of the traces and remains it's left scattered over the internet.
- The Corporation Film: Welcome thecorporation.com
- Main Page - StealThisWiki wiki.stealthiswiki.org
"Steal This Wiki is a collaborative update of Abbie Hoffman's seminal work, "Steal This Book"."
- creativegeneralist.com creativegeneralist.com
An outpost for curious divergent thinkers who appreciate new ideas from a wide mix of sources. Completely random and updated regularly, inspiration drawn from - and relevant to - the larger creative world.
- Google Corporate Information: Our Philosophy google.com
"Ten things Google has found to be true". Classic vision.
"Science groups for young professionals who don’t wear white coats, like the year-old Secret Science Club at Union Hall, are cropping up in bars and bookstores all over the country." Great idea!
- Infovore » “What was with the pirates?” infovore.org
This Flickr support thread is a must-read if you’re interested in online communities, and in particular, how they change as they grow.
- The Penguin Blog: In Cyberspace everyone can hear you scream thepenguinblog.typepad.com
When we first started dabbling in Second Life we quickly realized that something interesting Penguin could do would be to bring William Gibson into this strange new place, a place he seemed to have predicted and described years ago...
- baby - blog.myspace.com/cursorminer blog.myspace.com
Baby - a vast parisitic cultural organism feeding off the love expounded in pop songs.
- <em>Das Google Problem</em>: is the invisible mouse benevolent? Tony Curzon Price - openDemocracy opendemocracy.net
The way Google organises knowledge raises fears that in the process understanding will be crushed. Tony Curzon Price identifies a problem and points to a solution.
- Creating Passionate Users: Don't ask employees to be passionate about the company! headrush.typepad.com
"People ask me, "How can I get our employees to be passionate about the company?" Wrong question. Passion for our employer, manager, current job? Irrelevant. Passion for our profession and the kind of work we do? Crucial."
- Digital Web Magazine - It's in the Details: Seven Secrets of a Successful International Website digital-web.com
When it comes to creating a successful international website, language isn’t everything. Many other factors come into play, all of which require knowledge about your target market.
- :: rogerebert.com :: Editor's Notes :: <strike>101</strike> 102 Movies You Must See Before... (xhtml) rogerebert.suntimes.com
They're the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat "movie-literate."
- Whatsonstage.com : Whatsonstage.com: Griffiths, Hurt & Stott Star in Stoppard Latest, 18 Oct whatsonstage.com
"Tom Stoppard [...] will be back in the West End this autumn. He’s written a new English-language version of a hit French play by Gerald Sibleyras called Le Vent de Peupliers, which will receive its UK premiere at the West End’s Wyndham’s Theatre on