Updates from September, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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co? okropnego
that somethingawful.com fake polish movie poster contest is much harder to enjoy if you’re (1) a big fan of polish movie posters, and (2) constantly flinching at the horrible translation errors
the titanic one was cute though
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technology to make you an important person
in one of umberto eco’s collections of writings he mentions seeing a man in a restaurant who during dinner would loudly talk on his cellphone about large (iirc mafia-related) business deals. the man’s intention was to communicate that he was an important person of significant power. eco then points out that the man got one thing precisely wrong: an important person would never be interrupted during dinner.
power is about being able to do what you want, when you want to, not simply being responsible for greater and riskier things.
i recently thought about this upon receiving a random internet alert. i spent a large chunk of my life thinking that to be more technologically advanced you need to be more hooked up, with all your programs reporting status updates to you constantly. in reality this does not empower you, just scatters your attention.
instead, i’ve now actually made an effort to disconnect myself and hide things away from myself. i have enough trouble concentrating without a periodic ‘beep’ that, upon investigation, will inform me that someone has become the mayor of a new eatery in foursquare. my phone and computer have no twitter/facebook/rss alerts at all anymore, instead i read those when i feel like it using web browser bookmarks. my phone now receives nothing that makes noise, except calls which still require immediate attention unfortunately.
my only exception is emails that go to my work account show up in my computer dock. that’s a work obligation. nothing else does.
technology should never interrupt you. technology should politely wait for you to look in it’s direction, then quickly, clearly, and efficiently say to you what it has to say, and when done move back and wait on the side.
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globalization of monoculture
one of the people interviewed for the Helvetica movie mentions that he thinks that the democratization of design is going to end the concept of “eras”, concepts like 60s being the era of modernism, 70s were a backlash, 90s were the grunge, etc. the idea of designers as a closed culture, one that shares influences, and all know what the others are doing, is going to be made obsolete as millions of people start teaching themselves the processes, going into it with no knowledge of the past, and very willing to simply trial+error until they get something that appeals to them
i want agree and disagree. on one hand we do still see trends, things like the rounded corners of the first wave of web2.0, which implies that simple hivemindedness can duplicate the effects of single points of distribution and design monoculturalism. on the other hand, how long did that trend last? one, maybe two years? and what percentage of the world was affected? it seems relevant to me, but a disproportionate amount of my design exposure comes from websites. that whole fad was probably not even a blip in the actual design world
i talked about the same phenomenon showing up in audio and music culture. i’m not sure if it will be possible for a genre, a culture, to start and grow into an actual world phenomenon starting from now. there simply might be too many people speaking at the same time for anyone to be heard.
counter-example: dubstep. counter-counter-example: dubstep. yes it’s a genre that is clearly different and clearly new, but on the other hand it hasn’t grown a visual culture, it isn’t growing very quickly, and i don’t think it has lasting power in the sense that the things it came from (jungle, dub) have, did, and do.
not that it really matters much to the average person. we will have helvetica corporate brands and 4 person guitar rock on radio, and the average person will be perfectly ok with that, because really, why shouldn’t they. you can’t worry about every damn detail of your life 24/7.
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helvatican
mi: “wow, i certainly have a lot of small stuff to do today, let me eat this, watch one episode of something, and get started”
netflix: “hey, i have a new recommendation for you”
mi: “actually, i got stuff to do so maybe later”
netflix: “it’s a 2 hour documentary on the Helvetica font”
mi: “i got to do shopping, laundry, move som… come again?”
netflix: “two hour. documentary. Helvetica font”
mi: “is it now”
netflix: “yessir”
mi: “this isn’t some indie romantic comedy that just uses that as a name?”
netflix: “no sir. two hours of history of modernism, typeface theory, and interviews with designers”
mi: “huh”
netflix: “4.5 stars for you sir”
mi: “well, it is only 9am”
netflix: “certainly is”
mi: “most places aren’t even open yet”
netflix: “no sir, they tend to open 11ish. 2 hours from now”
mi: “indeed… indeed…”good movie, if you’re into this sorta stuff
