New Now Know How

"Why wasn’t I consulted,” which I abbreviate as WWIC, is the fundamental question of the web...."

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:23:48 +1000

““Why wasn’t I consulted,” which I abbreviate as WWIC, is the fundamental question of the web. It is the rule from which other rules are derived. Humans have a fundamental need to be consulted, engaged, to exercise their knowledge (and thus power), and no other medium that came before has been able to tap into that as effectively.”

- The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com)

Something to keep in mind with all the teeth-gnashing over the Flickr re-design (which I quite like) and the Tumblr acquisition.

codingconduct: A/B, A Manifesto (on critical design) –– by...

Sun, 19 May 2013 08:28:50 +1000

codingconduct:

A/B, A Manifesto (on critical design) –– by Dunne & Raby

Yes to all of this except for “design as medium” because I distrust _X as Y_ constructions.

browncar: Chevy Vega GT Look, I know the Vega is a joke. But...

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:58:08 +1000

browncar:

Chevy Vega GT

Look, I know the Vega is a joke. But from here in the antipodes all I see is a Torana-that-never-was that needs a honking great V8 and a ducktail spoiler.

/via The ‘Pedia.

The Brown Car Blog is back. With a vengeance.

"They want everything; their ambition is boundless."

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:52:08 +1000

“They want everything; their ambition is boundless.”

- Chairman Gruber, on Google.

Viral James Mattis Email About Reading

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:00:10 +1000

Viral James Mattis Email About Reading:

In the first 4th year industrial design class of the year, my colleague always asks the students if they read any books over the year break. Any books at all. Maybe 30-50% have. Then she asks if they’ve read fiction over the break. Very few.

Hmmm…

"It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 19:00:12 +1000

“It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.”

- Comment: Down with meritocracy | Politics | The Guardian

Early career research: the power of 'no' | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:00:13 +1000

Early career research: the power of 'no' | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional:

Some 20 years before I visited Brazil, paleontologist Jack Homer looked at his own work patterns, building a model based on differential equations to explain how working long and erratic hours led to an overall decrease in productivity. The story I heard was that Homer was supposed to be on a summer break and suffering from burnout when he did the work. So not only did Homer show us that putting too many things on your to-do list is bad for productivity, he is also anecdotal evidence that researchers were workaholics long before the growth of the publish-or-perish mentality.

natgeofound: Apprentice air traffic controllers train with...

Fri, 10 May 2013 06:22:12 +1000

natgeofound:

Apprentice air traffic controllers train with model aircraft at Andrews Air Base in Maryland, March 1957.
Photograph by Robert F. Sisson and Donald McBain, National Geographic

That Big Data Debate In Full

Fri, 10 May 2013 06:20:51 +1000

blackbeardblog:

“Big Data doesn’t work!” (post by somebody who has never worked with Big Data.)

“No, Big Data is awesome, buy it!” (post by CEO of Big Data company)

They both make excellent points.

BMJ Group blogs: Richard Smith: The irrationality of the REF

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:00:10 +1000

BMJ Group blogs: Richard Smith: The irrationality of the REF:

What this means is that universities have effectively outsourced to journals and publishers the function of assessing academic quality, an activity that many would consider core to academia.

Waiting around for the bureaucratic machine of universities to work that out is going to take a while…

"Kirk’s boyish cockiness is the character’s trademark, but he falters before the daunting Harrison,..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 19:00:11 +1000

“Kirk’s boyish cockiness is the character’s trademark, but he falters before the daunting Harrison, whose skills include killing a great many armed opponents and letting his fringe fall dramatically across one eye.”

- Star Trek Into Darkness Review | Out of this world good

Sounds like STID has more than a little fan service.

Just How Flexible Are Casual Academics? | newmatilda.com

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:00:09 +1000

Just How Flexible Are Casual Academics? | newmatilda.com:

While flexibility has become a popular buzzword in corporate management, from the worker’s perspective it is largely code for employment insecurity. University management uses the rhetoric of flexibility to shift the risk of fluctuating student numbers to staff. NTEU research published in 2012 found that since 1996, the use of casual workers to perform core teaching roles has increased by 81 per cent, with over half of all undergraduate teaching now done by casual academics.

A tight fit (by ten) Boring news story but those water-curtain...

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:58:48 +1000

A tight fit (by ten)

Boring news story but those water-curtain projected stop signs are awesome.

"Defense Distributed seems intent that their invention will somehow disrupt gun regulation. They keep..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:06:49 +1000

“Defense Distributed seems intent that their invention will somehow disrupt gun regulation. They keep ending their posts with epitaths like “Whither gun control?” This is a category error, the same mistake as the DeCSS advocates made when they believed that by revealing that the DMCA’s slicing between code and speech was absurd that it would make the law go away, as if the legal system was a rampant AI that you could shut down by shouting a paradox.”

- Controlled by Guns — Weird Future — Medium (via iamdanw)

"Keynes was saying economics has to do more than just tell us how the world works when the world..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:00:16 +1000

“Keynes was saying economics has to do more than just tell us how the world works when the world works. It has to tell us how the world works when it doesn’t — and how to make it work again. An economist who only says our problems will eventually go away is no better than a doctor who says the same of illnesses. This is not a call to ignore the future, but rather to stop ignoring the present.”

- This Is the Biggest Mistake Conservatives Make About Keynes - Atlantic Mobile

I sucked royally at macro economics 101. Squeaked a pass, when I’d got a distinction for micro 101 the semester before. When I read articles like this one, I see the roots of my enjoyment of sociological explanations in the stories macro gets to tell.

Status Flight and the Gendering of Google Glass » Cyborgology

Tue, 07 May 2013 19:00:28 +1000

Status Flight and the Gendering of Google Glass » Cyborgology:

When did mobile phones go from being symbols of status and power to being “emasculating”? Probably around the time they became easier to access than toilets are.

"There are many possible reasons why the MBTI is so entrenched in workplaces and promoted so..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 17:00:24 +1000

“There are many possible reasons why the MBTI is so entrenched in workplaces and promoted so enthusiastically. There’s the expense and training involved, mentioned above. It may be because everyone uses it, so people conclude it must be reliable, and thus its success becomes self perpetuating. Also, any personality type you get assigned is invariably positive. There is no combination of answers you could give on the MBTI which says ‘you’re an arsehole’.”

- Nothing Personal: The questionable Myers-Briggs test | Science | guardian.co.uk

It's because, not in spite of.

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:09:38 +1000

Yesterday I asserted that James Garner was cooler than Steve McQueen.

Dusty said:

Nope. He isn’t. Why? There’s a Chevrolet Vega in his past.

But that’s why he’s cooler.

Amazon and the reintermediation of the spectacle | Smethurst

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:00:15 +1000

Amazon and the reintermediation of the spectacle | Smethurst:

This is a brilliant article that just changed my mind about… everything to do with the web and service design.

The weird thing about Amazon is they’re always there but rarely noticed. The rest of the tech community is happy to stand on any platform available to shout their own praises. And the tech press follow along like adoring puppies. Every time Ed or Ev or whatever his name is announces a new feature the web lights up. Usually with adoration. It only takes an announcement of an announcement by Zuckerberg to trigger a torrent of praise / condemnation. And every time Google make a public proclamation… well at least Jeff Jarvis gets excited. Meanwhile Amazon just get their heads down and build the best online store and the best engineering platform and the best integrated service design and there’s barely a murmur. It’s all vaguely weird…

"Everyone wants to be a disruptor. But there’s nothing uniquely virtuous about disrupting, either as..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 19:00:16 +1000

“Everyone wants to be a disruptor. But there’s nothing uniquely virtuous about disrupting, either as a way of changing the world or as a way of getting rich.”

- Disrupting disruption: A once-useful concept has become a lame catchphrase. - Slate Magazine