© Polyphonic (via YouTube)
It’s absolutely mind-boggling to me that ‘Inside’ by Bo Burnham was released almost a year ago. But the dwindling of time asides;
After seeing the Special multiple times since its release and listening to the songs separately even more often, I still consider it to be one of the most notable pieces of art published in years. Not only is it an accurate reflection of the pandemic reality and the feelings probably most of us had or have to face as a consequence, but beyond that, I consider it to be one of the most spot-on dissections of (current) internet culture the entertainment industry has to offer.
As I have learned through the recently released video essay Bo Burnham, Arcade Fire, and the Infinite Dread of the Internet by Polyphonic, Arcade Fire –who have returned not long ago with a new single from their upcoming album WE, (tbr. in May)– have been criticizing the development plaguing the world wide web years ago, as well. Guess it’s time to give their albums ‘Reflector’ (2013) and ‘Everything Now’ (2017) a more considerate listening (again).
The philosophy is rooted in the idea that computing systems should “simplify complexities, not introduce new ones.”
The idea outlined in this essay reminds me of the wonderful concept of Shikake –”the Japanese art of shaping behaviour through design”– as well as the beautiful approach to tech displayed in the fantastic movie her and I wholeheartedly agree with its central claim; We need more Calm Design.
Made to Measure is an experiment that asks if you can reconstruct a person based solely on their digital data trail. Can you build a doppelganger of a person you don’t even know? Record, recreate, and replay the life of someone and their personality in detail?
[…]
Take an hour of your time and join us in the world of digital trails. How close will we get to the person behind the data?
How much does five years’ worth of personal Google data consisting of more than 100 000 data points reveal about the life of a person?
Using the online data¹ from an anonymous volunteer, the Laokoon group worked together with data analysts to reconstruct this person based solely on their digital trail. The result of the experiment is shown in an intriguing documentary called Made to Measure which is available through the dedicated project website —alongside different media libraries.
¹ the data Google is legally required to release according to EU laws
The Internet has been monetised by social media, by big tech, by search engines. Fuck, it’s been monetised by pretty much everyone. The whole concept of netizens and a community around the web, from the late 90s and early 00s, have been lost to the sands of time.
As made clear before, I think the world wide web –or at least social media, which unfortunately replaces the real web for way too many people now– is in a bad state this day and age. Or, to put it in the flowery language of Kev Quirk; The Web Is Fucked.
Don’t worry, there’s some positivity within his “manifesto”, too.
In the unlikely case, that you missed the current furor;
The Facebook Files and the insights shared by Frances Haugen made it clear once again how ruth- and wreckless –at best naive– Facebook (now Meta) operates and how well researched the negative ramifications of the social network internally really are.
Probably a good occasion to bring up Mike Monteiro’s talks from 2013 respectively 2018 again, addressing us, the people within the industry: ‘How Designers Destroyed the World’ (vimeo.com/68470326) and ‘How to Build an Atomic Bomb’ (vimeo.com/268704084).
Minus is a finite social network where you get 100 posts—for life. While you can reply to a post as often as you like, every time you add to the feed, it subtracts from your lifetime total. When you reach 0 posts left, that’s it. No exceptions.
As mentioned in one of my first posts and repeatedly brought up since then, I think social media is fundamentally flawed in this day and age, a sentiment Ben Grosser certainly would agree upon.
In his work, the artist focuses on the cultural, social, and political effects of software and his latest project, Minus, is his take on a social network. It shares some aspects with traditional social media websites –like a main timeline and personal user profiles, but every user can publish only one hundred postings in total.
You can read more about the fascinating project on the artist’s website or join the network yourself —something I wouldn’t recommend for any other social network.
© Kirby Ferguson (via YouTube)
Our creativity comes from without, not from within. We are not self made, we are dependent on one another. Admitting this to ourselves isn’t an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness —it’s a liberation from our misconceptions, and it’s an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves, and to simply begin.
As creatives, we are usually driven to chase what we think of as purely original ideas. While I was studying design, a video series called Everything is a Remix was making the rounds, offering another –presumably much healthier– perspective on novelty and inspiration.
A decade later, Kirby Ferguson is apparently redoing the series for 2021 and I recommend every creative to watch it —but especially those who are still in training.
I am on Twitter, still, despite my better judgment, and it seems to me to be The extremely unforgiving medium in my life.
It is risky compositionally. You can delete a tweet, but you can’t edit a tweet. You can add to a tweet, but it’s hard to improve upon it.
It is risky socially. Every tweet is an invitation for scrutiny if not consultation if not correction if not misunderstanding if not rancor. Forgiveness, even if we agreed it still existed in the wider culture, I think we could probably agree it doesn’t really exist on Twitter. (“Never Tweet” is not terrible advice.)
While Twitter still refuses to provide its users the repeatedly brought up and widely requested edit button, Austin Kleon has a point for Blogging as a forgiving medium —published on his personal blog of course. Reaffirms my suggestion to move back from the centralised social media structures to self-contained, more private digital spaces, instead.
To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform, which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self.
Earlier this year Caroline Busta wrote a comprehensive –and very interesting– online article about counterculture in the time of social media hegemony, touching on politics, technology and culture. The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram.
Over the past few decades, we have helped build a corporate culture that systematically prioritizes short-term gains over longer-term product health.
A well written, intriguingly designed online essay by Fabricio Teixeira, Caio Braga and Emily Curtin about provoking change through the work we do every day as digital product designers. I totally agree, the world needs a tech diet.
This dynamic hints at another shift: Even our most solid, real-world possessions are increasingly inseparable from the intangible and ephemeral digital world. Which means that as much as our relationship to digital possessions may be evolving, so is our relationship to tangible ones — and it’s not a relationship in which the consumer holds much power.
A great article by Dan Greene on The erosion of personal ownership in our increasingly connected world. I highly recommend checking out Internet of Shit on twitter afterwards to witness some of the ludicrous, unintentionally funny ramifications the internet of things holds when the current digital development goes bananas.
vox.com/the-goods/22387601/smart-fridge-car-personal-ownership-internet-things
The Accessibility Developer Guide is an initiative of Access for all, Swiss Foundation for technology adapted to people with disabilities. … The vision behind the Accessibility Developer Guide is to bridge the gap between providers of websites and users with special needs.
The Accessibility Developer Guide addresses a very important, but unfortunately often neglected component of website and web application design. Based on the experience of users with special needs as well as the knowledge of experienced web developers it provides help with the setup of tools, the basic knowledge needed for development and code examples to get things started.
We shape our tools and our tools shape us. We are a product of our world and our world is made of things. Things we use, things we love, things we carry with us and the things we make. We are the product of our world, but we are also its designer. Design is the choices we make about the world we want to live in. … When we are gone, all that’s left of us is what we’ve made. The things you and I make may not leave a visible footprint on the earth, but everything we make takes up space, creates noise, competes for attention. What do we want to spend more time with? What do we want to shape us? What nurishes us? What do we want to see grow? I think we all have an idea. I think we all have something we want to make for no other reason than we want it to exist. Something small but meaningful. … Things that nudge the world a little bit in what we hope is the right direction. We got to put a dent in the universe. This is a great job.
… a starting point for a more expansive, and more critical discourse on website design. The engagement of liberal arts, humanities and engineering present in the architectural discourse is more timely than ever. Considering and expanding upon these aspects when building and critiquing websites may help us fulfilling our responsibility as contributors to the global digital infrastructure today.
A very interesting and quite different approach to think of web design as architecture. It actually makes complete sense considering the ten associated statements by Malte Müller, though. Definitely something to keep in mind for future online projects.