Deepthinking

Hisaji Hara - A Study of “Because Cathy taught him what she...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:59:11 -0500

Hisaji Hara - A Study of “Because Cathy taught him what she learnt”, 2010 (via Michael Hoppen Gallery)

"How many more social-networking accounts does one need? Things have become so bizarre by now that..."

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:42:00 -0500

“How many more social-networking accounts does one need? Things have become so bizarre by now that often clicking on a Twitter link takes you to a Tumblr page linking to some other site linking to… (You might know the same game from Facebook or Google ) What’s the point of posting the same stuff on five, six, seven different sites?”

- Joerg Colberg Conscientious | Feeling Social Enough Yet?

"TED attempts to present itself as fresh, cutting edge, and outside the box but often fails to..."

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:34:05 -0500

“

TED attempts to present itself as fresh, cutting edge, and outside the box but often fails to deliver. It’s become the Urban Outfitters of the ideas world, finding “cool” concepts suitable for being packaged and sold to the masses, thereby extinguishing the “cool” in the process. Cutting-edge ideas not carrying the Apple-esque branding are difficult to find.

At TED, “everyone is Steve Jobs” and every idea is treated like an iPad. The conferences have come to resemble religious meetings and the TED talks techno-spiritual sermons, pushing an evangelical, cultish attitude toward “the new ideas that will change the world.” Everything becomes “magical” and “inspirational.” In just the top-ten most-viewed TED talks, we get the messages of “inspiration,” “astonishment,” “insight,” “mathmagic” and the “thrilling potential of SixthSense technology”! The ideas most popular are those that pander to a metaphysical, magical portrayal of the role of technology in the world.

The way TED talks fuse sales-pitch slickness with evangelical intensity leads to perhaps the most damming argument against the TED epistemology: It necessarily leaves out other groups and other ways of knowing and presenting ideas. As Paul Currion tweeted, TED seems “unaware of its own ideological bias.” Let’s take one example. Take a wild guess which gender is massively over-represented as TED speakers (answer, via Tom Slee @whimsley). And TEDxWomen stinks of tokenism. Hint: It is better to be more inclusive through and through than to segregate marginalized groups into their own token corners. But the TED style aligns much more easily to articulating ideas that sell than ideas that concern power, domination, and social inequalities. Real cutting-edge ideas also come from the margins. TED’s corporate-establishment voice and style aren’t without their uses, but they are certainly not innovative or cutting edge.

[…]

Can a new wave of technology thinkers produce a fresh outlet for smart ideas not (yet) co-opted as badly as TED? If so, it won’t come from the well-financed centers of Silicon Valley but from the margins, the actual cutting edge.

”

- - Nathan Jurgenson, Against TED – The New Inquiry

There is a Disneyland feel to TED. A sort of creepy, contrived atmosphere, as if we are being primed for a peak experience or undergoing a secret ritual in techno-utopianism. And that feeling that great people are doing great things out there, so don’t worry: how could the world wind up in a cataclysmic catastrophe with such smart people working so hard?

But meanwhile, once the video stops rolling, the impending disaster — our world drowning in the corporatist exhaust of our global excesses — is still going on, and we haven’t actually done anything to stop it.

TED is just another drug, another way to numb ourselves to the looming ecological and political crash, another way to push the most important things into the background, for another 16 minutes.

(via underpaidgenius)

Jorge Ledesma - Emergency Door (via The Decisive Moment)

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:36:09 -0500

Jorge Ledesma - Emergency Door

(via The Decisive Moment)

theconstantbuzz: © Michael Woods

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:33:36 -0500

theconstantbuzz:

© Michael Woods

speedwater: photo by Serge Jacques

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:32:48 -0500

speedwater:

photo by Serge Jacques

mudwerks: The Smithereens | A Girl Like You

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:29:39 -0500

mudwerks:

The Smithereens | A Girl Like You

kvetchlandia: Robert Doisneau Danseuse de be-bop, Saint...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:22:22 -0500

kvetchlandia:

Robert Doisneau Danseuse de be-bop, Saint Germain-des-prés, Paris 1951

"All companies want profit, but knowing what you ate for breakfast or storing the drunk photos from..."

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:13:24 -0500

“All companies want profit, but knowing what you ate for breakfast or storing the drunk photos from last night only get a company so far. Apple is already making billions without publicizing the fact they have your drunk photos too.”

- Egg Freckles | Why Apple Does Not Need a Social Network

Scott Pommier

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:12:04 -0500

Scott Pommier

"If memory serves, globalization was sold as an opportunity to export the First World economy and..."

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:53:03 -0500

“If memory serves, globalization was sold as an opportunity to export the First World economy and conditions, not import a Third World standard for workers.”

- Armine Yalnizyan - Why we’re seeing the ugly new face of capitalism - The Globe and Mail

FUTURA LE SPECIMEN ANIMÉ (by Thibault de Fournas)

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 11:37:42 -0500

FUTURA LE SPECIMEN ANIMÉ (by Thibault de Fournas)

rcoleman: Urban Planning for the Future circa....

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:24:52 -0500

rcoleman:

Urban Planning for the Future circa. 1925

(via arsvivendi: via Urban Times)

"Sharpness is a bourgeois concept"

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:04:23 -0500

“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”

- Henri Cartier Bresson

Why Sharpness is a Bourgeoise Concept in Street Photography — Eric Kim Street Photography

"The marginal value of the last hour put into a business idea is usually much less than the first...."

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:00:03 -0500

“The marginal value of the last hour put into a business idea is usually much less than the first. The world is full of ideas that can be executed with 10 to 20 hours per week, let alone 40. The number of projects that are truly impossible unless you put in 80 or 120 hours per week are vanishingly small by comparison.”

- All or something - Jinesh Parekh (37signals)

Printed me up a photo book through Aperture…pretty nice...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:01:47 -0500

Printed me up a photo book through Aperture…pretty nice looking I must say and the quality is top notch!

postgradlife: Saw this on my Facebook feed. I think @vegasgeek...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:58:33 -0500

postgradlife:

Saw this on my Facebook feed. I think @vegasgeek made it? Not sure who it is, but it’s pretty clever.

-Malia

minusculus: At the Pasha Nightclub, Cooma, 1957-59. Photo by...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:58:02 -0500

minusculus:

At the Pasha Nightclub, Cooma, 1957-59.

Photo by Jeff Carter

Cindy Sherman talks to Simon Schama - FT.com

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:58:51 -0500

Cindy Sherman talks to Simon Schama - FT.com:

The American photographer on capturing the masquerade of daily life

"To me Facebook already feels over. I really don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Look at it this..."

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:06:56 -0500

“To me Facebook already feels over. I really don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Look at it this way. There’s lots of stuff going on right now that I’m not part of. That’s the way it goes. Me and Facebook are over. It’s going to stay that way. And if I’m on a ship that’s sinking, well I’ve had a good run, and I can afford to go down with the ship, along with people who share my values. It’s a cause, I’ve discovered, that’s worth giving something up for. #”

- - Dave Winer, Scoble: I’ll go down with the ship via Scripting News

Facebook is the new AOL, despite the market cap. But it’s headed for a hard landing for other reasons that Winer is pushing. Facebook will fail because of the imminent rise of social operating systems — future versions of iOS, Mac OS X, and Android — which will break the Facebook monolith to bits.

(via stoweboyd)