Tags: essay

Essays « Object Lessons

Fax machines, pop-up books, radioactive televisions, writing boxes, microfilm readers, nuclear bomb cores, cupholders, bidets, jet engines, index cards, wiffle balls, oil barrels, lightning rods, playing cards, air conditioning, hair dryers, wheelchair ramps, handbags, diving bells, slippers, laundry chutes, sewing machines, pockets, skee-ball, safety pins, chalkboards, tote bags, holograms, hearing aids, dollhouses, billboards, airports, flash drives, cardigans, beer cans, stethoscopes, text editors, mugs, wallpaper, towel dispensers, bumber stickers, staplers, microscopes, fingerless gloves, wire hangers, toast, and more.

I’ll be in my bunk.

Metropolis Now - The Atlantic

A collection of essays on cities and technology. Contributors include Bruce Sterling, James Bridle, and Adam Greenfield.

Everything Easy is Hard Again – Frank Chimero

I wonder if I have twenty years of experience making websites, or if it is really five years of experience, repeated four times.

I saw Frank give this talk at Mirror Conf last year and it resonated with me so so much. I’ve been looking forward to him publishing the transcript ever since. If you’re anything like me, this will read as though it’s coming from directly inside your head.

In one way, it is easier to be inexperienced: you don’t have to learn what is no longer relevant. Experience, on the other hand, creates two distinct struggles: the first is to identify and unlearn what is no longer necessary (that’s work, too). The second is to remain open-minded, patient, and willing to engage with what’s new, even if it resembles a new take on something you decided against a long time ago.

I could just keep quoting the whole thing, because it’s all brilliant, but I’ll stop with one more bit about the increasing complexity of build processes and the decreasing availability of a simple view source:

Illegibility comes from complexity without clarity. I believe that the legibility of the source is one of the most important properties of the web. It’s the main thing that keeps the door open to independent, unmediated contributions to the network. If you can write markup, you don’t need Medium or Twitter or Instagram (though they’re nice to have). And the best way to help someone write markup is to make sure they can read markup.

Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities: A Collection of Space Futures – Center for Science and the Imagination

A collection of short stories and essays speculating on humanity’s future in the solar system. The digital versions are free to download.

Seeing Earth from Outer Space

A lovely interactive photo essay charting the results of what happens when evolution produces a life form that allows a planet to take selfies.

Near Future Laboratory » Blog Archive » Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction

Download the PDF of this essay from the Near Future Laboratory and wallow in the sci-fi/tech/design goodness.

George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”, 1946

A beautifully marked up and typeset copy of George Orwell's classic essay.

Skeptic: The Magazine: Featured Article

A good, if somewhat dispiriting, overview of Artificial Intelligence. (There's some nice typesetting on this page)

Star Wars: Episodes I-VI - The greatest postmodern art film ever. By Aidan Wasley

What if the Force isn't a plot device... what if the Force is the plot?