synthetic aporia(s)

"Just start something and be open to the lessons that you will learn along the way."

Wed, 01 May 2013 08:09:18 -0400

“Just start something and be open to the lessons that you will learn along the way.”

- The End of Entrepreneurial Design Great writeup by one of my students, Tyler Davidson. (via garychou)

archimaps: Sansovino’s Library and Logetta, Venice

Wed, 01 May 2013 07:20:27 -0400

archimaps:

Sansovino’s Library and Logetta, Venice

The IRL Fetish – The New Inquiry

Wed, 01 May 2013 02:04:22 -0400

The IRL Fetish – The New Inquiry:

notational:

workman:

The deep infiltration of digital information into our lives has created a fervor around the supposed corresponding loss of logged-off real life. Each moment is oversaturated with digital potential: Texts, status updates, photos, check-ins, tweets, and emails are just a few taps away or pushed directly to your buzzing and chirping pocket computer —

Re-reading this now. Remembering when it first came out last year. Considering this for a first reading in a class next year.

"The assumption driving these kinds of design speculations is that if you embed the interface–the..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:48:50 -0400

“The assumption driving these kinds of design speculations is that if you embed the interface–the control surface for a technology–into our own bodily envelope, that interface will ‘disappear’: the technology will cease to be a separate ‘thing’ and simply become part of that envelope. The trouble is that unlike technology, your body isn’t something you ‘interface’ with in the first place. You’re not a little homunculus ‘in’ your body, ‘driving’ it around, looking out Terminator-style ‘through’ your eyes. Your body isn’t a tool for delivering your experience: it is your experience. Merging the body with a technological control surface doesn’t magically transform the act of manipulating that surface into bodily experience. I’m not a cyborg (yet) so I can’t be sure, but I suspect the effect is more the opposite: alienating you from the direct bodily experiences you already have by turning them into technological interfaces to be manipulated.”

- Your Body Does Not Want to Be an Interface | MIT Technology Review (via zachrose)

howiechang: [website] Google and BERG design the future user...

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:39:30 -0400

howiechang:

[website] Google and BERG design the future user interface.

"Changing aesthetics: Shopping online for clothes typically involves scrolling through pages and..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:37:02 -0400

“Changing aesthetics: Shopping online for clothes typically involves scrolling through pages and pages of images. Mary Kantrantzou believes that this has lead to shoppers paying more attention to designs that stand out - in particular unusual colours or prints. She believes this has been a factor in the resurgence of print.”

- I believe it.

Soundboy: How the internet influences what we wear (via new-aesthetic)

I’ve been wanting to start one of these for architecture...

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:33:33 -0400

I’ve been wanting to start one of these for architecture students.

fastcompany

Come To College! Get Funded! Northeaster Offers The Nation’s Only Student-Run Venture Accelerator, Idea

Northeastern University has a student-run venture accelerator with $250k cash. Is this what it takes to keep kids on campus?

College is crazy expensive—and it’s getting more expensive all the time. Entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel are fond of saying it’s not worth it. But 23-year-old Chris Wolfel, who is getting his bachelor’s from Northeastern University this spring, found college to be not only a good investment, but the perfect launching pad for his entrepreneurial dreams.

For the last two years, Wolfel has been the CEO of IDEA, the only student-run venture accelerator in the country. Founded in 2009, IDEA offers workshops, meetups, coaching, mentoring, and most importantly, funding, all from alumni donors, for student startups. Wolfel and his team were able to raise $250,000 to help launch almost 300 businesses by students from every school across the university.

“Northeastern right now is one of the biggest hotbeds of entrepreneurship I’ve seen,” says Wolfel. He points to the longstanding co-op model to explain why—Northeastern’s five-year bachelor’s degree program includes three six-month-long full-time internships, so “people come here knowing they’re going to work no matter what.” For the last few years there’s even been a self-co-op model for student entrepreneurs to take time off to work on their own projects.

It could be said that IDEA is challenging the very idea of university education.

Is the major purpose of convening a university and charging tuition to allow students to ponder the good life or expand the boundaries of human knowledge—or to turn collegians into entrepreneurs?

[Image: Flickr user Steve Jurvetson]

NYC Digital: Project Connect: Hacking for a Better Web

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:23:23 -0400

NYC Digital: Project Connect: Hacking for a Better Web:

nycdigital:

Facebook, The MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla and the Family and Online Safety Institute (FOSI) are hosting a hackathon where developers, designers, educators, programmers and learning innovators will develop social tools — apps, badges, curricula, and other prototypes — that help make for a…

"The artist is engaged constantly in building anti-environments. (And, by the way, the Courtly Love..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:21:25 -0400

““The artist is engaged constantly in building anti-environments. (And, by the way, the Courtly Love people were engaged in making love itself into an art form.) The artist is engaged typically in creating situations and images that will vivify or revivify the ordinary scene. The ordinary scene tends to dull and numb the sensibilities. If you think of art as primarily concerned with perception and awareness, you can easily see why, when ordinary routinized forms tend to numb awareness, the role of art is to keep faculties alert.””

- Marshall McLuhan (via reckon)

darksilenceinsuburbia: Nandan Ghiya

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:16:06 -0400

darksilenceinsuburbia:

Nandan Ghiya

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:20:00 -0400

“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, “Human, All Too Human” (via adsertoris)

"Whether in Californian press release, panting media profile or prime ministerial exhortation, the..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:10:55 -0400

“

Whether in Californian press release, panting media profile or prime ministerial exhortation, the message is clear: there’s gold in that code. The public discussion of the “app economy” is where the politicians’ rote language of enterprise takes on the sheen of high technology, to potent effect. Success stories come round with obliging regularity. Last month was the turn of Nick D’Aloisio, a 17-year-old who slaved away in his bedroom over an app before flogging it to Yahoo for $30m (£19m). In every profile that played up his normality, and played down his investment-banker dad and funding from Stephen Fry, there was an almost audible sigh: if only more slugabed Britons would do this …

To which the honest riposte is: loads of them do, and it doesn’t get them very far. It suits both politicians and journalists to portray the hi-tech economy as a succession of heroic geeks – in which Bill begets Steve who begets Larry and Sergei – but in doing so what often gets missed out is the prosaic, vital stuff of how these companies make their money. Apple’s “app revolution” sounds groovily freeform but it is both tightly controlled and a veritable licence for the company to print money.

”

- Young appmakers can’t count on a job for life | Aditya Chakrabortty | Comment is free | The Guardian (via iamdanw)

filthyphil: Jon Dore on Conan, great comedian

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:03:05 -0400

filthyphil:

Jon Dore on Conan, great comedian

Yes. futuretechreport: Look Ma - No Hardware! Software Turns...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:57:05 -0400

Yes.

futuretechreport:

Look Ma - No Hardware! Software Turns Dumb Paper into a Smart Touchscreen

Fujitsu has created a spatially aware Fingerlink Interaction System creates an interactive touchscreen like system using objects in the real world - both flat surfaces like paper and tables but also curved surfaces like books.

In this way - the system takes “dumb” items and makes them “smart”

The system doesn’t use any special hardware, it re-uses an ordinary webcam and a commercial projector. It relies on image processing technology to work its magic.

The video demo shows how you can import information on the paper by selecting areas on the page to import as data.

The system is designed to operate on specific gestures and will not react when you make ordinary motions on the table. The system uses finger height accurately in order to translate touch. The system can also be operated by gesture controls.

Gesture and spatial input for PC and other connected devices have received a lot of press lately with the likes of Thalmic Labs, Leap Motion and the updates from Microsoft for Kinect - but this is the first that I have seen of a company that is attempting to use this type of technology to merge the real world with the digital world outside of a typical screen.

More from Fujitsu’s press release here: http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2013/20130403-01.html

"The creative process is just that: a process. Recognizing value that others have missed doesn’t..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:50:11 -0400

“The creative process is just that: a process. Recognizing value that others have missed doesn’t require preternatural clairvoyance. A well-honed creative process enables us to intuitively recognize patterns and use those insights to make inductive predictions about divergent ideas, both vertically within categories, and horizontally across categories. By understanding the genealogy of innovation within a given category, we can imagine what might come next.”

- Great Innovators Think Laterally - Ian Gonsher and Deb Mills-Scofield - Harvard Business Review (via soxiam)

fred-wilson: Back In Town - Wiretree not sure who to give the...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:48:14 -0400

fred-wilson:

Back In Town - Wiretree

not sure who to give the reblog of the week to on this one but i will call out Kirk since he posted it. kudos to Luke too.

kirklove:

Back In Town by Wiretree

Luke and I got to chatting and he pointed me to more Wiretree. Really dig their sound. It’s got a sweet Teenage Fanclub vibe to me. This just gets me going. I need that today. As always – thanks Luke. You rock.

emergentfutures: Self-assembling furniture ‘grows like...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:23:19 -0400

emergentfutures:

Self-assembling furniture ‘grows like popcorn’

Assembling your own furniture, after you have brought it home from the showroom, is a nightmare for many people.

So, what if flat-pack furniture was smart enough to assemble itself?

Belgian designer and engineer Carl de Smet is experimenting with a kind of smart foam technology, which he believes could do just that.

Full Story: BBC

emergentfutures: G.E. Turns to the Crowd for Help in Creating...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:20:15 -0400

emergentfutures:

G.E. Turns to the Crowd for Help in Creating Consumer Products

On Wednesday, G.E. announced a partnership with Quirky, a New York-based start-up that is a kind of social network for inventors, helping turn vague ideas into marketable items, manufacturing them, and distributing them through stores like Best Buy and Target. G.E. is licensing hundreds of its patents to the company’s community and working directly to help identify particularly promising consumer uses of these patents. The number of patents that G.E. is making available is expected to grow into the thousands in the coming months.

Full Story: NYT

softpyramid: Marian BantjesNow201016x20 edition version

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:13:35 -0400

softpyramid:

Marian Bantjes
Now
2010
16x20 edition version

Candilis Mat Building Interior @ Free University Berlin (at...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:59:40 -0400

Candilis Mat Building Interior @ Free University Berlin (at Freie Universität Berlin)