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blech + culture   176

Why Are So Many Americans Single? | The New Yorker
"Most people who were brought up in the past half century have been taught to live this way, by their own rules, building the world they want. That belief—Klinenberg calls it “the cult of the individual”—may be the closest thing American culture has to a common ideal, and it’s the premise on which a lot of single people base their lives. If you’re ambitious and you’ve had to navigate a tough job market, alone can seem the best way to approach adulthood."
newyorker  life  culture  housing  from instapaper
6 weeks ago by blech
Space and Architecture in Battlestar Galactica | Mediascape
Annie Dell’Aria: "The architecture and design of the new Battlestar Galactica’s (SciFi, 2004-2009) narrative world mirrors the complex political, ethical, and moral questions posed by the narrative arc of the entire series."
battlestargalactica  tv  television  culture  architecture  comment  from instapaper
7 weeks ago by blech
Saving space junk, our cultural heritage in orbit | The Conversation
"Is the problem as straightforward as just doing some orbital garbage disposal? What about the historic spacecraft in orbit that represent our incredible technological and social journey into space?"
space  debris  culture  artefact  technology  history  heritage  from instapaper
7 weeks ago by blech
Will Self: Walking is political | The Guardian
"A century ago, 90% of Londoners' journeys under six miles were made on foot. Now we are alienated from the physical reality of our cities. Will Self on the importance of walking." Good stuff.
guardin  willself  walking  pedestrian  london  culture  from instapaper
8 weeks ago by blech
I want to be alone: the rise and rise of solo living | The Guardian
A summary from Eric Klinenberg of his new book: "the number of people living alone globally is skyrocketing, rising from about 153 million in 1996 to 277 million in 2011". It's let down a little by the lazy choices of who to interview at the end, but it's a phenomenon worth watching (and one I'm happily part of).
guardian  culture  urbanism  environment  people  society  friendship 
8 weeks ago by blech
“The Glitch Moment(um)” by Rosa Menkman | CreativeApplications.Net
Greg J. Smith / @serialconsign reviews a book that puts some media theory behind the glitch aesthetic.
art  culture  criticism  mediatheory  glitch  glitchaesthetic  newaesthetic  from instapaper
9 weeks ago by blech
Will Self reviews Owen Hatherley on architecture | LRB
"Hatherley is ostensibly a critic in the mode of Reyner Banham: freewheeling, spinning out ideas, theories and evaluations that may have their origin in the stony core of the built environment, but which spread to encompass most other aesthetic realms as well. Aesthetic but in Hatherley’s case also political: for it is the great strength of his writing – as well as its besetting weakness – that he aims for an explicitly politicised critique." Full of fancy words, and sympathetic yet still Self is scathing. It's worth a read, anyway.
architecture  criticism  politics  culture  review  lrb  willself  owenhatherley  from instapaper
9 weeks ago by blech
Why 2012 Is the Republicans Last Chance | New York Magazine
"Republicans are worried this election could be their last chance to stop history. This is fear talking. But not paranoia." On demographics, politics, and a strategy that bets it all on 2012's elections.
us  politics  culture  demographics  via:@hitherto  from instapaper
11 weeks ago by blech
Explaining Londoners | NYTimes.com
"If you had to make a snap judgment about a Londoner, how would you do it? Start with the newspaper he or she is reading." More handy hints are within this New York Times magazine article, such as "Frequent apology is one of an arsenal of clever tricks Londoners employ to obscure their true feelings and remain opaque to outsiders and possibly even to themselves."
london  nytimes  magazine  article  culture  newspapers 
12 weeks ago by blech
The Facebook Problem | Martin Parr
'The more drink is taken, the bigger the “Facebook Problem” becomes. You walk into a crowded bar or party, lift your camera and everyone in front of you starts posing and smiling, producing the kind of image in the past associated with the social pages in magazines, but now the stock that fills up Facebook." "The image is unlikely to disappear, as they have probably been photographed many times already that night on countless mobile phones."
photography  facebook  culture  martinparr  via:antimega 
12 weeks ago by blech
David Graeber’s Debt: My First 5,000 Words | The New Inquiry
Aaron Bady's fantastic review of a book examining debt: 'It’s an invitation to read the world differently, to see different possiblities in the here and now, and to argue not only that “another world is possible,” as the slogan/cliché has it, but that other worlds are present.' It's now on my (growing) reading list.
economics  debt  review  book  culture  thought  via:migurski 
february 2012 by blech
The origins of Instagram style · robinsloan | Storify
'How's that for a tagline? "Instagram: pictures of things that don't mind having their pictures taken."' Robin Sloan on what gets posted to Instagram (but I'd caution that a) you're seeing things your friends post and b) there are some photos of (young, attractive, usually female, often self-taken) people in the Popular tab. Still, worth reading.
culture  instagram  iphone  photography  robinsloan  internet  etiquette  via:couch 
february 2012 by blech
Flâneurism shouldn’t be easy | I Am Pete Ashton
"Our Internet dreams, it seems, have turned to shit.
"Except they haven’t. I don’t believe anything has fundamentally changed. The infrastructure is still there. We’re just overwhelmed by the sort of activity some of us were trying to escape. We thought there was something special about blogs and forums but we mistook the tool for how we were using the tool. The Internet is, in many ways, a neutral platform. You can use it for anything, and that means you can use it for mediocre sales nonsense as much as flaneurism."
internet  culture  facebook  flaneur  from instapaper
february 2012 by blech
California Dreamin' | MetaFilter
In the comments on a post about the removal of state(-level) funding for library services across California, this is a deservedly well-circulated comment about libraries and their role in providing internet access.
metafilter  libraries  internet  access  digitaldivide  politics  culture  california  us 
february 2012 by blech
The lull of the Shipping Forecast | BBC News
'The Shipping Forecast may provide vital weather information to sea captains and sailors, but some of the most devoted fans are those who listen to it for its poetic quality.
'"Only recently, some Americans came in, listened to the broadcast and said, 'Well, we don't understand a word of that but it was terrific. Could we have a recording of that to go back and play in our office? No one would believe us otherwise'."'
bbcnews  shippingforecast  culture  uk  radio  from instapaper
february 2012 by blech
Half Baked: The Trouble With Cupcake Feminism | The Quietus
"Twee and retro have been seeping into feminism for a couple decades now, gaining potency. It’s all about cute dresses, felten rosettes from Etsy, knitting, kittens, vintage lamps shaped like owls, Lesley Gore. And yes - a lot of cupcakes." This reminds me of a phrase coined by Ken MacLeod in The Star Fraction: "femininism". Anyway, possibly worth a look.
feminism  cupcakes  femininism  gender  politics  culture 
february 2012 by blech
Resilience vs. Anticipation | Dynamist.com
Virginia Postrel: "Eventually, all the theories wind up there, at the one thing that makes Silicon Valley unlike Boston, or Austin, or Seattle, the one thing they can never hope to copy: It's the weather. The weather in the valley is perfect. Not temperate, not tolerable, not good. Perfect. Month after month after month of sunny days."
sanfrancisco  bayarea  siliconvalley  boston  culture  economy  startups  via:ldanderson  from instapaper
february 2012 by blech
#shitsiskosays | Charlie's Diary
A guest post from Cat Valente on why Star Trek (with particular reference to Deep Space Nine) looks not like the future, but the not-so-recent past.
sciencefiction  startrek  culture  future  prediction  from instapaper
february 2012 by blech
The Death of the Cyberflâneur | NYTimes.com
"Transcending its original playful identity, it’s no longer a place for strolling — it’s a place for getting things done. Hardly anyone “surfs” the Web anymore." A thoughtful essay by Evgeny Morozov that captures some of my dislike for the modern web. (Having said that, on editing my pinboard bookmarks, I find a disturbing number recently are from the NYT. So much for me flaneuring.)
nytimes  web  culture  flâneur  paris  history  internet  facebook  comment  from instapaper
february 2012 by blech
In Search of the Elusive Definition of Heterosexuality | NYTimes.com
"it was coined in Germany only in the second half of the 19th century and was first used in English several decades later with the classical sense of “hetero” (“other, different”), making it initially a term of opprobrium. Only in the first decades of the 20th century did it settle into its present niche, cushioned with overtones of romance, pleasure, health and normalcy."
nytimes  book  review  heterosexuality  history  culture  gender  hanneblank  abigailzuger  from instapaper
january 2012 by blech
Design Perfectionists at Home | NYTimes.com
The captions on the photos are hilarious, and there are some good laughs in the first few paragraphs, but there's a good deeper point in this post about minimal and perfect homes.
architecture  living  design  culture  perfectionism  minimalism  nytimes  from instapaper
january 2012 by blech
Test of Time | ESPN
Subtitled "in defence of a game that lasts five days", this article by Wright Thompson is a great read on cricket, its history and future, clock-time, attention and devices, meditation and mindfulness, and probably more that I've forgotten. I could pull half a dozen quotes from it but I think the point of the article is that it's worth taking the time to do something properly, so set aside half an hour and read this.
cricket  time  sport  meditation  culture  communication  from instapaper
december 2011 by blech
You Say You Want a Devolution? | Vanity Fair
"For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new."
newaesthetic  design  technology  culture  via:stml  from instapaper
december 2011 by blech
'Thelma & Louise': The Last Great Film About Women | The Atlantic
Raina Lipsitz: [[ "This movie would never get made today," sighed one of the panelists, and the audience members murmured their assent. It's shocking enough that it was distributed in 1991, but at least back then American women were experiencing something like momentum ]]
film  feminism  culture  bechdeltest  via:candacep 
december 2011 by blech
A Point of View: The euro's strange stories | BBC News
"With the euro in turmoil, writer and academic Mary Beard explores the odd tales from myth and history told on the currency's coins." The rape of Europa by Zeus and other stories.
bbc  news  comment  marybeard  coins  currency  design  culture  stories  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
The end of an era: The Yahoo! billboard comes down | The San Francisco Egotist
"It’s been a San Francisco icon for more than a decade. It’s graced our skyline through the dot.com boom and bust. And it’s one of the most recognizable pieces of advertising the city has seen in a long time. But the San Francisco Egotist has learned that in two weeks, the Yahoo! billboard will be no longer."
sanfrancisco  yahoo  billboard  advert  culture  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
V for Vendetta mask is a symbol of festive citizenship | guardian.co.uk
"For many observers, the V for Vendetta mask has nothing to do with a Jacobean conspirator or a modern comic-book slash movie. It is just a very strange mask. It has taken on a life of its own, and its meaning is not fixed by its origins."
guardian  vforvendetta  guyfawkes  anonymous  politics  culture  signs  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
Accessibility | The Memory Clearing House
"Why doesn’t the British Library have a greasy spoon in it? This is, believe it or not, a serious question."
britishlibrary  library  food  culture  accessibility  via:mondoagogo  from instapaper
november 2011 by blech
Women And Children First: Technology And Moral Panic | WSJ
"Why is it that some technologies cause moral panic and others don’t? Why was the introduction of electricity seen as a terrible thing, while nobody cared much about the fountain pen?"
technology  culture  history  privacy  society  children  from delicious
july 2011 by blech
All Real Atemporal Stuff. No Authenticity | POSZU
"Using a word like “nostalgia” is such a desperate sign of being out of touch, out of date, and so awfully-temporal in an atemporal time. “Nostalgia” assumes that there still was a temporal order in which someone could purposefully choose to “rewind”. It implies someone wants to “turn back a clock”, as if all our “wrist watches” weren’t synced to regulated network time via cell phone towers."
photography  culture  history  art  nostalgia  atemporality  from delicious
june 2011 by blech
The Faux-Vintage Photo: Full Essay | Cyborgology
"We have associated authenticity with the style of a vintage photo because, previously, vintage photos were actually vintage. They stood the test of time, they described a world past, and, as such, they earned a sense of importance."
photography  design  culture  art  hipstamatic  atemporality  nostalgia  from delicious
june 2011 by blech
How early Twitter decisions led to Weiner's downfall | CNN
"To receive their [DMs], he had to follow them in return" "These new followers seemed out of place among the politicians, journalists, and celebrities on his list" "He made a common mistake between a direct private message and a public reply, and sent the picture out to the tens of thousands of people". File under 'tools shape culture'.
twitter  politics  privacy  communication  culture  from delicious
june 2011 by blech
Total recall: why retromania is all the rage | Music | The Guardian
From synth pop to Hollywood remakes to collecting manual typewriters, we're busy plundering the past. But why the fatal attraction?
guardian  history  culture  nostalgia  photography  music  simonreynolds  from instapaper
june 2011 by blech
Nanolaw with Daughter (Ftrain.com)
A story about privacy, law, the internet, and the future. Go and read it (if you haven't already).
technology  culture  law  internet  sciencefiction  shortstory  from instapaper
may 2011 by blech
So long overnight TV. And thanks for all the late night poker and big brown ties | Television & radio | The Guardian
"One of the important things about telly was that sometimes it stopped. We can feel nostalgia for the sour-sweet satisfactions of the cathode ray tube whining down to a faint white dot, then a spectral after-image, before vanishing altogether." On closedown and its potential reintroduction.
bbc  television  culture  closedown  night  from delicious
march 2011 by blech
Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You | NYTimes.com
The New York Times on the shift away from voice calls.
culture  telephone  communication  syncronicity  from delicious
march 2011 by blech
What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness by Clark Whelton - City Journal
“And he was like, you know, ‘Helloooo, what are you looking at?’ and stuff, and I’m like, you know, ‘Can I, like, pick you up?,’ and he goes, like, ‘Brrrp brrrp brrrp,’ and I’m like, you know, ‘Whoa, that is so wow!’ ”
english  americanenglish  culture  writing  language  education  from instapaper
march 2011 by blech
Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson | Edge
"By breaking the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things, von Neumann unleashed the power of the stored-program computer, and our universe would never be the same." George Dyson's short article for Edge may act as a sketch for his forthcoming book of the same name.
article  google  vonnuemann  alanturing  computing  history  culture  2005  from delicious
february 2011 by blech
Words on the street: Stephen Walter's city maps | Art and design | The Guardian
Last October, artist Stephen Walter and I walked from Wedding, Berlin's north-western suburb, to the shores of the Tegeler See
london  berlin  maps  art  walking  geography  culture  from instapaper
february 2011 by blech
Church Farmhouse Museum | diamond geezer
"Nextdoor, in two upper rooms, is the reason you'll probably want to visit soon. The museum is hosting a special exhibition devoted to Harry Beck, designer of the world-famous tube map, who was born down the road in Finchley." You'll also need to visit soon, because Barnet Council want to  close the entire museum. 
london  culture  maps  museum  tube  underground  exhibition  from delicious
february 2011 by blech
Clapham Common, Ground Zero of the Saints | Strange Maps
"This map, dated 1800, depicts the common at what may have been its high society high-water mark. These were the days of the Clapham Saints, a loose association of agenda-setting Anglicans."
london  maps  history  geography  culture  strangemaps  via:kasei  from delicious
february 2011 by blech
There Are Grocery Stores in Detroit | The Urbanophile
A guest post by James Griffioen pointing out that while there may not be big-box stores in Detroit, the city has plenty of places to get food (and not just junk, either).
us  detroit  cities  urbanism  food  culture  media  from delicious
january 2011 by blech
David Wojnarowicz Ruckus, as Viewed From Britain | NYTimes.com
"It has something to do with the ideal of the American Everyman. As with the military or medicine, so with museums, we are by national inclination meddlers. Europeans are not, which is why they have reacted to the Smithsonian flap with the same mildly appalled bafflement that they express toward American opposition to the health care bill. It all seems inexplicable to them." The NYT on Wojnarowicz, Sensation, Tate, the Smithsonian, and attitudes. 
art  culture  nytimes  newspapers  comment  uk  us  europe  from delicious
january 2011 by blech
The cuisine of Sputnik | Space Age Archaeology
"While the US military and government were grappling with the political implications of Sputnik 1, one of the ways in which ordinary people responded was to translate the body of the spacecraft into something familiar and edible.  The humble olive, with the addition of three or four toothpicks to represent antenna, became a symbol of the satellite." It's worth delving into the archives, too.
space  sputnik  food  history  culture  via:mondoagogo  from delicious
january 2011 by blech
Owen Hatherley: A flat festival tonic for Britain | The Guardian
"The new festival – especially if it gives in and rebuilds the Skylon – will be an exercise in nostalgia, in morbid and wildly inaccurate historical analogy, at a time when we desperately need an infusion of the original festival's socialist, futuristic spirit."
london  architecture  modernism  history  austerity  owenhatherley  via:mondoagogo  culture  nostalgia  comment  from instapaper
january 2011 by blech
James Bridle on Wikipedia's 10th Anniversary - James Bridle - Technology - The Atlantic
I was one of those kids who read the dictionary. Start at Aardvark. Would the Aardvark be as famous if he didn't start the dictionary?
wikipedia  history  historiography  culture  reference  education  from instapaper
january 2011 by blech
Our peculiar relationship with service stations | Motortorque
"We can all expect to have to pull into a motorway service station from time-to-time." An interview with the author of Food on the Move.
uk  motorway  architecture  food  culture  modernism  1960s  book  interview  from instapaper
january 2011 by blech
Wikileaks Exposes Internet's Dissent Tax | The Atlantic
"Horrifying as this vision is, it simply distracts from the main lessons of the Wikileaks affair: the increasing control of (relatively) unaccountable corporations and states over the key components of the Internet, and their increased willingness to use this control in politicized ways to impose a 'dissent tax' on content they find objectionable." A long piece by Zeynep Tufekci that sags a little in the middle, but which is definitely a worthwhile read and eminently quotable in parts.
wikileaks  internet  culture  privacy  technology  jaronlanier  via:@mala  from delicious
december 2010 by blech
Reap the rewards of letting your employees run free | Telegraph
On non-commissioned / 20% work, and how it's a good idea for companies.
telegraph  20%  companies  culture  via:russelldavies  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
Snow scuppers Cameron’s “big society” | New Statesman
via joemoransblog: "Nice piece about snow and the big society by Alice Miles".
uk  weather  politics  culture  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
David Runciman · Look… | LRB
"In a hung parliament, should the MPs who hold the balance of power side with the party that came first in the election, or the party that came second?" An interesting, if short, review of David Laws' book about the coalition horsetrading.
lrb  politics  uk  coalition  libdems  conservatives  culture  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
FT.com / FT Magazine - The world needs French lessons
joemoransblog: Another great piece by Simon Kuper, this time about the French: http://tinyurl.com/32u5jg8
ft  france  culture  language  work  from:instapaper  via:@joemoransblog  from instapaper
december 2010 by blech
The politician’s handbook to East London | designswarm
Four plausible reasons why the East London Tech City initiative might fail. "Stratford isn’t near Old Street" "Creative people are poor" "Creative and tech people like their food and coffee" "Silicon Valley can’t clone iself"
london  siliconvalley  siliconleavalley?  eastlondon  technology  culture  startups  from delicious
november 2010 by blech
The Myth of Charter Schools by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books
gnat: Fascinating NY Times piece on public education. http://j.mp/9j4Fb8
us  education  politics  school  documentary  review  culture  via:@gnat  from instapaper
november 2010 by blech
On the Telephone | Lee Maguire
"In real life, the phone boxes have become invisible in terms of utility. Billboards with a shape historically determined. Vestigial street-furniture. Bizarro morris columns." Lee on telephone boxes.
telephone  technology  architecture  everydaylife  culture  hardware  comment  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
Correspondent's diary: Ascension Island | The Economist
Speaking of Ascension, this Economist correspondent's diary (annoyingly, reverse-chronological) is well worth a read. "Ascension Island turns on its head the old sailors’ folklore about islands that move from place to place. It sits still, but the world shifts around it in a way that sometimes, unexpectedly, put Ascension Island between an A and a B that people want to get to."
economist  article  islands  uk  culture  from delicious
october 2010 by blech
A unified theory of New York biking | Analysis & Opinion |
An interesting piece on cycling in cities that aren't designd for it (it's written for NYC but I expect it applies to most British cities (like London), as well as, say, SF. "Cyclists get no respect as road users. Instead, tragically, they’re treated like pedestrians." It's also self-reinforcing: "Bikes can and should behave much more like cars than pedestrians." "[Cyclists are] still in the human-powered mindset of pedestrians, who feel pretty much completely unconstrained by rules."
bicycle  nyc  london  culture  traffic  pedestrians  motoring  via:philgyford  from delicious
september 2010 by blech
Goodbye London - Radical Art and Politics in the Seventies | NGBK
"Sombre photographs by Jon Savage and Homer Sykes show entire neighbourhoods of London that stood empty due to speculation, but also document the development of growing protest movements that generated new forms of solidarity. In addition to the squatting movement, the exhibition looks at the gay movement, feminism, industrial disputes and solidarity with international liberation struggles."
berlin  london  exhibition  art  photography  employment  politics  culture  todo/done  from delicious
august 2010 by blech
Annals of Science: Numbers Guy | The New Yorker
I was reminded of this today on Twitter, but I don't seem to have a bookmark, so: on mathematics, with an interesting bit about how the differences in how languages render numbers affecting the speed on which we learn numeracy.
mathematics  newyorker  culture  education  language  science  via:russelldavies  from delicious
june 2010 by blech
Defending the German language | The Economist
"In the fight against English, France is famously out in front. Now Germany is joining in. Guido Westerwelle, its foreign minister, has begun a campaign to promote German as the “language of ideas.”" "When Germany’s Lena Meyer-Landrut takes to the Eurovision stage on May 29th to sing “Satellite” in English, purists will cringe. Walter Krämer of the Verein Deutsche Sprache (German Language Association) blames Hollywood."
germany  german  language  economist  culture  from delicious
may 2010 by blech
How the English breakfast has changed | Times Online
"What do the once-traditional fried breakfasts on offer around Britain say about how our cultural landscape is changing?" A very good read.
times  food  culture  fullenglish  breakfast  via:antimega  from delicious
april 2010 by blech
Fortress America, London SW4 | Warren Ellis
On the proposed US Embassy in Battersea: "It's a fortress with a fucking moat". (It's worth clicking through to the Guardian for their belaboured pun headline and the either ironic or wrongheaded Glancey commentary.)
architecture  uk  london  us  culture  design  politics 
february 2010 by blech
Clive Thompson: Park the Car, Take the Bus | Magazine
"We should change our focus to the other side of the equation and curtail not the texting but the driving. This may sound a bit facetious, but I’m serious. When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they’re doing is texting? How do we free them up so they can text without needing to worry about driving? The answer, of course, is public transit."
sms  culture  us  europe  transport  wired  comment 
february 2010 by blech
New content for a new device | Snarkmarket
"Apple: you did not invent a magical and revolutionary device so we could read books in ePub format. Think about what the iPad really is! It’s the greatest canvas for media ever invented. It’s colorful, tactile, powerful, and programmable. It can display literally any thing you can imagine; it can add sound and music; and it can feel you touching it." A call to arms.
apple  ipad  design  books  media  culture  content  via:infovore 
january 2010 by blech
Micropatronage and the virtuous paywall | Lee Maguire
Interesting thoughts on news on the web. "What if there was a paywall scheme for news that was compatible with the customs and values of the current network-news consumer?" Lee asks, before going on to outline a scheme.
news  newspapers  internet  sharing  curation  culture 
january 2010 by blech
Guardian editor hits back at paywalls | The Guardian
"Delivering the 2010 Hugh Cudlipp Lecture today, Rusbridger said that universal charging for newspaper content on the internet would remove the industry from a digital revolution". There's some well-argued stuff in here.
guardian  news  newspapers  culture  journalism 
january 2010 by blech
radicalcartography
"I'm not convinced that subway maps need to be "abstract," with massive distortion and nothing but forty-five degree angles, especially for small systems like Boston's." Well, no, but this unofficial design has a crowded central area which needs a pull-out (precisely what Beck's London diagram and its successors avoid). Meanwhile, details like the forced change at Ashmont is badly conveyed yet arguably useless information (neighbourhoods? distances? travel times?) is squeezed on. Still, maybe that's what suits the Boston psyche. (Jonathan Laban spends a good part of Soft City talking about how important neighbourhood is in that city.)
map  boston  subway  transit  diagram  culture  proposal  redesign 
january 2010 by blech
A Makeover for the BART Map | Design Observer
"Like a child drawing, the old BART map could take you on a flight of fancy, but wouldn't get you to and from work." However: "If I consider the old BART map in the context of the visual culture of the San Francisco Bay Area, I am no longer certain of its inferiority." An interesting piece touching on the cultural links between subway maps and the cities (or areas) they depict. (I prefer the new map, but then, I'm a Londoner.)
sanfrancisco  design  map  bart  geography  culture  comment 
january 2010 by blech
Facebook, Twitter, Privacy | Techdirt
Originally entitled "Zuckerberg: People Are Comfortable Without Privacy, So We Threw Them All Over The Cliff", this is a good read on the way Facebook's userbase is being driven from default-private to default-public, and the reasons for the change.
facebook  privacy  social  culture  twitter  techdirt  via:rcarmo 
january 2010 by blech
Everyday RFID | Anne Galloway
This post is, to me, an odd mix of the familiar (the injunctions to touch in and out, although only tubes, not buses, enforce the out part in London; the requirement to touch and not rub, despite the fact hovering should work) and the odd (a 25¢ charge to top up? Home USB readers to avoid that?), along with different capabilities (Snapper sounds more like a wallet than just a travelcard).
rfid  technology  culture  via:moleitau  via:infovore 
january 2010 by blech
Mobile-phone culture: The Apparatgeist calls | The Economist
A longish but interesting Economist article about the (apparently decreasing) regional and cultural variations in the use of mobile telephones (whose name itself betrays your regional affiliation, as discussed early on).
technology  mobile  telephone  communication  economist  culture 
january 2010 by blech
Hanging gardens of Barbican | click opera
Momus on the Barbican. "[It] has grown on me. It has its own charm. With age, it's becoming more weird, eccentric and unique. Yesterday, before running through the Brel show in the big theatre, I had a good rummage through the building." I think it does perhaps take time and effort to like the place.
london  barbican  architecture  culture  highwalk  momus  via:blackbeltjones  via:cityofsound 
october 2009 by blech
The Meaning of Photoshop | Subtraction.com
Khoi Vinh, slightly edited: "We’ve spent the better part of a decade and a half debating digital privacy, but compare the number of people who have been exposed to the sheer amount of manipulated, unreal and just plain fake imagery that assaults each of us every day, and the case for a more robust discussion about digital imaging looks like a pretty good one."
photoshop  images  manipulation  comment  culture  via:blackbeltjones  via:preoccupations 
september 2009 by blech
Peter Landin obituary | The Guardian
"Peter Landin ... was a complex character: a political radical, a gay-rights campaigner and an outstanding academic computer scientist." "Towards the end of his life, Peter became convinced that computing had been a bad idea, giving support to profit-taking corporate interests and a surveillance state, and that he had wasted his energies in promoting it."
guardian  obituary  computing  science  politics  sexuality  culture  history 
september 2009 by blech
Farewell to brutalism | Building Design
"It is hard to believe that it is five years since Portsmouth’s Tricorn Centre (1962-7) was demolished, to the sound of the 1812 Overture. Nothing has happened to the site, but the building’s busy campaigners have produced this affectionate celebration." A good review of an interesting-sounding book.
architecture  books  review  culture  1960s  via:cityofsound 
september 2009 by blech
meta reviews | loca london
Chris made a thing. It is good.
london  culture  art  reviews  re:chrisdodo 
september 2009 by blech
What’s wrong with eco-stunts | The New Yorker
"Living without a fridge, and other experiments in environmentalism. By Elizabeth Kolbert". Well worth reading, a dissection of experiments in lifestyle from Thoreau to this year.
newyorker  environment  books  review  history  politics  culture 
august 2009 by blech
End of the line for British TVs | BBC News
On the birth and death of the British TV manufacturing industry, with interesting digressions on the fact that we still make programmes and the future of the screen as a focal point for living rooms.
uk  bbc  news  television  manufacturing  culture  business  media  technology 
august 2009 by blech
Merciless | Charlie's Diary
"The subjects vary - crime and penal policy, healthcare, don't get me started on foreign policy - but there is an ideological approach in America that is distinguished by one common characteristic: words and deeds utterly lacking in the quality of mercy. There is a cancer in the collective American soul - a mercy deficit that has in recent years grown as alarmingly as the budget deficit."
us  politics  culture  crime  health  via:ohskylab 
august 2009 by blech
Fixed-gear or granny-bike: who'll win? | guardian.co.uk
A not entirely serious race between various bike "tribes" (fixed-gear, road, mountain, Dutch) comes out with a possibly unsurprising result: "Once you factor in the time taken to get showered and changed it seems that the tortoise really is faster than the hare. For front door to desk speed, the dawdler took the gong."
bicycle  culture  guardian 
july 2009 by blech
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