"Writer and urbanist Brendan Crain writes about the role of new digital tools in preservation efforts. In the existing conflict between preserving buildings to slow the process of loss and the dynamic nature of people, digital layers can maintain a sense of urgency around long-passed events that lend the built environment much of its import."

"As I walked through the markets of Hong Kong, staring at jade jewellery & Angry Birds paraphonalia, it occured to me that I could order everything on eBay or Amazon. The foreign land’s treasures have been globalised to a point of total consumer disinterest. The only thing that was left to consume was food & architecture…

Could it be that When you are drowning in a digital culture that says that social is everything then you might forget what makes you special? When Amazon and every ad banner online knows what you like, what happens if you forget what you like. Anti-consumption…

When you can be anywhere, you have to celebrate where you are right then and there. That’s luxury.

True affirmation of identity and uniqueness has become tricky when you are constantly forced into relationships with “friends”, Groupon deals and “other people also bought this” prompts. Perhaps travel and food, as sensorial experiences that one cannot share, will become even more prized than they are now."

"By providing us with new ways to share what we’re doing right now, the real-time web also captures something we might not have created otherwise: a permanent record of the event. We’ve all been so distracted by The Now that we’ve hardly noticed the beautiful comet tails of personal history trailing in our wake. We’ve all become accidental archivists; our burgeoning digital archives open out of the future."<br />
<br />
"The current philosophy underlying most of the real-time web is that if it’s not recent, it’s not important. This is what we need to change."<br />
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"I believe we, as makers of online services, have an incredible opportunity to ground the things we create in both the present and the past, making them — and thus ourselves — richer, more beautiful, and more human.<br />
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But first we need to catch archive fever."

"brings us full circle back to “Web 2.0’s” origins in what Delicious creator Joshua Schachter has called a “memory platform.” …there are some powerful social memory experiences possible that aren’t yet appreciated by an industry (and public) preoccupied with “The Now.” The immediacy of services like Twitter, Foursquare, and Instagram is a powerful incentive for average people to fit journaling into their daily lives. But, as Matt Jones points out, in many ways “The Now” is the least interesting part of the spacetime light cone. Without deep access to archives, and compelling ways to navigate them, real time services are falling short of their true potential."

"I think a lot of the problems we’ve been experiencing come from the fact that no one embraces the miracle and amazement of the present. So many people—steampunks, fundamentalists, hippies, neocons, anti-immigration advocates—feel like there was a better time to live in. They think the present is degraded, faded, and drab. That our world has lost some sort of “spark” or “basic value system” that, if you so much as skim history, you’ll find was never there. Even during the time of the Greeks, there were masses of people lamenting the passing of some sort of “golden age.” But I’d never go back and live in any other time than teetering on tomorrow; this is the greatest time to be alive." — Patton Oswalt

“I hate trying to re-create a tone or a pitch. Saying, “I want to make it sound like I made it sound the last time”? That’s insane, because the last time doesn’t exist. It’s only this time. And everything is going to be different this time. There’s only now. And I don’t think a director, as often as not, knows what is going to play funny anyway. As often as not, the right one is the one that they’re surprised by, so I don’t think that they have the right tone in their head. And I think that good actors always—or if you’re being good, anyway—you’re making it better than the script. That’s your fucking job. It’s like, Okay, the script says this? Well, watch this. Let’s just roar a little bit. Let’s see how high we can go.”

"I'm not saying that the only people capable of describing or critiquing classroom teaching are classroom teachers. There are people who don't work in a classroom who know a lot more about my business than I do. I'm saying it's difficult, as one of public education's foot soldiers, to do much with inspiration. I don't have many places to put inspiration, certainly not as many as the edtechnologists walking away from TEDxNYED minds buzzing, faces aglow, and so it tends to settle and coagulate around my bile duct. It's too hard to forget that tomorrow I and three million others will have to teach too many standards of too little quality to too many students with too few resources. What can you do with this?"

"Artworks in general are increasingly regarded as seeds — seeds for processes that need a viewer's (or a whole culture's) active mind in which to develop. Increasingly working with time, culture-makers see themselves as people who start things, not finish them.

"Deliberately obscure, Situationism was cool...perfect ideology for knowledge-work generation. What could be better to provoke conversation at local Starbucks or company cantina, especially once Marcus's, which traced dubious red thread between Debord & Malcolm McLaren, hit the presses? Rock & roll plus neoliberal politics masquerading as leftism: a perfect mix. For the generation that came of age with Situationism-via-Marcus & dot.com era, work at offices like Razorfish or Chiat/Day was highest form of play. Enough pop-tarts for middle of the night charettes & a bit of colorful design ensured that work & life had finally merged in dot.com workplace. Or so it was in theory. The reality was Office Space. Today, Situationism seems to be more popular than ever, serving as the latest justification for neoliberal city. Instead of a broader idea of a collective, Situationism advocates for the right not to work (but just how will we survive? will amazon make free shipments after revolution?)"

"Flow, as defined by Dale McGowan, is when we’re completely in the moment, so intensely focused on the activity at hand that we lose track of time. It’s one of the most deeply satisfying and meaningful states we can enter.

"I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack...at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did...I’m not sure how much outward details or accomplishments ever really make us happy...happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued...If you’re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn’t where your joy lies. In New York, a part of me was always somewhere else, thinking of what a simple life in Japan might be like. Now I’m there, I find that I almost never think of Rockefeller Center or Park Avenue at all."

"Roughly speaking, consumers have two modalities: surging and dwelling. In the surging modality, consumers have momentum. We have a vivid sense of forward motion. Life is getting better. Each purchase is an improvement on the last one. Clothes change with fashion. The material world teems with new features, new things, new opportunities, new excitement. We look ahead constantly, keeping one foot in the present, putting one in the future. The good life is America is always a better life. That's the fundamental promise of the consumer society. In the dwelling modality, the consumer is not forward looking, but concentrated on the here and now. Now most of life's pleasure comes from counting one's blessings. This is a dwelling modality, because the individual is no longer in transit, racing towards a better tomorrow. Now the consumer is focused on what is good about what one has. The consumer stops anticipating and starts savoring."

"...those plans that allow you to leave half your life packed in boxes in the garage or the attic, half your heart tucked away, and half your imagination wandering the map in search of a better place."

Gerritzen's talk "Next Nature"...way that corporatism & nature will mesh more & more -- think of butterflies gengineered w/ corporate logos...heady mix of what-if and have-you-seen...manages to make my head swim every time I watch it."

Momus plays pervasive urban gaming hokey-pokey

"BERLIN.placeinplaceof.net is a web-based project which uses the weblog format to present concurrent and collaborative investigations and interpretations of Berlin, from Then and Now."

"At Internet Evolution we believe that the next huge leap forward in the history of the Internet is happening now – and the goal of our site is to gauge its likely impact on every aspect of life as we know it."

"I count myself lucky to live in a time where there’s enough progress and action to even discuss naming the shifts we see taking place."

"Suppose...you had the kind of society you wanted. How would you live...in that society? Start living that way now! Whatever you would do then, do it now. When you run up against obstacles, people, or things that won’t let you live that way, then begin