"The price & delicacy of screens means we've learned to treat them w/ enormous reverence & care. We polish them. Keep them in cases. Don't draw on them.<br />
<br />
I wonder if this reverence was what led to…horrified reactions when I painted my macbook w/ blackboard paint.<br />
<br />
But that's going to have to change…We're going to be carrying them around, pawing & dabbing them w/ our fingers too much to keep treating them that delicately. I bet that means we'll get new aesthetics for screens & their boxes. More tolerant of damage & dirt. & if it doesn't happen w/ glowing rectangles it'll definitely happen when we get E Ink everywhere…Scuffed & patinaed screens.<br />
<br />
I remember wondering the same about cars - whether the industry would develop a less shiny aesthetic…it's starting to happen. There are a couple of cars round us with an aftermarket matte black finish. They look brilliant, sinister & subtle. It's a high-end, expensive thing…but I bet it migrates through modding scene & into mainstream."

"We’re in the pre- era of publishing and media. Some consider it the era of pre- digital dominance or pre- death of printed matter. Others hear the talk of change, clutch their hardcovers and shrug it off as a bunch of hype: the pre- not worth worrying about it era. Whatever we consider this pre- era to be, it’s undeniably post- many things that defined publishing until about ten years ago. It’s post- having to bend to big distributors. It’s post- ignoring the screen as a viable reading space. And we’re rapidly closing in on post- printing mass-market throwaway books (they’ll work great digitally)."

"As I’ve said before, we break stuff before we know what replaces it, and we invent things before we know what they are for. Maybe we’re now living in the future tense."

"And that made me wonder if that's why people are liking Newspaper Club so much? Are we getting close to some sweet spot where you get the satisfactions of sharing a physical thing but with the convenience of sharing information. Is that what you can get when you add Digital Sharing Technologies to Physical Manifesting Technologies?

"From the early brainstorms we came up with idea of a system for collecting the thoughts, recommendations, pirate maps and sketches of the attendees to republish & redistribute the next day in a printed, pocketable pamphlet, which, would build up over the four days of the event to be a unique palimpsest of the place and people’s interactions with it, in it. ... One thing that’s very interesting to us that is using this rapidly-produced thing then becomes a ’social object’: creating conversations, collecting scribbles, instigating adventures – which then get collected & redistributed. As author/seer Warren Ellis points out, paper is ideal material for this: “…cheap. Portable. Biodegradable/timebound/already rotting. Suggestion of a v0.9 object. More likely to be on a desk or in a pocket or bag or on a pub table than to be shelved. More likely to be passed around.” ...The Incidental is feedback loop made out of paper & human interactions - timebound, situated and circulating in a place."

[more here: http://magicalnihilism.com/2009/04/22/a-palimpsest-for-a-place/ ]

"I have no expectation of what happens next, but here’s a manifesto. Being interesting is as important as being useful. Making things that delight and inspire is as important as creating value. Old systems are crumbling; the best you can do is be nimble, smart and make some trouble.