"Listen closely to James Brown's Super Bad; nestled in-between Bobby Byrd's keyboards and Bootsy Collins' bass line is a flaw. It's the sound of a squeaky hi-hat pedal. A squeak that nobody felt the need to remove – nobody felt compelled to record an _update_. And yet the recording is still wonderful even with this supposed flaw because – for me at least – it adds _texture_.

I strongly believe these bumps and scars – these moments of subtle poetry – are what we as human beings fall in love with. These amazing digital devices we hold in our hands shouldn't be an exception; in fact because of their Flatland like nature we need to make sure we add these often illogical empathetic moments in-between to our interfaces and so we can create objects that not only Beep but squeak a little too."

"a blog post by Tag Savage [http://sexpigeon.org/post/16729718345/path-puts-a-silly-amount-of-trust-in-its-avatars ] about Path’s user interface choices in their app. Central tennent: if a place is too pristine and planned, it can’t be colonized. Tag’s words:

"Path is pretty in the same designy way as our modern museums. […] These museums are very exciting when they open. You show up and marvel along with all of the other fans of architecture. Maybe you return for one of those nights where they stay open late and there is a band and drinking. “A great space,” you think. […] The art doesn’t get talked about so much at these museums."

Path is a monument to Path. It is no place to scribble in. I wish it longevity so that it might find shabbiness.

A tricky balance, to be sure, but one that must be navigated if a product is dependant on user’s content. Part of the product must be left undone to provide the opening for the user to contribute."

"Brene Brown studies human connection -- our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share."

And nostalgia, for all its trickiness, isn’t terrible, just problematic. It’s possible to have good memories, sure, or to segment and enhance the ones that were not really that good, instead of sinking into an overwhelmed bitterness like an inverted Benjaminian Angel. But nostalgia is not neutral. We need to remember, along with all the memories, that our lives in the now are partially cast from the look of our past. Maybe it’s fade and maybe it’s stutter, or maybe it’s different looks on different days.

"We tend to think of the pause as awkward. In speech, pauses connote uncomfortable silence, an issue at hand, and as communicators, we smooth over silence with fillers. We’re trained to deliver smooth speech, censoring “um” and “ah” out. As designers, as much as we value whitespace, we tend to fill it. This distaste for the pause — and the inverse seeking an always-on state — is a daily battle we face. We’re impatient with the pause, and as a result, we’re missing out on a great deal. What would happen if we become more comfortable with the pause? As it turns out, we can add by leaving out. From Edison to Underhill to web-based software, learn where the pause has power." [Something very brief that I wrote about pause a few months before: http://robertogreco.tumblr.com/post/626105538/hustle-works-best-when-paired-with-pause-time]

"1. Toska [Russian]: At deepest & most painful…sensation of great spiritual anguish, often w/out any specific cause. At less morbid levels…dull ache of soul, longing w/ nothing to long for…<br />
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2. Mamihlapinatapei [Yagan (indigenous to Tierra del Fuego]: wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start<br />
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3. Jayus <br />
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4. Iktsuarpok [Inuit]: “To go outside to check if anyone is coming.” <br />
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5. Litost 6. Kyoikumama 7. Tartle 8. Ilunga 9. Prozvonit 10. Cafuné 11. Schadenfreude <br />
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12. Torschlusspanik [German]: means “gate-closing panic,” but…refers to “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages."<br />
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13. Wabi-Sabi 14. Dépaysement <br />
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15. Tingo [Pasquense]: “act of taking objects one desires from house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them.”<br />
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16. Hyggelig 17. L'appel du vide 18. Ya'aburnee <br />
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19. Duende: “the mysterious power that a work of art has to deeply move a person.”<br />
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20. Saudade"

"Wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous & characteristic feature of traditional Japanese beauty & it "occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty & perfection in West." "if an object or expression can bring about, w/in us, a sense of serene melancholy & a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi." "[Wabi-sabi] nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging 3 simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, & nothing is perfect."

Wabi now connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, & can be applied to both natural & human-made objects, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks & anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness & elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object & its impermanence are evidenced in its patina & wear, or in any visible repairs."

"OK Do is a socially-minded design think tank. We tackle emerging questions exploring the roles and methods of the new designer. Our aim is to cultivate design discussion and practice what we preach – think and do.

We come from hybrid backgrounds bridging design, art and science with an interest towards future. Our approach to thinking and doing is simultaneously theoretical, practical and avant-garde. According to wabi-sabi principles, it seeks to pare things down to the essence without removing the poetry.

We operate through an online publication, events as well as think-and-do projects with public and private organisations.*

Our activities are based on interaction with an international network of creative practitioners and researchers."

"The right word is "unfinished." Think of cultural products, or art works, or the people who use them even, as being unfinished. Permanently unfinished. We come from a cultural heritage that says things have a "nature," and that this nature is fixed and describable. We find more and more that this idea is insupportable - the "nature" of something is not by any means singular, and depends on where and when you find it, and what you want it for. The functional identity of things is a product of our interaction with them. And our own identities are products of our interaction with everything else. Now a lot of cultures far more "primitive" than ours take this entirely for granted - surely it is the whole basis of animism that the universe is a living, changing, changeable place. Does this make clearer why I welcome that African thing? It's not nostalgia or admiration of the exotic - it's saying, Here is a bundle of ideas that we would do well to learn from."

"In an age of digital perfectability, it takes quite a lot of courage to say, "Leave it alone" and, if you do decide to make changes, [it takes] quite a lot of judgment to know at which point you stop. A lot of technology offers you the chance to make everything completely, wonderfully perfect, and thus to take out whatever residue of human life there was in the work to start with. It would be as though someone approached Cezanne and said, "You know, if you used Photoshop you could get rid of all those annoying brush marks and just have really nice, flat color surfaces." It's a misunderstanding to think that the traces of human activity — brushstrokes, tuning drift, arrhythmia — are not part of the work. They are the fundamental texture of the work, the fine grain of it."

"Finite and Infinite Games, a little philosophy book by...James P. Carse...“There are at least 2 kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other, infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” Society is set up like a finite game, with winners & losers. The point of this game is to climb the social & economic ladder...So we create schools that will train people to succeed in this finite game. We give kids test that they either pass or fail, rank students by GPA, & help them win a spot in an exclusive university...What if we created infinite schools? What if, instead of correctly answering question about Civil War, point was to have a discussion that leads to tackling ever more complex questions? School districts all have as their goal “creating lifelong learners,” but they disrespect that notion by treating school as a finite game to be won/lost. What would it mean to re-imagine school as an infinite game?"

"Is there a name or term for the aesthetic these blogs contain?...there is a definite theme & aesthetic quality in a lot of the blogs I read. But when trying to relate this to a friend yesterday, I realized I can't seem to figure out what it is or even quite how to describe it. It bothers me even more because this aesthetic is very similar to things I('d like to) wear, things I collect, how I decorate areas in my room, etc, which is likely why I read them in the first place. It's not just the vintage stuff, but that is a large part. There's a lot of overlap between them in modern things as well, & I think this combination of the two is rather important. So what's the name for this aesthetic & how can I describe/define it? And as a side question, are there blogs/resources where I can find more of the same? The blogs are: A Continuous Lean, The Material Review (a tumblr blog by the same guy who does A Continuous Lean), A Time to Get, Cold Splinters, Secret Forts"

"30 years in business. Open 7 days a week. Bread to bake, money to make. All those clients have worn out the floor, I said. You should see round the other side of the counter, she said. Come and have a look."

"A Continuous Lean is about things. American things, good looking things, well designed things and all sorts of other things. Sometimes A Continuous Lean even talks about people and ideas. That’s it, keep it simple. More good, less bad."

"*We’ve long had a term of art for old buildings that are ruined...“ruins.” *However, we lack a term of art for “ruins” that are actually buildings never completed. Sometimes they’re completed buildings that are never sold...start falling over before they were ever inhabited...*Another version is the abandoned, incomplete high-rise...In Brazil a skeleton framework of this kind is called a “squelette.” *Occasionally squatters move into “squelettes” & bring in some breeze-block, corrugated tin and plastic hoses, transforming squelettes into high-rise favelas. This doesn’t work very well because it’s tough to manage the utilities, especially the water...*It bothers me to use clumsy circumlocutions like “unfinished ruins” or “partially built, yet abandoned structures” or “stillborn highrises” for a phenomenon that is so common and so obvious to billions of urban people, so henceforth I am going to call them “squelettes.” They don’t have to be Brazilian, French, or 80 stories tall, either."

"Consumption = word used to describe acts of acquisition...of things, in exchange for money. Unconsumption is a word used to describe everything that happens after an act of acquisition...an invisible badge...accomplishment of properly recycling your old cellphone, rather than the guilt of letting it sit in a drawer...thrill of finding a new use for something you were about to throw away...pleasure of using a service like Freecycle to find a new home for the functioning VCR you just replaced, rather than throwing it in garbage...enjoying things you own to the fullest – not just at moment of acquisition...pleasure of using a pair of sneakers until they are truly worn out – as opposed to nagging feeling of defeat when they simply go out of style...feeling good about simple act of turning off lights when you leave room...not about rejection or demonization of things...not a bunch of rules...an idea, set of behaviors, way of thinking about consumption itself from a new perspective...free."

"Many in the industry now speak of the need to go from a world that had embraced a concept of "fast fashion" -- where dresses or handbags are designed and produced quickly to meet the latest fad and then thrown away the next season -- to one that embraces "slow fashion," where goods are made by hand and meant to endure for decades. This nascent "slow fashion" movement has taken its cues from the now-popular "slow food" movement, which -- besides emphasizing slow cooking methods -- has also made efforts to support small, local farmers and to promote the use of local, seasonal produce."

"Platform21 = Repairing starts from the notion that repair, as a creative, cultural and economical force is underestimated. With this, an incredibly rich body of knowledge, a part of our independence and pleasure could be lost. This situation is especially puzzling if you consider the global interest in other durable visions like recycling, and the cradle-to-cradle philosophy. Hence Platform21 = Repairing wants to create more awareness of a mentality, culture and practice that not so long ago was completely integrated in life and the way we designed it. It is not too late though."

"Too poor to buy cheap. That simple phase really resonated with me and has stuck with me ever since.

"So I've been thinking about how I can continue to projectise this product. And how this bag can have a 10-year + story. So I'm trying to add spimeiness to it and to use internet stuff as a memory aid for this thing. So, I've created a unique URL for it at thinglink, in the spirit of the skuwiki idea. And I've built a tumblblog for it at HMDbag.tumblr.com. That tumblr extracts things from flickr and delicious that I've tagged appropriately, so it's sort of self-generating. I imagine telling the story of the life of the bag that way, keeping it as a project not a product.

"These products have been made to last. So that one day you can hand them down to someone else. And they can carry on their little journeys."

"Accepting a certain kind of disorder and natural decay are paramount to good design, particularly in architecture, and it is the concern of an ever-decreasing number of designers. It leads to the kind of buildings that age with grace and evolve with time—not those whose illusion is so easily shattered. It’s sad to see that such obvious and accurate criticisms such as Tati’s, articulated fifty years ago, have fallen on such deaf ears."

"But you can pick materials that age well, show their patina gracefully. Formica being one. Leather. Wood. They show you that they've been used. And how. (And peeling paint seems to give you the aesthetic quite quickly.) And then the back half of Matt's presentation from Picnic made me realise that I get the feeling of patina from some web things too."

"now energy, economic cycles...logic for nuclear power, challenge remains for designers, landscape urbanists, politicians, engineers...best expressed by Basil Spence, original architect of Trawsfynydd station...question he asked in 1963:"

"a manuscript written on a surface from which an earlier text has been partly or wholly erased. Palimpsests were common in the Middle Ages before paper became available, because of the high cost of parchment and vellum. In a figurative sense, the term is

"GIACOMO MOJOLI: slow+design, a slow approach to design"

"An object should be designed not just for sale, but also for day to day wear and tear. With use, this iPhone should get more attractive, should become like a trusted and inseparable friend."

"*classroom = community of inquiry where knowledge emerges from conversation *thought is internalized conversation generated in the process of contributing and interacting with others in a social space *All members enter into a semiotic apprenticeship"

"Should touch-screen keys fade the more you use them? And if you lend your 'digitally worn' touch screen device to someone else should the keys appear as new?"

"Stain is a set of a teacups designed to improve through use. This project examines the assumption that use is damaging to a product (For example, scratches on an iPod)."

"This product challenges the assumption that use—i.e. scratches, discoloration, wear and tear—is damaging or bad. Designed to improve through use, the inside of the cup is treated so that it is more susceptible to the staining that results from tea dr

"I'd like to tell you about a new aesthetic term called "beausage". It sounds French but it's not; instead it's a synthetic combination of the words beauty and usage, and describes the beauty that comes with using something."

"What if they also tried to create a new approach to the exterior, one that was more about appreciating and revealing the character of wear and tear of driving life and that didn't have the instant, built-in depreciation of shiny metal?"

"I also dig the photo because it's a great example of beausage, the beauty which comes with use."