March 12th, 2012 § Comments Off on The Internet: It’s like Real Life, Only With Buttons § permalink
Image via Wikipedia
the article is actually about SEO and designing buttons, so not really what i was hoping for, but i really love the title:
Every time I read about social media these days, I end up hearing about how social sharing metrics are becoming a bigger factor in everything from organic rankings to driving additional clicks from visitors already on your site. And it makes total sense.
via: searchengineland.com
… it expresses without hesitation the promise of the web, and what it actually is striving for – reinvent and emulate everything that makes us humans. just think of all the catchy buzzwords flying around past two decades: shopping, socializing, mobility, expression, gaming… it almost reads like titles of books on philosophical anthropology at the beginning of 20th century: homo faber, homo ludens, homo creator, homo socius… (full list)
if only we were more aware of the similarities and not reinvent the wheel all the time.
March 3rd, 2012 § Comments Off on ‘Code Poems’, code as art § permalink
I am always interested in ‘arty’ aspects of creative professions – when does design or architecture become art, why couldn’t entrepreneurship be considered art etc. code and software engineering can be beautiful as well, so this project si really wonderful:
Artist and engineer Ishac Bertran has launched a project that invites people to submit poetry written in any coding language. These code poems will be considered for publication in a book. A code poem is simply a poem written in any programming language including C++, HTML, C#, SQL, Objective C, Applescript and Java.
via: www.wired.com
i’m just a bit sad that there are no inspirational examples on the site yet, so I feel obliged to write about some cases where I have recognized ‘beauty’ in code before:
- obfuscated JAPH snippets are mind-boggling in sometimes very profound ways. my absolutely favorite is this piece of code, that uses only reserved words to print out “just another perl hacker” when run:
not exp log srand xor s qq qx xor
s x x length uc ord and print chr
ord for qw q join use sub tied qx
xor eval xor print qq q q xor int
eval lc q m cos and print chr ord
for qw y abs ne open tied hex exp
ref y m xor scalar srand print qq
q q xor int eval lc qq y sqrt cos
and print chr ord for qw x printf
each return local x y or print qq
s s and eval q s undef or oct xor
time xor ref print chr int ord lc
foreach qw y hex alarm chdir kill
exec return y s gt sin sort split
This image is a program code!
- esoteric programming languages, like brainfuck, are awesome, but Piet is the king of them all. I guess it’s not surprising that you can write a program code as a picture, but after you see it in action, it still give a sense of profound connection between digital and organic world.
- and lastly some blatant self-promotion – two years ago I started an online unicode art gallery, čšž.si, where I try to use only html/css/javascript basics to present the wealth of worlds languages and scripts, and where every ‘gallery piece’ displays it’s own source code.
March 2nd, 2012 § § permalink
Image via Wikipedia
now this is just stupid:
As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, “very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is,”
news.yahoo.com
my favorite primary school teacher once told us: “if you really understand the subject, you are able to explain it to anyone and at their level.” it has proven to me to be true over and over again in my life.
so all this ‘study’ might be saying, is that our beloved politicians are not smart enough to explain their ‘good ideas’. which is exactly why we need to replace them with a more directly democratic, hopefully crowd-sourced system.
if you simply assume that the current election systems are perfectly ‘democratic’, and you don’t like the result, that doesn’t mean that the voters are stupid, but that the system promotes other ‘qualities’ that good ideas.
meh.
February 29th, 2012 § Comments Off on Could crowdsourcing be a better way to make legislation? § permalink
yes! yes! yes!
Crowdsourcing has proven to be a pretty good way to accomplish things that require a lot of input from different people, including the creation of encyclopedias and the financing of personal projects such as movies and comic books. But could it be used to create legislation as well?
via: gigaom.com
but really, to actually get there, we need more transparency. basically, that’s the hope behind the open data movement right? if all the data is open, and real-time controlled using automated agents, then everyone can help on decision making. if all data is distilled to transparent chunks of information, then the politics is cleansed back to relationships management, without deceit or manipulation.
the challenge is not so much collection of information anymore, but figuring out when to present which.
February 18th, 2012 § Comments Off on Total Perspective Vortex § permalink
I just can’t get enough of this infographic.
It’s amazing, jaw-dropping, existential.
If you click trough, you’ll understand.
February 12th, 2012 § Comments Off on Why A Blogger Needs To Be Crazy § permalink
Image via Wikipedia
I would actually expand on this point, to claim that ‘to achieve anything, one has to be crazy’. i think we should all start fighting to redefine the word ‘crazy’, clean it of it’s bad connotations, more towards the proposed meaning from this article: ‘extremely enthusiastic’.
Are you a crazy blogger (do you think I am crazing for writing this blog post)? Before we start, let me ask you some questions: What comes to your mind when you think the word crazy? Why? Take a piece of paper and write it down. Do not, I repeat, Do not scroll down to read more. Just answer the question first. Are you done?
via: weblogbetter.com
now, historically, the word crazy comes from ‘cracking pot’, something that is about to fall apart. it’s fascinating how our generation is making ‘explosions’ a good thing. instead of thinking of solid objects, nicely polished, we prefer energy, as free and intertwining as possible. we are fascinated by Emergence of higher-order patterns.
we are becoming ants.
February 11th, 2012 § Comments Off on Markos on writing § permalink
Image via Wikipedia
I was struck by this formulation today:
Just a notch above a monkey » On Tumblr
However when I write, it’s not really me who does it. Writing, even when trying to avoid self-censorship (unsuccessfully), engages a different part of a brain than responding to an image or a passage of text. I write so I can think, but even when not, I don’t just type a Joyce-like stream of consciousness. I form sentences I would prefer to utter, but usually don’t.
markos.gaivo.net
I’ve written about the difference between retweeting and rebloging recently, mainly from the perspective of individuals contribution to the aggregate knowledge of the world. but Marko hit the nail much harder.
Commenting may grow into expression, but if it doesn’t, all three of these activities are probably distinct in my head. Just like nodding at a meeting, thinking aloud, and sketching an idea on the napkin are very different engagement levels – you can feel the brain switching into different mode.
now, interesting question might be, what happens if you don’t use the ‘narrative’ brain for a while?
February 9th, 2012 § Comments Off on Slovenia’s Ambassador to Japan issued this incredible apology for signing ACTA § permalink
i’ve tweeted about this, i’ve blogged about it, i don’t think we said enough. I also don’t think it was right for us to stay quiet until it was too late.
can’t wait until geeks take over governance.
Slovenia‘s Ambassador to Japan has made a quite incredible apology after she signed the ACTA agreement on behalf of the Eastern European country, as Techdirt reports. After being deluged by complaints, Helena Drnovsek Zorko apologised to her nation, but first her children, for signing the act.
via: thenextweb.com
January 30th, 2012 § Comments Off on reblog: Stonehenge’s great escape § permalink
to think that someone would want to build a highway under Stonehenge…
Today is a double landmark for the Heritage Journal. This is our 1,000th post since we switched to our current WordPress format and coincidentally it is also 3 years to the day since we did so. So we thought it a good moment to start an occasional series in which we revisit some of our earlier posts. We are calling it “As We Were Saying”….
via: heritageaction.wordpress.com
January 29th, 2012 § Comments Off on beautiful localized ad campaign in russia § permalink
Image via Wikipedia
From Russia with fashion: MediaMarkt 2010 calendar
MediaMarkt stores calendar 2010 is an exellent idea and perfect project! The authors made remixes to traditional russian images for russian fairy tales…with moder point of view! It`s the best AD-campaign in 2010, i think! Did you like this tales? =)
fashionfromrussia.blogspot.com
