On November 6, I didn’t run out to buy a paper. I thought about it for a second. I decided that I have more than enough stuff and because newspapers aren’t archival. Because they are designed to be disposable, newsprint disintegrates over time. I asked myself, “why bother?” When the paper eventual would turned brown and brittle, would I ever want or try to read it? Or would I just log on to nytimes.com and look it up? Of course, then I thought, what nytimes.com look like in 20 years.

Not that it matters, because the newspapers sold out all across the country during all this thinking. And I more concerned about getting a train to Philadelphia.

In retrospect, it’s interesting to observe in a time when newspapers are shutting down and laying people off, on the day after a historic election for many reasons, people still wanted to sought out the newspaper as a physical token of the event.  A copy of the New York Times apparently sold for $400, not a bad return for a one dollar investment in less than a week.

Did anyone bother saving a screen shot of the New York Times website for November 6th?

I wonder if the selling out of print newspaper was a generational phenomenon. Did Millennials, the so-called redubbed, Generation O, view this edition as someone to save?

On Wednesday, November 12, I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of the New York Times Special Edition. The parody issue of the Times dated July 4, 2009, with articles full of a hopeful future. (I wonder, however, what the Yes Men and others had planned if Obama had lost.)

This elaborate campaign took months of planning and reportedly hundreds of volunteers.  It seems that they will someday be collector’s items, according to Alex S. Jones, who wrote a book on this paper titled, “The Times.” Score one for ironic outcomes.

We, as a culture, still value scarcity. My newsprint copy is worth than my screen from nytimes-se.com. The vessel is worth paying for, but the content is not. Now the two have been irreparably divorced. And we want and expect the content to be free.  However, there are times like the 6th and 12th of November 2008, that we found ourselves returning to treasuring the vessel.

For those two days, we were back to the 20th century, where people sought out the print newspaper.

What this its last hurrah?

My friend Alex sent me this link to this recent JC de Castelbajac video, which reconsiders his recent runway show as LEGOs.  JCDC is known for incorporating popular culture imagary into his couture, but this is taking the concept into new levels. The Anna Wintour as a plastic toy is just too good. Below are screen grabs, a still from the animated show, the actual Spring/Summer 2009 show, as well as, Ms. Wintour. I’ve let you go to the site watch the entire video (which I highly encourage) and find Kanye West in the first row. In the confusing time of economic uncertainty and post-election optimism. The show itself leans toward the hopeful, with rainbow colors and plastic hats. Obama’s portrait even makes a showing.  Amidst the gloom of two wars, the shrinking global economy, and pummelled stock market, is this the perfect time for play and reinvention?

Walking out of the C/E Spring Street stop, I got a “free NY Times” from a guy passing them out to riders leaving the station. I sort of knew something was up because it was a lot thinner than normal. Another clue is that it’s dated July 4, 2009, and full of articles talking about a future, where Gitmo is closing, oil companies are nationalized, and the National Health Insurance Act passes.

Here’s a screenshot of the site, nytimes-se.com, which has slow downloads times. A lot of people seem to be hitting the site, whose owner looks like a pseduonym, Ginsu and Treadmill Technologies?  I must admit that they did a good job mimicking the paper and web versions.

UPDATE:

I leared from Trebor Scholz’s, that the prankster activists group, the Yes Men are somehow involved, and have posted some video, which I can’t see because  I’m guessing the servers are still being overwhelmed with data requests.

On November 5th, I noted an important turning point in my media, among all the celebration of electing Barack Obama.

I didn’t watch any of the TV coverage on election night. I just had a few websites open to track reporting from different areas. I mostly stuck to the New York Times, that had the best interactive map, and the San Francisco Chronicle to get some West Coast reporting on things like Prop 8. I could also easily compare what states the sites were calling (it’s not always the same) and focus the races of course interest, Al Franken’s Senate race in Minnesota, for example.

It was interesting to note how the newspaper sites covered when TV programs called races, as their round about way to report results early without “really” reporting results early. But shortly after 11:00pm, I was alerted that Obama won, just like everything one else who were glued to their television sets.

Before 11:00 pm:

After 11:00 pm:

What did I miss from not having the TV on? Reporters, pundits, and anchors with often little meaningful to say as returns slowly are released. It was refreshing just to get the data. On the other hand, the decision also meant I had wait a whole day to learn about CNN’s Princess Leia Style Hologram.

I finally made it to the New York Art Book Fair after being out of town last year. I think I learned about the first one a couple of days after it ended, which is quite typical for me.  In any event, there was the high and low brow and everything in between.

Image source: The Thing

I met Will Rogen and Jonn Herschend from The Thing Quarterly, which sends its subscribers a piece of art every quarter. I had just heard about it a couple of weeks ago, when I was out in SF, where they are based. It’s not quite publishing, although it’s definitely a self-described periodical, and a bit more like those organic local food subscription services where they mail you a box of kale or carrots or melons once a month, except its art and of course its quarterly.

I was pleased to find out that they were super friendly, and we had a short, but interesting conversation, on publishing. When I asked them if their backgrounds was in publishing, I found it of note that they said they are artists. That answer is personally great to me because I’m really intrigued in publishers (if you want to call them that) from non-traditional backgrounds.  I finally got my tax stimulus check from the federal government, and a chunk of it may just go towards a subscription, especially because Jonathan Lethem is on the docket as an artist. Will and Jonn are in town participating in various art organizations in the city of the rest of the week.

Stuart and David of Dexter Sinister had a table, and it always fun to talk to them, especially about geeky things like the text editor Tex. I ended up buying something that was quasi-expensive and actually deserves an entire post of its own later.

Image source: An Atlas of Radical Cartography

At the table next to Dexter Sinister, I met Alexis Bhagat who co-edited “An Atlas of Radical Cartography” which is a collection of essay and maps.  Coincidentally, Brett introduced to me the collection when I was at UArts a few weeks ago, funny how things work out that way.  The maps touch everything from oil to surveillance to garbage production. He was fun to chat with as map have been on my mind lately.

J Morrison was selling silk-screened man purses for a suggested donation. He had young women helping him silk screen images on the spot, and everyone was wearing matching colored tee and shorts. His assistants made a bag to order, for a good birthday present, which was my next stop after the fair.

Image source: cultureby.com

On Saturday, I got to hear Grant McCracken speak at the AIGA GAIN conference in New York.
I documented that I was going to the talk in my usual way of writing a quick note in twitter, which gets dumped into my facebook status.

“At AIGA, just heard Grant McCracken say smart things on design & culture, and the role of the anthropologist”

I got two quick responses from friends of mine who are working on their dissertations in anthropology, who basically asked what is the role of the anthropologist?

Of course, their requests had a bit of tongue and cheek, who am I to tell anthropologist what is their role? And I hope that they understood, that the talk was about the role of the anthropology within the context of design and culture. Nevertheless, the question is worth a response, because it is an interesting one, and perhaps the answer is not so obvious, although it is after hearing the talk.

During his talk, in a conference room mostly full of designers, McCracken refers two kinds of practitioners of anthropology. Anthropologists with an upper case A, and anthropologists with a lower case a. McCracken is an Anthropologist (PhD U Chicago) just as my friends are training to be Anthropologists. As well, there are many anthropologists (I would count myself in that group) who have the opportunity to practice anthropology in their work.  For designers, that practice is decoding culture and explaining it back to the design or marketing client. Although many in the Field (uppercase F) might have a problem with that, McCracken does not, and in fact encourages it. Although, it must be done in a smart way.

Decoding culture is crucial to the designer, because “culture provides infrastructure” to how we understand the world.  McCracken divides culture into the “above” (Malcolm Gladwell, Coolhunters, trendsetters) and the “below” which is all the rest.  Culture below is more hidden, and is made up of the assumptions people make in their construction of their worlds. The culture below is so obvious to the individual that they don’t even realize it exists. It remains in the domain of the unknown, until the anthropologist enters and maps out assumptions that. He cites the example of what makes a Harley more than “just” a motorcycle.

What does this have to do with design?

The designer must consider more than the cultural relevance of her creative output.  She must also consider the people who will see, hear, try, and her designs.  The successful designer will have an intimate knowledge of her end-user/audience/market and the culture surround the products and services that use in their daily lives. She will then use that knowledge to create a relationship with that person.

McCracken began with the question, “who owns culture in the corporation?” His claim is that designs probably don’t, but they should.  And today, the answer is probably nobody, which makes that there is an opportunity for the designer to lay claim to that corporate group.

What does this have to do with the Anthropologist overall or in training? McCracken often talks about the missed opportunities of Anthropologists because, they could provide insight in a post-modern world of flatten hierarchies (high-low, East-West) where known cultural structures are eroding.  In their place is an ad-hoc, but quite real, infrastructure of culture that is ripe for mining. Although they may not be the traditional domain of Anthropology, these cultural norms have a huge influence on the every day lives people in a post-industrial, consumerist culture. There is a great need for these changes to be explained back to the corporations that are creating that culture.  Whether for the corporation or academia, there is an opportunity for both Anthropologists and anthropologists to weigh in on the issues of the bagginess or skinniness of jeans, the identities of our vehicles, or personalities of our beverages.

Perhaps, there are Anthropologists in training who are already tackling these issues. If that is true, that would be great. For those who are designer or marketers who are (aspiring) anthropologists, there are also many opportunities as well. For both parties, McCracken has just created a blog conpendium on how to be an anthropologist for hire.

Image source: flickr

1. If you are waiting for a train, and the incoming train cars go, packed, empty, packed… do NOT enter the empty car. The *best* case scenario is that the AC is broken.

2. The subway trains run in the same direction as that cars run on the street above the tracks.

Image source: backspace.com

3. The compass roses that the MTA is placing in front of subway entrances, started out as an intervention by riders, and is what I would call ethical graffiti.

4. The A and D trains run express from 59th Street to 125th Street, which is great if you want get to Harlem, but not so great, if you are trying to visit the American Museum of Natural History.

5. The subways do, in fact, run on a schedule.

6. Google Transit combines subway schedules (see point 5) and Google Maps to provide directions using public transportation in New York, and many other cities around the world.

7. The displays with real time updates of the next train that the MTA have been introducing on the L line has been in other systems, such as DC’s Metro and the London Underground for years and even decades.

Blogs on Subways:

Second Avenue Sagas

Subway Blogger

AMNY Subway Tracker

Going Underground’s Blog

Something has been confusing and annoying me basically since I started reading blogs. It’s one of those slight annoying things, where a little design considering would make the issue irrelevant. When reading or searching blogs, the bottom of the screen usually offers you two choices, of which, the following combination is quite common:

<< Older Entries          Newer Entries>>

<< Previous Entries     Next Entries >>

Am I the only person who is confused by this interface? Both examples are slightly ambiguous. What does “previous” or “next” mean?

Blogs are generally organized by descending chronological order, that is, newest post on top of the screen or webpage. Books are generally ascending chronologically, if they have a time-based narrative, and start at a point in time and move forward.

Because English is read left to right, the “next” page of a book and navigation pointing to the right refers to pages dates in the future. However, in a blog, “Next” and “arrows pointing to the right” could either refer to blog web pages with posts that you haven’t read yet or a page with blog posts written in the past, ie older then the posts you are currently reading. To further add to the confusion, some blogs use Google as their search engine, which serves results in order of relevance.

To reiterate the two main points of ambiguity:

#1: Blogs and books don’t chronologically map in the same way. Books based on chronology are usually presented oldest information first. Blogs are generally displayed with the newest post first.

#2: Pages in blogs and print don’t map in the same way. The subsequent unread (I’m trying to avoid saying next) page on a blog is going backwards in time. Going forwards in a history book, toward the right, is moving forward in time.

In these two examples, left arrows link to older posts by date and right arrows link to newer posts by date.

Here is the interface of weatherapattern.com, so I write:

Notice the subtle different in terminology in designnotes (composite image):

As mentioned before, the questions arise:

What does “next” mean? That is, does it refer to unread posts or posts dates in the future?

In both cases, when I see “<< Previous Entries,” do the arrow mean the past in time or unread posts?

Why are the older post to the right? If I were to print out a blog and bind it, the older posts would exist towards the right.

Is there a better solution?

I think Gigaom, has a very good solution, part of the time. Instead of using the interfaces of many blogs, they both map to the closest to the print experience as well as have clearer wording.

With this interface, Gigaom both avoids the ambiguity of “previous” and “next.” Using “newer” and “older”  clearly refers to date of the posts. Also, the arrow points in a direction that map to the printed out and bound blog. Unfortunately, that interface is only used for the main pages, and not when you search. Sigh.

So, the remaining point is, why should blogs map to the convention of English (or any language read left to right) books? My only response is that most English speakers read books before blogs. It is important for a designer to build upon the obvious reference points and mental models of their users. For blogs in languages the read right to left, such as Chinese or Hebrew, I was have Older Posts pointing to the right.

Now, I have to go try to tweak this site’s navigation.

Image source: flickr

Well, the internet is buzzing with the discussions and reviews of Google’s recently release browser, Chrome. Nick Carr has some good thoughts on the subject, his key take aways:

“To Google, the browser has become a weak link in the cloud system… Google can’t wait for Microsoft or Apple or the Mozilla Foundation to make the changes.”

“…winning a “browser war” is not its real goal. Its real goal, embedded in Chrome’s open-source code, is to upgrade the capabilities of all browsers so that they can better support (and eventually disappear behind) the applications.”

I agree with this basic idea of needing to move browser technology forward, and having a few competing products motivates people to innovate. I recently heard an explanation that Google’s “Don’t be evil” credo really meaning “Don’t be Microsoft.” However, they were often criticized for releasing non-standard products, including features in Internet Explorers but also C# and Active X (more on that later.) In order to give browsers more speed and capabilities, Google had to move away from web standards.

Just to be clear, web standards are basically a really good idea, even if adoption of new ones is a slow process. Leaping frogging the standards process brings us back to web development in the mid-90s. In those days, after creating a website, we had to test the web pages on all the browsers across all the platforms. More likely than not, the site never worked on the first try, which gave the process a Groundhog Day feel. (Of course, we still have to do that today, but it is thankfully not has bad as the days of Netscape 4 and IE 5.)

Google’s decision to go open source is clever, but there is an implied statement to the other browsers of “join us, or be left behind.” I suppose, at least the other browsers are given the option of having access to the code, unlike other proprietary browsers. I’ll admit that an optimal outcome would be the other browsers would adopt only the best features, and those features would eventually be accepted as web standards. However, the problem with this scenario is that it will take a while for time for the best features to emerge, as web developers create new kinds of content for them. In the meanwhile, developers will have to play the user percentages game, and make trade offs to maximize what the number of people who can see their work. More importantly, users will have to have multiple browsers to access different kinds of content.

The fundamental problem is that the moving away from standard and interoperability is going to fracture the internet. If you want a glimpse of the implications of this idea, an interesting place to look is Korea where a large percentage of sites use Active X, which I learned about first hand trying to plan a trip to Seoul last year. Blogger and friend, Danny Kim gives a interesting account of the use of Active X in Korea. He also sent me a parody of Google’s Chrome comic book, which is worth a look as well.

I’ve been to the Home Delivery show at MOMA twice on sunny weekends this summer. The show on prefabricated architecture is overall well curated. However, the true brilliance of the show is that they have full scale models of six homes. The all steel Lustron house is in the indoor portion of the exhibit. The others five are constructed in the parking lot next store to the museum. Architecture exhibits rarely show full scale buildings for obvious reasons, which relegates museum shows to drawings and models. Normally, to see architecture you have to go to the actual sites, which makes comparing structures challenging. But here, you get to experience multiple examples at full scale.

Of all the architects that were invited to show, the most remarkable was Housing for New Orleans, designed by Larry Sass of MIT. He researches new fabrication techniques using CAD and digital laser cutting. His houses are constructed from numbered jigsaw-like pieces which can be assembled with a rubber mallet, hot glue, and the occasional crow bar. The first prototype took five students to build over two days, however this example was erected with three people over two weeks. The individual pieces are small as compared to the normal two-by-fours that are normally associated with building houses, as seen in the details images. This iteration of his research 196-square-foot one-room shotgun house for post-Katrina New Orleans . The application of his techniques to the housing crisis caused by Katrina is also noteworthy, especially as related to my interesting in ethical design and prefab architecture.

Sass’ impressive approach to architecture comes from a completely new starting point, that is born digital. The designs are created using fabrication and cutting techniques which utilize the strengths of computation for something greater idea. Despite this use of technology, I was reminded of Japanese Shinto Temples, which use a centuries old technique of interconnecting wooden joints that do not require nails.

Unlike much of the work of say, Gehry, computation is not used to build once impossible complex structures. Rather, Sass’ research seems to be more about rethinking how to one goes about building a house (Housing for New Orleans, could be build without the use of computers.)  In his House for Katrina, there is a balance between shelter and ornament. The structure provides protection from the elements, while the flourishes still invoke local styles and nod to the human need of aesthetics and having their home relate to an surrounding architectural context. Although, I’m sure many people feel the ornamentation (and the structure itself) is a poor substitute to the grand architectural styles of New Orleans, there are limits to the not only his construction methods, but also what can be reasonable built during disaster relief.

Weeks later, I’m still thinking about the relationship between computation and architecture, and how Sass both makes architecture more abstract and more concrete. The abstraction comes from the reliance of the computer to design and cut the material. However, in the actually physical act of building, the methods allow a few people (instead of a team of builders and suppliers) to construct a house with a minimal set of skills and tools. Computation’s ability to make something simultaneously abstract and concrete is not all that new, but I’ve never seen the idea applied to architecture, which makes the discovery all the more exciting.