Shirky on Innovation & Workspaces
The second half of the video (about 14 minutes in) focuses specifically on the connections between creativity and workspaces.
Archived entries for work
John Updike on the Ethics and Poetics of Criticism
Open to (healthy) debate, John Updike’s six rules for criticism have something to offer to web commentary. From his 1977 anthology of prose, Picked-Up Pieces:
- Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
- Give him enough direct quotation–at least one extended passage–of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
- Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.
- Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)
- If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?
To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author ‘in his place,’ making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.
[via Brain Pickings]
This Land is Your Land
And don’t you forget it.
Backing band includes Joe Ely, Arcade Fire, Alejandro Escovedo, Tom Morello, The Low Anthem, and Garland Jeffreys. (From SXSW 2012.)
BBC Moebius Documentary
Damn. BBC removed the video last night.
The Aesthetics of URLs
The Wall Street Journal stands firm against the tendency toward simple, readable URLs. Here’s an example, the URL to an article on the apparent Japanese obsession for appropriating, transforming, and then perfecting products from other locations (bomber jackets, sweatshirts, espresso):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204542404577157290201608630.html
It’s not just an article issue, though. Here’s how WSJ handles sections, in this case US Business News:
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-business-us.html?mod=WSJ_topnav_business_main
For comparison, here’s the URL to a post from my weblog, a picture of a creek near Fort Jackson, NY titled, unsurprisingly, “creek, fort jackson“:
http://www.johndan.com/workspace/2011/10/creek-fort-jackson/
And here’s a link to articles tagged “design“:
I guess it’s arguable whether URLs need to make sense to users. I think there’s not a good argument for not making them cleaner and simpler given that the process of creating them can be automated. Maybe that’s just me.
Goldberg Variations
In the late 1980s or early 1990s, after reading either Hofstedder’s Godel, Escher, Bach or Richard Powers’ Gold Bug Variations (I forget which), I bought a copy of Glen Gould’s Goldberg Variations. The album’s still remarkable.
‘The Ropes at Disney’, 1943
A scan of Disney’s employee manual, circa 1943: The Ropes at Disney. Interesting for many reasons, including its reminders about how sexist workplace culture was in 1940 (and probably later).
Apparently if a guy ogles an attractive female co-worker (to the point that even your ID badge gets in on the act), his ID badge animatronically ogles her too:
Better: her frightened-by-workplace-stalker expression will suddenly convert itself to a picnic date:
I really thought I was going to see some discussion of, at the very least, the problems of romantic relations in the workplace (let alone sexual harassment), but no go.
[via HOW TO BE A RETRONAUT ]
One Project
Ironic bad low-light iPhone shot of my Leica M3.
I realized I’d let this pass without noticing it: on October 8, 2010 I packed up all of my digital camera gear into an enormous box and shipped it off to Adorama in exchange for a 1950s-era Leica M3 and a Summicron 50mm f/2 lens, only slightly newer. Like a surprisingly large number of people, I’d read Michael Johnson’s manifesto, “The Leica as Teacher.” Johnson recommended, as a learning exercise, radically simplifying one’s gear possibilities: One camera, one lens, one film (black and white) for one year.
A year with a single Leica and a single lens, looking at light and ignoring color, will teach you as much about actually seeing photographs as three years in any photo school, and as much as ten or fifteen years (or more) of mucking about buying and selling and shopping for gear like the average hobbyist.
I’m not actually through the year yet because I spent some time experimenting with different films. And I prefaced this with a couple of months using a Yashica Electro 35 rangefinder I purchased from colleague. And I don’t shoot often enough. And I’m still surprised at how difficult it is to get good scans from negatives on consumer-level, flatbed scanners. And I still don’t pay enough attention. Also, Leica’s a collector’s world, so there are way more bits of “really crucial” peripheral equipment one must purchase (note the vented lens hood, medium yellow filter, and leather strap).
But–and maybe I’m kidding myself–I think I’ve gotten better at this. Maybe not, as Johnson promises, better than I would after three years of photography school, but way better than after three years of shambling around zombie-like, firing off a hundred shots at every shiny object.
I’m not sure the quality shows through my Leica Flickr set, but I can guarantee you that the ratio of usable shots to total shots has increased by several orders of magnitude.
I should have stepped forward 10 feet or rotated the camera
back to landscape to make the centered composition work better.
That’s not great, but it’s not bad. OK, at least it’s better than what I was shooting on average with my DSLR and several thousand dollars worth of lenses and assorted tech. Some of the shots I posted earlier are stronger. creek, fort jackson, for example, or church restoration work better. (And, in editing this, I just realized I always lean to the right. Dammit.)
I’m going to sound like that person who says, “Kindle? But I like the smell of paper!” but shooting film pushes a photographer towards a more meditative state than digital. You’re certainly free to override that push and just snap off five shots of film without thinking. Or you’re free to spend a half hour lining up a digital shot. Many people who are amazing photographers do one or the other, way better than me.
But every time I fire off five shots of film without thinking, an unease grips me when I realize those five shots cost me about $1.50 and ten minutes of scanning time, along with a week waiting for the lab to develop the film. Just to see if the negative is worth spending time on in post with Aperture or Photoshop. That’s before thinking about printing. (I haven’t even learned how to develop my own film yet.) Eventually, I learned to take a breath and think before I framed a shot let alone pressed the shutter button.
I’m nothing if not anachronistic–I use an iPhone lightmeter app while I continue to get used to eyeballing exposures with Sunny 16–so I’ll probably continue doing this for awhile. There’s something to be said for regressing, technology-wise, in order to confuse and challenge yourself a little.
Instructables for Activists
Destructables follows the model of how-to site Instructables, but purposed for political activism and creative anarchy.
(Via Laughing Squid.)
