Russell Davies

Public

"Is it time to start talking about a public media for the internet? To start imagining structures within which at least nominally independent media can preserve itself?"

Possibly

 

The best blog posts

@genmon @kellan @benhammersley The real takeaway: I-thought-of-this-two-minutes-ago-while-washing-dishes blog posts are the best blog posts

— Robin Sloan (@robinsloan) May 20, 2015

This is dead on true but I'm nowhere near the dishes so I have nothing to add.

post post post

I'm talking, with Ade, at Thinking Digital tomorrow. Six years ago, it was here I first talked about this stuff. What a horrible cliche it seems now, probably did the moment I said it. And yet it's still so far away.

#neverforget

131-137

absolutelysupersymmetry

Went to see Ryoji Ikeda's supersymmetry. Very good. Like being inside a Hollywood OS. And very much fulfils the minimal modern art criteria of offering a lot of Things You Can Instagram, almost to the extent that the glows of the phones add to the work.

work

One of the things I like about work is the way the conversation and the thinking goes on across the internet, and links in and out of home lives and other work experiences. It's a networked, distributed exchange of ideas and observations.

Special contributions this week from Leisa

"They are process diagrams and routine tasks for people on the inside, but when we are on the other side of the counter they are the exact opposite of routine and mundane transactions."

and Matt. 

"Without exception, everyone I meet in the public sector wants to help make their service better. Most of them are in some way frustrated. The domain is massive and the activities disjointed."

writer's

try

Just in case you're interested, I have this spotify playlist called try (web version) or try (spotify uri).

It's a bit random. Sometimes it changes a lot quite quickly, sometimes it barely changes at all. It's made out of stuff I want to try. Music I've never heard of that I read about, things that I've always meant to listen to and never gotten round to until something reminds me. New stuff. Old stuff. Whatever.

If you'd like to join me on this magical tour, please feel free.

vapespace

William Gibson tweeted this today

"Vaping", coined by Rob Stepney, actually came along only a little later than "cyberspace"

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) May 12, 2015

which sent me in two directions.

First:

the arrival of vaping seems to have been totally big brand free. Ask the average brand theorist about vaping and they'd have found it utterly, utterly preposterous that vaping could become as big and popular as it is without the 'reassurance' and 'validation' of big, mainstream, well-known brands.

Turns out, utterly not. People are entirely, blithely happy to suck down random vapours from some strange new shop on the corner with a brand name that you've never heard of before that looks like it was knocked up by a designer who fell off the back of Cyberdog. No need for reassurance, awareness, nothing.

Second:

It reminded me how smart Mr Gibson is; to go from the soundscape in your head of the Walkman, to the consensual hallucination of cyberspace.