Artschool.IO

[stoweboyd]

“The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out—maybe ankle-deep—and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

— Carl Sagan, “The shores of the cosmic ocean” (via albarrancabrera)

[nevver]

No pain, no pain.

[theimpossiblecool]

“All life is part of a complex relationship in which each is dependent upon the others, taking from, giving to and living with all the rest.”

Jacques-Yves Costeau.

[sthmvnk]

[nevver]

Art School Confidential

[flavorwire]

Illustrator Elia Colombo takes on dreams, work, school, and social media in these thought-provoking cartoons.

Witty Illustrations Capture the Pitfalls and Contradictions of Contemporary Life

[brucesterling]

[stoweboyd]

“An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil and confusion.”

— | Joni Mitchell

[nevver]

Kaye Blegvad

[stoweboyd]

Paging through the first 25 years of WIRED, what’s most striking is that the future *never* becomes evenly distributed. | David Karpf https://t.co/Hunglqh3cY pic.twitter.com/lEXmqD9uLN

— Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd) September 27, 2018

[artschoolio]

“Hey, you, get off my cloud You don’t know me and you don’t know my style.”

[nevver]

Mike Kelley

[stoweboyd]

“When art is consistent with itself, it guides everything more surely to its goal.”

— | Victor Hugo, preface to Cromwell

[boredpanda]

China Opens World’s Coolest Library With 1.2 Million Books, And Its Interior Will Take Your Breath Away

[explore-blog]

Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.

The incomparable Zadie Smith on optimism and despair – superb read, particularly at this cultural moment.  (via explore-blog)

[perrycox-ae-deactivated20210213]

3d Sport Countdown Animation.

Artstation author page. 

Dribbble.

[stoweboyd]

Looking Back: Reviewing 2017 Predictions

Here’s the recap of last year’s predictions. See this year’s predictions, here.

Below, the prediction indented, my comments follow. Bolding is from the original post:

1. Work chat will continue to dominate the market for enterprise ‘collaboration’, and AI-based ‘team members’ with deep learning skill sets will become commonplace, building on chatbot models of interaction but assuming larger roles in project management, development, marketing, and HR. Slack is acquired by Amazon for $35 billion, and loosely integrated into AWS.

Got the first part right.  Many, many bots are in use, so kinda good on that. Slack was NOT acquired by Amazon or anyone else in 2017.

2. The hottest business trend of 2017 will be AI-based ‘driverless management’, displacing Holocracy and other management ‘business operating systems’ fads. AI will play a significantly larger role in areas that human cognitive biases are most problematic, like hiring and promotion, decision support, and ensuring diversity, equality, and well-being in the workplace. (Daemon (via Daniel Saurez) meets the workplace.) Several unknown start-ups will lead this new exploding sector.

I was just too early with this, although the driverless management trend is heating up.

3. Following Trump’s proposed withdrawal of US supporting NATO troops in the Baltics and Eastern Europe, Vladimir Putin’s Russia will occupy some part of the Baltics, like the Latgale region of Latvia, which is ~40% ethnic Russian. Mike Pence resigns as Vice President following major disagreements with Trump on the Baltics and NATO. Trump nominates Elaine Chao as Vice President, his Secretary of Transportation, and she is appointed in October, the first woman and first Asian American to serve in that role.

This move by Putin didn’t happen, but joint military exercises in Belarus involved as many as 100,000 Russian troops. Russia rejects Ukrainian assertions that most of the troops were left in place.

4. North Korea will fire a rocket that hits Kodiak Island in Alaska, although it carries only a conventional warhead. Kim Jong-un says the rocket was supposed to have crashed in the ocean before landfall, but many believe it was on track to hit Anchorage.

This has not happened, but the degree of staging up to a new war state with North Korea has been fairly terrifying. NK can now hit all continental US with nuclear warheads, experts agree.

5. Trump raises massive trade barriers to Chinese goods, sparking a trade war that damages both countries’ economies. This is in part because of an inability to get China to – in effect – take control of North Korea, but also as part of an attempt by US and European companies to make China’s markets more open: a second Opium War.

Trump’s trade war has been minimized by the conventional GOP buffer zone around him now. Score that a miss.

6. Britain begins that actual process of Brexit in mid 2017, leading Scotland to a referendum in favor of leaving the UK and applying to the EU for membership.

Yes, they did start the process.

7. The US Congress will pass legislation in early 2017 to repeal Obamacare, but defers any implementation until 2018 at the earliest, because they can’t agree on how it will be replaced or by what approach. Trump proposes a single payer system as a companion to a radical restructuring of the tax code, as he had hinted in his campaign, and falls into open discord with the establishment wing of the GOP.

Trump and company were unable to repeal ACA, but they did sneak a repeal of the individual mandate into the tax cut bill, so I’d say that a mixed result.

8. Driverless car fleets are rolled out by various car companies (Ford, Chrysler, Tesla, etc.) and car hailing platforms (Uber, Lyft, etc.). Car ownership in major urban areas continues to decline, and many municipalities create partnerships with fleet owners to augment conventional mass transportation solutions. The value of New York City taxi medallions drops over 75%.

A little early on the rollout of car fleets, but it’s coming soon. We’ve only seen small pilots in 2017. But the taxi medallions fell like a rock in 2017.

9. Amazon will buy Snapchat, and announce a new take on augmented reality glasses, picking up where Google dropped the ball years ago. Building on the success of Alexa-based Echo devices, Kindle, Fire TV, Amazon Prime, and the growing popularity of Snapchat, Amazon Eyes are the hit of Christmas 2017, with over 50 million ordered in November and December.

Amazon did announce Echo-enabled glasses are coming, but they haven’t shipped them in 2017. Snapchat has not been acquired.

10. The war in Syria comes to a Korean War-like end, with a partition of the country into various regions, and a unceasing belligerence on all parts. It is clearly a shadow war between factions backed by the West, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Russia. The stalemate here is a reflection of the reappraisal of loyalties and goals of the shadow players, more than the aims of the Syrian government and the insurgents. Bashar al-Assad rules a rump state of western Syrian, with much of the rest of ‘Syria’ in shambles.

Looks like the end state accelerated faster than I imagined, because of close work between Russia and US to crush ISIS, along with the complicity of Iran.

11. Hillary Clinton files for divorce from Bill Clinton in March 2017, and assumes the role of president of Harvard University, two weeks later.

Didn’t happen.

12. Marine Le Pen loses an unexpectedly close run-off with François Fillon, but the close election pulled Fillon and his Republicans farther right than in recent decades.

Emmanuel Macron didn’t even have a political party at the start of 2017, so that was a real surprise. The collapse of the conventional parties is the real story, and Le Pen did get to a direct election for the presidency, and lost, which is part of my prediction.

13. Oprah announces that she intends to run for President in the next election.

Still possible?

14. Angela Merkel narrowly wins reelection, after wide-spread controversy of scandals uncovered by leaks generally attributed to Putin’s brigade of hackers.

A few scandals, but mostly growing concerns about immigration and the direction for Europe: this one I got right.

15. Barack Obama joins Andreessen Horowitz as a partner, and leads a round funding AdjectiveNoun (fictitious, note), one of the most promising ‘driverless management’ startups. He also comes out in support of Oprah Winfrey’s candidacy.

Obama seems content to take it easy, and hasn’t decided what to do aside from writing some books.

16. Microsoft acquires Salesforce for $75 billion. Marc Benioff leaves to run philanthropy (amid discussions of political ambitions).

Didn’t happen, but still could.

17. Apple acquires Tesla for $75 billion. Tim Cook announces retirement, Elon Musk becomes CEO.

Now that the iPhone X is starting to look like a dud, this might become more realistic. But it didn’t happen.

18. Despite inaction by the US Federal Government, and chaos in the EPA and Energy Department, CO2 levels continue to fall worldwide. Environmental groups suggest that we may have turned the corner on energy in 2017, because solar is now cheaper than other energy sources in most places in the world. However, global temperatures continues to rise, and many models show that it might take 1000 years to reduce global temperatures.

Alas, we hit record levels of CO2 in the atmosphere in 2017. But solar is falling in price, leading to more coal power plants to close.

19. California and San Francisco, with support from Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and other platform companies, announced a project to convert increasingly unneeded parking lots to small ‘park villages’ with dense, micro-apartment developments, for low-income and homeless residents. Trump-sponsored infrastructure funds are directed to US micro-building factories and a new California Construction Corps, which is strongly supported by both Democrats and Republicans. The state’s program is seen as a blueprint for the rest of the country.

This was far too hopeful. None of this has happened, and Trump – despite his infrastructure mumbo-jumbo – is cutting funding that might be used for projects like ‘park villages’.

20. Michael Bloomberg announces plans to create a third ‘Pragmatist’ party, based on economic conservatism and social liberalism, and rapidly attracts a large minority of GOP and Democratic legislators in Washington who have been whipsawed by the 2016 elections, and by the growing discord in both major parties over the future of their platforms. Some project that the Pragmatists could gain as many as 30% of the seats in the House, and as many as 10 governorships in coming years. Bloomberg announces his plans to run for President.

It may be more reasonable to imagine Steven Bannon starting an independent run for the White House. But at this point it doesn’t seem that Bloomberg is planning a run.

On the whole, I did fairly badly, really. None of my acquisitions came together, North Korea didn’t bomb us, the Clintons didn’t divorce, CO2 levels continue to rise. And of course, astride the year like Godzilla was Trump, and I made very few predictions about him, and those I did were really off. I don’t think we realized how bizarroland it was going to get.

Even though my results were lousy, I am taking another run at it, in Some Predictions, 2018.