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[brucesterling]

Joi Ito of MIT Media Lab:

From a Wired interview:

http://www.wired.com/business/2012/06/resiliency-risk-and-a-good-compass-how-to-survive-the-coming-chaos/

Ito: There are nine or so principles to work in a world like this:

1. Resilience instead of strength, which means you want to yield and allow failure and you bounce back instead of trying to resist failure.

2. You pull instead of push. That means you pull the resources from the network as you need them, as opposed to centrally stocking them and controlling them.

3. You want to take risk instead of focusing on safety.

4. You want to focus on the system instead of objects.

5. You want to have good compasses not maps.

6. You want to work on practice instead of theory. Because sometimes you don’t know why it works, but what is important is that it is working, not that you have some theory around it.

7. Disobedience instead of compliance. You don’t get a Nobel Prize for doing what you are told. Too much of school is about obedience, we should really be celebrating disobedience.

8. It’s the crowd instead of experts.

9. It’s a focus on learning instead of education.

We’re still working on it, but that is where our thinking is headed.

[notational]

I continue to think about this list about learning, new media, technology, and networks., When possible I try to apply it, none the less it’s still scary even as I see the value in these suggestions.

[snmsnewartblog]

1. Yep, and positive psychology agrees completely there. Lots of good evidence for resilience over strength. 

2. Im not sure what he getting at there. I'd argue for more of a balance. 

3. Again, balance that. Risks should only be taken once theres somewhere to fall back to. But they need to be taken.

4. I wish he had said more detail here. I cant tell what he's talking about.

5. I'd prefer a map,  but being able to work out some sort of relative direction is important. 

6. yes!!! Functionality is often undervalued in an atmosphere of principles and values

7. I dont like how this is phrased. Cries for anarchy are not helpful. Systems exist to support everyone involved, large or small. Breaking them for the sake of effect is more destructive than helpful. We glorify smashing the system far too much.

8. what?

9. Yes. Always keep learning and teaching, achieving a slip of paper is less important.  

[snmsnewartblog]

On Internet For the 1 Percent, Net Art, and Internet consumption

I think of everyone who spends a significant amount of time online develops their own style of interpreting/processing the information. I know that I take a great deal of time looking at some parts the web, such as YouTube where the shortest video I usually walk is about 15 minutes up to some more than two hours long.  While I'm on Facebook, I'm there for maybe a moment or to check and see if I have  you messages or updates. I don't spend any time scrolling through the now useless feed of advertisements, videos I don't want to want to watch, and spam.  Facebook has become an informal email and nothing else. Tumblr holds a place in the middle, I take time to consider the composition of the different photo sets people of put together of shows I enjoy, or briefing with a laugh at an awful joke someone is created.   I have yet to spend much time looking at net art because I have yet to find much value in it. Even looking through the history of net, most of it seemed to be individuals exploiting gimmicks of code and systems to create something weirdly abstract, something I'm  not really interested in. Pieces like "web stalker" do interest me because they offer perspective the people to not get to see very often. (Going further into this would require me to explain what I think is art thats a long and complicated discussion)

On the note of net neutrality though, I find the fact that an entity, company or individual, could set a price on getting good Internet service to be a horrible abomination. The beauty of the Internet is that it is a ridiculous mess of an international democracy of opinions and ideas.  any kind of limit were placed on what could be created or said, the most important part of the internet will be gone. While I can understand the capitalist arguments for paying the make sure your product gets the proper treatment, there are better ways to do that such as manipulating the demand for your product. 

[art2803802014]

A bit of Curt’s writing. Respond to this. What are your thoughts about previcating in the name of art? How might this be connected to building a website?

[snmsnewartblog]

I'm not sure I buy into this, I feel like there is some kind of original thought. BUT I cannot form an argument against it.Almost everything I can think of that I appreciate for its design was directly inspired by something else.

In the block of words "fantasize" is the only one that hints that originality can exist. Since this is the opening for the his whole argument he seems to leave no open for further possibility out. And this irritates me. He seems to be trapped where he cannot think of anything new and, for the purpose of what he's saying here, that seems to be the only perspective open to him. He can only see "prevaricating" as a way to create more content. This is flawed as it assumes that if you trace everything back far enough its a direct copy of something else. This works in a small perspective of "oh your [art/design piece] looks like [other art/design piece]" but fall apart completely as you follow each piece back through its various connections. Eventually you'll run out of sentient life and the first creature to drag its tail/appendage/whatever through some convenient substance and seem some kind of image or meaning in it was the one true artist ever to be. 

Everything is part of a very large chaotic system and if one takes the perspective  that the interconnectedness of the pieces affect their value, than one is making a mistake to judge something on the degree of its connection to other pieces. 

In terms of making a website, I think most of us have spent a great deal of time online and know of websites we like the look of. Following the patterns of things that we find appealing is not a negative thing. It is a compliment to those who created what we found good. 

I view art as a demonstration of perspective, not a trick.

Also anyone who cites Ai Weiwei and then generalizes that artists are insane intentional liars really need to rethink what there're trying to say. Ai Weiwei is decidedly a bit nuts, but his works are very intentional statements, but he does very little lying.  

[tomemrich]

Print Your Cup and Fill It With Coffee at Berlin’s First 3D Printer Cafe

3D printers are fantastic new tools for creators, but you have to have loads of patience. A 3D printed object can take hours to build one the job is kicked off. So what better way to kill time while waiting for your creation to take shape then to grab a coffee and a meal. This is the idea behind Berlin’s first 3D printing cafe, DimensionAlley.

Read More

[futurescope]

[DimensionAlley]

[snmsnewartblog]

While this does not seem to be a viable business at all, public access to the potential of 3D printing is pretty cool. I guess if the community was involved enough in the technology this could work out. I'd go and print things all the time if it were near me. 

[snmsnewartblog]

Here's my final video. It still uses the pixelation from my original idea, but this actually shows what might have been making me react.  Inspired by mmart380's style. 

[snmsnewartblog]

I think the only things i can model are robots. I'm not sure if that's a problem.

[snmsnewartblog]

Bruce Sterling's Afterglow talk

I could not take most of his speech very seriously. He seemed more inclined to rank about big companies in a very generic way. His call to action didn't seem to have much of an argument to it. just the big companies were too powerful and that artists were going to be the ones to fight back. That at least was a little unique, there kinds of speeches more often end with a more V for Vendetta kind of popular uprising call. i'm going to have to watch this again to find a topic to research further.

one thing that did occur to me to look into was to find out why Intel got involved with arduino in the first place  

[art2803802014]

I’ve been thinking a great deal about this article as I’ve been preparing class for this semester. It’s an interesting take on working with limitations , particularly in scenarios where they don’t seem to exist. How can we positively use our own ignorance as well as our intelligence/

[snmsnewartblog]

for creating something I enjoy i certainly fall into the camp of allowing limitations to shape what I can make. Most of the projects I've done that have been fun have sprung from finding something that I think is interesting or cool. Often using that makes the project far more difficult than starting from scratch. This is not to say that having complete freedom with a medium is not a good method, but inspiration isn't always there. Coming up with an idea from a blank slate is difficult, a challenge of some kind of limitation helps to get me started. 

Both ways of approach make sense and each demonstrates how a mind can either latch onto something that can  act as a challenge or starting point or start from a perfect slate and create whatever they desire.