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Archive for March, 2006

The Meaningful Experience

Tuesday, March 21st, 2006

Pardon the hyperbolic headline. But after lamenting how listening to music was once a meaningful experience for me but has lately become disposable, I started to think about what might exhibit the reverse dynamic. Oddly enough television came to mind. By this I’m referring to content, not broadcast medium.
I remember television always [...]

The Smiths Can’t Be Bought

Saturday, March 18th, 2006

This is outside my focus here, but wow. The story is that The Smiths were offered $5mil to reunite for Cochella—and turned it down. “[B]ecause money doesn’t come into it,” Moz said.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for not ruining another cherished band from my childhood with some cynical [...]

Materialism is Bad for You

Friday, March 17th, 2006

As the song goes, “More, more more. How do you like it, how do you like?”
Aparently, we only truly like it to a point–but we’re hooked, so we can’t stop even when it becomes bad for us.
As a follow up to my question about accelerating consumption verus enriching meaning, here’s a story from [...]

And The Winner of the Worst New Web Trend is….

Wednesday, March 15th, 2006

Oh my god this must never gain traction folks. More insidious than the animated gif. More annoying than Netscape’s blink tag. More obnoxious than X-10s original pop-up and pop-under ads. And soon to be more ubiquitous than the animatronic Marissa Mayer conference bot.
Ladies and gentlement, i present to you [...]

The Disposable Experience

Monday, March 13th, 2006

I’m worried. I’m worried that experiences are becoming disposable. I’m worried that in our striving to make experiences simpler, easier, and faster, we’re also somehow stripping their soul, their meaning.
The subtext beneath this implies that we are supposed to use the time, money and attention that simpler, easier and faster frees [...]

The Wicked Witch of the Problem Space

Thursday, March 2nd, 2006

A while back on cph127 Adam Richardson of frog raised the issue of wicked problems. I’m really glad he brought it up because I’ve always felt they are central to design as a professional practice. Curiously though there isn’t much talk in design circles about them.
In “Making Use,” John Carroll offers [...]

i-Fi

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006

If no one else has has done so yet, I would like to be the first to cutesify the new iPod Hi-Fi by shortening it to just the i-Fi.
I think this is my lamest post ever–lamer even than my first Hello World introductory post. I need a vacation.