notes.husk.org. tagged culture.

“ The internet is still a pretty daunting place and most of us have this nagging feeling that we are bluffing, that we deep down have no idea what’s going on. It’s still a new technology and we don’t know what to expect in much the same way that our newly-literate ancestors didn’t know what to expect from the printed media or its future possibilities. Memes in this way can be seen as the internet equivalent of serialized novels. Memes are meant to be repetitive, archetypal and easily reproducible and remixable. New memes build on or reference this archive that we have accumulated over the years. Recognizing the patterns gives us a sense of belonging, that we belong to a growing community that feels comfortable sharing cat pictures with captions, even moving pictures, like GIFs. Or uploading talkies to YouTube. It’s a way of easing us into this new world. ”

Rocío Rodtjer: LOLcats and Victorian Serialized Novels.

[This is good.]

2012-03-14

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quote 20:10:05

“ I feel sorry for blogging. How could something so great just wither on the vine? There are vast prairies of abandoned blogs now. Without any specific decision, there’s been a mass migration to social networks, like tribesmen picking up and moving to cities overnight. It’s certainly not the worst decision in internet history but maybe it’s fair to say that it wasn’t given much consideration at the time. “Just imagine a band of savages,” Diamond writes, “exhausted from searching for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep.” Progress isn’t deliberated upon, it’s magnetic. But once drawn in, you might find yourself living (in a shotgun shack) on a cheaply manufactured high-carb, high-fructose diet of realtime information. You’ve traded still pools of honest expression for rivers of pageviews and machine-generated timelines. It’s not unreasonable to wonder whether we all made a little mistake with that. ”

Emmet Connolly: Mistakes we made along the way, drawing a parallel between the shift from hunter-gathering to agriculture and the move from blogging to social networks. (via)

2012-02-22

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quote 06:24:05

“ If we want all this digital stuff to be something more than an ephemeral performance, a dance that’s beautiful and glorious and something to be left behind as we keep pushing forward, we’re doing okay. If we want history to be something that doesn’t just trail off suddenly at the start of the twenty-first century, we need to be smarter, and think in a holistic, comprehensive way. ”

Joe Belknap Wall in a comment at Metafilter on a story about the worries about preserving (cinema) film, now that’s largely digital. (via)

2012-02-20

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quote 21:45:05

“ The 18th century also saw some measurable advances in human comfort for the middle classes and above, ranging from better home heating to the availability of umbrellas to provide shelter from the rain. (Only a few British traditionalists objected to the latter as undermining national character.) ”

Peter N. Stearns in The History of Happiness at the Harvard Business Review.

2012-01-24

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quote 20:09:05

“ I think TV is pushing ahead. It used to be we make TV on video and they remake it on 35mm. We all now work in high-def, we all have the same cameras. You can get things made the same year you think of it, rather than 12 years later. We can make three Sherlock films in the time it takes Hollywood to have lunch. ”

Steven Moffat, answering “Isn’t choosing British TV over Hollywood nuts, career-wise?” in an interview in the Guardian: ‘There is a clue everybody’s missed’: Sherlock writer interviewed.

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quote 19:51:06

“ A library is not simply the books and the computers and the resources, but it’s actually a place where there aren’t four or five conversations going on. It’s a place where children can read and be on their own, and that’s invaluable. But they want to turn our library into some sort of retail outlet. ”

Alan Bennett, quoted in the Paris Review: Alan Bennett on ‘Smut’, by Jonathan Gharraie.

2011-12-19

In Defence Of: Lego Friends (and Creator)

text 19:26:00

Last week, the internet sat up and took notice of Bloomberg Businessweek’s cover story about the launch of Lego Friends, its new “for girls” line. There was much wailing of gnashing of teeth on Twitter, with a common and much-retweeted line being “Lego is launching a product line for girls. Someone should tell them that they already have one; its called Lego.”

Well, yes and no. As the article points out, much of Lego’s growth since its nadir in the early 2000s has been on the back of boy-oriented franchises: the biggest is Star Wars, but also Bionicle (fighting robots), Ninjago (fighting ninjas) and so on. Of course, culture isn’t as good at noticing when a line is aimed at males, since they’re the default market, so nobody’s really saying anything, but it is a change since the Lego of the 1980s.

Compare Lego Town circa 1981, with a “house with garden” and minifigs gendered merely by hairstyle (all the faces were the same smiling face) with City in 2011, dominated by fire, police and aeroplanes. (There is at least the City Corner set, with a female pizza chef, and it’s gratifyingly sold out at the moment.) Is it any wonder parents say things like “The last time I was in a Lego store, there was this little pink ghetto over in one corner”?

(Speaking of pink, Lego’s had that colour in its palette since at least the early 1990s, although it is somewhat rare. Lego Friends “introduces six new Lego colors—including Easter-egg-like shades of azure and lavender”, but pink was already there, including an entire pink brick box.)

Meanwhile, I’ve also seen people reacting against the idea that Lego Friends have backstories printed on the boxes, as if it’s assuming a lack of imagination on the part of girls. Well, perhaps, but if you’re playing with Star Wars, Harry Potter, or DC Superheroes sets, aren’t you also tapping into someone else’s narratives and creations?

Reading the article, it’s clear this isn’t something Lego rushed headlong into. They’ve talked to their potential customers, attempted to understand them, and dealt with their own core beliefs (including the previously-near-sacred minifig) to create something to sell - which, for better or worse, is what as a company they have to do. If we’re going to place blame somewhere, perhaps it should it be the external society?

Oh, and one last thing. If you really hate the idea of Lego Friends, why not ignore it and instead buy Lego Creator sets? Apple Tree House looks particularly good, and there’s not much gendered about it at all.

2011-08-24

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quote 19:16:08

“ Tseëlon, a social psychologist specialising in visual appearance, says the British devotion to uniform reflects “a general etiquette towards children” defined by power, control and a lack of trust. ”

Patrick Barkham: School skirt ban is just the latest battle in the uniform wars, at the Guardian.

2011-08-07

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quote 04:21:48

“ Once you understand that there’s an architectural politics baked into technology design, it’s easy to look at the protocols and interfaces and say: I can see what will happen to the people that use this, and therefore the world they inhabit. ”

Quinn Norton: Ways in which I am old.

2011-06-29

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quote 13:11:06

“ If you’re someone who can’t drive, like I can’t, you find a lot of American cities are not just difficult, but really quite strange. ”

China Miéville in an interview with BLDGBLOG, Unsolving the City.

older

notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

2012-03-19

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