We Live In The Future - by Nicholas Molnar

Lenticular Photo Used To Secretly Convey Hot Line Number To...

Sun, 05 May 2013 15:06:19 -0700

Lenticular Photo Used To Secretly Convey Hot Line Number To Abused Kids

"The internet’s proven to be a pretty big deal for global society, and Bitcoin could basically be..."

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:34:48 -0700

“The internet’s proven to be a pretty big deal for global society, and Bitcoin could basically be thought of as the Internet, applied to Money.”

- Let’s Cut Through the Bitcoin Hype: A Hacker-Entrepreneur’s Take | Wired.com

I Love Your Work · An interactive film by Jonathan...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:11:41 -0700

I Love Your Work · An interactive film by Jonathan Harris

Jonathan Harris is a brilliant interactive storyteller. It’s totally worth $10 for me to see what he’s cooked up next. Plus, there’s boobs. And the money goes to a good cause.

"Video discovery startups are flawed products and even worse businesses. Why? Because they..."

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:18:29 -0700

“Video discovery startups are flawed products and even worse businesses. Why? Because they don’t fit into a consumer’s mental model. They’re fine products - several are very well-designed - and I’m sure many user studies provide answers like “oh yes, I totally need this,” but in reality there’s no habit being formed.”

- Why Video Discovery Startups All Fail

laughingsquid: Vintage Social Networking

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:42:11 -0700

laughingsquid:

Vintage Social Networking

james-blake: James Blake - Every Day I Ran (Bouns Track) James...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:16:31 -0700

james-blake:

James Blake - Every Day I Ran (Bouns Track)

James Blake + RZA. Fuck yes.

Storms and Teacups — Acko.net

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 18:20:41 -0700

Storms and Teacups — Acko.net:

I think Steven Wittens is right on the money with his incredibly thoughtful and thorough analysis of the gender & tech flamewar that periodically takes over the internet, as it did this week. The attention given to contrived issues marginalizes the real ones. That helps nobody.

What most schools don’t teach (by CodeOrg)

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:48:15 -0800

What most schools don’t teach (by CodeOrg)

Video

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:35:38 -0800

Clay Shirky on why love makes open source communities work One...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 08:59:32 -0800

Clay Shirky on why love makes open source communities work

One of those handful of critical lessons everyone needs to understand if they want to understand the internet.

Firewall Interactive Installation Do they make a home version of...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 21:46:18 -0800

Firewall Interactive Installation

Do they make a home version of this, because I want one.

(via True Facts About Morgan Freeman by Ze Frank)

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:20:23 -0800

(via True Facts About Morgan Freeman by Ze Frank)

"I predict that on each step towards increased realism new media take, there will be those who find..."

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:51:31 -0800

“

I predict that on each step towards increased realism new media take, there will be those who find the step physically painful. It will hurt their eyes, ears, nose, touch,and peace of mind. It will seem unnecessarily raw, ruining the art behind the work.

This disturbance is not entirely in our heads, because we train our bodies to react to media, and when it changes, it FEELS different. There may be moments of uncomfort. But in the end we tend to crave the realism — when it has been mastered — and will make our home in it.

The scratchy sound of vinyl, the soft focus of a Kodak Brownie, and the flickers of a 24 frame per second movie will all be used to time-stamp a work of nostalgia.

”

- The Technium: Pain of the New

Kickstarter’s numbers from 2012 are staggering

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:39:14 -0800

Kickstarter’s numbers from 2012 are staggering

How To Make Burning Man Last 100 Years

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:20:00 -0800

I’m Nick Molnar, a 4-year Burner who found himself a part of the somewhat-controversial Ideate theme camp last year. You can read more about Ideate here and here.

One of the defining features of Burning Man is its impermanence. Every year a city is built and then demolished to the point there is no physical evidence it even existed in the first place. Black Rock City is under a constant existential threat. Will the BLM keep handing out permits? Will the town of Gerlach still accommodate the throngs of Burners passing through? Will the Port-O-Pottie’s keep getting serviced? Having an ever-growing number of people come together in a specific piece of desert every year is a doomed proposition. One year, the rumours will finally be true and BRC as we know it will be no more.

The Burning Man founders know this better than anyone. But they have also been abundantly clear that Burning Man is not confined to a patch of sand in the desert. Here’s a quote from Maid Marian from 12 years ago:

“It gradually dawned on me that many things we do before and after the event are a part of Burning Man’s culture. Burning Man is not a select club or a clique or a closed subculture. It is a kind of tapestry, an ever-widening network of actions and relationships extending far beyond the place called Black Rock City. As a result, many of us have gained a way of looking at life that is similar. Regardless if Burning Man has changed our lives, we share certain values in common. Now it’s time to begin to communicate as members of this global community.”

Black Rock City may die, but Burning Man will live on.

This is where the Ten Principles fit in. They are what makes Burning Man portable and resilient. Regional Burns are a great example of this: someone who has never set foot in BRC can be a full-fledged member of the Burning Man community by attending a Regional and seeing the Ten Principles in action.

Today, that “ever-widening network of actions and relationships” has made its way much further into society than Regionals and Decompressions. Google, the 4th largest US company by market-cap, is a part of that network. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin had to pick a CEO to help them grow the company they gathered a shortlist of prospects and picked the one who had been to Burning Man. The Googleplex is littered with Burning Man art, and photos from the event. The first ever ‘Google Doodle’ was the Burning Man logo.

It’s trendy in tech circles to make fun of Google’s “Don’t be evil” mantra, and they have certainly made occasional missteps into evil territory, but Google is a leader in everything from environmental stewardship (leave no trace) to workplace diversity (radical inclusion) to protecting internet freedom (civic responsibility).

Google is far from the only example of Burning Man principles infiltrating mainstream society. Zappos’ quirky - and celebrated - company culture borrows from Burning Man principles. Ridejoy, a successful ridesharing startup, began as burningmanrides.com. Couchsurfing.org is a part of that tapestry. So is Free Grilled Cheese Day. Big-time CEOs like Jeff Bezos, Chip Conley, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Bill Gates have all attended. It’s hard to imagine that they didn’t bring a little bit of their experience back to their organizations. In aggregate, those types of changes may one day touch more people’s lives than BRC ever will.

The is why The Burning Man Project is so important. The Burning Man Project is a new group devoted to bringing the Ten Principles into broader society, spun out of the Burning Man Organization. It’s a big bet that the leaders of tomorrow are going the principles of Burning Man into their organization, and that even people who have never set foot into BRC are going to incorporate the Ten Principles into their lives.

Now, back to Ideate, Bear, Zos, and the root of this whole controversy.

Was it a practical move to put the largest number of virgins in a single camp ever? No.
Was Ideate as welcoming and inclusive as it could have been? Nope.
Was the Reallocate drone project enjoyed on the same scale as The Trojan Horse or Opulent Temple? Not even close.
Was it worth it? I think so.

We fucked up. There was too much back-patting and networking and way too little radical inclusion, participation, and communal effort. Hubris led us to set expectations too high. The Reallocate drone project was a remarkable technical achievement, but its limited scale made it a pretty marginal gift to the larger Burner community. We hosted some amazing talks, but they were probably 70% attended by people from inside Ideate. We had fantastic meals, but we only shared them with our campmates and our almost-as-elitist sister camp. As a group, we got more value than we gave.

There were times where it felt like a dustier version of TED, Summit Series, or SXSW. We created the kind of place where who you knew, or who you were, mattered more than what you contributed. The already-exclusive group had even more exclusive sub-groups: private salons and retreats to Fly Ranch, where only the most elite of the elite were invited.

But here’s the thing: it was a long-term investment. We were all virgins once, and none of us got it right the first time. I frequently grapple with how to be a better member of the community. It takes time to wrap your head around Burning Man culture, and how to be a part of it. The people I met at Ideate were some of the most thoughtful, intelligent, kind, and tenacious people I’ve met inside or outside BRC. It might take years to pay back all that the group got from the event, but I’m confident that this group of people is going to make the playa a better place and be exemplary members of the community.

The big gambit is if they can take these lessons home and use them to build the next Google or Zappos. The people I met in Ideate are certainly an ambitious bunch: the Summit Series team just bought a mountain, Reallocate is doing radical work around the world, Shervin’s funding the next wave of innovators, and on and on and on. If even a small percentage of the Ideators actualize their ambitions, there are going to be a lot of Burners in positions where they can really make a difference.

Remember, BRC might not be there in 10 years, but Google sure will. The Burning Man of tomorrow won’t look like the Burning Man of today. That’s why I think Ideate was a bet worth taking.

"An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not..."

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:45:09 -0800

“An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States apprehended in the United States, unless an Act of Congress expressly authorizes such detention.”

- A dropped amendment to the National Defence Authorization Act

One would think this wouldn’t be controversial.

"Some research suggests that, statistically speaking, there are too few terror attacks for predictive..."

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:25:50 -0800

“Some research suggests that, statistically speaking, there are too few terror attacks for predictive patterns to emerge. The risk, then, is that innocent behavior gets misunderstood—say, a man buying chemicals (for a child’s science fair) and a timer (for the sprinkler) sets off false alarms.”

- U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens

Cards Against Humanity Holiday Gift Pack

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:43:45 -0800

Cards Against Humanity Holiday Gift Pack:

These guys are awesome

"I talk to new tech companies every day, and I’ve rarely come across a firm that has created such a..."

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:07:45 -0800

“I talk to new tech companies every day, and I’ve rarely come across a firm that has created such a fantastic product aimed at solving such a big problem. Real meat is delicious, but it’s terrible in nearly every other way. Meat is environmentally toxic and colossally inefficient, ethically dubious (even if you’re OK with killing animals, raising and slaughtering animals in factory farms is hard to defend), and it’s unhealthy”

- Beyond Meat: Fake chicken that tastes so real it will freak you out.

If I had money, I’d give it to these guys.

"In other sad news, Google “search anthropologist” Dan Russell told The Atlantic’s..."

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 10:40:49 -0800

“In other sad news, Google “search anthropologist” Dan Russell told The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal that 90 percent of American Google users do not know how to use CTRL or Command F to find a word on a page.”

- College students stumped by search engines, research finds

Seriously?