PUBLIC MARKS with search thought

Shifting focus

Posted: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 ~ 4:54 PM

This is the last new post that I'll be making on this blog. I decided a while back to shift the focus of my web activities, and thought it was time to formally close things off here.

Why stop posting here? Mostly just a feeling that I needed to shake things up a bit, to put some serious effort behind a few other ideas that I've wanted to work on for a while. Making a clean break just felt right.

There may still be some activity on this site as I back-fill some old posts from other blogging platforms. My goal is to eventually have this as a (more or less) complete archive of my personal blogging from early 1998 to this year. That's a background project of mine that I plan on allocating a bit more time to in 2010.

A huge thanks to Karl Dubost for hosting this blog for so long. In addition to providing this infrastructure, Karl has supported and inspired me in more ways then he may realize. That you are reading this today is due in no small part to him, so you can thank (or blame!) him.

Multiple trips to Japan and constant frustration at being unable to read the language has sparked off an unusual typographic project at johnson banks. Earlier in the year we started seeing if we could combine the English language and Japanese script in some way.

you said: “Especially given the by-now-clichéd recognition that we’ve decisively become an urban species”

It is indeed very interesting to think about urban systems design given there was a major move toward cities. That said I have the feeling that this move comes with, at least, three issues:

1. access to the “thought” urban environment,

2. the space left where 50% of the population is still living,

3. the space of this growth

There are many areas in the world where the growth of the cities is made by people without access or a limited access to the thought urban environment. Poor people living in slums or just in a space which is not part of the work of urban planner per say. In a recent exhibition about slums I went, it was very interesting to see that the organic structure of the slums was making possible for the individuals to create a rich and meaningful space, driving sometimes to less criminality than more traditional areas of the city. The slum is a forced collective creative space for survival.

The rest of the population, the 50% living in deserted areas are the forgotten of this story. It’s indeed more “fun”, interesting for researchers, sociologists to observe and think about the density in urban space (richness of interactions) more than the low level of activities in the “countryside”. Though there are equal challenges there in terms of design and space organization, access to services, etc.

Finally, is it really cities which are growing? What we call urban space often relates to the city center, but I have the feeling that the growth is happening in the in-between space (suburbs), which is again a complete disaster in terms of design, even more so in rich countries. The private space is becoming a space of non-creativity, dead areas of non activities. Someone, who wants to start a small business in between two buildings on the grass of a random suburb of a rich city, will not last for very long. Complete different dynamic than the slum where unregulated areas give the opportunity of creative solutions for surviving or living.

As someone who has written serious, production-quality code for WM5 and WM6, I say this from many months of hard experience:

I WOULD RATHER STICK A FONDUE FORK THROUGH MY SCROTUM.

Never the fuck again will I develop for that platform. My god, I thought X11 was bad...

C'est ça la véritable expérience Windows Mobaïle.

When the idea came up, we thought “wow, this is really innovative and smart”. But quickly we found out that we had not invented anything: Tupperware has been doing for years. And since 1907 a famous movement has functionned in a similar way, groups of people getting together following guidelines expressed in a book. It is of course Scouting. Scouting spread all around the world based on Baden Powell’s book. So if you thought Barcamp and Pecha Kucha’s concept of decentralized events was new, unfortunately it is not really. Welcome to the frustration of living in the 21st century, almost everything has already been done :)

On taking over the world, and other things…

It’s been a month of milestones for Tumblr, and we thought it would be a good time to stop and say: Thank you to everyone for making this possible.

We can still remember watching your new posts come in one-by-one the day we launched. Now we’re waiting for five new servers to arrive to help us handle the 330 million (that’s 0.3 billion!!) hits and 20 million new posts we’re projecting for August.

More than anything, you continue to blow us away with the amazing things you do with Tumblr.

As our team gets bigger (we’re up to 9 people!), we promise we’re as committed as ever to making Tumblr the greatest place for everyone in the world to share the stuff they love and create.

We love you

When I saw the results I thought “yeah, that’s right.” Uh… but I don’t feel enlightened. Just a nagging feeling that I need to tidy up my tags ;)