It is only the beginning of April 2011 but a lot of things are changing in the world around us. For one, we are facing massive government transitions throughout the world, namely in Egypt and closely followed by Libya. We have already faced a massive natural disaster that has shaken one of the world’s densest countries. We’ve mourned the loss of Elizabeth Taylor, a violet Hollywood gem amongst the modern rubbish we now see at the multiplexes. A lot has already happened in this still young year. But, I feel one large cultural item has gone overlooked, an item that relates directly to urban twentysomethings.
This item is the death of the hipster and the associated culture as it is perceived to be. I’ve noticed it’s dissipation for years now, as you hear people everywhere–from Wal-Marts to vintage stores–call each other and deny accusations of being a hipster. Young preteens in the suburbs are wearing Toms shoes and the emblematic keffiyeh scarf. Moms and Dads are downloading music by artists like Cut Copy and Sufjan Stevens for free, texting and video chatting their kids for help on how to use
Hype Machine in order to find out other things to listen to. Names like Aaron Sorkin, Paul Giamatti, Natalie Portman, David Fincher, and Trent Fucking Reznor are among household names. A movie like Juno can sweep the hearts of a nation, on the wings of a silver screen ingenue by the name of Ellen Page, performing a role penned by a woman by the name of “Diablo Cody”.
It sounds both pretentious and preposterous, but like grunge in the nineties, the underground has gone mainstream. We can’t hide it anymore, as city dwellers visit their suburban towns during holidays to walk past Urban Outfitters in place of where Hot Topics once stood. This seems like an easy enough (and obvious) transition, but a few really tangible things have happened within the past three months of this year that has nailed the hammer into the cold, ironic, European cigarette smoking coffin of the hipster.
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Over the weekend some linked to Stefan Sagmeister website which is just as creative and innovative as the rest of this work. The 3D-esque buttons which are painted on the floor are actually the site navigation. You can literally watch Stefan and his team working at any time, the feed runs 24 hours a day. I think this is one of the most innovative web sites I’ve seen in a while. People need to be inspired this and take it to the next level.
Bobby
The New York Times has a great article by Julie Zhou called Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt about how people behave when given the ability to act anonymously, specifically when leaving comments.
There you are, peacefully reading an article or watching a video on the Internet. You finish, find it thought-provoking, and scroll down to the comments section to see what other people thought. And there, lurking among dozens of well-intentioned opinions, is a troll.
I always equated commenting to what a person would do in real life. Would you really walk up to someone and tell them their art sucked or that their opinion was stupid? My guess would be no, you’d leave your opinion to yourself. I’d say about 5% of comments on The Fox Is Black get deleted for a number of reasons, but just like the content on the site, the comments should be curated as well. The article brings up a lot of good points, many of which I’ve been frustrated by before. It’s nice to see I’m not alone.
Bobby
This isn’t exactly music monday material, but think of it as another option to listen to while completing tasks that require more hands than brains: oxford-style debating from Intelligence Squared. Ok, Ok, stay with me. I listened to one of these debates this past weekend centering around a proposition that “the art market is less ethical than the stock market” and since I like art, I wanted the art market to be ethical… but then I learned more about the art market (while listening to some pretty funny back-and-forth between the panelists, including artist Chuck Close, collector Richard Feigen, critic Jerry Saltz, and others.) The audience is polled before and after the debate to determine the winner.
Most of the debates center around political propositions, especially the free U.S. version, but the original, un-free version from the U.K. features more debates surrounding design such as: Fashion Maketh Woman, Modern Architecture is all Glass and Carbuncles, Real Artists Work in Advertising or Palladio versus Ruskin. Actually, after writing Palladio versus Ruskin, I can’t blame anyone for preferring to listen to music.
Alex
The New York Times recently covered a story about Internet company Google testing autonomous cars that have been driving themselves around San Francisco. These test cars, comprised of seven Toyota Prius’ and an Audi TT, have all equipped with sensors that attach to the roof and wheels and allow the cars to drive unaided by humans, though there are humans in the car during the test for legal and safety reasons. The article focuses on the technology aspects mostly, how the car works and where it traversed. It was a great article and it’s a really amazing concept. Then I came across this idea from Nathan Williams, a designer who works over at Wolff Olins, who tweeted:
Google’s mission = ‘organise the worlds info’… if you think about it, drone cars make perfect sense. Bots collecting data. Simple.
And suddenly it became clear what Google could be working toward.
Imagine you make a technology that allows cars all over the world to be driven autonomously. There are a huge number of benefits to people and society at large. Less accidents, more freedom to interact with people in the car or just so you can text or watch a movie. But what does Google gain from this? Well, you have to input an address into the system so the car can drive you to your location. It can tell which grocery store you shop at, which gym you visit, what kind of school your kids go to. It knows what time of day you’re travelling, if you make a morning and evening commute or if you zip around town at all times of the day. What would Google do with this information? They’d sell ads based around the data. It’s your real life and your digital life merging together.
I’m not trying to sound Orwell-ian here, though the idea can sound a bit scary. There are a lot of devices that capture your real life and combine it with your digital presence, think Last.fm or Foursqaure. But this would be one of the largest companies in the world who already knows so much about you getting even more information getting even more precise data. I came across this article by IDEO though titled Why Would You Trade Away Your Online Privacy? which spoke exactly about the tradeoffs of privacy. It’s a great read and it honestly answers a lot of concerns one might have against losing privacy… you know, so long as Google doesn’t turn evil.
Update: The Associated Press has their own take on it but seems to think the cars would have cameras attached, taking photos along your route to flesh out Google Maps. While it’s an interesting idea I think it misses the real point which is tracking behavior in the real world.
Bobby
My Twitter stream has been blowing up this morning about a new project called Lost World’s Fairs, which as you can guess, is a collection of World’s Fairs that have been lost or are yet to happen. Microsoft hired design/illustrators Frank Chimero, Jason Santa Maria and Naz Hamid to go create awesome scenes which included fancy fonts as IE 9 now supports Web Open Font Format, which is basically going to make the web a much prettier place in the near future.
The outcome was phenomenal as Frank created a deep diving Atlantis adventure, Jason went out to the moon and Naz explored the ancient city of El Dorado. I love how Frank’s design deep dives 20,000 leagues under the sea and the fonts in Jason’s moon display are sooo beautiful. I’d love to see this collection expanded by other artists in the future.
Bobby
