Labels: language
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9:45 AM | Tuesday, December 29, 2009 |
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9:46 PM | Monday, December 28, 2009 |
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I had a conversation once where one person, an Asian immigrant, noted, "Westerners seek out therapists when they're confused. Asians seek out their fortune tellers." I don't know how true this statement is (I've never actually been to a fortune teller), but I was reminded of it recently.
This time of year, as a matter of habit and curiosity, I look at the Chinese zodiac forecast. This past year was the Year of the Ox, and the coming is the Year of the Tiger, fraught with change and unpredictability. It will have a different resonance for the different zodiac animal and element you are, but the broad forecast holds that everyone will experience change this year. Astrology is a funny practice. It's founded on the basic idea that when you were born influences your basic temperament and personality, which in turns influences your future. Relegated to the New Age section in the contemporary mind, astrology can seem as foreign as the pre-industrial, star gazing cultures that birthed it. Yes, it is remarkable that the vast majority of my close friends are astrologically compatible with me, but I don't know many people these days who take astrology much more seriously than a casual read through their online horoscope. And yet, I wonder if the contemporary mind has just channeled this energy elsewhere. The future, after all, is a muddy thing. We all know there are no guarantees, but we still wish we could know what lies ahead for us. Wouldn't it be great if we could find out? I'm thinking about Facebook quizzes, thin slicing, Myers-Briggs types, career placement tests, the quest to understand the human genome--all of these practices seem to draw from a basic human need to understand and to encapsulate the core of our selves, and to then draw larger inferences from that understanding. Whether it's a palm reading or drawing of stalks, an online quiz or a brief behavioral observation, we want to believe that this is easy, that we can indeed understand who we are and predict what the future holds for us. We want a word like "tiger" or "ENTP" to tell us this, and to tell us what we need to do to live a maximally happy and fulfilling life. The adage to "know thyself" is hard work. Yes, thin slicing can be remarkably accurate, but understanding the underlying causes of behavior and personality is another story entirely. Any psychologist can tell you that personal therapy is a long-term process, that the Myers-Briggs type is not destiny, that disciplined self-discovery is key. A skilled, honest fortune teller will say the same thing. One of the more interesting and popular books of Chinese divination, the I-Ching, is famously opaque, and perhaps deliberately so. Translator Richard Wilhelm apparently once called it "a work that represents thousands of years of slow organic growth and that can be assimilated only through prolonged reflection and meditation." It's silly, but I think back to that line from The Matrix, after Neo met with the Oracle. She had just told him his future, and his mentor, Morpheus, replied: "She told you exactly what you needed to hear, that's all. Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize, just as I did, there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. " It was a perfect example of upaya, or expedient means, the notion that there are many ways to trigger self-learning. But in all of this, the act of self-learning remains central. Neo received a thin slice forecast; his own travels through the Matrix led him to a more compelling answer. In any case, I am sensing change all around. A number of friends are planning career moves, city/country moves, getting ready for a fresh start. And more broadly, we're supposedly recovering from the recession here in the U.S., and now jobs and industry just need to catch up. The Year of the Tiger is just around the bend, and whether you can subscribe to astrology or not, it seems like a good idea to take this limbo week between Christmas and New Year for self-reflection, and to be ready for change. It is, as they say, the one true constant in life. Labels: chinese, philosophy, psychology, zen
9:35 AM | |
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This was a good article, and it reminds me what excites me about the 10's.
Most designers spent most of their time developing things that were tangible. Almost all of their work was for the wealthiest 10 percent of the global population, the pampered minority who already owned more than they needed or wanted, although only a few of them felt guilty about it.I've always loved new technologies. In grade school, I was one of the first people to use instant messenger and email, and I taught myself HTML and set up a simple template system so I could blog before blogging was a household word. I used Telnet, played MUDs, chatted on IRC, discussed on Usenet, texted on my phone back in the days when you had ask people if their phones can handle texting, and read the NY Times on my Palm Pilot. It was a lonely world, though; my online life was by and large separate from my offline life. What's been remarkable in the past 10 years has been seeing how all these social and mobile technologies have become mainstream. I can meet someone at a party and friend them on Facebook; I can meet someone on Twitter and get drinks in the real world. Mobile and social technologies are now so deeply embedded into daily life that we can't remember how to live without them. The next step now is seeing how these technologies become mainstream not just in the developed world, but in developing nations. The next billion people to go online will be doing so via mobile phones, not computers, and they'll be coming largely from the poorest countries on earth. I experienced this personally when raising money for typhoon victims in the Philippines. It seems to me that technology design has incredible potential right now to transform the lives of ordinary citizens in countries where the existing infrastructures have failed to provide for basic needs. And the most remarkable thing is that we don't necessarily have to develop new technologies; we just need to design new ways to use what's already there. One amazing but very simple example is an SMS-based quiz system by Text To Change, designed to educate people in Uganda, Kenya and Namibia about basic HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. See also: Mainstream and Mobile, and Game Changers and Mobile Phones Labels: design, technology
11:07 AM | Sunday, December 27, 2009 |
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Just started a Tumblr. I'd experimented with it before but couldn't quite figure out what I would use it for (this blog frankly already has a Tumblr-like quality), so I deleted it. But it's back, and now I have a clearer purpose: "A scrapbook of design and technology, with a focus on social and mobile".
And that's how I plan to use it--a social, public scrapbook of fascinating implementations of technology and design. I use my blog as a notebook of thoughts and ideas, Facebook and Twitter for conversation, delicious for longer-term records. I decided to focus my Tumblr specifically on design and technology because I've been thinking a good deal about it, and I want to be able to record the random things I come acros and that I find interesting. Hope to see you there. Thanks to Joanne McNeill's great essay on capturing an idea for leading me down this road of thought. Labels: idontknowwhat, personal
12:22 AM | |
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7:15 PM | Saturday, December 26, 2009 |
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 A vending machine payable by credit card. It wasn't that long ago when you would get a funny look when trying to pay for anything less than $10 via credit card. Now it's become normal to pay $1-2 with an Amex, and sometimes even less. Swipe and go--no fumbling for change, no need to handle cash. This is good for credit card companies, of course, and probably good for the vendors, who get increased business despite the premium they need to pay (cf. NYC cabbies). But it got me thinking about how this shift has opened the door for microfinancing--give $5 or so, and you can help a small business owner in a developing nation get started: Perhaps the fastest-growing way to act on these altruistic instincts is participating in microfinancing. You take a relatively small amount of money and, through an online marketplace of sorts, give or lend it to a specific person or project whose story moves you.For every shift in cultural norms in one area (consumer purchasing), a door opens up elsewhere (microfinancing).
1:06 PM | |
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7:34 AM | |
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 Labels: business
8:13 PM | Wednesday, December 23, 2009 |
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 Labels: design
9:27 AM | |
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 Spotted in a building in Brooklyn with a plethora of immigrants. In elevator-rich Manhattan, I already assume that the two buttons outside the door represent up and down, and that the higher one will take me up, and the lower one will take me down. This elevator was in fact designed with this assumption in mind, but one of the residents decided to add labels to make things ultra clear. Again, I think back to the dim sum bill and the one-minute copier. The use of technology is as much a cultural code as it is a generational code, even if that technology, like the mechanical elevator, is hundreds of years old and used the world over. If you come from a world with no elevators and see a door with two buttons, it might not be clear what those buttons are for. How do you open the doors? What's the difference between the buttons? Why won't the door open immediately when I press them? Incidentally, check out Nick Paumgarten's great piece in the New Yorker about the lives of elevators: Smart elevators are strange elevators, because there is no control panel in the car; the elevator knows where you are going. People tend to find it unnerving to ride in an elevator with no buttons; they feel as if they had been kidnapped by a Bond villain. Helplessness may exacerbate claustrophobia. In the old system—board elevator, press button—you have an illusion of control; elevator manufacturers have sought to trick the passengers into thinking they’re driving the conveyance. In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command. The biggest drawback of destination dispatch, besides the anxiety of novelty, is that once you are in an elevator you cannot change your mind. To amend your floor choice, you must disembark, and start again. Elevator mind-changing—the sudden lunge for the unlit button—is rare enough; still, the option is nice. Also, when you get used to this system, you get into an elevator with buttons and forget to press one. But sometimes that happens anyway.With new technology comes new anxieties. Sometimes a label is all you need. Labels: citylife, culture, design, new york, technology
6:30 AM | |
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 Spotted at a teriyaki joint in Venice: thin slices of jalapeño for flavor. In most places in America these days, you can always find a place to eat hamburgers, pizza, variants of Chinese, sushi and teriyaki. In my experience, at least, the best way to tell what part of the country you're in is by looking at the condiments. Labels: culture, food, los angeles
6:10 PM | Tuesday, December 22, 2009 |
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 At Target, of all places, a preponderance of analog clocks vs. digital ones. This got me thinking about a short essay I drafted up about the future of books, and why I, as the opposite of a Luddite, believe e-books will never rule. Happily co-exist, yes, but replace books entirely? Doubtful. Labels: design, technology
6:08 PM | |
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2:36 PM | |
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 In Chinatown, a series of sculptures marked by number rather than name--and using Arabic numerals. Someone versed in Chinese culture would already know what to call these, but for anyone else, "No. 55" is a lot easier than saying "That green rooster with the white head. No, not the duck--the rooster. Wait, not that rooster, the other rooster. Yes, that one." The assumption of Arabic numerals for all language speakers and writers is a good example of what happens when you have a common point of reference. These numbers are as helpful for the foreign buyer as they are for the merchant, who might encounter any number of language speakers in eclectic New York. "55" works for anyone, anywhere, as long you're literate.
3:06 PM | Monday, December 21, 2009 |
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For those precious few seconds  At the gas pump: a credit card reader that doesn't care which way your card is facing. Labels: design, los angeles
12:46 PM | |
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 I don't why, but I'm always fascinated when objects are used for other than their original purpose. Despite our attempts to clearly demarcate and brand a physical object, the human/ape propensity for toolmaking presides. In this example, a can of Arizona ice tea helps cool a building by propping the window open. See also: how a bench becomes a desk.
4:11 PM | Sunday, December 20, 2009 |
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 In Brooklyn, one side of the theater marquee was busted, so they posted the information on paper. You could hail it as a triumph of lo-fi, but the sign still required a computer and a printer, plugged into a power outlet, using a medium generated by very large machines. Will there ever be a day when an LED sign becomes the backup to some new form of information-sharing technology? Labels: new york, technology
12:51 PM | |
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In the land of a thousand languages  Parts of the world where people speak not just multiple languages but read multiple scripts present numerous challenges for health care, education and communication, but also for design. Outside the Asian Pacific Health Care Venture, it was interesting to see what the organizers deemed absolutely necessary to communicate to all the language groups they serve, and the extra information they communicated only to Spanish speakers. Also interesting to see the street signs just outside--all in English, all in Roman script. Willful neglect of immigrant populations, or a design problem? How on earth can you share key site-specific legal information to so many different language speakers without dressing the pole up and down with signs? See also: staccato Shanghai and Tarjeta telefono. Labels: citylife, design, language, los angeles
12:46 PM | |
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  Despite all these advances in mobile technology, our digital lives remain annoyingly tethered. 3G reception can be spotty in certain locales, and if you don't have the Internet on your phone, you're going to need a computer to access your email, and if you don't have a computer on you, you're going to need to borrow one. And even if you do have a computer, you'd better hope there's Wifi access nearby. But regardless of how fancy your newfangled device is, and how energy-efficient it is, and how well it handles data, it's going to run out of juice. There's no way around the constant need for power, and, short of carrying around a generator (itself dependent on gas or solar), you'll eventually need an outlet. I remember it wasn't too long ago when people huddled around public phone booths in airports, waiting to be able to make a call. Apparently, people did the same in telegram outposts. Now it's the Internet and power outlets. Soon, as the cost of Wifi goes down and the frequency of Internet-enabled phones goes up, it will just be power outlets. See also: power outlets on the BoltBus. Labels: technology, travel
5:52 AM | |
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What, no basket for the driver? Must be a recession.
Spotted at the Whole Foods in Tribeca: gift baskets explicitly spelled out "for the Nanny" and "for the Doorman". Up till that moment, and in fact, for most of the year, the store looked like any other Whole Foods I'd been to around the country: pricey but quality food.
Shopping at Whole Foods is itself a marker of status (we ain't at Vons, folks), but people living in doorman-less, cramped apartments in Brooklyn are still allowed to shop there. How does buying a gift basket explicitly marked "For the nanny" add just a small extra marker of distinction for anyone who might be looking?  
4:07 PM | Saturday, December 19, 2009 |
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Cultural codes / Generational codes  The dim sum bill--a coding method perfectly simple and straightforward to the frequent dim sum goer, especially one familiar with Chinese characters, but totally opaque and intimidating to anyone else. What are the stamps for? Why are some red and some black? What do the little numbers mean? Why do they cluster around one spot? Are stamps in the D row worse than stamps in the C row? A few days ago, I helped an elderly lady decipher the automated machine in a parking lot. She'd been struggling for a few minutes, but I walked her through all the buttons and slots in a quick few seconds. "It's complicated," she said, after receiving her validated receipt, "...but just for my generation. Not yours." Below: a self-service key copier spotted in a mall. Designed to be simple and straightforward, but for who?  Labels: chinese, culture, food, technology
3:28 PM | |
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 Spotted in Detroit in the summer, when snow was the furthest thing from my mind. It's probably a bit more appropriate now that temperatures are dropping 'round the northern hemisphere.
8:44 AM | Wednesday, December 16, 2009 |
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 Spotted at UCLA: a food donation box at the entrance/exit to an underground parking lot. I didn't actually check to see what was inside--maybe nobody actually donated anything--, but it drove home (ahem) something I've been thinking about lately. Drive thru cities vs. walking cities. Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas vs. New York, Chicago, Boston. I used to think drive thrus were markers of laziness, but I'm wondering if it's more a cultural thing. In any major city I've been to, our most common necessities are set up around our preferred mode of transportation. ATMs in Los Angeles are drive thru; in New York, they're facing the street. Panhandlers hang out around subway stops and freeway exits, the places where we slow down, look around and regain our bearings. If you're driving everywhere, it's just more natural to throw some food in the trunk and drop it off on your way out of the parking lot. Labels: citylife, culture, design, los angeles, new york
2:59 PM | Monday, December 14, 2009 |
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 This sign got me thinking about design interfaces that anticipate your needs. The way a smartphone might suggest words based on the first few letters of what you're typing, or, even better, suggesting entire words and phrases based on the context of your sentence. Spotted in a no-name pizza joint uptown, a context where someone might pop in and buy something for a dollar in exchange for using the loo.
8:40 PM | Thursday, December 10, 2009 |
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10:44 PM | Wednesday, December 09, 2009 |
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4:07 PM | |
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Refuse as an aesthetic element
3:34 PM | |
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12:50 PM | |
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 Labels: design
12:45 PM | |
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 I love dogs, but I also find them to be interesting studies in semantics and iconography. Any quick trip to a dog park or dog show will put you in front of dozens and dozen of different creatures, all of which meet our understanding of "dog". Animal lovers often debate the subtle differences between alligators and crocodiles, hornets and wasps, but a pug and a St. Bernard, so obviously different, are still the same species. Labels: biology, language, los angeles
12:55 PM | Tuesday, December 08, 2009 |
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 Road trip entertainment for kids, found in a small shop in the middle of Colorado, carrying with it the assumption that a good portion of folks are just passing through.
12:48 PM | |
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 It's interesting how small gift giving so frequently mimics the practice of small purchases. In this case, a parking meter collects money to help the homeless. But long ago, marketers figured out that if you put small candies by the register, people will be more likely to buy them; it didn't take long for non-profit marketers to train sales clerks to ask if customers would like to make a small donation to help such-and-such cause. Chase Community Giving isn't quite the same, but it works on the same principle: Folks are already used to hitting "Like" and making small comments around Facebook. So why not take advantage of something they're already doing, and push it toward a social good?
9:47 AM | |
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 History will remember us as a generation of devices and gadgets. Things that buzz, click, beep and flicker. Labels: culture, technology
5:23 PM | Monday, December 07, 2009 |
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1:07 PM | |
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 Looking down at the MIT Museum: an installation asking you to "Step Here". Got me thinking about contexts in which simple instructional signs are necessary. In a museum, a foot peddle might give one pause. Does it work? Is it allowed? Will a guard yell at me, or will I break the thing? Transfer it to a public space, and have the foot pump operate a water fountain, and the sign may no longer be necessary. Makes me think, too, about how frequently we use our feet to handle tools. In New York, I often see people use their feet as tools, namely, to keep a subway or elevator door from closing (the fact that most people are willing to risk a foot rather than a hand shows its relative value). In some sense, "Step Here" is a reminder to use your foot in the first place.
9:14 AM | |
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 Out in Plantersville, TX, as the Texas Renaissance Festival, I came across a shop of handmade wooden goods. I remember, when I was little, taking trips through the Southwest and coming across local shops. My family taught me to buy things then and there, because you may never find it again. Now, through a simple business card and an e-commerce-enabled web site, it doesn't matter if they're in in the heart of the Texas countryside or the heart of Manhattan. Be sure to check them out, by the way: Wondrous Works of Wood. We were very pleased with the mug we purchased. Labels: business, culture, internet, technology, texas
5:52 AM | |
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  More on tea, and coffee. It's interesting to think about the different practices around caffeination, the way we civilize and stylize drug use for a greater cause--in this case, staying awake. Even before globalization, these norms popped up in almost every culture, perhaps trumped only by alcohol.
9:15 PM | Sunday, December 06, 2009 |
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 Niche tea options - for every taste, an option. Spotted in Takashimaya.
11:33 AM | |
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 The usual array of hotel amenities, but something new: a bottle of Purell. Gets me thinking about Atul Gawande's thoughts on hand washing in hospitals: No part of human skin is spared from bacteria. Bacterial counts on the hands range from five thousand to five million colony-forming units per square centimeter. The hair, underarms, and groin harbor greater concentrations. On the hands, deep skin crevices trap 10 to 20 percent of the flora, making removal difficult, even with scrubbing, and sterilization impossible. The worst place is under the fingernails. Hence the recent CDC guidelines requiring hospital personnel to keep their nails trimmed to less than a quarter of an inch and to remove artificial nails.In many parts of the world, people are already hyper aware of bacterial transfer--I have a number of purse hooks sent from my family in the Philippines, and I remember using hand sanitizer many years ago. It's interesting to watch broader American culture adapt to the fear of disease transfer. I've been seeing Purell dispensers everywhere these days. On college campuses, in offices, in handbags. Strangely, though, I've never actually seen anyone use them. As Gawande's essay explores, that's often the hardest part.
10:27 AM | |
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"She looked like something else, something magnificent."
The best writing I've seen and probably the best writing ever about Caster Semenya, the runner from South Africa who won a gold medal in the 2009 World Championships in Berlin but was stripped of the medal after an inconclusive gender test. Ariel Levy in the New Yorker covers the intricate complexities of the situation, and how race, politics and gender have all come together. The most powerful part comes toward the end, when she meets Ms. Semenya briefly and brings a sense of humanity to what can often seem like an abstract debate:
She wore sandals and track pants and kept her hood up. When she shook my hand, I noticed that she had long nails. She didn’t look like an eighteen-year-old girl, or an eighteen-year-old boy. She looked like something else, something magnificent.For the record, it looks like the medal will continue to be honored. Labels: gender
7:12 AM | Wednesday, December 02, 2009 |
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