The tulips are now in full bloom, and the allium bulbs are getting ready to flower. The peony grows noticeably every day. The Northern Mockingbirds that were still feathering their nest over the weekend didn’t sing yesterday, and today the nest was empty. Was it the wisteria leaves and buds unfurling into the nest that disturbed them? My paparazzi habits? GMOs? Something else? The purple kale looks so luscious, I may just have to cut and steam it tomorrow, and use the flowers in a salad.
Three nomads connecting in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Yours truly, revealing the secret to keeping my digital devices active and connected: Voltaic Systems solar backpack. Nau’sAcoustic Pant also proved most excellent for riding and other adventures. The handsome man holding my hand sports a traditional deel with a wide sash that serves as a brace during wild rides as well creating a pocket for mobile device and other accessories. The bactrian camel wears a beautiful handwoven saddle.
Last weekend, an uncle asked me “How many hours a day do you go online?” I looked up from my iPhone and repeated the question out loud several times, stressing the different words to understand what he meant, like Jude Law as Brad Stand in “I Heart Huckabees” pondering “How Am I Not Myself?” Go online? 10 or 12?
“All of them,” my wisebrother answered. “She doesn’t go online, she just is.” Uncle seemed confused and more than a little worried.
This week’s Economist has a great section on the new nomadism might help him understand the shift that occurs with ubiquitous connectivity. In it, Paul Saffo describes the evolution of the digital nomad from the early astronauts (who must bring what they need because they cannot rely on their environment to provide it) to intermediate hermit crabs (who survive by dragging a cast-off shell i.e. carry-on bag of cables, discs, dongles, batteries, plugs and paper).
In contrast, the new urban nomads, appearing only in the past few years, are defined “not by what they carry but by what they leave behind, knowing that the environment will provide it.” As the technology becomes more advanced, it becomes invisible — the connection is what’s important.
Highlights:
New oases - Expect “a huge rise in demand for semi-public spaces that can be informally appropriated to ad-hoc workspaces”. The new architecture, says Mr Mitchell, will “make spaces intentionally multifunctional”. This means that 21st-century aesthetics will probably be the exact opposite of the sci-fi chic that 20th-century futurists once imagined. Architects are instead thinking about light, air, trees and gardens, all in the service of human connections.
Family ties — nomadic technology deepens them, because it enables connected presence. People expect less content but instead a feeling of permanent connection, as though they were in fact together during the entire time between their physical meetings.
A world of witnesses - ubiquity of mobile video changes the game for exposing human rights abuses, health care and environmental monitoring.
Recognize yourself, global nomad? Check out Janera.com, founded by Janera Soerel, a new online publication and social network for and by the vibrant community of global nomads.
When a group of pygmy sperm whales repeatedly beached themselves off Mahia beach, people tried over an hour and a half to get them to sea. Just when humans were about to give up, a dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales and led them to safety.
The Institute For Figuring’s Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project embodies “conecptual enchantment,” the “beauty and creativity that comes out of scientific thinking.” As it turns out, the gorgeously crenellated and undulating corals, anemones, kelps, sponges, and slugs that live in the reef have what are known as hyperbolic geometric structures: shapes that mathematicians, until recently, thought did not exist outside of the human imagination.
“Design and the Elastic Mind,” an exhilarating new show opening on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, makes the case that through the mechanism of design, scientific advances of the last decade have at least opened the way to unexpected visual pleasures. Features “Honeycomb Vase” made by 40,000 bees and Tomás Gabzdil Libertini through a process of “slow prototyping,” Front Design’s Sketch furniture, and Joris Laarman’s bone furniture. More images from the show.
Obama’s main “change” banner font is Gotham, designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones for GQ to be something that would look fresh, yet established, to have a credible voice to it. It also needed to look very masculine and “of-the-moment.” Mission accomplished.
Online outpost of Devonport, Auckland, NZ based Endemic, devoted to artist and designer made fashion, publications, art toys and a wide range of playful imaginings. (Looks like physical store opened right after I visitedthis wonderful area — will have to go back.)
Love eating bitter gourd/ bitter melon in Bhutan and China… Looking forward to studying this beautiful reference to all things bitter melon and figuring out what to do with it at home.
Olivia Judson asks what’s it like living on a cloud? There’s some wild microbial life going on there. Living conditions, nutritional information and lots of good questions.
SSBX is partnering with MIT to bring a FabLAB (Fabrication Laboratory) to the South Bronx. FabLAB is an international project started at MIT Center for Bits and Atoms , aiming to bring digital fabrication, to ordinary folks for solving community problems. (Thanks and congratulations, Paris!)
Consider hiccups. These spasms in our diaphragms are triggered by electric signals generated in the brain stem, which we inherited from amphibian ancestors who emit similar signals to control their gills. Hiccups are the same phenomenon as gill breathing.
Our inner fish extends beyond physicality. New research reveals that many fish display a wide range of surprisingly sophisticated social behaviors, pursuing interpersonal, interfishal relationships that seem almost embarrassingly familiar.
“Fish have some of the most complex social systems known,” Michael Taborsky, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, said. “You see fish helping each other. You see cooperation and forms of reciprocity.”
40k people have watched a video of a cow birth on youtube shot and uploaded by a kid from rural Uruguay with an XO computer from the OLPC project. Links to class blogs for grades one-six, reflections and frank criticism of the project.
MyMaps GeoBlogger makes it easy to blog from Google Maps and create a geo-aware RSS feed. Perfect for adding a location context to your posts. Trend from chronological towards location-based.
I fell in love (again) with New Zealand and Australia over the holidays. (I’m sorry too!) But I couldn’t believe people put up with their bits being metered. Even coming from laggard U.S., I felt like I was sucking bandwidth out of a cocktail straw.
Hotels charged $30 a day as an ante — a few YouTube shorts is all it takes to reach the daily limit, after which you pay for every mb. (Exception: Hotel So with free broadband wifi.) Forget about uploading all your photos. Cafes with wifi charged high fees too. Few non-geek friends had broadband at home.
Immediately after I returned to the U.S., things started looking up down under. Australia’s getting faster and cheaperbroadband with a new undersea cable, and NZ’s making changes too. Good on ya!
FRUSTRATED by the NSW Government’s stalled free wi-fi project, a group of Facebookers have decided to start their own. It was inspired by futurist Mark Pesce (Mob Rules!) to create a free wireless network, which the group hopes will one day cover Sydney and make it easy for anyone to enjoy the convenience of free internet access for quick tasks such as checking email.
What if there was free Wifi across the whole city of Sydney, Australia? It is perfectly possible. And YOU can help make it happen. The Technology: the Meraki wireless mesh hardware, cheap, easy to set up and easier to share. Sydney is bootstrapping right now, and you can say “I was part of the free Wifi revolution in Sydney!” We are not related to Meraki in any way - we are a collection of individuals who are interested in changing the world, one neighborhood at a time.
At the end of the day you will be hard pressed to find individuals who can afford sharing their bandwidth in the current New Zealand broadband landscape. In this country there’s no concept of “unlimited” bandwidth. People are still being charged in plans that go from a minimum of 1GB (yes, believe me), going through 5GB, 10GB and so on.
Cornell University researchers have succeeded in implanting electronic circuit probes into tobacco hornworms as early pupae. The hornworms pass through the chrysalis stage to mature into long-lived moths whose muscles can be controlled with the implanted electronics. The research was showcased at MEMS 2008.
Social networks create a trusted environment for reaching high-value, frequent purchasers of airline tickets, electronics, clothes or other items. Where does that leave less-frequent buyers? Looking to their friends rather than to advertising for advice.
Say you’re a business that needs photos for your website, or a magazine that needs an illustration, or just someone who wants to hold a contest … Pixish is a way to engage creative people online to submit, judge, and source amazing images.
Sur les paves la ferme (Over the pavement, the farm), is the theme of Work Architecture’s winning proposal for P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s 2008 summer courtyard. Reflects the movement from industrialization to postindustrialization, from global to local, from free market to farmer’s market, and from sand to hay.
Alex Steffen eloquently outlines two singularity scenarios and suspects we are at the shearing point on either side of which one looms: the Atmospheric Singulariy (if we fail to tackle our climate crisis) and the Sustainability Singularity (if we do come to grips with our challenges and realize that “small steps” are not even vaguely sufficient.)
If we look for practical information through Google then we don’t need to involve much of our inner world. However, as it often happens, search engines are being used as well for cultural, philosophical, and even existential or spiritual searches.
The Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN will stage a workshop called “Forest Insects as Food: Humans Bite Back.” Among the questions to be addressed: Why douse fields with pesticides if the bugs we kill are more nutritious than the crops they eat.
On every street in Buenos Aires, I fell in love with the handpainted signs and lettering. Delighted to discover these fonts below by Alejandro Paul that capture the Argentinian style and energy. Paul is one of the founders of Sudtipos project, the first Argentinian type foundry collective, whose site is filled with fonty goodness.
Regarding the adorable pinguinos, I didn’t see any in Argentina, but here are some pictures of the pinguinos of Patagonia (Chile) and the Galapagos (Ecuador).
Three nomads connecting in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Yours truly, revealing the secret to keeping my digital devices active and connected: 
Obama’s main “change” banner font is 
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