Design, Perl, Heresy, and Ephemera:
- Product Panic: 2009 -- Bruce Sterling essay on design for recession-panicked consumers. As is usual with Bruce, I can't tell whether he's wryly tongue-in-cheek or literally advocating what he says. Great panic products are like Roosevelt’s fireside chats. They’re cheery bluff. The standard virtues of fine industrial design—safety, convenience, serviceability, utility, solid construction … well, when you’re heading for the lifeboats, you can overlook those pesky little details. For designers, the ideal panic product in 2009 is a 99-cent iPhone application. Something like an iPhone ocarina or lava lamp.
- Chuck vs Camel -- Programming Perl makes an appearance on mainstream TV. (thanks Allison!)
- The Civil Heretic (NY Times) -- a fascinating portrait of Freeman Dyson.
- FileFront Closes -- "48 terabytes of data, historical and user-generated, gone." Does our every upload deserve eternity? Who would want, take, or be able to support the continued existence of 48T of unprofitable blahblah? If 48T of user-generated content falls in the cloud, does it make a sound? (via waxy)
Comments: 4
Andy Baio [27 March 2009 05:04 PM]
My big complaint is that the users had no choice: they were given five days warning to save all of their material from an 8-year-old website.
Service providers, even if they're free, should feel a certain commitment to the community that kept them alive. Is it that hard to keep an archive of material online for a few months, retrievable only by the people that originally created it?
watzabatza [29 March 2009 08:13 AM]
@Andy
Perhaps you're right.
We really have no choice.
Thomas Scoville [29 October 2009 05:16 PM]
I love the Sterling link. Nat: I've been digging FSL for a while now. Just wanted you know know.
Medyumlar [ 6 May 2010 05:03 AM]
I love the Sterling link. Nat: I've been digging FSL for a while now. Just wanted you know know.