Is this progress?
Thanks to Random Good Stuff for posting this spellbinding Disney vision of the future of transport – from the yesteryear of 1958.
The one big vision of luxury back then, it seems, was the dream of having machines do everything on our behalves. From conveyor belt window shopping systems to cars that drive you straight to your desk – it seems tragic that the utopian dream was that of isolation and increased laziness. Thankfully, 1958’s vision is far from coming to fruition – with the closest thing we have to its predictions being our new 186mph Eurostar, some driverless airport car-pod-things and subservient library chairs.
Not so thankfully, we still don’t have sun powered electro suspension cars and certain arrogant ****s still drive 4x4s around the city. (Rant over!).
Posted by: Simeon at matter transfer time on Thursday, 20th December 2007
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Seek and ye shall get down
Search engines are the future of everything. Yes, absolutely everything. So it’s no surprise that an excellent music search engine has come along.
There’ve been many pretenders over the last few years but Songza takes the crown. Not only does it have every song that you might never want to hear again. But it also has a user interface that makes me grasp my Sony Vaio with a previously unknown amour and weep with joy.
What’s next? Xmas discount voucher search engine? Perhaps that just be the top result of a xmas marketing search engine.
Posted by: Ben at 2nd Wispa-time on Friday, 30th November 2007
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Which way for art dot com?
Science can take credit for digital technology. And Google is evidence of how accepted digital is by the business world. But has the art world fully embraced digital connectivity yet?
Plenty of art has. See Postsecret, Grafedia, Golan Levin, We Feel Fine without even dipping ones digital toe. But not much digital art seems to be celebrated by the establishment. Where is the digital art gallery?
Ondotzero commissioned Dandelion for the V&A. The Tate has embraced MySpace in its Tate Tracks initiative and Flickr in its How We Are Now exhibition. These are great but feel like the flirtatious early stages.
How will it blossom? What needs to be done to take the art gallery digital? Will it look like MYARTSPACE? Hyper thinks it’ll be a little more amazing than that.
Posted by: Ben at wondertime on Friday, 2nd November 2007
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‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication'
...said Leonardo DaVinci.
Marketing communication through digital channels currently has a tendency to be over-reliant on technology or complicated interactive techniques.
First Direct wanted to show that customer satisfaction is of utmost importance to them. So they commissioned a survey to find out what makes people happy. And then they published it online. No bells, no whistles, no expandable-social-podcast-
viral.
It just goes to show that a cute puppy is still a cute puppy, even since the internets arrived.
Image by anyoungkevin
Posted by: Ben at listening to Justice on Friday, 27th July 2007
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Time for a reality check?
Hope and encouragement go a long way in motivating people, but whilst this approach seems to work just fine for brands – it seems it’s taking a little more to get people to care about saving the planet.
The 1940s saw America set about a fairly successful conservation effort fuelled largely by a sense of national pride. But in a society where national pride is now less, and global pride seems non existent, maybe it’s time to up the ante and resort to straight-talking fear tactics? Forget Live Earth (it shouldn’t be too hard to do), nothing’s made me sit up and take notice more than ‘World Without Oil’; a hypothetical web journal documenting a week by week account of life in America as oil supplies dwindle. It confirms for me that digital, and ARGs [define] in particular, could really steer society to saving mother earth.
Posted by: Simeon at afternoon slump time on Friday, 13th July 2007
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