McFilter: April 2016 Archives

April 18, 2016

Interesting Things on the Internet: April 18th 2016

Paying Your Own Way (Or Not). Tom Steinberg talks about whether money is the only useful measuring stick. For tech, in this case, but see also all of the assorted "ROI" justifications for the arts, city investment, etc. When do we start demanding that the bankers and accountants justify their existence in terms that the rest of us feel are important (hint: those terms won't be ones that can be reduced to a single number either...)
The divide. Looks interesting... and is playing at FACT at the end of May...
Modern anti-spam and E2E crypto. In-depth look at the issues surrounding spam email and how to counter it. And how to balance that with the scope for privacy invasion that be-able-to-read-email-to-check-for-spam introduces...
Why Are America's Most Innovative Companies Still Stuck in 1950s Suburbia? Good exploration of what's wrong with big out-of-town company campuses.
Story of cities #21: Olivetti tries to build the ideal 'human city' for its workers. In contrast with the previous link, a look at the work Olivetti did to situate their company in Ivrea mid-C20th. It was arguably moulding the city to suit the company, but I remember a really interesting exhibition I visited when I lived in Turin (but never got round to blogging, sadly) that explained lots of the social/improving-society thinking tied up with those experiments and work. Arguably the main problem was that Olivetti dominated Ivrea (from a percentage of people working there perspective) and so the fortunes of the town and the company ended up too closely intertwined (which is fine as long as the company is doing well...).
Hacking Rambert. Leila Johnston doing an excellent job of documenting what she got up to as a technologist-in-residence, and more importantly asking questions about technology and its relationship with/to the arts.
When U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages. Or a warning from history about blind belief in "big data"

Posted by Adrian at 12:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 11, 2016

Interesting Things on the Internet: April 11th 2016

OMATA: A Modern Mechanical Design Approach. Lovely article about OMATA's beautiful GPS bike speedometer. I especially like the term modern mechanical. It sums up nicely the sort of products I'm aiming for with MCQN Ltd.
What It’s Like to Get a National-Security Letter. A behind-the-scenes look at the usually-shrouded-in-secrecy process of responding to a request for information from the US security services.
Design Facts. An interesting collection of facts about design (as you'd possibly expect :-)
Saul Alinsky, community organizing and rules for radicals. Interesting article about an interesting person. Will have to seek out some of his books.
‘The Finkbeiner Test’. Good set of tests/rules to follow when writing about scientists (who happen to be women).

Posted by Adrian at 12:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack