July 31, 2008

Is Hipster Homogeneity Killing Culture?
Adbusters has a controversial essay questioning whether or not today’s youth culture is inbreeding itself into oblivion. They use the dreaded word “hipster” which tends to make people argue about the definition and miss the point. The piece does raise an interesting question though -is the current cool/hipster/youth culture just an empty mash of previous cultures? Like westernization killing off indigenous traditions; is “hipster” culture an hyper-ironic recursive game that lays waste to creative thought? The article is written in typical heavy handed Adbusters style, but the ideas presented are worth thinking over.
From Adbusters:
Ever since the Allies bombed the Axis into submission, Western civilization has had a succession of counter-culture movements that have energetically challenged the status quo. Each successive decade of the post-war era has seen it smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society.
But after punk was plasticized and hip hop lost its impetus for social change, all of the formerly dominant streams of “counter-culture” have merged together. Now, one mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior has come to define the generally indefinable idea of the “Hipster.”
An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.

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Unique Interior Design: Salt Lined Rooms For Relaxation
Omotesando, Japan is home to an interesting concept spa called Saltasia. It’s a female only spa featuring salt lined rooms that promote anti-aging and relaxation. Kept at a comfortable 41°C, the rooms provide a a space for lounging, meditation and stretching. Hexagon shaped salt tiles cover all surfaces with colored LED lighting behind them. Soft ambient music also plays in the background, making it into a complete sensory relaxation cocoon.
[via C Scout]

Marktd Hates Latest Guinness Ad
The guys over at PSFK’s Marktd site think that the new ad from Guinness is unbelievable:
Unbelievable in the negative use of the word… Now we have an ad with people switching on and off lights in a building at night… so that if you looked from the outside the building would look like a pint of Guinness. But it doesn’t. It looks like all those CGI gimmicks that throw you out of the make-believe in all those sci-fi films you’ve hated recently. You just know it didn’t really happen and that the ad-guys are trying to fool you.

Using Physical Objects As Passwords
Using a stapler to open Photoshop? A Notebook as your email password? A project from the Tangible Interfaces class at MIT gave birth to a weird but potentially useful idea - using physical objects as activators of computer processes. This unusual concept software is called Amphibian, and uses the very specific weight of everyday objects to trigger computer processes. Weighing the objects on a small scale connected to a computer will match the weight with the digital process, and make it happen.
From the Tangible Interfaces web site:
Amphibian allows users to easily imprint digital functions onto common everyday physical objects. Amphibian is a low cost, low infrastructure system that enables users to choose their own physical objects and imprint onto them almost any standard interface functions that take place on a GUI desktop. The goal of Amphibian is to create a system that the common user can implement and operate so that we may learn more about the digital-physical object relationships people will form.
[via Kevin Kelly]

Video Is The New Text File / Infomercial
Make Magazine make an interesting comment on their site about how video (like the one in this post) has become the new user-manual and that we, or at least tech-geeks don’t tend to learn from text anymore:
We think there are some good opportunities for people who makes things to share their skills and how they create and make a living doing that (and we’ve shared some initial numbers). Videos are becoming the new “text files” - if you grew up learning about some techy topics by text files shared around you likely recognize the analogy. Etsy sellers, makers and anyone who makes things might want to experiment with this model of sharing their skills with other online via video and having actually things to buy as part of the video, but not just an “advertisement” or “infomercial”.
Nice comment on the power of video to share ideas too.

Terminology: Citizen Engineers

A few months back we interviewed Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, about his views on the trend of open source hardware (read it!). In the interview Anderson told us to watch what the guys at Make were doing around this subject, so it was interesting to note that Make have just released a pdf on the subject that they first presented at the Ingite NYC conference recently. In the document they have a lengthy list of the layers that make up open source hardware. The list includes Hardware / Mechanical Diagrams, Schematics & Circuit Diagrams, Parts List (BOM), Layout Diagrams, Core/Firmware and Software/API.They say that each level can be open sourced, but the exact nature of what it means to open it varies:
In practice, not every layer is fully open. Often only a subset of the layers are released, documented, or open source. 7th layer might be materials…
Something to monitor.

Cadillac: We’ll Go Efficient When Consumers Want Us To
Jalopnik points us to news that Cadillac have, erm, said they are prepared to downsize their cars’ engine size when consumers decide they want to have more efficient cars. Auto Observer covers a recent speech by Thomas G. Stephens, General Motors Corp.’s executive vice presiden
U.S. customers will have to signal their readiness to accept smaller engines - in effect reversing a long trend for ever-larger engines and more horsepower.
…Stephens cautions [that] marketing in many segments traditionally has focused on engine cylinder count and power ratings - totems Stephens isn’t certain all customers, particularly those shopping in the premium- or sporty-vehicle segments, are entirely ready to give up…
“We’re ready. When (customers) want it (the option of smaller engines) - we’ll do it.
You can see how well General Motor’s share price is doing with folks like this running their brands:


Bay Area Innovators: Gustaf Alströmer of heysan!
Noticing that there were no standard protocols for communicating between mobile phones and desktop computers, Heysan! is a mobile web based service that enables people to use any Instant Messaging service to chat through their mobile device. The service is not only free, but works with any phone and on any network.
Gustaf discusses some of the popular devices amongst their young, urban users that are typically overlooked by the mobile industry and explains the unique relationship this audience has with the mobile web.
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