Rob Walker points us to the short documentary “Possessed”, a film directed by Martin Hampton that delves into the fascinating world of hoarders and their belongings. Martin tells the story of four individuals who can’t let go of their mounds of stuff, ranging from old furniture to memorabilia to completely valueless bits like used cotton swabs and trash. The film tries to get at what drives hoarding behavior, suggesting it may be a type of mental illness and/or an extreme reaction to reckless consumerism and a culturally-condoned obsession with material wealth and consumption. Martin made the film during a [...]

Patrick Macias points us to some interesting images of the ’stay-at-home’ Japanese generation known as Otaku. The photos show that despite their disinterest in leaving their bedrooms, they still seem to amass a lot of possessions – often around a particular theme.
There seems to be some similarities between these men and the monorcolorists New Yorkers who lived a single color scheme, no?
More photos: Otaku Power – Trivia/Desire/Transformation

It seems it’s never too early to get your kids started on sharing their thoughts and emotions. Designer and expectant father Corey Menscher has created the Kickbee, a device worn by pregnant mothers that senses a baby’s movements inside the womb and transmits them onto digital networks.  Realizing that fathers don’t have the same intimate physical connection to their unborn children, Menscher wanted a means of experiencing greater awareness and believes that this technology can do just that.
The Java application receives the sensor values and analyzes them. When a kick event is detected, a Twitter message is posted via the Twitter [...]

Violet, a company devoted to building products based on “calm and emotional technologies,” recently unveiled their new Mir:ror device.  The cleanly designed product resembles a USB-powered cup holder, but it’s essentially a simple RFID tag reader paired with some innovative software.  The idea behind Mir:ror is to streamline your physical life by scripting digital events through RFID tagged objects.  For example, you affix one of the provided colorful RFID stamps (called Ztamp:s) to your car keys and after waving it over the Mir:ror pad your computer reads you the traffic report for the morning commute. The slogan is to create [...]

While conducting research for one of our client projects, we stumbled across an in depth discussion on tinkering written by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang following a conference entitled ”Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge: Production in the Digital Age” put on by the Carnegie Foundation.  His thoughts touch on tinkering as both a powerful learning tool and means of relating to our future-forward world where technology is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. In his notes, Pang defines tinkering as:
us[ing] materials at hand, combining heterogeneous parts and components (e.g., raw and finished materials, handmade and industrial objects, customized and personalized consumer products) in ways that push beyond the boundaries [...]

Despite a long list of “must try” restaurants in our neighborhood, last week we opted for an entirely new experience and attended the launch of the Good Knife, a new underground supper club in Manhattan’s Gramercy area.
Originally, many such clubs arose as a means of allowing chefs to stretch their creativity. Participants could enjoy an intimate and casual setting, welcome in an era ruled by theme restaurants and grand settings. Foodies especially jumped at the chance to sample new talent. As the popularity of underground restaurants and eating clubs grew, so did the scale and spectacle of [...]

Notcot points us to some highlights from the new (and first) National Geographic store on London’s Regent Street. The three-story shop features beautiful gallery spaces, science-themed bits and bobs to gawk at and to buy, the expected melange of relics from around the world (Burmese army trekking stick, anyone?) and a swanky cafe. But what really caught our eye was the The Genographic Project Public Participation Kit Notcot got their hands on:
Quick description of The Genographic Project: “The Genographic Project is a global research partnership of National Geographic and IBM. With support for field research from the Waitt Family Foundation, [...]

In 1966 the original Batman television series found so much success in the U.S. that it was eventually exported overseas. When the show aired in Japan, the audience was so enamored by the Caped Crusader that the publisher of Shonen King, a popular boys’ magazine at the time, contacted DC Comics to license the rights to the Dynamic Duo. They would go on to create their own original Batman stories interpreted through the lens of Manga. Though the run was short-lived, lasting for only one year, the comics presented an interesting twist on the Batman paradigm, offering [...]

There is an old curse that goes like this: “May you live in interesting times.” It doesn’t get any more interesting than two recent strange news stories about digital worlds sparking irrational behavior in the real world. These two items illustrate the weird problems we could be encountering on a regular basis as bleed-through increases across the border of the real and virtual worlds.
The first story is about two kids in the Netherlands that robbed a 13 year old boy at knife point, forcing him to log in to RuneScape, an online game, and transfer an amulet, a mask, and [...]

We’ve received details on the next (and what will be our first!) Nerd Nite in NYC, a monthly event that brings together nerds of all persuasions to listen, learn, and share ideas. (Over drinks, of course.) Nerd Nite, which originated in a Boston bar in 2003, has grown far beyond its beginnings as a small get-together for self-proclaimed nerds interested in presenting their passions to their likeminded peers. November 15’s Nerd Nite, which will be held at DUMBO’s expansive new art space, Galapagos, will feature talks from three obsessives  coming from three disparate areas of expertise (evolutionary genetics, role-playing [...]

If you aren’t living in a big house, driving a fleet of cars and sporting the latest stereo system, don’t feel so bad.  According to Peter Whybrow, author of American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, the material road to happiness does not sit well with our 200, 000 years of ’scarcity-driven evolution’.
The Director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA believes our evolution from an environment which barely satisfied our day to day needs to one of plenty, has left us socially incapable of coping with the modern comforts of affluence and material wealth.
Whybrow attributes [...]

I’ve finished my presentation for Friday’s PSFK Conference Asia – and one of the last slides comes from a comment that was left on the site the other day. Gabriel Amadeus said:
“[Creator?] Hey, that’s me! Not that I am successful at it or anything, but I much prefer to be a jack of all trades instead of specializing in “vector illustration”, “interactive flash”, or “band posters”.
“In the past week I’ve designed flyers, banners, screenprinted shirts, welded a homemade bakfiets (dutch cargo bike), organized a scavenger hunt, planned a freakbike booth at the Oregon Manifest, and applied for a bunch of [...]

The other day on the phone a client of our consultancy service said to us, “The problem Starbucks created was that for every store they put up, they inspired something like 16 others to be created.” We’re not too sure about the numbers but I’m sure that if you’ve walked through your caffeine drenched neighborhood recently you get the point.
A walk through the Samcheong-dong and Hongdae districts of Seoul last weekend reminded us of this comment. Alongside the bright green-lettered Starbucks are dozens and dozens of other coffee shops: some Western brands, some European-sounding brands and a growing number of [...]

The Japanese comic book “Kami no Shizuku” translates to “The Drops of God”. It’s the story of Shizuku Kanzaki, a wine enthusiast who is on a heroic quest to find the 12 best wines in the world. Described as “The Da Vinci Code” set in a Tokyo bar, the story is part mystery and part richly detailed, surreal wine review.
The curious thing, is that the Drops of God has been creating an explosive new demand for wines in Asia. A mention of a specific wine can boost sales tremendously.
The Telegraph reports:
Shizuku Kanzaki’s adventures in the comic Kami no Shizuku lead [...]

David Art Wales shared his insights on the power of secrets and clandestine societies at Interesting NYC – a topic he’s become quite an expert in since spearheading the Prudent Boozer movement and exploring the uber-hush hush world of the Freemasons. We asked David if he could share a little bit more about his thoughts on what makes secrecy so sublime, and he was kind enough to divulge. A little.

At Interesting NY, you spoke about “Secret Societies and the Twilight of Hidden Knowledge.” What’s so special about secrecy?
We all love secrets. They’re so precious and fragile, and they can’t be [...]