Posted on September 22, 2011 by David Thomas
During a recent conversation my friend told me that he thought of the Internet (capitalized because it is a place – have you noticed?) as a living, magic realist world. He is a bit complicated sometimes but I know what he meant. Beneath the riddle, what my male friend Pam was talking about was stories.
That is why Pam is my friend: because we both love stories most of all.
We read stories written in all kinds of styles but have a soft spot for sci-fi and magic realism. For imaginative stories, is how I usually put it.
Once upon a time the book was the snazziest communication technology used to tell stories, and authors crafted them on paper. They invented and deconstructed ways of writing stories, and they themselves were authors, working in the age of the book, so they were writers.
But now, means Pam, we are in the digital age – and our equivalents of those old magic realists (such as Borges – Pam’s and lots of folks’ favourite) are not necessarily writers. Nowadays they are either developers or they work with developers.
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Posted on July 21, 2011 by David Thomas
This blogpost about infographics was going to be about how modern humans cannot process pure data anymore, and must be greedier than ever for information because we glut on adverts and other entertainment media. This is not completely true. Just because we have the internet does not mean we live in more interested times.
Originally this blogpost started like this, ‘At the heart of an infographic there needs to be pure data. The rest is its fancy robes that make the data look sexy. We even need our data to be sexy these days.’
But I was wrong – data has always been sexy. Look online (or below this sentence) and you will find the Victorians, with their fetish for geology and the natural world, used many of the same methods as we do to show information.
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Posted on May 26, 2011 by David Thomas
I’ve been copywriting for Ultraspeed lately so had some expert schooling from the Ultraspeed engineers in the terms, jargon and principles of Managed Hosting. I figured it would be high-tech and difficult to understand.
During these clinics my mind sometimes wandered back in time to when my ancestors were Indian sailors (on my mother’s side), blacksmiths in Manchester (on my father’s side), and braves (I have some exciting Native American blood in me too).
What counted as useful technology to my ancestors may have been the spinnaker, the anvil, and the stirrup. Little positive changes like these come about through expertise and experimentation. And most importantly they came about because they fulfilled a need.
Managed Hosting and outsourced IT fulfill a modern need: cutting the nonsense out of peoples’ lives. Innovations make complicated things simple, and it’s said today more than ever we’re thankful for such clarity.
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