We want people to care about design as much as we do, but how can they if we speak to them in a foreign language? It’s important that, as we do with any user, we find a shared vocabulary and empower everyone else to become evangelists for our cause. — Inayaili de Leon in A …
Why 90% is not enough
Don’t do something 90 percent well and hope that it’ll slide through. Don’t rely on luck. You have to make your own luck. The only thing you can do is try your absolute best to do the right thing. And then if it doesn’t work out, you know there’s nothing else you can do –New …
Closing statement in the trial of Russian punk band Pussy Riot
It is the entire state system of the Russian Federation which is on trial and which, unfortunately for itself, thoroughly enjoys quoting its cruelty towards human beings, its indifference to their honour and dignity, the very worst that has happened in Russian history to date. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s closing statement in the trial of Russian punk …
Personas for a 21st century media environment
Conjure me up a guy who talks science winningly, who shows you that everything is transparent, and does it in a self-help-y spirit,” Gitlin said. “In our age, a guy who looks cute and wonky is better positioned to get away with this than others. Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia, …
Is technology ruining language?
Many a linguistic commentator would have us (misleadingly) believe that technology is ruining language. Every mangled text message and misspelled Facebook status update, they cry, is a dagger through the heart of proper usage. But such grousing ignores increasingly symbiotic ties between linguistics and technology: Some of the most exciting developments in the use and …
Getting ready for the campus tsunami
The early Web radically democratized culture, but now in the media and elsewhere you’re seeing a flight to quality. The best American colleges should be able to establish a magnetic authoritative presence online. David Brooks, The Campus Tsunami
On Stanford & Silicon Valley
Interpreting the dynamic between Stanford and Silicon Valley, as broken down by Auletta’s article, is a bit like watching “Wall Street,” a movie that was meant as a polemic on what was wrong with finance but which inspired kids everywhere to become bankers. Sarah Lacy, Stanford, Silicon Valley, and John Hennessy’s Real Legacy
Must read: The Flight from Conversation
Most of all, we need to remember — in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts — to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another. The Flight from Conversation, …
Inside the Silicon Valley Gender Gap
The dominant element next to the piece of technology is some woman who’s scantily clad. It creates a hostile environment, and it also doesn’t reflect back onto the female audience that ‘You can be a founder’—but ‘You can be an object.’ Leslie Bradshaw, JESS3 founder, quoted in Inside the Silicon Valley Gender Gap
Rusbridger on open journalism
How can we harness this digital revolution we’re living through to provide a better account of the world around us? Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian speaking last night on open journalism at the 2012 Goldsmith Awards. See also their contemporary take on the Three Little Pigs…