A characteristic of a naive approach to the digital world is the tendency to record and store everything. JustBecauseWeCan. Every photo, every e-mail, every song, every web site ever visited, every acquaintance who ever added you as a friend on some social network, every message you ever received. Somebody, probably an author, termed this the [...]
Monomorphic
Conceptual meandering
culture
The aesthetics of technology
Different technologies have different kinds of aesthetics, and they affect us in various ways, whether we are particularly fascinated with technology or not. The easiest technologies to understand on an intuitive-emotional basis seem to be those that involve physical processes. Objects rotating, moving, being lifted and displaced, compressed, crushed. Gases and liquids being sent around [...]
Power and rebellion in Marunouchi
In the chilly yet sunny winter afternoon, I took a walk past the imperial palace in the centre of Tokyo. I find sunny winter days refreshing. The palace is interesting to behold. It is fronted by lots of that most precious of Tokyo commodities, open space. Supposedly, during the height of the land bubble, the [...]
Abundance and the culture of thrift
For a long time, the level of comfort allowed us by technology has risen persistently. This trend shows no signs of slowing down. One of two things would have to happen: either we reach some point where a fundamental barrier prevents us from extracting or converting certain natural resources beyond a certain rate, and this [...]
