Thanks to dear friend Jon for this must see international video collaboration. I am completely taken with the idea of using the urban landscape as a canvas. And even though the subject is kind of dull and reductive, the inspiration is brilliant!

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DESIGN 21: Social Design Network
Better design for the greater good

There’s an interesting model of neighborhood-based social networking evolving in Vermont called the Front Porch Forum. I was recently struck by its connection to broad, national concern about the loss of local news coverage. But before I go further, I have to confess some skepticism about the recent sense of malaise around the media. Here’s why:

Just about everywhere you turn, you are bound to read omphaloskeptic writing about the sufferance of media - its consolidation, how it is biased, how there has been a turn from the local, and certainly the absence of an “alternative” voice. At its finest, some have even called Viacom-produced shows like the “Colbert Report” “independent” news sources. This all plays up the general state of disarray and incoherence out there - but not, at least to me, a state of crisis. And perhaps part of the equation lies in some of the unique qualities of a state like Vermont: small, northern, rural, inconsequential, largely and often overlooked. Perhaps this has allowed something other than the dominant narratives to play out among our bonny green hills.

One of those is the healthy ecology of small town newspapers. Right here in the northern piedmont we have more than a dozen local papers serving a disbursed population of roughly 70,000. Which are all complemented by the circulation of the larger area papers - the Times Argus, Burlington Free Press as well as out of state ones, including the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

So why the health of so many local papers?

(more…)

Remember when we were kids, how we’d be eager to get to the baby sitter’s early before school so we could catch 15 minutes or a half hour of Speedracer, Marine Boy, or Underdog? Then afterschool we’d rush back to catch Banana Splits, later it was He Man? By the time we were in high school we’d graduated to soda pop, MTV and illicit puffs of cigarette.

Today, I think that’s old hat.

My daughter is six, and her grandfather - an ex systems engineer - sent her an XO-loaded One Lap-top Per Child computer. I couldn’t believe the first words out of her mouth were, “Can I Google ‘lions’?” Next it was, “What about ‘Griffins’?” Finally, “‘Dragons?’”

Its a whole new world of electronic babysitting. If her time wasn’t moderated, I am certain she would spend hours with “Big G”, “Uncle G” or just plain “Goo Gool.”

I am convinced there are at least a few benefits:

• Helps her sort out her spelling - the old, “Did you mean…” is a default spell-checker as well as exposure to lots of new words and navigation
• Exposes her to the many different interpretations of the same thing (images)
•  Helps out her fine motor skills with that tricky mouse and trackpad