Cole Smith: “ And my third recommendation is just the idea of sampling yourself . Sampling yourself is so fun to me, because you might make a song, and it sucks, but instead of throwing it in the trash, you chop it up and use it as a sample. I highly recommend it.”
Blackbird Spyplane: It’s interesting to think about how to apply that idea outside m... See more
In the digital age, cultural artifacts are eroded by abundance. Timelines layer and compress artwork, images, and artifacts into corners of the internet. In my corner, I stumbled across a speech entitled “Perfume, Defense and David Bowie’s Wedding” delivered by Brian Eno in 1992 at the Sadler Wells Theatre in London. In it, Eno predicted the nonlin... See more
Component-based design systems produce inherent efficiencies for designers and developers, and solve the challenges associated with duplication and inconsistency in applying themes -- while driving the development of better quality, reusable components. Clients gain the benefit of better brand management resulting from a simplified content editor e... See more
As anything scales too effectively - from fashion to restaurants to music - the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, many of us crave the artisanal coffee shop. Once our favorite Italian restaurant becomes a chain of three, we grow tired of it. Why? First, so much of what we buy and do is tied up in ... See more
In his retrospective of 2023 for his company Acquia, a SaaS platform built on top of the open source (and browser-based) Drupal software, Buytaert noted both the dangers and opportunities for the web going forward. “On one side, the rise of AI in information gathering will decrease the need for traditional websites,” he wrote. “On the other side, t... See more
What my students seek is what I sought: not just a place to publish, of which there remain plenty, but a place to aspire to, the kind of established, vital ecosystem within which a writer can learn, play, feud, create meaning, spark conversation, make sense of herself and her world. Rare by definition, such things grow more elusive by the day.
Howard Blum, a former staff writer, is the first to declare the Voice “a precursor to the internet,” an idea that recurs, with diminishing shine, throughout the book’s five hundred and thirty pages. Notes of elegy sound throughout, laments for something too good to last, but also for a moment of honest and urgent revolt. When there seemed no such t... See more
While it’s probably one of the corniest things I’ll ever write in this column, I’ve come to believe that developing taste is not so unlike going to therapy; it’s an inefficient, time-consuming process that mostly entails looking inward and identifying whatever already moves you. It’s the product of devouring ideas, images and pieces of culture not ... See more