Brian Thomas Clark
@btc
Strategist/Producer/Collector
Digital Experience Director @risd
Brian Thomas Clark
We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests... See more
nytimes.com
culture25 and
The Wisdom and Prophecy of Jimmy Carter’s ‘Malaise’ Speech
The trends he saw emerging two generations ago now bear their poisonous fruit in our body politic.
Carter’s central insight was that even if the country’s political branches could deliver peace and prosperity, they could not deliver community and belonging. Our nation depends on pre-political commitments to each other, and in the absence of those pre-political commitments, the American experiment is ultimately in jeopardy.
via dirt.fyi
It’s not that anyone is forcing us to humiliate ourselves; it’s that we’ve come to equate being known with being exposed.
Humiliation Rituals
Complexity increases because adding is easy and removing is dangerous.
Whenever there's a problem, we add: a new person, requirement, or process. We never subtract.
Why?
Because everything that already exists has a champion. That clause in the tax code, that step in the process, that feature in the product ... someone fought for it, and they'll... See more
Whenever there's a problem, we add: a new person, requirement, or process. We never subtract.
Why?
Because everything that already exists has a champion. That clause in the tax code, that step in the process, that feature in the product ... someone fought for it, and they'll... See more
Brain Food: The Limits of Devotion
We have been an essentially colonial civilization since the first enclosed farm, since agriculture, really, but definitely since territorial wars, slavery, and resource extraction. It’s what we do - not just with imperial armies, but with basic capitalism. This is our average. Our normal. A digital media environment with algorithms and AIs... See more
Douglas Rushkoff • Pockets of Weird: The Fight Over Reality
It seems clear that AI art’s biggest utility right now is aspirationalism. The ability to quickly and cheaply generate a vision of the future for Trump supporters. And I’ve written before about how AI art is to modern fascism what futurism was to 20th-century fascism, but the Homeland Security X account posting a Thomas Kinkade painting — and a... See more
Trump's big, beautiful gulag
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... See more
Cassey Bowden • Advantages of Component-Based Web Design Systems
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