Brian Thomas Clark
@btc
Strategist/Producer/Collector
Digital Experience Director @risd
Brian Thomas Clark
I do not blame anyone but myself for this. This is not something the corporations did to me. This is something I did to myself. But I am looking now for software that insists I make choices rather than whispers that none are needed. I don’t want my digital life to be one shame closet after another. A new metaphor has taken hold for me: I want it to... See more
Ezra Klein • Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You.
The ones and zeroes of the digital map tolerate no error or noise. It’s an auto-tuned reality where everything is on the note or it doesn’t exist. Never mind that James Brown reaching up to that note is where we find the soul of the music. In the world of digital figures, that expression of the human soul — that stuff between the official notes —... See more
Douglas Rushkoff • Pockets of Weird: The Fight Over Reality
We rush because we’re late. We also rush because we want to move quickly away from discomfort. We rush to come up with solutions to problems that would benefit from more sustained consideration. We rush into obligations or decisions or relationships because we want things settled.
Melissa Kirsch • Why We Can’t Stop Rushing
To put it more plainly: As you grow older, you face the interconnected questions of which parts of yourself to preserve, which parts of yourself to evolve, and which parts of yourself to abandon .
I think these are fun questions to work over, because they’re questions without easy answers and, anyway, there’s no opting out of them. You can ignore... See more
I think these are fun questions to work over, because they’re questions without easy answers and, anyway, there’s no opting out of them. You can ignore... See more
Are you even alive if you aren't confused?
The exhaustion experienced in burnout combines an intense yearning for this state of completion with the tormenting sense that it cannot be attained, that there is always some demand or anxiety or distraction which can’t be silenced. In his 1960 novel “A Burnt-Out Case” (the title may have helped bring the term into general circulation), Graham
... See more4/4. Be a good assistant to yourself. Prepare and gather, make notations and sketches in your head or phone. When you work, all that mapping, architecture, research & preparation will be your past self giving a gift to the future self that you are now.
That is the sacred.
Jerry Saltzx.com“Authenticity”, I think, looks like the power to opt in or out, perform or not, when you want to—in other words: freedom. So when it comes to the Internet, if switching off entirely isn’t possible any more, then surely the words of MGMT can be useful: “control yourself, take only what you need from it.”
The New Nostalgia
digital life and
AI might take over some of our jobs, but I believe it will also lead to a major resurgence of arts and crafts. It might mobilise people in new ways. New luddite rebellion? Bring it on! Not only will we need creativity to find purpose in life (because what are humans for then?), we will also come to cherish the handmade with a renewed sense of... See more
Karen Rosenkranz • The Home as a Place of Production
via Dense 9/2/24
KRF : How do you define taste?
BD : Taste is the natural tendency to filter, mix and recombine the like and the unlike to approximate sublimity.
BD : Taste is the natural tendency to filter, mix and recombine the like and the unlike to approximate sublimity.