Insights 4.10

Design:

• The aesthetics of anarchy: an April Fool's experiment on reddit that granted users the ability to contribute (one pixel at a time) to a big blank canvas quickly transformed into a collaborative, competitive work, flickering in and out of visual cohesion. The article maps out a chronology of activity and how trends from various factions played out over the course of the experiment. It's probably unwise to draw any big conclusions about our collective prospects as a species based on a digital mural from an internet forum, but it has some positive indications for our ability to work collectively with great agility to make something from nothing. With reddit's periodic reputation for hosting hate speech and doxxing campaigns it's also a glimmer of hope that the final version of the canvas contained no racist/hate symbols (this is according to the article, we haven't scoured the totality of it ourselves to confirm). On the other hand it's disappointing that given a blank slate, mostly people pulled together to recreate brands, videogame characters, flags, and sports logos rather than producing original concepts. From a speed to organization perspective reproducing well-known imagery is certainly a lower bar to clear for aligning efforts. It also speaks to why people respond so strongly to the 21st century readymade of the internet meme: a set of sights, sounds and words that speak to what we already believe to be true, rather than challenging us to dive deeper, think critically and invent for ourselves. We'll be thinking about this experiment for awhile. 
• A concise analysis of how aggressive ad placements and newsletter signups are turning activity in browsers into a nuisance-laden chore, making the web less legible. 

Upgrading Ourselves: 

• Harvard Business Review on how augmented reality devices are giving a significant boost to worker productivity in healthcare and service technician roles. An aspect of these 'augmented workforce' practices that will need studying in coming years is how stepping in and out of these altered contexts could affect health in terms of mood, sleep, or fatigue. While there's no reason to automatically suspect occupational AR systems are detrimental, spending extended amounts of time in a sort of overclocked cognition seems worth understanding better before we all plug-in for productivity's sake. 

Body/Image: 

• We said back in July that Taser was on an aggressive campaign to gain market dominance in the category of police body cameras, and they just made their biggest move yet: rebranding to Axon and offering free cameras and services (for one year) to any police departments in the U.S. that wants them. 

Big Business: 

• E-commerce continues to hammer away at brick-and-mortar retailers. A Credit Suisse analyst is predicting 9,000 or so store closings this year in the U.S.(worse than during the 2008 housing collapse and recession). The shift from jobs dealing in the local and tangible, to the digital and distributed is a trend that is going to keep reshaping communities and industries for the foreseeable future, despite political efforts to reinforce old notions of borders. 
• The unique problems and solutions of large, ambitious organizations: how Google built their own processing chips so they wouldn't need to build as many new data centers. 

Behavior: 

• Looking at the psychology of self via Tough Mudder to understand why so many people are willing to pay for the opportunity to experience discomfort, pain and injury. In short, modern humans feel disconnected from regular awareness of their bodies and clouded by a hundred tiny anxieties. Pain can bring hyper-focused flow states for the brain, and a grounded sensation in our flesh and bones. 
• Lenders in China are studying large swaths of smartphone user data to determine risk and set terms for loans. According to their analytics, iPhone users are more reliable than Android users, and people who let their phones linger at low battery levels are more prone to repayment issues. 

More next week. 

Insights 4.05

Design:

• Gilbert Baker, the artist/activist behind the design of the iconic rainbow flag representing the LGBTQ community has passed away. As far as visual culture and politics go, it's difficult to overstate the impact that this particular flag has had in uniting people under a common physical and philosophical banner.

Communication: 

• Now that your Internet Service Provider can sell your search data, tools like Noizy (a plugin that spends its time creating garbage data to obscure real activities) are becoming more popular. Add such traffic to the deep hum of autonomous, inhuman noise of the 21st century internet: bots crawling, scanning, tweeting, and emailing to no one in particular. 
• Using encryption is important for privacy and security but it also leads to some frustrating complications. Quinn Norton, writing for Backchannel recounts how the development of a romantic relationship via encrypted channels made the usual way of proving the relationship for immigration purposes via documents impossible. 

Upgrading Ourselves: 

• A company in Sweden has a program for microchipping workers (it's opt in). The company is a "startup hub" hosting more than 100 companies- so far 150 people (out of 2,000 or so at the facility) have taken part in the program and can use the implanted chip as a keycard to gain access to secured parts of the complex. While this program is voluntary, it's not hard to imagine companies or government agencies that have an interest in detailed data on the comings and goings of staff making something like this a requisite part of their employment contracts. Microchipping humans seems extra-creepy due the the bodily aspect, but perhaps we should be more concerned about the less visible but similarly invasive surveillance technologies like facial recognition or data-brokering. Whether it's vice clauses, non-competes or non-disclosure agreements, employers have enjoyed a fairly expansive set of powers and legal controls over worker freedoms in and outside the workplace. If automation fears pan out, and it does lead to intensifying job scarcity there's little reason to think some employers would pass up the opportunity to police the lives of laborers even more as their bargaining power is reduced. 
• Research into how we see color and the development of novel lens arrangements can give us the ability to see a more complete and true spectrum of color. This seems like a pretty great little superpower to have, we're sure Pantone is excited about the possibilities.  

Energy: 

• Demand for lithium has skyrocketed as more devices and machines rely on the element for energy storage, increasing exploration and mining efforts globally.  In the U.S. those activities are taking place in Nevada, altering the landscape and fortunes of 21st century prospectors.

Engineering Communities: 

• In markets where property values have been climbing rapidly (Boston, Manhattan, San Francisco, etc.) there's a different variety of neighborhood blight: strings of vacant properties that occur when landlords drastically increase rents while holding out for tenants willing to pay that premium. When the economics are such that this waiting game is more lucrative than renting the properties at recent rates, the other properties, residences and businesses in those neighborhoods suffer. Some cities have proposed having rental deadlines under penalty of fines to encourage would-be property hoarders to find tenants in the here and now.
• Heatmapping noise levels across cities and towns shows the impact of major highways and airports. While noise seems like it begins and ends as an inconvenience, studies show that it may have deeper impacts: affecting learning and overall health.

Big Business: 

• The founder of Roland Corporation, Ikutaro Kakehashi, has died. While most obituaries of the man only mentioned his achievements in creating and advancing electronic music technology, his company was/is one of those quintessential Japanese organizations that took on an incredible breadth of product categories (milling machines, vinyl cutters, dental tools and 3D printers) and executed on them exceptionally well, over and over again across decades. That said, it's fair that his contributions to electronics for music are noted as his principal legacy. Some of the devices he was responsible for, like the TR-808, led to fundamental changes in the sound of electronic music the world over and music overall. If you listen to hip-hop, EDM, or pop music - many of those sounds can be traced back directly to innovations from Roland and Ikutaro Kakehashi. Technology that can put such a deep and lasting ripple into the waters of culture, birthing new genres and subcultures is something rare. 

More next week. 

Insights 3.27

Design:

• When it comes to the latest and greatest in tech-driven projects, accessibility concerns are rarely built-in from the beginning. In the case of the automated restaurant Eatsa, their lack of accessibility in their design process has resulted in a lawsuit filed by the American Council for the Blind. 
• If you want to learn about product design and development from us, we have a couple of events coming up: we'll be presenting at FUSE - Formlabs User Conference (June 6th at MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, MA)  and at The Hardware Workshop (May 4th & 5th at Bolt in Boston). 

Machines for Moving: 

• New York recently cracked down on electric bicycles, confiscating 247 of them. Anyone who has spent much time in the city knows the ubiquity of these zippy little machines, which boost the human capabilities of harried delivery workers bringing pho, pizza, and everything else you might order from your favorite smartphone app. While the e-bikes are illegal under New York regulations, they are very much a part of the ad-hoc social and technological infrastructure of the city- without them the delivery business and the city itself would be markedly different. 
• Underwater behemoths for harvesting minerals from the sea floor are slated to start deploying in 2019.

Solutions from Down the Supply Chain: 

• Apple has released their 2017 Supplier Report which now discloses their cobalt smelters. The element is commonly sourced from conflict zones and many of the companies involved in smelting operations have been found to use child labor or other unethical/illegal labor practices. Following some great in-depth reporting on the cobalt mining and processing industry from the Washington Post last year,Apple has expanded their transparency and compliance efforts. 

Branded: 

• There's much to be said about the obsession with "authenticity"  - perhaps we've been spoon-fed so much advertising simulacrum that we long for something with the scent of the genuine. But with so little left untouched by marketing ploys, it seems like only what is over can remain authentic in its fixed-ness. All else is at risk of rebooting or rebranding: actions that fling a once solid sense of place, time and tone into some unfamiliar configuration. The dead-ended brand is a sort of psychological home; a mental space that we can return to and count on to provide us a certain feeling time and time again. So maybe it's not surprising that the bland, brand new luxury apartment market would attempt to imply real world origins, some anchoring in past and place. Often these developments are given pseudo-historical, implied-industrial names that reference what was once there (or could have been there) similar to how suburban subdivisions are named for the natural landscapes they displace. In this case, it's a set of incredibly expensive NYC apartments ($16,000+ per month) with a salvaged Pearl Paint sign adorning the lobby. It's an object-in-context that begs two very different readings: either a tribute to the artists and neighborhood histories of NYC, or gentrification's grim trophy of another community converted. The fact that cultural production is what can make a neighborhood "hot" in the first place makes turning an art supply store sign into set dressing for ultra-expensive apartments beyond the reach of most creative folks feels like a very tone-deaf gesture, if not downright salting the wound. 

Engineering Communities: 

• The "Maker Movement" was supposed to enable the masses to tinker, tear down and rebuild the world of technology around them; a democratization of the digital means of production stretching from website to widget. While many successful startups have emerged from the quest to bring precise, powerful lab and shop equipment into the home and small business, most of these innovations have ended up in the homes and garages of engineers rather than boosting the capabilities of the average person. For a true renaissance of invention and repair to happen at a grassroots level, a more complete ecosystem is required. One essential element of such an ecosystem is making tools available to as many people as possible. Maker Spaces like TechShop provide complex, big-ticket tools for community use, but with membership fees that are beyond the reach of many. An article from the Star-Tribune highlights a new tool library project in St. Paul that lets people check out a wide variety of hand and power tools for $55 per year. 

More next week.