There is no question that ideas and artifacts evolve, in the sense that they will start varying from one another, and some will be selected in preference to others, and then transmitted to a new generation. Most people assume that this cultural “evolution” is simply an extension of human evolution. After all, they argue,
ideas and objects could not survive without us, and therefore they could not have an independent evolutionary history. But that is like saying that humans are part of the evolution of plants, since we could not survive without them. It is true that memes need our minds to exist and evolve, but then so do we require air, water, and photosynthesis, among other things, for our survival. Therefore it does not seem that memes are any more dependent on their environment than we are.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
The Evolving SelfAM
thought
memes more than a cool metaphor before. Now I’m scared.
Each person creates the world he or she lives in by investing attention in certain things, and by doing so according to certain patterns. The world constructed on the blueprints provided by the genes is one in which all of a person’s attention is invested in furthering the agenda of “reproductive fitness.” This is a simple goal: How can I get enough out of the environment to make sure that I reproduce and that my children will also have children? In less complex organisms, like many species of insects, practically the entire life span is dedicated to the project of laying a clutch of eggs; promptly afterward, the parents expire. Like every other organism, the butterfly has evolved to see only those things that will either help or hinder the survival of its offspring. Its world is made up of flowery shapes that provide nectar, and shapes that resemble predators that are best avoided.
Poets make much of the majestic eagle soaring freely among the snowy peaks. But the eyes of the eagle are generally focused on the ground, searching for rodents lurking in the shadows. The lives of much of humanity could be summed up in similar terms.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
The Evolving SelfAM
Flow was one of the best books I’ve ever read. I’m halfway through its sequel, The Evolving self, and I can already say the same for it. I’m already having trouble remembering meself before I started reading it—it’s one of those books that stretches and rewrites you as you read it. It’s also deeper than Flow, more speculative, darker—the whole first half has been about the (inevitable) obstacles to human freedom.
After reading
Flow I felt confident happiness, joy, flow, would always be at hand, always within me. Yet I also realized that happiness, joy, and flow were not enough.
The Evolving Self is about what’s missing.
PicLens is the breathtaking image-viewing browser extension
(now compatible with Safari, Firefox, and IE!) that has caused some deserved news furore lately. It frees photos from browser-bound Google Images or Flickr pages in favor of a fly-able, zoom-able 3D wall. It’s like nothing you’ve seen, a masterful technical accomplishment and an eye-opener of the rich, delightful interactions that are just now becoming web possible. Go play with it and gape and gawk!
(It works particularly well with Mac two-finger trackpads.) Interesting times for interaction design!
Logged in to your Flickr account, click on the YOU drop down menu and select Your Account.
Select the Privacy & Permissions tab.
Click the Edit link next to What license will your photos have.
You’ll now be presented with easy instructions to both select a Creative Commons license default for your future photo uploads and to change the license of all your existing photos. Creative Commons licenses are copyright licenses for you to legally let others use your work on your terms. You can, for instance, require attribution, that no derivatives of your work be made, that your work only be used for noncommercial purposes, and that if others build upon your work they release it under the same terms you did.
So this is an easy way to free your photos, on your terms; to explicitly build the creative commons from which we all build upon. Expect thank you emails—from some website that needed a photo to illustrate an obscure Italian dish, from some gal who used your photo of your city in a brochure.
Zipping back and forth along Kottke’s Twitter some minutes ago I finally got Twitter. And I smiled. Like I smiled when I finally got Wikipedia (or blogs or Flickr or Facebook or Google or GMail)—a smile of wonderment at the great and totally unexpected.
His observations on it are spot on—no wonder he’s the web pundit par excellence.
Flickr AutoPagination has got to be the coolest Greasemonkey script I’ve seen yet, and, to judge by its code, a really intricate labor of love. It works flawlessly and does exactly what you’d guess: it makes every Flickr page (where it would make sense) “infinitely scrollable”. A cool, handy, and surprisingly stable script.
Fruits being another perennial fetish of mine this transfixed me. Of course.
The always-up-to-something Gwyn is organizing the 2nd Fototour tapatio and place and time have been settled. Here’s the official invite.
El sábado, 28 de este mes (Lo siento, Gibraine, Joyfulgirl y R@ypg, será el siguiente, ojalá)
Qué tal a la 1 de la tarde en la Cantina La Cava: Herrera y Cairo #285, Colonia Centro, esquina con Belen. (Está a unas 5 cuadras del panteon)
Esperamos allá media hora pa´que lleguen todos, y después de una chela o tequilita y ¡que comience el tour!...
Si quieren llegar más tarde, contáctame (con este formulario) o por FlickrMail y te mando mi número de celular para que puedan ver dónde estamos.
Traigan sus cámaras y también unos pesos para la entrada al panteon… Nos vemos en la Cava! (Soy el extranjero con el pelo largo, y la chela y la camara en la mesa)
You should come—it’ll be fun (it was last time). If you do, drop a note at this Flickr thread.
I’m so set in my (fetishy) ways. Again, I feel compelled to say that I’m not on the look out for such pictures. They come my way. Though come on, maybe I should be…
The responsible for the
baci saffici is the most talented
Alessandro Pautasso.
...one really do wonders what is the point—other than better displays—of that quaint anachronism that is the museum.
And don’t even get me started on DeviantArt.
