In a busy, bustling hipster bar called The Alibi Room in Culver City California, you’ll get a magician-sized playing card to identify you as the party who ordered two flights of spicy pork korean BBQ tacos, fries and a couple of pints of girlie beer. (That’s the same bar that was once much rougher, less hip, where y…

For anyone who hasn’t watched the amusing trekumentary How William Shatner Changed the World — please, treat yourself. It come back and forth to my mind as I hammer out some of the contours of design fiction thinking and practices.

The Valley and The Sky, Sascha Pohflepp’s RCA dissertation, just now released into the wild’s of the networked jungle. A dissertation about California’s technology culture between idealism, business and futures for design. Submitted to Critical Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art in October 2008.

This is the most important thing you will read this year if you have any interest in or passion for ubicomp, design, making-things. I’ll quote a bit, then send you to the source. Eric wrote this on the centenary of The Futurist Manifesto, bringing these sensibilities into the context of ubicomp in particular, but I…

Departing Madrid early on a Sunday morning, I found this paper map of the Metro, tucked neatly within the seams of a pre-fab wall, ready for re-use. I wondered, who was on their way out of Madrid, thinking that they could not in good conscience throw away their worn map, looking about for a way to pass it along to a…

Been thinking about the relationship between things over-burdened, trying to do too many things at once, and the elegance and simplicity inherent in doing one thing, and doing it very well. I get a bit miffed and muddled about long lists of features on most any consumer gadget, especially things like telephones and…

Newsstand in central Madrid, Spain. Where?

This came up in the studio..errr…I think it was a studio BBQ. Mr Newman pondered – what about thoughtful acts?

Museo del Jamon. Museum and Eatery!