Thinking About The Future Of The Internet

On the Wall Street Journal David Gelernter and  Eric Freeman discuss the evolution of how we consume the internet: 

We go to the Internet for many reasons, but most often to discover what’s new. We have had libraries for millennia, but never before have we had a crystal ball that can tell us what is happening everywhere right now. Nor have we ever had screens, from room-sized to wrist-sized, that can show us high-resolution, constantly flowing streams of information. 

Today, time-based structures, flowing data—in streams, feeds, blogs—increasingly dominate the Web. Flow has become the basic organizing principle of the cybersphere. The trend is widely understood, but its implications aren’t.

There is also the other side of the equation, not just consumption but production. Anyone working producing content to distribute on the internet is aware of how rapid this flow really is. 

How "oldschool" graphics worked

In part 1, the limitations of color on older 1980's computers and game consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Commodore 64. The artwork of "The Mill" by Oliver Lindau. The artwork of "Halo J." by Steven Day.

In this episode Apple II and Atari 2600 graphics modes. 

The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead

The New York Times: 

Now, there are signs that some e-book adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devices and paper. E-book sales fell by 10 percent in the first five months of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, which collects data from nearly 1,200 publishers. Digital books accounted last year for around 20 percent of the market, roughly the same as they did a few years ago.

E-books’ declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology better than other forms of media, like music and television.

I read a lot, on phones, tablets, desktop, laptops, magazines, but I love a good book. A beautiful, well-made book is a thing of joy. 

Everything is a Remix Remastered

I'm a fan of Kirby Ferguson and have shared his work before. Here is a remastered version of his series Everything is a Remix, that is worth revisiting. 

Swiss font legend Adrian Frutiger dies

Swissinfo.ch: 

The internationally renowned Bernese designer who created the famous Univers typeface passed away on September 12 in Bern at the age of 87. 

He was one of the few typographers whose worked with hot metal, photographic and digital typesetting during his long career. Besides his well-known Univers family of sans serif typefaces, Frutiger designed over 50 other fonts like Roissy, Avenir, Centennial, Egyptienne, Glyphia, Seifa and Versailles. He was also the man behind OCR-B, the standard alphabet for optical character recognition. 

...

Univers was one of the first breakthroughs of the new system of phototypesetting that soon supplanted the old and expensive method of casting a font in lead. It offered a whole set of variations to the blossoming global advertising industry which helped make it enormously popular. He did well from the advertising boom by creating his own studio in 1960 and working for clients such as Air France, IBM and the Swiss Post.