otrops quotes

"Today’s young people learn how to be themselves via social networking sites. Depending on..."

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 05:14:09 -0400

“Today’s young people learn how to be themselves via social networking sites. Depending on their generation, YouTube or MySpace or Facebook or Twitter will create for them a peer group, and establish parameters of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, in a far more reliable way than Big Brother ever could.”

- Germaine Greer, Too much reality to bear.

"[E]very city begins as a slum. First it’s a seasonal camp, with the usual free-wheeling make-shift..."

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:09:58 -0400

“[E]very city begins as a slum. First it’s a seasonal camp, with the usual free-wheeling make-shift expediency. Creature comforts are scarce, squalor the norm. Hunters, scouts, traders, pioneers find a good place to stay for the night, or two, and then if their camp is a desirable spot it grows into an untidy village, or uncomfortable fort, or dismal official outpost, with permanent buildings surrounded by temporary huts. If the location of the village favors growth, concentric rings of squatters aggregate around the core until the village swells to a town. When a town prospers it acquires a center — civic or religious — and the edges of the city continue to expand in unplanned, ungovernable messiness. It doesn’t matter in what century or in which country, the teaming guts of a city will shock and disturb the established residents. The eternal disdain for newcomers is as old as the first city. Romans complained of the tenements, shacks and huts at the edges of their town that “were putrid, sodden and sagging.” Every so often Roman soldiers would raze a settlement of squatters, only to find it rebuilt or moved within weeks.”

- The Choice of Cities, Kevin Kelly

"In our research, every time we found a site where the search results were doing what they should, we..."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:40:41 -0400

“

In our research, every time we found a site where the search results were doing what they should, we also found a team that had worked really hard to make it that way.

Those teams all have something in common. They’ve experimented thoroughly, trying out dozens of designs and repeatedly watching users. They’ve frequently scoured their search log data, studying the terms users employ and comparing them to the results the site generated.

They’ve ended up with great search result pages, but it has taken months (and in some cases, years) of constant studying to get to this point. There is no way, as far as we know, that you can produce a great search results page without spending the time and effort to build it.

”

- Jared M. Spool, Producing Great Search Results: Harder than It Looks, Part 1

"I submit that obsessing about celebrity is unhealthy for the single reason that it is also..."

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:55:58 -0400

“I submit that obsessing about celebrity is unhealthy for the single reason that it is also unproductive. Celebrity is to mentality as smoking is to food. It is an unhealthy waste of time.”

- Doc Searls, Beyond celebrity obsession

"Uncertainty is inherent and inevitable in software development processes and products."

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:18:54 -0400

“Uncertainty is inherent and inevitable in software development processes and products.”

- Hadar Ziv, Debra J. Richardson, René Klösch The Uncertainty Principle in Software Engineering (via The roots of agile project management)

"[C]onspicuous consumption” is being replaced by “conspicuous expression” as the driver of identity...."

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:17:31 -0400

““[C]onspicuous consumption” is being replaced by “conspicuous expression” as the driver of identity. This new paradigm emphasizes the conspicuousness of ideas, interests, and opinions rather than accumulating more stuff than your neighbor. This is not insignificant.”

- Stephen Lino , Brad Bate , Michael Keating, Conspicuous, but not Consuming

"What matters most, more than anything, is getting the right words in front of the right people...."

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:52:18 -0400

“What matters most, more than anything, is getting the right words in front of the right people. That’s what the Internet is for. Everything else is the icing on the cake.”

- Tim Bray, The Internet’s Payload

"I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t..."

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:57:58 -0400

“I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money.”

- Ray Bradbury in A Literary Legend Fights for a Ventura County Library, June 19 2009, Jenniger Steinhauer (via Tim O’Reilly)

"[T]ools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. It isn’t..."

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:48:42 -0400

“[T]ools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. It isn’t when the shiny new tools show up that their uses start permeating society. It’s when everybody is able to take them for granted.”

- Clay Shirky, How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history (TED talk)

"I like the concept of wearing in instead of wearing out."

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:15:00 -0400

“I like the concept of wearing in instead of wearing out.”

- Bill Moggridge, Objectfied

"The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers."

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:14:00 -0400

“The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers.”

- Richard Hamming, Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers (1962), epigraph (via Leisa Reichelt on twitter)

"Maybe it’s time to dispense with modernism and all its prefixes."

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:25:25 -0400

“Maybe it’s time to dispense with modernism and all its prefixes.”

- Ursula K Le Guin, Into the cosmos with Qfwfq, The Guardian, Saturday 13 June 2009

"[T]he most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it’s doing to us. It’s what..."

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 07:06:34 -0400

“[T]he most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it’s doing to us. It’s what we’re doing to it.”

- Steven Johnson, How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live, TIME, Firday, June 5, 2009

"Enlightened trial-and-error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius."

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:01:00 -0400

“Enlightened trial-and-error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius.”

- Peter Skillman, The Deep Dive (YouTube video), ABC Nightline, July 13, 1999

"She could not listen good enough to hear it all. The music boiled inside her. Which? To hang on to..."

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:06:30 -0400

“She could not listen good enough to hear it all. The music boiled inside her. Which? To hang on to certain wonderful parts and think them over so that later she would not forget — or should she let go and listen to each part that came without thinking or trying to remember? Golly! The whole world was this music and she could not listen hard enough.”

- Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, p.107

"Endless stories, all crossing each other, and mine tiny, negligent, quick as a blink, where nothing..."

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:11:44 -0400

“Endless stories, all crossing each other, and mine tiny, negligent, quick as a blink, where nothing much happened except this: I stepped out of myself and into the park, I stepped off the pavement and into a place where there’s never a conclusion, where regardless of wars, tragedies, losses, finds, the sting or the sweetness of what’s gone in a life, or the preoccupations of any single time, any single being, on it goes, the open-air theatre of flowers, trees, birds, bees, the open vision at the heart of the old city.”

- Ali Smith, Park Stories: The definitive article, p. 12

"Without bees? Nothing. Nothing pollinated. Hardly any fruit, almost no vegetables. All the food..."

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:09:00 -0400

“Without bees? Nothing. Nothing pollinated. Hardly any fruit, almost no vegetables. All the food chains disrupted, from the human on down to the insect.”

- Ali Smith, Park Stories: The definitive article, p. 10

"Calvino was brave because he sat down to write what interested him - not what might interest other..."

Thu, 14 May 2009 18:39:06 -0400

“Calvino was brave because he sat down to write what interested him - not what might interest other people.”

- Jeanette Winterson, An exploration of seminal novelist Italo Calvino, through his writing

"When a writer regrets something that he or she has written, if it is fiction, it is always,..."

Thu, 14 May 2009 18:36:50 -0400

“When a writer regrets something that he or she has written, if it is fiction, it is always, paradoxically, because the piece of work feels untrue.”

- Jeanette Winterson, An exploration of seminal novelist Italo Calvino, through his writing

"[You] cannot have a healthy diet without a healthy agriculture."

Fri, 08 May 2009 16:39:23 -0400

“[You] cannot have a healthy diet without a healthy agriculture.”

- Michael Pollan, Deep Agriculture (mp3)