101 Culture

This is a blog about the emergence of a digital culture. What might it look like? What can we see already?

And all my other details are kept at benmason.org.


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The terrible perfection of digital

Florence Welch eloquently expresses the beauty in imperfection found in things while examining the facade of a London house from c.1600.

"The human aspect of objects is always the most interesting... and the mistakes, the cracks."

Digital, with its coded, copyable language, has a tendency to erode these imperfections. Consider film versus digital photos. The poor functionality of the Lomo camera has found a renaissance during the digital boom.

The value of the physical, the worn, the human object will only increase as digital pervades.

Digital has no patina. It doesn't age.

Robert Overweg: photographer in the virtual world

Media_httpshotbyrober_cazaq
via shotbyrobert.com

Glitch art. Nice!

via http://twitter.com/#!/BBHlabs

Should we all learn to code?

Douglas Rushkoff thinks it's imperative.

As he says, "The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? "Choose the former," writes Rushkoff, "and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make."

But the logic in that video doesn't seem to flow? We invented language, we learnt to hear and also speak. We invented text, we learnt to write as well as read. We invented computers, we should learn to code as well as just use them.

I agree with the principle that the world would probably be more balanced if we all learnt the skills to properly master computers. But it seems unrealistic. We've spent millennia forming societies of specialists. Why go back now?

I think the computer is, by its nature, interactive. And that's a powerful thing for society. And we should all learn how to use it well. But there's a long way between learning how to search the web properly and learning how to build a search engine.

I reckon we should let the specialists specialise and reap the benefits of the tools they build by learning to use them properly.