Burned through Eternally Yours: Time in Design and Vision in Product Design (design by Irma Boom, to boot) over multiple late-nighters in luxurious loneliness at the IDC library; we have on an 2030 to 2230 experimental extension. Eternally is, among other things, a set of monologues (and dialogues) on the dimension of time as applied to product (read interaction) design. It discusses the Long Now Foundation’s many projects, talks to artists/designers from across disciplines—the one on fashion is particularly worth reading twice, especially for like-minded cynics who end up here and read all the nonsense—and not-so-lightheartedly peddles Vivian, a non-object object that embodies the ideal of a product that steals time from others around. ViP is, on a too practical it hurts level, a how-to-guide on approaching the design process with a foot in the future. The focus is on interactions between products and people, more than the eventual product itself. Eternally has interesting parallels, where it takes apart this notion of planned interactions for a more realistic view on the place of things in the lives of people. Together, I wish these were appended in the reading lists for IxD courses, still largely concerned with glass surfaces and artificial intelligentsia.

Listen to Anab Jain talk at the NEXT conference, about what it means to be alive in the future. She has a blog post up walking through the talk, too. Happy to see her reflect at length and much more critically on some of the pet peeves of mine, with technology and non-removable batteries and the whole paying with data shebang. Discovered Magazine B.—the brand-videos are such nice propaganda. Maybe it was too early to quit ello afterall.

Acquired a mildly inoffensive fixed gear, and the thing still throws up a mighty surprise on descents, even after all thse years of riding around Gurgaon and its nemesis.