Category Archives: Media & Culture

Distributed: A New OS for the Digital Economy

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“The increased surface area for corporate capitalism is human attention. So we spend more and more of our time feeding the market place. Central currency and chartered monopoly — corporate capitalism — is not a condition of nature. It is an operating system that was invented by certain people at a certain moment in history and they’ve long since left the building.”

“It was such a good little thing”

“How much is our data worth if we don’t have any money?”

“If we’re all doing everything for advertising, what’s left to advertise?”

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus – Douglas Rushkoff Link above to some of my favorite parts of the book (PDF).

Illiteracy in America

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“According to a study conducted in late April by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S. can’t read. That’s 14 percent of the population. 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can’t read.[…] The current literacy rate isn’t any better than it was 10 years ago. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (completed most recently in 2003, and before that, in 1992), 14 percent of adult Americans demonstrated a “below basic” literacy level in 2003, and 29 percent exhibited a “basic” reading level.”

What Made The Aeron Chair An Icon

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Screen Shot 2016-03-03 at 9.44.21 AMI don’t think much about office chairs these days but when I did I was of the opinion there were only two kinds: really bad ones and really good ones. And like most companies, the two I worked for purchased the bad ones because they were cheap. And before the Aeron, I suspect most of the expensive ones were pretty bad as well. Wheels always falling off or locking up; the seats were wobbly; hard to adjust.

A few years before I retired took some of my savings and bought myself an Aeron chair to use in my office at work. I think I paid north of $1,000 for the thing but I’ve never regretted it. It’s as good as its reputation. The design is based on the following tenants:

  1. A chair should be perceived as comfortable before, during, and after sitting upon it. Comfort is as much a matter of the mind as of the body.
  2. A chair should enhance the appearance of the person sitting upon it.
  3. While allowing postural movement, the chair should also embrace the body.
  4. The chair should provide correct support for the sacrum as well as the lumbar region of the spine.
  5. The chair should provide a simple means for height and angular adjustments. A chair should be friendly to all parts of the body that touch it.

My Aeron is in my home office now.