An amazing piece of cause-based guerrilla art, called The Economy, created by an anonymous designer.  These stickers, placed throughout various public spaces, are meant to draw attention to the fact that GDP, our primary measure of abundance as a society, is an overly-simplistic, if not, downright irrelevant measurement of our prosperity.   I’ve talked about this in several posts, but I think Haque’s recent ebook, Betterness, sums up the dilemma we are facing as a society, rather nicely.  And, yes, when crime goes up, it benefits us economically.  When people are unhealthy, it benefits us economically, bearing in mind “us” is being used loosely here.

Adam Butler, of The Butler Brothers, sat down with the creator and asked him a few questions about the project.

So what spurred you to do this?

The source of many of my projects comes from a growing unease with how politicians (on both sides) create narratives to fit their agenda. We’re told what’s important, and why. At the end of the day, we actually believe that we have opinions. In this case, I was struck by the framing of any policy argument that it was “good” or it was “bad” for the economy. Rather, I’d like, just once, for us to make decisions based on what’s good for people. We are, after all, people. (Sorry, I keep forgetting that corporations are people, too).

Regardless of your intentions, do you feel like you changed anything with this series?

No. Yes. Maybe. I have such an overwhelming sense that we’re heading in the wrong direction. And I don’t mean this from a political leadership standpoint, but as a society. We. Us. We’re heading the wrong way. We measure GDP, but not happiness. We think we’re number one, but really, that’s just in average number of hours worked per week … we work the most of any industrialized country. Hooray.

We need to start defining prosperity in a new, broader (and also more specific) range of ways.  Economically, people are working harder and harder and yet, key outputs like jobs, net worth and net profit are shrinking.  This is because we need to re-evaluate what it means to ‘profit’ as a business to move beyond merely focusing on quarterly earnings.  In addition, how businesses (and our government) see themselves creating ‘wealth’ needs to evolve to more human-centric measures with outcomes that make us fitter, happier, healthier, truer, humbler, wiser, more educated, etc.

Overall, a great project that sums this mess up very succinctly.

[via @HSchum and Fast Co.Exist]

Sarah Klein and Tom Mason created this touching film about Ken Burns and his take on what makes a good story.  The Burns recipe is 1+1=3.  The things that matter most, in his opinion, are the immeasurables – love, reason, faith, irony, conflict, paradox, etc.  These are the things that help stories to connect with us on a deeper level, making the whole, greater than the sum of it’s parts.

[via Brain Pickings]

I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies.

So, the challenge: how to get across the ideas bound up in the word “privilege,” in a way that your average straight white man will get, without freaking out about it?

Being a white guy who likes women, here’s how I would do it:

Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

[via Whatever, By: John Scalzi]

Part tribute, part educational endeavor and part cultural commentary, Tom Sachs opens his Space Program: Mars exhibition, transforming the Park Avenue Armory into the surface of the Red Planet.

Space Program: Mars, which opens Wednesday, consists of 50 sculptures, five films and countless zines, which took Sachs and his studio hands three years to create. With the sprawling installation, they’ve attempted to fashion all the life-sustaining gear that would be necessary for humans’ colonization and scientific exploration of Mars, from a food-delivery conveyor belt and an astronaut gym to systems for waste disposal and even a Mars rover. Tucked away amid the exhibit’s simulated launch and capsule-gathering scenarios, visitors will find a few Sachs staples: a place for his tea ceremony and for a signature Jack Daniel’s bottle.

But really, Space Program: Mars isn’t about space. It’s about life on Earth.

“We have to consider how we interact with it,” Sachs said Tuesday, introducing the second phase of his Space Program series. The exhibit considers what we bring with us when we explore new frontiers: What germs do we transport, what parts of our culture do we share and, perhaps most importantly, what do we draw from the experience?

“Science is a comparative act,” said Sachs. “We look to Mars to analyze ourselves. “Earth has been around long enough for slime to turn into things that talk about slime.”

[via Underwire blog]

Since the creators of this project can put it better than I can:

There’s no place like home. It’s where we live, work and dream. It’s our sanctuary and our refuge. We can love them or hate them. It can be just for the night or for the rest of our lives. But whoever we may be, we all have a place we call home.

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE is a series of short films that explore the idea of home; what makes them, how they represent us, why we need them.

They’ve filmed a handful of these things, each as good as the next.  The one above is about Allan Hill who lives in the abandoned Packard Plant in Detroit, MI.  So, many beautiful shots, I just had to share.

Thanks for the share, Christian!

One school of thought says that assistants should be all about delegation. I pass tasks downstream, and in doing so, I reclaim my time and energy. I think that several companies will achieve big things doing just that.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. What about an assistant that doesn’t take things off my plate — but rather, wants to put things on it? What about an assistant that guides me down paths less traveled? What about an assistant that aspires to help me be a better version of myself? What about having a colleague instead of a secretary? A mentor instead of a student?

What would it mean to have a rewarding, mutual relationship with a computer — not in a GTD sense, per se — but rather in my private life? A relationship that was based on mutual admiration, a high level of trust, and a secret handshake? We need a corollary to the notion of an assistant. I like having an assistant. But I want a companion too.

With a companion, you’ll have to give more to get more, too. It’s more of a partnership, and a true love. A companion is an emotionally evolved species. Better put, a companion actually aspires to help me be a better human, and lead a better human life. A companion is about more than just finding me an ATM, conducting a web search, or deleting a calendar entry. It’s about achieving goals, and revealing truths.

Andy says we’re seeing the convergence of three major trends that are making this technologically possible and socially desirable.

The Transparent Self

First, these apps will require a lot of data about us to become effective and useful in our lives.  We need to let them in and then be convinced that continuing to share personal information with them is providing us with tangible value.  Andy points out that location-based apps may have the best headstart in this area, as they ask for a type of data that we’re freely willing to give up, and that can be used to make a ton of accurate predictions about who we are, what we do, and (ultimately) what we’ll want/need.

The Aspirational Self

The next step is about creating enough value to garner continued use.  A lot of this begins with the idea of The Quantified Self, the act of being able to measure habits and behaviors as a means of self-improvement and discovery.  The Feltron Report, Jambone Up and Nike’s recently launched Fuel Band are all great examples.  But, Andy points out that they rely (to varying degrees) on game mechanics.  Whereas, when you receive a recommendation from a trusted source, you don’t have to be “gamed” because there’s a sense of established trust and mutual understanding.  It’s what we have with our significant others and close friends.  And this is where the opportunity lies: in creating trusted “companions” that make our limited time on earth richer.

The Clued-In Self

Staying with this idea of the companion, the difference they have from assistants is that companions (or think of them as good friends) say “Hey.  I saw this awesome new thing.  You gotta go try it with me now!”.  Whereas assistants (think: Siri) are reactive.  They do what you tell them to do, but operate exclusively within the purview of your own awareness and knowledge.  The second piece to this goes back to the always-on mentality.  The idea that our desires, interests and needs are always changing, requires a companion that is always listening, re-evaluating and adapting.

Overall, an awesome series of trends and an even better framework for thinking about the future of brands as utilities…and eventually companions. Rock on, Andy.

[via Cool Hunting]

A fantastic snippet of research that I wanted to share because of how diametrically opposed the responses of males are from females.  I mean, they could not be more opposite in how they feel about their vehicles, what characteristics are most important, and the emotional benefits they’re looking to receive.  Check out the infographic after the break.

Source: ATYM and @cganilo

In case you missed it, Instagram was just purchased by Facebook for a billion dollars (yes, billion).  This says one of two things to me.  A) the valuation of this tech start-up (which currently has no revenue model) is incredibly inflated or B) the values of Americans are rapidly shifting to prioritize the preservation and sharing of experiences over that of being informed on local, national and global issues.  What am I missing here?

Google’s ambitious Art Project just got a sweet update.  The site now boasts over 30,000 pieces of art from 150 collections in 40 countries, all available for perusal in high def.  Users can now create their own galleries that include notes and custom arrangement of works.  Sharing functionalities are super seamless integrating Google+ and Hangout (not that you actually use those).  But, the project represents one more way that Google is bringing the inaccessibly analogue to the masses via digital technology.