Offline news first – I’m having an Open studio day on Saturday 26th November, 11-4pm at 22 Parade Mews. All welcome. Others in the Mews are opening too including Michael Ruh Glassblowers. Great to see you if you are in the vicinity.
Online – well, it’s “cyber week”. My ambivalence about this is all about the consumer capitalism of it all, really. Although, of course, the Internet was initially funded by the military in the USA, and the backbone –ARPANET- operated by them (DARPA) until 1990. A lot of the design choices were about resilience, a network that could survive disruption. It’s now categorically denied that this was anything to do with surviving nuclear strikes..
My antidote to the idea of the internet as fighting or shopping is wikipedia and ravelry (capitalism-free knitting). But on a practical level, there’s a great article written by an ex-Google employee on how online apps hook you in, and a site to help you un-hook youself. I’ve already installed f.lux – which changes the colour of my screen as twilight falls, rather charming, as well as apparently helping me sleep better by reducing the blue end of the spectrum.