Russell Davies

This week in references: layers, injury, softness

4layers deep from Justin Lincoln on Vimeo.

This week in references: Oscar, Sebastian, Laura and Wool

Watery

Because you people are special, this is what will be in the email later...

Joanne McNeil's lovely criticism nudged me into reading New York 2140 and I'm really glad. There are themes that many here would enjoy; dark pools, cities, air ships, New York topography, disaster, submarines, dredging, a plausible end to late stage capitalism. And the watery themes of the novel seemed to seep into the way I was reading it. The Kindle/iPhone/Echo/Audible infrastructure is now sufficiently oiled that I was sliding easily between reading text, listening to the audio or lying in bed muttering 'Alexa, play audible' and the book just carrying on where I'd just finished reading. It felt fluid.

It made me wonder what London would be like under another 50 feet of sea level and, of course, Stamen had the answer. And it reminded me of my own tiny speculations at Russell Square Farm, a twitter account I've been occasionally adding to since the summer of 2012. My only rules are I can only update it when I'm in Russell Square and I'm not allowed to look back at the stream to remind myself of the story. So there is no story.

(There are currently 269 of you. 269 is the area code for Kalamazoo which, due to its exotic and euphonious name has ended up in more songs that the average place in South Western Michigan.)

Wired Acknowledgements

Wired have been kind enough to print a thing I wrote.

It's at this URL apparently.

(I'm always too scared to actually look at these things when they appear, I get very anxious about things appearing on platforms I can't alter, it's so irrevocable. Plus there's all the worry about what headline it might have on it).

Most things I write are the products of conversations I've had, I do very little original thinking of my own but it's particularly true for this one.

And a while ago Mark pointed out on twitter the good thing that Ethan Marcotte does at the end of this blog post, thanking the people who've helped him write it.

So, acknowledgements;

Tom Stuart is responsible for reminding me of the term Charismatic Megafauna, which I love. And the undervaluing of domestic technology first struck me through Kim Plowright's talk at Interesting 2008. And the washing machine became the hero of the piece because of many conversations with Rachel Coldicutt.

Thanks to them.

I wish little columns/pieces like this could really have acknowledgements. They'd become a really interesting form in themselves. Like indexes.

July 2017

July 2017 from russelldavies on Vimeo.