The world's richest person
Apparently the founder of IKEA is now richer than Bill Gates. Am I the only one who sees a little irony here? I mean, Microsoft sells the software equivalent of a very pricey, very spiffy couch that got delivered to your house by delivery guys who wear velvet gloves in order not to leave any fingerprints on your Himalayan yak leather, but that couch will just never accomodate your spine in the right way and the yak leather is better to look at than to sit on, and you only keep it around because, well, it's already there and you spend so much money on it. Then there's IKEA, who sell you the furniture equivalent of a Linux distribution and although it's a bitch to put together and there's this one shelf you managed to put in backwards but never got around to putting right, it kind of grows on you and after some time you even think back fondly about that horrid evening when you put it all together and got it working.
Apr 6, 2004 @ 07:51 » 5 comments » General
Who's car?
Wired runs an article about a Volvo concept car that has been shaped by the ideas and wishes of 8 women designers and marketers (who, according to other sources, also drew on the input of other women working for Volvo). Wired gushes:
After more than 100 years of male domination in the auto industry, women have for the first time taken the driver's seat in engineering a vehicle. A team of eight female Volvo engineers and marketers has developed a concept car that uses technology for comfort and safety, and hides the gadgetry that male gearheads savor. Volvo's project is seen as part of the auto industry's growing attention to the needs of female drivers.
The car looks pretty nice and those gullwing doors channel a bit of Mercedes 300SL luxury and good looks. I don't particularly get why the parallel parking sensors need a mention in this article because many high end cars not particularly pitched at a female audience have them nowadays. The simplified dashboard is something you see in quite a few concept cars and making the car's engine so low maintenance that basically you never have to lift the hood again makes good sense to me as well. In short, I'd say it's a car with some nice touches, but a car is a car and there's only so much any designer can do with it. The whole story about "women lead and women focused" design strikes me more as clever marketing speak, which is not to say that these women didn't do a good job or that car companies shouldn't put more women on their design teams! It's just that, as the quote says, car companies recognize they buying power of women and try to tailor their products to their tastes.
Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I think the photo taken at the presentation of the car at the New York International Automobile Show illustrates my point. It shows the 8 women designers kneeling in front of the car they (helped) design. This would make a good composition if it were not for the one man in the shot, who gets to stand up and, metaphorically speaking, approriates the car and the design by putting his hand on the opened gullwing door, the women kneeling at his feet. It's a bit disheartening to see these familiar patterns repeated, even at occasions where, at least in name, they are being challenged.
Apr 10, 2004 @ 14:48 » no comments » Gender
Bibliomancy/Memery
Alex points to a fun meme on Long Story Short Pier. Here's what you do:
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open the book to page 23.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Okay, the nearest novel:
"To get up there Sophia would have to step onto his bateau lit and reach up" (Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Felaheen: The Third Arabesk).
The nearest scientific book:
"In Saussure, it is as if speakers had attempted to arrogate to themselves the godlike abilities and prerogatives of linguists, but more important than Saussure's denigration of the speaker's understanding of language is his claim that only by studying the logic of Lucifer can linguistics become a science" (Stephen A. Tyler, The Unspeakable: Discourse, Dialogue, and Rhetoric in the Postmodern World).
Apr 16, 2004 @ 15:14 » 4 comments » Blogosphere
Internet wisdom
I think this will be my slogan from now on:
"It ain't broke unless we fix it."
Really, I can explain why it is a feature and not a bug.
Apr 23, 2004 @ 12:01 » no comments » General
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