20th June 2015
1) Utah Valley University creates a ‘texting lane’ for busy staircases.
2) From The Economist. The Future of The Book… ‘to see technology purely as a threat to books risks missing a key point. Books are not just “tree flakes encased in dead cow”, as a scholar once wryly put it. They are a technology in their own right one developed and used for the refinement and advancement of thought. And this technology is a powerful, long-lived and adaptable one’
3) ‘Over the last 70 years, American animal and plant breeding has focused on yield, pest resistance and appearance — not flavour . The pleasure of an ingredient’s taste did not seem to have practical value’. This Is The Dorito Effect.
4) Welcome to the Dark Web. ‘You have anonymous users visiting sites that can’t be censored. So anybody with something to hide, whether it’s for good reasons or for ill, finds a very natural home there’.
5) Spotify causes a stir by changing the colour of its logo. From green to green.
6) A sign of the times. The New Yorker features a ‘Minecraft Play Date’ on its front cover.
7) How Walt Disney World has left the middle classes behind. ‘When Walt Disney World opened in an Orlando swamp in 1971… admission for an adult cost $3.50, about as much then as three gallons of milk. Disney has raised the gate price for the Magic Kingdom 41 times since, nearly doubling it over the past decade. This year, a ticket inside the “most magical place on Earth” rocketed past $100 for the first time in history’.
8) The Hipster is Dead. Good news? You might not like what comes next… Meet the Young Urban Creatives or Yuccies.
9) Great edition of Firestarters this week at Google HQ and curated by @neilperkin ( friend of TDF ). The Magnificent Seven – ‘brought together seven of the smartest brains in strategy and planning …and asked them to answer one simple question What is the most useful thing that you have learned to date in your career?’
10) A marvellous selection of web miscellany this week, including…
– Spacex records fall to earth with a GoPro
– The Average American woman now weighs as much as an average 1960’s man
– The breathtaking star like beauty of a squid giving birth
– The fascinating feel good psychology of Internet cat videos
– And finally (watch this one again and again) a crowdsurfing singer catches and drinks a cup of beer , thrown from the crowd