The Week's Links: September 30, 2012

All the items posted to Facebook and Twitter this week:

• Proof: What I Learned This Week owl.li/2srqX0
• Fascinating: WSJ looks at how Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix say sorryowl.li/e6gnl
• Inside Paul Allen's Quest To Reverse Engineer The Brain owl.li/dUZtv
• JWT Answers 'Advertising Is Dead' Cry With Mock Funeral During Advertising Weekowl.li/e6ecl
• Beautiful: 2012 winners - Astronomy Photographer of the Year owl.li/dUZfi
• How the 8.5" x 11" Piece of Paper Got Its Sizeowl.li/dUZ5N
• Introducing Magic and Good Madness: A Neil Gaiman Reread owl.li/dUWmn
• How I learned to love immersive theatreowl.li/dUW8z
• Discovered: Lord Byron’s Copy of Frankenstein Signed by Mary Shelleyowl.li/dUVdc
• Design Thinking for Social Good: An Interview with David Kelley owl.li/dUOVO
• Neal Stephenson on the Future of Books and the Ubiquity of Gadgets owl.li/dUOrp
• Generative App From Brian Eno Makes Music That Thinks For Itself owl.li/dUIZJ
• 150 Essential Science and Tech Reads compiled by The Electric Typewriterowl.li/dUIvT
• Melissa: The Power of Love, 350,000 Post-Its Animation owl.li/dUVMC
• Further adventures in nanotypographyowl.li/dUIkZ
• W3C announces plan to deliver HTML 5 by 2014, HTML 5.1 in 2016 owl.li/dUIeF
• Necessary: AskPatents.com- A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents owl.li/dUIch
• And speaking of maps: Clever Google Maps Manipulations by Christoph Niemannowl.li/e4jN0
• Who Invented The Internet? We Did.owl.li/2spIgD
• Is slang the natural evolution of language, or just a ginormous trickeration of all that is sensible? owl.li/dUGjR
• Long-lost Agatha Christie piece, commissioned to promote British crime fiction, finally available owl.li/dUGdt
• Paul Krugman and the Economics of Booksowl.li/dUG61
• These are so great: 10 NASA Self-Portraitsowl.li/dUFLM
• How the ampersand came from a misunderstanding owl.li/dUFzi
• The Creators Project Launches YouTube Channel. Will Premiere Artworks, Short Films, And Music Videos owl.li/dUFtb
• The Inspiration Issue of NYT Magazine is out with insights from many creatives. owl.li/e35y2
• SocialSamba's Aaron Williams on Hashtag Killer, working with USA, and that interactive Emmy owl.li/dUDEd
• Instagram Beats Twitter In Daily Mobile Users for the First Time owl.li/e34yd
• The Unsung Art Of Patent Drawingsowl.li/dRT6H
• Google's Astro Teller on Innovation at Singularity University owl.li/dUVLX
• Google launches Creative Sandbox. A showcase of marketing campaigns that blend creative genius with digital innovation.owl.li/dRy3Y
• Why Fighting For Our Ideas Makes Them Better owl.li/dRxqg
• Amazing: Technological mandalas made from soldered computer components owl.li/dOEfN
• Design Wants to Be Free owl.li/2sotBX
• Print Ad For The CW To Feature Tiny Screen With Live Twitter Feed owl.li/e2fJv
• Vintage Photographs From Inside 10 Famous Libraries owl.li/dOD9g
• CultureLab: Meet Marco Tempest, magicking up new technologies owl.li/dOADu
• What Comes After The Touchscreen? Here are five experts' thoughts. owl.li/dOgrm
• Even J. K. Rowling Has To Deal With Fear And Change owl.li/2snxXP
• What was Kurt Vonnegut like in class as a teacher? Find out: owl.li/dNVq0 /via @Coudal
• PBS Arts: Off Book - Episode 2: Typographyowl.li/dUVL6
• Joss Whedon followed up The Avengers with a Shakespeare film. What you can learn from that act of creative recharging. owl.li/dNV3w
• An Annotated Charlie Chaplin Filmography — 82 Films with Links to Videos owl.li/dNOUZ
• More bee awesomeness: they can alter their genetics at will. owl.li/dNLW2
• Creativity Top 5: September 25, 2012owl.li/2sndvR
• A collection of classic film noir posters.owl.li/dNLNM /via @Coudal
• Ever wonder what coffee, red licorice and an oreo look like under an electron microscope?owl.li/dNAAj
• PBS Arts: Off Book - Episode 1: Light Paintingowl.li/dUVJX
• The digital doesn't annihilate the analog, and the business card creativity proves it.owl.li/dNwfG
• You Won't Need a Driver's License by 2040owl.li/dNkLR
• The Future of The City owl.li/dNkHz
• Prehistoric Animated Cave Drawings Discovered In France owl.li/dMS8i
• Michael Bierut on 2012 Presidential Campaign Graphics owl.li/dYCPJ
• The History Kitchen: History of Sushiowl.li/dKOf8
• 100 Most Influential Women in Advertising - Advertising Age owl.li/dXLvI
• Banished Words owl.li/2smKEm
• Property Numbers: A Flickr collection of great property signs. owl.li/dYubh
• This Is Responsive: Tips, Resources and Patterns for Responsive Web Designowl.li/dKBWj
• How Tolstoy Learned to Ride a Bike, and Other Tales of Late-Life Learning owl.li/dKzne
• Our Storytelling Minds: Do We Ever Really Know What’s Going on Inside? owl.li/dKxiP
• The Time Douglas Adams Met Jim Hensonowl.li/dKxgu
• Photography Snapshot: The Power of Lensesowl.li/dKmCE
• Mapping the smells, taste, and sound of a cityowl.li/dKmBs
• Move, Eat, Learn - A Philosophy for Life in 3 Short Films owl.li/dUVJ4
• The Top 5 Qualities of Productive Creatives (And How to Identify Them!) owl.li/dK1VW
• McSweeney Strikes Again: A Candid Proposal from an Advertising Firm’s Creative Director.owl.li/dVpef
• Bob Dylan's Great White Wonder: The Story of the World's First Album Leak owl.li/dK1pz
• CERN’s Higgs boson discovery passes peer review, becomes actual science owl.li/dK0hy
• Rethinking Sleep owl.li/2slyXE
• Continuing with great work: The Public Theater 2012-13 Season Campaignowl.li/dK0cO
• The Key to Creating Remarkable Thingsowl.li/dK00Z
• The Rules of Randomness & How You Can Stand Apart owl.li/dJZXp
• When Theater Props Masters Meetowl.li/dJZOE
• Treatment with fungi makes a modern violin sound like a Stradivarius owl.li/dJZGZ

Recommended This Week:

Proof: What I Learned This Week

• Cinnamon is waterproof. 

• I discovered a new podcast, The Life of the Law. It is similar in style to 99% Invisible. On their first podcast they discussed the concept of jury nullification. 

When a jury nullifies, it finds a defendant not guilty, although the jurors may actually believe he is guilty. And because it’s illegal to retry someone, the person goes free. Jury nullification happens when jurors don’t agree with a law, or think there should be an exception.

Who Invented The Internet? We Did.→

In other words, it’s impossible to overstate the importance of peer production to the modern digital world. Peer networks created and maintain the Linux operating system on which Android smartphones are based; the UNIX kernel that Mac OS X and iOS devices use; and the Apache software that powers most Web servers in the world (not to mention the millions of entries that now populate Wikipedia). What sounds on the face of it like the most utopian of collectivist fantasies — millions of people sharing their ideas with no ownership claims — turns out to have made possible the communications infrastructure of our age.

It’s not enough to say that peer networks are an interesting alternative to states and markets. The state and the market are now fundamentally dependent on peer networks in ways that would have been unthinkable just 20 years ago.

​Steven Johnson, in The New York Times, expands on ideas from his most recent book Future Perfect. While both governments and corporations want us to believe that they are responsible for the creation of the internet, it is really the users, us, that shape what happens and how the internet grows. Johnson shares how Harvard legal scholar Yochai Benkler calls this phenomenon "commons-based peer production."

And so, while much discussion occurs amongst large corporations, the government and even the press - about maps on mobile, ecommerce, privacy, bandwidth, regulations and restrictions - it is our behavior and how we spend (or don't) our money within the internet that pushes its evolution forward.

It is a bit like voting in an election, every time we consume anything related to the internet we build it a little bit more. In the same way that we have a responsability to be an informed electorate, we should be informed consumers and not let self-aggrandazing origin myths shape what we want and need from the internet. 

Design Wants to Be Free

Design wants to be free, to paraphrase Stewart Brand. And when I say “free,” I’m talking about the broadest sense of the word—meaning both low-cost and liberated. We’re not there yet, but that moment isn’t far off. What will liberate design? Our tools, for one; they are increasingly cheap, powerful, and available to all. Design no longer signifies high priests at their drafting tables but rather you and me at our computers: 3-D printers are the new inkjets, and the age of desktop publishing is fast becoming the age of desktop manufacturing. Haven’t yet printed your own toys, household staples, and replacement parts? You will soon. And even if you’re not remotely interested in making stuff yourself, you’re probably still quick to appreciate that there’s something really cool about skyscrapers that go up in two weeks or the glass that protects your iPhone.

...

Design isn’t just something we appreciate, it’s something we do. Autodesk is helping by creating tools and services that it hopes will power the maker movement. And Etsy is changing the definition of “handmade” by helping its sellers manufacture their wares on a larger scale.

Yves Behar introduces the Wired Design Issue, featuring a look at the new MakerBot Replicator and an engrossing article on something we all carry in our pockets, gorilla glass. 

Even J. K. Rowling Has To Deal With Fear And Change

​I've always found J.K. Rowling to be a fascinating woman, particularly after hearing her Harvard commencement speech in 2008. On the eve of the release of her first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, and the first book after the Harry Potter series, Ian Parker writes a revealing in-depth profile of Rowling for The New Yorker. 

I asked her if publishing the new book made her feel exposed. “I thought I’d feel frightened at this point,” she said. “Not just because it’s been five years, and anything I wrote after Potter—anything—was going to receive a certain degree of attention that is not entirely welcome, if I’m honest. It’s not the place I’m happiest or most comfortable, shall we say. So, for the first few years of writing ‘The Casual Vacancy,’ I kept saying to myself, ‘You’re very lucky. You can pay your bills, you don’t have to publish it.’ And that was a very freeing thought, even though I knew bloody well, in my heart of hearts, that I was going to publish it. I knew that a writer generally writes to be read, unless you’re Salinger.” After all the fretting—“Christ, you’re going to have to go out there again”—she discovered that she was calm. “I think I’ve spent so long with the book—it is what I want it to be,” she said. “You think, Well, I did the best I could where I was with what I had.” She laughed. “Which is a terrible paraphrase of a Theodore Roosevelt quote.”

​It seems Rowling is very shy and despite the success of the Potter series still has to confront the fears of creating work and putting it out into the world. 

“I read “The Casual Vacancy,” which is five hundred and twelve pages long, in the New York offices of Little, Brown, after signing a non-disclosure agreement whose first draft—later revised—had prohibited me from taking notes. (With this book, Rowling was hoping for a “more run-of-the-mill publishing experience,” but that hope goes only so far.) Within a few pages, it was clear that the novel had not been written for children: “The leathery skin of her upper cleavage radiated little cracks that no longer vanished when decompressed.” A little later, a lustful boy sits on a school bus “with an ache in his heart and in his balls.” But reviewers looking for echoes of the Harry Potter series will find them. “The Casual Vacancy” describes young people coming of age in a place divided by warring factions, and the deceased council member, Barry Fairbrother—who dies in the first chapter but remains the story’s moral center—had the same virtues, in his world, that Harry had in his: tolerance, constancy, a willingness to act.”

The profile is worth the long read. In it you'll learn the through-line between Potter and Vacancy ("Mortality and morality",) where the title of the new novel comes from and above all that Rowling is very much a writer who is going to continue writing other books, for adults and children, of which the Potter series was simply the beginning.