5 Mega-Trends (World Economic Forum)
What would a healthy social media platform even look like?
Facebook is under fire, again. But perhaps its problems are more fundamental.
Influencers are wearing digital versions of physical clothes now
How to end the American obsession with driving
The case for ugly design
The environmental costs of iPhone culture (Probable, Possible and Preferable Futures)
By Lottie Limb • Updated: 22/09/2021 – 17:15
Millions of new iPhone 13s will be wending their way to excited customers this week, with the new model’s release on Friday.
Its new and improved features include a smaller carbon footprint: the iPhone 13 represents 64kg CO2e in greenhouse gases compared to 72kg CO2e for the equivalent iPhone 12.
But trading in your old smartphone for the newest model is the worst thing you could do. According to Apple’s own metrics, 81 per cent of the phone’s lifecycle carbon emissions are released during production.
The energy required to mine the rare materials for iPhones is huge. According to one report, “buying a new phone takes as much energy as recharging and operating a smartphone for an entire decade.”
Resisting the urge to own the latest iPhone won’t reverse emissions for the products hitting the shelves on Friday, but it will help to limit how many phones are made in the future.
730 hours of violence
730 hours of violence is an exhibition that aims to build critical discussions with people about how we collectively see and relate to new paradigms of violence.
Violence has always been a part of human history, but today it presents itself in ways we never could have imagined. Technology, capitalism, new urban lifestyles and the commodification of security have provided violence with a solid ground from which to flourish. It evolves with us, taking up new spaces wherever we go. If we want to tackle the challenges these new violences present we first need to understand how they have come to be normalised.
996 Culture
A generation that grew up with Google is forcing professors to rethink their lesson plans
It’s possible that the analogy multiple professors pointed to — filing cabinets — is no longer useful since many students Drossman’s age spent their high school years storing documents in the likes of OneDrive and Dropbox rather than in physical spaces. It could also have to do with the other software they’re accustomed to — dominant smartphone apps like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube all involve pulling content from a vast online sea rather than locating it within a nested hierarchy. “When I want to scroll over to Snapchat, Twitter, they’re not in any particular order, but I know exactly where they are,” says Vogel, who is a devoted iPhone user. Some of it boils down to muscle memory.
https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z
Sustainability in the Pandemic Age
We use applied semiotics and cultural anthropology to understand how meaning is changing. This report applies the method to understanding sustainability in the Pandemic Age, framing the words and trends we are seeing into meaning spaces. Each meaning space fuels the next. The interplay is critical because meaning thrives in layers. Our analysis demonstrates the diversity of schemes existing within each unique layer. Sustainability is a vast, complex topic. Design initiatives need to know where they live within the bigger story. Learn more about the report
