Category Archives: Neat Things

Neil Gaiman: How Stories Last – The Long Now

July 12, 2015 Sean Dague Leave a comment

“Stories,” Gaiman said, “teach us how the world is put together and the rules of living in the world, and they come in an attractive enough package that we take pleasure from them and want to help them propagate.” Northwest coast native Americans have a tale about a beautiful woman and young man whose forbidden love was punished by the earth shaking, and black ash on snow, and finally fire coming from a mountain, killing many people. It stopped only when the beautiful woman was thrown into the burning mountain.

That is important information– solid-seeming mountains can suddenly erupt, and early warnings of that are earthquakes and ash. As pure information it won’t last beyond three generations. But add in beauty and forbidden love and tragic death, and the story will be told as long as people live in the mountains.

Source: Neil Gaiman: How Stories Last – The Long Now

Neil Gaiman did the latest Seminar About Longterm Thinking, audio available to all, video available to Long Now members. 2 years in the making, this is a story about stories, and how we have stories that date back 5000 years.

I think my favorite moment was his explanation that stories are lies. When you say “Once upon a time”, it’s code for “I’m going to lie to you now”. And when you say “this happened to a friend of mine”, it’s code for “I’m going to lie to you now, but I think there is a chance this might be true”. But in those lies we layer elements of truth that endure, even as the stories adapt to the modern age.

As with all Long Now talks, this comes in over an hour and a half of content, but well worth your time.

Neat Things

99% Invisible at TED – Good Flags

May 25, 2015 Sean Dague 1 Comment

A Tiny Radio Show About Design with Roman MarsSource: 99% Invisible at TED | 99% Invisible

Roman Mars did a remix of his 99% Invisible podcast episode on flags as a TED talk. As with all of 99% Invisible, it’s pretty amazing. And it might even inspire you to fix your city flag.

Neat Things

A memory desk

March 14, 2015 Sean Dague 1 Comment

This Memory Desk is a tool to record all the small items you write down once, but intend to forget tomorrow.

I’ve come to realize that I’m somewhat obsessed with how we remember the past. This is the latest installment in that series and a more serious attempt at furniture making. There are a hundreds of little things that we don’t try to remember every year or even every week. Does the sum of all these tiny parts produce a new narrative on our lives?

1,100 yards of paper will record the lists, the phones numbers you call once, the pixel size of that box on that website, the street name of that business, and the long division you try to remember.

via ANALOG MEMORY DESK – Kirsten Camara.

Extremely cool idea. If I had a place to put one of these, I’d definitely do it. Blueprints available under a creative commons license, so you can build your own.