A blog of aggregated miscellanea and things I like uncovered from my daily travails. I'm @jacobjay, a peripatetic designer/developer of British persuasion, having interests in gastronomy, fashion, technology, interiors and sustainability. I'm currently living between New Delhi and France, working on a Lua web platform and e-commerce. I dig Macs, mountain biking and smelly cheese.
↩ Jacob's Ephemerata
Posts tagged “politics”
“ Any believable prediction will be wrong. Any correct prediction will be unbelievable. ”
Kevin Kelly; via Ben Hammersley’s ‘My speech to the IAAC’: «anything that is dismissed on the grounds of the technology-not-being-good-enough-yet is going to happen». «It remains, in too many circles, a matter of pride not to be able to programme the video recorder. That’s pathetic.»
“This Painting is Not Available in Your Country” by Paul Mutant. Featured in a Budapest exhibition by the artist, which included visualisations of how his work propagated across the internet (see article by Governance Across Borders).
“ UMP Senator Jean-René Lecerf wants new French ID cards to be embedded with a chip so that connecting to the Internet would be - according to his plan - impossible without proper identification ”
“ Politicians are in charge of the modern economy in much the same way as a sailor is in charge of a small boat in a storm. The consequences of their losing control completely may be catastrophic (as civil war and hyperinflation in parts of the former Soviet empire have recently reminded us), but even while they keep afloat, their influence over the course of events is tiny in comparison with that of the storm around them. We who are their passengers may focus our hopes and fears upon them, and express profound gratitude toward them if we reach harbor safely, but that is chiefly because it seems pointless to thank the storm. (p. 25) ”
“The Company of Strangers” by Paul Seabright; via Peter Gordon; via Joel Selanikio.
“ We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly – or not at all – because of a stifling bureaucracy. ”
Warren Buffett; via 37signals.
