Precise Curiosity

Tweetdeck, Jerusalem Syndrome and how I became an Internetist

Gautam Ramdurai — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:11:59 +0000

Tahrir on Tweetdeck Past midnight. February 6, 2011: I was frustrated by the incompetence of the coverage of the Arab Spring by most American TV news networks. Tahrir square had turned into a tent city. Andy Carvin‘s twitter account was my primary news source. I had the Tweetdeck app open and Al Jazeera‘s online live feed on my browser. The [...]

Excuse me, may I smell your e-Reader?

Gautam Ramdurai — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:29:32 +0000

Rachael Morrison smells every book in the MoMA Library collection and records the call number, title and a description of the smell of each book in a ledger. This is part of a performance titled plainly Smelling The Books. The performance romanticizes the book: the physical artifact. When I first read about this, it seemed [...]

The Memes are Spreading

Gautam Ramdurai — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:52:20 +0000

Internet memes are inherently silly. That does not mean we can’t learn from them. Regardless of their content, Internet memes are spreading far and fast with no advertising budget. They are leading people to land television deals, interviews, book deals, and revived music careers among other things. Sounds pretty nice, huh? We tried to break down why this is happening.

When data about data matters most

Gautam Ramdurai — Wed, 11 May 2011 03:21:14 +0000

Data is abundant today. In a world where data is easily accessible - 'data about data' or metadata and how we manipulate it will become increasingly important. I've observed this with the music industry - but I think the principles apply to any form of digital commodity.

The value and the price of metaphors

Gautam Ramdurai — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:33:34 +0000

We are very liberal with the use of metaphors and models in our language, thought process and problem solving approaches. They act as bridges between concepts and disciplines. But without some vigilance, these metaphors notoriously pigeon-hole us into a partial suspension of reality.

Thinking about thinking and the Planner brain

Gautam Ramdurai — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:35:32 +0000

Planners have supposed to have gone beyond digital, made something and figured out our T-shape. But what do strategists and planners do? What is our craft? Every person in an agency is a problem solver. Art directors solve by making things beautiful, copywriters solve by writing and technologists solve by making the interwebs tick. And [...]

Outsourcing gray matter, re-purposing it

Gautam Ramdurai — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 17:49:30 +0000

Len Kendall feels Spell-check makes him a bad speller. He is not alone. We are all experiencing the same, in our own lives. Clive Thompson cited an example in an article for WIRED magazine last year. Neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to [...]

Neuroplasticity and other complicated words

Gautam Ramdurai — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:49:31 +0000

[Check the entire Digital and the Brain series] It is the endless vortex that pulls me in. I submit without any resistance – every single time. It has a way of getting into my head and switching off the button that connects my psyche to my immediate surroundings. It is what fills the distance between [...]

Nature of the medium

Gautam Ramdurai — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:55:51 +0000

[Check the entire Digital and the Brain series] The nature of the medium can be more powerful force in the world than the content of the messages that pass through it. - Marshall McLuhan It never ceases to amaze me how perfectly McLuhan’s theories from the 1950s apply to today’s world. I never wondered about [...]

Carr. Shirky. Cut it out!

Gautam Ramdurai — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:53:49 +0000

[Check the entire Digital and the Brain series] A lot of people seem to be obsessed with all this media around us and how that’s affecting our brain. This was in no way sudden. One early sign was how neurobiology started getting more coverage in rather mainstream media two years ago. Then Barnes & Noble [...]