A zeitgeist for 2006. And a look forward. (Just Bru)

A zeitgeist for 2006. And a look forward.0

Posted by Bru December 30, 2006 11:54 AM

Google published as every year its 2006 Zeitgeist.
Nice to see things like "how to levitate" still clinging to position 6 in the howto list, or "what is tramadol" on position 5 of the "what is" (and we could start ranting about socio-cultural effects of spam).
On the other hand, "who is borat" on position 1 of the who is list can tell you something about the international hype that surrounded borat's movie (nobody knows him in Italy, for example, so I can imagine a lot of people watching trailers and then asking google who's that bloke).
Funny also to see "Where is Torino" as 3rd in where is. You organize the olympics and think they should be in a place everybody knows... well, now everybody does. Good!

As for myself, I'd like to "steal" the meme from Svaroschi who published her own zeitgeist for the past year. So here is mine:
. London
. Headshift
. Reboot
. Barcamps
. Airports
. Architecture
. Nabaztag (+blogjects)
. Aesthethics
. Babysteps
. Italian pride

I'd say also twitter deserves a slot, but let's wait for it to consolidate... maybe next year :)

Finally, this should be the time for resolutions (see yesterday's rocketboom on the topic :) ). I've been thinking about mine for a while, then threw away the whole (far too comples) list, so eventually these are the de-mistified ones:
. laugh more
. play more
. indulge
. be serious about it
. build up "affordance"

And then we have the evergreens:
. drink less coffee
. give up crackling my bones (for the happiness of my dear colleagues)
. cook more
. start jogging
. go back to regular meditation practice

This is gonna be it. But I'd like to say bye bye (at least for this year) with a few inspiring words and a picture.
I found the picture on Zadi Diaz's while the words are from an article on Icon magazine, as reported by Fabio Sergio: these could seriously be good manifestos for the next few monthes (but maybe more)!
That's it, enjoy your time and see you next year!

Delavega

"There's nothing intrinsically interesting about technology.
It's only as interesting as what you can do with it.
You can create some piece of 'convergent' nonsense - a printer that plays music and polishes your shoes - or you can project an image of a tree in a public square, make the leaves fall as people walk past and have them swirl on the ground as pedestrians walk through them.
The first is onanism, the second is poetry.

The designers collected together in our feature on interaction design (Simon Heijdens, Moritz Waldemeyer, Greyworld, Loop and Troika) use increasingly accessible forms of technology to make surprising, delightful things rather than strictly 'useful' ones (isn't it useful to make someone feel better on the way home from work?).
Now that, at least in the west, our design needs are largely met, the designer's role can become that of the humanist - or even magician.
Our electronic devices can be so much more intuitive, our public spaces so much more magical.
Advocates of a stricter notion of design may accuse the practices published here of playing around on the margins of the discipline.
To them I would say that perhaps what we need - as a society - is less design and more magic."