fulminate // Architectures of Control

The Five Stages of Collapse | Dmitry Orlov
"And so it is with a great many things. We can wait until the lifestyle that is killing the planet and is making us crazy and sick is no longer physicall...

Ballardian » ‘Content in their little prisons’: J.G. Ballard on ‘The Towers’
"For example, in cities, the degree of criminality is affected by liberty of movement; it’s higher in culs-de-sac. And ...

I’m pleased to announce the launch of Design and Behaviour, a new discussion list / Google group:
The design of products, services and environments can be used to influence behaviour, and there’s ...

Swoopo, a new kind of “entertainment shopping” auction site, takes Martin Shubik’s classic Dollar Auction game to a whole new, automated, mass participation level. It’s an example of the escalatio...

From this BBC story, as of 6.43 pm.
P.S. I love the way it’s claimed “everyone will benefit” from the royalty rise. As a consumer, I can’t wait to be paying more! Perhaps a price increase will hel...

It occurs to me that it’s now October, and in Britain that really means the summer’s over (though as I write this it’s pleasantly sunny and crisp outside). And despite attending a lot of very inter...

This is a great graph from GraphJam, by ‘Bloobeard’. It raises the question, of course, whether the ‘door close’ buttons on lifts/elevators really do actually do anything, or are simply there to ‘...

Doors of Perception weblog: How dematerialisation adds value
Good idea. It also shows how clever design techniques so often _don't_ depend on having an 'academic' descriptor to be inspired in the ...

The London Design Festival always throws up some interesting events, especially involving clever people trying new things in design and sharing their experiences and expertise.
This year, the Desi...

Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen, mentioned a few days ago, now has a full agenda available [PDF] (thanks Debra) - here are the abstracts:
Tang Tang, Loughborough University
Creating Sustainabl...