Quotes of the week

Metaphors are useful, as they enable the thin skein of connectivity between bodies of thought; yet they are also a leaky mechanism, potentially losing much richness from original concept to translation.

- Dan Hill

Is serendipity just the playing out on the human level of the same emerging, patterned self-organization that drives evolution?

- Simon G. Powell

Articles of the week

• New York Times: On Modern Time
  This one is a bit heavy on the philosophical side of things and yet, our cultural perception of time is a highly important topic. It’s heavily correlated with our ability to change and how to allow new patterns to emerge.
• Nieman Lab: The day the bookshelf shook: Four lessons for news orgs from today’s Apple iBooks announcements
  Joshua Benton looks at Apple’s presentation of their iBook Author and discovers developments with far bigger consequences than just for education.
• All Things D: With FuelBand, Nike Gets Into the Ultra-Wearable Fitness Game
  Nike introduced the next iteration of their quantified self system Nike+ on Thursday, with an armband that tracks steps, calories and movement and puts it all into their own activity score labeled NikeFuel. We’d rather have them go with something like the Basis watch, that just shows and helps interpret your measurements instead of locking you into another closed system.
• Reuters: Facebook’s newest frontier: inside the car
  Facebook is extending to new platforms, namely TVs and cars. These announcements around CES are an indicator of the ever-increasing overlap of some so-far largely separated spheres. Publishers and broadcasters have long been looking into getting their products ready for Social Primetime. More recently, the automotive industry has realized that the cars they build should be made a platform – CarOS, so to speak. Getting a slimmed-down version of Facebook on your Mercedes Benz is one early step into that direction.
• Wall Street Journal: Sci-Fi Writer William Gibson on His iPad
  It’s a William Gibson interview. How can we not link to it?