Young and Brilliant

“Instead of trying to focus on software and connectivity — these camera companies need to zero in on two things they know really well: lenses and sensors. They should be thinking about how they can make their “glass” (aka lenses) work with the computer we carry around in our pockets. Sony was right in introducing its Q-series cameras that attached to the iPhone, but I think they introduced them a little too early. Today (or even tomorrow) if there was a Leica 35 mm standalone lens with a built in sensor and the clip-on unit working with the compute and software on the iPhone — I would pay good money for that.”

The Internet is a confessional place. With so little privacy, passwords may soon be tomorrow’s eight-track player, quaintly described to our grandchildren.

Considerations of who will or might read the piece are appropriate and sometimes actively useful in planning it, thinking about it, thinking it out, inviting images. But once you start writing, it is fatal to think about anything but the writing. True work is done for the sake of doing it. What is to be done with it afterwards is another matter, another job. A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; it takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer’s job is to be its medium.

Surfing is expressive of one’s innermost being. How you surf expresses who you are; what you click is expressive of your identity and fetishes. I think that writers try too hard to express themselves. Just by merely clicking, we are expressing ourselves. The new memoir is our browser history.

I’m a fan Virginia Woolf — I’m a real fan of Mrs. Dalloway more than anything else she’s written. But what, I think, seduces her work is that sense that small things are significant. There’s another great quote [from To the Lighthouse] which sums up one of my theories of design, to the extent that I’m entitled to have any theories, which is: “light and evanescent but held together by bolts of iron.” [Design] must be, on the surface, like a butterfly’s wing — but underneath it must be clamped together with bolts of iron… This is what I think is the secret of so much craft — to make it look effortless and evanescent, like a butterfly’s wing, but it needs to have structure, rigidity, purpose.

As a result, children’s society has less and less to do with the land around them – land which, anyway, they are unlikely to occupy when they become adults in our hypermobile society. Children’s society exists on the internet if at all, with raids in video games and chat rooms replacing geographically colocated monster hunts.

Mastery requires endurance. Mastery, a word we don’t use often, is not the equivalent of what we might consider its cognate — perfectionism — an inhuman aim motivated by a concern with how others view us. Mastery is also not the same as success — an event-based victory based on a peak point, a punctuated moment in time. Mastery is not merely a commitment to a goal, but to a curved-line, constant pursuit.

But one of the main advantages of making lots of videogames was that I came to realize that I didn’t particularly care a whole lot about making videogames! (I have a totally different talk about that whole process called Fuck Videogames.) In 2012 I realized that it’s better to create things for me than for some imagined audience. I decided to create things solely because I want them to exist. And I started making things in 1 to 5 hour bursts. And I’m at a place now where I create one or two small things each week and it’s really satisfying.

These mods, JadedCat says, are representative of a new trend in modpack making. “Instead of the focus being on a collection of powerhouse mods, the focus is now on creating a new experience by combining mods with selective tweaks and even maps,” she explains. “While there will always be a place for more traditional factory modpacks, themed gamepacks are now more popular and last longer for players. Minecraft has become a game engine.” Canvox agrees: “Modpackers and server owners are building constructed play experiences using mods as building blocks and making something entirely new with them,” he says. “In my mind, this is the big thing to watch out for.”