April 9, 2012
discourse machine, Future Tools, Overheard, Research, Vocabulary, Watch this thread

A Dictionary of Received Ideas

Her colleagues often repeated that ‘there is no perfect solution to a design problem’. Rebecca was pretty sure she had read it somewhere within the context of computer science or learning technology but after looking all over, she still had not found a solid source for the idea. After posting her question to the mailinglist, [...]

January 21, 2012
Abstracting craft, Chicago, Future Tools, Language, Overheard, practice, Vocabulary

Word, Work

A group from Chicago visited Constant Variable last week. One student explains his mother is a publisher and that she compiled an on-line glossary of terms used in her mixed practice of printing, publishing and writing. It is stunning. For example, under W: word spacing: The amount of space between each word in typeset text. [...]

December 23, 2011
Abstracting craft, dilettantism, expertise, Future Tools, geekdom, Overheard, practice, theory, Watch this thread

The Dilettante Expert

‘Dilettante expertise’ as a way to make practice meet theory: Expertise is the classical foundation of all geekdom, whether it is encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare, of the Star Trek universe or the registers of an 8-bit controller. Dilettantism is the unavoidable condition of drawing the bigger picture. It can end up badly like with the [...]