I just got an email that Social Tapestries has a new website. Social Tapestries is a research program which focuses on "the potential benefits and costs of local knowledge mapping and sharing." The program is run by Proboscis, which is headed by Giles Lane. I met Giles a couple of years ago at the People Inspired Innovation conference in Essex, where he gave an interesting talk on the Urban Tapestries project--lots of interesting stuff on how people experience cities communally (London in particular) and some neat methods that they use. Lots of cool stuff on both websites. Check out the Diffusion ebook generator.
I read an interesting article on trend forecasting today. I've always found this fascinating (and wonder how much anybody checks later to see if the forecasters were right). The only thing that bothered me about this one, and this is not new, is the claim that what they do is like cultural anthropology. This is not a diss on advertising, marketing, trend forecasting, or any of the other fields that claim to be like anthropology--these folks to interesting work. I am just annoyed at the claim itself. Granted, we anthropologists are not always good at advertising ourselves...in that we offer a holistic approach, and theoretical insight based on our training. So anybody who observes people is now an anthropologist. Or is it just that Americans are so used to sound bites that they don't understand the nuanced differences in anything? Sigh.
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