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LETTER no. 55Week no.8: Zoom Out. FridayDesign 101 MOOC, Abadir
for iversity
Greetings from he a think-tank of the contemporary world,Were at
Googles headquarters in Mountain View, California!
Google, is set forth to understand us, humans. Our way to put
together words to form meaning.
It constantly analyses and shapes our language. For better or
worse.
We just came back from an exhibition on the history of computer
chess at the Computer History Museum and learned that the first
chess-playing automaton was created in 1770. Impressive isnt
it?
The principle was very simple. A human chess player was hidden
inside the machine.
By the way, this museum has an impressive concentration of nice
content, Just check for instance this virtual exhibition on Visible
Storage.
Seymour Crays supercomputers were truly something. Between the
1960s and the 1980s, he designed the worlds fastest computers.
This one we see is called self-portrait.
Question of the day: What are you searching for?At Google, the
main mission is to organize the worlds information to make it
accessible and useful to all (this is what they say).
Desig
n 101
055/5 10
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Week 08
Saturday
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They do this by providing tools. Easy-to-use, intuitive,
self-explanatory tools that make navigating the internet and, for
that matter, life simply better.
Apart from the search engine, Google has introduced Sketchup, a
free 3D modelling program that can be used by everyone.
Google says about Sketchup :
Great tools are ones you look forward to using. They do one
thing (or maybe two) really, really well. They let you do what you
want without having to figure out how. They help with hard or
boring tasks so that you can focus on being creative, or
productive, or both. And they are, in their own way, beautiful.
In this course, our main mission is to understand the basics of
what it means to design. Something we mainly try doing by making
things and by organizing our time and lives.
But then, each one of us should shape his personal set of
missions and goals.
The important thing is not about having extremely high goals.It
is about setting up clear ones.
We want Google to be the third half of your brain. (Sergey
Brin)
And what about you? What would you want?
Homework no. 55Today, there is no specific homework.
You will rest and relax, catch up on the week if you have not
completed your homework, or simply think about your own personal
plans or missions.
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What will I learn today? Nothing specific. Just take a look at
this Sketchup thing.Nowadays there are a lot of powerful (and free)
tool around.Tools to draw, to write, to plan, to do all kind of
different things. Do you use them?
Here some we like:
> https://mural.ly/> http://paper.li/>
https://storify.com/> https://medium.com/>
http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/art-project>
http://ldd.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx?icmp=COUSCreateShareSL100LDD
Why do we do this? In the previous world, the tools to design
were pretty much given. Nowadays, every day we have new tools.
How to understand if they are good / useful or not?Where to find
them? How to keep ourselves updated without drowning under the
informations waterfall?
Also, we want to have you take one stepat a time.
As supercomputer designer Seymour Cray would said, as long as we
can make them smaller, we can make them faster.
Something to remember: Design. Brick by brick.Remember
Confucius? The one who said that a journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step?
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Further inspirations...From the workshop of carpenter Ole Kirk
Christiansen to todays worldwide sensation including six themed
amusement parks, Lego is a game that everyone can enjoy.
Its name comes from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means play
well.
Indeed, with its unmistakable and colourful plastic building
blocks, the game has a simple set of interlocking parts. Building
blocks to build whatever you can dream up.
Another open-ended game that we love is SimCity. Its about
city-building: developing a city and seeing that its citizens are
happy and have all the makings of a nice, comfortable life.
And all this on a budget!
The most interesting thing about SimCity is its generative
aspect. There are different zones for different types of activity:
residential, commercial and industrial. The zones are developed
when the player provides adequate factors and conditions like
sufficient power, transportation infrastructure and good tax
levels.
The great popularity of Simcity has seen many spin-offs and more
recently The Sims.
Here is another cool game Railroad Tycoon: empire building in
the Golden Age of railroads.
It was our inspiration for todays postcard.
:-)
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Design 101. A How-To.We know we have some late-comers, here are
a few instructions on how the whole thing functions...
A typical Design 101 day:
We send you an email around 9 in the morning (Berlin time) with
the link to our daily unit + some news, updates, cool Design 101
things we found etc.etc.
Note: you can find all of our previous emails in the
Announcements section of Design 101 on iversity.
Once you land on the units page, you find our shipment (which
consists of a video-postcard + a letter). You watch the video, read
our letter, get to work and complete the assignment (or relax if
its a weekend day). For even more fun, you can always refer to the
Design 101 encyclopedia, which is updated every week.
Dont forget to take part in the conversations of the Discussions
forum!
Now, going beyond the iversity platform, we have setup other
places for us to meet and spread things we do.
On Facebook:the Design 101 page: to follow whats going on (in
general terms)the Design 101 Exercises page: to check out picks
(things that fascinate us the most)the Design 101 Arena group: to
post your pictures, share your thoughts, emotions, references,
lalala (as a complement to the discussions happening on the
platform).
On Twitter,@design1o1: to follow whats going on + discuss with
each other.#design1o1: to connect us all under a same hashtag.
On YouTube:the Design 101 channel: to view + share our video
postcards (which is not possible to do from the iversity
platform)
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On Instagram:#design1o1: to connect us all under a same
hashtag.
Regarding the hashtag, make sure to use #design1o1 with an o and
not a 0...
:-)
PS Uploading your homework to the iversity platform is very
important in terms of archiving. It is the only way we can collect
all the things we do in one same place. Once the course ends, it
might turn out to be reorganized into a wonderful book and/or
exhibition
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Lego man
Lego bricks
Todays postcard
Our little sketched-up city