What we read this week (15 Feb)

Quote of the week

With equipment like this in the home of the future we may not have to go to work, the work would come to us.

–Walter Cronkite, 1967

Articles of the week

• Kyle Studstill: On names and the next big culture
  Kyle believes in searching for the next big culture rather than the next big thing, as Alexis Madrigal put it. Here he outlines the philosophy he and his colleagues work by at their consultancy, Three Kings, through the story of their name.
• MIT Technology Review: Inside China’s Genome Factory
  On sequencing human genomes at the gigantic Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, huge amounts of data becoming ever easier to obtain and work with, and what the implications of having all this information might be.
• Sacha Greif: flat pixels
  Sacha Greif talks about current UI design paradigms, contrasting skeuomorphism, realism and the increasingly popular “flat” design, describing the benefits and tradeoffs of each, and what way things are heading.
• The Verge: What is a book in the age of the iPad?
  A great interview with Craig Mod on growing pains in digital publishing, how print and digital media are evolving, user-friendliness and more.
• Audrey Watters: Building a Student Data Infrastructure: Privacy, Transparency and the Gates Foundation-Funded inBloom
  Education activist and writer Audrey Watters gives her take on “data-driven education” and the issues of data privacy, security and transparency that go along with it.