One day you are putting numbers into spreadsheet cells, and the next those numbers feed into budgets, and the budgets turn into requests to Human Resources, which turn into postings on Stack Overflow and requests to outsourcing placement firms in Estonia or Mumbai, and these turn into human beings doing things, sometimes in Offices, or at home, or in home offices. Just one number in a cell in Excel, plus human beings with checkbooks, and suddenly you’ve created an absence that must be filled. Houses are sold and bought. Kids have to move from their schools and attend new schools.
Paul Ford, Deliverables
Words are things. Information is mass in another form.
(via quartey)
I have been playing this game quite a bit lately, usually with other people.
Like, staring at an ad on the subway and trying to count back all of the jobs filled and decisions made that resulted in that poster being there. Dreaming up the exact path a banana took to get from a tree in Colombia to a sidewalk in Manhattan. Or guesstimating the range and distribution of emotional reaction to the Justin Bieber sleeping video.
(via kenyatta)
Kenyatta have you seen Madoka? Among other things it’s a magical girl anime about the enormous potential emotional impact (ie the total volume of heartbreak or love their choices will cause to themselves and others) held within pre-teen girls, and how that being aware of that power can be a gift or a curse. It’s really good.
(via bradofarrell)
*shifting attention to madoka*
(via kenyatta)
Flow charts of attention and quasi-causation. (via notational)