In this month’s issue of Communication Arts, columnist Natalia Ilyin discusses the process of creating stories–mythologies, as Roland Barthes would call them–as part of the design process. It’s a wonderful article, yet simultaneously alarming. I’ve excerpted part of it here:

A designer wants to “Make Things Better.” And this ideal hints at a different plane of consciousness, a place of perfection, just like the construction of a story hints at a world where things can make sense. Designers tell everyday people that there is a beautiful world out there, just out of reach. We design bits and pieces and sometimes whole scenaria of a beautiful world that they can be a part of, if they buy the artifacts of our story.

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Apologies that this post is a day late–we had our annual company holiday party last night and I didn’t have an opportunity to put this together until today.

• A 9-year-old reviews the XO laptop
  I have mixed feelings about the “One Laptop Per Child” project–for example, I honestly wonder if the money spent on these laptops could be put to better use by creating infrastructure for impoverished nations instead of placing so much emphasis on technology as a solution. I was also skeptical of the user interface, which I had only seen pictures of, until I read this article in which a precocious 9-year-old British boy is asked his opinion of the machine:
  

  So Rufus is using his laptop to write, paint, make music, explore the internet, and talk to children from other countries.

  Because it looks rather like a simple plastic toy, I had thought it might suffer the same fate as the radio-controlled dinosaur or the roller-skates he got last Christmas - enjoyed for a day or two, then ignored.

  Instead, it seems to provide enduring fascination.

  Perhaps I was wrong about the device; it’s been known to happen sometimes.

• Fark.com attempting to trademark “Not Safe for Work”
  This is in line with T-Mobile trying to trademark the color magenta, in my opinion; there are certain things that just shouldn’t be trademarkable, including descriptive phrases like this. Fark is a bit late to be trying to “buy” this phrase, given, as Ars Technica points out, how many internet properties already use variations on “NSFW” or the actual phrase “Not Safe for Work” for their branding.
• Learning to settle for less than what you want
  Kiplinger’s has posted a somewhat questionable article entitled “Do What You Love and Starve,” which is basically a slap in the face to anyone who wants to try and make a living as an artist, actor or musician:
  

  Following your dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Fact is, most wannabes aren’t happy. In addition to the constant rejection, they feel unproductive. And when hired, they worry that they’re just one wrong word from being unemployed again.

  What a depressing and joyless point of view! Yes, it’s difficult to be a successful artist or performer, but we live in a celebrity-obsessed culture and there’s always money to be made if you’ve got a new idea, a unique talent or if you just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

  But should you throw common sense out the window and just do whatever it is that you want to do? Perhaps, to a point–if you can handle it, and create a solid workable plan that will keep you from living in a cardboard box and starving.

  I think that better advice than this gentleman gives (settle for a job that doesn’t suck and do whatever-it-is-you-love as a hobby) might be to create a realistic plan for yourself and stick to it, such as giving yourself six months or a year or whatever in LA or New York to try and reach your goal while working on the side, and then retooling your plan if it doesn’t happen after that. Your mileage may vary, of course.

• The year in ideas
  The New York Times Magazine has put out a list of what it deems to be “the many curious, inspired, perplexing and sometimes outright illegal innovations of the past 12 months. Then we lay them out on the dock, flipping and flopping and gasping for air, and toss back all but those that are fresh enough for our particular cut of intellectual sushi.” Odd and somewhat unfortunate metaphor aside, many of the ideas are interesting indeed, including the concept of ambiguity promoting liking, wikiscanning and neurorealism.