Back to normal - part 4?

Life is still some way from normality yet- making plans involving travelling abroad still feels like a bit of a gamble, and its anyone's guess whether we'll get a similar Christmas to last year with last-minute lockdowns, or the Christmas we expected to get. Societal norms for things like when you should wear a mask or how much space you should give strangers in public are still a bit fuzzy - masks on trains, the underground and shopping centres are starting to become conspicuous by their absence. I haven't noticed the lingering smell of hand sanitiser for months. "Protect each other" seems to have fallen off the agenda. We're still in a ‘reevaluation’ stage - the "new normal" might be in sight, but not quite here yet.

But that means that what we can do (which we couldn't when we were still adjusting to life in a pandemic) is start getting ready for it. The big question isn't "when will this end?", but "how will we continue?"

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What can we learn from "The Dress" today?

"#TheDress" is an interesting thing to think about because in itself, it doesn't matter. In 2015 it was a social, viral, publishing phenomenon. In 2021, at best, its the answer to a trivia quiz question in a loosely defined "the internet" category. Nobody really cares about it. (Except possibly that person who had the tattoo...)

But it tells us something about how people come together on the internet in a way that they didn’t just a few years previously. And that is something that does matter.

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Back to Normal

its become pretty clear to me that this (#gestures vaguely around#) is "normal" now. No, we haven't gone "back to normal", whatever that might mean (I don't think it really means anything in this context, other than the fantasy of a world without SARS-CoV-2 and all that it entails... which is basically everything that has happened in the last 6 months or so...) But I think we can say that whatever this (#gestures again#) is is "normal" now.

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Data Art

Some people look at data art as a challenge to do the most original, visually interesting, arresting piece of art that somehow corresponds to a data set. Thats fine… But it’s the line of thinking that gave us all those 3D charts in old versions of Excel and chartjunk galore.

The other way of looking at it can get you to a different place - how do you make 'art' that actually represents the data? I think some of the best data art boils down to a straightforward bar chart, and this is no exception…

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For now...

What I write here tends to be what I'm thinking about, with a general theme of 'how people adapt to technology'. Right now, our society is undergoing a seismic shift - millions of people are suddenly living and working in a totally different routine, much of which is enabled by the internet and online services - meaning I've got way too many things to be thinking and writing about to actually write any of them down.

So, this is a "for now" post while I try to get my head around what comes next.

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For Whom the Bell Tolls

“No man is an Island, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

Context: Brexit: Big Ben fundraiser given £50,000

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Made up my mind

The "I'm still a bit undecided about my vote direction this coming Thursday" copypasta meme has made my mind up. (I've seen it from a couple of people on Facebook not really linked to each other, so I assume it's done the rounds and we've all seen it now.)

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