Digital by Design: Crafting Technology for Products and Environments by Troika has just been released in the UK (US in Feb 2009). Buy online.

Text description from Thames & Hudson..

Troika is a multi-disciplinary art and design practice founded by Conny Freyer, Sebastien Noel and Eva Rucki. In “Digital by Design”, Troika presents the most exciting smart objects and their designers who push the boundaries of interactive technology and intelligent design, creating new realms of experience, customization and beauty for consumers increasingly looking for products that are much more than mere tools. This inspired and illuminating survey presents a world of design in which the latest digital technologies are ultimately placed in the hands of users, to enrich our lifestyles and experiences in new and unanticipated ways. No design professional will be able to ignore this innovative book.

Full review soon, for now the contents looks like this…


1 / Design Nouveau – Digital forms and Electric Beauty

Fredrikson Stallard / Paul Cocksedge / Joris Laarman / Hussein Chalayan / Ron Arad / Sam Buxton / Stijn Ossevoort / Christopher Pearson / Takeshi Ishiguro / Geoffrey Mann / Front / Moritz Waldemeyer / Loop.pH / James Clar / Simon Heijdens / Usman Haque / United Visual Artists / realities:united / Troika

2 / Augmented Art – Narrative Technologies and Immersive
 Experiences
Conrad Shawcross / Daniel Rozin / Mark Hansen & Ben Rubin / Rafael Lozano-Hemmer / Jim Campbell / Jeppe Hein / Max Dean, Raffaello D’Andrea, Matt Donovan / Thomas McIntosh / Julian Opie / James Carrigan / Michael Cross / Julius Popp / Björn Schülke / Sachiko Kodama / Peter Vogel / minim++ / Greyworld / Tatsuo Miyajima / Paul DeMarinis / Troika

3 / Guerrilla Artfare –
 Disruption and Hardware Hacking
Institute for Applied Autonomy / Graffiti Research Lab / Karolina Sobecka / Mitch Altman / Limor Fried / HeHe / fur / Philip Worthington / rAndom International / Michael Golembewski / Jürg Lehni / Simon Blackmore / Zach DeBord, Kim Jackson DeBord / Brian Duffy / Roger Ibars / 
Schulze & Webb / Owl Project / Hulger / Science & Sons / Industrial Facility / Mark Hauenstein / Luckybite / Ryota Kuwakubo / Troika

4 / Twilight Technologies – Critical Design and Alternative Futures
Auger-Loizeau / Marie Sester / Noam Toran / Natalie Jeremijenko / Tim Stolzenburg / Tim Simpson / Dunne & Raby / Aparna Rao / Crispin Jones / Alice Wang / Fernando Orellana / Kok-Chian Leong / Onkar Kular / Maywa Denki / Troika /

5 / Interviews
Dunne & Raby / Ron Arad / Steven Sacks / Machiko Kusahara

Layoffs have become the dominant story as we near the end of 2008. After writing about the cold economic realities for companies that have had to cut staff, we wanted to find out what it was like for the people who are now unemployed. Just how bad is it out there for new media folks looking for work? We talked with three people at different stages of their job search to see what, exactly, they’re up against.

Sarah Lane was with Revision3 for a year and a half before being laid off at the end of October. While she did a lot at the company, she was best known as the host of popSiren. I spoke with her just a couple weeks after she had been let go.

“It’s great to be unemployed sit in my pajamas for like five minutes,” Lane said. The problem she encountered is that even though there are companies interested in her, there’s just a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the market right now. “Some people have said ‘If I could guarantee that you had a job in a year I’d hire you,’” said Lane. Problem is, those companies can’t guarantee anything right now.

In addition to the lack of jobs, there’s an increase in competition for those jobs. “It’s not just that I’m out of work, there’s a lot of me out of work,” said Lane. In the meantime, she’s taken some freelance work doing consulting and even some video hosting (she won’t say for whom) that will pay the bills and keep her busy through February.

The geek culture web video series EPIC-FU suffered collateral damage as a result of Revision3’s belt-tightening at the end of October. Smashface Productions, which produced EPIC-FU, itself had to let go of an editor and two producers. Among them was Rick Rey, who emailed me his thoughts on looking for new media work a couple weeks ago.

“After I was laid off as Producer of EPIC-FU, I was fortunate enough to quickly pick up some freelance work - affording me the luxury of not rushing into another full-time gig,” he wrote. “It’s not what I want to be doing career-wise, but it pays the bills and it gives me the freedom to be picky about my next move in the new media space.” Some of that freelance work includes writing for EPIC-FU.

Rey said he was weighing his options, which include working for an established network, or even seeking funding for his own projects, but that the idea of going back to a smaller new media startup wasn’t too enticing. “There’s also a few funded new media houses in the LA area that could use an experienced hand, but given the state of the space I’m not confident a horizontal move like that is the most prudent course of action. I don’t want to end up in the same situation 6 months from now,” wrote Rey.

When we checked back in with Rey, he said he’s still freelancing and doesn’t anticipate any new opportunities until after the holidays. And as you’d expect, the time between now and the end of the year is a slow one for companies — a slowdown John Halecky was trying to beat.

Halecky is in a bit of a different position than either Lane or Rey. He was laid off from his position as director of web content and editorial at ReelzChannel back in July. At the time, he figured he’d take his severance, take July and August off, and the start his job search in earnest in September — which is right when the economy went to pot.

Halecky has been actively looking for work since September, searching job board postings and networking through services like LinkedIn, but everywhere he applies, companies say they are on a hiring freeze. He’ll go in for interviews for jobs posted online only to be told that the position will be filled at some point — the company just doesn’t know when.

Thanksgiving was a big deadline for Halecky in his job search. “No one hires between Thanksgiving and the end of the year,” said Halecky. “Nothing will come about until the fiscal budget for 2009.” But when we spoke to him today, Halecky said that he’s still out looking for his next job.

Though it all sounds dire, the one thing all three people I spoke to had was optimism. No one wanted to just take a job to be employed — all three of them were willing to wait for the right opportunity and believed that opportunity would come.

Are you looking for work? What have you found in your search? Leave a comment and let us know.

Bloodlines: Inside Higher Ed published an article on the recently revived lawsuit by the Havasupai tribe against researchers at Arizona State University. The suit alleges that researchers (other than the original investigator who collected the blood) have used blood samples for purposes other than outlined in the IRB protocols. Said one commenter:
“This is a really interesting case because it opens up some questions of the reasonableness of practices that have been flying under the bioethical radar,” said Jonathan Marks, a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and an expert on informed consent and bioethics. Marks said that while he did not know the specifics of what happened in Arizona, he sees a widespread problem of anthropologists collecting blood for one purpose (with informed consent) and then having other scholars use the blood (without consent). Ethics issues abound, he said, because some of the subsequent research is potentially lucrative and because of the realities that these interactions do not take place on a two-way street.
Building/Burning Bridges: Hanna Fearn wrote for the UK Times Higher Ed Supplement on the divisions between evolutionary and sociocultural anthropology. Sometimes, one is left wondering whether The Great Divide Fearn speaks of is between evolutionary vs. social anthro or between U.S. and British models, as a lot of the British scholars interviewed suggested that the rising tide of evolutionary anthropology is coming from the States. Hmm, if that’s the case, the Chagnon reference might not be the most convincing. (Thanks to Crystal at Travel Scrabble for linking to this).

Addenda: Click here for a response to Fearn’s article by Michael Stewart on Cognition and Culture.

Archeology of Homelessness: Phys.Org reported on the research of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI for the midwesternly challenged) anthropology professor Larry J. Zimmerman and IUPUI student Jessica Welch. The archaeological survey was designed to look at homeless life outside of shelters, where most ethnographies of the homeless take place. Welch, herself formerly homeless, and Zimmerman will be publishing results in Historical Archeology early next year.

Saying Goodbye to ‘the Stranger’: NY Magazine published a fairly lengthy article challenging the isolated individual trope that seems to linger on in urban and online studies (even Louis’s Wirth’s 1938 classic essay “Urbanism as a Way of Life” makes an appearance.) If you can ignore the self-loving parts where the author reminds us how quintessentially urban and wonderful New York is, it’s a pretty good article. (Thanks to Arts and Letters Daily for posting this).

It’s Electrifying! Lorenz at antropologi.info has a great interview with Tanja Winther about her new book, The Impact of Electricity: Development, Desires and Dilemmas.

Ladies and Gents, the punchline: What would a news roundup be without some fun stuff? The first one comes from deathpower.
Cleverest Hegel joke this week: Most Hegel scholars agree there are 3 kinds of people: those who don’t really understand Hegel, and those who never liked arithmetic anyway.
The second is filed under ‘weird toys’ on Visual Anthropology of Japan. Enjoy!

"Trials drive us to the realities of religion. You may feed on chaff until you have real work to do, or real grief to bear; but then you want the old corn of the land, and you must have it, or else you will faint and fail" (Charles Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, pp. 384-385).