Last.fm received 11,353,666,092 scrobbles in 2011. That’s a lot. In this visualization they break down how some monumental events were seen through the lens of what people listened to.
Pretty cool stuff in the New Directories sections as well.
♺ — #2011 #data #last.fm #visualization
Every New Year’s Eve, I think to myself that the coming year can’t possibly be any crazier than the year before.
I’m always wrong about that, and 2011 ended up being about all of this:
Oh, and traveling—lots of traveling. I’ve never flown so much in the space of a year before, and doing Zürich — Copenhagen Sunday, Copenhagen — London Monday, London — Copenhagen Tuesday, Copenhagen — Berlin Thursday and Berlin — Copenhagen Tuesday made me feel like traveling faster than the speed my mind could keep up with.
Here’s the places I spent time in the past year:
I want more of all of this in 2012.
I’ve never worked so hard in my life; trying to balance working at my dream job while writing my Master’s Thesis; trying to adjust to life in a new city while wanting to be back “home”; and stretching my abilities to feel I just barely reached what was expected of me. But also eventually finding that constantly stretching to reach a goal brought me much, much further than I ever thought possible in such a short period of time.
I’ll work towards making that the case in 2012 as well.
There is no hope; only hard work.
So a couple of things happened in 2011:
The music is the fantastic “The Height of Summer” by The Knife.
#2011 #amy winehouse #breivik #economy #egypt #fukushima #greece #japan #libya #montage #muammar ghaddafi #mubarak #murdoch #news corp #norway #obama #occupy #occupywallstreet #osama bin laden #steve jobs #tsunami #utoya #Video
It’s either sunshine and heatwave or rain and hail the size of ping pong balls here—it can change from one day to the other.
I still like it, though. And here you might get an idea why:
#2011 #july #photography #zurich
Yesterday, Bruce Sterling gave the closing keynote at the annual interactive festival in Austin, Texas, South By South West aka. SXSW.
Sterling is one of my personal heroes in many ways, and yesterday, even with an even more dystopian view on things than usually, he made my brain spin in ways that bode well for the future:
What makes the world work, what makes things better, is passionate virtuosity.
If you don’t know Bruce Sterling, a great place to start is his talk from Reboot 11 (note that the sound is fairly loud):
My friend Morten used this technique of categorizing ones personal items when he moved to Zürich last August: Finding out which things to throw out. It’s well worth a read.
Sterling tried to describe what it is that he does, as he seems to not be very fond of the title of “futurist”:
I criticize stuff that doesn’t exist yet.
and
I’m interested in things that have one foot in fantasy and a toe in reality.
I love when people look at what is happening, mend the trends together and present it in ways that make sense on a global scale with lots of room for action you can take yourself.
Just look at Sterling’s closing remark yesterday:
Another world is inevitable. The future is unwritten. Good luck to you.
It’s your choice if you want a better tomorrow. If you want something to happen, you have to do it. Because, as you might remember:
I have some important news to share. Soon.
#2011 #bruce sterling #future #sxsw #trends
