The Best Time to be Alive

Ed Wallace:

Think of it this way. During the Financial Panic of 1893, considered the worst depression to hit America since its birth, those involved in electric utilities systems suffered not a bit because electricity was a growth market. Henry Ford, working as the chief engineer for Detroit Edison at the time, never worried about losing his job or having enough spare money to build his first automobile. That was also the period in which electric trolleys and the interurban rails came to most cities; and those manufacturers, the rail systems’ owners and the workers who installed them also went through that Panic virtually unscathed. Thomas Edison built his first movie studio in New Jersey the year of the financial collapse; and he certainly didn’t go out of business for lack of demand for his short films.



Even when the dotcom bubble burst in the late 1990s, it didn’t affect the progress made in expanding the Internet – or in the improvement in high-speed connections, video streaming or the expansion of commerce online. All those things dramatically improved during that collapse.

An Open Letter to People Who Take Pictures of Food with Instagram

Katherine Markovich:

Dear People Who Take Pictures of Food With Instagram,

Just because the picture looks artsy doesn’t mean you are. I get it. We all went through our creative, experimental stages. There is a period in all of our lives where we think we can probably make money off our pseudo-artistic talent of choice. And now, you think you are a photographer because Instagram does the work for you. Do you have to focus anything? Do you have to worry about lighting? Do you have to think at all? Not really. You are part of a fast growing legion of people that have been duped into believing they are visionaries, auteurs, even.

“<3 <3 Gorgeous day for lunch outside <3 <3,” you post to the image of a set of railroad tracks behind a McDonald’s.

Thoughts on Paul Rand

John Maeda:

As a graduate student at MIT, I stumbled upon a thin, nondescript book called “Thoughts on Design” by Paul Rand. At the time I was building a reputation for myself as being a gifted graphical user interface designer. However, as I flipped through Rand’s book I was humbled by the power with which he manipulated space and at the same time struck by the clarity of his accompanying prose. I was immediately inspired to pursue the field of graphic design, not necessarily pertaining to the computer.



It is ironic that 8 years later, I would return to MITas a professor of design, and that I would host a lecture by Paul Rand at MIT, which I did on November 14 of last year. The time for the lecture was set at 10am. For those familiar with how an American university works, an early lecture is very rare because students usually study late into the night and are less apt to attend events in the morning. But Rand insisted that he speak in the morning. He said, “If someone isn’t willing to wake up to hear me to speak, I don’t want to speak to them!”