Article: “The Binder and the Server” by Triple Canopy/Colby Chamberlain
This is a nice long piece about the web magazine/network/artist collective Triple Canopy by one of its editors. I have posted things about Triple Canopy before; this is a website you should be watching, both for its content and for the ways in which that content gets presented. The people behind Triple Canopy are really thinking creatively about what it means to translate publishing to the web– how it is necessarily different, and what kinds of differences are simply habits or reactions to superficial characteristics– and thus the extent to which print and web could be brought closer together, in ways that make a web publication seem less transient and more amenable to close reading.
Perhaps as importantly, they are also thinking creatively about how to fund such a thing.
Article: “The Lord of the Flies: How GitHub Tamed Free Software (And More)”
Article from wired about the open-source code depository GitHub. I am not so much recommending this article in particular as a greater awareness of GitHub and what they are doing. Briefly, they provide an easy, powerful way for software developers to manage open-source projects, allowing them to compare proposed additions to the code, as well as allowing people to easily fork the work of others. In so doing, they have made open source much more open, but also, as the article demonstrates, provided a model that is beginning to be applied to all kinds of other areas, including writing.
Song: “Forget (Shlohmo Remix)” by Lianne La Havas
Also, a remix by Two Inch Punch:
Both of which I like quite a bit better than the original:
Song: “F’ Off” by Wiley, Flowdan, Riko and Manga
Wiley, for those who may be unfamiliar, is one of the original grime MCs (possibly THE original, if your source is Wiley himself). He is also unbelievably prolific; he generates dozens of songs a year– some are great, some are junk, and he gives a fair number of them away for free. This is, obviously, a group effort, and I don’t think there is any particular standout among the verses. But what is really striking here is the production: nothing at all but percussion, African drums, which drive the track in really surprising way.