“Standing at the shore of this overwhelming sea, instead of trying to swallow it all in, the new masters of information skim across it, picking out things from all over, and diving in deep only when necessary. Maybe more importantly, the true masters aren’t the ones who simply accumulate knowledge; they’re those that reconfigure it into something new”.
From The Masters of Data, another good article at the Toronto Standard on life in the digital age.
Having briefly existed between the years 1848 and 1850, the Toronto Standard reemerged last night, April 7, 2011. From the cold ashes and forgotten name of a defunct printed newspaper to an internet media startup, 161 years later.
“The Toronto Standard is a daily digital briefing on the life of the city, covering urban affairs, business, technology, culture and design — and all the sparks that happen in between.” (about)
One of the first articles is written by Navneet Alang, From Handwringing to Hope: the Future of Media. In it the author addresses the future of media in a digital culture, an appropriate topic considering that the Standard is a youthful face in that same tumultuous industry.
The website, made by the development company Playground, is clean, easy to read, with a black and white color that harkens back to a newspaper legacy. The horizontal reading frames, which have been taken down for maintenance, are a step in the right direction for comfortable online reading. Horizontal reading is a rare treat on a website, and it’s refreshingly good to see someone else undertake a horizontal reading extension similar to that advocated by design mogul Frank Chimero.
If you a Torontonian and you care about media or what happens in the city you live in, keep an eye on the Standard. If a first impression tells us anything, they will have a lot to offer.
