Archive for the ‘curiosities’ Category
What’s a Rolodex and why would I want one?
When will the cloud break your heart?
“I don’t care if Google has my information,” said the sales woman.
Digital natives may be a lot of things, but one thing is certain: they aren’t too worried about technology. For them tech is a fact of life, like air and electricity and coffee—always there. Always ready. All slick and wireless and greased to go. That’s why Facebook is mostly just a free $13 18 20 billion Rolodex and Google is a verb. Thus has it always been. And so it shall always be.
Except when it isn’t.
Digital natives have abandoned themselves to the cloud assuming it will always be there. Mostly they don’t have a plan B when stuff goes away. Plan B is to call friends for numbers and addresses and recreate what they had before—but that’ll never happen because Facebook will be there, right?
I don’t put myself in the digital native category, which means I remember a bunch of dumb old stuff like phones with cords and 5 ½ inch floppy disks and, well, I won’t bore you with a kiln-load of nostalgia. But I retain crisp memories of this: important stuff vanishing with a bad piece of media. And an old computer simply destroying things I’d spent lots of time on. More than once. And that lesson stuck. That’s why my contacts and files reside in multiple places, including the cloud. That’s also why I do not assume Internet access in my travels. Instead I have this dumb game of searching for Wi-Fi wherever I go: just last week I ran across a signal called “Chuck Norris” in South Minneapolis. My many experiences losing important information have made me happy to seek redundancy.
The sales woman at the AT&T store has no problem storing contacts, messages and files with Google. Same with millions of us. Who cares if Google scans our communication and sends the right advertisers our way? Who cares if Facebook is about to have one of the largest IPOs in history, based on the dumb comments we type and the hours we spend on the site? Nobody cares—we get what we want out of the deal. We chat with people and divert ourselves with dumb games. Half of Americans think Facebook is a passing fad—and GM thinks their advertising with Facebook is a waste of money. Even if both of those are true, something more enticing and powerful will surely rise next.
I’m guessing down the road we’ll realize the much larger issue was not about losing stuff. And the larger issue maybe isn’t even that we’ve given away the keys to our connections between friends, family and acquaintances. We have yet to understand the full impact of this progressive-thought harvesting, but I’ll admit Nick Carr’s post on digital sharecropping has set me to thinking about where I spend my digits. It also makes me reluctant to entrust everything to the cloud and the enterprising folks who manage it.
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Image credit: Chris Buzelli via thisisnthappiness
No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition
This was a favorite phrase back in High School, when there was no end to how much Monty Python we could quote each other. Lo these many years later, it turns out that John Cleese had quite a lot to say about creativity. I invited Mr. Cleese to lecture in my Freelance Copywriting class last week (via Youtube). Two lectures—spaced 18 years apart—show and reinforce that the best ideas come from sitting in that uncomfortable spot where things are not resolved. The quick solution is often not the best solution. Mr. Cleese argued we need space to become playful, time to border our playful escape from life’s ordinary pressures, time to grind through creating, confidence that mistakes made while creating mean nothing and humor—which is one of the quicker ways to get to this open mode needed for creation.
My goal with copywriting students (and with myself) is to learn to inhabit that chaotic place of unresolve. To live in that space—for as long as possible—while fitting different ideas to the problem. Looking for a match. The chaos of the unresolved space has some motivating effect that helps generate new solutions.
If we wait there.
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Via Brain Pickings
Advertising’s 10 Best Kept Secrets (Via The Ad Contrarian)
These ten facts run counter to all we’ve heard about what’s happening on-line. For that reason alone they are worth 76 seconds of your time.
Click here.
The Bare Facts about Freelancing
“The life of a plant is harder than it seems.”
In this case, the plant truly is our hero.
Noah and the Other: A Hump Day Story
Here’s your Bible story for today.
Occupy Midweek
Once upon a time there was a man named Noah. He enjoyed a good conversation. He also had a sense of wanting to do the right thing as he walked upright through a strange time.
And he walked through a very strange time. Noah lived among superheroes, when the sons of god walked the earth, sexing the hot chicks (OK, the text says “they married,” but there is meat-market sense to it) and producing a super race. Men of renown. It’s all in the Bible—Genesis 6. But it was also a time of great violence. And Noah was the last man standing uncorrupted—so the story goes (except for the problem with new wine, a bit further in the story). But mostly Noah was blameless and faithful as he did the right thing. Noah’s way of living had something to do with the conversations he had.
Noah had cultivated a sensitivity unlike anyone else: he was conversant with the Being that created everything. The Bible calls this being “God” and the story that Genesis unfolds seems predominantly God’s story, though steadily unfolded through people who interact with Him and His creation. When God saw how bad things had become on earth: violence pouring from the evil thoughts that ruled every person’s heart, He said he would wipe out the whole thing. Then He said it again. To Noah. Along with a few instructions that preserved Noah and his family. You know the rest of that violent story—which is really no kids’ story at all.
“Corrupt and full of violence.” I hope that does not describe your work place today, though it is a theme carried out through the entire story of God’s interaction with the earth. But no matter how it feels today, Noah’s story is about pursuing and preserving conversational moments that move toward freedom from the violence and evil that so easily infects all we do. Living above the fray—not by willpower but by deeply connecting with this mysterious being.
It’s a strange story and not at all polite or nice. It raises all sorts of questions and highlights unsolvable mysteries we rarely speak of—a perfect story to occupy midweek.
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Image Credit: Bechet Benjamin via Iconology
conversation is an engine 