I can hardly keep up. And I have trouble imagining a time or place when true creative work was rare and had to be passed, intact but tattered, from hand to hand, or only recounted: a treasure whose survival relied on the willingness of a living vessel to carry and spread it with fidelity. Now our art stands alone and often runs, with little motivation on the part of the creator.
So much of the beauty we're making now is just mash-ups and homages, like this (or like this!). These are great to watch because you can see how a message manifests itself to another person, how we can never, none of us, see exactly the same thing behind our eyes, and how the seed of that ingested mass communication grows and mutates into other messages we can't control.
And yet somehow there remains an underlying known aesthetic, a cue or value that we can recognise...
"Maps are very simple," began Orange labs researcher Christophe Aguiton. "They are practical things. But at the same time a map is a dream engine ... people dream on maps."
Once upon a time, ordinary maps were given depth with topographical tricks. Today you can layer maps with data - examples of which we see in plenty, like how criminal acts, bars or schools can be mapped for the BBC's The Truth About Crime project.
And as an example, Aguiton showed us a map of France, seen from above, layered with the frequency of real-time SMSes in a given area on new years. SMS concentrations were illustrated to look like flames, burning calmly over the country and culminating in a gleaming ball of fire in Paris. When midnight hit, the lights suddenly exploded upward and outward, indicating the immediate rise in text messages - a fireworks show composed by data.
It's cool that there's an agency out there that's willing to try new things, and be seriously fucking funny, without worrying about looking chill or getting some faint-hearted person's panties all in a twist.
With virtually no load or lag time whatsoever, I'm currently watching the feature film Sideways.
And I didn't need to pay for it, or illegally download it, or sacrifice any precious computer space for it. When I'm done, I might watch Arrested Development, or Heroes, or -- get this! -- Doogie Howser, MD. My whole day is officially down the drain.
And while the occasional :15 or :30 ad cuts through my experience, I'm willing to deal with it. The content is worth the wait.
I was hesitant to pin Joost a YouTube killer, but I'm fast inclined to dub Hulu, and similar business models (think the ABC and NBC online sitcom players), Joost killers. It's all the convenience of Joost with better shows, better ads and no software downloads.
For someone who doesn't own a television but loves the sitcom -- and also happens to own a good-sized monitor -- this is very exciting. Brand me a Hulu addict.
Hulu avails you to:
Popular shows and clips
Current shows and clips (the two are not necessarily mutually inclusive)
Netflix-worthy feature films
Somewhat appealing advertising (no ballpark franks here -- I'm mainly seeing Axe Vice spots)
(Apparent) universal platform friendliness. Unlike the Netflix player, Hulu doesn't seem to mind whether you operate on a Mac or a PC. (Not sure about Linux.)
An "embed" and "share" feature
A "lower lights" feature. If for some strange reason you don't want to watch your show in full-screen, you can opt to dim the website offerings (film information, related videos) above and below the player
Pretty sophisticated toggling. You can check out film information, full-screen the feature, pop it out of its window, rewind or fast-forward, or opt to embed it somewhere without losing your place or having to stream the whole thing again. Most of the time, whatever you're watching just pauses and waits for you to push play again
Granted, Hulu isn't perfect, either. Some cons:
I wouldn't call it laggage but every one in awhile the picture pauses. It probably has more to do with my RAM than Hulu, though. (I'm streaming a feature film while doing three other things at once, including writing this blog.)
The ad breaks could be a little more graceful. Hulu hasn't quite mastered the art of easing into advertising without disturbing its audience. Sometimes breaks occur while feature characters are mid-sentence. o_O And after each spot, there's this jarring moment of silence and black screen. It's a little WTF?!-ish.
No uploads onto iTunes, no episode-saving or downloading onto your hard drive
Films cut to accommodate time slots and content restrictions. A scene in which Maya exclaims, "You wanted to fuck me first!" has been tastefully dubbed to a more morose "You wanted to fool me first." And when Miles sneaks into the trucker's house while he's in bed with his wife? No idea what's going on there. You get loud rock music and a stray bedsheet. First-time watchers of Sideways will have no idea why a naked trucker chases him back to his car.
In any event, congrats to a couple of old-timers for stealing the limelight from the new kid on the block -- and actually improving the value proposition (for the most part). How often do you see that happen?
For the cinematic adaptation of his novella Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote balked at the notion of Audrey playing Holly. He wanted Marilyn Monroe.
Paramount clearly had something else in mind.
Side-by-side, it's only fair to say the film is, at best, only loosely based on the Capote book. Capote's Golightly is completely different from the one we encounter on the big screen - similarly frothy, granted, but by no means was she planning to forsake her own ideas to go running into Paul's arms in the rain.
In the book, she doesn't even go back for the cat she deserted.
Nonetheless, the book and the movie gleaned acclaim in their own circles, and even drew audiences to one another - the book to the film, the film to the book.
Capote was a writer appealing to the individual. He knew what he was doing. An individual has opinions. For him or her, Holly is less a woman than an allegory. On print, her betrayals make sense.
Paramount baked visual and auditory hits for hundreds at a time. They knew what they were doing. In a theatre, individual opinion is largely dependent on the sentiment of others. And Holly isn't just an empty vessel open to interpretation - she's living, breathing skin, a woman with a fashion sense and a personality that reminds people of themselves or their aunts or their mothers.
Decades after Audrey Hepburn's star hit its peak, women are still fashioning themselves after the charmed Holly Golightly. The "little black dress" is standard issue for any self-respecting New York female.
It would be unreasonable, I think, to call one more or less authentic than the other.
With Breakfast at Tiffany's in mind, consider a marketer's attempt to shove a TV ad campaign onto YouTube or some kind of microsite.
These efforts largely fail. Unless an ad is particularly conversation-worthy, what in hell makes you think people are trawling YouTube for it? They're too busy spoofing Miss South Carolina and gawking at the miracle that is Sonic Speed Run. (Seriously, how does he do that? I could never get past Chemical Plant Zone 2.)
You cannot separate the medium from the message. A person is not a passive receptor for any piece of data we choose to spoon-feed it. When I watch television, I have completely different expectations, and a completely different mindset, from when I am sitting in front of my computer.
Paramount understood there's a difference between the individual experience and the group encounter. Paramount also knew it had a limited amount of time to turn a flighty hooker into a social icon. The individual can be forgiving; the group, less so.
These are things that architects of the individual experience alone don't always understand. That's why Capote was so good at addressing the one, while Paramount turned addressing the crowd into a multi-million-dollar business.
The challenge lies in that, these days, a marketer must try to accomplish both: addressing one, touching many.
"Should men and women, after all, be defined in any important way by their work? The answer, of course, is yes, otherwise the activities that largely support our lives and consume our time would be unfriendly, foreign, and irrelevant to us.
"Our occupation should not be something we visit like the seashore in summer or a prisoner in a prison, despite the fact that the work may be unpleasant [...] Even if it is like speaking a foreign language we haven't learned, that incapacity itself is totally defining."
-Foreword by William Gass, Stanley Elkin's The Franchiser
I hit NYC for the first time last weekend. Once I got over the elaborate spiderweb that passes for a subway (definitely a far cry from beloved BART), I fell all over myself.
New York is the living, breathing witness to America's industrialized history, stuffed to overflowing with contradictory messages and too many dreams. And like a splatter in the concrete, every once in awhile you find beauty again.
I'm accosted by ads I've reviewed, come to vivid life. It's like they were lying in wait and have leaped out to confront me, pulsing with energy and so much force. The press releases that tried to contain them simply never had a chance.
Since the awakening, so to speak, I've developed an almost superstitious aversion to PDFs. Generally speaking I don't mind them, but in the strange universe of ad critique I find them deceptive for two reasons:
Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message. Can you divorce the medium from the message? No. In PDF form, the ad lacks the impact and gravity its creators had in mind.
Press releases, which also come in PDFs, are like cheat-sheets. PR execs and agencies love to wax creative about ad particulars on a release. The problem is, your consumer doesn't get one. He or she has no chance of knowing why you picked that color, or why the giant talking tooth made a great inside joke. Fuck poetic license in a PR; it's supposed to be in your AD! (Have I mentioned I also hate reading them?)
I'd like to gauge the quality of an advertisement in almost the same way an art critic appraises some ancient or contemporary oeuvre.
It needs to be in front of me, larger than life, involved in my world. If it's a billboard, I want to be standing under it with my neck craned as far as it will go, trying to decide if it "pops."
If it's a print ad, I want to encounter it in a magazine or discover it hanging above me one drowsy day on the train. If it's a :30 spot, I want to find it appropriately adorning some TV show while I sit fooling with a Rubik's cube on the couch. A version of an ad in a PDF, versus the one you come across on the street, is like the difference between a 20-foot Picasso and a JPEG, or the Louvre's Mona Lisa and a postcard.
You can never learn how your advertising moves a person - provided it does at all - until you can experience it in the intended format, whether it's hundreds of feet above you on a billboard, or posing as a coquettish interactive Flash corner on the digital edition of BusinessWeek.
They say Warren Buffett made his first stock purchase at the age of 11, a small number of Cities Services shares for $37 each. When the price hit $40 he sold, only to see them hit $200 some years later.
This allegedly taught him what it meant to invest for the long term. And not just in companies but in the people behind them, too.
One thing I admire about Warren Buffett's annual shareholders letters is their lengthy tell-all nature. You feel the same intimacy encountered when hearing the precious particulars of a good friend's life. He reflects, makes jokes and considers past decisions. He also takes great pains to explain the underpinnings of his methods.
After describing the past year's goings-on and some recent acquisitions including Business Wire, in his 2005 letter Buffett reflects upon the way Berkshire develops relationships:
Unlike many business buyers, Berkshire has no “exit strategy.” We buy to keep. We do, though, have an entrance strategy, looking for businesses in this country or abroad that meet our six criteria and are available at a price that will produce a reasonable return. If you have a business that fits, give me a call. Like a hopeful teenage girl, I’ll be waiting by the phone.
Berkshire does it for keeps.
Businesses aren't just currency machines. They're functioning entities with a culture and an ethos supported by people.
Two contributing reasons to Buffett's decision to join forces with Business Wire lived in company president Cathy Baron Tamraz's two-page letter to him: “As president of Business Wire, I’d like to introduce you to my company, as I believe it fits the profile of Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary companies as detailed in a recent Wall Street Journal article [...] We run a tight ship and keep unnecessary spending under wraps. No secretaries or management layers here. Yet we’ll invest big dollars to gain a technological advantage and move the business forward.”
A close watch on finances, coupled with the gumption to take educated risks, made strong recommendations. Let's add a third element: Cathy who, upon reading Berkshire's profile, wasted no time in developing what appears to be a straightforward, no-nonsense relationship from the get-go.
As a proponent of sincerity in networking I should first have mentioned how important I think it is to start yourself off right before even trying to develop relationships with others.
A responsible financial plan, where you don't spend what you haven't earned, may seem old-fashioned and conservative. But a chill attitude about credit will ease a young business out of your hands faster than you can lift it off the ground. Each debt you take on is like a blood pact against your business's strength. Is a blood pact something you really want to make at every open opportunity? The way you manage money reflects a lot about your character.
A willingness to look facts in the face, take criticism and scrutinize the raw elements of your enterprise are also critical. Buffett knows his businesses in and out. And as well as he knows the balance sheets, he knows the people running them.
Then there's the people element. You should never discount the partners and employees whose near-term destinies it will be to make your business a great one. Even if you don't know all the details of their kids, you should at least keep eyes and ears open to what they love, why they work with you and how they manage others - particularly your customers.
It's my opinion that these are the characteristics that put an enterprise at Berkshire caliber, bearing in mind it ain't Google. You're not looking to explode in a handful of years, you're building a solid foundation that many people can feel good about standing on, perhaps even after you're gone.
The conclusion to Buffett's 2005 letter includes the following admission:
Charlie [Munger] and I are extraordinarily lucky. We were born in America; had terrific parents who saw that we got good educations; have enjoyed wonderful families and great health; and came equipped with a "business" gene that allows us to prosper in a manner hugely disproportionate to other people who contribute as much or more to our society’s well-being.
It's not everybody who shares Buffett's net worth, or the sense of immense gratefulness and personal responsibility he exhibits to the people who make it possible and society at large. It merits noting.
Moreover, we have long had jobs that we love, in which we are helped every day in countless ways by talented and cheerful associates. No wonder we tapdance to work.
Oh yeah, that last thing. It helps to pursue something you love doing. Be passionate. Please.
An older female colleague pulled me aside to divulge some personal problems that have been taking a toll. She explained that she thinks her 50-year-old boyfriend is cheating on her with a woman around my age.
Well, that's an old, familiar story. "How do you know?" I asked.
She leaned over conspiratorially, even as she dabbed at her eyes. "I checked her MySpace," she replied. "She wrote about it there. And he denied it, but he saves all his IMs and I found those too."
Yeesh; that's never easy. I said hang in there. She blames the internet for her troubles; I admitted I'd sooner blame the man.
"The internet makes it more possible to meet somebody and fall astray," she moaned.
I thought about how hard my parents fought to keep me in the house in the angsty teen years when I had crappy boyfriends. No restriction of media could save me or the chastity they imagined I still had.
"No," I answered. "If a person wants to cheat, he'll cheat." I didn't know what else to say.
I think it was silly of me to imagine, however subconsciously, that the social effects of Web 2.0 belong to only a small generation - my generation mostly, and a handful of the early adopters in Gen X and the Baby Boomer stratosphere.
I'd include the kids born in the '90's, but a disparity even there can be felt - they'll grow up thinking this is simply another way to relate to people. It'll never occur to them what kind of impact this Web 2.0 stuff had just a few years prior. When my 8-year-old sister registered for a MySpace, for example, I had no idea what to do and no yardstick for gauging its appropriateness. It's not like I can look back and go, "Well, when I was a kid I had (or didn't have) one..."
The internet continues to break new ground in our personal relationships. And clearly not just for those of us who feel as if we've been personal, active witnesses in the transition from the "a/s/l?" days to the broad universe of MySpace, Flickr, Youtube and Xanga. It's fundamentally shaken the norms of an older generation, like those of the nice older woman who among other things must now redefine old-school definitions of cheating (cybering: faux-pas or innocent pastime on a par with passive porn-watching?). And it's altered what a younger generation will learn to call normal.
But I'm preaching to the choir, aren't I?
Here's some eye candy that I think decently demonstrates the evolution:
In other news, I just saw Pan's Labyrinth with said 8-year-old sister. (Probably not the best film to see with an 8-year-old.) She didn't like it, but she ripped off the storyline to create one of those creepy MySpace bulletins that conclude with, "If you don't send this to 10 people in 10 minutes, you'll end up like this kid."
I felt disappointed. I don't know if she's old enough to play on MySpace, but she clearly hasn't yet learned the etiquette of an older generation: you don't put spoilers in a bulletin, and you don't perpetuate chain letters.
The point this entry is approaching, I think, is the effects of our new webiverse are eyebrow-raising (regardless of how profound people think they are or aren't), and while I won't say they've made human relations any better or worse, I'll say they've certainly added a layer of complexity. And maybe that's not really saying anything. It's possible that this isn't news, it's just the natural evolution of man and technology.
What was that thing Marshall Mcluhan said? The medium is the what?
What's our medium of choice got to say to us lately? *checks MySpace bulletin* Oh awesome. Another one of those survey things.
