Digital Detox

“You are now entering a technology and device free zone. Please refrain from using your cellphone inside this space. The use of WMDs (wireless mobile devices) is not permitted.” Word about the Device Free Drinks party, billed as an occasion to “enjoy a few hours off the grid,” had spread through Facebook and other social media ... and drew about 250 participants. But asking people to surrender their digital tethers at the door still required some coaxing...

- Andy Isaacson, "Learning to Let Go: First, Turn Off the Phone",
The New York Times

Eight years ago a much older friend said, "One day, only the rich will be able to disconnect." Hipsters off Union Square are hardly the richest slice of the populace, but their little Digital Detox shindig captures the spirit of his idea: disconnecting has become some novelty thing you do in a club over drinks with other giddy friends eager to "experiment".

But what really got me was the party's structure: little activity stations encouraged you to type, draw and chat in "analog" ways that, in order to reassure (or be relatable), still bore traces of the digital world: you didn't just draw; you drew profile pictures. And what would you type at the typewriter station, if not a tweet? Finally, perhaps for the most adventurous, a jar labeled "Digital Detalks" included strips of paper with questions you could ask others in order to start a conversation.

I remembered a scene from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. In the book, the US government is overthrown by a theocratic conservative extremist group, under which women lose most rights, including the right to read, and people's lives become tightly regimented. The country's name is changed to the Republic of Gilead. At some point the protagonist, a "handmaid" or concubine for a wealthier couple, finds herself at an underground party where people wear makeup, dance and dress the way they did before the Republic was established. There is something sad, desperate and deeply caricatural about the way people at the party interact, as they draw mainly from memories of how they used to behave -- memories that grow less unreliable and more cartoonish with time.

The purpose of a Digital Detox party is to remind us of the importance of establishing and maintaining real non-digital connections, but part of doing that is remembering how it's done. I guess that's why the activities, so heavily (if playfully) inspired by our digital lives, struck me as imaginative but sad: have we come so far that the only way we can be cajoled into drawing is by using the template of profile pictures? Or by pulling talking-points out of a jar...?

What'll a party like this look like 10 years from now, or even five? Maybe we'll only be able to paint if the utensils are arranged like Photoshop features: life's cheap imitation of digital. And I thought the iBook page-turner feature was sad.

I'm being glib. All this is to say don't let yourself get so disconnected from reality that you need a themed party to explore the concept. (I'm saying this for me, too: I'd be the first in line at a Digital Detox to turn my phone in ... then cry.) Digital will penetrate every aspect of our lives -- and our bodies -- soon enough. So soon, in fact, that once it's arrived we'll have no time to turn back and remember what the world was like before, much less ask ourselves what we've lost for this gain.

We're running out of time to relish in the freedom we really do still have. Why surrender it so readily?

Oh, of Course

Ariel, another compulsive owner of gadgets. (And gizmos.)

Me: Chéri, I really think I need to have this.

Him: Of course! It's not even that expensive. We should also get one of these.

Me: We're like those sad gadget people.

Him: We're nothing like those people. All our gadgets are useful.

It's a Chanel Bot ... that Smokes!

Brought to life by makeup magician Peter Philips with Nowness for Chanel. An entertaining way to demo all elements of the typically overwhelming makeup superkit while tying fashion's fast-paced catwalk feel to the cutesy tech personifications of today. (Consider. And also.)

Naomi Klein: Addicted to Risk

I like how Naomi Klein put the BP crisis in perspective here. She's not the first to observe how crazy it is that we watched the earth bleed on a livecam in real-time for months, or to note that what's scarier than that is the carelessness and lack of remorse that precipitated this event in the first place.

But she raises important questions scientists often pose with regard to the way we approach what should be long-term industrial development. Instead of taking those questions into serious consideration, decision-makers usually ask, "What's the latest we can wait?"

Humor me ››

Dentsu London, BERG's 3D Light Painting iPad App

Dentsu London has been experimenting with design consultancy BERG in lightplay and filmmaking. The first collabo film they've put together, "Making Future Magic," demonstrates the curious and amazing characteristics of an iPad application they've just produced.



Dubbed Penki (Japanese for paint), the app enables you to use your iPad to create 3D light paintings, revealed in long-exposure photographs. But this is neither here nor there. Seriously. Watch the film, and if you're precocious but technically undereducated like us, you'll be like, "Why are Sony and Panasonic making me deal with 3D glasses...?"

A book of stills from the film is also available over at Blurb. Support creative innovation by snapping up a copy and parking that bad-boy on your hip asymmetrical coffee table. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

A Rockmelt Review Update, to Be Just.

After 48 hours or so of hardcore use, today I decided that I hate Rockmelt.

Used as your primary browser it gets insanely slow and data-heavy and the lag is insufferable.

And because you can't organically update Twitter/Facebook from the right-hand pane, having them ever on the periphery doesn't actually stop you from having to go to those pages. All it really does is make you a compulsive newsfeed update-checker, which is something you thankfully forget about doing from time to time when you're not constantly gazing at those icons.

Back on Chrome again. Will I return to Rockmelt someday, to visit? Probably, but that I'm saying "probably" probably means no. I'll keep it on the dock awhile though, just in case.

This concludes my review.

UPDATE, 13 Nov: A few commenters actually pointed out to me how I can update my Facebook and Twitter statuses from Rockmelt.

It's on the left!

There's also some kind of "smart" RSS suggestions feature that passes you fresh sites based on your interests (StumbleUpon-esque?). I haven't yet figured out how that works though.

Thanks, guys. Maybe I'll give this another go (but that laggage, man... find a way to work it out!).

The Long, Gritty Holiday Decompression

Yeah, I know we still have New Years ahead of us, but might as well start grinding on some brainfood early so Jan 4 doesn't get you all depressed and looking for candles and razors and Enya.

AdVerve partner in crime (and blogga from anotha motha!) Bill Green sent me the above greeting. I think it is nice.

Anyway, as the season winds down and we recover from the funnel-fest of food, I imagine a lot of you are using your downtime to scope out Twitter, see what's hot or at least peruse-worthy. To help, as we traverse that short road back to the mills, here are some links that I promised myself I would read sometime today or tomorrow(ish):

• Top 10 Branded iPhone Apps of 2009 (AdAge)
• Twitter is Profitable. Your Argument is Invalid.
• 5 Ways Slideshare Can Help Your Business (Rohit Bhargava, who I find quite neat)
• 10 of the Biggest Lies in History (includes some faux Vermeer action, and my favourite: the Trojan Horse)
• US vs British Healthcare (for sounding smart and well-rounded when the moment is nigh)

A coupla links in French, for those of you that read it or want to make the best of Google Translate:

• Retour sur la gestion de crise Eurostar (Sandrine Plasseraud, who is loveleh and who thinks)
• Les Français décomplexés du porno. How porn is penetrating the mainstream -- couples watching it together, people being able to say they watch it without looking like sick sad potential pedos, etc.

And some fun shit:

• I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT BUTTER. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
• La Main Perrier (I'll write more on this later)
• Strindberg and Helium! If you liked Salad Fingers, you will quite enjoy this. (Thanks, Beeg.)
• Domino Day!
  
• Stefano Ferroni Photography -- generically Vogue on the surface, but pretty and a little stark. The Exhibition section also has some neat things:

• Gonna wrap this up with Violet Blue's Top 10 Sexy Geeks 2010, not just because Google can now index (and immortalize) evidence of my goddesslike countenance for time immemorial, but because... no, that's pretty much the only reason.
  

On Mending the Marketing and Tech Divide

Here's an article for marketers about learning how to relate to your tech team.

The chief operating officer of Watershed Publishing -- a big tech geek -- wrote the first draft. It was hilarious; I read it and thought, "This is a laundry list of things he hates about me!"

But the dude makes some solid points. I honestly think the fractured marketer/dev/designer relationship in most office settings is a topic that needs addressing, especially as sophisticated interactive technology has become a de facto expectation of brand websites and online campaigns.

There's a universe of (actively-maintained) difference in the spheres where marketing and tech work; from experience, it's hard finding people willing to breach the divide.

This is counterproductive hubris crap. When working with interactive media, marketers must make an effort to get geeky (read: more tech-savvy). This will make them better marketers. On the other hand, engineers should also feel compelled to nurture their own creativity. This makes them more competitive assets.

One day at DriversEd.com, after getting the usual pushback from the senior engineer, I spat out, "Why don't you ATTEND OUR MEETINGS so you can tell us what can't be done before we've laid out a game plan!"

He smiled, shuffled a deck of cards between his hands and answered, "Because I like the way it feels to say no after your hopes have been ignited."

Funny guy.

Marketers, devs and designers: we live in the same world now. Deal with it.

One Laptop to Rule Them All

My landlord Atif has a One Laptop per Child XO, which he brought over the other day. For the next hour we sat around discussing its merits and exploring the functionalities.

The XO is a super-durable Linux-powered laptop. Its mission is to enrich the lives of children in developing nations for less than $100 per unit. (At a current retail of $200 per unit, it's a bit shy of that goal.) Atif put himself in queue for purchase the second they were available for order.

It's a pretty spiffy computer: Ten inches across, more or less, and totally weather- and childproof. It's wi-fi ready (buy one now and get a year of free HotSpot access, courtesy of T-Mobile!) and it automatically searches the area for other XOs so users can communicate with one another even if the 'net isn't otherwise available.

"Right now I'm the only XO user in Ithaca," Atif lamented. I patted his shoulder.

Other neat features: A memory game that teaches sums and spelling (multi-player-ready), a Fruity Loops-type application for making beats, audio and video recording capabilities, writing and content sharing features, a game for fledgling programmers that reminded me of Etch-a-Sketch, and a cute little app that teaches kids Python.

The laptop comes with a handful of gigabytes of memory (see it stripped down at Engadget), but you can add a great deal more with an external plug-in. (Atif took advantage of this. And to showcase its productivity, he gave us a trial sample of Paprika.)

He also installed Skype and Opera on his XO because he thinks the stock browser is crap. (I never got to look at it.) Then he pulled up The New York Times website and turned the backlight all the way down.

In high light, the XO's screen reflects text like print on paper. This makes the best use of its battery life, which ain't exactly the 10 hours promised by the founder -- clocking maybe 3 1/2 to 4 hours at most.

My first reservation with the XO was with its lack of casual usability. The kid-friendly icons and GUI are easy enough to navigate if you have the time and willingness to learn them, but parents buying the unit just to get their kids a laptop will be unpleasantly surprised. It's not exactly Windows XP, which is what most people are used to using.

Atif acknowledged the usability issue but pointed out the laptop is for improving the educations of kids in developing countries. "They'll have lots of time to learn its feature set. What else will they be doing all day?" he kidded.

But this poses another challenge. I don't get how OLPC proposes to improve the education system with these machines. It's wildly educational if you want to learn coding as a hobby, but how will it help teach kids history or pre-algebra?

Atif tied the logic to textbooks. He explained that textbook companies don't stand to make much money from Second or Third World institutions, so they provide schools with material for little cost. Naturally, it burns money to print a textbook for each student, so if they can save there, all the better.

If the contents of a textbook are USB-accessible, Atif argues, it would cost publishers less than printing books for schools who can't pay for them anyway. Students can learn from their XOs, which will also help the laptops pay for themselves.

That sounds pleasant and all, but I just don't see textbook companies doing that.

I'm thinking back to my 600-page AP Chemistry book from high school. Did it really need that gloriously glossy hardback cover, or all those deliciously slick blinding-white photo-quality pages?

And was the supplementary DVD necessary? Nobody never watched it.

The books were, in fact, so expensive that we weren't even allowed to take them home overnight.

Spending money lavishly on textbooks, even crap textbooks, justifies the existence of a textbook publishing firm. If children in developing countries can get complete texts in a little USB stick, plusher countries will go, "Why can't we?"

Think of it: No more lugging heavy books around, and no more high-cost print publishing on yards and yards of glossy paper. We'd really only need to pay for the content.

With that said, it won't be long before some stingy educator goes, "Why buy textbooks through Macmillan/McGraw-Hill at all? We can go straight to established authors and license the content directly."

It won't be long before all this comes to pass anyway. But with the little time they've got left before obsolescence yawns open and swallows their business model, I doubt textbook companies will put their precious data on a memory stick -- for starving kids or anybody else -- out of the kindness of their hearts, and certainly not as a replacement for a real-live book.

It would be innovative, it would be forward-thinking, hell -- it would be learning from the mistake of the newspaper industry when the internet flew into its face -- but it would also be perceived as boardroom suicide.

I'm willing to be wrong on this one, though.

Joost: Fast Adopting All the Crap It Left Behind

It's been four months since I nailed my Joost beta invitation, and I think by now I'm in a fairly decent position to review the offering that either puts television to bed, or marries television to its longtime nemesis, the computer.

Cool things about Joost:

• The occasional brand-spankin'-new music video
• The occasional good show
• Throwback television (remember Ren and Stimpy? Hell yes)

Less than cool things about Joost:

• The ads, however short and occasional, are getting to be a drag. I don't know how many more times I can look at a Ballpark Frank
• The ad logos in the lower right-hand corner are not much better and, to their misfortune, remind us a lot of the logos that appear on the right-hand corners of daytime network TV
• The 'occasional good show' leaves room for improvement: I Hate My 30s was pretty funny at outset, but increasingly looks like it'll go in the same direction as That '80s Show: the bin. It's a cute idea in theory, but otherwise has a short shelf life. Can't wait for more competitive fare to start popping up, because...
  
• Most of the rest of the shows are trash. Really, The Guinness Book of World Records? Did I really need to see a dude juggling basketballs or a man who can pull tractors with his beard? This is the kind of stuff you feed people who can't afford cable

Will Joost put TV to bed? With TV already on its way out the door in terms of viewership, we probably can't attribute its death to Joost alone. But the service is certainly proof that we don't need the original king-sized tube to suffer the same angst.

Will it wed TV to the monitor? Joost proves, and impressively, that democratic TV-on-yo'-comp is doable, and well.

One awesome thing about the service is my newfound ability to zone out and watch a show in the middle of a coffee shop. That, coupled with Joost's On Demand-esque feature, is as hard as a coffin nail that's sealing in the television monarchy.

I definitely wouldn't pin Joost a YouTube killer; it's a totally different value proposition. I can't imagine kids uploading their dog chases or acting impersonations onto the Joost platform, and I don't think that's what the founders want either.

It goes without saying, I think, that the service could do with a little competition to inspire improvement. Increasing adoption of broadband in more rural areas certainly can't hurt, and the iPhone presents a savory opportunity to bring the platform to a more mobile place.

If it wants to be the TV of tomorrow, it needs to go mobile (these days, aiming for the desktop just isn't high enough). Overall, I'd say Joost has a couple of years to go before it sees ready mainstream adoption.

Update: MarketingVox reports Joost is also too heavy for US broadband speeds. Well, hrm, that sucks.