Move Toward the Good

This past Saturday was a day of contradiction for me.

That afternoon I went to see Collapse, a movie – really a 1.5 hour interview – about Michael Ruppert, a former LAPD officer turned investigative reporter, soothsayer of the financial crisis, and publisher of the newsletter, “From the Wilderness”. “Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead. He is especially passionate about the issue of peak oil…. Ruppert doesn't hold back at sounding an alarm, portraying an apocalyptic future.” (via)

Later that evening, I watched CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute. It’s an award show taped before 3,00 people honoring everyday people who have made a difference in improving people’s lives. Among those honored was 20-yr-old Jordan James who fought to ensure amputee children received the prosthetic limbs insurance companies too often deny them. Another was Betty Makoni, an African woman, who created Girl Child Network – an organization that helps girls escape sexual abuse in a country where it is widely believed that if a man with AIDS/HIV rapes a virgin, he will be cured of his disease.

Both stand at opposite ends of the spectrum. One fills us with a sense of fatalism and weakness. The other fills us with a sense of self-determinism and strength.

And, truth be told, both stories are necessary. Ruppert’s story shakes us out of complacency by revealing the intensity of our problems. Jordan and Betty’s stories drive home the truth that our hands can create change even if it’s against intimidating insurance companies and cultural myths.

Each is better when balanced by the other.

But with each newspaper delivery, the Rupert stories seem to multiply like hives: War; Peak Oil; National security concerns; Weak healthcare reform; Animal extinctions; Rainforest deforestation; SARs; Avian Flu; Swine Flu; Russian and Chinese hackers; Water scarcity; Global Warming; Declining Bee populations…. While these stories are necessary, they come with a catch: if we amplify too many "Ruppert stories” to shake us up, the end result will be a self-inflicted form of Shaken Baby Syndrome.

More than ever, we need a shift in story telling. We need the Jordan and Betty stories to balance out the weight Ruppert’s stories place on our hearts.

But, at this point, simply “sharing” these stories would be like whispering about electric-powered cars at a NASCAR race.

We have to do better. We have to elevate and amplify Jordan and Betty stories. CNN Heroes is an admirable step in that direction. The program gives a primetime platform, and celebrity to individuals that deserve our applause. It puts pomp and circumstance around the only values that matter to our future: generosity, self-motivation, creativity and local-action. And, as we watch, we yearn to imitate those values and those people.

In Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Marco Polo gives voice to such an imperative. 'There are two ways to escape suffering from the inferno where we live every day,’ says Polo. The first is to 'accept the inferno and become part of it so that you can no longer see it.' The second 'is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who, in the midst of the inferno, is not the inferno. Then make them endure; give them space” (Invisible Cities, 165). (via)

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that life always moves toward the good. Jordan and Betty stories show us where the good hides in the inferno.

***

This was my favorite of the CNN heroes:

The 5 Most Important Designers of the last 100 years

I would like to know your answer to this question:

Who are the 5 most important designers - from anywhere in the world - of the last 100 years?

NOTE: Please exclude graphic designers.

Thoughts on Copyright Law and Patents

“Since invention is almost never the sole work of a single inventor, however great a genius he may be, and since it is the product of the successive labors of innumerable men, working at various times and often toward various purposes, it is merely a figure of speech to attribute an invention to a single person: this is a convenient falsehood fostered by a spurious sense of patriotism and by the device of patent monopolies – a device that enables one man to claim special financial rewards for being the last link in the complicated social processes that produced the invention….This holds true for countries and generations as well: the joint stock of knowledge and technical skill transcends the boundaries of individual or national egos: and to forget that fact is not merely to enthrone superstition but to undermine the essential planetary basis of technology itself.”

Source: Technics and Civilization

Mobile Phones as Nerve System

From The Economist, a sort of altruistic, mobile Amazon Turk:

"Some computer scientists look forward to the day when mobile phones and sensors can provide a central nervous system for the entire planet. An abundance of sensors, they believe, will lead to two things. First, the amount of data will increase, allowing scientists to build more realistic models. Alessandro Vespignani of Indiana University compares the current state of affairs to weather forecasting a century ago, before satellites had provided meteorologists with the data to build and optimise mathematical models. When it comes to problems such as tracking and predicting the spread of diseases and other environmental hazards, he argues, scientists can never get enough data.

Second, once people are able to contribute data to research projects from their mobile phones, it could provide an ideal way to broaden public involvement in scientific activities. This would be the next logical step after the popularity of web-based participation in scientific research, from folding proteins to categorising photographs of galaxies. Eric Paulos, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, predicts the rise of “citizen scientists” able to measure and sample their surroundings wherever they go. When people can report mundane variables such as the level of traffic noise in their street or the degree of air pollution at the bus stop, he argues, their outlook on science changes. “People develop a relationship with and a sense of ownership over the data,” he says. He foresees amateur experts being driven by a new sense of volunteerism, the 21st-century equivalent of cleaning up the neighbourhood park."

Reminded me of this (GOOD article):

The Three Phases of Technology

Technology goes through three phases:

I Function – the invention of a new functionality previously unknown to the public.
II Feature – the addition of ancillary functions/features to the original, core function. 
III Experience – the orchestration of all functions into a fluid and emotionally-charged user experience.

So let’s follow the evolution of videogame consoles:

I: Company introduces the function of playing video games on your home TV.
II: Console makers add new features such as enhanced graphics, new controllers/interfaces (i.e. the NES Zapper) as well as functions such as playing DVDs, playing music, viewing pictures, downloading games and online play.
III: Microsoft introduces Natal and thereby rejiggers the user experience. No longer does a gamer interact with the game through a controller (even Wii does this). The gamer now interacts with the game as he would another person. The user experience changes from the “keyboard metaphor” to the “in-person metaphor.”

It works with CPG goods (a type of technology) too:

I: Introduction of washing machine soap.
II: The additions of scent, color protection, stain fighters, a bleaching agent, etc.
III: Method rejiggers the user experience from a product that I hide in a cabinet to a product that becomes an enhancing part of the décor of my home.

(Because invention is expensive, time consuming and hard AND because orchestrating the experience requires discipline, systemic thinking and tons of user information, most companies settle into and get stuck in the Features phase. Adding features (ie line extensions) is much easier and cheaper place to exist as a company. But stay there too long, and it'll mess up you up (ie Sony).)

You can even place occupations into these categories:

Phase I Function is where engineers live. They are always trying to make real the unreal – i.e. putting a man on the moon. They are most concerned about the product and what is happening inside of it.

Phase II Features is where corporate-side marketers live. They always want to add something to their product to differentiate it from a competitor’s. The belief: More features = better value proposition.

Phase III Experience is where designers live. Here, designers do two things. First, they help people deal with change – i.e. breakthrough, game-chancing functionality – by managing the experience they have it. Second, designers, because they have the ability to think systemically, orchestrate information and/or features for greater clarity. (This has been a core function of designers dating back to the Illuminators of Medieval book reproduction.) Designers are less concerned with ushering in a new reality (as they do not often have a commands of chemistry, physics, math, molecular biology, etc.) as they are spreading a new reality throughout the world (by elevating the experience people have with that new reality).

The Influence of Media on Time Perspectives

So I tend to define media as the things people think with. If a ‘thing’ is not in use, it is not a medium. For example, a book is only a book until I notice, open and/or use it to think. Until then, it is just an object in my environment.

There is an important implication to this: Thoughts need media.

Without media, I can’t think. Maybe that’s why people go insane when placed in sensory deprivation? With no media, cognitive function malfunctions.

If you change (or remove) my media, you change my thoughts. Hence, governments who want to control people, by means other than physical force, control the media. Harold Innes, in Empire and Communication, likewise argues that revolutions in communication media are followed by revolutions in culture and society.

I bring all this up because I think this presentation by psychologist Philip Zimbarto is highly interesting to anyone in media communications or development.



Zimbarto argues that our individual perspectives on time shape our lives. They influence every decision we make. Even our personal destinies.

Here’s a good summation of each time perspective (TP):

(Hank Hill in King of The Hill is a great example of a past-minded person. Ben Stiller in Along Came Polly is future-minded. Johnny Depp in Public Enemies is present-minded.)

But you should know we are not locked into our perspectives. Time perspectives are malleable. When we were children, Zimbarto says, we were present-minded. Some of us just learned to be future- or past-minded.

That said, I’d argue that most of the traditional mass media we’ve lived with has inclined us to act as future-minded individuals. For example: Until recently, TV and radio operated on schedules. If I wanted to watch MacGyver Monday’s at 8:00pm on ABC, I planned my day to ensure I’d be in front of a TV at 8pm. Sending letters in the mail required planning as well - around pickup and travel times. Phones, pre-messaging systems, caused us to plan parts of our days around when a person might call or be available for our call – for a date, job interview, repairman visit, etc (a.k.a. probability thinking).

But with the wide adoption of new media form such as IM, Twitter, iPods, websites, SMS, Kindle/ebooks, etc our minds are oriented more towards the present than the future. These technologies are about socializing (high affiliators), exploring information/links (Explore novelty), instantaneous communication, increased interactivity (improvisation) and constant activity (energy).

So if Zimbarto’s time research is accurate and Innes’ change via-communication theory is durable, we may expect a significant shift in our culture’s time perspective, and therefore value and behavior, in the coming years: from future-minded to present-minded.

Some quick example that comes to mind:

1. The perspectives of young employees. In the past, people planted roots at a single company and worked almost their entire adult lives there Today, more young people treat jobs as a “thing to do now” and have short tenures with each company. 
   
2. The desire to experiment more – in both the remix/cut-n-paste culture as well as entrepreneurial fields. (I bet drug use will go up in the coming decade, as well.)
   
3. Excessive and Rising credit card debt. 
   
4. Boom of social networks and need to always be connected.
   
5. Rise in poker popularity and online gambling.

Human Beauty. Human Ugliness. Human Beauty, again?

In this hideous and yet highbrow lecture, Umberto Eco walks us through a history of ugliness showing how the notion of “repulsion” has shifted from generation to generation.

But what struck me most is how artists have chosen to represent humanity over time.

In ancient Greece and the European Renaissance, the human form was beautiful - a thing deserving reverence and celebration. The Greeks so revered the form that even their God’s took its shape. Renaissance painters, likewise, moved away from holy subject matter towards more human ones.

Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Carthusian, 1446

And it was this orientation that continued many centuries all the way up through the French academy and the beginnings of the industrial revolution in the 1700’s. 

Jean Baptiste Chardin, Laundress, 1733

And on through art movements such as Art Neavou:

Alfonse Mucha, Dusk, 1899

And commercial art such as the poster art of the early 1900s:

Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Calzaturificio di Varese poster, 1913.

But you might be surprised to know that fine artists didn’t just paint human beauty; they also painted human ugliness. However, that is not what I think is remarkable. Instead, it is the way the artists treated the ugliness. From what I can see, it was with surprising respect. Renaissance artists still saw their ghastly, even disfigured, subjects as people. People still capable of compassion, intelligence, strength and accomplishment. The following examples show how a few artists chose to show us the beautiful in the ugly: 

Quentin Matsys A Grotesque Old Woman (or the Ugly Duchess) ca. 1525

Rembrandt, Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse, ca. 1665

Image pulled from Umberto Eco’s presentation (I couldn’t find name of painter of this)

But as I watched Eco’s presentation I felt the art community took a dramatically different stance, almost an oppositional stance, to their predecessors. From the Modernist movement forward, it feels like artists, more often than not, wanted to show the ugliness of humanity and the human form. The human being was not something to be revered but reviled. 

We see it in the cubist movement…

Picasso, Man with Guitar, 1911

…in the Futurist movement…

Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913

…in the Dadaist movement…

George Grosz, A Victim of Society, 1919

…and many other artists:

Hans Bellmer, ca. 1930

Francis Bacon, Two Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer, 1968            

Lucian Freud, in process of painting Naked Man, Back View, 1991.

What I find particularly interesting is that some modern artists are going back into old Renaissance works and deforming them. It gives me a weird feeling to look at this stuff. It’s as if someone, who by virtue of living at a later, more knowing age, went back and fixed the naivety of an ancient people. By altering the faces with horror film characters, the artists unmasked the true nature of subjects who once fooled us. It’s a statement that the grotesque is more human than the beautiful.

Aleesandro Botticelli, Portrait of a Youth, 1480s

Uknown Artist

Leonardo Da Vinci Mona Lisa

Unknown Artist

Unknown Artist (I couldn’t find the original)

Unknown Artist (I couldn’t find the original)

While I do think many things fueled this shift towards humanity’s ugliness, it is certainly no small point to note that the rise in “ugly” expressions coincided with the rise of Freudian psychology. Freudian psychology taught us that we are born bad – in the sense they we just want to do what feels good – and that our desires, if left uncontrolled, lead to personal ruin.

Artists saw this theme reinforced in the world around them. Greed, materialism and status fueled the erection of landscape-scarring factories that forced workers to endure horrendous working conditions and employed children to do dangerous, body-mangling tasks. Vengeance sparked trench warfare in WWI. Lust for strength lead to several notable WWII atrocities. It was a tough time to see the same beauty in humanity that Praxiteles or Botticelli did.

I bring all this up, I guess, because maybe we’re in a recursive phase circling our way back to our past. Maybe today we’re experiencing something akin to the Renaissance. After all, the Internet, like the printing press, has brought a rebirth in rampant learning - and I don’t necessarily mean education. Just as renascent Italians awoke to the humanities, we are reawakening to our relationship to the earth – a relationship at the core of many “ancient” and “primitive” civilizations. Networking technologies have opened up markets to smaller companies and individuals. They’ve even created new markets altogether (Second life, Ebay, MMORPG Gold, etc). That’s pretty big deal when you consider markets have been feudal territories ruled by corporate “kings”.

Swirled up in all these trends is the notion that maybe we’re starting, again, to see the beauty in humanity and an optimistic view on what we’re capable of. Maybe that’s why we elected a community organizer instead of a soldier. Maybe that’s why Pepsi, a brand that defines itself according to each generation, has developed Oneify and Hope campaigns and modeled its logo after a smile. Maybe that’s why WALL-E, while showing the grotesque side of humanity, also showed us our innate power to correct our errors and learn from them. (BTW, WALL-E received a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which almost never happens).  

I dunno. I have no specific point I want to make. I’m just thinking out loud here. Just trying to think about the context of what we do everyday so that maybe we can understand why we do it.  

Our Moral Roots

Purefold's Family Tree

In case you haven’t heard, Ag8 teamed of up with Ridley Scott to launch Purefold. As I describe it, Purefold is a platform for collecting crowdsourced stories that will be curated into a larger story by Hollywood directors and writers.

It’s a bold idea. So bold that much of the chatter revolves around the issue of “how.” How will they aggregate the stories? How will they manage the information and fan conversations? How will they manage the egos? How will…

But there’s another interesting question: “where.” Where does Purefold come from?

This is a question of lineage as every new idea builds on a past idea. And, as I see it, Purefold is the newborn child in a family tree dating back to the Bible.

The Bible, as far as I know, is the first crowdsourced story. Throughout early Christianity, no “Bible” existed. In its place, many individuals wrote and circulated their own stories of Jesus and other Christian characters – some tales becoming very popular. The Church, seeing disagreements among these works, decided to compile an official book recounting the story of Christianity. Rather than writing it themselves, they cherry picked from the pool of stories circulating in the public. The Bible, therefore, is one story, written by many authors, curated by the Church.

In the ancestry of Purefold is also the story of Santa Claus. St. Nicholas, a 4^th century bishop, kicks off this myth when he tosses a sack of gold through a window – by chance landing in a stocking by the fire – to help free a girl being sold into slavery. As this story spread, children would hang stockings in the hope of St. Nick’s continued generosity. The chimney enters the legend when tales emerge of St. Nick throwing gold down a chimney if windows were locked. Clement Moore’s “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” added the plump physique, bearded face, jolly attitude and eight-reindeered sleigh. George P. Webster’s "Santa Claus and His Works" gave Santa a North Pole home. Coca-Cola popularized Thomas Nast’s image of Santa Claus. But unlike the Bible, the story of Santa is a “free-range story” as creative minds continue extending the story: Elf, The Santa Clause, Robot Santa, Norad Santa Tracker and Santa Gets Canadian Citizenship.

More recent in Purefold’s lineage are Star Wars fan fiction and Star Trek fan fiction. Like the authors behind Christian and Clausian stories, fan fiction authors offer subplots and new elements to a preexisting storyline. But where they depart, I think, is that fan fiction fused crowdsourced storytelling with transmedia storytelling. Fans use text, film, novels, animation and machinima to tell their stories.

In 2006, a duo of Californians birthed what is arguably one of Purefold’s immediate family members: LonelyGirl15. This production departed from past crowdsourcing conventions in many ways. Most noticeably, it didn’t mythologize a real person or extend a preexisting story line. Its was original from the start. In a more subtle departure, LonelyGirl15 broke the third wall. Bree, the series protagonist, replied to people’s videos and comments while the series’ writers eavesdropped on online fan conversations and worked fan ideas into the storyline. As Wired notes, “When viewers suggested that he [Daniel] had a crush on Bree, they [the writers] changed the story line to include a romance.” Thus, by breaking the third wall, LonleyGirl15 achieved something fascinating: it became a living thing. Christopher Vogler, author of The Writers Journey, believes “that stories are somehow alive, conscious, and responsive to human emotions and wishes.” LonelyGirl15 confirms his belief. It was conscious. It was responsive. It was alive.

Last year, Penguin Publishing introduced another immediate family member. Penguin sought to answer the question, “Can a collective create a believable fictional voice?” The experiment, called A Million Penguins, invited anyone to come to a wiki and add to an “in-progress” novel. Around 1500 people contributed. Regardless if the end story was a success or not, it was an important step for crowdsourced storytelling: absence of the curator. All efforts before, even fan fiction, had had some level of a curator ensuring the quality of the completed “product”. A Million Penguins challenged this assumed need.

And since Purefold comes from this genealogy, we might say its shares genetic traits with its ancestors:

1. The Curator Gene
   The Church curated the story of Christianity. Free Scott will curate a large portion of Purefold.
2. The Free-Range Gene
    Santa Clause is a “free-range story” which has and will forever evolve. Purefold has no limits on where the story can go or become.
3. The Transmedia Gene
   Fan fiction authors used Transmedia techniques to help share their story. Purefold will make use of RSS feeds, film, Youtube, Twitter, Blogs, etc.
4. The Turing Gene
   Due to LonelyGirl15’s ability to be conscious of and respond to people’s comments and wishes, many thought this fictional character was real. While Purefold will take place two years in the future thus eliminating any question of its reality, it will still nonetheless be conscious of and respond to people’s emotions, wishes and conversations.

Purefold, for me at least, becomes most interesting when you think of it in its family context. In it, you begin to see that, at its heart, Purefold is an old idea. But, in its expression, it’s a new idea: one that incorporates the strengths of its ancestors and operates on a scale and at a speed that humbles all other attempts at crowdsourced storytelling.

Which is why the question of “how” is such a good one. ;)

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia - November 2009 from niko on Vimeo.

A New Metadata Video

Creativity = Better Democracy

"As people become creators, they become better critiquers, more self-reflective, more participatory."

Yochai Benkler

Heard at Open Video Conference

Reconstructing the Crime Scene

Via Ian

Logotherapy is our Generation's Psychoanalytics

If our modern-day concept of marketing were a stool, it would have three legs. The first leg would be the late 19^th century Symbolist movement, which invested all things with symbolic value to provide a temporary refuge from pain. The second would be Newtonian Physic’s mechanistic view of reality, which implies a rigorous determinism. The third, Freudian psychoanalytics, is the topic of this post.

Freud, broadly stated, based his model of psychology on the will to pleasure. It’s the idea that inside all our minds is an “I want” machine and that society, environment, family, or personal incapacity often prohibit satisfaction of our desires. Unable to sustain this tension of wanting without resolution, we push our desires down into our unconscious. Eventually, these repressed desires remerge as neurosis. That said, psychoanalysis concerns itself with undoing the consequences of repression to help “cleanse” individuals of neurosis, tension and pain.

Given that, one can see how this model has shaped our modern marketing ideology. Early 20^th century marketers were told that people are propelled to action by internal “I want” machines. So they labeled people “consumers” and treated them as such. Marketers were told people want emotional resolution. So they stopped speaking about product features and started speaking to subconscious desires. Marketers understood pleasure as a personally experienced sensation, not a communal one. So they marketed to the individual and individual interests. Marketers were told their products could resolve soon-to-be-repressed desires or even help unlock repressed desires. So marketers believed they we are uplifting society (see Edward Bernays).

And it worked. For a long time.

But I think the girth of our industry as well as chancing tech is exposing the cracks in what looked to be a sturdy stool leg. The Freudian model isn’t holding up like it used to. “Consumer” is a misnomer for today’s producing populace. Pleasure as a personal pursuit has left our society quantifiably unhappy. “Brand”, an arguably psychoanalytics inspired concept, is (slowly but surely) falling out of favor.

But what will fill its place?

I think the answer is Logotherapy. Begun mid 20^th century, Viktor Frankl’s discipline argues that our greatest motivation in life is not to gain pleasure or avoid pain but to find meaning in life. Logotherapy believes in the “self-transcendence of human existence.” It denotes the fact that a human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself. Logotherapy tries to make the patient fully aware of his own responsibility – his purpose in a brief moment or in a long life.

Much can be said about logotherapy, but here is a short breakdown of the difference, as I understand it:

I can already see parts of this psychology popping up in our commercial world. Conscious consumption ties my purchasing activity to a larger purpose (Toms, Sun Chips). Companies engage me on a co-creative level acknowledging me as shapers and not a consumer (Starbucks, Purefold). Some help me be outwardly focused and connect with a larger community (NIN).

There is a WHOLE lot to say on the ideas of logotherapy, their value and their implications for marketers. But this thought by Viktor Frankle captures my sentiment best: 

"People have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have means but no meaning."

Frankl believed that every generation has its own psychological discipline to help it deal with its situation. Psychoanalysis made sense for a world that viewed the machine as the greater uplifter and sought to understand why and how commercial progress had such a profound influence on individuals and society. But our world is fundamentally different now and I believe logotherapy is more aligned with it. Today, we seek to understand the why and how of people who are interconnected; who have unprecedented control over what they see, hear and do; who have storage units brimming with bought but unused products. To do that, we need to shed outdated frameworks and open ourselves to a new understanding of the world.

I encourage you to learn as much as you can about it, because the lens it provides for our work will present many new doors we never saw before. 

PureFold at bTween 09

Sorry it's cut off. If you want to watch the uncut-off version, visit this link.