The Wonder Years

Posted: August 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: digital media | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

(Overheard by no one. Ever.)

“I wonder what happened at the Olympics.”

“I guess you’ll have to wait until you get home to find out.”

###

“What do you think she’s like? I wonder what kind of music she’s into, books she’s read, where she’s from…”

“Assuming asking her is off the table, see what you can find out from one of her friends.”

###

“I’ll bet you Michael Phelps is straight as an arrow. He’s probably in bed at eight every night so he can get up and train at five-AM or some ungodly hour. I kind of feel bad for him. He can’t kick back and just do the things dudes do.”

“Yeah. He’s probably never even been to a party. Sucks for him.”

###

“Did you know Anthony Weiner originally wanted to be a weatherman? What a tool. He’s such a mensch it’s pathetic. He’s like the central casting ‘shirt off his back’ Boy Scout.”

“I know. The guy’s gotta loosen up a little. He’s making the rest of us look bad.”

###

“I’m worried about her. I think she’s working herself to death. I think she wants to prove to us that she can handle the freedom of college. We trust her. I just want her to enjoy herself– when she’s done studying of course.”

“The key is make friends and not look back and say ‘I wish I lifted my head up a little and enjoyed myself some.”

If Only We Could Unknow Things

Technology has made the world incredibly small and very translucent in so many ways. The whole concept of not being able to know something or to access information about it instantly from anywhere is almost unthinkable.  This is not a diatribe on “Big Brother” and our loss of privacy. The government (or its shadowy puppet-masters if the blogosphere is to be believed) can watch me all they like. I’m not that interesting. Rather, I’m speaking about our loss of those things that were so common and so foundational for so many. The curiosity, opinion rather than ‘fact’, and the dialog that surrounded us are in short supply these days. The ubiquitous “I wonder…” most of us grew up with has gone the way of the hula-hoop. Many of life’s mysteries, writ large and small, have been ‘solved.’

In many ways this is a good thing. Finding what you’re looking for quickly and verifying it against multiple sources is nearly always a good thing.  “Why belabor through debate what you can know,” has its place. But I can’t help but wonder if this seeming God’s-eye, three-hundred-sixty-degree view of everything actually acts as blinders more often than not. I worry we take so much in we retain very little.

“Did you hear about the shooting in Aurora?”

“OMG. Will Ferrell just called Kristen Stewart a ‘trampire’!!!”

Nothing sticks for long. There’s always more right behind it. Size gets distorted as everything gets force-fed into 140 characters or a million Facebook comments.

The Ephemeral Empire.

But mostly I worry we’re greatly diminished by our growing inability to understand and go beyond what we cannot see, what isn’t captured and made data.

To market a product (or create one) people used to engage in copious amounts of people-watching. Cognitive Anthropologist Dr. Bob Deutsch once told me that successful marketers are always astute observers of “people in life”, like Diane Fossey observed and came to understand gorillas in the mist.

Now we have behavior monitoring. Someone hit your website. Drop a cookie and work backwards as to how they got there. Look for ‘likes’ and funnel them at the point of decision.

Fine. For salmon.

 

The Deeper Part of the River

 

But if that’s all you’ve got, you’re in trouble. Our obsession with action has left us with decreasing understanding of why (or why not) the things happen. We only know that they happen or are statistically probable to happen.  I’m not advocating going back to the bad old days of “birds of a feather” bucketing where nine of ten products were aimed toward “soccer moms.” We’re way past that. But I don’t want to lose sight of the things that happen that can’t be measured, captured, or categorized. What makes folks tick, not just what makes them click. Trusting your eyes and ears as much as your data. Or more.

Like the “Ghost on the Canvas” from one of my favorite Paul Westerberg songs, too often, “people don’t know when they’re looking at soul.”

Pity.

Olympic Torched

Posted: July 25, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: digital media, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The London Olympiad is upon us, and I for one am thrilled. In a ‘win at any cost’ sports culture that mimics our larger society whether we want to admit that or not, the Olympics somehow float high above the grit despite the sponsorships, despite the doping, and despite the professionalization that’s foundationally changed the Olympics over the past few decades.

Underpinning it all is a wonderful set of tenets we could all do worse than to strive to achieve in our everyday lives:

Not to win but to take part.

Not the triumph but the struggle.

Not to have conquered but to have fought well.

So here are a few ideas I think merit recognition for their ‘going for gold’ if not ever achieving it.

Gold: Huffington Post
HuffPo may not have vanquished traditional News formats across media, but it certainly has made its presence known– and quickly. In just seven years it’s been bought, become one of the most visited News sites, and won a Pulitzer Prize. Not bad. What I like most about it is that it’s the proverbial box of chocolates. It’s got hard news and gossip, syndication/aggregation and original reporting, national and hyper-local news, liberal and conservative points of view. There’s something for everyone without being just completely vanilla, as in the USA Today. Rather than saying nothing, HuffPo says seemingly everything. Cool.

Runner-up: Facebook

Like The Dream Team, people love to hate. But, Facebook is bringing lots of the best parts of the web together under one blue roof. Acquisition of Instagram, integration of Spotify, and many other land grabs continue to make The Facebook the shiniest site on Earth for most folks.

Silver: MobileMe
What if all your stuff was synched and stored in the Cloud? Wouldn’t that be awesome?! Yes. It is. Before iCloud and other services made that de rigueur, there was MobileMe, Apple’s Hindenburg meets Pinto blemish. A great idea that just never worked, MobileMe was tantamount to asking all of your stuff to stop working. It effectively shut down all conversation between devices like a third martini over dinner with your in-laws. Undaunted, Big Mac came back strong and MobileMe is all but forgotten. I like that Apple makes computers but isn’t a computer itself. This was the ultimate feet of clay demonstration of that. Happens.

Runner-up: RIM/Blackberry

Seeing Blackberry’s struggles is like the opening sequence of The Agony of Defeat. I’m not even sure if that epic tumble was from the Olympics, but it was Ski Jumping, so close enough. Blackberry pioneered the multi-purpose mobile space, blazed the trail, was run over by an iTank, dusted itself off only to get speed bumped by a speeding ‘droidmobile’. They brought their 400m game to the Marathon with predictable results.

Bronze: Napster
In so many ways Napster was the ‘straw that stirs the drink’ for so much of what we have today. Before getting squashed like a bug, it egged the Music Industrial Complex, ushering in the likes of Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud and others who crossed the chasm from traditional to digital delivery on a bridge fashioned from the charred bones of Napster. P2P got rolling in earnest with Napster. “Don’t own it, share it” became the mantra for a whole generation, second only to “don’t buy it when you can burn it.” While its reach did exceed its grasp legally and ethically, Napster began the process of people looking to each other and not to corporations for answers, ideas, and of course, music. Rock on.

Runner-Up: Samsung

Apple and Samsung need to get a room already. These two remind me of the Harding-Kerrigan soap opera. Engaged in an Olympic-sized pissing contest over patents, Made-in-the-USA (by way of China) Apple stares down the “menace from the East” with global Gold in the balance. Sorry, that was the made-for-TV Olympic-hype version. But don’t sleep on Samsung. They could very definitely medal in the Handset 400. My money’s on Apple to nip them at the tape.

None of these products won it all and that’s precisely the point. They strived. They tried. They pushed themselves and their competition to the limit. Isn’t that what we all should aspire to do? Not competing against anyone but competing for someone. For ourselves, our ideals, our ideas. The Olympics are about Personal Best, not destroy everyone in your path.

Prediction Time
It wouldn’t be a Sporting event if we didn’t have wages on it.

Gold
All of us. That’s right. I think over the next fortnight or so we’re going to get a glimpse into how multiple technologies, multiple screens, can be used in a complementary way for regular folks, not just the Adderall-with-a-Mountain-Dew-chaser gamers. Use the web to learn more about events, contestants, venues…while also providing your own color commentary on your social web. With the apps out there and the anticipated coverage London will receive, it will be easier and more fun than ever.

Silver
Chicago. The City of Broad Shoulders wanted the Summer Olympics. When they see what an enormous cluster it is for Londoners, they’ll thank Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow they lost the bid. It’s not like they’re not used to losing.

Bronze
Innocence. I think the Olympic flame stirs something in even the most jaded hipster among us. What it stands for deep down at its core is pretty good stuff. While the McOlympification continues to dismay and disappoint, I think there’ll be enough genuine passion, genuine appreciation, and genuine sportsmanship and camaraderie to keep the flame aflicker.

Let your Games begin.