Archive for October, 2007

Visual Diary

Published October 27, 2007 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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I now have a book for capturing ideas. A visual diary.

I’ve used a visual diary for around 15 years, on and off. This year really sees me needing one to take everywhere, again.

Lovely blank white pages ready for my fineliner pen. A few random words and scribbles already. No “to-do lists”. Just ideas. I’m really liking this pen to paper thing again {grins}

Reminds me of a question asked in 1996 at a multimedia art demonstration

viewer “wow great effect - what did you do that with?”

demonstrator “pen and paper”

viewer “cool, who makes that program?”

{grins again}

Look at some lovely examples of pen to paper like the one below at Icastic

apple chomped in time

Virtual Culture

Published October 25, 2007 virtual worlds 0 Comments
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Is culture the very thing that creates community and life in a virtual world?

A recent series on the ABC “Not Quite Art”hosted by Marcus Westbury grabbed my attention recently. I caught the episode in Glasgow where artists were doing great stuff in old factories, fostered by communities of artists. I liked how Marcus seemed to capture the essence of a vibrant creative community injecting life, art and culture into a hollow industrial shell. I couldn’t help but think of the parallels with virtual worlds, Secondlife in particular. From the ABC site:

Marcus puts forward the question of whether you can buy culture by building an iconic building or even franchising a McLouvre or McGuggenheim? Or is culture a messy, dirty thing that comes from the bottom up, refuses to behave, is borderline illegal and breaks a lot of occupational health and safety rules?

Sometimes when you wander around Secondlife you sense this “culture” - a community living outside the rules. Obviously this is where traditional marketers got it wrong. Imagine McSponsor walking into a real life burgeoning underground arts & culture scene and dropping in a building, flashy logos, and changing the rules. Uh-huh.

So how do you retain that vibrant culture in a growing community? I personally think culture grows when you heat it up, mix it up, foster it, infuse it. Just don’t try to change the essence of it.

What do you think?

Agile Minds

Published October 21, 2007 innovation , web 2.0 2 Comments
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I read two interesting articles over the weekend both worth a peep. They got me thinking about a generation growing up in an information vortex and the need to develop a vital frame of reference for agile minds to grow.

The first article in the weekend paper by Maryanne Wolf “Learning to think in a digital age” as far as I can tell originally published 5 September in the Boston Globe.

To Socrates, only the arduous process of probing, analyzing and ultimately internalizing knowledge would enable the young to develop a lifelong approach to thinking that would lead them ultimately to wisdom, virtue and “friendship with [their] god.” To Socrates, only the examined word and the “examined life” were worth pursuing, and literacy short-circuited both.

How many children today are becoming Socrates’ nightmare, decoders of information who have neither the time nor the motivation to think beneath or beyond their googled universes?

Will they become so accustomed to immediate access to escalating on-screen information that they will fail to probe beyond the information given to the deeper layers of insight, imagination and knowledge that have led us to this stage of human thought?

Or, will the new demands of information technologies to multitask, integrate and prioritize vast amounjts of information help to develop equally, if not more valuable, skills that will increase human intellectual capacities, quality of life and collective wisdom as a species?

…there should be a developmental perspective on our transition to a digital culture.

….Children need to have both time to think and the motivation to think for themselves, to develop an expert reading brain, before the digital mode dominates their reading. The immediacy and volume of information should not be confused with true knowledge.

As technological visionary Edward Tenner cautioned, “It would be a shame if the very intellect that produced the digital revolution could be destroyed by it.” Socrates, Proust, and the images of the expert reading brain help us tothink more deliberately about the choices we possess as our next generation moves toward the next great epoch in our intellectual development.

The second published in the Times Online by Michael Parsons about the charms and dangers of exploring virtual worlds

We have created an endlessly proliferating series of virtual spaces to explore. Imagine being a teenage boy today. You can jump into online massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, or play online against people around the world on Xbox Live in a game like Gears of War. You can jump into in the endless whirl of social networking sites like Bebo, or MySpace, or Facebook. You can explore the labyrinthine worlds of music, film, and television online, hunting out specialist websites to pursue your particular taste in obscure cultural niches.

The reality is we don’t have a wood between our worlds. We have the World Wide Web, and it’s this web between the worlds which is our jumping off point for all the new spaces that digital culture is enabling.

Like Polly and Digory, we also risk getting lost in this endless series of virtual worlds, and I think we’re naïve if we underestimate the challenge we are setting ourselves as a culture in finding order and meaning amidst so many different opportunities. The wood between the worlds is beautiful, and quite peaceful: nothing ever happens there, and no one really belongs there. I hope we teach our children the skills they will need to keep jumping between worlds safely. Sadly, and unlike the heroine in Frank L. Baum’s Wizard of Oz books, they can’t just click their heels together to find their way back home.

I started to wonder about the hunger for knowledge and meaning in a digital age. I wondered how many adults assume to know more simply because they can access more . “The immediacy and volume of information should not be confused with true knowledge”

If we are to set a precedent for the rising generation transitioning to a digital age, we need to get some fresh perspective ourselves. As we further develop collaborative models of innovation, perhaps we need to maintain a standard that begins with self examination as Wolf highlights. We need to step back from the information vortex at times; not be so overwhelmed with the information and connections that we fail to harness the true potential of web2.0.

Funny, how the minds of children tell us so much about our own. Both authors are considering the next generation, innocent and fresh minds diving into the digital age. It’s a perspective worth considering.

So What?

Published October 17, 2007 web 2.0 4 Comments
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No I’m not talking about the famous Miles Davis tune, although there is a nice Youtube moment here below for your listening pleasure while you read this post!

I’m talking about the “so what?” question we need to ask ourselves more in this social media and communications space. It’s a simple yet powerful checkpoint I keep getting back to, something I need to ask myself more often. I heard about it several years ago in a consulting workshop and was reminded of it again yesterday in an influential writing course.

So, you go to that lovely little microblogging site Twitter. You tweet your 140 characters in freestyle form. Pause for a second before you hit that update button.

So What?

What is the purpose of that tweet? Are you just creating noise? Ask yourself the question “who cares?” Have you shown me an insight into what is unique about you? Are you tweeting for the sake of getting something out of your head or could your tweets benefit from asking yourself each time - so what? Perhaps mindless banter is your flavour of the day (nothing wrong with that style - microblogging lends itself to that form) and Twitter is really what each person makes of it. I would just love to see more people ask themselves those two words more often, myself included, so that tweeting has the potential form of storytelling and compelling autobiography. Some tweets grab me, others are like noise in a crowded room.

Same goes for blogging. I still don’t understand why people post “links of the day”without any descriptions. So what? Post your links with a little one liner about the difference these links made for you, a description of the content, or your experiences with finding the links down a rabbit hole that day. Personalise it. If you are sharing an article or something that inspired you, put your own spin on it. What has that article made you think about? Why are you telling me about it?

Creating a presentation? Ask yourself for each slide. Each heading. Who cares? What difference does it make? What thought process have you wrapped around the information? Will your audience care? Are you telling a compelling story?

People nowadays are pruning their RSS feeds and turning down the volume on noisy twitterings. Perhaps if people asked themselves those two simple words they would have more compelling content and be less likely to find themselves on the “cut” list. It’s something I need to ask myself more often, if only to improve my content and writing style.

So next time you tweet, IM, text, or even talk - think first “so what?” It could make the difference between losing the interest of your audience or engaging them to converse and interact with you.

Fun Working

Published October 12, 2007 web 2.0 0 Comments
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I’ve been wondering about the art of corporate play (Plork = play + work), the need for fun at work, the ability to be human in an environment that has the tendency to be intense and humorless at times. Where has the sense of community gone? I’m glad I have it, but wish it permeated further.

Perhaps for some, the desire for a “secondlife” has arisen from the need for freedom “just to hang out” and have some space to simply be, no strings, no expectations. Have other online social networking platforms like Facebook and Myspace refreshed the desire for freedom of expression once found in some work cultures? Or are they creating cultures finding social norm in digital form? Is it a little inside out? Do we just need to expose a few neurons before we feel free to express ourselves these days?

Have our digital identities become more pervasive as a corporate community building platform than traditional social banter? In Virtual Worlds, friends give gifts of clothing and accessories and offer to teleport friends to a new event. Friends chew the fat, chatting amongst the planets listening to ambient beats. The chillout zone of the dot com era is replaced by a virtual chill out sim. Facebook friends share gifts and grow fish.

Anything labeled fun these days is frowned upon and treated with skepticism. Secondlife, blogging, anything with nice graphics or a social element is seen as a waste of time. Then they wonder why people are leaving the company. A healthy dose of pragmatism is great, but it would be nice to see more people play and happy at work.

Mr Wonderwebby begins each day at work with his team, laughing at newspaper quiz questions and answers. It gets the team spirit fired up and seems to work nicely for them. It just happened and makes for a nice social medicine. Verbal communication and real gifts should not be forgotten in an age of text and email birthday greetings. The form of communication we choose can make a real difference.

However, as far as banter goes - do you think that fun “over the partition” conversation been replaced with tweets for an extended global audience? If social media is fun, is it really that bad for you? If laughter is the best medicine, is social media good for you? ;)

Hoban’s Door

Published October 10, 2007 art & design , inspiration 1 Comment
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Written and narrated by Russell Hoban and animated by David Anderson in 1990, I have always liked this dark and kooky animation. It inspired me many moons ago. So glad some of my faves can now be found on Youtube. I wonder what impact access to arts media “on demand” will have on developing creative talent - the available stimuli and inspiration abounds more than ever. I had to go to the RMIT Uni Library to watch this on VHS ten years ago!

“DOOR concerns man’s relentless and impetuous curiosity and the results of his actions when he takes one step too far. It examines our ability to shut our eyes to what those results are, or may yet be”

Wel wun tym thay foun a key it hadda noat tyd to it the noat sed THIS IS THE WUN.
So she sed to him Wut do you think it meens THIS IS THE WUN?
He sed Wel this is sum kyna speshil thing you wun unnerstan it.
She sed I can unnerstan enny thing you can unnerstan.
He sed O yes youre the wun knows it all.
She sed may be you are may be youre the wun knows it all.
He sed may be I am. She sed Wel then tel me wuzzit meen THIS IS THE WUN? She sed THE WUN wut?
He sed Wel it meens wut it says THIS IS THE WUN.
She sed THE WUN wut?
He sed Wel its THE WUN wut is wut it is and she sed wut is it then?
Nevva myn he sed I am lookin inno it.

Digital Leviathan

Published October 8, 2007 web 2.0 2 Comments
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Are you afraid of the Digital Leviathan?

I bought a copy of Spielberg’s first feature Duel recently and was reading on Wikipedia that both this movie and Jaws were “about these leviathans targeting every man“. If you have seen either movie, you will remember the protagonist’s angst of being consumed by something greater. I started wondering (as Wonderwebby is wont to do) if the fear of “the Digital Leviathan” holds people back from contributing to Web2.0.

As Euan Semple recently pointed out, nobody wants to be found out. I’ve been thinking this for a little while, how confidence has so much to do with the ability to dive into the information vortex.

I do wonder if creative brainstorming techniques should be better adopted to foster collaboration and communities of learning using social media. The good ole “how do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time” certainly rings true. The Digital Leviathan can be so big and foreboding, it’s no wonder people are happy to stick with email.

When I first saw Andy Piper’s multiple digital identities I felt a little overwhelmed with the apparent amount of information and “digital me” management required for generating a digital community. Step by step (bite by bite) I have carved my own path into 2.0 and now realise the task was nowhere near as monolithic as I anticipated.

I think it works quite seamlessly for me now and I find I get back what I put in. What do I get back? The more I embed of my own identity, likes and interests the more people I discover. Yes, the people. I have been discovering more exceptionally talented people who share a similar vision or interest. Then I discover more about them, who they are, what they like. We start to develop a community. I’m learning. I’m improving my knowledge. I’m developing new skills and drawing upon my existing skill-set. I’m sharing my knowledge with others. We are looking at innovative solutions and pioneering new ideas as we apply the knowledge. Personally, I think it is a very exciting and revolutionary time. Simple practices revealing extraordinary potential through extraordinary people. Focussing on the output more than the input. For me, the ultimate output helps other people.

SO I’m hoping to apply some “one bite at a time” brainstorming techniques to gather a bit of digital community momentum amongst some peers. My mother (who drew my profile pic) always says, if you have artist’s block, start scribbling with pencil on paper. The same goes for creative writing techniques, just begin to write random words.

If starting up your own blog looks too daunting, begin by commenting on others. Start to tag others. Learn to have confidence in your own voice. Use your own words. Write your own thoughts. Contribute something new. Begin with small ideas first, if you like. Then ramp it up to something bigger. Ask a friend for help if you don’t understand how something works. It’s particularly good to have one or two mentors to encourage you and give you feedback through this process. Share your unique self.

People don’t bite nearly as much as you might think! The hype and the jargon can make things seem complex when the concept of collaboration really is simple. And the Digital Leviathon is what you make of it.

Haunted Mansion

Published October 5, 2007 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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I was hovering around SOA Adventure Island in Secondlife recently (posing like Venus in rollerskates in front of a fountain, as you do)

Jazzydee on SOA island
when the lovely Anita Cassini took a few of us up to the clouds to take us through a maze in a Haunted Mansion she recently ensembled leading up to Halloween. Walking through swinging blades we entered a maze.
Jazzydee at the door of the maze
I had to change my outfit (bit of a virtual chameleon - have to fit in with my landscape)
Jazzydee in the batcave
scampered past the zombies, spoke to a Goddess bot and ended up in a cave full of butterflies
Jazzydee in butterfly cave

Thanks Anita I enjoyed the vibe! Just had to share it.

Privacy Thresholds

Published October 4, 2007 Uncategorized 5 Comments
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Is web2.0 breaking the barrier of our own privacy thresholds? Are we giving away more than ever in the act of “sharing”?

Bill Thompson sums it up

I’m as bad as anyone here, handing over my shopping patterns to supermarket loyalty schemes; sending unencrypted emails and visiting websites without seeking to disguise my identity; using Google for my searches and wandering the streets, often walking randomly around in a way that is guaranteed to make me look shifty.

Thomas Baekdal also had a good post on privacy policy and personal information. I liked this breakdown of personal information:

Personal information specific to you as a person - like your name, address, phone number, age, your education, the name of your children, your gender, who you are married to (or if you are single), social security number, tax number etc.
Information about your actions - what websites you have visited, what you have searched for, what products you like, what you bought at Amazon, how many times you went to the bathroom last week etc.
Information that you supply to a website - like the things you post about yourself on your blog, what you post on Twitter and the comments you made on varies websites.
Technical information that links you with any of the above - like your IP address, Mac address, unique cookie identifiers and encryption keys.

I recall working with a Fraud and Debt Collection Subject Matter Expert who showed me a checklist of tips for crime prevention. This included divulging information about personal habits, times you leave the house, days you work, information about your family, your name, shopping habits etc. It made me realise that sometimes seemingly trivial information can be quite revealing.

Some people go as far as sharing their home address on Facebook. I have heard of secondlife stalkers turning up at real life homes. Sometimes I wonder where to draw the line. I want to share, communicate, express, engage, and I like freedom of speech and the forming of virtual communities. Nowadays my CV is viewable to all on LinkedIn and I have photos of my monkeys on Facebook (for my “friends”- although I am looking forward to the implementation of filtering on Facebook which I understand is coming soon.) Some Flickr their personal pics for comment, I tweet some habits on twitter but all the while I am conscious of what I am telling and (hopefully) when it becomes too much. Maybe I already tell too much? Others may think I don’t tell enough.

Sometimes I feel a bit awkward when my identity appears on “recent vistors” blog widgets and I noticed Linked In has a recent visitors function too. Facebook tracks my actions in newsfeeds. Sometimes the actions can even be distorted eg when I have accidentally followed a link, changed my mind, or the Wondermonkeys have attacked my keyboard. Mr Wonderwebby was even talking to me the other day about Google having so much of our information (data) on gmail, googletalk, google apps, google reader etc

So what is my privacy threshold? Have I become desensitized to the traditional rules of keeping things personal through my 2.0 interactions? Or am I contributing to an evolving community (and sub-communities) and moving into a new social structure establishing new dynamics of trust and protection as a result? Does it really matter? At this point in time, I’m going to share what I personally feel comfortable with - and nothing that I would not want repeated.

One…

two…

three…

jumping into the information vortex!

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