connecting*the*dots

The reviews are in: We, the people, are in the drivers seat.

Newspapers are already hemoraging readership, as the web has created an extremely rich bazaar, allowing us to shop for unbundled content at every turn, while unbundled advertising models begin to sprout up to support this evolution. Well, get ready for the online replicas of the print world to begin to sweat even more. Following on the heals of the mass appeal of social wisdom sites such as slashdot and digg comes a revolutionary hybrid of mainstream media, citizen journalism and participatory editing: Newsvine.

Taking the aggregation features of a Yahoo! News, the collaborative properties of a digg and the citizen media aspects of blogging, Newsvine is staged to completely redefine the news. Why? Because the common man now has stake in the game.

Old School

Top/down delivery of content, beginning with organized knowledge, is a modern construct. Since the advent of television, these organized silos of knowledge have been optimized over the years for advertising to take advantage of explicit media buys — matching business audience demographics, psychographics and geographics to channeled, programed, bundled content. Great for advertisers and the networks/publications, lousy for the “consumer,” as we end up consuming more messaging and less news or interests which match *our* needs and desires.

These constructed, mechanical relationships define false, explicit edges of our culture, which in turn raises the value proposition of media and news organizations simply by standardizing on such lexicon. This standardization of topical interests — unknowingly bought into by the public as what is *real* — enables a sussinct universe of sales and stories, broadcast on television news and pumped through newspapers, serving as the ying to the entertainment media’s yang.

A metaphor: Is it easier to entertain and pacify a child within a theme park or the natural environment of a forest?

Somewhere between the crafted, paced, 4/4 movement of greased industry palms rubbing against one another, lies our percept of reality, consistently bombarded by messaging and it’s representative experience. So while we struggle with this understanding of our surroundings, back in the news room, editors — the field managers of this construct — find themselves under the thumb of the financial steerings and pressures of this propped reality. Their indoctrinated intuition places reactionary constraints on the types of stories generated, the depth of coverage, even the language the writer chooses to employ.

The innovators and early adopters of the web… we’re basically saying, “Fuck that noise.”

New School

Bottom/up constructs, enabled by the personal publishing revolution, delivered with flexible subscription technology such as RSS, have empowered individuals to publish cheaply within our own crafted domains.

• RSS allows us to digest information passively (in a centralized location), instead of actively (surfing the decentalized web), which greatly increases our level of input and conversely, fine tunes our understanding of the world, which is represented by our output (blogging, conversations, actions, etc.)
• Those of us who publish our own information objects, apply meta-data to increase the potential of findability, both now and in future interfaces
• Many of us participate with folksonomies, helping make our POV of all information semantically rich and contextual to our neighbors interests, our future grandchildern’s recollections of us, even the desires of a family on the other side of the planet
• We create multimedia objects to compete with elite vehicles of capital, and fuel them through the same tactical approaches

This participatory environment is one aspect of the Web 2.0 phrase that gets tossed about. It’s enabling us humans to share our creative impulses with others, helping to constantly define and then redefine the world around us through our personal representations of both explicit and implicit lexicon.

This is an open paradigm, a transparent journey, based in accelerated trust and faith in one another.

So when these two worlds meet — old school vs. new school or modernism vs. post-modernism or proprietary vs. open source — the truth of hierarchy and the truth of individual POV’s collide. Guess what remains?

A truthier truth.

Newsvine has taken a position of mixing mainstream feeds with user submitted, tagged and collaboratively greenlit content. Even more revolutionary, they’re mixing the standardized embedded lexicon of our culture — topical categories — with the co-occurance generated wisdom of the people creating relevant content living within such silos (see below)

The secondary navigation points are all dynamic, altering over time as the co-occurance of tagged objects within a topical category shifts. This is how I think — how I search, discover, build my own archive in this blog — so in and of itself, the concept doesn’t blow me away. What does blow me away is that by simply placing this paradigm next to, say, The New York Times, Yahoo! News, my pseudo-innovative hometown Greensboro News & Record and a blog aggregator like Greensboro101 (disclosure: I’m on the advisory panel), none of these domains can compete if Newsvine gains a participatory, critical mass audience.

Think about it: Newsvine provides AP feeds (like a Yahoo! News), yet allows anyone to seed *any* story, from *any* site (like digging or del.icio.us tagging). Let me try to clearly paint how disruptive of a strategy this is.

• With only the AP feed, Newsvine could potentially evolve to become a successful News aggregator
• The addition of the digg and del.icio.us features completely change the game. Newsvine now becomes populated by the very content from the news sites (New York Times, News & Record, etc.) that it’s competing against for advertising
• The better the content, say, a New York Times produces, the more likely it’ll end up in Newsvine, but with more context (meta-data) and a thriving, participatory readership.
• Content will begin to be valued differently at a New York Times — as prices might become reduced at the domain, while new, shared models will be created at sites like Newsvine. Good for the Times, as they have a new market for revenue, but it will effect their organizational structure. The big advantage for Newsvine: they don’t have to completely readjust due to their recent entry into the arena and their nimble stature (compared to large news organizations)
• Community blog aggregators could possibly fall to the wayside, simply due to the fact that people can seed their own local posts, as well as their neighbors, and leverage unbundled advertising services. The very concept of “community” will be redefined on much more granular levels, moving towards a flickr existence, as explicit tags begin to define groups of interest

The Final Touch

Mike Davidson obviously knows what he has here; not only an opportunity to provide a rich, participatory environment for the redefinition of what news means to us as a collective, a community and as individuals, but this service could very well challenge the embedded constructs of media and the contradictions of Adam Smith capitalism.

Heavy.

In the final analysis, if Newswire succeeds, it’ll be because of the participatory nature of people. So if Davidson really wants to make his mark on this planet, he’ll not only decide to share advertising revenue with the organizations and the content creators themselves, but the swarms of participating editors — editors removed from the burden and balancing act of management, reduced simply to individual citizens focused on making our communities that much more aware, educated and inclusive. If an incentive program can be devised along these lines– some type of a micro-payment structure based on Karma points and click-throughs for both editors *and* authors– he’ll be responsible for creating the Mechanical Turk of the media world.

If he heads in this direction, or others evolve his concept down this line, media as we know it could absolutely cease to exist. Reputable journalists will become more enabled by freelance opportunities, as news organizations will need to drastically reduce their overhead because advertising money won’t be channeled into one out of six corporate funnels.

Then we’ll more easily find the opportunities to 2.0 the hell out of government.

———-

(Big ups to Kent Bye over at The Echo Chamber Project for refueling my tank last night on the way home. 5 hours of ECP podcasts will get you into this type of groove. Go check out his amazing project)

A working piece of art using a 1988 Mac SE, a 1923 Underwood typewriter and a Fresnel lens. Such a beautiful ode to Brazil — my all-time favorite movie.

(via Neatorama)

Brought to you from that cutting-edge crew over at Current TV. You know, that little ol’ venture from Al Gore.

Big business is already squirming regarding citizen media; they’re going to have a heart attack if this experiment takes off. I don’t make predictions often, but the day it’s the norm for companies to dive into blogging as a means to communicate with their market, citizen advertizing will take off like wildfire.

The value proposition for large companies is too high to ignore hundreds, possibly thousands of passionate, creative consumers. Aside from the media buy component of a 50 million dollar campaign (in non-Current TV channels), the remainder of the creative and production costs could be replaced by a hundred $1,000 checks.

But forget huge corporations for a minute; imagine the value proposition for small businesses. The saturation of message and community will be beyond enticing; it’ll be intoxicating.

Man, the elites must really hate Web/Media 2.0 now.

Just who are these fuckin’ guys anyway?

vnunet.com
RIAA aims to ban CD ripping
by Iain Thomson

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has reversed its position on CD ripping and now wants the practice outlawed.

In a filing to the US government concerning digital rights management the RIAA and other copyright industry associations said the fact that CD ripping is widespread does not make it legal.

“Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization,” the filing stated.

“In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.”

This is a complete reversal of the RIAA’s previous policy. In last year’s Supreme Court MGM v. Grokster case a representative of the RIAA described ripping a CD and putting it on an iPod as “perfectly lawful”.

“It is no secret that the entertainment ‘oligopolists’ are not happy about space-shifting and format-shifting,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a statement. “But surely ripping your own CDs to your own iPod passes muster.”

Unbelievable. The RIAA is Exhibit A as to why I financially support the EFF. Didn’t we get past this litigious moment in time when we were passing mix tapes between friends in the early 80’s?

Unchanneled, unbundled, uncontrolled music distribution can tremendously benefit three out of the four constituents in the music industry — the fans, artists and labels — if the technology is enabled and monetized properly. Citizen media and file sharing software has already provided the inroads to extrapolating the concept of personal mix tapes by exponential factors, but since the RIAA is a cabal of thug lawyers, knee-deep in the politics of the power structure of the record industry and big business — busy hawking the propaganda of “musicians starving by the thousands” due to copyright infringement — artists are left out of the conversation surrounding their own work.

From the RIAA self-descrption on their About Us page (emphasis mine ):

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members’ creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

In support of this mission, the RIAA works to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists; conduct consumer industry and technical research; and monitor and review - - state and federal laws, regulations and policies. The RIAA also certifies Gold®, Platinum®, Multi-Platinum™, and Diamond® sales awards, and recently launched Los Premios De Oro y Platino™, a new award celebrating Latin music sales.

The RIAA are suits providing a perceived value service for a constituency of labels. Innocuous transfers, such as cd-rom to iPod, shouldn’t even be a part of the conversation, but the legal hawks at the RIAA need to keep their battle alive, cash in their hours on the job and make further cases for battles in this war, one that is bound to fail.

Why?

When we reach the tipping point for successfully monetizing a post-modern world — where citizen media receives micro-payments for media views and not click-throughs or micro-purchases instead of bundled viewing through industry channels — this argument will simply become moot. As new technological systems for production and distribution are built, the creative talent inside and out of the development community will begin to leverage the services.

• It’s already happening at myspace.com
• Have you seen what you can do with iLife?
• Hell, even I’m a movie director in my spare time

The evolution of citizen production technologies, along with rich forms of free advertising, networking, marketing and sharing delivered by blogs, will not just simply come to a screeching halt.

And that’s why the RIAA is stepping up their “intelligently designed” game.

I tend to sit on the optimistic side of this battle. Explicit, absolute hierarchy expressed via controlled management will not survive this explosion of technological innovation. It simply can’t. For as much energy and resources it takes to create, manage and govern a structured, old-money universe with closed systems of infrastructure, it takes a fraction of such time, energy and resources to release expression into the newly networked ether.

But these facts won’t stop the lawyers of the world from doing their best from stopping it. Check out this snippet from the bio of one of their leaders:

Mitch Bainwol
Chairman And CEO
Recording Industry Association of America

Mitch Bainwol joined the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as Chairman and CEO in September 2003. As a seasoned policymaker, he is one of the Washington’s most recognized and respected strategists and possesses a unique blend of political, legislative, and communications skills.

The Washington Post recently called Bainwol a “Top D.C. Lobbyist and Man in Demand.” Several years in a row, Capitol Hill’s Roll Call newspaper hailed Bainwol as one of the 50 most influential “politicos” in Washington. He was also named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the most powerful people in show business and Campaigns and Elections magazine named him a “Mover and Shaker.”

[…]

Bainwol is a “recognized and respected strategist” in Washington DC; he’s a lobbyist. Music is reinventing itself from too many directions for him or anyone else representing this controlled system to make it last long-term.

Fuck the RIAA!

My father’s sculpture has been standing guard in our home for as long as I can remember.

The funny thing about running into the posting wall, is that it almost always comes out of the blue, often at the most random of times. Well, unlike past years, in 2005 I hit the wall at the most appropriate time of the year.

So, in order to get back up on the blogging horse, I’m now going to confront what annoyed me the most over the past week or so by presenting you a better late than never (maybe), hodge-podge list of the best stuff I personally experienced in 2005:

Going freelance
Yeah, I know you can’t buy this or go see it, but it was somewhat of a life-changing moment for me. And while I’ve gone back and forth between full-time and freelance gigs over the years, unless the perfect full-time opportunity to build smart experiences and flex skills with like-minded people arises, this time I just might not go back.

Beginning to blog full-time
While I’m still a bit of a beat-down blogger, I’m pretty amped that I’ve been writing consistently since last April. Because my last job consumed so much of my time and energy, my posts were few and far between in 2004 and without writing, sketching, or being creative on some level for me and me alone, I begin to lose it. Maybe I won’t post as much this year, but when I do, they’ll be accompanied by original creative output (illustrations, music, podcasts, etc.).

Working with Media Matters
Admittedly, before I took the gig to collaborate on the redesign of the Media Matters site, I had never heard of David Brock. So as I researched Brock and Media Matters the week prior to starting the job, I became fascinated with his story, especially how the concept of his book literally became a functional venture (the Media Matters for America non-profit) to clean up the media. Does the released information architecture of the site exactly reflect my vision for a forward-thinking domain? Not quite, but it’s getting there, and man, does our media need a real-time ecosystem of accountability.

Picking up my father’s habit of watching the 11 o’clock news
My father is religous in catching the local 11 o’clock news. Aside from catching the weather for the following day (ever notice how the weather is placed at the end of the newscast?), it provides him daily insight into the local news that he feels he needs. Well, I’m now picking up his tradition by religiously catching The Daily Show. Yes, with the amount of in-depth news I catch on my aggregator, I need Jon Stewart’s take on our twisted planet to close out my day-to-day.

Returning to The Chuck Nevitt Invitational
In 1999, the innaugural CNI season, my handicapped parkin’ squad ended up tying for first place. Thanks to Carver High, an invite was extended to me six years after I released my entire fantasy baseball squad due to the real-life threat of a strike (I thought they’d never get over that one). I’m only a few healed players away from having the trophy living in my den for the next year, so Bonzi, Emeka, hurry up and get healthy!

Becoming active by donating to causes I believe in
Historically, I’ve backed organiations by talking them up and defending their practices within mixed crowds. Similar to how I viewed my ability to become a Big Brother (not responsible enough), I also thought that one needed to be rich to financially support an organization. Well, after giving a few hundred dollars to EFF and TerraPass, I’ve come to realize that one doesn’t have to be wealthy to contribute. This year, I’m looking to expand my philanthropic range, so I guess I’ll just have to kill a few magazine subscriptions and keep my heat down at night.

Really Simple Syndication: For real
I’ve been using feeds for years, but not to the degree I used them this past year. Bloglines has become my primary source of information and news from around the world. Out of my 130+ subscriptions, less than ten would be considered mainstream media, so for the first time in my life my perspective is being primarily influenced by people like me. This is a post all in it’s own.

Moving to Greensboro, North Carolina
As I posted before I left JC to come to Greensboro, I’ve a bunch of mixed feelings. On one hand, going from a long-distance relationship to living with Angela has been great. Just as cool has been seeing my brother much more than once every six months. Greensboro is a laid back town, larger in scale than my one-time home of Williamstown, but similar in vibe; small enough to get away from the hustle and bustle, but large enough to ensure that your girlfriend isn’t one degree away from your doctor, dentist, shrink, yoga instructor, etc. On the other hand, it’s not New York City.

Well, that’s that. This post isn’t chock full of top movies or albums, but hey, those types of posts probably annoy you just as much as they annoy me. If 2005 was my year of change, then I’m thinking that 2006 will be the year of transparency across the board. The internet has far too many dedicated, passionate people and easily accessible, open hooks to not dig into rich domains (such as government) to create open, honest conversations.

Transparency and accountability in 2006.

I’m the “big brother” in my family and growing up, well, I played the role like a champ with my “little brother” Andy.

When we wrestled, I’d pin him after giving him false hope of a tap out. When we played Intellivision, I’d beat him as soundly as humanly possible. When my 12 year-old friends came over, I’d embarrass his 8 year-old ass in front of them. Why’d I keep him toiling, frustrated and fuming in "little brother" mode? I don’t know, I was a kid… maybe I watched too much TV?

In retrospect, I’m willing to get deeper. I probably needed the power in the relationship to make me feel whole and stroke my ego on some level. Just coming home from the hospital, he took away the focus on me. With our mom working three jobs, being latch-key kids, I probably craved even more attention. Eh… that’s all bullshit psychobabble crap; I was a kid—I thought being a big brother meant that it was my job to be a dick on some level.

But for every time I played the classic big brother in a negative way, there were at least five times that I watched his back and made sure all was good.

When Andy had a problem with a kid on the bus coming home, I marched my eleven year-old ass over to the kid’s house to make sure the there wouldn’t be a problem the next day. When my dad had a few too many Martini’s and threatened to get rid of him because he didn’t finish his vegetables fast enough, I packed my bag with him and forced my dad to decide to get rid of both of us. As much as I teased him, I looked out for him more so. Somewhere in between we teamed up and became tight and the big and little signifiers dropped.

We were brothers.

And then life happened; we grew up.

We’ve been living in different states for the past 12 years. Andy’s been in Greensboro since his freshman year at UNCG, focusing on his documentary work and video editing, while I spent my time moving all around the northeast as a designer for hire. We’ve always stayed in touch via the phone and holiday visits, so when I moved down to Greensboro in September, I fully expected to pick up our tight-knit relationship where it left off as post-adolescents.

I’m coming to understand that life isn’t that simple.

It’s not that we’re not still tight, we are, but for some strange reason we don’t quite see and react to the world in the exact same same way. Somehow, different life experiences over the past 12 years have shaped our individual goals, perspectives and perception of the world we interact with.

Crazy, eh?

We hit The Scene on South Elm the last two nights, catching both the Wal-Mart and Outfoxed documentaries. On the way home last night, while discussing the possibility of shooting a documentary together in the near future (I’ll keep you posted on where that conversation goes), we ended up bumping heads on a variety of subjects and a few stinging perception issues that we had about each other—issues that must have built-up between us over the years in our separate lives—came to the surface.

Quite honestly, if this conversation were over the phone sometime over the past 12 years, these pent up perceptions probably wouldn’t have made it to the surface. Looking back, we both became proficient at not pressing our conversations when anything became close to uncomfortable, as (I think) we both wanted to ensure that our tight relationship as kids remained just as tight as adults. I’m thinking that we both must have felt that challenging each other too much might have snapped that carefully crafted ecosystem of "safe" interactions.

I’m also thinking that it would be stupid for us to continue along these lines; thankfully, Andy feels the same way.

Us Coon brothers are creative souls and creative souls often have problems communicating and taking feedback. But if we want to work together professionally, allowing ourselves to evolve to understand each other as artists, adults and brothers, we’re going to have to lock in and listen to each others perspectives by trusting in our common, positive intent.

On that note, come on bro’… try to pin me.

I tag like a 15 year-old kid in the South Bronx with a box full of Krylons and a yard full of freshly sandblasted cars.

I tag like I just got jumped by a handful of punks who made the mistake of letting me follow them to their trailer park homes adorned with freshly cleaned aluminum siding.

I tag like I get told who I am, what I’m supposed to believe and how I’m supposed to act on a daily basis.

I go all city, hoping that one day, the vehicles I’ve touched get stitched together to form a complete sentence.

I tag because I saw you leave your mark and it was dope.

I tag because I know how to freeze, watch TV and (kinda) avoid the kissing bugs.

I tag because the words I drop in time will find a way to form a cohesive rhyme.

I tag because the world may be getting smaller, but it’s damn sure not coming together.

I tag your name, your spot, your position, your mood, your frame of mind when it’s too hard for you to see it for yourself.

I tag the expected terms of modern constructs.

I tag the post-modern undercurrents of miscellaneous descriptors.

I tag my tags so that when structure is forged out of chaos, you’ll know how to find me.

I tag so that it’s me you won’t be looking for.

When I tag, I’m regurgitating the meal I’ve caught for the chicks in my roost.

When I tag, I feel one with the universe of the collective unconscious.

When I tag, I can see the pillars of control quaking in their foundation.

When I tag, I experience therefore I understand.

When we tag, anything is possible.

————

Tag! We’re It! Part II
Tag! We’re It!

Get away from the business of corrupt government. Bouncy balls in San Francisco.

(via Boing Boing)

Roger Waters has moved his profound, progressive, creative juxtapositions into the expansive realm of opera. From NPR’s World Cafe:

"Roger Waters, a founding member of Pink Floyd, has released an opera about the French Revolution, titled ça Ira. The album is based on Etienne Roda-Gil’s original French libretto.

The two-disc album, which entered the Billboard classical chart at Number 1, features work by opera stars like Bryn Terfel, Paul Groves, and Ying Huang."

Waters provides an amazing interview. Well, for any true fan of Floyd, any interview with Rogers is an amazing interview.

Brilliant. Thanks, Paul!

Update: If it isn’t clear from the title of the post, this is from the October issue of The Nation, titled "Perp Walk" by Joe Wezorek of American Leftist

(originally uploaded by dreadfuldan)

Mother nature dropped Katrina.
The federal government dropped the ball.
Kanye West dropped the illest freestyle in the midst of the harshest climate.

And Mos Def just dropped Katrina Klap, a jam that will undoubtedly mark this moment in the annals of hip-hop and social activism.

1, 2, 3, 4 bust it!
This is for the streets
The streets everywhere
The streets affected by the storm called… America, huh.
I’m doing this for y’all
As for me, the creator

Get busy, y’all!

God save these streets, one dollar per every human being
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
Listen, homie
It’s dollar day in New Orleans
It’s for the water everywhere and people dead in the streets
And Mr. President, he about that cash
He got a policy for handling the niggers and trash
And if you poor, you black
I laugh a laugh, they won’t give when you ask,
You better off on crack
Dead or in jail or with a gun in Iraq
And it’s as simple as that
No opinion, my man
It’s mathematical fact
Listen
A million poor since 2004
And they got illions and killions to waste on the war
And make you question what the taxes is for
Or the cost to reinforce the broke levee wall
Tell the boss he shouldn’t be the boss anymore

God save these streets, one dollar per every human being
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
God save these streets, quit being cheap, nigger, freedom ain’t free!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
Lord have mercy!
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save our soul, a God, a God save our soul
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save our soul, soul, soul… soul survival!

It’s dollar day in New Orleans
It’s for the water everywhere and babies dead in the streets
It’s enough to make ya’ holla out
Like, where the fuck is Sir Bono and his famous friends now?
Don’t get it twisted man
I dig U2
But if you ain’t about the ghetto
Then fuck you too
Who care about rock n’ roll when babies can’t eat food
Listen, homie man, the shit ain’t cool
It’s like, dollar day, for New Orleans
It’s for the water everywhere, homies dead in the streets
And Mr. President’s a natural ass
He out treatin’ niggas worse then they treat the trash

God save these streets, one dollar per every human being
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
God save these streets, quit being cheap, nigger, freedom ain’t free!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
Soul survivor!
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save our soul, a God, a God save our soul
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save our soul, a God, a God save our…

God did not intend for the wicked to rule the world
Said God did not intend for the wicked to rule the world
God did not intend for the wicked to rule the world
And even when they do
It’s a matter of truth
Before their wicked ruling is through

God save these streets
A dollar day for New Orleans
God save these streets
Quit being cheap, homie, freedom ain’t free!
God save these streets
One dollar per every human being!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
God save these streets
Quit being cheap, nigger, freedom ain’t free!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
Ghetto Katrina Klap!
Soul survivor
Lord, God, God, save our soul, a God save, God save our soul
Feel that Katrina Klap!
Let’s make them dollars stack!
And rebuild these streets
God save these streets
God save these streets
God save the soul!
Feel that Katrina Klap!
See that Katrina Klap!
Soul survivor

Don’t talk about it, be about it.
Peace.

Push it along. You’ve got to push it along…

While listening to KQED (out of Northern California) this afternoon (I love the Rabbit Radio widget), I came across this interview with Eric Maisel. Maisel is a "Creative Coach," spending his time helping creative people (primarily, artists and writers) understand their own temperment, so that they can better apply themselves to their craft.

Maisel argues that creative people are stubborn by design, beginning at an early age. He uses examples of how specific social conditioning exercises, such as the direction to color within the lines of a coloring book, creates children who are more apt to conform in society and not follow their creative tendencies. I found that one example very interesting, as I vividly remember as a child pointing out the devisive nature of the lines in my coloring book by always lining the edges of the images with strong, thick strokes, while lightly "coloring-in" the interior of the object with the same crayon.

If I were to apply Maisel’s position to my actions as a child, it’s as if I were emphasising the borders of expectation, illustrating the very nature of their confining strokes, while simultaneously remaining safe within their domain. Well, if that were true, at least it would explain my choices to join Beta Theta Pi in college and a few conservative corporations over the short course of my career.

Maisel also discusses creative temperment in context to bipolar disorder; how in order to be creative, one has to be viscerally ready and able to fail, as creativity relates to the cycles of life and death, success and failure, planning and stumbling, etc. His understanding of cyclical conceptualization, with abstract formation and pragmatic execution is pretty spot on. Kay Redfield Jamison, an accredited psychologist suffering from manic depression, has written about the same connections to the artistic temperment for years.

The thing about our culture is that people aren’t considered “creative” unless they do something different from the normality of society. Contributing expressive, innovative or valuable output within the productive cycle of culture is a clear way to be recognized as different (Van Gogh), yet so is the temperment to the approach of creating differentiating output (Van Gogh).

Maisel and Jamison’s observations are very telling of the temperament of society itself.

At times like this, when war is just around the bend, us civilian folk often look to political cartoonists to provide an encapsulated vision of what’s happening in the world around us.

Well, I’ve come across a cartoonists take on the war with Iraq using Flash as a vehicle for delivering the message. It’s a bit scary, but you have to love the power of the interactive medium.

The other day, Efrat and I checked out the D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival.

performance hairdresser

guys painting in a glass box

political theatrics

secrets in a window

tonka christmas tree

D.U.M.B.O. is too fresh. The vibe is straight up fine arts and creativity. Why the hell am I living in the taint between Park Slope and Carrol Gardens? Oh yeah, I remember why… I’m NOT A TRUST FUND KID!

Feel the bitterness.

First, there was theDancing Baby. Now we have an internet superhero capable of swinging (literally) from the West Village to San Francisco, as well as from criminal to criminal. I’d like to introduce (drumroll please) gay Spiderman!

Don’t ask me who created this, but whoever they are, they’re my new heroes. Brilliant! It answers all my questions about Peter Parker after sitting through Spiderman and watching him turn down Kirsten Dunst — he was probably holding out for the Green Goblin.

I have to give my brother, Andy, a major shout out for his recent kudos down in North Carolina.

First, the feature film, “Burying Merriweather,” which he produced and starred in, is premiering next week at a local theatre in Greensboro, North Carolina. Two nights of big screen viewing and then off to film festivals around the country.

And then today, he found out that his documentary, “Greensboro’s Child” has been accepted at the Carolinal Film and Video Festival. Andy is a dedicated cat. It’s great to see his career start to take off. Love ya bro!

Admittedly, it took me a few days to shrug off my last rant. I’m finding myself at a crossroads of my career (what type of IA am I?) and upon hearing the perception of my career choice as not being a creative one, a chord was struck within me. I began my career in a creative capacity, and I plan on ending it the same way. I refuse to dumb it down to another level, as I’ve invested too much effort to do so.

Four years ago I was on a path of becoming a solid interactive designer in this industry. I had worked my way through the multimedia years as a CG artist, dabbling in art direction and interface design, and eventually made the move to the web as a full-time art director in ‘97. After a year and a half at a small interactive marketing company, I became lost. Something was missing. Every project became a battle to produce and it started to wear me down.

I needed a new resume.

That year, I proposed to the president of the company for me to concentrate on becoming a "New Media Specialist." During the course of our conversation I’d unknowingly described the responsibilities of an IA to a tee, but unfortunately, he had never heard of an IA either and couldn’t justify the position as billable. So I was thanked for being proactive and received a pat on the back on the way out of his office.

While trying to cope within those difficult times, I was introduced to the work of three people; Janet Murray, Brenda Laurel, and Bill Buxton. While my day job seemed to work overtime to extinguish the passion I had for the medium, these three people emitted the vibe that something better, more creative, was on the horizon. With Janet and Brenda’s varied take on the interactive narrative, and Bill’s perspective on redefining HCI, from 3d interaction to input device’s, I became exposed to perspectives that blew my visual design goggles out of the water. I had to make a move.

I wanted to practice what Brenda preached, creating a narrative experience in an on-line application; to explore the path of convergence that made Janet’s wonderful dreams a potential reality; to become a participant in Bill’s vision of the next generation of interfaces where an OS and the application layer become as one.

So to make a long(er) story short, I became an information architect. I jumped from the world of communication design and landed right in the midst of this intriguing discipline, with such different contextual career possibilities.

Now, three and a half years later, I’m grasping to find my niche, first and foremost as an interactive designer. While our profession is feeling the backlash of a brutal economy, the last thing I need to do is lose sight of why I do what I do. No matter how you skin this cat, we create temporal experiences through creative thought processes while collaborating with smart, creative people.

And I’d scrap with the biggest bully on the block to keep it that way.

Alright, I’m a bit pissed.

Doesn’t anyone consider our profession a creative venture? I understand the library science angle (meaning I understand where they come from, not necessarily how they do exactly what they do all the time they do it), but doesn’t the remainder of the craft of information architecture help deliver a narrative expression? Not as in a Shakespearean format, but in the very least as a scripted experience, set in code and interface parameters, but flexible in exploration?

I got fired up over this because of a thread at the SIG-IA list, where it was suggested that we:

1. are not artists creating experiences
2. only create "web pages"
3. would have a "hypnotised mind" if we beleived otherwise

Where’s the inspiration folks? In taking the user along a path to pertinent information, we do script an experience for them. How they react to it is based on the work we perform; the ux umbrella designers.

If you’ve ever worked on a project in this field, hopefully you’ve created something more relevant than a "bunch of web pages." If not, then you’ve never designed a precise solution, one which creates navigation paths that readily resonate in the user’s psyche; or an interface which feels seemless and intuitive to the intended audience; or an information architecture that is succinct in it’s labeling, categorization and retrieval capabilities, which also has multiple points of contextual departure for the user, creating an underlining narrative structure.

I thought the days were long gone when you had to be broke with paint stained finger tips to be considered creative. I guess not.