chroma

10 projects that challenge / change the concept of what communication is

Do we fail to see the extent of what communication is / has become?

Here are 10 projects that should / hopefully would change / broaden our idea of what communication is:

1. The Copenhagen wheel
The Copenhagen wheel is a perfectly designed combination of a lot of separate ideas, that collectively demonstrates the potential in modern communication. It offers both immediate interest and value through personal benefits in the context where it is used, but also ads a layer of communal value – and taking us one step further in creating the connected cities of the future. It’s an exceptionally complicated idea made into something people could understand and want immediately.

2. Life of George
LoG is a small initiative exploring the interface between technology and reality. It has been extremely well concepted and designed. This might not be an eye-opening revolution, but it is a very well thought through commercial mass-produced product. It has been through all the barriers and ended up as something that could easily, and hopefully, be adopted by the mass (iPhone-owning) market.

3. Sniff
Sniff is only a prototype, but demonstrates with beauty the life an inanimate object can have as soon as it takes on some form of well designed behavior. There has been digital technology inside toys for tens and tens of years, but Sniff approaches the idea of what technology is, not what it outputs.

4. Nokia Push Snowboarding
The way the technology has been implemented into the culture of the sport it is trying to augment is the most impressive feet. Nokia and Burton have pushed the snowboarding culture first – and then designed itself to it – which could not be said for a lot of other commercial technology…

5. Nest the learning thermostat
The objects learns by recording our behavior – and calculating something on top of that recording. Objects are still dumb, but in a very intelligent way. The Nest is an example of everyday appliances becoming a second brain, and a demonstration of how digital objects have gone from furniture you hide away in small offices upstairs to objects you display and want to talk about.

6. Up by Jawbone
How does a wristband with no screen and no sound communicate with its carrier? A vibration in itself says nothing, the interesting thing is how we learn what the vibration means in different contexts. This is a perfect example of the rich unexpectedness of communication – the one without the spoken/written language – and how quickly we adopt and learn new forms of communication.

7. Zeebox
Zeebox is one of several new products being launched to augment the TV experience. Behind it lies the concept of increasing the value of something local by connecting it to the rest of the world – through a parallel system. In this case the linear TV experience. Now any idiot could do that, but it is the tools by which they try to achieve the connection which is brilliant. Zeebox is a first generation concept in this arena, but demonstrates the potential of what is to come.

8. Waterpebble
Ideas don’t have to be big and shiny, they can be small and solve minute problems. It’s the aesthetic of the idea that is the important thing: How does the mechanic of such a small thing change the dynamic of something bigger… Now, if they only could connect it to the Internet…

9. The Wattson
The Wattson gives us access to things that previously where invisible and not present in our consciousness. Just because we can’t see things and talk about them doesn’t mean they aren’t important. The Wattson gives us access to a layer of reality that we haven’t been able to see before but which is highly real and important.

10. Nokia kinect
Now the first nine examples have been impressive, most of them include sensors and things which gives us access to a part of reality that we haven’t explored before. But it doesn’t stop with the invisible data… The next generation handsets gives us access to the layer of communication that emerges as objects becomes haptic and kinetic, opening a whole new world of interaction and behavior, through the sensitivity and richness of touch and force.

In conclusion:

“in the future we will communicate with identities, if these are people or objects doesn’t really matter” –

180360720.no

“Our goal is to first connect all the rabbits, and then connect everything else” – Rafi Haladjian

via 180360720.no

10 projects that challenge / change the concept of what communication is

Do we fail to see the extent of what communication is / has become?

Here are 10 projects that should / hopefully would change / broaden our idea of what communication is:

1. The Copenhagen wheel
The Copenhagen wheel is a perfectly designed combination of a lot of separate ideas, that collectively demonstrates the potential in modern communication. It offers both immediate interest and value through personal benefits in the context where it is used, but also ads a layer of communal value – and taking us one step further in creating the connected cities of the future. It’s an exceptionally complicated idea made into something people could understand and want immediately.

2. Life of George
LoG is a small initiative exploring the interface between technology and reality. It has been extremely well concepted and designed. This might not be an eye-opening revolution, but it is a very well thought through commercial mass-produced product. It has been through all the barriers and ended up as something that could easily, and hopefully, be adopted by the mass (iPhone-owning) market.

3. Sniff
Sniff is only a prototype, but demonstrates with beauty the life an inanimate object can have as soon as it takes on some form of well designed behavior. There has been digital technology inside toys for tens and tens of years, but Sniff approaches the idea of what technology is, not what it outputs.

4. Nokia Push Snowboarding
The way the technology has been implemented into the culture of the sport it is trying to augment is the most impressive feet. Nokia and Burton have pushed the snowboarding culture first – and then designed itself to it – which could not be said for a lot of other commercial technology…

5. Nest the learning thermostat
The objects learns by recording our behavior – and calculating something on top of that recording. Objects are still dumb, but in a very intelligent way. The Nest is an example of everyday appliances becoming a second brain, and a demonstration of how digital objects have gone from furniture you hide away in small offices upstairs to objects you display and want to talk about.

6. Up by Jawbone
How does a wristband with no screen and no sound communicate with its carrier? A vibration in itself says nothing, the interesting thing is how we learn what the vibration means in different contexts. This is a perfect example of the rich unexpectedness of communication – the one without the spoken/written language – and how quickly we adopt and learn new forms of communication.

7. Zeebox
Zeebox is one of several new products being launched to augment the TV experience. Behind it lies the concept of increasing the value of something local by connecting it to the rest of the world – through a parallel system. In this case the linear TV experience. Now any idiot could do that, but it is the tools by which they try to achieve the connection which is brilliant. Zeebox is a first generation concept in this arena, but demonstrates the potential of what is to come.

8. Waterpebble
Ideas don’t have to be big and shiny, they can be small and solve minute problems. It’s the aesthetic of the idea that is the important thing: How does the mechanic of such a small thing change the dynamic of something bigger… Now, if they only could connect it to the Internet…

9. The Wattson
The Wattson gives us access to things that previously where invisible and not present in our consciousness. Just because we can’t see things and talk about them doesn’t mean they aren’t important. The Wattson gives us access to a layer of reality that we haven’t been able to see before but which is highly real and important.

10. Nokia kinect
Now the first nine examples have been impressive, most of them include sensors and things which gives us access to a part of reality that we haven’t explored before. But it doesn’t stop with the invisible data… The next generation handsets gives us access to the layer of communication that emerges as objects becomes haptic and kinetic, opening a whole new world of interaction and behavior, through the sensitivity and richness of touch and force.

In conclusion:

“in the future we will communicate with identities, if these are people or objects doesn’t really matter” –

180360720.no

“Our goal is to first connect all the rabbits, and then connect everything else” – Rafi Haladjian

via 180360720.no

Tropicana Advert Commercial: Arctic Sun - Brighter mornings for brighter days

via youtube.com

This won us a Gold Lion this year, very proud of that!

Digital Analogue Check In Device

Over the weekend, I was thinking that it would be pretty cool if restaurants and bars had buttons or switches or something for customers to "Like" the place, or check in to Facebook Places or Foursquare. Sort of like that Bakers Tweet device, or the pizza delivery thing that Crispin had done a couple of years ago.

Then I came across this today.

An interesting installation on a University campus that prompts students to check in on Facebook Places, and spread the word about the University. Sort of garish and loud, it is different, but far from the same thing.

"We're encouraging students to check in, so when they do, it'll show up in their news feed and maybe their friends still in high school will see it over and over again," the university's marketing director told AdAge

I think there is a lot of potential to bring something more tangible and tactile to the check in experience. How much more effective would it be to do the check in and tell your friends through a real interaction? (Please keep your answer to yourself if you are a location awareness hater!).

Maybe it has already been done somewhere? I remember when I was at the customs counter in Shanghai, China earlier this year there was a feedback box right on the officer's counter, with three buttons to register your feedback. That was pretty cool, very easy to punch in an opinion after you have been grilled by security.

Questioning Assumptions

There is a great article in today's Ad Age that challenges creatives to ask for help. The author, Kevin Roddy is Chief Creative Officer of the awesome BBH, and he makes a very convincing case for the argument that, given the complexity of contemporary marketing, creative folks need to get off the high horse and solicit help. Technology and media are just too complicated

But when it comes to creativity today -- a new world that encompasses everything from iAds to augmented reality -- it's a whole different ballgame.

So far, so good. Hooray for this enlightened approach that acknowledges that the writer and art director as the unit of creative output needs to evolve and expand to include different skills and expertise. A lot has been written about this, we all seem to agree on this point. But there is one sentence in the article that made me pause, and question whether the advice offered really goes far enough.

As creative directors it is still, ultimately, our responsibility. We are, like it or not, better qualified to judge and direct great creative work, of any kind, than anybody else

Better qualified? Why? How can we accept a blanket term like creative work to account for everything possible today that goes beyond words and pictures (to quote Faris)? Does one Creative Director today possibly have the ability to judge and direct creative work of any kind? Is that even possible?

I fail to see how a Creative Director of an advertising agency with the experience of dealing with a very specific kind of creative output is best qualified to judge and direct the many different forms of creative output that brands today demand. This includes content, of course, but also the explosion in possibilities with brand utility, services and products. This has been discussed elsewhere, I know. The reason I bring it up here is because the rest of the article was so dead on that if you blinked, you might have missed this very simple yet fundamental assumption that persists in advertising agencies regarding the qualification of Creative Directors in the landscape today.

Much better, I think to commit all the way and imagine what true creative collaboration looks like today. Yes, I know that too many cooks in the kitchen is a recipe for disaster, and that the kind of co ordination and collaboration required today remains elusive. But that should hardly pardon us from asking the tough questions, and calling in to question the most basic assumptions on which the industry is based. My hunch is that this particular assumption is probably the one most deeply embedded in the fabric and culture of advertising agencies. It is taken for granted, and the toughest to truly challenge and change.

 

Location, Location, Location

I have been thinking about Facebook Places over the past couple of days. Though I have yet to try it since it has not been made available in Canada, I am interested to see how it differs from Foursquare. Or, more accurately, how I will use it differently, how brands might use it differently and how it might co exist with Foursquare.

In my mind, I find it useful to view location based services and what they offer through two distinct lenses. The first is, of course, the lens of PEOPLE that use these services. The second is the PLACES themselves, the actual locations in which we check in. Sure, it is an obvious distinction, but here is how I see some of the implications when we think of these two lenses as they apply to what is happening NOW versus what has happened in the past, or THEN. In other words, how do these services play out in how they deliver value right now, in real time, and how does that differ from how value accrues over time? And how is that different for people and places?

Here is my rudimentary chart

I. Places, Now

This is the data that is made available in real time about what is currently popping at a given location. It is the basic role of Foursquare, as far as Places are concerned; animating the present. How many people are right here, right now at this place? Think of, say, a bar or club, and in many ways this is pretty obvious, people have been doing it with text messages or by telephone for ages. I know that as a DJ this is a behaviour that we saw evolve through the medieval ages (the 1990s, as people would rifle off text messages to their friends upon walking in the club to let them know if the party was happening.

Of course, the present is most definitely vital to location based services, but it is far from everything. Making use of the real time information that is being provided is a huge benefit for places, especially commercial places, but it is different than the long term breadth and depth of information and data that location services can provided. More on that below, but Yelp is just one starting point as an example.

2. Places, Then

I think of this as the layers of meaning attached to locations over time. Yes, much of this can be, and is, commercial in nature. Things like loyalty programs, CRM type stuff. Huge for business. But I think it is quite telling that the example used by one of the Facebook developers when Places was launched was of a beach that you were at, and discovered that this was the place where your parents had their first kiss. How sweet!

This hints at the long term project and goal that transcends the present, commercial or otherwise, and is the beginning of an underlying digital archive of information and meaning attached to physical locations, or places. I should say, it is a beginning, instead of the beginning. There is a lot of interesting work being done by the folks at Bing Maps, for instance, to develop rich layers of meaning on city maps. But given the sheer size of Facebook, this project can take off in a very natural, mass way, by making it part of the regular social stuff we share with friends.

So, in contrast to Foursquares game mechanic driven focus on what is going on now, I think Places strength will be in building meaning over time for locations. This is a lofty goal, but as long as the behaviour of checking in becomes adopted and second nature, it will happen given the sheer size of Facebook. Here is how Augie Ray from Forrester put it,

Soon, the local restaurant or hiking trail may have as rich a personality as do the people on Facebook, not because everyone has visited but because your friends have.  And in the end, isn’t that what we really care about?  Not who is mayor of our local coffee shop, but what our friends did, said, and liked when they were there before us

3. People, Now

When Foursquare launched, it was described as one part social city guide, one part mobile friend finder. For users, the mobile friend finder is exactly the benefit of real time location data. Knowing that your buddies are drinking at the bar around the corner from where you are right now is compelling, and at its best, this is where Foursquare and the other services shine. It is why unlocking badges is such an important engine to the game. And though you are encouraged to leave tips or reviews for your friends or others about places, it really is one of the lesser used functions. The focus is on the now, the game and collecting badges. Indeed, the whole idea of the resetting leaderboard underscores the inherent temporal logic of Foursquare.

4. People, Then

This is where Facebook has the biggest opportunity. The goal is to make checking in and the social relevance of location on par with the many other social behaviours and interactions we already share on Facebook, like tagging each other in pictures or posting on each others wall.

This is from the Facebook Places page

If you're already using Places, it's like you checked in yourself without having to do a thing. If you're not using Places yet, it's just like being mentioned in a status update

Putting the check in in the wider context of social behaviours we are already familiar with will be a huge accomplishment if they can pull it off, and if we actually adopt it as users, because we will have the potential of seeing a lot of rich meaning emerge over time for how we relate with places in the real world. This can be incredibly relevant to our friends and network.

Part of this relevance will be in the now, so that we know where are friends are in real time, but in contrast to Foursquare, that relevance will also grow and emerge over time as it is woven in to the fabric of our social behaviours. Or, as the clever Facebook put it, the where joins with the who, what, when. Smart.

Thinking back to that first kiss on the beach example provided by the Facebook developer, it is worth noting that he intended it to show how Places will be meaningful twenty years down the road, as we develop the shared social history of location awareness with our friends and network.

With respect to brands and commercial applications, I think that Facebook might have got it right this time around. Instead of jamming an intrusive and strange interaction down our throat, like Beacon, it is banking on first socializing the check in among users so that it becomes second nature. I suspect that they are purposely waiting to roll out commercial applications because job one is to acclimatize Facebook users to using location features and discovering the many ways that they can deliver value, over time, in ways that go beyond just collecting loyalty points or a free latte.

 

 

 

 

 

Streams of Activity

Superb presentation exploring my #8 media axiom ;)

Motivation by Association

Just finished reading Bounce, a great book on the science of success. The author explores all sorts of hidden or underappreciated contributing factors to success, challenging the notion that some people are just born with IT. Among other things, this includes the Gladwellian 10,000 hours of practice idea, along with a range of cognitive behaviour type stuff to do with motivation and perserverance. One of the most fascinating sections looks at the social dimension of motivation. How simple shared connections trigger remarkable behaviours.

In sports, this can be seen in the surge of successful South Korean golfers following the success of Se Ri Pak (though it took the equivalent of 10,000 hours in years to start seeing the results! Same holds for the high rankings of Russian tennis players in the WTA.

But even more amazing was a Yale University study in which they gave a group of students a math test. Half the students were told the story of a yale professor who shared a birth date with the students. The other half of the class was given the same motivational story, BUT did not share a birth date with the professor. remarkably, the motivation level of the students was vastly greater in the first group. They spent 65 percent longer on the math problem, and reported significantly more positive attitudes toward math and greater optimism about their abililties. The shared connection of a birthday was enough to motivate them. Or, as the author puts it, "suddenly it was US doing this, as opposed to ME doing it.

 

New Doesn't Replace the Old

The Web is Dead article has caused quite a stir over the last couple of days. Here is a very well articulated argument for the belief that it is, in fact, not dying, and that old media and old technology is not replaced by new media or new technology. Instead, they evolve and morph and co exist (see Rule #8. Though the author is referring to technology in general, the very same applies to media, digital or otherwise.

I love the distinction here between a tidy timeline of progress as opposed to the messiness of technology in use.

An obsession with 'innovation' leads to a tidy timeline of progress, focusing on iconic machines, but an investigation of 'technology in use' reveals that some 'things' appear, disappear, and reappear...

 

Start Coolfarming?!

In Coolfarming, you’ll discover how to grow your own trends by creating an environment where COINs flourish; then—once a product has become established—extend the creative pool into a Collaborative Learning Network, or CLN, whereby a targeted group of interested people are brought in to learn the basics of the product, make suggestions for improvements, point out deficiencies, and push the idea forward.

When this feedback gets incorporated, things get really interesting, expanding the process further outward to a Collaborative Interest Network (CIN) that encompasses thousands or even millions of users, building what hopefully turns into a loyal fan base…and virtually guaranteeing the success of the idea

via innovationwatch.com

Do people really buy this? "Coolhunting was bad enough, but Coolfarming?!
This sounds to me like another misguided attempt to harness networks and collaborative creativity to make something viral. Beyond identifying trends, as in coolhunting, this book promises to show how to develop trends, from the ground up.
Sucker born every minute, and that.

Tweet Wisdom

My Twitter feed provides me with a lot of smarts and inspiration. Here are some links (no links) from the past week.

  

@biz "Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore." -Steven Johnson

 

@thinktank To be successful a #brand's story must connect with a larger conversation that's happening in the culture. #ttnotes

@iTweetArt  Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. ~ Theodore Levitt

@iaintait So Facebook is 'doing' Foursquare and Spotify. Why don't they just put the Internet inside Facebook and be done with it? Oh, wait...

@adverblog The future of digital is less digital

@ToddCB RT: "We don't have interactive strategists, you can't plan a strategy if you don't understand interactive" @mrhowell

@gagnier RT @danroth: RT @garyturner: 50% of Apple revenues come from products that didn't exist 3 yrs ago.

Particularly like the nod to the blurring of digital and analogue by @adverblog, and the astounding statistic regarding Apple revenues. Wow.

Underpaid Genius - Time Is A Cultural Artifact

In other cultures, time plays at a different pace, or seems unpaced, emerging like smoke from events, as opposed to being the metronome driving us forward.

via underpaidgenius.com

A lovely metaphor and contrast to describe the culturally constructed notions of time. Like most everything else that we simply take for granted, time is also a cultural "artifact.

Questioning some of our most basic notions and assumptions seems to me to be one of our biggest tasks and challenges as we head to a post digital world. This includes how we think of consumers and consumption, producers and consumers of content, friends and community, and, of course, offline and online.

I love this quote, Culture is what remains after we’ve forgotten everything we’ve read. If that is true, post digital culture is demanding that we forget, and unlearn quite a bit.

Article: Lessons In How to Go Viral: Use the “Bored at Work” Network

I like this thought from Jonah Perreti,CEO of Buzzfeed, on what you need to do, and who have to appeal to in order for your content to spread. 

“the web is ruled by maniacs,” and content is more likely to go viral if “it helps people fully express their personality disorders.” Couch potatoes don’t rule the web, he says — “crazy people do

It has to be slightly odd and a little insane to appeal to that critical audience of afternoon office workers who are key to spreading content online. 

here is the link to the interview with Mathew Ingram. 

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/13/lessons-in-how-to-go-viral-use-the-bored-at-work-network/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%29

"emulator" on töken concept on Vimeo

via vimeo.com

"emulator" on töken concept on Vimeo

via vimeo.com

"emulator" on töken concept on Vimeo

via vimeo.com

((tags: music, djing))

Desperate Times

If you work in advertising, your agency is probably in the midst of a major restructuring effort. And I genuinely hope that it’s a really, really unpleasant experience. Because the issues we’re dealing with as an industry are big ones - too big to be dealt with simply. The ad business has fallen dangerously behind in its understanding of technology and its effects on consumer behavior. Catching up requires hard work and difficult decisions.

via www.boardsmag.com

Very smart thinking on the future of the agency in the digital age. I fully agree with Matt's belief that the emphasis needs to be on the cultural and organizational shifts that need to occur in order for great work to happen. This includes a redefinition of the "creative" team, a willingness to embrace failure and opening the aperture to include a much broader range of skills within the agency.

From a planning perspective, tools to help us and the agency at large plan for experiences (not messages), social interaction and utility are just a few areas that we need to work on, among others.

5 Reasons Your Social Media Strategy Will Fail

Successful storytelling is much more. It involves conversations and participation. It involves a brand embedding itself into communities that are important to them. It's when consumers develop a new language around the brand, and the brand embraces and learns it.

via www.adweek.com

Short and well articulated point of view about the many pitfalls brands are falling in to as they rush to execute "social media" in the absence of a broader marketing strategy, and without considering how it fits in to a vision of the brand as a whole.
Truth is, I think we lack tools and models for how to integrate the marketing pieces together (including social media), let alone how to effectively facilitate the organizational shifts that need to occur to ensure that it no longer stays in a silo. Right now, I'd say we're mostly just making it up (which could be good, just makes it harder to be repeatable or consistent).

Here Comes Everybody

The Facebook "Like" button has just been installed in the top right there. And since this is the first blog post here in a very long time, I'm going to go ahead and make the hyperbolic prediction that this might just revive blogging.

Kidding aside, the next few months (weeks?) will be interesting to watch as more of the web becomes subsumed by the Facebook graph via the simple "Like" button. As far as this little remote corner is concerned, it is awesome to have such an immediate and simple link to Facebook. Which makes me think that this latest move by Facebook can all go fantastically well if the friction is removed as seamlessly as first appears. On the other hand, the spectre of a too powerful Facebook playing hard and fast with our privacy looms large indeed. Need to keep an eye on this, for better or for worse.

And for those of you popping in after months of tumbleweeds around here, welcome back. Thank you for checking in.

Link Round Up

Some of my favourite links and things from the past week, drawn from delicious, Twitter, Facebook and all of the other nooks and crannies I poke around in.

Nice updated version of the "Did You Know 2.0" video

New Nielsen research on Social Media

I don't think there is any one left that needs to be convinced about social media usage, but still, the numbers are staggering.

Americans have nearly tripled the amount of time they spend at social networking and blog sites such as Facebook and MySpace from a year ago, according to a new report from The Nielsen Company.  In August 2009, 17 percent of all time spent on the Internet was at social networking sites, up from 6 percent in August 2008

Very good presentation on the future of Social Media

Insights on the coming collision of mobile social networks, augmented reality and more. Nice work!

The Future of Social Media Gerd Leonhard @ PICNIC 2009

Immersive Storytelling

Two very good recent examples of storytelling done right using digital tools.

HBO Affair

Deep content, a follow up to the much praised "Voyeur" work.

The Mosaic Collective

This is for the show "Flash Forward" (which isn't half bad, judging from the season opener). I like how the website makes the show participatory, like a massive collaborative game. Basically, the site asks you to submit a future vision and compare that vision with others (if you watch the show, it makes a bit more sense!). Good idea, and I like the level of complexity and depth they've aimed for.

Seth Godin Brand Jacking.

I know there was a lot of chatter about Seth Godin's Brands in Public thing this week, but I found the whole thing tedious and boring. 

Cool things from Google

You might have seen this kicking around over the last little while, loads of great examples of Google/You Tube powered digital campaigns

Robotvision

The brand new Augment Reality application for the iPhone is pretty cool. I installed it only a few days ago, and I'm still fiddling with it, but so far, so good! It brings up Twitter posts, Flickr and Bing results. Cool! Here is a screen grab of me looking for a pub from my couch.

Good articles to read

Social Media a Central Park of the Mind. (Good analogy)

The New York Times on Coupon Clipping Culture

Great article on strategies for building mobile Apps

Thought provoking article from Adrian on the future of Specialists versus Integrators (in some circles, this is alternately referred to as The Future of The Agency.)

Google and Wharton collaboration on the future of marketing

How far from a McDonald's?

This infographic keeps popping up on blogs/twitter/facebook this week. It's a great example of what sticks. Compelling information coupled with the visualization to help us see the big picture, that also manages to tweak a little cultural resonance (only 145 miles from the farthest McDonald's?! isn't that sort of sick?).

Digital Cultural Invention

I want to take a stab at some thoughts about a recent post from Grant McCracken. If you haven't read it, take a few minutes to do so and see if you can help me out here.

So, the topic of the post is Grant's idea of the "Culturematic" machine (is it even a machine? I don't know). The Culturematic is a simple two step process of creating culture that starts with cooking up an interesting premise and then actually, you know, DOING it. Sounds pretty simple. And at the very least, we can agree that the cost of trying stuff out, experimenting, is pretty neglible. I love this slide from the awesome Google presentation, 87 cool things.

Kutiman had a thought about remixing bits and pieces of music samples in to a fresh new composition, and with a little patience and a ton of imagination launched it and made it happen. Just like that. And it spread, and got talked about, and the rest is history.

This is, of course, nothing new to those of you that have been witnessing the outpouring of creativity and accessibility to the tools of "cultural production" over the last few years. The democratization of creativity and flattening of the means of culture making are pretty clear.

What interests me more about Grant's "Culturematics" is that it gives us a glimpse in to how that democratization and accessibility is subtly but surely changing the types of things we are creating. We aren't just talking about producing the same kind of cultural artifacts and output. Our creative vision is changing. The world is becoming more expansive, more fragmented, we can know everything about any thing, and technology gives us the illusion to dream big and think of the unthinkable. In Grant's words, it starts quite literally with asking, "What if?".

This has massive implications. The ability to ask "What if?" questions, combined with the knowlege and expectation that they can not only be realized but also distributed has been promising to change culture, and in my mind part of that is bestowing the (super) powers of cultural invention to those who want it.

On that note, I love this thought on cultural invention from the Schulze and Webb presentation I posted here a couple of weeks ago.

It establishes "interesting" as the thing that culture does for us. We can release things in to the stream of popular culture, as Grant says, but if they aren't adopted/remixed/used they won't go far. Grant calls the product of "Culturematic" machines "quirky" ("it is the quirkiness of the things produced by the Culturematic that captures our attention. Hmm, we say".

Beyond being interesting and capturing our attention, and beyond the test of interestingness being adoption (which, after all, is the condition dictated by participatory culture), what about the types of thoughts and creative expressions that qualify? How are those being changed?

Skipping back to that Berg presentation for a second, consider the idea of a "macroscope", as the tool with which designers see culture. 

Designers, in order to see the very big, in order to see culture, which is much bigger than any one of us personally, have macroscopes.

The way I think of a macroscope is as something that shows you where you are, and where you are within something much bigger — simultaneously, so you can comprehend something much vaster than you suddenly in a human way, at a human scale, in the heart.

I love this, and it really ties in nicely with Grant's idea. Ideas can be macroscopes, and ideas that "put us in our place and let us see a much larger world" are especially powerful macroscopes. Likewise, the "What if?" questions start with me and my experience but expand to reveal a bigger, broader picture. In a way, they lift our creative gaze upward, even as they focus on an individual experience (like, "What if I visited every Grant McCracken in the tri state area"?).

I think of these kinds of ideas as types of "super" powers, in the sense that the Berg folks talk about. The world has changed so much that we need "macroscopic" ideas that help us see the bigger picture. This Twitter visualization tool has made the rounds this week, and I think it's a good example of a macroscope

It maps trending topics across a map, and if you read the description of the project you get a sense of how audacious, bold and ambitious the thinking is

Trendsmap.com is a real-time mapping of Twitter trends across the world. See what the global, collective mass of humanity are discussing right now.

This is amazing to me. When did we start to believe that we can really see what the "collective mass of humanity" are discussing RIGHT NOW? It may be unrealistic and verging on nuts, but yet it's interesting and compelling.

This, to me, is the really exciting possibility of cultural invention in the digital space that we are seeing. It might just be a conceit, and we might just be fooling ourselves, but the ability of technology to offer us the dream of creating the macroscopes that help us see the world differently is pretty amazing. To take the wildest "What if?" question and release it in to the world is a beautiful thing.

And when I think about it, the surge of creativity and cultural invention that the "Culturematic" notion represents suggests that we are all getting a little closer to having the ability to "touch the moon with one's finger tip", in the words of those Berg fellows). However, in contrast to the John F. Kennedy example cited in their presentation (please check it out if you haven't done so already!), which was based on will and determination, I think that the Culturematic is brilliant precisely because it produces, in Grant's words, "frothy" culture. This is more realistic, more attainable and, taken together, it is all the "frothy" small stuff that creates culture (and occassionally creates larger "resonance", love that idea).

In just a few short years, I think our focus is evolving from sheer awe at the ability to imagine things and put them out there to what is beginning to look like a more ambitious cultural vision. Less about cat videos, more about macroscopic ideas, projects and cultural invention. But I'm curious to hear your take on it.

Scope This

I want to avoid posting too many presentations and slideshows, but this is my favourite of the year. A very inspirational and visionary way to think about the role of design.

Here is just a small tidbit, a particularly powerful challenge to see the world differently and INVENT culture.

So I think, you know, we need macroscope ideas – like the dandelions which are like MP3s, and like the tomato which happens outside Spaceship Earth – we need macroscope ideas because when the world changes, what we invent – as designers – needs to change too, or it won’t be relevant.

Especially this year, you know. The world has changed in bigger ways than we can really see or comprehend. The financial system came close to complete collapse. Even the cleverest people in the world – literally, seriously, the cleverest people, by any measure you can think of – the cleverest people in the world can’t tell us a cohesive story about the collapse of the banks. So what do we do? It’s too big.

Music Future

A few recently released music related applications/games demonstrate how quickly the consumption of content is being changed by digital technology. What's particularly interesting about each of these is that they all use the design of artist brand "experiences" as a way to invent new business models. They are changing culture and changing business.

The first is a Timbaland beat making game for the PSP and iPhone. I say "game", but having played with some beat making applications on the iPhone, they're really much more than a game. They're powerful pocket studios, and I'm sure the partnership between Rockstar Games and Timbaland will take this to the next level. From a business model perspective, sure you download Timbaland's music for free, but with this application you MAKE beats like Timbaland. And what's more, it will be socially juiced up, so that you can post and share beats with other beat bangers. In a similar vein, the wildly popular T Pain Auto Tune app. I have this one, and it's as fun and hilarious as it looks here. It amazes me that this processor only costs a few bucks in the App Store. That kinds of technology would have cost hundreds of dollars as a stand alone unit not too long ago. So for less than $10 you can make beats like Timbaland and sound like T Pain. That's crazy. And if Clay Shirky is right, that technologies only become socially interesting when they get technologically boring, I'd argue that the accessibility to these tools almost renders the technology itself kind of boring. It's about the behaviour. And in this case, aligning that behaviour with the "brand" to unlock value. The last one is the huge new Rock Band release, The Beatles. This one is interesting because unlike other Rock Band releases that feature multiple artists, this one is JUST The Beatles. 40 something songs, all Beatles, all the time. It is coinciding with the release of a Beatles CD that I saw at Starbucks. That closes the loop on that one quite nicely. A digitally augmented Beatles experience that might just stimulate sales of the old school CD in a coffee shop. If there is any quick lesson here, it's that the technology is getting ridiculously easy/accessible, and that the platforms we're talking about (X Box, PSP, iPhone) have limitless potential to deliver rich, incredible experiences that go beyond "entertainment". They are redefining cultural production so that the experiences are not just games. They are closer to the design of behaviours of creative expression. They are helping us to BE something else, and that is pretty powerful stuff. Brands have the opportunity, as well, to discover what behaviours they can enrich and empower. The technology to make that happen is certainly not standing in their way. It's just a question of discovering what those bevaviours are and then, well, just inventing great things ;)

Interaction Design History

Interaction Design History

View more presentations from Marc Rettig.

With digital experiences becoming more central to how people interact with brands (and each other) we often talk about the importance of planning for experiences, not just planning for "messages". I feel that there is so much to learn about this, particularlyl as those experiences take the form of networked platforms. We need to think of how things take shape in a social context. Planning for individual experiences is not enough.

I found this to be a nice primer/introduction to Interaction Design. If you know of other good resources, please leave a comment, if you would be so kind.