David Emery OnlineGeneration Why?
When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears. It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned.
A fascinating – albeit long – article by Zadie Smith for the New York Review of Books on The Social Network (a film which you really should go and see if you haven’t already).
Lots of good points are raised, but I’ve picked this quote out as it represents a feeling that I’ve seen crop up in a few places – that being that in someway online communications are in someway lesser then traditional forms – and it’s a feeling that I think is seriously wrongheaded.
Social network presences for me are not a replacement for physical interaction but an additional representation of yourself. In fact, I think often they can represent a person better then they do in real life, depending on the character.
Another point worth pointing out – there’s also an underlying tone of ‘all your data belongs to facebook’ but that’s no more relevant then what phone network you use; it’s just the delivery method – it’s the content, which can be (often simultaneously) on all sorts of sites, that matters.
Visit ➔I believe in WikiLeaks.
I wonder what it’s like to be 14, to be watching this unfold and have Wikileaks as the base of certain assumptions you will make about media, news, government and information for the rest of your life.
I am proud to live in a world where this is possible.
WikiLeaks defines the effect the internet has on the world; information cannot be controlled anymore (once more then a small handful possesses it), and you just have to deal with it.
As Anthony says, WikiLeaks is like Napster, but for governments.
Visit ➔It’s As If Apple Has Hired Don Draper
Watching Apple’s iPhone 4 FaceTime commercial again, it reminds me of something: Mad Men. The television show is starting its fourth season in a couple of weeks, but the commercial takes me back to the end of season one — an episode called “The Wheel.” I’ve actually talked about this episode before because it contains a scene that is perhaps the best in the entire series. In it, ad man Don Draper gives a presentation to Kodak showing why Sterling Cooper should be handling the account for their new picture projector.
I really like the FaceTime ad for the new iPhone; yes, it borders on (well, cannonballs straight into) over-sentimentality, but it’s an ad that actually makes you feel something and you can’t say that very often.
It feels old school, timeless, in way quite reminiscent to what Pixar achieve with their films.
If you haven’t seen it:
Visit ➔I hope ebooks usher in a world of ideal book lengths
I hope ebooks usher in a world of ideal book lengths. I.e., detached from the burden of having to be "book-sized"; less filler, more focus.
A great idea – after having now spent a bit of time reading on the iPad (2 books so far) I firmly believe this is the future of the medium, and it’s a lot more adaptable then paper ever was.
Of course, whether the publishers will get their heads around this sort of thing is a whole different question…
Visit ➔W+K: Honda commercial
Great new ad for Honda from W+K, love the photography style
Well isn’t this beautiful:
While we’re on the subject of adverts, I really like the new Cadbury’s Flake ad as well:
Visit ➔Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch
This clip is raw from Camera E-8 on the launch umbilical tower/mobile launch program of Apollo 11, July 16, 1969. [...] The camera is running at 500 fps, making the total clip of over 8 minutes represent just 30 seconds of actual time.
Awesome (in the true meaning of the word):
Visit ➔How Software Engineers and Designers Can Increase Their Focus
There’s a really simple tip almost everybody can use to increase productivity tremendously. Not only is the tip free, it might even make you a bit of money. *And* it’ll make you smarter. It’s really easy, there’s only one step involved: Sell your TVs.
I don’t get how anyone can fail to see that TV is one of the most important source of culture and knowledge we have.
Might as well be saying ‘sell all your books’ or ‘don’t listen to music’.
Visit ➔