Florian Brody asks: Should we wait for a random start-up to come up with some new web technology to find out about the next major change of the media that defines our society?

Well, from someone who hangs out with "random start-ups" here in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I proffer that they are not quite so random. Defining society and defining technology and defining media -- these "definitions" are all connected by two-way streets, so one cannot happen without the other.

Continue reading "Not So Random" »

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Here's a new twist, for me, on virtual meetings: virtual locations. Here's an upcoming briefing from Creative Commons on copyright basics. To attend, you need to "go" to a place called Kula 4 in Second Life, a 3-D virtual world.

Via Joi Ito's blog.

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Connected? Has the Net been Darwinian in its brief evolution, and are the characteristics of a networked society akin to different genus/ nationalities, seemingly different people within a network sharing common characteristics or ideals?

Continue reading "Connectedness and Technology - Evolutionary Siblings?" »

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Should we wait for a random start-up to come up with some new Web technology to find out about the next major change of the media that defines our society?

In a connected society, media are the shared stories modulated over the diverse connections available to its participants. Every well-connected society shares a diversity of threads and will use a range of different media types available to them to exchange news, establish and maintain connections and establish history.

There are obviously many different types of connected societies. The society we live in is well connected via digital media. By no means do digital media connect everybody in the Western industrialized world, but those working in the field - and this most likely includes the readers and writers of this blog - are reasonably well connected to each other. Tribes around the world are organized around the media available to communicate in space and in time.

Continue reading "How Media Is Changing Society - Connectedness" »

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For those of us fascinated with Star Trek probably the best, in terms of blending technology and story, was the Next Generation series. In that was the idea of a Holodeck, a virtual reality world where you were the program and you experienced it real time, in fact, I can't actually recall anything like TV in any of the Star Trek episodes. In Gene Rodenberry's future world you did, you didn't watch.

I wonder if the Holodeck is closer to the collaborative story telling world we are imagining, which seems a long way off, or if there is something closer. This week I concluded that the latter is likely more true.

Continue reading "Real Reality TV - Further Blurring the Lines between Audience, Author, and Cast" »

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It's not just about 'citizen journalism'. This is about content co-creation with people who don't just want to consume media but also want to create.

My job as a journalist used to be a proxy storyteller because I worked for the guys that owned the press. Now, it's about telling a richer story quoting the audio, video and text my 'audience' is creating.

Continue reading "Partnering with 'the people formerly known as the audience'" »

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That's right.

TV and movies and all that jazz are not replacing our imagination, just adding another layer to it. The Hobbit I met when I was 12 years old is still with me, even after I saw an actor play Frodo in The Lord of the Rings movies. Anna Karenina's pale shoulders are still the ones I imagined in my mind when I was 15, despite having seen numerous film and television versions of Tolstoy's masterpiece. The creation of the producers and actors is simply another layer to the experience and doesn't detract from the initial magic.

So bring it on, YouTube! Have your growing pains. But what I love is that the generation first to embrace emerging technology doesn't analyze anything before jumping right into the fray. The kids figured out their cell phones have the capability to record 30 seconds of video. What do they do? The grab a hairbrush and start lipsynching to Brittany and before long, it's online for all of us. It's brave, it's ridiculous and it's progress.

Most of YouTube (and the 100 or so other companies that have become known in the Bubble 2.0 world as "the Flickrs of video") is horrible content. My friend (and creator of media aggregator FireAnt) Josh Kinberg calls most of the videos "Jigglers." And that they are.

But out of the morass comes gems like Rocketboom and Minnesota Stories and Bicycle Sidewalk and...even this on YouTube.

So read the book and listen to the radio and watch the TV AND check out some video online. Not in place of - in additon to.......

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I suppose every time is a time of wonder.

Rob Enderle wonders about whether the march toward "better" virtual experiences will prove disappointing, the way early TV was a disappointment for radio listeners who found their own imaginations both richer and more satisfying than what they encountered on TV. He wonders if games will take a "step back," akin to TV, as they become more fully wrought by authors and, ironically, more passive and restricted in their vision.

You could wonder, in a similar sort of "be careful what you ask for" way, about all that video flying about - its existence is amazing, but most of *it* isn't. Will we be youtubed to death, or drowned by a torrent of crap and drivel?

Continue reading "Youtubed to death?" »

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With the help of technology we have been moving through mediums of telling stories, and with each application of technology the need for the audience to use its own imagination has been diminished. This seems to be a trade off between the magic of our imaginations and the need to assure the audience actually sees what the author intended. As we gain reality, I wonder if we lose the richness of our imaginations.

Continue reading "The Future of Digital Storytelling" »

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Where are we going with digital storytelling or storytelling more generically? I don't know. Storytellers draw maps of what they want their audience to envision, while futurists are best advised to present what Columbus had in hand when he set sail: Blurry outlines punctuated by "There be monsters here."

The thing about maps is that they restrict possibilities. In this case, there are no limits, because we people things have demonstrated without fail the ability to learn and imagine new forms of expression. And for the storyteller, I can only say, "Go, explore and experiment because you'll learn." That experience is worth the price, because you'll certainly find a few monsters.

I'm struck by how often when reading about blogging, citizen journalism and self-made media that the advice offered as revelatory is nothing a journeyman writer hasn't been told by teachers, editors and how-to books. What they don't hear often enough in this "new world" is "take chances." Instead there's already a formula for blogging, an orthodoxy of podcasting, that priestly figures growl about.

We're free because there are monsters out there at the limits of our imagination. It's only when you find them that new expression erupts into life. All the advice in the world won't make it safe where stories are going, unless society makes safe the law, as it seems to be inclined to do in much of the world today.

So, what's ahead? I know there will be some digital technology and a lot of human history wrapping a monster carcass, bloody, sensual and nourishing. But I haven't got a map for you.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

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Humans have a rich and complicated relationship to Place. We leave something of ourselves everywhere we go. We leave our mark where we've been. If we look at memory from the perspective of a Place it would be a collection of experiences; the couple who got engaged there, the kid who tagged (as in graffiti not as in folksonomy) the wall there, the person who worked there all his life. A Portland historian (I believe Paul Falsetto) calls this the "Stank of Humanity[sic]"- the remnants left on concrete steps of a library that have been worn away over decades of climbing. This term is authentic and rich because it is not what the library would package and promote but what proves the building to have been important to thousands of people.

We try to take Places with us-

Continue reading "The Beautiful "The Stank of Humanity"" »

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"One day we'll all have computers, one day, perhaps even your mother will have one! One day we'll be able to send messages down the phone line, and when you're grown up you'll probably have a computer so small it will fit in your handbag."

As a technologist I have at times been asked to 'future gaze'; to imagine what will come next, as if working with this stuff makes us better able to predict the next thing; what is about to come. To an extent this is true; we are able to look at trends and predict that things will 'get smaller', 'be faster' let us 'do and talk more'! True futurists thankfully take a longer view, and tend to embellish their vision of the future with ideas about how we may change our behavior and society. But as we get more and more technology and new possibilities every week, "imagining" seems harder to do.

Thinking about what we have imagined on this blog; we have learned about how we communicate and tell stories, hopefully imagining how we will tell stories in the future.

Continue reading "Imagine That!" »

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The narrative and storytelling in digital media is at the core of We Imagine, jointly created by a team around the world, and this week's topic is a recursive view on the blog and its narrative.

We have been talking about the concepts of time, space, memory and how digital technologies influence our stories.

But who is the audience? The group of listeners attentively sitting on the floor in a circle around us? Everyone alone in front of their screens?

Continue reading "WE IMAGINE: WEEK 6 - Digital Storytelling" »

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We are moving into an age where technology is becoming more symbiotic (though, I know, it often doesn't seem that way). A time when our mutual dependence on technology better fits us, as people, into the solution and where the combination of technology and human is actually better, not just somewhat faster and more complex, than we are separately. For those of us with great memories for events but horrible memories for people, this application of technology to better enhance our memories could be a godsend.

Continue reading "The Birth of Personal Digital Memory" »

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Well, actually, that's not true. I remember Jack, just not his last name, where he lives, his phone number or his email.

I met Jack at the theoretical Jack Conference and we had a really intense conversation about Jack and now I think he's going to hire me. Or we're going to interview each other. Or start another conference.

But I remember nothing. Because I don't have to anymore. The Internet does it for me.

Continue reading "I Can't Remember Jack" »

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First off, a brief apology for being late to this party. It was my first long break from work in a year, and I needed to unplug and unwind.

Now, a good friend, Euan Semple, says that blogging is like plugging into a networked mind.

But whether it's blogging in particular or the Internet more broadly, I also see distributed memory. It's more than a hyperlinked narrative, the Internet is linking together personal histories.

Continue reading "Networked Minds, Distributed Memory" »

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Is it possible to create a shared digital media environment that allows people around the world to share ideas based on shared memories, Florian asks. Fresh from two days of pontification at the FT Digital Media Conference in London this week, I can testify that YES ! we can do this.

Continue reading "Shared Places" »

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I recently wrote about myself, something along the lines of, "She lives her life online." It sounds terrible, doesn't it?

Having just read Florian's article introducing the topic of Memory, and having considered the notion of a "digital memory" further, I truly have no idea what I was on about with such a grandiose and rather silly statement!

Continue reading "Living Online" »

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I have a secret blog. Not an embarrassing, squealing blog, but the kind you hold close. The kind that caresses your cheek like a whisper.

I'm not after a big audience or notoriety with my blog. It's not a secret to be discovered or revealed. It is a secret to be shared, selectively, with an understanding that is immediate and without bounds.

Continue reading "...Of the Way We Were" »

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The underlying structure of every medium is the memory it entails. In the case of a blog, the strange relationship between the "now" of the reverse chronological presentation (who reads yesterday's blog entries?) and the permanence of the Internet that makes it virtually impossible to delete an entry you want to erase defines a new relationship between the medium and its memory.

Storytelling has memory at its core - both the memory of the story and the shared memory of the community that creates the context for the story. While a good story lives from the references made to shared knowledge and with every story on the Web potentially available to anyone who bothers to read it, these references need to be acquired.

The narrative memory of the Web allows stories to be told and retold at an amazing speed. Last week someone posted a video about the Microsoft iPod, a fun little story that requires a significant amount of background knowledge about Apple, Microsoft, marketing and design but the insider group seems to be rather large - it has been viewed on YouTube over 130, 000 times and copied all over the world onto different servers. Try this with a little parody in a conventional medium.

Continue reading "WE IMAGINE, WEEK: Memory" »

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We are all still struggling to find the time to find time. I think the immediate initial instinct we all had/hoped was perhaps that the digital world and digital media would liberate us from the shackles of structured, fixed schedules and time contraints.

Continue reading "Will We Ever Find the Time?" »

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The one thing we all seem to have in common is that we sell our time. Interestingly enough we often sell that time so we can have higher quality time at a resort, an exotic location, with our remote family, or as simply a quiet moment at home. It seems to me that one of the missed media opportunities is consistently providing guidance on better ways to spend this universal currency.

Continue reading "Time: Optimizing the Universal Currency" »

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I've enjoyed everyone's discussion on the olympic scale of our need to see the Olympics live. I've been too self absorbed to think about watching the Olympics. But reflecting on the collective experience it enables made me look longingly at my dark and dusty television screen. I was intrigued enough about our need for collective experience to do a little research and found an insightful, bite-sized interview from All Things Considered.

It is an interview with Professor Shah, School of Journalism and Mass Communication University of Wisconsin, Madison from February 3 on "The Superbowl being one of the last collective experiences in America". As we grapple with temporal scarcity and the outlook of a shrinking and finite future,

Continue reading "The Superbowl and The Long Now" »

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Here's the beauty of the Olympics if you watch from the perspective of another nation: It's not all about us, or U.S., if you're an American. I watch the Olympics on Canadian television, because I happen to live near enough the border to get the CBC.

The Olympics isn't compressed into commercial tidbits quite so much as U.S. television would have us believe and, while Canadian coverage is about national pride, the CBC doesn't forget what it is like to be excluded from the podia. It's a more humble telecast, not about the glory of the nation, though there's plenty of that, but allows the celebration of sport to come through.

Let's think a bit about the discontinuities of the Olympics, because that's what folks here are talking about.

Continue reading "Beyond Borders" »

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The following quote is a re-enactment of too many conversations I've had because of the Olympics:

"Hey! You won the bronze metal!" (very funny) or "Is that your sister?" (yes, my mother named both of us the same name) or "I didn't know you could skate" (even funnier).

So every time they roll out the presses for Irina Slutskaya, I spend much of my time telling stories about Russian last names and feminine endings and how the guys at the border in 1980 weren't very sensitive to that kind of thing and slapped my sister and me with my father's last name.

Ok, so that was the intro to get you to think I'm charming and funny and Russian. Here's the real issue: I can't watch my regular NBC shows because some guy wants to snowboard in the Olympics and I'm forced to live with someone else's idea that snowboarding is more important than, say, "ER?" See, this is where technology comes in to my diatribe. (Stay with me.)

Continue reading "Get Your Olympics Out of My Television" »

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I have two concerns with the Olympics.

First, I'm nine time zones behind live action, so NBC had little choice but to fake the drama of live sports events, even though those of us with constant access to wire reports already knew what happened. Solution? Start webcasting the Olympics live.

Second, Tom Brokaw did a wonderful, roughly 50-minute feature piece on 86-year-old war hero Vernon Baker, whose actions helped liberate Northern Italy in 1945. I watched the mini-documentary (right before the closing ceremonies) at the home of Baker's biographer, Ken Olsen, who is a former colleague and a good friend. It's the longest Olympics-related feature NBC has ever done. It was marvelous, and it was about a local hero, and my friend was quoted repeatedly. I'd love to have access to that feature on the Web, so that people who didn't see the broadcast can view it. Where is it, NBC? I went looking for it but couldn't find it. If it's on the Web site, it's well hidden.

Time is the issue in both cases. We want instant access to news as it unfolds, but we also want continuing, archived access to news and features. Is that such a difficult concept?

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An admission: The Olympics and Television are not high on my list of priorities, however I feel happier in the knowledge that I am not the only person contributing to this Blog who doesn't watch a lot of TV. I wonder though if the need to watch just a little 'Olympics-on-TV' is perhaps about memory, about reliving our own times past.

Continue reading "Time, Torino and Tea" »

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The "time of now." That's what Florian called it, reconnecting with the "time of now." I like that concept, the phrasing of it. Online, time is now. It doesn't matter when I post this entry. If someone finds it two years from now, reads it, shares it with someone else -- that is their time of now. Time no longer stands still; it is alive and dynamic and full of surprises. An unexpected IM...email...SMS...the format may vary, but the connection is always of the moment. Always on.

Continue reading "Time Capsules" »

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Time flies like an arrow [check the link AFTER you found all 5 meanings of the sentence ]

Time 1: Olympics

For the last 16 days millions of people around the world did their best to honor the Olympic spirit that participating is more important than winning. Athletes from 85 countries won 252 medals, yet millions watched in front of their TVs. The winter Olympics are much more Europe-focused than the summer games but still people in the US sat in front of their TV to be part of the event in real time. I observed my neighbor at 3:30 AM sitting in front of his TV with a laptop on his knees watching some Olympic competition. I had a reason to be up - my daughter is 16 months and decided to be hungry - but what would tempt you to watch TV at this time in the age of TIVO? -

Continue reading "WE IMAGINE, WEEK 4: Tempus Fugit" »

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It just doesn't seem to matter where I am physically anymore. And this is good because I tend to move around a lot. I wonder if we are moving to a time when we will seldom leave our home physically but will still travel the worlds, virtual and real, more aggressively than ever before.

Continue reading "Does "Where" Matter Anymore?" »

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Isn't that the beauty of what technology has given us? We can - and I do - dip in and out of mediums and media every day, absorbing and expressing some thoughts in one format while preferring another for a seamingly similar end purpose. But, location matters enormously I think in setting the priorities of whatever we're thinking - as Mitch articulates in his post.

Continue reading "Here, There, Everywhere and Nowhere!" »

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The sound of my home is different depending on the time of the year, whether there are leaves on the trees or not. During the winter we can hear the freeway that's about a mile from the house. In the summer, when the leaves wall in the yard, it's almost silent, except for the sound of the birds, particularly the three eagles that live on the lake, who pierce the air with their cries. I don't know if Florian is a dog when he is on the Internet, but I do know that his home includes baby sounds.

Continue reading "I Am Speaking From a Quiet Place" »

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To paraphrase a famous cartoon - on the Internet nobody knows where you are as a dog - or as a human - [dog] and with all the wonders of the information superhighway, cyberspace and telepresence, why would anyone bother with the singularity of the one place the body happens to be at this very moment.

Continue reading "WE IMAGINE, WEEK 3: "Where" Matters ..." »

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I'm going to write about the Olympics. Don't worry, I'm no Bryant Grumble. I like watching the Olympics. Okay, I don't like the opening ceremonies so much but I watch them anyway because that's how it always begins. This year, though, something's different.

I'm bored. Really, really bored.

Continue reading "Put the Pedal to the Medal" »

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I've just come back from Boston where I met some amazing people and talked about digital identity. My friend Eric Rice is in Seattle at the Podcast Hotel conference. I'm procrastinating buying a ticket to Austin, where I have to fly to attend SXSW.

I'm sure you're all aware of what I'm trying to say here: Location is important. Geography has not been dissolved by technology. We still have to BE THERE to get it.

Certainly, I haven't been to an office that employs me for writing in weeks. I work from bed for the most part. So in that case, technology allows me to tell stories without having to tell them from a specific location. But I still have to GO THERE to get the story in the first place.

Continue reading "You Are Here" »

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I live in Williamsburg (Brooklyn), a neighborhood 40 percent industry, 40 percent residential (predominantly Polish until very recently) and 20 percent hipster scene. The hulking factories, mostly empty, are gorgeous reminders of New York's past; the patina of "authenticity" is intense. One of my favorite local restaurants is a Mexican joint, Bonita. It's got a counter and formica tables. It's comfortable; nothing fancy, but it's "perfect."

The other day I was making a trip to the bathroom. I noticed the walls were painted a bright green that I thought was typical of a color I would see in Mexico. Then I noticed that the sink was made of marble - well-aged and used. I started thinking. Hmmm... the food is delicious: Is it authentic or is it "adjusted" for my "sophisticated" taste? The graphic design of the menu is just right. The exposed pipes and open kitchen look terrific with the funky linoleum on one wall and tile with embedded mosaic on the other. What I realize is that this restaurant is "perfect" for me. It's a perfect match for my sensibilities. But then I wonder if I like this place because it satisfies my desire for "authentic" experience or because someone has figured out what people like me want and made a "place to order."

I start to ask myself, "Is this restaurant a "real Mexican restaurant"? Are the owners from Mexico? Did this place evolve over a long period of time? Turns out that it used to be a "real" Mexican diner but was completely renovated (except for cheesy linoleum on wall, the "Comida" sign decorated with a lobster out front, etc.) by new owners who also operate a "perfect" little French bistro around the corner.

I feel more than a little silly and shallow when I realize how easily my "search for authenticity" is fooled and satisfied.

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I wanted to write about Amsterdam as a backdrop for a conversation about technology. Amsterdam is a great conference venue; people from all over the world come for a few days of conferencing and culture, of the Rembrandt variety and of the variety that is illegal elsewhere.

But does it matter where we go to talk about technology, where we are when we make technology, and where we are when we blog about a place?

Continue reading "Technology - Coming Soon to a Town Near You!" »

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As I read Florian's investigation of a normative code in blogging, it sparked the thought that perhaps, we are at the beginning of an emergence of a global normative code. Historically, universal languages were fringe experiments in idealism. Imagine life if we communicated in the universal musical language of Solresol. While beautiful and elegant, it was just too irrelevant to meet people's needs and surely couldn't be successful created by one person, nation or association. The only firm criteria for a common global language is that it evolve organically out of a need and desire for people around the world to communicate.

Continue reading "Emerging Global Normative Code" »

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I'm seeing the emergence of a skill set that, while it isn't really new, is trending to become much more powerful as technology moves more aggressively into the news and entertainment space. That is the skill of good summary that can simply get you to the information you need or pull you into stories you wouldn't have discovered. It is making a huge difference in Web traffic, and may even save a life or two from time to time. Let's explore this a bit.

Continue reading "News in Small Bytes - Thinking Through the Smartwatch and Slashdot Lessons" »

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I've been thinking a lot lately about how to convince mainstream media editors that technology and the Web provide tools that can be used to create better journalism. These editors tend to be a skeptical bunch, and for good reason. There's always some new fad or new study that recommends how, for example, to better reach younger readers. Nothing seems to work very well. And for too many of these skeptical editors, migrating to the web is considered more of a financial imperative than an opportunity for better storytelling.

But editors know good journalism when they see it. In the spirit of showing rather than telling, here are some examples:

Continue reading "Better Storytelling, Better Journalism" »

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This is our media now, right?

Continue reading "A Day in the Life..." »

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I am not (yet) a huge fan of convergence; my "smart phone" just isn't very smart. My camera, my iPod, my Blackberry all do what they are meant to do and well, so talk of converged devices as the holy grail doesn't rock my boat. It may do in the future, when I get my hands on a 'converged device' and it does all these things better than the individual devices, but I think we're still a long way off.

So, diversification, then... I am seeing diversification in the Web services I am using at the moment. My list of Web tools is now really a "blogger's toolkit," but it didn't used to be. I am using Typepad, Blogger and Wordpress, as well as Upcoming, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Preople and Plazes to consume, create and share content and ideas. These services also do well as business and social networking tools and through these services I have made 'real life' friends. Each of these services does what it does well. They are 'open' and public, and most also interlink or 'plugin' to each other as Di-Ann Eisnor discusses in STORY-SLINGING (MOBL/BL/VL/PL)OGGERS:

Continue reading "Diversification of Web Services & Diversification of Storytelling" »

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I got in trouble this weekend.

I got in trouble by mathematically assuming that everyone loves technology because it helps TELL STORIES. So here's my buggy postulate:

Irina loves technology because it helps tell bigger and better stories. You love technology. Therefore, you love telling stories.

Not true.

The "trouble" was a case of two lifestyles clashing. One life lived off the record, though online. The second (this one being mine) lived in a blog, on a vlog, and any other combination of media and technology possible to date. (I plan to expand living in public as technology allows me more ways to do it.) The storytelling function of technology appears to be the only reason I am so obsessed with it. Of course, I appreciate technology for the way it saves lives and all that. But I LOVE technology -- I hold it close to my heart -- because it allows me to talk about you and, more importantly, me, in so many different ways and so simply and so immediately.

Continue reading "For the Record, We're Off the Record." »

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There are rare individuals who seem to speak in long, well-organized prose, eloquently and extemporaneouly laying out sub-arguments, stringing them together and building up to their main point. Less rare are those who are charming, funny, intelligent, and we can sit in a dark corner booth for hours with them, a rapt audience for their stories and their life philosophies. Both kinds of people are, in a way, social lions who exude their own authority and command respect in classrooms, at board meetings, at cocktail parties, etc. They are kings of the human jungle. Aren't our socks knocked off, though, when it turns out such people can't write? And I'm not talking about spelling or grammar - skills, really, that anyone should be able to pick up with some attention - but written expression, the ability to organize one's thoughts and put them down on paper (or on the screen) with some coherence. But perhaps they don't need to since they seem to get plenty of love anyway.

Continue reading "Tongue-(Un)tied" »

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You'll have to forgive me. I'm a little upset tonight. I just found out I'm on the other side of the generation gap. Oh, trust me, I'm desperately clinging to the edge, but that's only until I get caught.

A recent Pew study said the following:

Internet users 12 - 28 are more likely to IM, play online games and create blogs.
Internet users over 28 (but younger than 70) are more likely to make travel reservations and bank online.

Shocking, I know. But after getting past the "What, this is news?" reaction, it occurred to me that they just declared the virtual generation gap begins at 29. And while I am closer to 29 than 70 (I double-checked on my solar-powered calculator), it is still rather distressing. Should I stop IMing and blogging? Do I need to rush online and make travel reservations??

I remember record players. Quite fondly, I might add. I remember typing papers in the lounge of my college dorm. On a typewriter. The click-clickety-click-clack-clack when I was on a roll. The soft electric hummm when I wasn't. And I remember discovering "cyberspace" (yes, we all remember when it was called cyberspace - without the quotation marks). But even more than that, I remember my introduction to email.

Continue reading "Let Freedom Ping" »

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We Imagine Week 2

During the first week, the postings of We Imagine explored the relationship of the reader and the narrator, the different forms of storytelling, reality and blogs as conversations. For the second week, I want to take the discussion one step further: What happens to the written language we use inside blogs and outside, when we write by hand or on a keyboard? (BTW, when was the last time you sent or received a handwritten letter? Send one today and explore the experience.)

Continue reading "WE IMAGINE, WEEK 2: You Win - You Lose" »

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"My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we usd 2 go 2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :-@ kds FTF. ILNY, its gr8.

Bt my Ps wr so {:-/ BC o 9/11 tht they dcdd 2 stay in SCO & spnd 2wks up N.

Up N, WUCIWUG -- 0. I ws vvv brd in MON. 0 bt baas & ^^^^^.

AAR8, my Ps wr :-) -- they sd ICBW, & tht they wr ha-p 4 the pc&qt...IDTS;!! I wntd 2 go hm ASAP, 2C my M8s again.

2day, I cam bk 2 skool. I feel v O:-) BC I hv dn all my hm wrk. Now its BAU ..."

Continue reading "The Language of the Medium OR "What I did during my Summer Vacation"" »

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I've had several discussions lately (if by lately I mean this week and a year ago) about the crazy evolution of language and grammar and capitalization practices telling stories using the new technologies. It's no mystery to anyone who reads my personal blog, my Flickr account and even some of my professional blogging gigs that I am not a fan of capitalizing the letters I am capitalizing here. (As much of a narcissist as I am, I feel strange capitalizing the self-referrential "I.")

Continue reading "making a case for lower case" »

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It is perhaps no coincidence that the buzz words of authenticity and transparency swirl around us today as storytelling breaks new ground in connecting us with an immediacy that none of us could have imagined even five years ago. Immediacy brings such a glare, and the instant feedback mechanism is a check and balance that storytellers have never had to deal with. What will this do to the style and substance of the narrative? We are just scratching the surface....

Continue reading "Will the Narrative Change?" »

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I remember when early desktop applications began to allow robust design capability to an average user. Over time this turned the design industry upside down. With a fairly modest startup cost it was possible to be a designer, talent notwithstanding. For a moment the design community conversation seemed to focus on how design would suffer by opening it to the masses. In some cases careers were at stake, for instance the whole typesetting industry. But the changes were imminent due to expanded creativity and productivity gains.

Continue reading "Ready To Imagine?" »

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I've been contemplating the notion of storytelling's evolution for many years. The questions raised here have to do with modes of telling and listening, as well as of behaving as a storyteller, whether it is an amateur or a professional undertaking, and if the new modalities of telling and listening change the story. That's all well and good, though I have never really enjoyed stories, like, say, MacBeth, that hadn't changed, at least in the telling, as when it was translated into Japanese as Throne of Blood, or into American English as Scotland, Pa., or arrived at the conclusion with a clever twist that kept MacBeth among the living and put his Lady in an asylum, even if it is the same story I'd heard or seen before.

Continue reading "Pardon the Interruption, I Have a Story to Tell" »

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Either I'm drawn to storytellers, or all around me people have developed magic powers that turn mundane reality into tales of enchantment, delight and fear. The tools for great storytelling are all around us and they come with a built-in forum and audience;Flickr, Platial, Myspace, and of course Livejournal (OG) and loads of blogs.

Continue reading "Story-Slinging (Mobl/bl/vl/pl)oggers:" »

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When Gloria Pan asked me to get involved in this project, I wanted to bring a European perspective to the conversation. I am not sure if this topic is really 'European,' rather the projects are taking place fundamentally in Europe, although we'll be using online tools to attract global collaborators.

I am interested in how all sectors can grasp, harness and develop online collaboration tools for their own ends, and particularly how this is happening with respect to, and generated by, the arts. The collaboration tools we speak of here in this conversation are ripe for use and misuse by the arts. It seems we have come a long way in terms of collaborative conversations and storytelling, but there is another construct that I feel is worthy of discussion: collaborative creativity. Collaboration in the arts, for me, is not only documentation, or "archiving" in an arts sense, but working together, openly discussing concepts or product development, inviting comment and criticism, and help and ideas. It is working together, in a flexible open ended way - research, development, discussion and promotion as a cyclical process.

Continue reading "Art & Collaborative Creativity (Some European Projects)" »

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As a Creative Technologist (designer, maker) I work with Web and mobile technologies together. Apologies to those who are more familiar with the term "wireless"; I suppose we Europeans think the wireless bit goes without saying if technology is to include mobility. (A different debate perhaps?)

I wanted to share some thoughts on mobile and its relationship with participatory and collaborative communication, blogs and citizen journalism. Current "moberati" topics seem to focus on grasping "mobile 2.0": How can mobile learn from Web 2.0, can it use this as a blueprint? I think not, but I am excited about a new era in "mobile thinking." This new thinking, perhaps with ancestory in Web 2.0 ideas, is focussing on mobile as an accessible, open, integrated channel, a channel that can be created by independent developers, where the profit share is fair, and the environment fosters, not forces out, creativity and innovation.

It's a large debate, and perhaps too big to tackle. So I have tried to pick out key areas for questioning; I warn you, I don't have all the answers!

Continue reading "Imagine Mobile: Useful, Accessible, Integrated" »

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For the past few months, I've been wondering about "what is real?" and "what difference does it make?" In December I wrote a post on a book about this, Are We Real or Are We Memorex?

My girlfriend Ashton and I went to Las Vegas for the weekend to think more about this question in an environment which begs the question every five minutes.

Continue reading "What Is Real? And What Difference Does It Make?" »

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I gave a talk last week at Berkeley with the following abstract: For the past several hundred years, intellectual discourse has been shaped by the rhythms and hierarchies inherent in the nature of print. As discourse shifts from page to screen, and more significantly to a networked environment, the old definitions and relations are undergoing unimagined changes. The role of the expert is being challenged. The roles of author and reader are morphing and blurring. During the Q&A;, someone asked me about the distinction between amateur and professional work.

Continue reading "The Power of the Unmediated Voice" »

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Today over on TechNewsWorld, I'm exploring the idea of what is likely to replace the iPod, the Blackberry, the laptop, the cell phone and the PDA. This is a new class of device I'm calling a communicator (primarily because few would make the connection to the name "global," which is vastly more accurate). The device itself, represented by products like the DualCor and Flybook, is a blending of every personal device we use today into a very small, highly portable, highly personal device. It promises to give us the content we want anyplace we want it, but I wonder if we have really thought through what the likely proliferation of such a device might do to traditional media.

Referenced Piece: "The Next Big Thing: What Will Displace iPod, Follow Blackberry?"

Continue reading "Imagining the Communicator" »

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I am overwhelmed. Blogs. Vlogs. RSS. Podcasts. Video clips. Not to mention your regular ol' newspapers and magazines - weekly and monthly - whether virtual or tactile. How am I supposed to keep up with it all? I keep hearing in my head that Bruce Springsteen song: "57 Channels and Nuthin' On." That's right. I grew up in New Jersey. And I'm nostalgic for the 1992 Boss who understood the feeling of wanting more. But now that I have it, how am I supposed to keep up with it all?

Is more really less??

Continue reading "Great Taste. Less Filling?" »

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Welcome to We Imagine!

Storytelling and communication always relied on technology, and for the last several thousand years, we were pretty good at developing technologies to tell stories - the mask and cothurn of the Greek theater; the amazing African costumes that often combine visual and acoustic elements; the ancient temples and gothic cathedrals; the laterna magica of Athanasius Kircher, Lumiere and Edison; and computer-based virtual-reality systems; the string phone, VOIP, plumes and punch cards. We continuously imagine and invent new storytelling technologies. The communication and presentation media obviously impact the story being told and at the same time tell a story of their own.

Continue reading "Imagine Blogs" »

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