Miles Forrest tweeted this Mixergy interview between Seth Godin and Andrew Warner a little while ago. It talks about the “Lizard Brain”, the biological impulse towards safety and security that hampers our creativity. Godin’s secret to success is to test out lots and lots of ideas, bad ones, even. You might say he just throws crap against the wall and sees what sticks. The trick is to keep throwing the crap. Better yet, get a shovel.
The internet allows this process to happen at a vastly accelerated pace. You have your ideas out there and find out if they work in a matter of hours. The problem remains, what’s the difference between a failed idea and a successful one?
Take this blog for example. One could call it a failure just because it doesn’t bring down the traffic or revenue of John Chow or ProBlogger. However, I enjoy writing it. It’s a great space for self-talk. If anyone comments, hell, I’m over the moon. It doesn’t take much time, and I can write off the hosting.
In the end it doesn’t matter whether you pass one metric or another in your ideas. What matters is the action, even it’s small as getting someone else to say “Yeah, someone should do that.” Most important of all, it should make you happy in some way. Even if at the end of the day, all you have is some crap sticking to the wall.
The internet is a funny place to try and make your mark. Your success is not only dependent on the number of eyeballs you bring to your content, but also how many people link to your content. Think about this. The greatest entertainment force of the modern age is basically driven by banal e-mails spamming up some office’s Exchange server.
This presents a conundrum for anyone trying to increase their traffic. How does one go viral? Do you just get all of your friends to post links to your site? Does buying adspace work? You can have great content all you like, but it won’t matter if no one hears about it.
I think the big question is if there is such a thing as shameless promotion on the internet. How many links can you post to digg, twitter or reddit before it becomes annoying? The problem with our society is that we’ve got it into our head that selling is not real work. We have all the tools of mass media at our disposal, but we shy away from using them out a sense of modesty. Unfortunately, if you are trying to start a business online, modesty might be a luxury you simply can’t afford.
Avatar is one of those movies that you just have to see. In our thousand-channel, billion-webpage universe, sometimes we need to have a collective cultural experience. The CGI is amazing. I couldn’t tell whether it was through the use of clever editing or new software tools, but the live action blended seamlessly with the animation in way I’ve never seen before. The story strikes a fine balance, incorporating enough hard science fiction ideas to inspire the visuals, but enough mythological tropes to keep the audience involved. It’s cheesy, but not too cheesy.
It is by no means a perfect movie. I would’ve liked to know why the corporation was willing to go through with genocide to get at their unobtainium (I would’ve called in macguffinite myself). This is a movie more about spectacle than nuance. But as the success of District 9 has shown us, there is room for intellectual SF movies as well as the booming blockbusters. Avatar has been an easy target for internet snark ever since the first trailers came out, but I find I part ways with the critics when they start talking about the film’s racist/mysoginist/ableist overtones.
I’m not going to go into every political grievance against this film. Even anti-smokers are getting into the game. Yes, Avatar is essentially “Dances With Wolves” in space, but that doesn’t make it white supremacist literature. People respond to this story, especially in North America because it is, in essence, their story. Most societies on the Western Hemisphere are here because of political edicts of older, more entrenched societies in Eurasia. As time went on, we adapted to our new home and eventually broke free of our autocratic masters from across the ocean. A lot of people died or were subjugated over this period of history, but it does not change the fact that it is our story. Instead of simply decrying movies like this, we should learn why they resonate with us, and in turn learn a bit more about ourselves.
What do stories like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, It’s a Wonderful life, and A Christmas Carol have in common? Now, I’m not talking about snow, Santa, and the Baby Jesus. That’s just trimmings on the tree, so to speak. If you were to take a critical survey of Christmas movies, poems, and literature, you might notice a few thematic trends. The protagonists all make a transition from a place of despair and doubt to a place of hope and belief.
Some people balk at this, claiming that these stories teach you that leaving behind your logical faculties is the key to happiness. While it’s true that these tropes have produced some truly awful Christmas specials, it addresses an issue that everyone (in the Northern hemisphere at least) has to deal with every December. The days are getting shorter and colder. The trees are black and bare. Those of us with central heat argue that there’s no reason for us to fear not making it through the winter in our modern society. Yet for reasons we cannot explain, we feel depressed. The negative thoughts and questions of our lives seem more present in the dark of winter. Are we good people? Are we living up to our potential? Do we really deserve all that we have? These thoughts begin to influence our decisions. At some point it’s not enough to know logically that winter will pass, that hope is real and just around the corner. We adorn our houses with the light that we so miss from brighter seasons. We give each other gifts so that we can symbolize in something physical. Some people even do daft things like erecting trees in their houses.
So if you’re concerned that you are celebrating a Holiday that is based on mere Christian/Pagan/Saturnalian traditions, or on things that aren’t real, ask yourself this. Is happiness you feel from Christmas real? If your answer is yes, then you understand that the celebration itself is its own reward. As long as we have the long, dark winter months, we will have Christmas.
How many of you out there practice digital hoarding? Do you have a collection of music, videos, or pictures that you’ve never seen before tucked away on some hard drive or other? These days, it’s so easy to generate large amounts of data with high resolution cameras, broadband internet connections, and DVRs that just squirrel away tv shows for you automatically. At the same time, because some of that data is protected by copyright, there is always some government or corporate agent in the press telling you that whatever you are doing with that data on your computer, it’s illegal and they are going to stop you by any means necessary. Most people’s response is to download like crazy before the hammer drops (it generally never does). To top it all off, the price of storage keeps dropping like a stone despite this recession. This will only result in so much downloading that people can’t possibly watch, read, or listen to their entire ever-expanding collections. If the RIAA and the MPAA can’t stop downloads, they have certainly found a way to keep people from watching them.
Have you’ve ever seen a movie in the theatre, enjoyed yourself, laughed, cried, ate lots of popcorn, only to log on the internet to find out you are nothing but a big fat liar? This happened to me just a little while ago. I saw “The Invention of Lying” in the theatre and had the grave misfortune of enjoying it non-ironically. The usual excuses were useless to me. Telling the nearby film snob to “turn your brain off” wouldn’t work. I believed the thought experiment of a world without lying was brilliant. I entered the theatre of sound mind and free of chemical influence. But when I say “The Invention of Lying” was a great film, I have a metacritic score of 58, a rotten tomatoes score of 56%, and a debut at #5 at the box office proving that I am nothing but an enemy of good taste.
There is a war going on in Hollywood. The talented writers, directors, and actors are locked in fierce combat with fearsome studio executives summoned from the stygian pits of ivy-league law schools. Their prize is nothing less than the creative soul of the developed world. The resources to create the films we enjoy are tended by soulless comptrollers with no regard for the product they are trying to create. When you see a bad movie, enjoy said movie, and then recommend it to your friends, you are feeding the machine responsible for “Meet the Spartans” or “Couples Weekend”. It doesn’t matter if YOU liked the movie. There is only one objective standard of taste, and if you can’t get in line, you are siding with the demons. In fact, for every movie you like, you are crowding movies that other people like. So if you want to cover all your bases, if you want build a film landscape that is pure and free of undue influence, you have to do the honorable thing. Never like anything.
Enlighten us. Fill us in. Give us the scoop, the lowdown, the dirt and the muck. What the hell were you just blathering about in that cryptic-ass facebook status?
Are happy? Are you depressed? Are you horny? Are you high? Really, it’s anyone’s guess. “So-and-so is…” are three dots really supposed to express yourself to your friends and family? Do we need to get the “real you” to get past the disjointed poetry, the typos, and the inability to use nouns?
All right. I get it. You’re deep. Special even. You have me completely enthralled with your non sequiturs. Now what am I supposed to do? Facebook messages often go unheeded because the reply box is aaaallll the way down at the bottom of the message. Should I phone you? Not a possibility. Your personal info was deemed much too precious to be molested by the rabble on the Internet.
Facebook has the potential to be the greatest gossip rag in the history of all communication. Tabloid celebrities are only a bland substitute for the people we are really obsessed with- each other.
Each one of us has a basic need to relate to the people we actually have a chance of meeting face to face. We want to praise the highs, console the lows, and occasionally engage in a bit of recreational schadenfreude. When we click “yes” on that friend request we not only agree to abide by the site’s terms of service, we pick up an obligation to relate to that person, as well as make some goddamn sense.
I want to direct your attention over to this rule often quoted by social media start-ups, the 90-9-1 rule for participation. It’s basically a ratio for internet users. 90% of them are lurkers. They just read posts and articles, they never comment, never share, and never click on one of those ajax-powered “thumbs-up” links. 9% are part-time contributers, you might hear from them only once in a while. 1% is the ratio of users on any given website or online community that produces 90% of the content. You almost begin to wonder if they ever see sunlight, but you see them over and over again on all your favorite websites.
With statistics like this, you begin to wonder, how democratic is the internet, really? If such a small ratio of users is producing all the content, are we really that much better served by the internet than traditional forms of media? There are several recommendations for addressing the inequality in participation by rewarding contributing users and making it easier to contribute in the first place. I think even deeper concerns about our society will have to be addressed before we make the internet the free speech utopia that we hope it to be. No one wants to write anything they’ll regret later. The media is full of moral panic stories about public figures posting information on the internet that they would later regret, as was the case with NDP candidate Ray Lam in the last BC election. On the other hand, people might avoid contributing because they fear they’ll be ignored. By the time they’ve come up with something witty to post in the comments section, the article they were reading is buried underneath dozens of subsequent posts. I’d like everyone reading this to consider what goes through their head when they post a comment, or decide not to. Either way, if I am lucky, perhaps you will post your results in the comments below.
[Today we have a guest post from Sara, who demonstrated the SMART board in my SMARTboard Jungle post. ]
As a fairly young middle school teacher, I am never old to my students until I start talking technology. They listen with fascination, and mouths slighly agape, as I explain to them that I can remember when the Internet was once only words, or that I received my first free Email account when I was in university. My students and I are only seventeen years apart in age, but we are growing up in two completely different technological generations. When I was in elementary school, a small computer lab with 15 tiny Macintosh computers was set up in the storage room behind the library. 15 students would go to the lab to type their assignments, 15 students would stay in the classroom to work on Math, and the teacher would run back and forth down the hallway to supervise. Now schools are teaching children with more technology experience then I could ever hope to achieve. The students I taught this year were born in 1998, meaning that they have never been without computers or the Internet.
However, just because students have technology skills, does this mean that they have technology savvy? There have recently been various articles and comments that decry the poor choices students make with regards to technology, like revealing personal information online, posting inappropriate pictures, and cyberbullying. Children have the technological experience that surpasses that of adults, yet they lack the critical thinking skills that enable them to avoid dangerous situations online. How can we both support and protect children as they are exploring a medium that they know more about than ourselves?
For many years, students have associated with their peers through passing notes in class or spending hours on the telephone saying nothing in particular. Some of this communication had the potential to hurt others, but the consequences stayed within the confines of the home, school, or at the very most the community. Today phone conversations have been replaced by text messages, and notes passed in class are now MSN conversations or social networking sites, yet the students are still relaying the same threats, slander, and gossip as before. The difference is they are displaying this information on a public forum, where the whole world could potentially see their actions. Kids now have the ability to post pictures, download videos, and correspond on Facebook. Many do not realize that the items they post for the enjoyment of their friends could be seen by other people for whom the items were not intended.
FYI, the issue of the creepy janitor at the end has already been addressed
One observation that I have noticed from explaining the Internet to students is that you cannot simply espouse on how evil the Internet is, and how they must never, ever post anything about themselves or they will be kidnapped from their homes in the middle of the night by a cruel cyberstalker. Kids know this scenario isn’t really realistic, and because they feel their intelligence has been insulted they won’t want to listen to the better pieces of advice that you want to give. Instead, be truthful. Explain how the Internet is a great place for learning new information and for communication, but just like in any public situation, we need to be careful. Instruct how to place privacy settings on the various Email and social networking sites the students use. Explain that they should not place pictures on the Internet that identify where they live or where they go to school, and discuss why using an avatar without your profile picture would be advantageous. As for cyberbullying, remind students that this is no longer a whispered piece of insult in the hallway, and that bullying in a very public forum could have public consequences. Explain the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and show how Canadian law interprets cyberbullying. Make sure that students understand that any negative comment they place on the Internet, no matter how well-hidden they think it is, has the potential to be discovered.
Overall, try to explain Internet safety to children the way you would discuss computers with a colleague. Explain simply the points that may be common knowledge to you, and never speak down or condescend. The most effective analogy that I feel worked with my classes was to compare the Internet to a bulletin board at school: if you do not want information posted on the board for the entire school to see, then you should not post this same information on the Internet. Children are not dumb. Some Internet dangers may not have ever occurred to them, but if they are given guidance and knowledge most children can amaze you with the mature decisions that they make.
It pains me that I should comment on something like this, but the insanity of this story is going unchecked. Perez Hilton was allegedly punched by Will.I.Am’s manager and within minutes the internet lost its mind. Men who don’t even read Perez Hilton’s site were jumping to the fore with “GOOD, HE DESERVED IT!” What the hell? Then you have this other gallery of hypocrites pulling their pants up to their chests and saying “Weellll, I don’t think Perez should’ve been punched, but he is trash and a provocateur, etc. etc.” Bull-tweet. They all subscribe to the same baffling brand of mob justice that makes people go ape-spazz over cartoons of Mohammed. And for what? How many people do you know, Mr. Digg Commentor, or Reddit/Mixx/wasteoftime.com commentor, that have been made fun of by Perez Hilton? Answer? Zero. None. Nai. Nada. Sorry to drag you back to the real world where people work hard and pay taxes, buddy. Will.I.Am just had his best sales week ever, and his biggest problem is this twit with a netbook? He should be so lucky. If you want to call Perez names for crying his eyes out on youtube, that man (for lack of a better word) is crying his way to the bank with the extra traffic and ad revenue from his site.
For all the rants on the ubiquity of celebrity news, I’ve been able to avoid all the specific causes of what happened and what Perez said about the Black-Eyed Peas. I still don’t care about it. The only celebrity news that I care about is the kind that’ll lead to the Marvel Avengers movies. If I have any questions, I go ask my wife. That’s it. What I am angry about is the hypocrisy surrounding the idea that he should be silenced when we as a society have decided that we want to read what’s on his site and give him a ton of ad money to update every day.
Perez doesn’t deserve to get punched in the face. He doesn’t deserve to have his website taken down either. All the verbal abuse that the internet can dish out won’t affect him, he’ll just throw on a crown of thorns and dance around for your amusment. Look, I know it’s horrible that celebrity news has taken up such mental space in our society, but it seems like the more we fight it, the more we feed the beast. In fact, I don’t know why we have this demarcation line between “Important Stuff” and Celebrities. Haven’t we already voted with our attention and our dollars that it’s just as important as Iranian Revolutions and Shuttle launches? We can’t innoculate ourselves from tragic heroes and comic villains, it’s practically in our DNA. Instead of just complaining about it, we need to understand what void people fill up when they log on to TMZ or Access Hollywood. The answer will be just as important as an electric car or fusion power.
[Today we have a guest post from Sara, who demonstrated the SMART board in my