Serendipity and Digital Media

Have you ever just googled two random words? I put in serendipity and discovery, not so random if you sit down and think about it. The Curies made many discoveries through one serendipitous event, louis pasteur, i think the DNA guys too had a revelation of sorts. Serendipity brings up images of mystical revelations, chance occurrences and blind luck. So why would i google that with discovery?

The word discovery is like a vector, it's got direction and magnitude, it implies focus and accuracy seemingly the opposite of the serendip. In college i took a Class called Leadership and Innovation where we studied serendipitous discoveries, ground breaking companies and the contexts which made these great occurrences possible, but all had a mix of blind luck, tremendous skill and intelligence as well as a vision.

Maybe i will tell you about my time as the manager of a ground breaking and visionary group of people, but i'm more interested in serendipity and it's relationship to learning. Humans in our earliest incarnations were hunter-gatherers; that right there implies we have two means of acquisition, hunting, planning, strategising executing and gathering walking around until we find the tree that has all the fruits. This is not to say that one activity does not involve elements of the other, bear with my generalization.

The way we hunt and gather information is not SO different. We either get online and search for what we want, we use addresses and key words to take us to where we want to go. Online we are generally vectors of what we want to find, we have a speed and direction and a goal in mind, when our need for information will be fulfilled.

Watching tv on the other hand is a gathering experience, you sit infront of the tv and flip through channels relatively random items of interest pop up on the screen and we choose to stay here or keep it moving towards greener pastures. Relatively recently in the history of tv we have "On Demand" which is usually a 1)secondary choice 2) limited in the scope of what is available and thus provides more of a gathering experience than a hunting one.

How would i differentiate an information hunting experience versus an information gathering experience?

Hunting implies a goal, you go to your friends house and ask him have you seen United By Fate 4? no? so you search for it, get these results and watch it. A hunting experience has a specific goal in mind, if you searched for United By Fate, a skateboarding video and there was no online information that would have turned into a gathering experience. Undirected information finding about the video, videos and sites related to it and so on, not necessarily the video ITSELF.

I think this is an important distinction to make. Microsites are critical to the gathering of information and tied to their respective campaigns are very effective at providing enough information or entertainment to make us feel as if we have actually hunted a piece of information to the point where purchasing the product could be considered secondary. and that is why microsites are SO effective because people that visit them rarely go on accident, they are searching for more interaction, information, video, snippets, product shots, colorways etc that weren't in their first exposure. Microsites are for brand hunters, without a doubt. hardly a nw concept.

Newspapers are a gathering source of information, you pick it up and serendipitously run into all kinds of information you were AND were not searching for. Print media does serendipity very vell, they cater to gatherers because with each turn of the page there is another tidbit for you sitting there, passively. Which is why tv and newspaper producers are fretting the most for their jobs over the next 5 years.Two German guys (?) are experimenting with on demand newspapers which could work, but just seems TOO analog for anyone but my own grandmother. There are a handful of resources i read regularly, only one of them being a daily news print publication]

I think progressively we are evolving into information carnivores hunting more and more for content that is compelling and not ALWAYS necessarily so new. I actively seek out more movies and music from the 70's 80's and 90's than from the past 10 years. There is almost NO instance in my personal life where i am subject to information gathering. You can count magazines but i read relatively niche magazines with AdBusters being the most general readership rag i read and i definitely don't watch tv on my own time.

I know i'm an information carnivore

Friday is for slackers, says my father.

first off, happy birthday to my dad, i could write a whole book on our relationship but ill save that for fly.paper

Cruising my RSSsubscriptions i found a little blurb from the web 2.oh conference with Tim Berners-Less who apparently was the final interviewee of the Conference. Cnet posted some of the Highlights on his talk which i'm sure was scattered and annoyingly stop-and-go; BUTthe inventor of HTTP made some good points from his historical promontory.

Check out the full article Here

You can see him stating to bring together the concept of linked data with HTML5 and the capabilities to forgo web applications and turn the web into an application.

Forge trust. Berners-Lee says, "One of the whole gating factors of getting the whole world of Web apps to take off is trust." He says that when Web apps get data from different services and those services similarly reach out to others, how do users, customers, and companies ever learn to trust a single site? What's the solution? He doesn't know, but believes it's an opportunity: "If we get a really good solution to the problem, then Web apps will be amazing."

I think the solution will be browsers that pull information in, in aggregate rather than whisk you off to a "Destination" per se. I think in this instance the power will be in the browser to keep you sitting still while information, web apps and data rush towards you rather than the current model of being delivered to a specific destination by our browser. a serendipitious web if you will.

If you want it everywhere, give it away. The Twitter founders must have heard this message before they built their product. When asked why Berners-Lee never thought about charging for the Web, the answer was practical and capitalistic. "Because we wanted it everywhere," He said. "We wanted a URL for every page." And he got it. Ubiquity would not have been possible with competing, paid hypertext systems.

yay opensource.

Don't build your laws into the Web. "Technology shouldn't tell you what's right and what's wrong," Berners-Lee said. "The rule of law applies on the Web. It's a platform for humanity." He does not appear believe that it is appropriate to code local laws onto the global platform, preferring to leave enforcement to existing means--police and courts.

I hope the FCC, verizon, ATT, conglomo bell etc are listening. Because Net Neutrality is a key to the evolution of the web and ultimately humanity. They need to think of it as growing pains, i'm sorry you have to spend money to speed up your networks so that your user base has equal access to the resources out there without having to bend the rules of traffic so your people/devices/information can go first, thats just not a sustainable solution. Besides if you don't want to provide service to people you should not be an Internet Service Provider.

like i said read the rest of Tim's Talking Points Here

Is the RZA a Prophet?

have you read the wikipedia entry for The Wu Tang Clan? Wow.

There were 3 small epiphanies while reading the article.
1) the Wu are the most prolific rap group in history. (and everything that implies)
2) Who ever wrote the Wu Tang Wikipedia page has an incredible insight into the Wu Tang Clan
3)The whole page is immaculately written.

a few excerpts;

One of the most critically and commercially successful hip hop groups of all time, Wu-Tang Clan rose to fame with their uncompromising brand of hardcore rap music, and their success enabled all 10 Wu-Tang members to pursue solo careers, with varying degrees of success. They have introduced or launched the careers of numerous other affiliated artists and groups,[2] often collectively known as the Wu-Tang Killa Bees.[3] In 2007, MTV ranked Wu-Tang the 5th greatest Hip-hop group of all time.

i don't trust anything MTV ranks, ever.

It had always been planned for Method Man to be the first breakout star from the group's lineup, with the b-side of the first single being his now-classic eponymous solo track. In November 1994 his solo album Tical was released. It was entirely produced by The RZA, who for the most part continued with the grimy, raw textures he explored on 36 Chambers. The RZA's hands-on approach to Tical extended beyond his merely creating the beats to devising song concepts and structures.[3] The track "All I Need" from Tical was the winner of the "Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group" at the 1995 Grammy Awards.

and finally;

Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... helped (with the likes of Kool G Rap) popularize the Mafia theme in rap music that remained widespread for more than half a decade. The landmark album touted a lifestyle patterned on drug dealing, regrets of living in harsh conditions, and partying (including popularizing the Cristal brand of champagne) which Nas, Mobb Deep, Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, and other popular artists all borrowed and/or expanded upon these themes at points in their respective careers.

The Wu-Tang Clan's slang has long been a staple of their music, wherein members would blend Five Percenter terms, Kung Fu/oriental words, and comic book and street terms to create their own nicknames for actions, people, places and things (such as the christening of Staten Island as "Shaolin Land" and money as "C.R.E.A.M."). The RZA noted in the The Wu-Tang Manual, that Raekwon was an originator of a great deal of the slang used by the group.

It's just a really well written document about an incredible rap group that originated slang, originated the mafia themes in rap; subsequently the whole bling era occurred as the music industry's programmed response to the Wu Tang. As individuals they were varied and had clicks even within the group. Rae and Ghost and cappadons when he was on, they put him on. Method met and fell inlove with red man, they've been married ever since. haha. RZA and GZA rapped on each others albums a a lot.

U-god, Inspectah Deck and Masta killa rapped more on each others albums than anyone's as well. And the cliques had different flavors and styles even within the Wu. The WuTang Clan was nobody's monolith.

Honestly right now i am more intereted in the first round of solo albums from the Wu Tang; Tical, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Ironman, Return to the 36 Chambers and Liquid Swords; all albums feature RZA production exclusively and all of those albums are on different record labels. The way RZA structured the original Wu Tang Clan deal with RCA allowed all the members to sign solo deals with any other record label but Wu the group would do so many albums for RCA.

Power Move by RZA.

And the albums are among the Classics of Hip Hop. And he produced them all.
Just like a Great novel creates a universe, with it's own rules and flaws for us to reside in. Thats the appeal of comics and sci-fi movies and novels and the Wu Tang. They created a world so much like our own and so different from it, depending on who you were and what you wanted to see in the image of the Wu. Be it Gambinos, high level drug dealers, low level drug dealers, working people, super stars, assassins, traveling ronin or the city itself they created a muti-dimensioned world for us, the listeners to identify with and ultimately reside in, even if only temporarily.

The Price of Monopoly

I read a really good (and slighly scathing) article over at New York Times yesterday about microsoft and Steve Ballemer's conspicuously optimistic claims about the future of Macrosoft. The dominating force of computing can no longer be called Micro anything, they are a Macro company, they have software products in every realm of computing; desktop, online, music/music players, mobile, search, business software, servers everything.

The article started out,

With the arrival this week of Windows 7 and a host of complementary, slick computers, Microsoft intends to undermine those Apple ads that mock PCs and their users as stumbling bores. Mr. Ozzie, who plays the role of visionary and strategist at Microsoft, says Windows 7 will let PCs keep pace with other computing devices and, in short, finally make them sexy.

yeah i believe it to a degree, windows 7 has resuscitated my belief that windows can actually produce a decent product that does not completely disregard my affinity for privacy in what i download and where i get it from. Since my life conversion to Apple i have realized all the impositions that microsoft had placed on me and how i desperately tried to escape their grasp by using as much 3rd party software i could, but i still lived in the windows world even though my house was a winamp/firefox/photoshop construction.

Using windows is like wearing a turtleneck sweater, it feels like a really weak midget is trying to strangle you. hyperbole aside...

These days, however, Microsoft has legions of doubters. While it still commands a prominent and profitable position in computing, brand experts say consumers stumble when trying to define what the company stands for and whether it can create a grander technological future.

“Microsoft sort of disappeared from the scene,” says Regis McKenna, a Silicon Valley marketing and strategy expert. “Every once in a while, they have a delayed Windows release or something like that. By and large, I think the marketplace is focused on what Google and Apple are up to.”

Critics of Microsoft say it has hugely underestimated market changes and plotted a long and winding course toward irrelevance. It remains too fixated on its old-line, desktop-based franchises, they say — too slow, too predictable and too, well, Microsoft

Honestly, what is Ballmer (the CEO a.k.a. the boss) doing? I don't feel like microsoft has really had a solid focus since they had to clean up the vista mess. If ram and hard drive prices hadn't been falling like a dying duck in recent years vista would have been improbable. The typical midrange $600 laptop now comes with 4 gigs of ram, the logical maximum that most systems can handle. So microsoft has been pushing 64 bit solutions which provide NO kind of advantages for typical computer users and actually kind of confuses them (why dosen't my 64 bit windows explorer show flash content? because there is no 64 bit flash). The average web surfer does not NEED 4 gigs of ram but their computer does just to be moderately responsive, run multiple programs and play video smoothly. Sad.

MY dual core imac ran faster than any PC i ever had, with one gig of ram and i didn't have to defrag the hard drive every 5 minutes. If you don't save anything but documents on your computer defragmenting your hard drive will not afford you much performance.

and more

Mr. Ballmer contends that Microsoft is the only company prepared and positioned to merge computing from both ends — the desktop and the cloud. “We’re just investing more broadly than everybody else,” he says, adding that, when it comes to software, “I want us to invent everything that’s important on the planet.”

noble sentiment mr. ballmer but i think apple is already doing that...

and it shows in their revenue...
Google too...

we know, intricately the game plan of microsoft. They over power emerging markets with pure development money and then lock the market down the low prices and high licencing fees. Thats how this whole Operating-System-Bundled-With-Your-Computer schema started. Also netscape vs internet explorer, windows mobile vs. everyone. Not only is their search engine 5 years late, it's call Bing, But-It's-Not-Google and looks like google. Yes their homepage is jucier and a secret ploy to install Silverlight on your computer (which i did, so i could peruse the different daily pictures) search for a torrent on bing, absent. As well as a host of other content which macrosoft is excluding from their search results. Typical microsoft hedgemony in action.

My life is too short to recount all of the balls in the microsoft court that were dropped, windows mobile 6.5, vista, zune just a bunch of products that are released, microsoft says oops, we missed a lot of stuff and then attempts to gain market share from a compromised position and make it up to the early adopters who were the first to purchase the products and redeems themselves to the rest of the consumer base. They have been playing the catch up game with themselves. Which is why i am so impressed with the quality and polish of windows 7.

A lot of the article talks about cloud computing, tying together products and services in your house; beaming netflix to your tv, computer and dvr; playing videos on your tv, computer, phone and mp3 player; syncing contacts between your computer and phone easily; mobile internet devices, location sensitive devices and programs etc. but microsoft's lack of integration thus far leaves me doubtful the behemoth will be able to integrate their sugar AND milk into their coffee, honestly.

To be fair the Xbox platform, Xbox live has been successful example or integration and cloud services but i'm not a gamer, im a pc user.

My mom has a zune and she has to use a zune specific software to manage her music rather than windows media player. The zune software is way cooler but it also does not rip music or movies and has limited integration and NO features that recognize our home network.

Rivals now simply dismiss Microsoft as a laggard rather than hitting it with the Evil Empire criticisms so familiar in the 1990s. In its place stands Google, which now has Microsoft’s mantle as a game-changing technology behemoth and is also increasingly perceived as a dominant competitor whose power warrants concern

To be fair, microsoft will prove they can create polished solutions, which probably means working MUCH closer with hard ware developers. They are going to have to prove they know how to design interfaces that are compelling, which has not been their strong suit, ever. They have to show us that all of our devices with microsoft can be networked and live up in the clouds. Last of all microsoft has to answer to the consumer, 2009 is the first year that consumers bought more computers than the enterprise market segment. More than ever people are bringing their personal computer into work (mostly apples) and our digital life is at the same time tied to the hard ware we like and disconnected from a specific computing terminal more than ever.

And microsoft will have to act like they know this.

5 year plan

In 5 years i'll be 30. What do i need to have accomplished by 30? Where in life do i want to be at 30? 30 is the gateway to the rest of your life.

By 30 i need to have found my groove. finding that groove in life lets you really get the most out of your investment of time and energy and in my mind is the fountain head of high reward for your internal and external goals. ok. So where is my groove? what is my record?

Lets start with the present. Currently, unemployed; sources of income, negligible. Ground Level we are at. I'm applying to be a substitute teacher with my sights on acquiring a full time position. I would also like to take the GRE with enough time to make some fall graduate school deadlines (april 1st)... Oh so you want to go to graduate school?

Yeah definitely, i want to do a program in Educational Technology or Learning Systems Design. I'm really interested in designing computer lessons. I need to take the things that i teach people now and put it into lessons and courses. I definitely have a photoshop course, a few lessons i give until the student figures out where they want to take the lessons. Same thing with the google suite of applications, start with gmail, go through and show them all the interesting and interlocking pieces of the google-verse.

I digress. I'll go anywhere for grad school but i have my eye on UMBC; Howard and/or UMD would also be choices if i could get in. But i have to take the GRE's, i have to get a job i have to get a schedule.

I look forward to subbing because i'll be able to craft a regular routine which means i could start cycling again if i wanted to. i dunno cycling burns at the heart of me, i miss the cycling community in all of it's different sub-genres and gear heads. i digress? no because at 30 i want to be cycling, i'll never give up skating but cycling especially being able to live your life on a bike instead of in a car adds so much Life and Quality to my Quality of Life.

At 30 i want to bean entrpreneur, i'll work for someone if i really want to, on a project or environment that is compelling. But mainly i'll be on top of my businesses, a non profit organization that teaches digital literacy to kids and provides space for creatives to be just that, fly.paper and consulting for other people and organizations who have needs to create learning systems and learning organizations.

By getting my masters i'm looking for the framework to be able to create lessons and courses from the things i find myself teaching already as well as new topics and things i don't necessarily know of my own volition.

At 30 i want to be able to create whole websites with the ease that i create graphics now. I want to have some more functional knowledge of java and flash.

Is that too much for a 5 year window?
I've got some good ideas and the will to make them work.

Social-Eyes

This is a story about marketing and some stuff i have personally noticed especially in regards to my little business, MyComputerGuy. MCG is something i have been doing in my free time for the past 2 years. After i started for for apple retail in may of 2007 i experienced a renewed interest in computers. i saw a need that needed to be fulfilled in atlanta and started MCG, MyComputerGuy, a computer consultant that mainly focused on helping people transition their lives to the apple platform and providing technical support to small and proprietary businesses. I started MCG because there was an inundation of people coming to me and telling me they had a need for a Guru in their lives. Some one available to provide responsive support and really provide targeted help to help people make the most with their time and cognitive effort while working.

MCG started strong and only got stronger as i came in more contact with people inside and outside of my day-job and for a time, all-day-jobs. My friend ended up moving to Atlanta and while we stayed together he took appointments for me. His specialty was digital photography and photoshop so all the virginia-highlands house wives loved him and i did home network set up, introduction to the mac and fixing all but the most simple technical problems we took care of; A well oiled machine.

Then i left my job at apple and i noticed my business was slowly declining. I wasn't running into as many people that needed my services. My business had no marketing strategy other than "Hi I'm offie, i can fix your computer, yeah really..." and the results brought repeat customers, word of mouth referrals and some randoms. But after i went solo again i really had to work to find anyone who needed my assistance.

i realized that wifi coffee shops are excellent places to troll for people with computer problems. Along with college campuses, any other random wifi spot, apple stores, best buy, people buying a new computer usually have one at home they don't know how to fix. I was selling woodallions real heavily on the street and starting to get some retail accounts when i realized that i could really work some coffee shops and the neighborhood of castlebury hills in general. Bingo. It was a good investment of time. So much so i got a job at the coffee place, Tilt it was called. i was there usually from 6am to 12 or like 10 to 4.

i liked both shifts for different reasons but i usually met some sort of client in there between 11 and 2 and getting their money during or shortly after work. It was a genius set up. my demographic has almost always been young black professionals, People who wonk on their computer a lot but aren't sure how to make the most of it, or how to make it work for them, much less fix one. And Tilt was a hotspot for young black professionals, college kids from the auc, ga state and tech, bike kids and all the castlebury art farts it was a beautiful mix.

Business was growing on all fronts; wood money, computer money and some other investments were all putting out a good amount of income and really affording me a life at the same time. Ride my bike to work at 5.30 am make coffee, eat breakfast, look cool, quick appointment at 12 or 1, sell woodallions in the after noons at auc or ga state or piedmont park. go to evening appointment or ride home and work on fixing pc's. do it all over again. my marketing was built in.

Now i am going through another period of no "built in marketing"; meeting and greeting is not part of my daily schedule. i am finding that i am having to go online and really find people to "run in to" that need my services. I have built a small clientele but i am having problems growing my word of mouth and being seen on the scene. my social network here in maryland is weak and

MCG really thrives when i am working and have a lot of interaction with people in general. i'm a very personal marketer, i'm really good at selling myself in person but i am still trying to figure out how to get a technical following. fly.paper is a cultural following thats easy, birth of the cool. But how do you get people who need help to find you? the yellow pages of blogging, of social networking.

all of this to say i probably need to go to some professional networking events to meet more of my demographic, headnod and handshake with people who find my time and skills to be valuable. get a little dressed up eh? i am of the firm belief that the amount of money i make in a given week is proportional to the number of strangers i met the previous 7 days. living in the burbs in hard on an urbanite like me.