It’s been a while since I last posted. I’ve been trying to figure some things out. I also started a new job which is slightly all-time consuming. But I’ve also been really trying to find a reason to write and for a long while, nothing seemed to be inspiring me. Recently, work has felt a lot like it did in 2001 when all the money fell out of the web and innovation went through the floor.
Web 2.0 was a bit of a revolution, but it’s not really anything tangible. Social’s pretty neat, but it’s kind of hard to get excited about getting $5 coupons on Facebook and I’m really feeling that the excitement of social is kind of past. Mobile is neat but to me it has yet to really transcend the web and transform our lives. And I guess at the end of the day I’m still waiting for the thing that’s truly going to give me the same high I had when I was first discovering the internet. I guess I’m still trying to figure this whole thing out.
But I was inspired by something recently. It was a simple idea that I found in a post on Smashing magazine (http://bit.ly/k5yU0R). Make something yourself. The thing is if you’re not inspired, then there has to be room for improvement. And while all of these digital platforms and ideas out there are not very exciting on their own, there must be millions of ways they can be combined and enhanced to do some truly amazing things.
And one of the best parts about making something for yourself is that YOU are the client. You are the person who benefits from what you make. And if it helps you, it’s probably going to help other people too.
Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of AIGA Talk in London
November 22, 2001“1
YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.
This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you…
For 7 weeks now, I have been lifting weights, improving flexibility, speed and balance, playing beach volleyball, biking 7k each way to work (and all over the city) and eating better. It’s amazing what you can do in 7 weeks.
- Daily bike rides to work leave me with a wicked tan
- People whispering “He’s hardcode!” after I biked to work during one of our torrential downpours of the summer and arrived more wet than if I’d just climbed out of the lake
- Having to add two additional holes to a belt to get it to fit
- Being able to play with and carry my 2 year old for much longer
- Being able to - for the first time in my life - touch my toes without hurting something
- My fiancé calling my sexy and me believing her
- Seeing my love handles almost gone this morning
- Feeling proud to take off my shirt
- Being called svelte by a friend who hadn’t seen me in over a year
- Climbing stairs is no longer a chore
- Faster reflexes saved a bottle of wine that otherwise would have smashed
Web 2.0 goes way beyond rounded boxes, icons that look like bubbles and really nice gradations. It’s become more about online conversations. The sites where this is happening are like a great human conversation compilers in that they allow for people to connect in a infinite amount of ways, all through one place. They allow many-to-many conversations, many-to-one conversations, one-to-many conversations and one-to-one conversations. Many of these site also allow people to have conversations with their data. An example would be a site like Mint.com where users can manipulate their already existing financial information to show them better ways to spend, save and generally understand their money. All this really means that the scale at which people communicate with each other and with their online data is becoming so big, it is becoming the majority of how people use the internet. Conversely people are less and less passively surfing or reading online. We cannot predict how this will continue other than to know that it will continue to be more and more true and continue to evolve.
Web 3.0 to me is all about the data. All data. Everything from census polls to medical and scientific research to personal shopping habits to search engine results to traffic information to weather patterns to social media conversations to EVERYTHING. I am really excited about the time when this concept reaches critical mass. That’s when the internet will really take on meaning and power. That is when all of the stuff that everyone knows out there will start to be shared and compared and crunched and processed as one data set. That is when the internet becomes one giant computer for everything and everyone.
Depending on how open people are with their information, we will start to see all sorts of people creating mashups of seemingly unrelated information and displaying it in really interesting ways. A great example of software that’s built for this is Hans Rosling’s Gapminder which was picked up by Google in March of 2007. It’s freely available to use which makes it poised to take advantage of what I think is coming. The knowledge and learnings that will pour out of this data - if it’s handled right - will be astounding. The trends and correlations between things we can’t even begin to see now will open our eyes and, I believe, launch an age of discovery explosion.
I have always believed that information is gold. In the last few years I have had to revise that to “information is free, making sense of it is gold.”
Video via David Gillespie.
I’m been slowly becoming acutely aware of something lately. The fact is there are so many exciting things happening with media lately: social, mobile, HTML5, semantic markup, open-data movements, users as content creators, etc. and many people out there are starting to get that all of these new fun tools that people get to work with are not what is important, but rather the message that delivered over them and the experiences people have because of them are what are important. This is very exciting because the face of advertising and communication is changing very fast. The digital network that surrounds us (difficult to call it the internet or digital or anything specific because it is becoming so pervasive and so ill-defined) is starting to mature in a way that no longer feels like an experiment, but rather something familiar and more natural.
So what is bothering me then? I think the problem is two-fold. First, I still haven’t seen anything (or very few examples) where someone has done something truly revolutionary with all of these new and meaningful tools. And second, I haven’t done anything or thought of anything truly exciting or revolutionary despite being completely aware of what is now possible.
I think the reality is that I have sat on the sidelines, doing my job, for a long time and I haven’t contributed anything personal in a very long time. I think it’s time for that to end. I need to stop being a critic and start being a creator.
India was such an overwhelming, intense place. Every sense of mine was illuminated. The heat (40°C+) and sun and the ground on your bare feet as you walk around in temples. The smell of curry and incense in everyone’s homes and the smell of pollution and smoke in the outside air. The sounds of car horns honking and loud 30 year old diesel engines of every kind everywhere. The taste of every dish - so rich, fragrant and intense. And the bright colours everywhere - in the clothing, the buildings and especially the trucks that are all hand panted. The crowds of people everywhere and the total lack of personal space that comes with living in such density is a very overwhelming factor. By the end of the trip I felt burned out. Used up. Spent.
But now, having returned, I have to admit that I miss it. It certainly feels as though something is missing here. The calmness is nice, but it’s almost the same as the overwhelmingness: I can’t escape it. There’s nothing here that compares to there. And now that I am aware of such an experience, I want to be able to experience it, even if just for a moment.
