How To Break Anything

If you look at all the interesting concepts for how the iPad will fundamentally shift how we think about content, each one is the result of clever writers integrating creative narration into their work. Artists change the world, not technology.

Addendum: The above was inspired by the comment conversation on the PSFK post linked above:

Michael Kowalski:  Hm, so the iPad could be a good platform for multimedia, games and augmented reality. Not much of a surprise there. I expect the textbook industry in particular will be utterly transformed in short order. But what about, you know, *real* books? I would have liked to have seen how, say, the next Martin Amis will be “enhanced” on the iPad.

Kyle Studstill: @Michael I tend to think of this about a variety of media/story content in general as well. Movies, for example. Everything about a movie, promotion and all, is about getting you into the theater, and once you’ve seen the film you’re done. I’d be fascinated to see a movie written such that the experience of “watching the movie” continued in some way outside of the theatre. Perhaps something is written into the script such that some common event occurs that everyone can be a part of (and anticipate) months after people have seen the film opening week. I don’t know. But I do think that the kind of “enhanced” you’re talking about comes from within the work itself, not necessarily the iPad that holds it. I think you’re right if you’re saying the iPad gives storytellers a fantastic opportunity to create something with the ability to be “enhanced,” and I hope they do.

To which I was referencing a thought that occurred to me once upon a time:

From the future: The evolution of movie-based entertainment

 

'why so serious?' via socialhallucinations.tumblr.com

It occurs to me that every movie-based campaign focuses entirely on getting consumers into the theatre to watch the film. There have been more and more interesting ways of doing this, through events leading up to launch day, but everything culminates in seeing the film in theatre and then the experience is over.

Seeing this today got me thinking: 'what if the Batman: Dark Knight experience were still something ongoing?' Something we were still excited about today. What if inherent in the plot and script of a movie there was something that made the story much more than a 2-hour experience? Something in the script that took the movie into real life, an event that could be held months after opening day, once everyone has had a chance to see it and understand how the event is an extension of the plot.

"As a public experiment, artist Julia Burns (alias: 'rose_burns') decided to blog on twitter in full view of the lunchtime crowd in Martin Place, Sydney, for one hour.

She sat on her living room couch, wearing ugg boots and a comfy sweater, next to her heater, favourite cup, and a box of chocolate mints as she posted tweets about her life in front of the Channel 7 building.

Burns is interested in the concepts of public access to the private sphere and the changing nature of privacy.

Do 'followers' read with the same zest in the real world as they do in cyberspace?

What is it like to follow a stranger's blog entries, while standing in front of them?

Why do individuals increasingly publicize their private lives?

Recognising the immense complexity and power of social networking and blogging sites, Burns does not wish to condemn these tools. Rather she wants to provoke, especially for the younger generation, debate on the integrity of some of their uses.

She is concerned by the increasing need for public acceptance and validation in the social networking scene."

I don't know if I agree right away on the need for public acceptance and validation as 'increasing.'

What has increased is our the ease with which we can satisfy it.

And like most things (read: everything), we come to find that there's an optimal balance, a sort of moderation.

That is to say, it may be privacy/public validation today, but it will most certainly be something else tomorrow.

I wouldn't be too worried about it. (but then, I'm not too worried about most things...)

5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted

This article is fascinating and of course hilarious, being Cracked (though I'm not prone to calling these types of things "creepy"...). Some things it calls to mind:

• Sheena Iyengar's The Art of Choosing, a brief section where she makes a bit of a case analogous to the "you're in a prison" idea of The Matrix
• Skinner Box? There's an app for that.
• Seth Godin's Linchpin, and the work culture we've created to indoctrinate employees:

Why do so many of us have that void? Because according to Everything Expert Malcolm Gladwell, to be satisfied with your job you need three things, and I bet most of you don't even have two of them:

Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);

Complexity (so it's not mind-numbing repetition);

Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).

I didn’t actually “like” the fact that five people had died in a terrible accident. Technically, I didn’t even “like” the story...

I called up an expert on language for some insight into this issue: Jesse Sheidlower, lexicographer and editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. Mr. Sheidlower said the evolution of meaning and interpretation is natural for language. He considers it entirely possible that a younger generation growing up online might understand “like” to mean something different than older folks do. “People are posting very heartfelt feelings on these social sites, and the option is to either like it or comment,” he said. “I don’t think it changes the meaning of the word, but there is a disjunct that is happening here, and it forces you to think of the word that is pointing to a story and not necessarily the content within it.”

“Like” clearly isn’t the only word that is seeing a change to its context or understanding. We are starting to perceive the word “friend” differently, too, thanks to social networking services. “There’s a point when these friends are really just people I have in common with others, or people I’ve only met once, but ‘friend’ is the only word available to say you know this person, even though they are simply connections,” Mr. Sheidlower said.

Couldn't help but reblog this, given my propensity to think about things in terms of "a long enough timeline..."

Noted that the actual excerpt from the above linked post is: "On a long enough timeline, every decision is a success, in the "you learn something from everything" sense. On a short enough timeline, every decision is a failure, in the "you haven't accomplished your goals yet" sense."

The idea of course is that on an even longer timeline, every decision is a failure. Or a success. Whatever 300 years later happens to mean to you.

At some point, we'll stop thinking of phones as devouring other devices; soon enough, we'll start thinking of it as devices that happen to be able to make calls as well. Kinda like how we had computers that just happened to have a solitare game on them too.

Eat the Big Fish is getting a second edition, looking at some of the changes in his thinking of the last ten years since it was written, and one areas he is looking to explore is "opportunity". 

"Do you know who invented the Cheeseburger?" asks Morgan. It was JWT in the 1930s, on behalf of Kraft slices who wanted to encourage the American population to increase their consumption of cheese slices. 

JWT suggested that they attach them as an ingredient to the most popular meal in America - the hamburger. They created something out of nothing." 

I love this story - the idea that an agency helped create a new usage occasion, a new reason to buy a product, and forever changed American culture - just by taking two existing things and putting them together. 

Another reason I love this story is that it's almost certainly not true. 

As far as Wikipedia knows, the Cheeseburger was invented in 1924 by a 16 year old fry cook called Lionel Sternberger [what are the odds?] at a sandwich shop in Pasadena, California. 

I very much doubt that this was the first time anyone added cheese to a burger, but it's the first recorded, [and as we know nothing is real until it has been recorded] and it certainly predates the 1930s. 

Assuming the Kraft/JWT story is at all true - I can find no evidence online, but that's not conclusive either way - what's way more likely is that some inspiring young Mad Man saw, heard or indeed ate a cheeseburger, stole the idea, and then, perhaps, the agency and the brand helped it spread. 

Stories are often more compelling than facts. 

No idea comes from nowhere. 

You may have heard me say that the problem with claiming "firsts" is (like most things) a problem of definition. I'll surely talk about this more later, but here Faris gives three excellent concepts to consider:

Nothing is real until it has been recorded
No idea comes from nowhere
Stories are often more compelling than facts