Creativity is the Nutritious Part of Technology

Technology is not the revolution.

Technology has existed from the time man built the first primitive tool. Technology is an evolution. The revolution lies in how people will use the tools of our time. Will they be happy to use new sophisticated tools to merely kill their time by sending videos of cats to their friends. Or will they search their souls, find their message and purpose first, and then use the relevant technology as a platform to express themselves.

Where is the stuff worth finding?

We are stuck in a frenzying beta loop of learning to ride the bicycle that is the Internet. That is constant-connectedness. We’ve all got our training wheels on still, and are sheepishly taking laps around the same familiar blocks. The neighborhoods where our friends are. The projects of Twitter, the (loosely) gated community of Facebook and long idle walks along the beaches of Google.

Where is the depth to our curiosity?

We’re stuck in a recyclists loop of reblogging. No original thinking. We’re content to sample the thinking and productions of others in hopes of giving ourselves a temporary status bump. In hopes of attracting spontaneous ‘likes.’ It has become our drug. We need those likes. We can’t remember what it was like before those likes. But the lasting nutritional value of this kind of cycle leaves us with an empty feeling. Every time we sit down at our computer, or pull one out of our pocket, are we just digitally snacking? Are we downing conceptual bags of Doritos with our online activity?

Where is the beef? Where is the salad? What will round out our digital habits?

If we are original. If we commit to producing a certain portion of original content and not just idling consuming.

Original thinking, in ways big and small will be what tips the scales and leads to the next revolution. It’s a revolution that has been stalled. But man, do we have some awesome weapons ready for free thinking warriors who have an interest and passion for pushing us forward.

Creativity will usher in the revolution.

We’ve just experienced an unprecedented acceleration of technology that has taken us to futuristic places. And now, here we are, in danger of an epic stall. In danger of treading water.

The next great leap in technology will be the leap in our ability to use it creatively. The competitive edge in every industry will come down to who champions the best creative thinking. As we all share the same working knowledge of our tools, it will be these creative free thinkers who can infuse cold technology with the inventiveness of the human spirit that will triumph.

The same standard thought models will crumble, in favor of fresh thinking. Brand new ideas. The technology has become the messenger, but we must still responsibly craft our message. That goes for big brands. That goes for the individual. To advance as mankind, we must become much better at using the tools of our time.

We must harness our spirits, distill them in ways optimized for our modern tools and then deliver them into the ether that is available to all.

The Importance of Having a Platform

I want to discover/build/create a great platform.

For me, a platform is that thing that allows you the chance to keep doing what you love, and to share it with the rest of the world. It’s the format or scheme that gives you the opportunity to get known for doing something. It provides you with a sustainable outlet for doing what you love.

A platform can be many different things.

The Beatles were a great platform for its members to amplify their message and creativity to the rest of the world. Apple Computer has proved to be a hell of a platform for Steve Jobs to inflict his personality and design principles on the world. The Chicago Bulls were an incredible platform for Michael Jordan to do his thing and have the whole world take notice and follow along.

There are some interesting things going on with platforms today. Facebook is proving to be a powerful interactive soapbox for Mark Zuckerberg. Subjecting and ensnaring the world in a web of his views on socializing and in turn the nature of privacy in the digital age.

Facebook, Twitter and these other social media platforms are letting many types of people and creators do their thing, while giving them the distribution channels and media reach to organically find an audience.

The notion of a platform used to have so many gatekeepers. The so-called tastemakers and editors of society. The record executive who would could anoint the next hot band or the scout who could grant an athlete the opportunity to and access to get crazy visibility. But now, we are seeing people even stumble into mass exposure through these emerging platforms.

Today, we have the whole notion of ‘Internet famous’ as a way to explain these home video uploading, overnight sensations. Entertainers with zero start up costs. This was famously evidenced by OK GO, and their clever little music video of them singing on treadmills that launched them into the pop culture discussion around music. The music industry is changing and we are just at the beginning of our realization of what the music and other major platforms of the future will look like.

Many people are jumping on this idea of content curation and aggregation as their platform to secure a mass audience. They sit in basements and internet cafes, blogging and reblogging, tweeting and retweeting their way into larger audiences. Honing their voices until it is a marketable, searchable, findable beacon of ‘Themness.’

So now, with the gatekeepers’ and tastemakers’ roles reduced, with all this opportunity, what platform are you building?

State of the New Media

Collective consciousness sure is a mystical bird.

Poets have tried to distill and interpret what it has been trying to say since the dawn of time.

Philosophers have tried to give meaning to it.

Rock stars have built careers out of giving us their spin on what it was we were all allegedly thinking.

But how those in bygone eras tapped into this stream of the sum of all our thinkings was a thing of mystery. They possessed some kind of internal device.

We possess handheld devices.

We get the collective consciousness push-fed to our iPhones via Twitter, and Facebook and Google Buzz.

We are spoon fed what the rest of us our thinking 24/7 in real time. Where has the mystique gone? How would Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ have turned out in the over-information age? Would he have had time to tap out the lyrics in between obsessive status updates and postings of Twit Pics of he and the Beatles?

The guesswork on what we are all thinking has been obliterated. So what are we going to do about it?

Can we do what the past masters accomplished in turning common public reaction into art? Can we play off of the fact that we know what everyone else has for lunch every single day of the week?

What are we going to do with this connectedness?

Do we have the ability to take the absurd and make it more absurd? Can we take these mundane facts and make them spectacular? Organize them in a new way? Make something with more lasting power than a fleeting tweet?

Where is our official canon? What will it look like? How will it be delivered?

We’ve got no shortage of information. Where then is the insight? Where are the expressions that rise above what everyone else is doing and thinking?

Will we create something lasting? Or is this an era destined to stay in a Beta mode of self discovery that is too afraid to carve our names into the wall?

What will our legacy be beyond ‘ease of access and information.’?

Are we merely a transitional era?

What will our lasting contribution be?

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Creative Mobility in Tokyo

Tokyo is a city that must be lived in, absorbed and tot he creative person, sampled. It sounds cliche, but the inspiration on the streets is astounding and endless.

You cannot lock yourself in a basement or an apartment (or an office) and create in this town. You gotta be on the move. The whole city is begging to be scanned, xeroxed and remixed by visual DJs.

It is important to pack a full creative, inspiration soaking arsenal on every city trek in Tokyo. Whether it’s a tiny dog dressed as Michael Jackson from Thriller, or a cutting edge photo collage in some hidden gallery, it all begs to be captured for later consideration. The city is random and fast and often beautiful in its iconic examples of modern creativity.

You better be ready.

A suggested arsenal:

Pocket Sketchbook

Great for whipping out when you see an awkward English phrase on a graphic tee like like ‘Soul of the wolf feels every love’ and ‘Big mega time at the outside forever.’ These could become treasured indie rock song titles if captured and used later. It’s also great to sketch the kinetic frenzy of a place like Shibuya crossing, or to render some of the city’s architectural marvels.

Japanese multi-pen

The masters of hybrid carry multifunctionality into even stationary. Pick up a double ended design marker and get to work capturing the essence of the city. I like to use the fine end for writing (and detailed cross-hatching) and the fat end for expressive slashes of line.

Digital Harinezumi 2

If you wanna take pictures that feel like you are photocopying the city, this little harinezumi (means hedgehog) is for you. The Tokyo camera makers intentionally went backwards with the technology, to give you a grainy, high contrasted and stylized take on the world.

The video mode references the look of analog super 8 film. So if you’re wanting to recreate the opening montage of the Wonder Years set in the streets of Tokyo, this is your camera. Flip it to black and white and you’ll get a grainy, high contrasted art house look that begs to be overlayed with some late night jazz or a brooding Tom Waitts track.

The photo modes present a heightened reality that only enhances the vibe of Tokyo. The color mode feels like the perfect way to express the neon dizziness of Tokyo’s most over crowded districts like Shibuya and Shinjuku. At times, this quirky hybrid of a camera supplants imagined colors into the splays of the lens flair. Each picture leaves you a bit curious just how reality will be altered. It makes the image capturing process as surprising as exploring the streets of Tokyo is itself.

Casio Exilim

For capturing the eccentricities of the city in a crisp yet portable documentary fashion, the Casio Exilim is a good pick for your open pocket. The images and colors are rich and true to the moment. There is a movie mode as well, to capture those dancing Elvises of Yoyogi Park when they really bust out and do their thing. This camera captures sound much better than the Harinezumi 2, so for shots that are dependent on live audio, this is the camera to pull out.

the iPhone

Turn the now ubiquitous (even in Tokyo) iPhone into another trusted creative partner. One app of particular help to the creative mind are Evernote: for recording memos and notes for larger projects. It also supports audio memo recording, and does a decent job with live music you want to remember for later. The camera mode provides you with yet another texture to use in capturing the city lights. Another app of note is MetroFinder, which will give you the best subway route to connect to that station in the trendy Daikanyama district. A great spot to think in a cafe or take in the evolving fashion that blooms in the window displays.

A Fat Sharpie

No city exploration would be complete with the most soulful marker on the market. Grab that sucker and let the rhythm of the frenzied metropolis be your muse in what you put on the record next.

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The Analog Counter-Revolution

You can feel it starting to happen…

The world has become too digital, and too saturated with digital choices. Digital has become this vague blanket word, like Entertainment, or Music. What it all basically boils down to is some kind of elaborate imitation of life. Just as there is music of all styles and genres, so too are there digital representations and formats suited for all types.

Except the analogphile.

The analogphile has been holed up in his analog cabin since Y2K, decrying the advent of social networks, and resisting the deluge of ‘smart phones’ and aggregated technology.

In fact, he’s never even heard of that last term.

The analogphile shuns fancy things like Twitter.

They just sit there, whittling something with their bare hands, and laughing at the frenzy they see the rest of us falling prey to.

Once this information and oversharing thing has run its course, and people realize that you are only ever as interesting as you are offline, despite how many flashing profile badges you accrue; the analogphile will be there to lead us to the next promised land. A promised land that we can feel and get under our fingernails. A promised land not seduced by candy coated holographic light shows brought to you by Carl’s Jr. A promised land not overrun by the herds of trending sheep, jumping from one shiny thing to the next. A promised land where ‘a conversation’ can only mean two or more people exchanging dialogue in the same time and space.

The analogphile likes his music non-portable, on a turntable, and not because he is a DJ, cause he’s not. He likes the tangible nature of the thing, the indulging of the senses and the way he can feel the cool brass of Miles Davis’ trumpet in a way that doesn’t compute with some robotically labeled format, the mp3.

The analogphile likes his writing physical, from a typewriter. He’s the only one left in his generation that still sends hand typed letters. And maybe the only one there ever was. MTV didn’t reward this kind of communication art form. There is no artistry in the way people connect now, the audiophile laments. It is all slashing letters, and words, in a race to communicate fastest, not best. All communication has become disposable. The oral tradition has given way to texting and blipping and tweeting. When the supercharged electromagnetic bomb goes off, so go the last twenty years of history with it.

The analogphile cannot live disposably.

The analogphile is a maker. Not a consumer.

Books and gifts and cards, all hand wrought. There is a craft to the analogphile’s life. Nothing is separated or misrepresented, because it all comes straight from the source. There are no RSS feeds for fingerprints and bloodstains and desire.

The analogphile believes in the charm of life. And there is no charm in a screen or video monitor. They are all hollow distractions, aiming to keep society off course and underproducing so that we may consume more.

The analogphile tries many things, and fails often, and as a result learns more about themselves and life from the many fledgling pursuits.

The analogphile is a cook, a photographer, a cobbler, an explorer, a writer. But you won’t find a soundbyted profile to be farmed out on feed eating websites. These interests are revealed slowly, over time spent. There is no simple way to understand it all at once. A stranger will never understand in one sitting.

Just the way the analogphile likes it.

Cackling in the analog cabin, with a lifetime supply of toilet paper, writing paper, ink and curiosity.

Such is the mysterious soul that cannot be represented digitally, and who loves it that way.

There Are No Experts

There are no experts.

Everything is changing too much for anyone to have enough experience to carry that title.

Don’t trust an expert. You need to be your own expert. Try to be an expert.

Organize the confusion in your own way. Make sense of things today, but stay open, because tomorrow it will change.

Don’t get too attached to your plans, or what you know, because both will change. Plans will change, clients will change, budgets will change.

Don’t let any of these bits of news become a death blow.

Because there is no finish line.

There is always time for a comeback.

It’s all incremental bits of progress and regression. In the end, hopefully you can make more progress than not.

At every step, figure out the most surprising, relevant, thing that makes you most excited to make sense of the chaos and communicate the idea.

There is always time to reinvent.

And that should be the fun part.

Creative Process

Everyone has their own process. And I love to think about how people keep creatively motivated and learn what works for them. Here is the current state of my creative process. I’d love to hear what works for you!

Start Immediately.

Even if you just scribble down one thought, that’s valid. You just need to get started. Sometimes just staring at a blank piece of paper, or a blank wall is the biggest hurdle. You can even start off with a joke, or something stupid, as these misfires can often lead to something relevant later on. Just get cracking.

Obsess over it.

Give yourself an hour to think about nothing but your project. Think of everything. From world changing ideas to the incredibly stupid, and everything in between. If you mind gets distracted, pay attention to that and try to find a way to connect what you were distracted by and the project you are working on. It could yield a killer new combination.

Forget about it.

Do something else. Play a sport, play a video game, work on another project. The momentum and attention you have on this project will stay with you as you do other things. Be ready to write down random thoughts that come to you, but don’t spend too much time doing that. Force yourself to stay away. You have thought about the project deeply, so you will continue to make progress.

Analyze the hell out of it.

When you come back from your project vacation, put your ideas up on a wall, and scrutinize them. Are they lame? Do they feel new or like a rehash? Are there ideas that stand out more than others? How can they be better? Are there some ideas that should be dropped from consideration? What is your favorite idea? Why? How could it be better?

Show someone you trust.

Once things are solid in your mind, tell someone else about what you are thinking. By explaining things, you are forced to become even stronger with your idea. If you can’t explain it well and easily to someone, it probably still needs some time and thinking. If they get it clearly, then you may be on to something. Or it may be a really obvious first thought. It’s a matter of taste at this point. Don’t let outer opinions sway your conviction. Everyone has their own point of view, and in creativity, there is no right or wrong. Stick to your guns and trust your gut. And any other appropriate cliche about staying strong.

Never stop.

Keep thinking of ideas. Creativity shouldn’t be a 9-5. Keep thinking of new ways to show things, new ways to communicate. What is new? What makes you laugh? What make you feel something? Keep notebooks with every idea you have. Repeat this process with ideas even if you have no intention of using them or producing them. It is all valuable learning.

I look forward to hearing about your creative process.

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Digital Philosophy

Don’t do everything.

Do one thing well. Don’t turn every project or brief into an opportunity to show you know the comprehensive digital landscape. You are not reinventing the internet here. You can do simple, small things in this space. Do them well. And do many of them. Comprehensive knowledge of digital is demonstrated over time, not in a single glorious campaign.

Be Beta/Update minded.

Releases or launches don’t have to be definitive. Be open to consumer feedback. Take a ‘let’s work together to make the best service possible’ approach. No brand or program is perfect. When media was confined to traditional outlets like television and print, brands could pretend to be perfect. They could take months crafted the absolute bulletproof appearance of perfection. But times had radically changed, and in digital, no one is perfect, because the whole scene is evolving. You just need to jump in, and upgrade as you go. Make every step make sense for right now, but be flexible to go back and make the same thing better later. Be incrementally minded.

Be responsive. Be real-time.

Free up your thinking and some budget to be timely. Relevant responses to hot issues and topics have a greater chance to ‘go viral’ because they are acting as a parasite to something that is already consuming mass mindspace. Sports brands should be insanely timely. They should think like newspapers, but in their brand voice. ESPN gets closest to this. But there are some other brands out there that could really get some serious hangtime if they committed to a more real time approach to sports marketing. Brands should present the information and put their unique spin on it, not just be a news service.

Rally groups of people to a common goal.

Digital media connects us all more than Kevin Bacon connects Hollywood. Key in on those pockets of passion, and give large groups a collective assignment, with minimum involvement, that results in something memorable. That’s as vague and jargon sounding as I can be about this.

People still love video.

Digital doesn’t mean that video, TV or filmmaking is dead. Everything doesn’t have to be a Flash application. Stories told as one-way, well made, moving images still have crown jewel status in the overall media landscape. You can start with an amazing piece of video, and then find smart and relevant ways to disseminate and surprise people with the digital extensions. Keep making films people!

Keep it simple.

Do your one thing, with style and strong branded voice. Don’t let the technology stifle the personality of your brand. Use the functionality of modern technology to fuel something human. Something emotional. This can be accomplished in a microsite, a banner ad, an iPhone app, or something that doesn’t even exist yet. Execute your one idea, and then move on to your next triumph.

I look forward to see what you do next.

The Creative Machine

Human creativity has run its course.

It’s time to turn the future of art and storytelling over to the machines.

Why must machines always be our servants? Why must they only be endless columns of databases? Is it their inescapable fate to serve the rest of eternity as elaborate calculators?

Give me a program that runs complex algorithms capable of outperforming a room full of inspired artists. Surely with technology these days, one super charged computer could be inputted with every feature film ever produced, and be able to analyze with razor sharp scrutiny the merits of filmmaking to the point it could predict where to take film next.

With a database consisting of everything from Citizen Kane to highly obscure and experimental projects screened at even more obscure festivals, this computer could cross pollinate the creative gut of masters and virtuosos enough to understand a superior range of aesthetic than 50 Steven Spielbergs sitting through 50 years of film school.

Give me a machine that can get behind a camera, and quickly reduce the framing of a shot down to its best, most provocative framing. Ultimately this will save hours of haggling and studio time, as the machine will be able to make split second creative decisions. It will also be able to act as director and director of photography, in another budget friendly development.

Give me a machine that can observe an actor’s performance and be able to deduce when the line was delivered with the purest human emotion, at its most natural and raw level. Give me a machine that can yell ‘cut!’ once it has seen the exact take it was looking for. Give me a machine that is cognizant of the apex of human emotion, yet also keenly aware of overacting and other acting contrivances that would fool a lesser director.

Hell, give me a machine that can straight up simulate a human being and guide it through the exact performance required. We’ve witnessed exponential improvements in the CGI arts, lets wrap all those developments into the same package here.

Give me a machine that can look at a sequence of film in the editing suite, and determine the most surprising, most impactful score to set against it. Give me that same machine that is equally adept at licensing existing music as it is in creating its own custom tracks. And let this machine have instruments that have not been invented yet in its arsenal.

On the business side of things, let this same machine be able to haggle and convince hard nosed studio executives into realizing now is the right time to release this new film and to invest heavily into it.

Let this machine also be a master level marketer, able to create the perfect campaign leveraging new media to not only hit all of the ideal targets, but also able to turn every person into the ideal audience through a series of persuasive yet authentic arguments.

There should only be a limited number of these machines, as the creative overload of perfect pieces of art would ultimately cancel eachother out in the eyes and ears of the unprepared. We need to be introduced to creative perfection slowly. We are not used to master level works of art being disseminated through the popular channels. I suggest just developing one of these machines to start with, and releasing it independently of any studio system, and just letting its work emerge as a natural force.

More to come.

I’ve gotta go look over some complex algorithms.

A Rational Defense of Illogical Thinking

Doing what’s different isn’t arrived at by mass consensus. No amount of empirical testing can prove being different yields unprecedented ROI. Nor can the same study prove a different approach leads to certain death. What is guaranteed by daring to be that different thing, is that it is the most basic step in the game of being memorable.

Isn’t that what we all want? To be interesting enough for others to remember and appreciate? Well, maybe some of us dream of blissful anonymity in some creekside log cabin of our own devices, but if you are in the business of business, or somehow involved in a society where goods and services carry monetary considerations that can pave the way to an easier means of living, you might want to be somewhat memorable.

If you are a giant corporation fighting for airtime, screentime and maybe even have ambitions of finding a little section in peoples’ hearts, then you probably really, really want to be memorable. You don’t get there by seeing what the other guy did and saying, “That, but in a different color,’ or “That, but with a different (cooler, more relevant, etc) celebrity.”

You get memorable by ignoring the rules, being a human and doing your damndest to walk a different way than that other guy you are fixating on.

You ignore the rules, but you don’t act clueless. Having some razor sharp people around who can dissect business problems and navigate the cultural context is very helpful.

Doing the illogical or being different doesn’t mean you’ve been granted free license to ‘do whatever.’ It means, figure out the playing field, and then do what you think you’re not supposed to on that specific field. Know what’s played out. Know what is a first reaction. Analyze. Dig. Come up with 50 solutions. Sleep on it. See which ones you like 24 hours later. Come up with plenty of options and then hand select the three most different ones. Hold onto one as your favorite.

Hell, you can really do your homework and go for the extra credit by analyzing those choices, and figure out what makes them so wrong. Then turn that around and figure out what makes them 100% right and bulletproof for the identical reasons.

Billy Shakespeare once said, “Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” So use your damn thinking and show us why your different thing is good. Why it’s different will be apparent to everyone. It will be laughed off. Met with “We could never do that,” or the all time roadblock cliche of a comment, “what were you smoking?!”

Comments like those mean you are really close to the right, wrong idea.

Time to dig in deeper and find a way to explain why it is a perfect solution to the problem that nestles perfectly with the larger unfolding of society and the ongoing cultural narrative in general.

Being different is an ongoing dare to yourself and others that will never feel perfectly comfortable, because the means of being different will constantly change and feel a little or a lot wrong every time.

That wrong feeling is called your gut. It’s your greatest asset. Follow it. Defend it. Get it out there.

(This all made perfect sense tonight in one of those frenzied Jerry Maguire keyboard rattling epiphanies. We’ll see how I feel about all this in the morning….)

The Importance of Doing Five Things at Once

I look at managing my time of creative projects like coaching a basketball team. I have five players out there on the floor, but I make sure I get the ball to whoever has the hot hand.

There are blocks and dead ends that come up when you are so obsessed and focused on one project, that you get paralyzed, think in circles and any hope of progress gets washed away.

That’s when I like to have another project to throw myself into fully. These days, work offers plenty of alternatives to get absorbed in. And I always have a roster of personal projects to get done.

The computer is nice, because right now I have this blog in one window, a couple of TV scripts up in Word, an illustration I’m working on in Photoshop. When I hit the wall on one, I can jump tracks and keep my steam up with another one. A creative body in motion tends to stay in motion or something like that.

This entry is getting really teenage diary-ish, so I’m sure I am only seconds away from jumping back to another project. This got my thought moving a bit, but is turning into some sort of public display of streaming consciousness. I don’t have many rules for this blog, but that was one thing I wanted to avoid.

Sometimes when I work on projects, I like to lay them out in stacks on the floor or on a table. I put the very freshest thing on top, with a pile of where it came from and how it got there behind it. Sometimes it helps to rifle through the process of discovery to help spark forward movement.

I like to ask really critical questions of my projects. Even if they are just personal projects. I find that when you force yourself to analyze five things at once you jump to conclusions and make connections that often lead to new directions.

This is probably the worst, most rambling entry I’ve made.

Maybe that is because other projects are looming large and I don’t feel a need to put a laser like focus on a blog entry right now. I look at this more as a morning warm-up. I didn’t want to tackle any of the other projects cold, so I came here, to this blog.

To stretch, to spew and try to spark my thinking to another level.

I’m sorry you had to watch/read.

I promise next time I will give more attention to you. I feel like I just used you. But I am reassured that because of the scattered nature of the past few ‘paragraphs’ that roughly only 5% of my daily visitors have made it to this point.

I just wrote a few tagline options for another project.

This is turning into a live-blogging of my morning now.

Please look away.

This is the worst of me, without editing, without a filter. Just saying some stuff and typing it. I’m actually whispering these words as I type. It’s getting creepy.

Maybe it is better to just do one thing at a time. I just went to get a drink and I was talking to myself. That’s a bad sign. I’ll probably delete this post in a couple of days.

Apologies in the meantime.

Time to switch projects.

The Importance of Doing Nothing

I’ve never really tried it to be honest.

I like to keep myself busy in as many projects, teams and adventures as possible. But I reckon it is probably pretty important to devote a portion of time every now and then to doing absolutely nothing.

To sitting in a fairly comfortable chair (not too comfortable though that it becomes an activity in its own right) and to stare at nothing in particular. Perhaps a blank wall. But not a wall with that popcorning texture, or much of a texture at all so that you start seeing shapes and are drawn back to reality and to-do lists and logos and cartoon characters…

But once you are in that perfect, blank environment, oh the things you must think of. You are probably drawn to make comparisons between atypical ideas, put a couple of wrongs together and come up with something new. You probably get the biggest, big picture view of the world, and can sort out the many complex steps in succession that would lead to global harmony and eternal sustainability.

If only we had more time to sit and do nothing to come up with these amazing revelations. Can it be a part of every work day? I’m sure some of the thoughts would help revolutionize whatever business or industry you find yourself in. Surely the intellectual map to progress and promotion and corporate domination are available to those able to commit to doing nothing.

If you want to do something, it seems you should start by doing nothing, not by doing something else. That is always how it goes for me. I will be doing one thing, and then I will clear jump tracks to the next thing, without any kind of full stop. Things get messy that way. You don’t see trains operate that way. If they need to transfer cars, they totally stop and then slowly make the transition to the next line.

Why, if I could do nothing, I imagine I could really accomplish things. What has not doing nothing done for me? It has filled 27 notebooks with to do lists, impartial sketches, lame puns and impractical product inventions.

I think the key to activity is inactivity.

This sounds kind of like meditation. But I think what I have in mind is slightly different. I’m not on a quest to clear my mind of the concerns of the world and replace them with surreal tranquil settings with the constant sound of a babbling brook. I’d like to replace my regular thoughts with super-charged, revolutionary thoughts. I don’t think those hang out with soothing tones and glowing orbs of pure energy.

Maybe one of these days I will test out my way of doing nothing and let you know how it goes.

But not today, I have too much to do, to do nothing today.

The Groundhog of Technology Saw Its Shadow

When we jumped from radio to TV, that was an instant advancement.

When we flickered back and forth between TV and the internet, it was us questioning what the advancement was exactly. The benefit wasn’t immediate. Certain enlightened folks got in there first, and slowly made things that garnered a wider acceptance. It was a new civilization that needed building.

But I don’t think the transformation is near completion yet.

What is the stand alone benefit of this technology? There is something interactive now, and something about endless possibilities. But there is no core singular benefit. Yet we are relying wholly on the power we claim this digital realm has. The belief has come well ahead of collective understanding. Hence the confusion?

Hence ‘internet radio’ and ‘internet TV.’

But, what is the internet on its own? Why does it always need an additional metaphor for it to make sense to us? Or is it less a format and more the most comprehensive way to archive media to date?

Connection is a benefit, but does it render moving pictures irrelevant, the way radio formats were killed off by the advent of television?

Or is the internet more akin to a new postal service? The mode and method of connecting and transferring information, but not a pure replacement of what we can gain and experience from the quote unquote traditional media?

Traditional media is collapsing, but is it being replaced by a meaty enough alternative? Are we losing value and something human by encouraging a full switch to digital? What does that even mean? Does anyone know the implications?

I long for the charm of analog, and the not instantly connected. I long for the charm of human discovering, offline experience. I long for deep understanding, not just instant wiki-like access.

Was radio completely killed by TV the way they suspected? No, it evolved. It got more interactive, compelling and multi-dimensional. The same is needed of today’s media formats. How can a newspaper or print magazine reinvent what it does and offers, be enhanced by the inclusion of digital thinking?

Let’s enhance, not replace, where we can. Less of a restart and more of an evolution. More touchy feely, and less clickety clack.

John Maeda pointed out in a recent talk at Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo, that technology has expanded exponentially as we all know, but that our lives remain largely unchanged. He said we were stuck in a Groundhog Day. Reliving the same day, with superficial advances in technology tricking us into thinking everything has changed. How do we break free of this repetitive loop and forge new ground? How do we get to new places if the technology has limited us to certain predictable outcomes? Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator make good examples. How much have those programs evolved and led to new means of creation? Or how much does an Illustrator piece of art largely look the same as it did five years ago? Things like this have become less a tool and more a style.

Let’s try new things. New combinations. Not just use the repetitive and predictable function of technology today. How can we use it in a new way? Can it make the human experience better? More textured?

We are all connected, and that seems positive. I’m interested in how this instant connection can lead to new collaborations. Collaborating across time and space. Ideas mixing from different cultures. We have the access and the bandwidth to do this. What new things could be make together?

Let’s take this connection and make some new stuff. Some new stuff that exists physically maybe. Things that live in this world, that are impermanent and beautiful in their fleeting, analog way. Let’s leave an evidence of our ideas together. Let’s take this world to new places and fill it with new thoughts.

(Sometimes you just wake up in a really philosophical place)

How do you make your digital a little more analog?

Collaborator Follow-Up

Wow, I’ve got some really creative contacts out there. It comes as no surprise, but makes me realize I need to reach out more and tap into this network of creators more often.

As you can read below, I put out a signal looking for creators, thinkers and makers. And that is exactly what I got.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with these ideas. And figure out how I can help make some of them happen so we can put them up and feature them on The Co-Pilot.

I got people wanting to make iPhone apps.

People wanting to make short films. Others who want to collaborate musically, trading beats and lyrics across the Pacific Ocean and creating a transcontinental sound.

I’ve got people with killer microsite ideas that if we could pull off would set the internet aflame I tell ya! Other people had stunt/performance art ideas that they wanted to carry out, and document for display. I got some photographers and artists pitching ideas for different series of work. Someone even wanted to put out a line of belts (and fannypacks! lol)

It kind of painted a nice picture of the state of creativity today.

It got a little new media, it got very digital. And it is all intriguing as all hell.

I have to find ways to bring these projects to life. Some of them are too good to stay in a state of ‘great idea tapped out in an email.’

Now comes an exercise in follow-through.

Will we be able to find the flash designer who can execute the idea for a microsite?

Will we be able to get an iPhone developer onboard and creating some apps for us?

May set up a ‘creative craigslist’ type listing system to fill out our wants and needs. ‘Seeking Flash Designer to make experimental game.’ ‘Seeking photographer to shoot portraits of futsal players…’ etc.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with ideas! Keep them coming. I will always be willing to accept some fresh, burning ideas that are out there. They fire me up and get me thinking about how to get them done.

The creative odyssey of The Co-Pilot begins today.

We have a long, long ways to go.