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ideas just a reflection strategy video clip ways of use work

words on turning ideas into action

The 99% Experience: Insights On Putting Your Ideas Into Action from 99% on Vimeo.

I think we’re quite a few who have experienced a variation of blockages, often invisible, that occur when trying to move an idea of some sort into action. Or even getting a seed of an idea to more of a full fledged idea. Procrastination kicks in. A coffee sounds perfect even though it was 30 minutes ago since the last cup. The situations are many and the reasons for the blockage as well.

I think there’s a few good suggestions in this clip from the 99 percent. Setting the egg timer is a good one I think. Really low-tech but effective in its simplicity. And I really do think there are devices that help us to be productive with, as well as within, technology.

I like what one guy says, as he likes the idea of micro failure but not macro failure. Perhaps something that can help you with just doing it and rather micro fail fairly quickly.

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digital just a reflection ways of use

where is the internet heading?

IMG_0261.jpg

This is a group of people starting to draw a ‘rich picture’ about where the internet is at, and where it’s headed. The twitter-parrot-dragon is the evil forces trying to control it. The freedom fighters to the right, joined or even led by The Pirate Bay have just declared war and are moving in to the rescue.

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design ideas just a reflection video clip what is around us

men have lost some culture


“Men have lost something in terms of culture, you know, so… just saying maybe we should get some of it back”
– Glenn O’brien

Where the line between losing a bit of culture and updating and adding culture can be found, I don’t know. But it’s an observation he’s not along to have made, and to some extent I have to agree. I’m a culprit myself. But back when men did dress up, surely we didn’t have slacker culture…

With every new wave, be it philosophical, style related, art related – anything really – there’s going to be a counter wave. At some point. Slowly beginning to grow in size. Check out Brooklyn Circus, to stay with men’s style and men’s fashion for example.

And actually; trying, doing (expressing) something new is not just how the old way of doing things lose people over to the new way, it’s also how people trying the new find their way back. On an individual level, generation and longer term culture. Small waves and big waves. They share the motion.

Do check out the, by the looks of it, really interesting lifestyle magazine by Jay-Z.

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digital internet just a reflection social media technology ways of use

anonymous opinions and public revolutions

“The cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself,” said Poole. “To fail in an environment where you’re contributing with your real name is costly.”

– Chris Poole, 4chan

“REAL change comes from people putting their necks on the line. I couldn’t remember a time when an anonymous person really enacted change in, well, anything. It’s why I sign my name to everything, even stuff that could get me fired,”

– Robert Scoble

From ReadWriteWeb

Both arguments are true. And we’ve seen more than enough evidence to verify that so is the case. It’s not either/or. When given the option, people will chose that which fits. Sometimes speaking up in public is what we need. Sometimes we need to be anonymous. Away from internet, the anonymous would hold his/her breath. Online that’s not the case. That’s quite groundbreaking, is it not?

Sometimes an anonymous person can start a revolution. Other times, many anonymous discontent people might need one public person to ignite them all. Going from reluctantly quiet and anonymous, to supporting an explosion of support. Confidence in numbers.

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design digital internet just a reflection social media technology what is around us

discovering stories that stayed put

Location really was the missing dimension of digitally mediated [personal] communication. The variable that made the question “where are you” or “where is that happening” redundant. Of course a call to a mobile phone still calls for it, but not too seldom my calls are triggered by a check-in I’ve seen.

Where someone was when you called them was never unknown before. You called someone and if they answered, they were home. Or at work, or wherever you called to. You sent someone a letter and if they received it, they obviously came home. An early question upon calling someone might, however, have been where have you been, and that question held much more interesting information than where they were at the time of the conversation. As that’s wherever you called them.

You can tweet and move. A tweet here and a tweet there. Another person tweets here and tweets there. With location meta data you can see tweets in your vicinity. Check-ins let you see where friends and others are at. Small messages floating around everywhere and often they have very little to do with the location other than the fact that you were there just then. Check-ins are just that.

But as soon as we gather for a venue at a place, a hash tag gives the place a twitter feed. The feed belongs to, or originates from, a place. The belongs to part is what I think is a lost aspect that holds some potentially interesting ways of discovering things from the past at that spot. It’s quite interesting if that feed, with a hash tag working as the shepherd, were to be connected to the spot for that venue. Continuously. Not just the initial check-in that serves as a “Hi, I’m here”, but the ongoing conversation. They tend to part ways as the participant’s communication, about whatever the venue is about, starts flowing.

I’d like to find locations with feeds attached to them, and discover stories told from that place. To find out that, for example, music lovers had a Bob Dylan night at [location] 2 months ago. Just from being at the place. And being able to find parts of their discussions. Perhaps I’ve found a music lover cafe.

But It’s like my colleague said: “Real time is nothing after real time”.

It’s true. Just after real time, it’s nothing.

Just recently there was a gathering about the digital world called SIME (funnily enough this was discussed: The age of information is dead and the era of storytelling just began. and I’m using it as an example of how we could be stumbling over stories. How appropriate.). Some of the discussion can be found at #sime10 (don’t know for how long), and physically it took place at Cinema Saga. If you check in today (29th Nov 2010) you’ll see it’s the Stockholm International Film Festival. You won’t, however, discover that SIME 2010 took place a week before. And you will most certainly not find that SIME 09 was held in the same spot a year earlier.

You’ll find recent check-ins, who’s checked in most, but nothing about what took place here. I think that would add something useful to a place. I mean Google is intangible discovery first while a check-in is a tangible, location based, discovery first. I think the two need to be more tightly connected in the later case.

The check-in is a “story” starting point and #sime10 the story unfolding from that place. I think it’s only right that it partly sticks to that place.

But I really enjoy coincidental discoveries of a third kind of whatever it is I’m writing about here. They make me smile. They are check-ins with comments to spots created while in a car queue or some other passing situation or event. There was a queue here, but not anymore. Another person was here, in the queue, but not anymore. That person, at that time, was pissed off and told us in a comment. He/she is not pissed off anymore (I should hope). Nothing is really there anymore. Yet the comment is always what feels most real and most present to me. That’s science fiction.

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just a reflection ways of use

everything is relative to culture and context

dollars

Maybe you’re familiar with linguistic relativity, or maybe not. Anyways, it’s about how language actually affects and even limits our way of thinking, our cognition. Plato said the opposite, that no matter what language you spoke, thoughts were not affected. The Whorf-Sapir hypothesis talks more about this if anyone’s interesting (even though wikipedia says it’s Sapir-Whorf, not Whorf-Sapir).

Yesterday I read an article about Zimbabwe and how Tsvangirai and Mugabe are hooking up again to try and find a way out of the mess. Good luck. Apparently Zimbabwe has a 2.2 million percent inflation!! Goddamn!

How does that relate to linguistic relativism? Not at all, but to the concept of context/culture affecting our thoughts and perception of everything. If you’re from a country with 2.2 million percent inflation – how does that affect your view on percentage? Or value of money? When someone tells me something went up or down 100%, generally that’s a lot. Would a Zimbabwian get the same first reaction? I doubt it. 2.2 million percent – come on! The central bank just printed a new hundred billion bill. It would say 100 000 000 000 on that, rather large, piece of paper. The paper industry is doing well I presume…

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just a reflection planning what is around us

intercultural communications and planning

After flipping through an old book on intercultural communication from the times back in school, it struck me that all communications models therein is more relevant and applicable than any other models (of course the element “clutter” does include “cultural differences” in those models too). Not that any old model is applicable at all.

And the way the world looks today, planners on national level have to take intercultural communications issues more seriously in their work. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I believe it’s a fair assessment. The only thing all cultures share, is the fact that they’re ethnocentric. I’ve heard. And studying intercultural communications, or anthropology, pretty much proves this right (often in an painfully obvious manner).

It’s worth a think.

On that note. Westerners, including me who’s a blond, blue-eyed Swede, are per definition a low context culture. We communicate in a clear, “no bullshit” way. High context cultures leave much more unsaid (verbally) and trust the context and the knowledge about the one you’re communicating with to fill in the gaps. Funnily enough – that’s the type of advertising we like so much in low context cultures. Like: “don’t treat them (advertising victims) like idiots – let them co-create the meaning”.

Funny that. I’m pretty sure it’s to do with being more interesting that way. Less obvious. And again it hits you; why the hell is so much advertising over obvious, to the point of you feeling like you’re treated like an idiot?

That’s a whole other matter.

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just a reflection what is around us

how we think

a fake trap of plastic bubble wrap

I planted this trap at work today, to see how people reacted (kind of a case of bad research – I didn’t really know what I was looking for), just for fun. And it was. The majority of my colleagues avoided walking on it some just walked right over it saying something like “oh, I’m trapped”. Some people said it was a rational decision to not walk on it. “I thought; OK this is probably something I shouldn’t step on because it goes pop and it’s ruined”. Others didn’t really have a good answer as to why they avoided it. Just “Oh, I don’t know”. Fair enough.