Millenium Ecosystem Assessment
The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report was released yesterday. The MEA is a landmark study conducted by 1,300 experts from 95 countries that reveals that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the regulation of regional climate, natural hazards and pests – are being degraded or used unsustainably. Scientists warn that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years and that global development goals are at risk.
It's a striking report definitely worth checking out, but it's hardly surprising. Most people intuitively know these huge problems exist and it's generally understood that they are worsening. But the scale of these challenges are so daunting that they paralyze. Thomas Homer-Dixon explained this effect brilliantly in his book The Ingenuity Gap (one of my all-time favourite generalist books). Can we solve the problems of the future? Has the world become too complex and fast-paced for us to manage? There are some remarkable initiatives - The Natural Step, Investors' Circle (see the video at the bottom of the page), Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), to name only a few - that would appear to prove that it really is possible. Is it enough?
Banksy, Roadsworth, and Grafedia
The artwork is every bit as good as the stealth form of displaying them is audacious. Last week the Wooster Collective posted photos of infamous UK graffiti artist Banksy sporting a beard and trenchcoat hanging some of his pieces in four of New York's most prestigious museums - The Brooklyn Museum ('Soldier with Spraycan'), The Metropolitan Museum of Art ('You have beautiful eyes'), The Museum of Modern Art ('Discount Soup Can'), and the American Museum of Natural History ('Dead beetle with glued on sidewinder missiles and satellite dish'). All have since been removed, although a couple stayed up a few days before being noticed by museum staff.
Another street artist who has a lot of people talking about art in public space is Montreal's Roadsworth. Last year, Roadsworth (Peter Gibson) left a series of wonderfully clever stencils on various streets and sidewalks in the city but was caught and arrested on vandalism charges. To many Roadsworth's work, although on public grounds, was not vandalism. It added character to some of the city's most boring areas and was definitely not the messy tagging typically associated with graffiti vandalism.
And still on the topic of graffiti, Wired News has an article on how street art is hitting your cell phone. John Geraci, a graduate student in New York University's interactive telecommunications program, has developed a simple wireless app called grafedia, which enables folks to make the world their canvas by publicly posting e-mail addresses or keywords that, when punched into certain mobile phones or an e-mail account, retrieve corresponding images. "Since the project launched in late December, instances of grafedia have popped up stateside in places like New York City and San Francisco. Outside the United States, the project has gained fans in Brazil, France and England, Geraci said. So far, several hundred images have been uploaded to the grafedia server."
Gondry's Sugar Water
One of Seb's latest posts over at his Open Research blog brings back fond memories of (twice) catching ex-Cibo Matto singer Miho Hatori perform adapted Brazilian folk songs with Smokey Hormel (of Beck fame) at the 2003 International Jazz Festival. They were amazing! And so is this Michel Gondry video Seb unearths for Cibo Matto's classic track Sugar Water. It's a mindbender.
Architecture and Carchitecture
Architecture and Carchitecture. This Times article points to the recent work of California architect Jennifer Luce for Nissan in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Presented with the challenge of making cavernous hangar-style industrial space inspiring for Nissan's designers, Luce introduced a warm, intimate, textured and residential feel to her designs.
Her approach has gone beyond the dot-com cliché of comfy sofas and pinball machines sprinkled around a high-tech office: at Nissan she drew on lessons from her work on lofts and houses—about the texture, color and "intimacy" of materials, as she puts it, and about the balancing of privacy and openness—to reconcile workplace efficiency with human needs. In doing so, said John Parry, the chief administrator of Nissan's American design division, she has helped the company create a more fluid, inclusive and original environment, and to attract and hold onto some of the best design talent in the business. At the Farmington Hills studio, which Ms. Luce designed with the help of Albert Kahn Associates of Detroit, she and her team worked to humanize the huge building, she said, by calibrating "the rough and the finished, the industrial and the domestic, and the vast and the intimate."
Conference Cross-fertilization
In a recent article in AIGA's Journal of Design author Ralph Caplan notes the peculiar tendency for design conferences to feature speakers from areas other than design, less for the purpose of cross-fertilizing ideas than merely for show.
Designers have a long tradition of holding conferences featuring speakers chosen for their achievements in fields other than design. In 1957, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Industrial Designers, the principal speakers were a chemist, a biologist, and a psychologist. This past October, the Industrial Designers Society of America’s annual conference featured a debate between a professor of molecular biology and a specialist in technology policy. The program organizers reasoned that “designers think too much about design and not enough about anything else,” which was the same rationale used 50 years earlier.
That is still valid as rationale, but disingenuous as motive. Certainly design practitioners need the wisdom of specialists from many different fields. They provide breadth and depth not always found within the professions. But our reliance on stars from other galaxies has always been powered by an element of show-biz aspiration. Speakers purportedly invited because of their relevance were really sought as much for their gate appeal and outré glamour. One of the best of them, the great scientific humanist J. Brownowski, complained of being “dragged on stage to perform like a trained seal” at design conferences all over the world.
(Thanks CT. Yodels!)
Latte Art
Latte art by Tonx.
(via Core77)
I [Heart] Huckabees
Existential detective Bernard Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman) explaining to activist/poet Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) the interconnectedness of things in David O. Russell's philosophical 2004 film I [Heart] Huckabees:
BJ: Say this blanket represents all the matter and energy in the universe, okay? You, me, everything. Nothing has been left out. Alright? All the particles, everything.
AM: What's that side of the blanket?
BJ: More blanket. That's the point.
AM: The blanket's everything.
BJ: Exactly, this is everything. OK, let's just say this is me, and I'm what, 60 odd years old and I'm wearing a grey suit. Blah, blah, blah. And let's say that over here this is you and, I don't know, you're 21, you've got dark hair, Etc. And over here this is Vivian, my wife and colleague. And over here, this is the Eiffel Tower, right? It's Paris! And this is a war. And this is a museum. And this is a disease. And this is an orgasm. And this is a hamburger.
AM: Everything is the same even if it's different.
BJ: Exactly! But our everyday mind forgets this. We think everything is separate, limited. I'm over here. You're over there. Which is true, but it's not the whole truth because we're all connected. Because we are connected.
AM: Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
BJ: OK?
AM: Yeah.
BJ: We need to learn how to see the blanket truth all of the time right in the everyday stuff. And that's what this is for.
AM: Why?
BJ: Why what?
AM: Why do I need to see the blanket thing all of the time in the everyday stuff?
BJ: Well, you wouldn't want to miss out on the big picture, would you?
AM: Nah uh.
BJ: And that's partly why you're here. And I'm talking about it right now. I mean, it will take awhile for you to get it but it will help you.
AM: How?
BJ: When you get the blanket thing you can relax because everything you could ever want or be you already have and are. Does that sound pretty good?
AM: That sounds very good!
Ecological Disconnect
I think that the problem we face is that we no longer see ourselves [as] connected to anything. If you go shopping at Gap and you buy a product, you just think it’s a shirt. But if it’s cotton, the chances are it’s been heavily, heavily sprayed with chemicals. Cotton is one of the most chemical-intensive products, and people never think about that. What is the ecological effect of this product? Where was it grown? What were the conditions? What about the workers? If you buy a computer, nobody thinks, ‘Gee, mining is a very destructive activity.’ And there must be dozens of metals in these products. We never ask questions like that! And even though everything we do has enormous repercussions, we never think about it, so we don't feel like we have any responsibility. What I try to do in Tree is show that in order to understand a tree, you have to go right back to the beginning of the planet and come ahead through evolution to see how the tree affects the weather and climate and the air we breathe. -- David Suzuki, referring to his new book Tree: A Life Story
Freefall
If you download the Freefall demo you get a vivid sense of just how many satellites we have soaring over us. It's like a swarm of gnats. Freefall is a screensaver that draws on UN and NASA data for over 850 actual satellites - Global Positioning Systems, GOES, NOAA and other unclassified orbiters used by amateur radio stations, weather services, search and rescue teams. One can view these from a number of different perspective, including from particular cities and points of latitude and longitude.
Lifehacker
Not quite as all-encompassing as its name would suggest but nevertheless pretty expansive, Lifehacker offers a handy assortment of simple tips for managing your information and time. Everything from extending the life of a clothes dryer to recovering lost files to stopping door drafts, Lifehacker is your own personal early adopter guiding you "through the onslaught of the new".
The Sketch Show
North American TV needed a show this funny: Kelsey Grammer presents The Sketch Show.
Marketing General Interest Magazines
Some old notes of mine on marketing general interest magazines:
The foundation of marketing is the target market. Marketing 101: rigorously define exactly to whom it is that you're selling your product or service. Fail to do this and you end up wasting valuable time and money trying to reach people who are unlikely to buy from you. Focus, focus, focus.
The same principle also goes for good management. Focus on what it is that you do best. Don't stretch yourself too thin by over-diversifying your product line or by pursuing markets that you do not fully understand. Fail to do this and you end up wasting valuable time and money. Specialize, specialize, specialize.
So right off the bat, by chasing after everybody with everything, the very idea of a general interest magazine violates two of the most fundamental axioms of business - focus and specialize.
That may go a long way to explaining the everlasting turmoil and long string of corpses in this ageless category, and it may partly explain why advertisers sometimes struggle to comprehend its utility, but it has very little relevance actually when looking at how solidly performing the general interest category really is. Some of the most enduring and popular brands in publishing history are general interest titles: The New Yorker, Harper's, Vanity Fair, Saturday Night. Some of the most successful titles of all-time have been nothing more than themed general interest: Maxim, Reader's Digest, National Geographic, Fast Company. In Canada, general interest was one of the few categories to see modest growth in an otherwise dismal last few years for the magazine industry. We've also had a veritable explosion of new high quality titles - such as Toro, The Walrus and Maisonneuve - enter the field. The fact is that while targeting particular readers and concentrating on your strengths is as important in magazine publishing as in any other business, the notions of focus and specialization don't necessarily apply in quite the same way.
General is indeed a niche of its own. There are groups out there that are not interested in only one thing or that have just one hobby or interest. The overspecialization of everything - from TV channels to jobs to the shelf categories at your neighbourhood video store - has restored general interest as a legitimate counterbalancing niche category. Furthermore, the movement towards a knowledge-based economy, the access to new information on the internet, and the rise of uncertainty in foreign places has only increased the thirst for learning and entertainment - regardless of genre, discipline or nationality.
General interest really dismantles demographics as the primary base on which to fully make a media buying decision. Not so much because we're now operating in a marketplace of individuals and mass customization. Not so much because age cohorts, for example, are becoming more and more fragmented and increasingly less uniform in attitudes and interests. And not so much because demographics aren't still useful in helping to segment and pinpoint a target market. Rather, it is because general interest is a niche that appeals inherently to a broad and typically nebulous (but nevertheless definable) audience. At its core general interest appeals to a mindset, not to an age group or income level.
The underlying mindset of a buyer of a general interest product like a magazine is one of eclectic curiosity. There is a joy to learning across areas of knowledge and there is a pleasure that comes from discovering things that you didn't previously know. In fact, thinkers - they're not extinct, you know - love to do this. The trendsetters and leaders of tomorrow - “Inspirationals and Connectors” (Arnold Mood & Mindset Study), “Connectors and Mavens” (The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell), “The Influentials” (John Berry and Ed Keller), “First Users and 'Bigmouth' Movers and Shakers” (The Anatomy of Buzz, Emanuel Rosen) - thrive on it. It's their currency. They understand the secret to new ideas is that they are born at the intersection of diverse thoughts. A collaborative mix of different perspectives helps to cast a wider net and opens receptive minds up to the possibility of discovering those special and lucrative ideas that transform mere blocks of space into architecture, that evolve advertising beyond annoyance and that transcend film or music from lost time to time well spent.
However, simply serving up a cross-section of subjects is not enough. Curious, intelligent and sophisticated people seek out products and media sources of substance. This may seem at first to go against the stereotype of the generalist as mere dabbler or of young adults as MTV generation airheads with impossibly short attention spans, but it makes a lot of sense. In fact, the latter is exactly why good general interest magazines (ironically) are needed and it is something a good editorial team always keeps front-of-mind when creating an issue. It doesn't matter if it's life drawing or zoning out listening to your favourite tune or reading a 7000 word article about the latest dance craze, when you go into that zone and you're really engaged by something it's actually a relief for your mind. Focusing and concentrating on something is very, very good. When you finish it you actually feel refreshed. And you feel better about yourself because you've learned something new. You've focused on something instead of having that sort of ADD quality that we do today by flipping around the TV or doing ten things at once.
Ultimately, that's the tricky balance to creating and marketing general interest. It has nothing to do with lacking focus or spreading oneself too thin, but rather is to be both wide ranging enough to capture the beauty of diversity and yet still be satisfyingly substantial.
_S
A Seamless Web
[People] are delighted when in some respectable way it becomes clear that there are not separate fields of knowledge, that they link up. That life and the Earth and everything in it really is a seamless web, and that's not merely a poetic expression. It is a very functional thing, that it is a seamless web, and that it is possible to understand something about these webs. - Jane Jacobs
Cartographic Globes
German journalist, author and artist Ingo Gunther quite literally looks at the world in a very different way. Actually, with his Worldprocessor Installation - a series of over 300 cartographic globes, lit from within - he sees it in many, many different ways. Each of the globes highlights (lowlights?) particular economic, cultural, technological, demographic or environmental aspects of the world. For example, refugee populations, credit risks, depleted fisheries, military budgets, oil supply routes, landlocked countries, TV ownership, travel souvenirs, fibre optic network, and even nuclear explosions.
There were 2000 nuclear explosions! I had no idea. I thought, you know, OK, there was Japan first then you have some testing in the United States and in Russia. I totally forgot that England has nuclear weapons as well. But where do they do their testing? Of course in Australia. They rented space in central Australia. Then the French, where do they do it? The Mururoa Atoll. Before that in the Sahara Desert in Algeria when it was their colony. It was totally shocking to me to see the globe littered with nuclear testing sites. That only happens to become clear once you map the statistics out visually.
So this is what it is about because when you read something in so much detail you never quite get the global context. My works are supposed to be background information or reference for the actual story ... context and dimensions are important. I missed this aspect in most newspapers, magazine or in TV news stories. I always cover topics that somehow surprise me.
(via Z+Blog)
Strategic Play
Strategic play is a process and a mindset. It is about looking for ideas rather than solutions, and focusing on possibilities vs. realities. It is about unlearning what you've learned in the business world. Our definition of creativity is to look at more stuff and think about it harder. Seems easy, but it's hard to make it a habit. Translating it to business is even harder. -- Andy Stefanovich, Play
Salon Makeover
Hairstyles changes but salons and barbers generally don't. They're just typically not hotbeds for organizational innovation, says Eric Tegler in a Baltimore SmartCEO article profiling one of the unlikliest of places for intersectional ideas. In Makover he takes a look at an ex-Marine, Andrew Zupko, who fell into the salon world and transformed the business's image from small, sleepy and unprofessional to big, exciting and enterprising. The article notes that Zupko drew inspiration from all over - including superstores (cross-promo shopping), casinos (experiences), and other established businesses (real management and employee benefits) to improve his Robert Andrew Salons and Spas.
As the years passed, expansion taught him equally that value-added services would bring more people through the door. Casinos may have provided inspiration for the look of Robert Andrew but they also suggested a psychology. Walk into a casino in Vegas or Atlantic City and you’re practically overwhelmed by the stimulus. There’s so much do and you can see it all. Every different game, each different restaurant offers the customer another reason to stay. The longer they stay, the more money they spend. So it is at Robert Andrew. “Every location I’ve designed or redesigned has kept in mind the idea that you can always see what’s happening in one area from another,” Zupko explains. “It’s not like you’re in separate rooms. You’re always aware that we offer so many different services.”
Don't Panic
Ryan
Ryan, the Oscar winning animated short film by Canadian Chris Landreth is available online at the NFB website.
Ryan...is based on the life of Canadian animator Ryan Larkin. Thirty years ago, at the National Film Board of Canada, Ryan produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Today, Ryan lives on welfare and panhandles for spare change in downtown Montreal. How could such an artistic genius follow this path?
In Ryan we hear the voice of Ryan Larkin and people who have known him, but these voices speak through strange, twisted, broken and disembodied 3D generated characters... people whose appearances are bizarre, humorous or disturbing. Although incredibly realistic and detailed, Ryan was created and animated without the use of live action footage, rotoscoping or motion capture...but instead from an original, personal, hand animated three-dimensional world which Chris calls 'psychological realism'.