tantramar

The Big Share

Back when this social web, social media sharing-circus started, I got quite excited - it was all a bit brave new worldly. I was writing a weekly digital music newsletter read by thousands, sticking it to the mainstream media and their pedestrian treatment of the future (present). All seems a bit silly now. 

Anyway, over time and working on lots of digital social applications and systems my viewpoint has shifted and I'm not so inspired by purely digital anymore. Digital should be part of the system, not the system. Part of the function if you like, not the form.

But now I'm starting to get excited by sharing again but for a different reason than before. Everyone was sharing content back then almost for the sake of it. We did it because we could, it was all a bit 'how many sweets can I hold in one hand' but really it didn't do much good or offer that much value, certainly nothing past the short term.

But now I feel we're on the edge of sharing, doing quite a lot of good. You know, digital systems facilitating real world actions and benefits. Free-cycle and The School of Everything are great examples of this. Russell calls this post digital, which is quite nice.

I know several other people (with funding) who are developing more ideas like this so clearly it's not just me that's excited about this. But yes, excited is the right word.

 

Everyone has so many things they could share (mental and physical) or skills they could teach. In the case of skills and knowledge it's worse than the cognitive surplus because that implies that people could learn things with their spare capacity. I'm saying people already have the skills (knowledge) and assets and they're wasting them. Matt Webb had a nice idea about wasteful time and talents, called 100 hours that he talked about at reboot which has inspired me into action somewhat.

I feel the tide is turning from utopian to useful. I guess we'll have to wait and see the score at half time to see if it's happening for real.

In a country like England where we can't afford to make much anymore, we need to get a lot better at managing waste and surplus or in a few years we'll be in big trouble.

For The Sake Of It

This is the inside of an old broken Macintosh Plus that I'm playing with. You can see the names etched on the metal of all the people that were involved in the design of the longest running Mac ever. 

I think I had read about this before but never actually seen it. How wonderful is that; a company that cared about how its staff felt and were playful enough to include a feature which does nothing for the product (visually or functionally) except make the staff feel warm inside. 

I bet they don't do that anymore. I feel this is what is missing from most companies today; a little bit of heart.

Sputnik Observatory

Jonathan Harris has just released details of his latest project; Sptnk. As his previous work had been pretty impressive, such as Whale Hunt and We Feel Fine he's generally worth paying attention to.

Sputnik Observatory is a New York not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the study of contemporary culture. We fulfill this mission by documenting, archiving, and disseminating ideas that are shaping modern thought by interviewing leading thinkers in the arts, sciences and technology from around the world.

There's some smart people who have talks on there. Worth exploring for sure.