A great share from NPR in honor of David Foster Wallace’s 50th birthday anniversary.  The music video for The Decembrists ‘Calamity Song’ was created as an homage to his novel Infinite Jest, specifically through the re-creation of the Enfield Tennis Academy’s round of Eschaton, a game that simulates global crisis.  The video was directed by Michael Schur, co-creator of Parks and Recreation and huge DFW fan.

Totally inspired by 718 Cyclery.  This is what the future of the retail business looks like. A rock solid understanding of their purpose: “we build bikes with people.” Total collaboration on the end product that takes place both within the shop and then via online file sharing. An environment that allows consumers to completely connect with the product they are purchasing, in this case by actually playing a role in its assembly.

People want to be involved in the process of understanding and making the things they purchase. Bruce Nussbaum has recently begun calling this movement “indie capitalism” and 718C fits beautifully within his description of being a locally-minded social businesses that builds community and places a heightened focus on materials, value creation and the sharing of information.  But, it’s really just the result of the very reason owner, Joe, began the business in the first place: to reconnect with humanity.

The key fundamental truth about human behavior here is that we need to be able to exercise our ability to shape and change our world, in tangible ways, especially as more of us transition into the knowledge economy, where our contributions to the world cannot be easily touched or felt.  In this case, people are playing a role in the design and fabrication of a mode of transportation.  It’s fulfilling something very real by giving them ownership over the product their purchasing while forming connections through the process.

[Full disclaimer: I wrote this post over a year ago on another blog, and just had to re-post.  It's still fresh, timely, and of the utmost importance for individuals and brands to fully realize.  Enjoy and comment if you feel so inclined.]

I recently had the pleasure of reading Seth Godin’s newest book, Linchpin and I must say, it was a worthwhile read.  The premise of the book is that our economy is changing to reflect a marketplace in which goods can no longer be made smaller, cheaper and more efficiently (we’ve maxed this out).  Rather, what today’s consumer is more interested in is products, services and brands that are extraordinarily unique, and help them to portray the complex story of their lives as they ideally see it playing out.  As a result, Seth argues that those workers (in any industry) who are capable of producing new ideas and ways of doing things are the individuals who are most likely to become ‘linchpins’ or indispensable employees in their own company.

The book then goes on to explain how a linchpin must think and act in her given field, as well as the obstacles that she can expect to encounter.  Overall, Godin’s Linchpin can best be described as motivating, remind us all that we have a responsibility to go into our jobs ready to produce new ideas, services and ways of getting things done, all things that Seth describes as ‘art’.

This brings me to the topic of this post.  The most inspiring and beneficial chapter of the book is rather inaptly called, “Is it Possible to do Hard Work in a Cubicle?”.  The chapter successfully urges us to consider that, as Roy Simmons put it, “most artists can’t draw”.  More specifically creating great art isn’t really about drawing, painting or sculpting.  It’s about paving new ground, by doing, thinking or producing something “that resonates with the viewer, not just the creator”.  Being an artist is about developing insight and being brave enough to communicate it to the world, without concern over how it will be received.

When we start to open up these terms, we naturally begin to feel a sense of responsibility to produce art, regardless of our specialty.  However, doing so requires us to overcome what Seth and others before him deem to be ‘the resistance’, otherwise known as fear – fear of being rejected, fired, laughed at or otherwise failing at life.

If fear can be overcome then we become free to produce beautiful art, that extends beyond the visual, taking on the power to change it’s recipient for the better.  Many of you may be thinking that there isn’t room for this in your job, and I would argue against that.  Being an artist can be as simple as being the catalyst in a successful brainstorm session or finding a more efficient system for completing expense reports on time or mentoring a new employee as they learn the ropes at a new company – all actions that have the capacity to change an individual or organization for the better (the true essence of artwork).

Seth carefully goes on to point out that there is no map or set of directions for becoming an artist.  Some are born with the creative fire inside themselves, others must learn to cultivate it.  But, as our increasingly divergent culture continues to infiltrate every aspect of commerce, those individuals who produce art in their own right, will be the most highly valued, the most likely to succeed and (in my opinion) the most fulfilled.

[Photo by: Christophe Kiciak]

The reason why television is becoming so popular–for us it’s become more than half of what people are watching on Netflix–[is because of] this long-form serialized storytelling. In some ways it’s like the new literature, you know, where you have the ability for a story to develop and for characters to develop, and more importantly for the audience to develop relationships with the characters.

Read the entire piece here.

Byrne sort of concludes by asking whether, creative expression is influenced more by context than what traditional romantics might believe. I love this because I think the same is true with technology. For example, the electric guitar was invented to allow musicians to be heard in front of larger crowds, not for guys like Jimi Hendrix who eventually came along and did unthinkable things with it. So, in a way it seems like creative expression is sort of contained.

This, then got me thinking about how it feels like the live music experience, which I personally feel like is undergoing a sort of resurgence, hasn’t benefited from a re-imagined or updated architecture. Even new venues (one was recently built near my house that will host all sorts of amazing bands this year) haven’t been modernized in any way. The design and layout are the same and more focus goes into the placement of concessions than crafting a space that allows for emotional connection and sensory immersion. So, I’m now wondering what the concert venue or, more appropriately, concert experience of tomorrow might look like.

Any ideas?

Bryan Curtis wrote a great article for the New York Magazine about George Lucas and his new film Red Tails, which premiered in most theaters this weekend. However, the part that really got me was the analysis of the relationship between Lucas and the hardcore Star Wars fans:

What the blistering fan reaction illustrates is one downside of Lucas’s naïve style. By persuading us to drop our snarky defenses and embrace his fables, Lucas had forged a bond with fanboys like no filmmaker, outside of Spielberg, before or since. (Adjusted for inflation, the three original “Star Wars” movies and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” still rank among the top 20 highest-grossing movies of all time.) But naïveté is a fragile emotion. When Lucas goes back and futzes with his mythology — has Greedo shoot first or creates a goofball like Jar Jar Binks or makes Indy uncool by sticking him in a refrigerator — he isn’t just messing with beloved movies. He’s telling fanboys the naïve belief they gave to him was misplaced.

“What more could one ask for than to have one’s youth back again?” Lucas once asked his biographer, Dale Pollock. Now imagine it being yanked away. If the fanboys had become like the studio to Lucas, then Lucas, to the fanboys, had become the man who breaks the bad news about adulthood. He’d become their dad.

I’ve always been conflicted about the the anger that fanboys have towards Lucas since he began tinkering with the films. Their his movies. Go make your own masterpiece. But, as a lifelong fan of this saga, every edit and change he makes, is like a small wound to that inner child I work so hard to keep alive and Curtis nailed it.

[Image via NY Mag Slideshow, "George Lucas, Hitman"]

Last night I watched, PressPausePlay, a documentary that addresses how technology is impacting our culture and it’s art forms. The film primarily focuses on music, arguing that greater access to better technology is making it easy for anyone to create art. But, at what cost?

They interview a variety of thought-leaders and artists, including Seth Godin, Andrew Keen, Moby, Bill Drummond and a bunch more.

I have to say, author, Andrew Keen, as always, makes some startling but compelling points about the cultural dark age he believes we’re heading towards. Keen postulates that technology and social media are leading everyone to believe that they’re an artist of some sort. The result is a sea of mediocrity that obscures the ability of the limited number of truly talented individuals in this world to shine through, ultimately destroying our beloved art forms when the world eventually becomes accustomed to sub-part art.  Pretty ominous stuff.

However, I don’t agree with this.  My first thought is, how can more people creating, building and making things possibly have a negative outcome on our society? Art, when practiced diligently, can lead to self-actualization, a greater appreciation of life and an overall sense of purpose.

Furthermore, and perhaps more compelling, is that the democratization of art and culture should be more effective at bringing the high quality work to the surface, not less, as Keen argues in the film. Allow me to explain. No more than 15 years ago, record studios and the radio stations determined what music you got to hear. If you had adequate buying power, you could drop 15 bucks on a band’s CD. Now with sites like iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and countless others, you can listen to tons of music for free without having to make a financial commitment of any kind.

Furthermore, all of these sites have sharing and rating functions, that enable you to voice your opinion about what constitutes good music. Rather than using record sales as a benchmark for quality, we use Views, Likes, Plays, and number of stars. On top of that, industry authorities, like Rolling Stone and Paste, for example, still hold influence over what gets attention. I still read their reviews and select what I’m going to listen to, partially, based on their critiques.  So, there’s still a hierarchy of influence out there. We’re not living in some chaotic flatland where everyone and everything has an equal voice.

Now, worth mentioning is that technological developments always come with positives and negatives. Take the automobile, for example. It opened up a world of possibility for the American consumer. However, it also created it’s own set of challenges, pollution and car-related fatalities, being examples.

The same is true with the development of social media, mobile and all other digital technologies. The result is that there’s a lot more noise, a lot more people talking and therefore a lot more we feel compelled to pay attention to. The cultural neurosis that I believe we’re seeing develop as a result, is a decreasing attention span. Fifty years ago when you listened to music, that’s all you did. Nowadays, few people simply lay down with their iPod and just listen to an album.  Instead we read, work, and skip from track to track, splitting our focus in countless different ways.

So, the real risk, at least as I see it, is that we may be losing this ability for prolonged focus and by extension our depth of understanding and appreciation of the music we listen to…which could then lead us back to a pervasive acceptance of mediocrity, but I’ll just stop there. Besides, this final point could lead us to a whole different discussion about the neurological and behavioral effects of the world wide web. So, let’s save that for another post.

In the meantime, go watch PressPausePlay.  You can watch the entire thing on YouTube, unless you love supporting artists. The film is a beautifully filmed documentary, loaded with the ideas of brilliant people and paints a delicate enough picture to allow you to formulate your own conclusion about where technology is leading art and culture.

[Thanks to Hanna S. for the inspiring discussion after the film!]

A section that I found to be particularly useful was Henry’s chapter on “Stimuli”. It goes about the way you’d expect. You are what you consume.  If you read and watch garbage, your mind will be filled with the same.

So, given the overwhelming flow of fantastic books, articles, blog posts and research studies baiting the curious mind, how do we sift through it all to ensure optimal inspiration and benefit across a variety of disciplines, relevant both to our professional and personal interests? Furthermore, how do knowledge workers consume the material that will benefit them the most at solving the critical problems they’re faced with everyday?

Ultimately we’re looking to expand the mental framework with which we use to understand and interpret the world. So, as Henry points out, make the box bigger, and you’ll be more likely to synthesize information from disparate reaches of our world in your own problem solving.

Henry offers some helpful recommendations which I’ll supplement with some of what I’ve come across during my own research and personal experience.

First, what’s the basic blocking and tackling you need to do to stay up to date in your field?  Henry refers to this as the mental vegetables in your content diet. These are the websites, magazines and writers that you need to be following weekly or even daily to ensure you’ve got all the information you need. For me, being a strategist in marketing, these are sites like PSFK, Harvard Business Review, Ad Age, Mashable, etc.  This should account for around 25% of your reading.

Second, address areas where you may be lacking information. We often avoid that with which we are unfamilar or uncomfortable, frequently without even knowing it. Take some time to identify areas of weakness and find books, blogs or subscribe to newsletters that will start you on the path to more comprehensive mastery of your industry. This should also take up around 25% of your reading or study time.

Next, read material that pertains to what you’re curious about right now.  For me personally, I’ve been extremely interested in Joseph Campbell’s comparative mythology work around the ‘hero’ archetype.  As a result, I’ve been watching films, reading books, and naturally analyzing the world through this unique lens, not for a moment feeling like a chore. You’re most likely to incorporate information that you’re deeply passionate about into solving everyday challenges. This category, according to Henry, should account for roughly half of your study time.

Henry’s final suggestion, comes from Stephen Sample’s The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, in which he makes the point that we should focus our studying on “supertexts”. Sample argues that everything we create today is really just a derivative of some supertext, like Plato’s Republic or John Smith’s Wealth of Nations, for example.  So, Sample says go right to the source and while I see value in this, supertexts often involve a great deal of time and effort, so I would say choose them wisely.

An additional suggestion involves embracing the seemingly irrelevant and just reading good fiction.  Learning, above all else, shouldn’t feel like a chore and a recent HBR blog post by Anne Kreamer, called, The Business Case For Reading Novels, highlights research that shows reading fiction significantly improves one’s ability to empathize with others, a crucial skill in today’s work place.  So, go ahead, pick up The Fire and Ice series (if medieval fantasy is your thing) and enjoy every minute of it.

I think Henry’s best point in this area is that we must be purposeful about our areas of study. And, if we have personal growth-related goals that we’re clear about, it’s easy to stay on track with this work. Secondly, from my own personal experience, I’ve found that when we’re interested in a given subject, we tend to start discovering resources in a variety of unexpected places.  So, allow yourself some freedom, especially when cruising the web to discover. That’s what its built for: to lead you down a series of rabbit holes only to come out the other side a more informed individual.

[Image from: The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers]