My boss and I were talking about the implications of social networking on people at work the other day (he and I see eye to eye on many different things, sort of another reason my job rules) and he brought up a point I’d not yet considered; the way that the suburbs exist due to the automotive revolution and a person’s ability to commute to work from distance with ease, seemingly next would be how people think as it relates to their existence in a digital world.

Do you go places knowing you’ll check in on Foursquare? Do you not check in to some places, because it might affect how your peers would see you? Do you write about certain things in your blog, but not others? Tweet some ideas, or preemptively think about what you’re going to do and how you’ll tweet it?

I thought about writing this post before I wrote it; granted, writing with a point in mind means your thoughts should be organized, and I’d probably write similarly were this for a book or project I was working on. But the medium is the message, and it is all affecting how our brains work.

This is a pretty interesting read on people overwhelmingly absorbed by technology. And I’ll gladly admit I’m in that realm; while I don’t have a zillion social networking accounts, I am on a computer about 12 or 13 hours a day. At work I always have my Google RSS reader, GMail, and Adium running. My iPhone makes it impossible to ever really avoid work or personal communication. And while lately I’ve been taking a more pro-active approach against always being around technology, at this point it’s become consumptive, if for no other reason than being employed by a forward-thinking company means it’s practically required to always be aware of what is happening, or about to happen, in the world. And that requires at least a similar amount of immersion in the same technological ocean a majority of the world is.

Guilt by association, if you will.

And so as our lives become more dependent on technology, or our social networks become more digital and less personal, we adapt our brains to survive in such environments. The root of human nature is simply self preservation, and a large amount of that is now wholly based in one’s ability to utilize and perhaps manipulate the technology available to forge the next step in society’s “growth.”

But it is something to think about; when I come home from a day of shooting photos, while developing and sifting through the ones I’m happy with, I think of what I want to be put up as Image Of The Day and what would go better on the blog. I think about what stages to document paintings at, and then if I want those to be made public or just kept for my own records.

The prominence of Facebook Status Updates and Twitter, well, tweets or whatever … have created a sense that the immediacy of what any individual does at any moment is actually important, so much now that I fear big picture idealism is getting muddled and lost. The ability to see the whole board, understand complex situations and cultural nuance, political relationships and religious beliefs takes a brain developed to believe such things are important (which they are, and moreso in a globally digital world). Yet here we are, spending most of our time tweeting about the fact we just, well, tweeted, or something.

I don’t give a shit where you get coffee or what mall you’re shopping in. Let’s talk about some substance, let’s have a discussion, get into a debate. I’ll meet you there and you can check in to Facebook Places and everyone can read all about where we are. I care more about where we’re going.

James: colin
James: can you tell me why i feel objectified by advertsing
James: lol
James: thats why im depressed
Colin: because you’re supposed to
James: its making me depressed
James: its made me depressed
Colin: haha
Colin: why
Colin: what ads
James: anywhere man like
James: i just feel like i’m a target audience
James: and i don’t want to be a target audience
James: i don’t want to be a target
Colin: lol then don’t buy things
Colin: as long as you’re buying things and 18-24, you’re gonna be a target
James: well thats what makes me depressed ma
James: n
James: and when i buy things i feel better
James: its so vicious
Colin: retail therapy
James: yep
Colin: well it’s just america
James: lol
Colin: people want to fit in and the basis of capitalism is association through consumerism
Colin: so people feel more human when they buy things in america
James: guh
James: that makes me want to kill myself
Colin: hahaha
James: it also makes me want to move out of the country
Colin: yeah, that

There’s a big new uproar about the alleged Google / Verizon net neutrality destroying meetings that have been taking place (which both companies have denied).

Regardless as to who is telling the truth in this, the end of the story remains the same: net neutrality is the single most important first amendment issue in the 21st century. From this point on, anything involving communication and technology will be pertinent so long as net neutrality is not established as law. The idea of corporations like NBC/Comcast funneling the flow of data online is just absurd. But, then again, this is not about constituents of senators who will make this law, it’s about who is lining their pockets.

(It’s nice to see FCC chairman Julius Genachowski endorse net neutrality, but the FCC doesn’t get a say in the matter really.)

Controlling the flow of information is power. Whoever the first genius is that is able to find a profitable way of dispersing news online will go down in history. But this isn’t the way to do that.

While many see the freedom of information available on the internet as the essential democratic medium, they’re slightly mistaken. Information should be readily available, not free.

I’ve got no problem with the New York Times starting a paid content firewall in 2011. We need good and honest journalism in the world, and to do that, journalists need a paycheck like everyone else. Rupert Murdoch’s attempts to de-index NewsCorp from Google are going to play out hilariously I’m sure.

But the partisan divide of journalism is bad enough right now; the distrust of the Fox News types of established press institutions mirrors the lamentable excuse of MSNBC basically just throwing around liberal mud back at O’Reilley and Beck. Hopefully this will revert back to the days of print when the cost of news online increases; it will then be about what people choose to read, as opposed to all the noise being dumped into the air and blogs gaining traction for basically being a content filter. (Also, hopefully, people will watch less cable news.)

It’s going to be interesting enough when news can’t just be re-posted by a blog (hopefully this knocks out some of the Huffington Post’s ego as far as being a legitimate institution is concerned). But if net neutrality isn’t signed in to law, a giant like NewsCorp could find a way to make sure that the NY Post loads faster for subscribers to (whatever internet service they get in bed with) than the NY Times. That certain information will be available faster, even if you’re paying extra to subscribe to a different service.

It’s going to be an interesting next few years and I’d hope that the 2012 elections have some substantial debate about net neutrality, or at least issues in regards to privacy and antitrust in the digital era. (I’d very much look forward to hearing, say, Sarah Palin talk about that stuff.)

Holy fuck. Bowie? Trent Reznor smiling? Killer guitar riff? Actually decent live cinematography? Kick ass song? All in one? Whoa.

October 18, 2010
Cafe Du Nord, San Francisco
ENVY with Touché Amoré, And So I Watch You From Afar, and La Dispute

Four bands I have been wanting to see! All at once! Holy fuck! Looking forward to this:

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Listen to this song because a) Mogwai rules and b) it is the sound of how crushed my soul is feeling right now.

So at work a few of us in the creative department are re-branding the social media strategy of the company. Developing a new blog (launched today with many, many changes to come), a new Facebook and soon a re-branded Twitter account. I am in charge of making sure that, across the board, the aesthetic is progressive but on brand, coherent but responsive to the dynamic nature of the internet. (Also, take into account this is why I stay late at nights, and so everything is still rough right now.)

So the blog just takes an e-mail address to run, and soon enough we’ll be hosting it locally and it’ll be that much easier. Facebook, however, needs to be administrated by user profiles, just because of the way that site is set up, I guess. So I had to re-join Facebook today, and my heart died a little bit more than it usually does on a Wednesday night. (No, I won’t be your friend.)

What bothered me about this was that, upon re-signing up, my account, left abandoned for a year now, was perfectly intact. I really loathe that stuff, with all the privacy concerns and also that there’s really very few ways to delete your information permanently.

I remember a conversation I had with Andrew once, I made a reference to some television show he’d never seen. He asked why I even bothered with TV, and I said in order to critique matters of society and culture, especially in art, one has to be aware of them. I suppose, if nothing else, my return to “The Social Network” (as Aaron Sorkin seems to write it) will provide me with that much more ammunition.

I don’t know, I still like the idea of people doing things themselves. Build a website, even just a simple blog. But do something on your own, make a shitty image in MS Paint if you need to. But make it yours, own it. The internet can be a fascinating digital extension of our lives, and yet so many people choose to have theirs grouped en masse with the general populace. Maybe that’s why I never really understood people, why they’d all want to be grouped together like this.

But I better figure it out, because if I’m going to be involved in a social media branding development I should probably figure out why the fuck people actually use this shit. My ten year high school reunion is next May, and I can’t think of a damn person I’d want to remember from then. Everything about this site seems like such an absent way to keep up with people. I want to know my friends, I want to have honest conversations. I want to write them letters in pen and ink and I want to take random trips to see them all so we can drink wine and talk about how awful life can be, and how we fight, how we fight, how we fight.

Doing that over the internet just seems so wasted, so lacking in honesty, I can’t imagine how people really think there’s anything that could fuel a heart available on this bullshit.

But this isn’t personal, this is business, and I guess it’s time I learned how to separate those two things. Which just makes a little more of my heart die on a Wednesday night.

It wasn’t that many years ago that major websites started adopting 990 pixel wide web layouts. It wasn’t until this year that I did, given that there are still a few users out there who use 800×600 screen resolution. But five years ago, 1024×768 became the lowest resolution on new monitors.

But now there is such a diversity of screen resolutions (I think my 27″ iMac at work has 2560×1440 while my two monitors at home are each stuck at 1280×1024) that it’s creating difficulty to maintain any sort of visual standard. This is one of the examples as to why print will always be better than web/digital design – control of the environment and therefore the ability to have a structure to visual communication (even if your effort at that point is to destroy the structure).

This was, up until recently, one of the bigger problems facing designers trying to adapt to the idea of aesthetics on the web. Yesterday, in trying to design a new page at work that will primarily target iPad users, I realized that this stupid device has just screwed up web design probably more than screen resolution did.

The lack of a mouse means things like rollover status, opacity, image hotspots and many tools that utilize the interaction of a scrolling environment are completely useless on an iPad. You can’t roll over a link anymore, because you tap links, so hover status is irrelevant. The way people interact with the web on a touchscreen device is a completely different experience and therefore a lot of fun little tricks that have been developed in visual communication have now been rendered … well, tricky.

Apple is releasing a trackpad, but I’ve used their mighty magic mouse (or whatever it is) and it fucks up a lot by accidentally hitting a side of the mouse. These devices are easy to use for checking your email, but intensive computer use requires precise tools – mice, keyboards. Tactile response to things.

So now we have a more fucked up web, and Apple’s touting of HTML5 and CSS3 is pretty ridiculous considering all the aspects of each the iPad renders useless. Certainly, at some point and time in the future, there will be a new standard environment for design. As for now, the internet can go fuck itself and print should live forever.

The importance of writing in about four minutes that were put on television once and though the entire first four years were brilliant, something about this scene is just spectacular. Whenever I need to write something, this is the first thing I think of. I don’t know why, I think it’s the end, just the way words can handle a situation. I mean, sure the writing for the scene is great but the subtext of the importance of words and how simple attention can drastically alter mood … So good, so good.

Okay this huge WikiLeaks story that is breaking right now is ridiculously amazing (from a journalistic standpoint). The Guardian and NY Times are running front page stories in conjunction with the release of the documents, and there’s even a pretty great map of some of the bigger events discussed.

I’d have more to write about it, but I think Julian Assange, who spoke recently at TED, covers most of it on his own:

All of this is so fucking awesome. (Except the fact that it’s all happening because we’re still in these ridiculous conflicts.) The only bad part is that now the Obama administration is going to have to answer for all of these documents, which are all between 2004 and January 2009 before the new Afghanistan strategy was crafted. That being said, war is war and it was his call to stay there. I just wish there was a retroactive policy where the Bush policy advisers would have to answer for some of this shit.

Also that TED talk is pretty great. “Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture victims.”

One of the better recurring spots on Funny Or Die. Also, more Drunk History please.

I’ve never been a huge fan of The Arcade Fire. I like Funeral and Neon Bible, in the sense that I’ll put them on and not get annoyed, but I don’t get the hoopla. (Mac explained to me that part of it is seeing them live, so there’s that perhaps.)

But I have always loved the weird shit they do with their art and media. The various websites for Neon Bible were awesome. And the fact these are the eight different covers to the upcoming release The Suburbs is pretty fucking awesome. Talk about nice little commentary to accompany your music.

Also, the band’s recent promise to match up to $1 million in donations to rebuild Haiti fucking rules, too. This is one of those times where I might not vibe with the band’s tunes as much as the rest of everyone, but I fucking love what they’re doing with their influence and voice.