From the sublime to the ridicuLOL
I get very inspired by all the wonderful, optimistic things people have to say about the Internet and its effect on global culture. You know the sort of thing: The rise of the Creative Class, the success of big global communications ideas like Wikipedia, etc.If the predictions are correct, I have every confidence that we will shortly achieve World Peace, then evolve into spiritual beings consisting only of pure light, communicating telepathically and flying around in space.
As a responsible writer, I must also consider the alternative: that such lofty ideas are a bit OTT, and that the Internet is simply a global outlet for lunacy on an unprecedented scale. Witness if you will, the wonderful meme that is the ROFLCOPTER:
Where do these things come from? From the deranged minds of people with far more time than sense, which in my book is the best thing since the Industrial Revolution.
You would not believe how much time and effort people put into making new and ever-more-sophisticated ROFLCOPTERS. It truly is breathtaking. There's even a ROFLCOPTER game! Worth playing now so you have a convincing answer when your grandchildren ask you "What did you do in the great Internet revolution?"
And, if you dare, check out the ROFLBROTHEL (Caution! Contains potentially arousing animated scenes of ASCII sex).
There's a lesson in here for businesses wondering how to form their digital marketing strategy: If in doubt - LOL!
Keywords: ROFLCOPTER
You are not in control
I'm a long time fan of Jeremy Bullmore's "On the Campaign couch... with JB" Q&A column in Campaign magazine, but I'd never thought to look for more of his stuff online.Thanks to Russell Davies I found Bullmore's Why is a good insight like a refrigerator? article on the WPP website last night.
It's a really well-written article (as you would expect from a copywriter, hem hem...) containing some great observations like this:
"Product satisfaction arises less from inherent construction and performance than from consumers' internalised perceptions of personal utility" is a low-potency insight.
"People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes" is a high-potency insight."
I'll let you read the rest of the piece yourself, but it struck me last night that it would be worth exploring its central thought - insights - in the context of interactive marketing. You know - websites and stuff... (Read more...)
The semantic web gets a little closer
Yahoo Pipes looks AMAZING.
Haven't had the chance to play with this properly yet, but I am going to love this.
A modular synthesizer for information: define a source, filter it, mash the output with another few parameters... and gimme the results!
Very. Excited. Indeed.
And what a lovely interface.
The revolution will be linked
Keywords: Web,2.0,Common,Craft,Lee,Lefever,Michael,Welsh
Open source creativity: there is a limit
Falling squarely in the "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" bracket, is www.amillionpenguins.com - an experiment by Penguin books and Leicester's de Montfort University, which poses questions like:"Can a collective create a believable fictional voice? How does a plot find any sort of coherent trajectory when different people have a different idea about how a story should end – or even begin? And, perhaps most importantly, can writers really leave their egos at the door?"
Unfortunately, the answer to all these questions - and more! - is a resounding no. The first paragraph is punishingly oblique, and it was all I could manage to skim through the rest of chapter one. Overwritten, nonsensical, riddled with grammatical errors and no coherent narrative.
I'll stick with Saki for now, thanks very much.
