The Dutch magazine Volume has published an article of mine on how the logic and networks of youth cultures provide an inspiring model for European cooperation. Volume is an independent quarterly for architecture to go beyond itself and is a cooperation between:
Archis Foundation, Amsterdam
AMO, Rotterdam
C-LAB, Columbia University New York
First time I made it to a cover of a magazine. Here´s a teaser on the article:
"Several youth cultures show how difference can be a prerequisite rather than an obstacle to interaction. By giving serious attention to interaction practices in transnational youth cultures we could actually find answers to many of the diversity problems with which Europe currently struggles."
Volume can be bought from selected bookstores:
Amazon
NAI Publishers
Bruil
Archis
Showing posts with label online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Spreading Meanings, Not Viruses
Last weeks have been quite exciting in terms of finding a new way of working. Going from an office job to freelancing has meant learning a new sense of pace. All the things I do currently are assignments where my work is measured on the originality of the ideas I produce, not based on the hours I spend at the office. It has also meant that I need to learn a new way of implementing reading and browsing as an essential part of my weekly routine. They count in the end much more than coordination meetings. It is fun - I give you that -, but it is also work.
I have developed a completely new way of using the Web. At the hectic office I used the Internet mostly like fast food, like media snacks (munched easily with increasing frequency and maximum speed – like chips – a description from Miller in Wired) between emails and phone calls. Now I take daily an hour or two to go through a dozen or so blogs, mark interesting stuff on Delicious and develop a more systematic way of finding content. Finding content that matters takes time and diligence.
The best thing I have discovered is Henry Jenkins´ blog. MIT´s Media Professor Jenkins focuses on what people are doing with media rather than on what the media is doing to people. His approach is critical but enthusiastic and he does not shy away from using very current examples for making his case.
His 8-part essay If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead is something I would recommend for everyone working with brands and media culture. Jenkins sees consumers as empowered and intelligent species using media for their own purposes and goes beyond the discussion on virals. He talks about the spreadability of media – that citizens spread and reform content rather than passively carry a virus. That spreading media is an essential part of reputation management online. Just think of your own Facebook usage – what you link and post tells your “friends” a lot about who you are.
A statement by Jenkins that is highly useful for instance for my work with StrangerFestival: loss of producers´ control over meaning is a precondition for circulation. Spreadable media memes have to available for remixing before transferring so that people can use them for their own purposes to recreate meaning. As John Fiske puts it: this is where mass culture turns into popular culture. From a producer´s point of view creating media content that “sticks” on people would be wonderful but today´s successful content is one that spreads, shapes and puzzles. Which is actually quite liberating and empowering if you really think about it.
I have developed a completely new way of using the Web. At the hectic office I used the Internet mostly like fast food, like media snacks (munched easily with increasing frequency and maximum speed – like chips – a description from Miller in Wired) between emails and phone calls. Now I take daily an hour or two to go through a dozen or so blogs, mark interesting stuff on Delicious and develop a more systematic way of finding content. Finding content that matters takes time and diligence.
The best thing I have discovered is Henry Jenkins´ blog. MIT´s Media Professor Jenkins focuses on what people are doing with media rather than on what the media is doing to people. His approach is critical but enthusiastic and he does not shy away from using very current examples for making his case.
His 8-part essay If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead is something I would recommend for everyone working with brands and media culture. Jenkins sees consumers as empowered and intelligent species using media for their own purposes and goes beyond the discussion on virals. He talks about the spreadability of media – that citizens spread and reform content rather than passively carry a virus. That spreading media is an essential part of reputation management online. Just think of your own Facebook usage – what you link and post tells your “friends” a lot about who you are.
A statement by Jenkins that is highly useful for instance for my work with StrangerFestival: loss of producers´ control over meaning is a precondition for circulation. Spreadable media memes have to available for remixing before transferring so that people can use them for their own purposes to recreate meaning. As John Fiske puts it: this is where mass culture turns into popular culture. From a producer´s point of view creating media content that “sticks” on people would be wonderful but today´s successful content is one that spreads, shapes and puzzles. Which is actually quite liberating and empowering if you really think about it.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Greener Across The Border
Today´s Forum Virium Hidden Treasure seminar showed the difficulty of international comparisons in policy debate. A presentation painted a picture of the Dutch innovation system and Innovation Platform as a smooth and efficient actor in fostering innovations. However, what was not mentioned was the heated discussion before the last Dutch parliamentary elections whether the entire organization should continue. It was largely seen as an inefficient bureaucratic failure. Alike what was not mentioned today at Vanha was the recent book by Frans Nauta, the first General Secretary of the Innovation Platform, in which he highly critically went through the setup and work of the body. Nauta, who is currently lecturing on innovation in Arnhem, left the office out of frustration quite quickly due to immense struggles with the government engine.
Before the last elections I did an article for Suomen Kuvalehti on the Dutch Innovation Platform as it was assembled following a Finnish example. Most of the interviewees then criticized the Innovation Platform for its broad agenda and the big publicity around its launch. Whereas in Finland the Science and Technology Council is not known by most people and is largely seen as a coordination body, in the Netherlands the government did a huge publicity stunt around its launch – i.e. it was doomed to fail in its delivery. As Joeri van den Steenhoven said in my interview for Suomen Kuvalehti then:”In Finland compromise means that people discuss, vote on the propositions and everyone lives with the result. In the Netherlands compromise means that we discuss and discuss, we split into numerous subcommittees and make an overall strategy so broad that everyone can keep on doing what they were already doing.” As someone on the coffee break rightly said in the Forum Virium seminar:”The problem with the Innovation Platform is that it has no money so it really cannot initiate much.”
I am all for international comparisons and learning from others. I also hope the Innovation Platform has learned from its start. I am also all for investment in innovation and R&D. But without a full picture of the international case, we end up making the wrong conclusions of it and therefore carry out our changes in false consciousness. But then again, I guess we have come full circle now in the Dutch-Finnish relations: some years ago van den Steenhoven´s and Nauta´s Kennisland was an active lobby in the Netherlands for learning from the Finnish model following Manuel Castells´ and Pekka Himanen´s work. Now we are presented in Helsinki the work of the Innovation Platform only to be followed by statements praising the leadership position of the Netherlands in investing in innovation. How did it go: what goes around, comes around.
Before the last elections I did an article for Suomen Kuvalehti on the Dutch Innovation Platform as it was assembled following a Finnish example. Most of the interviewees then criticized the Innovation Platform for its broad agenda and the big publicity around its launch. Whereas in Finland the Science and Technology Council is not known by most people and is largely seen as a coordination body, in the Netherlands the government did a huge publicity stunt around its launch – i.e. it was doomed to fail in its delivery. As Joeri van den Steenhoven said in my interview for Suomen Kuvalehti then:”In Finland compromise means that people discuss, vote on the propositions and everyone lives with the result. In the Netherlands compromise means that we discuss and discuss, we split into numerous subcommittees and make an overall strategy so broad that everyone can keep on doing what they were already doing.” As someone on the coffee break rightly said in the Forum Virium seminar:”The problem with the Innovation Platform is that it has no money so it really cannot initiate much.”
I am all for international comparisons and learning from others. I also hope the Innovation Platform has learned from its start. I am also all for investment in innovation and R&D. But without a full picture of the international case, we end up making the wrong conclusions of it and therefore carry out our changes in false consciousness. But then again, I guess we have come full circle now in the Dutch-Finnish relations: some years ago van den Steenhoven´s and Nauta´s Kennisland was an active lobby in the Netherlands for learning from the Finnish model following Manuel Castells´ and Pekka Himanen´s work. Now we are presented in Helsinki the work of the Innovation Platform only to be followed by statements praising the leadership position of the Netherlands in investing in innovation. How did it go: what goes around, comes around.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Boiling It Together
So, month 1 done as an entrepeneur. Some reflections are in order:
1. It feels so liberating to be in charge of your own schedule and work load. Everyne should at times try to define to oneself and others what you can do. It is good for your (professional) self esteem.
2. There is bureaucracy involved but you manage if you just get yourself into it. Good accountant helps. Taxation is not rocket science. Pricing is something I guess one learns only by doing.
3. Coming up with ideas and concepts is the best job ever. You also need people skills to make this work. But this kind of work is made for someone with a slight attention deficit because you have to stay alert and keep numerous balls in the air simultaneously.
So here is my Going Up and Going Down list from the first month:
GOING UP
- Lähivakuutus and Fennia: extremely good service doing exactly what an insurance company should do: take the worry away. Understanding that the salesperson should be the one knowing their product catalogue, not the customer.
- Cafes: I find writing in a cafe often more productive than at home. The buzz and soundbites from random discussions are inspiring.
- Verottaja: The Finnish tax authority has one of the clearest website around and superb customer service on the phone. Governmental excellence if you ask me. One of those things where regionalisation of phone service works - the ladies answering the phone outside the capital region are so relaxed and kind of motherly. "Don´t you worry, dear, it is all going to work out."
- Home food: Making pulla, macaroni casserole, meatloaf, meat balls with brown sauce and baking your own pizza is a splendid exercise after a long day in front of the computer.
- K-Market Kamppi: Sometimes size matters. When you have a big space in the centre, you can provide your customers with affordable organic products, fresh fruit and vegetables, great selection of beer and helpful meat&fish desk. Placing this market on top of the bus station and a metro stop is a wise choice.
- Demos Helsinki: cooking up a number of projects with them. People having this fresh and inspiring view on climate change and citizenship are hard to find.
- Blogs: Only now when I have more time for content, I realise really how great blogs there are out there. Some witty, some informative. Looking constantly for more but my current ones are there on the left hand side.
- Public transport: In Amsterdam I barely used public transport. But I must say that Helsinki has a punctual, well-planned and relatively affordable public transport system. HKL is the best argument against buying a car. And it is so much easier to read a book on a tram than on the bike.
GOING DOWN
- Nordea and OP-Pohjola: The beautiful idea of providing bank and insurance services from the same counter leads to the people at the counter not knowing the basics of the products they are selling and asking the customer to identify the products from their product catalogue. And hey, giving a pile of terms and conditions is not customer service - I could have printed them myself.
- Sonera: changing from Elisa to Sonera (for the iPhone) did not start too well. They for some bizarre reason "forgot" to process my application for two weeks and then I need to wait for my new phone for 3 weeks. What is the logic in individuals getting their phone directly in the store and business customers having to wait for weeks?
So all and all, we are strongly on the plus side. Next month should land a few big projects so we are all set to make this work.
1. It feels so liberating to be in charge of your own schedule and work load. Everyne should at times try to define to oneself and others what you can do. It is good for your (professional) self esteem.
2. There is bureaucracy involved but you manage if you just get yourself into it. Good accountant helps. Taxation is not rocket science. Pricing is something I guess one learns only by doing.
3. Coming up with ideas and concepts is the best job ever. You also need people skills to make this work. But this kind of work is made for someone with a slight attention deficit because you have to stay alert and keep numerous balls in the air simultaneously.
So here is my Going Up and Going Down list from the first month:
GOING UP
- Lähivakuutus and Fennia: extremely good service doing exactly what an insurance company should do: take the worry away. Understanding that the salesperson should be the one knowing their product catalogue, not the customer.
- Cafes: I find writing in a cafe often more productive than at home. The buzz and soundbites from random discussions are inspiring.
- Verottaja: The Finnish tax authority has one of the clearest website around and superb customer service on the phone. Governmental excellence if you ask me. One of those things where regionalisation of phone service works - the ladies answering the phone outside the capital region are so relaxed and kind of motherly. "Don´t you worry, dear, it is all going to work out."
- Home food: Making pulla, macaroni casserole, meatloaf, meat balls with brown sauce and baking your own pizza is a splendid exercise after a long day in front of the computer.
- K-Market Kamppi: Sometimes size matters. When you have a big space in the centre, you can provide your customers with affordable organic products, fresh fruit and vegetables, great selection of beer and helpful meat&fish desk. Placing this market on top of the bus station and a metro stop is a wise choice.
- Demos Helsinki: cooking up a number of projects with them. People having this fresh and inspiring view on climate change and citizenship are hard to find.
- Blogs: Only now when I have more time for content, I realise really how great blogs there are out there. Some witty, some informative. Looking constantly for more but my current ones are there on the left hand side.
- Public transport: In Amsterdam I barely used public transport. But I must say that Helsinki has a punctual, well-planned and relatively affordable public transport system. HKL is the best argument against buying a car. And it is so much easier to read a book on a tram than on the bike.
GOING DOWN
- Nordea and OP-Pohjola: The beautiful idea of providing bank and insurance services from the same counter leads to the people at the counter not knowing the basics of the products they are selling and asking the customer to identify the products from their product catalogue. And hey, giving a pile of terms and conditions is not customer service - I could have printed them myself.
- Sonera: changing from Elisa to Sonera (for the iPhone) did not start too well. They for some bizarre reason "forgot" to process my application for two weeks and then I need to wait for my new phone for 3 weeks. What is the logic in individuals getting their phone directly in the store and business customers having to wait for weeks?
So all and all, we are strongly on the plus side. Next month should land a few big projects so we are all set to make this work.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Change Dot Gov
MixedInk Demo from MixedInk on Vimeo. Thanks, MediaShift, for the link. This is just way too cool. This links well to a project plan we are putting together on citizenship. So the tools are all there, now we just need the content and the motivation and the commitment of government to take this seriously. Something else cool on coverage of the inauguration here, this time by Washington Post. I just love these gadgets.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Coolest Damn Video Festival on the Planet
I love my job. I just really really love my job. It is maybe weird to make that statement 5 days before leaving it but this weekend it once again became very apparent: this work is amazing as you get to work with top notch people. This weekend also made concrete all those books about collaborative creativity I have read lately: together we make better ideas.
We started StrangerFestival around two years ago on a couple of PowerPoint slides. Along the way came the visuals, the partner organisations, first videos uploaded on the site, first marketing material, more partners, more videos, an international festival and loads more. It is already a great project which has given loads of people their first time on a plane, their first video-making experience and their first international friendship.
This weekend we had a meeting first with our European partners and continued right away with the first meeting of TheStrangers, a group of young video makers acting as our expert group. Both of these meetings made it clear: this project belongs now to more people. It is not just our project. It is a bloody fab feeling when you start hearing more and more people using the word ´we´.
I am happy I get to continue in the project also next year, although in another role. Having these meetings in the beginning of the year would have made sense but then again TheStrangers group was really possible only after the first entries. It is fantastic that we can now learn from 2008 and make things better in 2009.
The people and issues we work with are amazing. Just a testing session on the website generated already a list of small things that would help make joining easier. You get to see some of them in the coming months. We came up with ideas for great workshops, created new categories, wrote down lists of possible jury members, brainstormed on prizes and even made some videos. TheStrangers showed us in the team and to each other already several videos which we had not seen before but which were winning material. It has now been proved that having young video makers owning the project with the team brings in great content. It is therefore clear now that in 2009 StrangerFestival will be even more special, even more fun and even more meaningful. I cannot wait.
Here are some of their findings:
Beautiful childhood memory from Slovakia
Role of video making in one´s life
How making a video important to you always does not need to be about you
We started StrangerFestival around two years ago on a couple of PowerPoint slides. Along the way came the visuals, the partner organisations, first videos uploaded on the site, first marketing material, more partners, more videos, an international festival and loads more. It is already a great project which has given loads of people their first time on a plane, their first video-making experience and their first international friendship.
This weekend we had a meeting first with our European partners and continued right away with the first meeting of TheStrangers, a group of young video makers acting as our expert group. Both of these meetings made it clear: this project belongs now to more people. It is not just our project. It is a bloody fab feeling when you start hearing more and more people using the word ´we´.
I am happy I get to continue in the project also next year, although in another role. Having these meetings in the beginning of the year would have made sense but then again TheStrangers group was really possible only after the first entries. It is fantastic that we can now learn from 2008 and make things better in 2009.
The people and issues we work with are amazing. Just a testing session on the website generated already a list of small things that would help make joining easier. You get to see some of them in the coming months. We came up with ideas for great workshops, created new categories, wrote down lists of possible jury members, brainstormed on prizes and even made some videos. TheStrangers showed us in the team and to each other already several videos which we had not seen before but which were winning material. It has now been proved that having young video makers owning the project with the team brings in great content. It is therefore clear now that in 2009 StrangerFestival will be even more special, even more fun and even more meaningful. I cannot wait.
Here are some of their findings:
Beautiful childhood memory from Slovakia
Role of video making in one´s life
How making a video important to you always does not need to be about you
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
The Video Republic
On Monday we launch together with Demos a report on youth and video which has been carried out associated to StrangerFestival. From Monday 6 October the report is available for downloading at www.demos.co.uk. I highly recommend reading it. But here as a taster, a video building up the excitement. The report is funded by Helsingin Sanomat Foundation.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Making Sense
First day of networking and learning at PICNIC08 done. Got home at 22.00 after a spontaneous dinner with corporate trend analysts. Great stuff and discussions on how to create governments able to recognise the issues that matter to people. Basically the question was: why is a marketeer able to develop a working model that benefits product development, brand recognition and also profits the individuals taking part? Or more importantly, why governments are not able to do this? More surely to follow on that. As Charlie Leadbeater put it: why does it feel like governments are doing things to us when they claim they are doing things with or for us?
So what else did I grab from today?
- Google is not very good - some even said crap - in suggestings things to us that we were not aware that we are interested in (like for instance newspapers are)
- nearly all creativity requires collaboration but not all collaboration is creative
- "free form internet is a pure myth"
- Aaron Koblin's work on visualising data is amazing (see video above on visualising SMS sending in Amsterdam)
- internet platforms have corrupted the way we use the word friend and the meanings we give to it.
By the way: PICNIC is doing a huge mapping on trends. If you can think of one, let me know by giving a short explanation and an example and I will add it to the mapping exercise they are doing. One I saw added today was sharing rare music via YouTube.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Switch
I was asked to speak to our board tonight with the title: what does Europe mean for young people? This is what I said.
---
During my summer holiday I read a great book by a Finnish young philosopher called Tommi Uschanov. The pamphlet by this quite peculiar character is called What is the matter with the Left. In this book that he had apparently been working on for more than six years he wondered why the European left is doing so badly when most of us buy their values of solidarity and compassion nearly to the full. What Uschanov wrote about the Left’s thinking I feel links well to the subject of this intervention. Uschanov claimed that an overall problem of European social democracy has been to tell people that their understanding of themselves and their priorities is wrong and that only if they would understand that they live on false premises, the society would function better. This was very visible in the 1970s idea in the Nordic countries that there is a Social Democrat in all of us.
In my work with young people – once again I wish to stress that I am not part of this group – I meet engaged and worried young people. These people are busy with a million things at the same time on a personal and local scale. The young video makers and fashion designers I meet also seem to be extremely allergic to fake things. If I was asked to describe the generation just shortly, I would dare to state that their jargon tolerance is the lowest of all generations I know. I see people driven by real emotions, real actions and real skills, not by big ideas, great achievements and global movements.
I think this is where it somewhat goes wrong for Europe. When a generation of personal action is coupled with ambitious ideologies, they detach from each other quickly like oil and water. The message being pushed is about big things such as peace and prosperity where people want a role, they want a genuine feeling and they want an emotion. The question I hear is: what should I do with Europe and what does Europe expect me to do? I really don’t have a compelling answer based on the current paradigms.
In the videos I see online on our projects but also on platforms like YouTube, the majority of the videos are not making explicit statements about the state of the world. They are more saying “this is how I think I am feeling today” or “this is what I think matters to me today”. As a research commissioned by the ECF around the StrangerFestival points out, young people use video for deliberation and they very seldom make their work for a specific audience. Video is in most cases a public tool for self exploration.
A superstructure like Europe is not an issue tackled often when it is nothing you can touch, nothing you can strive for and nothing you can influence in your daily practice. Just as an example we can take last year when the European Union celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. The message put forward was 50 years of peace. A lot of references were made also to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the progress Europe have made since then. I could not help wondering what this all should mean for an 18-year-old today who was minus 32 when the treaty of Rome was signed and just about born when the wall was hammered down. 50 years of peace and now what? When Europe seems to be a deteriorating mega project, it is very difficult to get excited.
Coming back to Uschanov, I feel we need a switch in our thinking. Young people are not stupid and don’t buy Europe when you attach a popstar to it. Europe needs to be demystified and it needs to start from people’s realities. What this video culture offers us, is this pool of deliberations for us to dive into. Now what we are mostly doing is asking them to adjust their reality to a supersystem without no practical implications.
So what could be done? I would have two suggestions:
1. Provide access for more young people. If we want to see a Europe that goes to the skin and feels like something, we need to make sure that more people are involved. With this I mean work that we do for instance with theoneminutesjr by providing access to culture, supporting self-esteem to enter the public sphere and in that sense tackling the symbolic inequality in the public sphere created mostly by white heterosexual men. But we need to allow people to decide what matters to them, which brings me to my second point.
2. And this is more difficult: We need to support connections and curation and help people – both young and old – to make sense and find their place. We need to build links between strangers but on matters that matter to them. This does not mean that people need to agree but we need to work towards exposing commonalities in interest. We need to allow people – young and old - to test, modify and attach rather than buy a message about a superproject. When you start from something that matters to the people, you are already more than half way there. And when these millions of expressive people with millions of aspirations happen to be in Lisbon, Pieksämäki and Cluj, I bet there is a feeling of being part of something bigger than our own village. I really think free self-expression is the key: if I matter to Europe, Europe could matter to me.
---
During my summer holiday I read a great book by a Finnish young philosopher called Tommi Uschanov. The pamphlet by this quite peculiar character is called What is the matter with the Left. In this book that he had apparently been working on for more than six years he wondered why the European left is doing so badly when most of us buy their values of solidarity and compassion nearly to the full. What Uschanov wrote about the Left’s thinking I feel links well to the subject of this intervention. Uschanov claimed that an overall problem of European social democracy has been to tell people that their understanding of themselves and their priorities is wrong and that only if they would understand that they live on false premises, the society would function better. This was very visible in the 1970s idea in the Nordic countries that there is a Social Democrat in all of us.
In my work with young people – once again I wish to stress that I am not part of this group – I meet engaged and worried young people. These people are busy with a million things at the same time on a personal and local scale. The young video makers and fashion designers I meet also seem to be extremely allergic to fake things. If I was asked to describe the generation just shortly, I would dare to state that their jargon tolerance is the lowest of all generations I know. I see people driven by real emotions, real actions and real skills, not by big ideas, great achievements and global movements.
I think this is where it somewhat goes wrong for Europe. When a generation of personal action is coupled with ambitious ideologies, they detach from each other quickly like oil and water. The message being pushed is about big things such as peace and prosperity where people want a role, they want a genuine feeling and they want an emotion. The question I hear is: what should I do with Europe and what does Europe expect me to do? I really don’t have a compelling answer based on the current paradigms.
In the videos I see online on our projects but also on platforms like YouTube, the majority of the videos are not making explicit statements about the state of the world. They are more saying “this is how I think I am feeling today” or “this is what I think matters to me today”. As a research commissioned by the ECF around the StrangerFestival points out, young people use video for deliberation and they very seldom make their work for a specific audience. Video is in most cases a public tool for self exploration.
A superstructure like Europe is not an issue tackled often when it is nothing you can touch, nothing you can strive for and nothing you can influence in your daily practice. Just as an example we can take last year when the European Union celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. The message put forward was 50 years of peace. A lot of references were made also to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the progress Europe have made since then. I could not help wondering what this all should mean for an 18-year-old today who was minus 32 when the treaty of Rome was signed and just about born when the wall was hammered down. 50 years of peace and now what? When Europe seems to be a deteriorating mega project, it is very difficult to get excited.
Coming back to Uschanov, I feel we need a switch in our thinking. Young people are not stupid and don’t buy Europe when you attach a popstar to it. Europe needs to be demystified and it needs to start from people’s realities. What this video culture offers us, is this pool of deliberations for us to dive into. Now what we are mostly doing is asking them to adjust their reality to a supersystem without no practical implications.
So what could be done? I would have two suggestions:
1. Provide access for more young people. If we want to see a Europe that goes to the skin and feels like something, we need to make sure that more people are involved. With this I mean work that we do for instance with theoneminutesjr by providing access to culture, supporting self-esteem to enter the public sphere and in that sense tackling the symbolic inequality in the public sphere created mostly by white heterosexual men. But we need to allow people to decide what matters to them, which brings me to my second point.
2. And this is more difficult: We need to support connections and curation and help people – both young and old – to make sense and find their place. We need to build links between strangers but on matters that matter to them. This does not mean that people need to agree but we need to work towards exposing commonalities in interest. We need to allow people – young and old - to test, modify and attach rather than buy a message about a superproject. When you start from something that matters to the people, you are already more than half way there. And when these millions of expressive people with millions of aspirations happen to be in Lisbon, Pieksämäki and Cluj, I bet there is a feeling of being part of something bigger than our own village. I really think free self-expression is the key: if I matter to Europe, Europe could matter to me.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
StrangerFestival Deadline
Today was one of those days when I ended up running up and down the office and having too hasty discussions with my colleagues. Reason: the deadline for uploads for the international StrangerFestival competition. By midnight tonight, people need to upload their videos at www.strangerfestival.com in order to take part in the competition for the AudienceAward, MTV Stranger Award and StrangerAward. Come and vote for your favourite at www.strangerfestival.com.
Over the last weeks we in the team have been going through the entries in order to make a preselection for a jury of media students who are going to help us on Saturday selecting the best of the best to be sent out to the juries. I have seen some really amazing stuff.
This video by Nanda is one of the most powerful I have seen. Please take 60 seconds to watch it. More to follow in the coming weeks.
Over the last weeks we in the team have been going through the entries in order to make a preselection for a jury of media students who are going to help us on Saturday selecting the best of the best to be sent out to the juries. I have seen some really amazing stuff.
This video by Nanda is one of the most powerful I have seen. Please take 60 seconds to watch it. More to follow in the coming weeks.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
How Do You Do, Dear?
I have never felt a particular need to hide my enthusiasm over Britain. I mean of course they have their own complexes (and lack of cuisine of their own) but at the same time it is the home of the English language, one of the political systems most strongly founded on the power of verbal argumentation and it still runs some of the best publications in the world. At a recent event on European culture I remember an Italian curator confessing that he actually thinks today's best literature comes from the US and Britain.
There are very few newspapers that would compete in quality with The Observer, the Guardian's weekend edition. I have made it into a habit to buy it on Sundays (even if they really rip you off by charging over four euros for it) and spending around 2 hours going it through. Such a delight especially on a sunny cafe terrace.
Yesterday I also discovered the Guardian's podcasts. They remind me how poor my English still is. I am a novice compared to the journalists now doing their word acrobatics also on my iPod. The podcasts also remind you how our Euro-English is mostly just English for Dummies. Or to be more on the mark, I think English for Robots Understanding Clear and Simple Sentences.
My favourites by now are Jason Solomon's film podcast and the Book Review podcast. Youngish Solomon has this amusingly posh English accent with an ADHD-ish enthusiasm competing with CNN's Richard Quest. In the latest episode his wordplay showed the true Clash of Civilisations of today when he interviewed the Michael Moore v. 2.0, Morgan "Supersize Me" Spurlock. Oxford met Wal-Mart. I do however hope that Solomon would at times give room to his colleague, one of best film critics alive, Mr Philip French. I want to hear his voice.
Regarding voice, some people surprise you. The book podcas's interview with novelist Hanif Kureishi surprised me. I did not expect him to sound so much like Jeremy Irons. Very compelling indeed.
There are very few newspapers that would compete in quality with The Observer, the Guardian's weekend edition. I have made it into a habit to buy it on Sundays (even if they really rip you off by charging over four euros for it) and spending around 2 hours going it through. Such a delight especially on a sunny cafe terrace.
Yesterday I also discovered the Guardian's podcasts. They remind me how poor my English still is. I am a novice compared to the journalists now doing their word acrobatics also on my iPod. The podcasts also remind you how our Euro-English is mostly just English for Dummies. Or to be more on the mark, I think English for Robots Understanding Clear and Simple Sentences.
My favourites by now are Jason Solomon's film podcast and the Book Review podcast. Youngish Solomon has this amusingly posh English accent with an ADHD-ish enthusiasm competing with CNN's Richard Quest. In the latest episode his wordplay showed the true Clash of Civilisations of today when he interviewed the Michael Moore v. 2.0, Morgan "Supersize Me" Spurlock. Oxford met Wal-Mart. I do however hope that Solomon would at times give room to his colleague, one of best film critics alive, Mr Philip French. I want to hear his voice.
Regarding voice, some people surprise you. The book podcas's interview with novelist Hanif Kureishi surprised me. I did not expect him to sound so much like Jeremy Irons. Very compelling indeed.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
And We Would All Be Safe
Yesterday I lectured in Geneva to a group of designers on the ways ‘we’ and ‘them’ are produced in youth cultures. One of my key themes in the presentation was the sense of insecurity felt by a large number of teenagers. There is not one single reason to point out: the sense of instability and anxiety results from the Internet, secularism, social inequality, lack of attention and confusion on parenthood just to name a few. The Internet is giving a voice for millions of freedom fighters but also acting as an efficient tool to terrorists, pedophiles and bullies. Therefore it does not come as surprise that one can witness an escapist sentiment in many youth cultures, which can be interpreted as a reaction to the world that the baby-boomers are offering. We’re destroying our planet, the public sphere and killing people on our borders. A growing number of teenagers are asking: what is the point really?
Of course the sense of instability and anxiety is not a privilege of teenagers. Kate Kellaway writes in this weekend’s The Observer how insomnia is becoming an epidemic of our era. The numbers are shocking: 27 % of Brits have at least three nights of bad sleep per week, 63 % suffer at least one. One in four Brits are finding it difficult to sleep well. The Western world seems to be turning into a community of unhappy, scared and wealthy zombies.
The Observer had asked a number of insomniacs to tell about their difficulties with sleep. As an insomniac myself, the stories are frighteningly familiar. During the last three and a half years I can’t remember a week when I had slept well seven nights in a row so reading the article felt like they had installed Big Brother cameras into my bedroom. As any insomniac knows, lack of sleep is not 100 % bad. Journalist Tim Adams describes the unusual moment of clarity emerging often in the middle of the night when sitting in a quiet house with your laptop and schoolgirl Elsa Vulliamy talks about the fear of the bed. It is black AND white, good AND horrible. “I’d just want it to be morning again” – a quote from Vulliamy – is something right from my mind earlier this week but I also can remember from my freelancer days the addiction to working in the middle of the night - which had as its flipside the grumpy zombie moments around three-four in the afternoon. And someone who always sleeps well cannot understand how much like a Superman an insomniac feels after nine hours of continuous sleep.
After my presentation yesterday we ended up talking about the responsibility of adults – teachers and parents specifically - when it comes to teenagers sharing intimate stuff online. We have entered a world where more and more parents are finding it difficult to perform some of the key roles of being a parent: protecting the child, passing knowledge onward and at times making the decision for the child. The helpless feeling is something we all insomniacs recognize – you feel very abandoned and helpless, lying in your own bed eyes wide open and thinking about the rest of the world resting in peace.
Of course the sense of instability and anxiety is not a privilege of teenagers. Kate Kellaway writes in this weekend’s The Observer how insomnia is becoming an epidemic of our era. The numbers are shocking: 27 % of Brits have at least three nights of bad sleep per week, 63 % suffer at least one. One in four Brits are finding it difficult to sleep well. The Western world seems to be turning into a community of unhappy, scared and wealthy zombies.
The Observer had asked a number of insomniacs to tell about their difficulties with sleep. As an insomniac myself, the stories are frighteningly familiar. During the last three and a half years I can’t remember a week when I had slept well seven nights in a row so reading the article felt like they had installed Big Brother cameras into my bedroom. As any insomniac knows, lack of sleep is not 100 % bad. Journalist Tim Adams describes the unusual moment of clarity emerging often in the middle of the night when sitting in a quiet house with your laptop and schoolgirl Elsa Vulliamy talks about the fear of the bed. It is black AND white, good AND horrible. “I’d just want it to be morning again” – a quote from Vulliamy – is something right from my mind earlier this week but I also can remember from my freelancer days the addiction to working in the middle of the night - which had as its flipside the grumpy zombie moments around three-four in the afternoon. And someone who always sleeps well cannot understand how much like a Superman an insomniac feels after nine hours of continuous sleep.
After my presentation yesterday we ended up talking about the responsibility of adults – teachers and parents specifically - when it comes to teenagers sharing intimate stuff online. We have entered a world where more and more parents are finding it difficult to perform some of the key roles of being a parent: protecting the child, passing knowledge onward and at times making the decision for the child. The helpless feeling is something we all insomniacs recognize – you feel very abandoned and helpless, lying in your own bed eyes wide open and thinking about the rest of the world resting in peace.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Sunny Jenkins
This was not how it was supposed to work. On Thursday I left the office energetic to prepare for the next day's evening with my team members. I had invited them over for casual dinner and drinks. My idea was also to use some of the evening for preparing for my lecture next Saturday in Geneva. After Friday I had planned an active Saturday of studying, shopping and so forth.
Well, as I got back from work on Thursday it was clear that the flu had caught me. And it came over like a flood. By the hour it only got worse and by the evening it was evident that the next day would be ruined. Before two I could not get up from bed as my head was pounding. I had to cancel the party planned a month back which sucked big time. In the end I ended up staying home also most of Saturday as I still felt relatively weak.
My weekend was however saved by two things: Professor Henry Jenkins and a sunny Sunday. Jenkins is MIT's Professor of Comparative Media Studies and writes phenomenally and in an entertaining manner on popular culture, fans, convergence of old and new media as well as media education. He has a critical but not cynical take on media, he admits being a fan of popular culture and he provides suggestions for improvements. I also like the fact that he often consciously looks at phenomena from the point of view of the viewer. His research on how Americans watch American Idol socially is awesome. Highly recommend his book Convergence Culture. Here I also need to thank Daniel and Celia for leading me to his literature.
The weather does not need explanation apart from pointing out that I am sure everyone knows how it feels when you get outside after being ill. Superman is back! Seriously, you feel reborn. I felt so energetic that we ended up discussing the European Dream for five hours on a terrace. It functioned as a good training camp for a debate in Stockholm on Thursday on the very existence of European culture.
Well, as I got back from work on Thursday it was clear that the flu had caught me. And it came over like a flood. By the hour it only got worse and by the evening it was evident that the next day would be ruined. Before two I could not get up from bed as my head was pounding. I had to cancel the party planned a month back which sucked big time. In the end I ended up staying home also most of Saturday as I still felt relatively weak.
My weekend was however saved by two things: Professor Henry Jenkins and a sunny Sunday. Jenkins is MIT's Professor of Comparative Media Studies and writes phenomenally and in an entertaining manner on popular culture, fans, convergence of old and new media as well as media education. He has a critical but not cynical take on media, he admits being a fan of popular culture and he provides suggestions for improvements. I also like the fact that he often consciously looks at phenomena from the point of view of the viewer. His research on how Americans watch American Idol socially is awesome. Highly recommend his book Convergence Culture. Here I also need to thank Daniel and Celia for leading me to his literature.
The weather does not need explanation apart from pointing out that I am sure everyone knows how it feels when you get outside after being ill. Superman is back! Seriously, you feel reborn. I felt so energetic that we ended up discussing the European Dream for five hours on a terrace. It functioned as a good training camp for a debate in Stockholm on Thursday on the very existence of European culture.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Optimism Is An Obligation
I just got back from Andrew Keen's lecture at Felix Meritis. Keen has made a fortune during the last year's by writing a bestseller called The Cult of the Amateur where he attacks the Web 2.0 phenomenon. According to Keen, we are not witnessing growing democracy but public masturbation of narcissists and a race to the bottom. As Keen puts it:"Most of us aren't talented. Most of us have nothing to say." According to Andrew Keen true democracy is not handing people the tools for self-expression, it is providing articles of professional journalists globally to everyone. "One learns about the world by listening to experts", he points out.
People like Keen frustrate me. He has found a segment in the market and hit it by simplifying his arguments to a cynical provocation piece. Personally I find it so sad when I witness professional writers choosing full pessimism as their final resting place. According to Keen, Web 2.0 is not about Wisdom of the Crowd, he thinks it is the Rule of the Mob lead by oligarchs such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page of Google.
I am right on the hit list of Keen's attack. We launched today a new version of www.strangerfestival.com which links videos by those vicious amateurs thematically and allows just everyone to even comment on them. Already now the thematic map shows fascinating aspects such as the amount of violence compared to religion. Come and have a look.
I get annoyed by attacks such as Keen's which blame user-generated culture for everything from drop in CD sales to falling subsciption rates of newspapers. Keen consciously forgets that at the same time as the Internet fosters blogs which are all about Me-Me-Me, it also creates opportunities for more people to reach quality and share quality. It allows people to gain recognition and creates a sense of belonging. Borrowing an idea of Karen Spaink from today: the goal of videos like the ones in StrangerFestival is not to prove that amateurs are as good as journalists and artists, not at all. We are talking of a new culture which creates its own narratives, frameworks and rules. Sometimes the goal is to change the world, sometimes it is just to share a feeling with friends of like-minded. Sometimes you reveal systematic torture by governments, sometimes you tell about struggling sleepless nights with a newborn, at times you want to show your holiday pictures to your loved ones and sometimes you tell about losing your legs in a bomb in Iraq.
Pessimism like Keen's is easy but not helpful. As Karen Spaink asked smartly:"So should we just tell people to shut up?" Maybe it my studies in political science but according to me this does not sound like spreading democracy, Mr Keen.
People like Keen frustrate me. He has found a segment in the market and hit it by simplifying his arguments to a cynical provocation piece. Personally I find it so sad when I witness professional writers choosing full pessimism as their final resting place. According to Keen, Web 2.0 is not about Wisdom of the Crowd, he thinks it is the Rule of the Mob lead by oligarchs such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page of Google.
I am right on the hit list of Keen's attack. We launched today a new version of www.strangerfestival.com which links videos by those vicious amateurs thematically and allows just everyone to even comment on them. Already now the thematic map shows fascinating aspects such as the amount of violence compared to religion. Come and have a look.
I get annoyed by attacks such as Keen's which blame user-generated culture for everything from drop in CD sales to falling subsciption rates of newspapers. Keen consciously forgets that at the same time as the Internet fosters blogs which are all about Me-Me-Me, it also creates opportunities for more people to reach quality and share quality. It allows people to gain recognition and creates a sense of belonging. Borrowing an idea of Karen Spaink from today: the goal of videos like the ones in StrangerFestival is not to prove that amateurs are as good as journalists and artists, not at all. We are talking of a new culture which creates its own narratives, frameworks and rules. Sometimes the goal is to change the world, sometimes it is just to share a feeling with friends of like-minded. Sometimes you reveal systematic torture by governments, sometimes you tell about struggling sleepless nights with a newborn, at times you want to show your holiday pictures to your loved ones and sometimes you tell about losing your legs in a bomb in Iraq.
Pessimism like Keen's is easy but not helpful. As Karen Spaink asked smartly:"So should we just tell people to shut up?" Maybe it my studies in political science but according to me this does not sound like spreading democracy, Mr Keen.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Artist Was There When Life Happened
"I don't want to present things like for instance Andy Warhol did by bringing Campbell's soup cans into an art environment. That is just changing the context. A regular thing does not turn interesting only by presenting it in an art gallery. (..) I don't want to make art that talks about art or raises discussion on art itself. (...) Sometimes people who demand more money, education and attention for art sound like those Formula 1 loonies who demand a Formula 1 track to every village."
These quotes from an interview with Finnish artist Jani Leinonen in VELI magazine were very much in line with my feelings today as I walked through the exhibitions of the Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA in Helsinki. I found myself being extremely moved by Nan Goldin's photography and one painting by Sami Lukkarinen (see pic). Let me try and explain why.
Goldin is a renowned American photographer who has made a career from documenting her own life and those usually considered to be on the downside: transsexuals, prostitutes, sexual minorities, victims of domestic violence, junkies and HIV positive people. Lukkarinen is a young Finnish star of the art world whose painting is part of a series where he worked with photos people used in their personal ads online.
Goldin's photos show people not at their best: with a bruised eye, sweaty and shiny forehead, bad hair day, in dirty underwear on a mattress that has turned brownish yellow surrounded by wallpaper that has lost its original colour ages ago. She shows people who look straight into the camera usually with a demanding look in their eyes, very seldom smiling. Goldin does not ask for pity for these people which a fresh and welcome take. She shows sex and life as they happen not in Hollywood but in cheap motels and run-down apartments. Her work shows human beings in full flesh, a bit scruffy but very present.
Lukkarinen's work then again shows people in the ways they see themselves at their best - often unconsciously reproducing common pornography and advertising imagery. They are not models but they push themselves out there, making themselves available for arousal and evaluation.
I found myself understanding and even supporting Leinonen's remark. I want art that makes me feel like something and says something about things that truly matter and which produces not just a new setting but a new meaning and an alternative way of looking. Goldin makes me face the side of our society not celebrated normally in the media and she shook a bit of my world. Both artists call for attention for life in its full which is what art should be doing.
These quotes from an interview with Finnish artist Jani Leinonen in VELI magazine were very much in line with my feelings today as I walked through the exhibitions of the Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA in Helsinki. I found myself being extremely moved by Nan Goldin's photography and one painting by Sami Lukkarinen (see pic). Let me try and explain why.
Goldin is a renowned American photographer who has made a career from documenting her own life and those usually considered to be on the downside: transsexuals, prostitutes, sexual minorities, victims of domestic violence, junkies and HIV positive people. Lukkarinen is a young Finnish star of the art world whose painting is part of a series where he worked with photos people used in their personal ads online.
Goldin's photos show people not at their best: with a bruised eye, sweaty and shiny forehead, bad hair day, in dirty underwear on a mattress that has turned brownish yellow surrounded by wallpaper that has lost its original colour ages ago. She shows people who look straight into the camera usually with a demanding look in their eyes, very seldom smiling. Goldin does not ask for pity for these people which a fresh and welcome take. She shows sex and life as they happen not in Hollywood but in cheap motels and run-down apartments. Her work shows human beings in full flesh, a bit scruffy but very present.
Lukkarinen's work then again shows people in the ways they see themselves at their best - often unconsciously reproducing common pornography and advertising imagery. They are not models but they push themselves out there, making themselves available for arousal and evaluation.
I found myself understanding and even supporting Leinonen's remark. I want art that makes me feel like something and says something about things that truly matter and which produces not just a new setting but a new meaning and an alternative way of looking. Goldin makes me face the side of our society not celebrated normally in the media and she shook a bit of my world. Both artists call for attention for life in its full which is what art should be doing.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
How do we feel?
As a professional conference guest I find myself quite frustrated fairly easily if the speaker is:
- giving the corporate PowerPoint
- undermining the level of knowledge of the audience
- making drastic simplification without data to back the arguments
- quoting Richard Florida
This morning at the Amsterdam Cross Media Week Picnic was very much living up to the points above. Speakers ranting about capitalist schemes killing creativity and authenticity, praising everything independent as the thing for the future and talking about creativity like it would be a democratic process ("everyone can now be a professional film maker" etc.) I have seldom missed office that much. Luckily enough after lunch I switched sessions and my sun started shining.
For once the rap was not about creativity. It was about living together as individuals on the same planet. As Emile Aarts from Philips pointed out, changing the perspective to the one of the citizen/consumer is easier said than done. Also in the panel on social networking platforms all the speakers talked about what people do rather than what's the business logic or the technical infrastructure. We are finally entering a debate around media and business where the corporations have realised that everything is technically possible but we just need better dreams and better ideas. Brilliant. Relevance is back in the game. I find this discussion interesting both from the point of view of business as well as the society. Developing products that make as live happier and in a more sustainable way are the ones that everyone strives for. I'm glad to realise that more and more people realise that good life and good business can be combined.
The highlight of the day was the presentation of the American artist Jonathan Harris. His projects like We Feel Fine or Universe use massive amounts of online information for showing in a new way what we as human beings feel, think and strive for. What makes it even better is that his projects are extraordinarily beautiful (see pic). Harris' work shows true creativity in stepping outside the 2-D website format and organising information in an attractive 3-D space.
Feelings are a good starting point for looking at the world. Feelings keep us going, drive us to demand more and not to give up. Harris' portfolio shows his anthropoligical interest in our life as a full package - including concern for Burma as well as the crush on the girl next door. That's who we are - fascinating packages with links to certain segments of other packages.
- giving the corporate PowerPoint
- undermining the level of knowledge of the audience
- making drastic simplification without data to back the arguments
- quoting Richard Florida
This morning at the Amsterdam Cross Media Week Picnic was very much living up to the points above. Speakers ranting about capitalist schemes killing creativity and authenticity, praising everything independent as the thing for the future and talking about creativity like it would be a democratic process ("everyone can now be a professional film maker" etc.) I have seldom missed office that much. Luckily enough after lunch I switched sessions and my sun started shining.
For once the rap was not about creativity. It was about living together as individuals on the same planet. As Emile Aarts from Philips pointed out, changing the perspective to the one of the citizen/consumer is easier said than done. Also in the panel on social networking platforms all the speakers talked about what people do rather than what's the business logic or the technical infrastructure. We are finally entering a debate around media and business where the corporations have realised that everything is technically possible but we just need better dreams and better ideas. Brilliant. Relevance is back in the game. I find this discussion interesting both from the point of view of business as well as the society. Developing products that make as live happier and in a more sustainable way are the ones that everyone strives for. I'm glad to realise that more and more people realise that good life and good business can be combined.
The highlight of the day was the presentation of the American artist Jonathan Harris. His projects like We Feel Fine or Universe use massive amounts of online information for showing in a new way what we as human beings feel, think and strive for. What makes it even better is that his projects are extraordinarily beautiful (see pic). Harris' work shows true creativity in stepping outside the 2-D website format and organising information in an attractive 3-D space.
Feelings are a good starting point for looking at the world. Feelings keep us going, drive us to demand more and not to give up. Harris' portfolio shows his anthropoligical interest in our life as a full package - including concern for Burma as well as the crush on the girl next door. That's who we are - fascinating packages with links to certain segments of other packages.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Shut up and read
I have been in the US now for more than a week and haven't posted a single thing linked to television. American television would turn me into a couch potato in a few days. Just the fact that in the house I am staying at they have something like 300 channels. I find it difficult to understand that someone can even concentrate on a programme without flicking through the others for something better.
By watching the current affairs TV programmes, one could easily think that the presidential elections are next week. From Meet the Press to Face The Nation they all concentrate on Hillary or not Hillary at the moment. Yesterday's Meet The Press (political journalists commenting on current affairs) one of the biggest topics was the decline in Barack Obama's popularity. The question these professionals were pondering was whether Hillary is starting to be unbeatable.
Ah yes, professionals. Yesterday's LA Times had one of those articles about professional commentators which I thought were already past times. Professor of Journalism Michael Skube from Elon University of North Carolina (Pulitzer winner) shared with us his concern for the way political discussion especially around the presidential elections is losing its quality. And his blaming finger - as a professional journalist - was pointing of course to blogs.
Some quotes from Mr Skube:
"One gets the uneasy sense that the blogosphere is a potpourri of opinion and little more. The opinions are occasionally informed, often tiresomely cranky and never in doubt." Skube also refers to blogging as "armchair commentary". He refers to a famous piece in a Washington Post in the following manner:"Such a story demanded time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, preseverance. It's not something one does as a hobby."
Just the obvious remarks to Mr Skube:
1. Have you checked what kind of scum and propaganda is on newsstands under the name of journalism?
2. Seeing the blogosphere as a unity is more than one would expect from a professor of journalism at a time when Senators, Editors-in-Chief and other professional journalists, Chairs of NGOs and researchers among many are blogging.
3. The whole blogging has to some extent challenged the idea of journalism as objective practice. I do agree with Mr Skube that our society needs more in-depth analytical discussion but to claim that can only be done by professional journalists is just silly. Many print journalists tend to think that print is superior to other media but just yesterday we saw at the Paley Center for Media (Museum of Television and Radio) how Sir David Frost mastered in interviews with Robert Kennedy, Muhammad Ali and Richard Nixon.
4. What would you suggest, Professor Skube? That bloggers would shut up? That politicians should stop listening to them? That we should all start writing for print journals? Where does your argument take us?
By watching the current affairs TV programmes, one could easily think that the presidential elections are next week. From Meet the Press to Face The Nation they all concentrate on Hillary or not Hillary at the moment. Yesterday's Meet The Press (political journalists commenting on current affairs) one of the biggest topics was the decline in Barack Obama's popularity. The question these professionals were pondering was whether Hillary is starting to be unbeatable.
Ah yes, professionals. Yesterday's LA Times had one of those articles about professional commentators which I thought were already past times. Professor of Journalism Michael Skube from Elon University of North Carolina (Pulitzer winner) shared with us his concern for the way political discussion especially around the presidential elections is losing its quality. And his blaming finger - as a professional journalist - was pointing of course to blogs.
Some quotes from Mr Skube:
"One gets the uneasy sense that the blogosphere is a potpourri of opinion and little more. The opinions are occasionally informed, often tiresomely cranky and never in doubt." Skube also refers to blogging as "armchair commentary". He refers to a famous piece in a Washington Post in the following manner:"Such a story demanded time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, preseverance. It's not something one does as a hobby."
Just the obvious remarks to Mr Skube:
1. Have you checked what kind of scum and propaganda is on newsstands under the name of journalism?
2. Seeing the blogosphere as a unity is more than one would expect from a professor of journalism at a time when Senators, Editors-in-Chief and other professional journalists, Chairs of NGOs and researchers among many are blogging.
3. The whole blogging has to some extent challenged the idea of journalism as objective practice. I do agree with Mr Skube that our society needs more in-depth analytical discussion but to claim that can only be done by professional journalists is just silly. Many print journalists tend to think that print is superior to other media but just yesterday we saw at the Paley Center for Media (Museum of Television and Radio) how Sir David Frost mastered in interviews with Robert Kennedy, Muhammad Ali and Richard Nixon.
4. What would you suggest, Professor Skube? That bloggers would shut up? That politicians should stop listening to them? That we should all start writing for print journals? Where does your argument take us?
Friday, July 20, 2007
Tell me what I want
"I read it on your Facebook yes."
"Hey but let's be in touch on Facebook."
"I noticed from Facebook that you are his friend."
Typical quotes from my discussions over the last weeks. I cannot help it - I have turned into a Facebook junkie. I find myself getting a new application nearly every day (Cities I've Visited, Movies I have seen, Music I listen to, Books I am reading) and going through profiles of my friends to see what is happening to them. Compared to all the other social networking tools I know, Facebook is by far the most clever in its recommendation systems.
I think for me one of its key things is that it works on the logic seen for instance in Amazon - peer-to-peer recommendation. It allows you to find new things in the closed circuit of people you trust and know. I think this is the future of the Internet - tools that rate quality in more sophisticated manners than merely based on hits. It's a logic that works in real life as well. I mean for me the best incentive for reading a book is a friend or family member who says:"Man, you should really read this book I just finished. It is phenomenal."
Those of you who are not yet on Facebook, it is time to join now. Facebook is the future, Facebook is good, Facebook is beautiful.
"Hey but let's be in touch on Facebook."
"I noticed from Facebook that you are his friend."
Typical quotes from my discussions over the last weeks. I cannot help it - I have turned into a Facebook junkie. I find myself getting a new application nearly every day (Cities I've Visited, Movies I have seen, Music I listen to, Books I am reading) and going through profiles of my friends to see what is happening to them. Compared to all the other social networking tools I know, Facebook is by far the most clever in its recommendation systems.
I think for me one of its key things is that it works on the logic seen for instance in Amazon - peer-to-peer recommendation. It allows you to find new things in the closed circuit of people you trust and know. I think this is the future of the Internet - tools that rate quality in more sophisticated manners than merely based on hits. It's a logic that works in real life as well. I mean for me the best incentive for reading a book is a friend or family member who says:"Man, you should really read this book I just finished. It is phenomenal."
Those of you who are not yet on Facebook, it is time to join now. Facebook is the future, Facebook is good, Facebook is beautiful.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Hanging out with friends
It is half past midnight on a Tuesday-Wednesday night as I am posting this. I ought to be sleeping but while brushing my teeth, I had this revelation which I just thought that I need to write down immediately.
I got back from a worktrip from Istanbul tonight. It seems that my fate for the next year at least is to be an advocate for intercultural and inter-generational debate. I feel very passionate about praising how clever young people are with the media. At work we are preparing a big festival for June 2008 around user-generated content. I realised that while talking full-time about this subject I should also look into my own media use every now and then.
As I press F9 on my iBook, I can see all the windows I have open on my laptop. Currently I have Flickr (photo), MSN (chat), Linkedin (networks), Skype (chat), Facebook (networks) and Blogger (weblogs). This is relatively normal.
I know a lot of people could find this sad or pathetic. I have also come across the question:"Why don't you read a book or hang around with your friends?"
The answer is obvious to those familiar with these tools: I am hanging out with my friends. 20 years ago it would not have been possible chatting on a normal evening with friends in Finland, New York, California, London and what have you. The common misconception is that young people are replacing "normal" interaction with talking to strangers online. This is not the case. I just use myself (although not that young anymore) as evidence. I share things with people I know. I am a Finn living in another country. 20 years ago it would have been close to impossible for me to keep in touch with all my friends or share things daily with my family. Of course I also hang out with the friends here in Amsterdam but it is extremely rewarding that I can chat for hours and hours with people I have known for years but who happen to live far away.
Tools like Facebook are fantastically intelligent in helping you to keep private things among your friends and other things shared with millions - just like it has always been.
I got back from a worktrip from Istanbul tonight. It seems that my fate for the next year at least is to be an advocate for intercultural and inter-generational debate. I feel very passionate about praising how clever young people are with the media. At work we are preparing a big festival for June 2008 around user-generated content. I realised that while talking full-time about this subject I should also look into my own media use every now and then.
As I press F9 on my iBook, I can see all the windows I have open on my laptop. Currently I have Flickr (photo), MSN (chat), Linkedin (networks), Skype (chat), Facebook (networks) and Blogger (weblogs). This is relatively normal.
I know a lot of people could find this sad or pathetic. I have also come across the question:"Why don't you read a book or hang around with your friends?"
The answer is obvious to those familiar with these tools: I am hanging out with my friends. 20 years ago it would not have been possible chatting on a normal evening with friends in Finland, New York, California, London and what have you. The common misconception is that young people are replacing "normal" interaction with talking to strangers online. This is not the case. I just use myself (although not that young anymore) as evidence. I share things with people I know. I am a Finn living in another country. 20 years ago it would have been close to impossible for me to keep in touch with all my friends or share things daily with my family. Of course I also hang out with the friends here in Amsterdam but it is extremely rewarding that I can chat for hours and hours with people I have known for years but who happen to live far away.
Tools like Facebook are fantastically intelligent in helping you to keep private things among your friends and other things shared with millions - just like it has always been.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Release The Stars
Today has been a good day. After having a second brilliant session with the design students in Zürich, I made my way to the airport with the new Rufus Wainwright CD in my iPod. Sunny streets and his flirtatiously clever voice in my head was just the ultimate start for the weekend. And just to make my sister jealous I need to mention the perfectly salty crispy bretzel at the railway station.
By the way the Zürich airport is quite an experience. I would dare to name it as the most impressive airport I have seen. The share amount of empty space, the size of the airport compared to the size of the city (only like 300.000 inhabitants) and the fact that the airport is completely spotless all support an image of a city quite comfortable with its prosperity.
In our second session today with the students we focused on self-representation, migration and contextualisation. We compared for instance presenting a video on one's own MySpace site and on YouTube which is much less contextualised. The longest discussion was on "the story" behind a video of a teenager girl shaking her ass in her bedroom to 50 Cent's openly sexist song Candy Shop. The group slightly divided between those who did not see a reason to worry and those seeing signs of a lack of parental control.
After watching a lot of oneminutes, hip hop videos and parkour videos we dived into the question whether there are differences in the visual languages based on the teenagers ethnicity or nationality. My own gut feeling is that the differences are much more on subjects and in the tone of communication but the visual structure follows relatively unified paths.
I also got a question on why we do not indicate on theoneminutesjr website whether the maker is for instance an asylum seeker or an orphan or belonging to a cultural minority in a country. My answer was that we give the context of youth but after that it is up to the young maker to decide which particles of their identity their wish to highlight in their video. I have lobbied and will keep on lobbying for strategies where young people - whether or not with an immigrant background - are allowed to choose the communities they wish to attach to.
By the way the Zürich airport is quite an experience. I would dare to name it as the most impressive airport I have seen. The share amount of empty space, the size of the airport compared to the size of the city (only like 300.000 inhabitants) and the fact that the airport is completely spotless all support an image of a city quite comfortable with its prosperity.
In our second session today with the students we focused on self-representation, migration and contextualisation. We compared for instance presenting a video on one's own MySpace site and on YouTube which is much less contextualised. The longest discussion was on "the story" behind a video of a teenager girl shaking her ass in her bedroom to 50 Cent's openly sexist song Candy Shop. The group slightly divided between those who did not see a reason to worry and those seeing signs of a lack of parental control.
After watching a lot of oneminutes, hip hop videos and parkour videos we dived into the question whether there are differences in the visual languages based on the teenagers ethnicity or nationality. My own gut feeling is that the differences are much more on subjects and in the tone of communication but the visual structure follows relatively unified paths.
I also got a question on why we do not indicate on theoneminutesjr website whether the maker is for instance an asylum seeker or an orphan or belonging to a cultural minority in a country. My answer was that we give the context of youth but after that it is up to the young maker to decide which particles of their identity their wish to highlight in their video. I have lobbied and will keep on lobbying for strategies where young people - whether or not with an immigrant background - are allowed to choose the communities they wish to attach to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
