Night time thinking.
In the information playground we all exist in fame is pressure. It is no longer something you have or you don’t, but is instead a state that must be maintained with constant activity, constant creation and constant reinvention.
Latest Updates: information RSS
-
Steve Spalding
-
Steve Spalding
The only part of my High-School geometry class I remember really enjoying was reading Flatland, which is a fantastic fictional account of the life of a point as she transforms into a cube.
We really should let go of some of the fixations we cling to when it comes to organizing information.
There is no reason we can’t use comic books to teach quantum physics or “autobiographical” accounts to drive home concepts like ethics. The line between education and entertainment is in serious need of blurring.
-
Steve Spalding
I apologize to any professors who may be upset with me comparing them to House. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t true, and really I could have picked The Jersey Shore.
There is almost no difference in importance between the latest episode of House and that last lecture you attended at the University.
Human beings are creatures of analogy, we learn by comparing new information with frameworks we have developed from previous bits of information.
That is why the power on the web and elsewhere is not in the ability to convey information efficiently. Efficiency is for computers and style guides. The power is in being able to package information into analogies, to paint something interesting with your words and videos.
This is one of the reason you’ll have a lot easier time remembering that last episode of House than you will the lecture. TV producers make no qualms about the fact that what they do must be entertaining.
-
Steve Spalding
I want you to see the first draft of this, it was spectacular — spectacularly awful! See what I did there?
Funny story,
I keep sitting here trying to come up with clever things to write. This whole “one draft” business is murder for someone use to being able to hit backspace on his life. The truth though is one that I think has wider applications for anyone who produces content – if I am working to try to remember something, it probably wasn’t half as clever as I thought it was after all.
Information is like that, we retain those things that are important to us and forget the ones that are junk.
Instead of trying to pull quips from the ashes of our imaginations, maybe we should spend a little more time considering those things that stuck out.
-
Steve Spalding
This is as close to an introduction as you’re likely to get from me
The interesting thing about this project is that I get to start it without an outline. This is the first and final draft all etched indelibly in ink, on this page and if you happen to be reading this you are getting real time access to my musings without the benefit of either an eraser or an editor.
What is this all about?
I guess we we’ll have to wait to see what it ends up becoming, but if I were taking a bet, I would say that it will be about information, how we look at it, and how technology is shaping the way we use it.
-
Steve Spalding
As fun as it is to make twenty copies of every piece of information ever made
People are far too concerned about owning the data, when they should be a lot more interested in shaping the workflow.
Media has never been about the manufacturing of ideas, media is about guiding the way that people see concepts, where they choose to find information, and the highways and byways they seek out to think about problems.
Anyone, anywhere can create something – creation is cheap. The really hard thing, the valuable thing is developing platforms to guide consumption.
