Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Gone, Briefly
Heading to a workshop tomorrow. Stop.
Will be gone for three days. Stop.
Away from Filter & Splice. Stop.
Back then. Stop.
Take care of the blogosphere for me. Stop.
Will be gone for three days. Stop.
Away from Filter & Splice. Stop.
Back then. Stop.
Take care of the blogosphere for me. Stop.
Labels: blogosphere, filter, gone, splice, telegram, workshop
Sunday, October 01, 2006
The Ultimate Filter
I'm half-way through reading Chris Anderson's The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. I don't know about you, but I want to discuss books as I read them. I find that I'm asking questions of the authors as I go and then discovering the answers a few pages after I anticipated them - a little literary ESP, if you will.
Chapter 7 is called "The New Tastemakers" and discusses how anyone, with the help of the internet, can propel a long tail product to popularity, not just our typical cultural critics, A&R folks, and giant media corporations.
There's a section in this chapter called "Filters Rule." With so many more songs, books, movies, products & etc. to choose from via the internet, there has to be someone or something out there willing to help us sort through all of it and find what we want. According to Anderson, "The job of filters is to screen out that noise." (pg. 115) Google is one such filter. Amazon's book rankings are another such filter.
The Ultimate Filter, however, is a human being. Not just me. Not just you. But every single one of us is a filter. Of course, not all of us share the opinions and tastes we acquire through our filtering activities. Some keep them quietly to themselves. Some, the tastemakers and cultural mavens, boldly broadcast their tastes and opinions.
I'd never thought of myself as a tastemaker, still don't really. My interests are too scattershot to have much impact. In fact, if you look at my profile, you'll see some pretty disparate topics. How could they possibly hang together in a coherent fashion? Yet, what gives them an affinity is that they filter through me, a single individual, just like your disparate interests filter through you, and your neighbor's interests filter through him and on and on and on. The cohesiveness and eventual creativity (the splicing) comes from the uniqueness of each of us Ultimate Filters.
Chapter 7 is called "The New Tastemakers" and discusses how anyone, with the help of the internet, can propel a long tail product to popularity, not just our typical cultural critics, A&R folks, and giant media corporations.
There's a section in this chapter called "Filters Rule." With so many more songs, books, movies, products & etc. to choose from via the internet, there has to be someone or something out there willing to help us sort through all of it and find what we want. According to Anderson, "The job of filters is to screen out that noise." (pg. 115) Google is one such filter. Amazon's book rankings are another such filter.
The Ultimate Filter, however, is a human being. Not just me. Not just you. But every single one of us is a filter. Of course, not all of us share the opinions and tastes we acquire through our filtering activities. Some keep them quietly to themselves. Some, the tastemakers and cultural mavens, boldly broadcast their tastes and opinions.
I'd never thought of myself as a tastemaker, still don't really. My interests are too scattershot to have much impact. In fact, if you look at my profile, you'll see some pretty disparate topics. How could they possibly hang together in a coherent fashion? Yet, what gives them an affinity is that they filter through me, a single individual, just like your disparate interests filter through you, and your neighbor's interests filter through him and on and on and on. The cohesiveness and eventual creativity (the splicing) comes from the uniqueness of each of us Ultimate Filters.
Labels: chris anderson, culture, esp, filter, taste, the long tail
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
The Akashic Records in Zeros & Ones
Ever heard of the Akashic Records? In mystical circles, the Akashic Records are supposed to be all the thoughts, words, and deeds of everyone who has ever lived, floating around in some ether world that surrounds us. You can find a complete description of the concept on the Edgar Cayce website. (Edgar, who is no longer living, went into trances and helped people find solutions to medical problems via these trances.)
I believe that we are trying to make the Akashic Records "real" through our activity on the internet. We're all just furiously filtering stuff out of the Records and recreating it in zeros and ones. Don't be fooled, though. For as real as computers seem to make all of this info, and for as much influence as computers and digital info have on the world, when it comes right down to it, the stuff is really no more tangible than ether. Think about it. If you don't have a machine to read the info, if the server is down, if the software is outdated, if, if, if . . . then it matters not how much we've downloaded from the Akashic Records, it's all still inaccessible. Sounds so negative, doesn't it?
Yet, I don't feel negative about the Akashic Records or digital technology. I think the idea of the one and the reality of the other are truly exciting. If we humans can dream it, we can do it. That's the lesson here.
I've always been fascinated by mysticism, and equally fascinated by science and technology. The mysticism seems to come primarily from my mom's side of the family. My grandma was especially interested in hoodoo woowoo stuff. She had an Aunt Mary who was a chiropractor and crystal ball reader. I've only recently found this out through my mom. When I was a kid, there was a crystal ball in our game closet. It was in a tattered brown paper box and was a bit smaller than a pool ball - just as heavy though. My sister and I used to try and read it. We'd follow the instructions included with the ball and wait to see if a mist would develop inside the ball. Images would've been nice, but they never came. Turns out that this crystal ball was the VERY ONE used by Grandma's Aunt Mary. If only I could find it again.
My interest in science comes equally from my mom and my dad. My dad was a chemistry major in college and seemed to be very interested in scientific topics and TV shows while I was growing up. My mom could've been a doctor, she was so in tune with medicine and the body. This was probably due to the fact that she suffered from polio as a small child and underwent many, many operations before she was 18.
What really attracts me is the intersection between mysticism and science & technology. That's the fervently interesting gap where art & music & literature, heck - CREATION! - occurs
I believe that we are trying to make the Akashic Records "real" through our activity on the internet. We're all just furiously filtering stuff out of the Records and recreating it in zeros and ones. Don't be fooled, though. For as real as computers seem to make all of this info, and for as much influence as computers and digital info have on the world, when it comes right down to it, the stuff is really no more tangible than ether. Think about it. If you don't have a machine to read the info, if the server is down, if the software is outdated, if, if, if . . . then it matters not how much we've downloaded from the Akashic Records, it's all still inaccessible. Sounds so negative, doesn't it?
Yet, I don't feel negative about the Akashic Records or digital technology. I think the idea of the one and the reality of the other are truly exciting. If we humans can dream it, we can do it. That's the lesson here.
I've always been fascinated by mysticism, and equally fascinated by science and technology. The mysticism seems to come primarily from my mom's side of the family. My grandma was especially interested in hoodoo woowoo stuff. She had an Aunt Mary who was a chiropractor and crystal ball reader. I've only recently found this out through my mom. When I was a kid, there was a crystal ball in our game closet. It was in a tattered brown paper box and was a bit smaller than a pool ball - just as heavy though. My sister and I used to try and read it. We'd follow the instructions included with the ball and wait to see if a mist would develop inside the ball. Images would've been nice, but they never came. Turns out that this crystal ball was the VERY ONE used by Grandma's Aunt Mary. If only I could find it again.
My interest in science comes equally from my mom and my dad. My dad was a chemistry major in college and seemed to be very interested in scientific topics and TV shows while I was growing up. My mom could've been a doctor, she was so in tune with medicine and the body. This was probably due to the fact that she suffered from polio as a small child and underwent many, many operations before she was 18.
What really attracts me is the intersection between mysticism and science & technology. That's the fervently interesting gap where art & music & literature, heck - CREATION! - occurs
Labels: akashic records, chiropractor, creation, filter, mysticism, science, technology
Sunday, September 24, 2006
99% Perspiration
Thomas A. Edison said that "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." It's that perspiration stuff that most of us can't live up to. It doesn't take much to filter the vast amount of stimuli that is thrown at us on any given day and splice it into some new, fresh idea. How many of us have the time, energy, or the other resources necessary to bring that inspiration into the world? Maybe if we could stop at one idea or inspiration, but we humans are filtering and splicing machines. Go ahead. Have your ideas. Generate lots of them, but don't be scared to let most of them go. Do what you can do. Leave the rest for someone else. If one of your ideas really grabs you, you'll find that you have all the perspiration you need to bring it to fruition.
Labels: fear, filter, genius, idea, inspiration, splice
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Made-up Words
If the President can be The Decider and misunderestimate situations, then I can make up words too. There's Neezuls, which was my placeholder name for this blog, 'til I came up with the much more appropriate Filter & Splice. This morning, in that dusty state between dreaming and waking, the word "glio" came to me. I looked in my dictionary. It isn't a word on its own, although a couple of words - gliobastoma & glioma - start with it. They have to do with glial cells. If "glio" was a word on its own, how would you define it?
Labels: dictionary, filter, george w. bush, glio, splice, word
Friday, September 08, 2006
Welcome
I'm sticking my toe in the water - deciding whether to get my feet wet. I've had an idea for a blog for well over a year. What's taken me so long? The name. Of course. I had a screwy placeholder name written in my notebook because I couldn't come up with something decent. The name, I hate to admit, was Neezuls. Sounds very Winnie-the-Pooh-esque, doesn't it? A little dorky, too.
I had a very focused idea for this blog of mine, which I'll describe in a later post. And an appropriate name finally came to me: Splice. I loved it. I even had a great tagline: Frankensteining the Talent Pool. Could I leave it at that? No! I wanted to be able to expound on more than my very focused idea.
Back to the drawing board. I thought I could just change the tagline, but the thing was slippery. I couldn't come up with anything. Well, it wasn't that I couldn't come up with anything, but that I couldn't sum up what I wanted to say in a pithy, witty line. You'll note that the one I'm using for the time being is pretty lame. (The building blocks of Creativity.)
As I messed with the tagline, I decided that the name of the blog should change. Here's the deal: I'm enamored with creativity - what makes people creative, how they can enhance their creativity, what is the nature of creativity - stuff like that. Creativity for me is about filtering all of these vast experiences that come hurtling at me and then splicing them together to create something new. Hence, Filter & Splice.
I had a very focused idea for this blog of mine, which I'll describe in a later post. And an appropriate name finally came to me: Splice. I loved it. I even had a great tagline: Frankensteining the Talent Pool. Could I leave it at that? No! I wanted to be able to expound on more than my very focused idea.
Back to the drawing board. I thought I could just change the tagline, but the thing was slippery. I couldn't come up with anything. Well, it wasn't that I couldn't come up with anything, but that I couldn't sum up what I wanted to say in a pithy, witty line. You'll note that the one I'm using for the time being is pretty lame. (The building blocks of Creativity.)
As I messed with the tagline, I decided that the name of the blog should change. Here's the deal: I'm enamored with creativity - what makes people creative, how they can enhance their creativity, what is the nature of creativity - stuff like that. Creativity for me is about filtering all of these vast experiences that come hurtling at me and then splicing them together to create something new. Hence, Filter & Splice.
Labels: blog, creativity, filter, frankensteining the talent pool, FtTP, splice, tagline
