Zero History – Notes from a n00b
7th October 10
I know that I’m late to the game on this ‘five things I’m thinking about’ meme and very new to the game in this advertising business, so here’s hoping that the two things balance out here, in my first nervy post.
1) Where is knowledge stored?
OK – so just a week ago I was posting farewell on The Penguin Blog, trying to distill a few years of digital publishing thinking into a couple of hundred words and now I am in a new office with new people doing a completely different thing in a new industry. So my short term goal is to find the well(s) of knowledge and drink deeply.
In preparation for this transition I’ve read a couple of books and redirected my RSS and twitter streams adwards. But already in 4 days I’ve learned more from a few concentrated conversations than from hours of reading. So maybe I’ve been reading the wrong books and blogs, or reading them badly.
But perhaps it’s a very analogue notion that knowledge is stored on paper and a digital notion that knowledge is amalgamated in crowds. Everyone is an expert in something, everyone has a specialist subject or a unique take on an issue – the challenge is finding them and unlocking their knowledge. And face-to-face beats distance learning every time.
2) Is there still an edge?
The publication of any new William Gibson book is always a good opportunity to think about the edges of things and, of course, the places in between, which in our upside down topsy turvy existence must be edges of a sort. My favourite Gibson passage is from All Tomorrow’s Parties where the disappearance of bohemia is explained thus: “We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious.”
Of course, as a new entrant to the world of advertising I need to start rapaciously appropriating the edge as swiftly as possible, which is why I should start finding out where it is.
3) Skateboarding
(Actually, specifically, the sound of resin on concrete, or even more specifically the difficulty in finding good skateboard sound effects)
Don’t get me wrong I am not and have never been a skater but I have always loved skate videos and watching this yesterday (via Ruby Pseudo) it struck me that it is the sound that I love especially. I was born in a city and have lived most of my life in the same city and can’t really imagine not living in a city. Cities, as far as I’m concerned, are where stuff happens, and I am a huge fan of stuff happening. And, since skating demands ‘crete perhaps there is no soundtrack more urban than the sound of skating. If there are other, even more urban soundscapes I should be tuning into, let me know.
4) Flickr and careful curation
Every now and again it’s worth remembering what a lovely and valuable discovery engine flickr really is. Of course for simple image search it’s great but there is also the joy-inducing serendipity of discovering that there are others who share the same interests as you, whether these interests are craneporn, control panels or failure. A friend of mine describes internet pornography as having the same serendipitous effect – all of a sudden you discovers kinks that you didn’t know you had. But with flickr the quality of a group is in the care of the curation. A good group will have clearly communicated criteria for submissions and submissions that fall outside certain boundaries will be rejected, so preserving a curatorial, yet crowdsourced, integrity. It strikes me that there are all sorts of lessons to be learned from flickr and curation and community are good places to start.
5) The Idea Thing
A change in profession is a good opportunity for some good old fashioned introspection and navel gazing. So, is there a difference between what I did (getting things made and selling them) and what I now do (communicating ideas about things other people have made and want to sell)? Who is the customer for an idea, the client or the audience or both?
When ‘things’ encapsulate ‘ideas’ do they stop being purely things or purely ideas? I am less interested in *the social object* than I am in *the idea thing*, a digital or physical object that captures and communicates an idea about the world. Can idea things sell stuff, or are they the stuff that sells?
I guess I’m about to find out.
uh, welcome. more posts please.
Emma, I love your observation on the sound of skate. Nothing is more musical to a skater’s ears. And that’s ripe territory for creative exploration. That’s what I really dug about radio…being able to find those little insights and re-present what we take as mundane in a brand new light.
But just because Radio as a medium is disappearing, the insight like the one you had can still be re-purposed easily: create an app of sounds of the city to soothe yourself when you’re away, or to entice you to visit.
I know I could fall asleep to the sounds of NYC Subway-mixed with the sound of Bloomberg’s raspy taxi-ride voice whispering in my ear to remember to buckle up.
Oops. Sorry Jeremy, Thought it was Emma’s post. Twitter links…
Jeremy + skateboarding = you’re pulling my chain.
Enjoy the job mate
Skateboarding? Soundscapes? Maybe you’ll enjoy this http://vimeo.com/8461831
It’s lovely notion, that of Flickr as a serendipity engine. Good post, sir – and a welcome addition to my reading list.
[...] But perhaps it’s a very analogue notion that knowledge is stored on paper and a digital notion that knowledge is amalgamated in crowds. Everyone is an expert in something, everyone has a specialist subject or a unique take on an issue – the challenge is finding them and unlocking their knowledge. And face-to-face beats distance learning every time. via bbh-labs.com [...]
Loved the post. One quibble with point #1: unlocking knowledge does not solve the storage problem. It is not OK to store knowledge in people’s heads. People come and go. People forget.
Whether companies are in a period of downsizing through cost and personnel cuts, or in a growth period, expanding and becoming less nimble, one of the first things to get lost is corporate learning. The discipline of Knowledge Management becomes an afterthought, and that can be crippling in the long term.
Thomas Friedman had a great quote from a business consultant in his column today: “If Siemens only knew what Siemens knows, it would be a rich company.”
I think I know who your porn-loving friend is. No, not him.
Martin Amis:
‘Towards the end of Rabbit At Rest, John Updike writes: Rabbit thinks of adding $5.50 to his bill to watch something called Horny Housewives . . . The trouble with these softcore porn movies on hotel circuits, in case some four-year-old with lawyers for parents happens to hit the right buttons they show tits and ass and even some pubic hair but no real cunt and no pricks, no pricks hard or soft at all. It’s very frustrating. It turns out pricks are what we care about, you have to see them. Maybe we’re all queer, and all his life he’s been in love with Ronnie Harrison.
Or, as a friend would put it to me later that week: It’s no good without Mister Monster. You must have Mister Monster.Must you? Gore Vidal once said that the only danger in watching pornography is that it might make you want to watch more pornography; it might make you want to do nothing else but watch pornography. There is, I contend, another danger. As I sampled some extreme productions on the VCR in my hotel room, I kept worrying about something. I kept worrying that I’d like it. Porno services the “polymorphous perverse”: the near-infinite chaos of human desire. If you harbour a perversity, then sooner or later porno will identify it. You’d better hope that this doesn’t happen while you’re watching a film about a coprophagic pigfarmer – or an undertaker.’