doh
Howies and Thoughtful are doing something interesting (and probably mischievous) at the organic food festival in Bristol in September. They're looking for some real life dohboys. If you fit the bill (or know someone who does) contact details are here. I hope it's not humiliating for some kid though, that would be bad.
semi living worry dolls
Went to this fantastic conference yesterday in Huddersfield - We Love Technology. Really good stuff which I will write up later. But one phrase has not stopped ringing around my head since yesterday when Steve Manthorp mentioned it in his introduction - "semi-living worry dolls". It's the name of this art project but it keeps striking me that it's the perfect encapsulation of all my worst days, particularly my worst days as an employee. Looking back I've spent many days as a semi living worry doll. Must try and make it less so in the future.
away with unslightly wires
One of the things that's bugged me for ages is the mess of cables and wires you get from all your chargers and adaptors. But, until they perfect wireless power, there's seemingly no alterative to the nasty tangle of charging stuff. But then, yesterday, in a bid to achieve something in an otherwise success-free week I bought a cheap bowl from Habitat, drilled a big hole in the back, poked some wires through and hey presto - domestic wirey neatness.
Then in order to achieve some small measure of greenness I plugged them all into one of those mechanical timer things so it switches everything off after about 2 hours of charging, which should be enough for all of them.
To be honest, I'm quite pleased with myself. I'm not very handy normally, but this actually seemed to work.
taste stalking, opinion surrogates and social slipstreaming
Chris has written a really interesting post about venues, the experience of going to things and the way venues and events could make themselves more interesting and useful by better using digital stuff.
It's prompted me to finally write something that's been wobbling around my head for a while - the benefits of the kind of benign "taste stalking" you can do with things like upcoming, last.fm and twitter. If I was going to slot it into Chris's breakdown of the different experiences I think I'd called it 'sharing the discovery'.
That's probably over-complicating things. What I mean in practise is this:
I've found a few people online who seem to have similar tastes to mine, but better and more enthusiastic. They're much more likely to seek interesting events out, they're better informed about what's coming up and what's likely to be good and they're more energetic about actually going to them. Their concert-going taste is like mine but better. And what upcoming lets me do is ride their coat-tails to event happiness. I don't have to religiously read Time Out and comb through upcoming I just keep an eye on what they're going to, and I go to some of the same things. (Which is why it feels slightly like stalking, and now I write it down maybe it's more creepy than I realise, hmm, maybe I should stop.)
I do the same thing on Last.fm. There are a few people who's taste seems to be similar to mine but again, they're just that little bit more into a particular genre, they're more informed, more dedicated. And Last let's me sample what they're listening to. They're a taste surrogate for me. I've found a lot of good music that way. It's like listening to tapes in your mates bedroom when you're 14.
I've realised that I also do this with political opinion, I simply don't feel informed enough about so many issues to know what I think about them, so I just find someone who I tend to agree with on the big things and then make them an opinion surrogate. For a long time my political opinion surrogate was David Aaronovitch but then I read this interview with Dave Rowntree and realised I agreed with everything he said, so maybe it'll be him from now on.
The beauty of services like last and upcoming is that other people's enthusiasms and expertise can be turned into gifts without them having to do any extra work. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent for books, or am I missing something?
I think of this aspect of the gift economy as social slipstreaming. We're all like members of the peloton, it works because everyone takes turns to be upfront battling through and everyone slipstreams from their efforts. Everyone takes a turn, everyone contributes, that's how it works. Your enthusiasms, your interests are your contribution. I guess mine is cafes, I hope that's enough.
Hmm. I'm not sure I'm saying anything new here, just making up jargon, but it's passing the time while the kettle boils.
the acceptable face of geek hysteria
Johnny Vulkan's already queuing for the first iPhone, and he's going to auction it for Keep A Child Alive. Brilliant. (via Johnny's flickr stream and racked.)
objects with faces
This seems like an idea that should have been around forever. But I'm not sure I've seen it actually in the shops before. It's just a bunch of stickers to add faces to your stuff. (Good thing - they're pretty durable and waterproof.) I'd been sticking banana stickers to my phone to differentiate it from every other k800i but I already like it a whole lot more now it's scowling at me crazily all the time.
the contrariness of crowds
Watching Eurovision last week reminded me of something I think we're all going to have to get used to - the contrariness of crowds; the fact that large groups of people, hidden behind the safety of numbers sometimes like nothing more than just to fuck everything up, because it's funny.
Of course the Serbian victory wasn't just about that, it was partly regional solidarity, it was partly that different cultures like different music (which we need to learn to accept) but it was at least partly sticking two fingers up to Old Europe and it's notions of acceptable taste. (In the context of Eurovision, which is admittedly a strange place to be talking about taste.)
I think my favourite instance of this was when David Bowie decided he'd perform his greatest hits on his Sound + Vision tour and he'd get people to phone in and vote for what they wanted him to play. The NME started a campaign to get everyone to vote for novelty Bowie song The Laughing Gnome which was so successful they ended up scrapping the voting.
A more recent incidence was the campaign to keep Sanjaya on American Idol. The individual mischievous feelings that we all sometimes get, just wanting to do something contrary and awkward and funny are magnified by these mass interactivity events, especially if something like votefortheworst catalyzes it. It's not quite the same as that activist impulse to subvert some UGC thing, it's more like the dumb, fantastic joy of chanting at the referee. It's about the mischief of the herd. Low effort, high fun.
I wonder if these kind of mass rejections of accepted taste have something in common with the rebellious celebrations Barbara Ehrenreich talks about in Dancing In The Streets.
beta tees and LBVs
The Little Big Voice website is up as a record of the other weekend down in Wales. It's lovely.
The handwritten notes on the frontpage are a really nice touch.
Lots of people seemed to like the 'always in beta' badges I handed out while I was there and Dave suggested they might make some up as t-shirts which would be splendid. Before I nudge him about that (because I'd like one) does anyone else want one? Not sure how much they'd be, but any interest in principle?