Contemplating the “Indirect Path” (Execupundit)

Michael Wade over at Execupundit recently posted two provocative questions under the title, “Indirect Path.” His two questions are as follows, “Is happiness something that is captured or achieved?” and “Or is it more likely that happiness will climb our steps when we are not in active pursuit?” What I would like to do here [...]

Living Fluidity

Sara Batterby’s article Brand Personification is a concise look at the living fluidity that one’s brand undergoes through the use of social media and search engine dissemination. It is also a call to recognize the “human” element of branding. As Batterby writes, “Brands, like us, have no meaningful existence outside of the constantly changing perceptions, [...]

Adbusters article – Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization

This Adbusters article on “hipsters” is still kicking up quite a storm. I just read it this morning and wanted to share it with you. In these times of “personal branding” and Web 2.0 social media connectivity, the “hipster” has arrived; an amalgamation of styles, a pastiche of meaning, a de-centered center of culture. Now, [...]

The Cobrasnake: Creating Culture

The Cobrasnake (Mark Hunter) takes photographs and makes T-shirts. His brand has expanded; he has infiltrated the clubs and the streets of the world. A casual glance at his website shows only the latest T-shirts available for purchase and a dense archive of Cobrasnake’s photographs. Said simply: the man is busy. The people caught in [...]

Friendfeed Through a Systems Looking Glass: Feeding the Beast

The following is a systems approach to the increasingly popular website Friendfeed. Recently, there have been many articles written about this site (I will provide links at the end of this post). I have written what follows through a Media Ecology systems framework with the hopes of “fleshing out” the system known as “Friendfeed.” The [...]

Mobile Report from the Crypt

Blogging from the mobile device allows one the freedom of interacting with your environment in a different way.The pathway to the network of the rural via bluetooth existentialism.Now the bus with its chattering and silent passengers.The invisible side of faceless communication and seamless connectivity surrounded by trees. There are no piles of books around,only the [...]

Deepening Web Communication (Fragments)

Communications theorist Lee Thayer once wrote, “We ‘dilute’ the world by having an idea of it; and the intent of our words is, more often than not, to eliminate the world as resistance (Thayer 190).” As languaging creatures, our comprehension of the world is at once in direct contact with it (with certain spatial areas, [...]