Interests
I have many interests. The main influences on my work and personal life are described in brief below.
Art
“What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life.” – Michel Foucault
Art interests me on both the aesthetic level and in its ability to inspire action.
Philosophy
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end…” – Henry David Thoreau
One of my majors at University was Philosophy. In particular I studied practical ethics in which I still maintain an active interest.
Digital Freedoms
“Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” – Virginia Woolf
I believe digital technologies work best when they are deployed in a free and open sense. This leads me to support and use Open Source Software, promote electronic freedom organisations like EFF, and promote liberal copyright approaches to content such as Creative Commons.
Technology
“They took the very machinery of the industrial age, which many felt dehumanizing, and found within it the resources for expressing individual visions, for reasserting basic human needs, desires, and fantasies.” – Gilbert Seldes
Imagining the possible uses of new technologies and how they might both enable and shape culture fascinates me.
Education
“At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.” – Neil Postman
I come from a family of teachers – being the one who has escaped “the curse” I am still nonetheless drawn to how people learn and how to get the best out of individuals.
Getting Things Done
“Never mistake motion for action.” – Ernest Hemingway
Personally, or by groups. Project Management, methodologies, processes. Locating and promoting drive.
History
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” – Karl Marx
Where we have come from, how we’ve done it before. And what it might mean for what we will do next.
Interactive Storytelling
“Multimedia as art is much closer to theater, and the performing arts in general, than it is to film, video, or the visual arts” – John Reaves
CS Lewis wrote, “When I was ten, I read fairytales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so … When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”. I’m interested in stories you can affect – by playing.
Marketing
“The first markets were filled with talk. Some of it was about goods and products. Some of it was news, opinion, and gossip. Little of it mattered to everyone; all of it engaged someone… Some of these conversations ended in a sale, but don’t let that fool you. The sale was merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.” – Doc Searls
Selling more "sprockets" is how I first started my career online. I’m as interested in how to sell (good) ideas as much as sprockets these days.
Communication Media
“To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control.” – Rupert Murdoch
Written, spoken, visual, audio, multimedia content that spreads ideas via compelling communication
These Things We Do
“people fascinate him, in some peculiarly abstract way: the things they do, though not so much why they do them” – William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I’m fascinated to observe the many and varied things us human folk do on a day to day basis. Both as individuals and (sub)cultures.
Why Do We Do (These Things We Do)
Quite why people do, these things we do doubly intrigues me.
Pop Culture
“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” – Guy Debord
O rly? Ya rly! Both pop culture as representation of our most base selves, and as folk culture, the representation of our most genuine selves.
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“Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.” – Guy Debord