Charles Gallant

Here are five dogs that hate the world.

Wait a sec… six.

It’s not just the ideas that are changing, but also the means by which we formulate ideas. It’s not just the novel idea to make _____, but it’s also the novel way that we made the connections that resulted in it.

The same goes for communication. We now have tools like text messaging, photoblogs, and MySpace profiles, but we also have new languages to speak in. Chartreuse (beta) is a perfect example of such a new language.

It’s not just the photo that we’re sharing, it’s what the image means in its new context. It’s the gallery it’s a part of. It’s the caption below it. It’s what it’s linked to. It’s where it linked from.

…and I’ve got videos to prove it:

Rock It music video
and
The Rockit Band live on SNL (1984)

In keeping with the same train of thought from the last post…

The internet, and leveraging a networked mindset is creating a system where the tool is transparent. If I write down an idea I had on a computer, if that computer is networked, I can have it forever. I can email it to myself, Gmail will remember it, I can add links & pictures to it, and search for it if I forget where it was. Its physical presence, and the means by which I store it (Gmail or backpack, or whatever) is transparent; It doesn’t matter anymore.

Steve Jobs just did a keynote address about the new advancements in Leopard. Things like Time Machine & all the new note-taking systems are a perfect example of all this. So what will all this mean? How is this going to affect our thought process? Will I someday be able to hum a tune to myself, have some frequency-to-midi conversion gadget on my cell phone convert it into a symphony, and automatically post it on YouTube?

One question that keeps coming to mind concerns a potential lack of patience that these instant solutions can support. If I can instantly write down an idea & save it (and forget about it), am I missing some perspective that could arise from getting a paper & pen, and thinking about it all a bit longer? If I really start to use (and depend on) Apple’s Time Machine, will it prevent me from developing/exercising good organizational skills? If everyone can make a symphony & publish it in 10 minutes, won’t that just make a bunch of crappy symphonies? As the amount of web content grows exponentially, will it be more difficult to find “good” information? Perhaps I’m just being pessimistic, and everything is just going to get cooler in the future. Perhaps I shouldn’t even be making a post here, but instead just email myself a list of keywords & sentence fragments that allude to all these ideas.

Drums:
Terry Bozzio

Guitar:
Frank Zappa

Bass:
Les Claypool