Daniel Lubetzky

Lev Grossman wrote an excellent article in TIME on how recommendation engines work (ie, for Netflix movie selection, and for Pandora radio selection) and how they can start turning us into boringly homogenous & predictive blockbuster consumers of the same stuff within one safe space.

Alas, when it comes to movie choices, the options and parameters are so many, that suggestions I get are often unreliable.

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Am on my way back from DC to NYC after a briefing with Paul McCartney on behalf of OneVoice (on whose Honorary Board he sits).  Earlier during rehearsals, I was struck at the beautiful simplicity and deep truth of the lyrics of Ebony and Ivory:

EBONY AND IVORY,
LIVE TOGETHER IN PERFECT HARMONY,
SIDE BY SIDE ON MY PIANO KEYBOARD,
OH, LORD, WHY DON’T WE?

WE ALL KNOW THAT PEOPLE ARE THE SAME WHEREVER YOU GO,
THERE IS GOOD AND BAD IN EV’RYONE.
AND WE LEARN TO LIVE, WE LEARN TO GIVE EACH OTHER
WHAT WE NEED TO SURVIVE, TOGETHER ALIVE.

….

- Sir Paul McCartney (c)

Later this week, Sir Paul is receiving the Gershwin Prize from President Obama.

This video by a friend of my sister’s really touched me and intensified my appreciation of the need and beauty of loving and remembering my parents with every breath. 

Check out this EXTRAORDINARY AD.  Make sure you watch it in full-screen mode, and with the volume way up.  It is one of the most awesome ads I have ever seen – and proudly directed by my cousin Emmanuel Lubezki (whose of the family unfortunately doesn’t know how to spell our last name properly .

And the priestess spoke again and said:
Speak to us of Reason and Passion.

And he answered, saying:
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon
which your reason and your judgment wage
war against your passion and your appetite.

Would that I could be your peacemaker
in your soul, that I might turn the discord
and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.

But how shall I, unless you yourselves be
also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder
and the sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or your rudder be broken,
you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill
in mid-seas.

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining;
and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns
to its own destruction.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion,
that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason,
that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection,
and like the phoenix rise above it own ashes.

I would have you consider your own judgement
and your appetite even as you would two
loved guests in your house.
Surely you wouldn’t honor one guest above the other;
for he who is more mindful of one loses
the love and the faith of both.

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool
shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace
and serenity of distant fields and meadows
then let your heart say in silence,
"God rests in reason".

And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind
shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning
proclaim the majesty of the sky, then let your heart
say in awe, "God moves in passion."

And since you are a breath in God’s sphere,
and a leaf in God’s forest, you too
should rest in reason and move in passion.

–Gibran Khalil Gibran, The Prophet, on Reason and Passion

(thanks to Uncle Jorge and Sioma Waisburd for sharing this)

by Adeena Schlussel on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky

The New York Times had a fun compilation of signs across the world that conveyed something surprising, not always unintended, but always funny.

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Very impressive! Watch till the end! Does anyone know how the last part is done?

Not lost in translation!

It is interesting that what we are witnessing right now is just simply the digitization of books formerly printed in paper.  For over 500 years, books have been written and conceived with Gutenberg’s guidelines in mind (Gutenberg is the inventor of the mechanical printing press). 

But since the advent of computers and now of the Internet, so many new possibilities have emerged – and yet the printed world has barely changed.  The advent of the Kindle, the iPad and other portable reading devices has so far simply resulted in turning analog print into digital print, while keeping the same linear prose format. 

If you stop to think about it, we are stuck in one model that, while beautiful and applicable for much good, is certainly not the only model to serve all potential needs that books can serve. 

Over the coming years, the whole way we think of e-books and just "books" will probably change.  One day it will not be "surprising" to read, within a book, interactive pictures and images akin to the ones you see in Harry Potter movies – those quirky 3D moving photos within the wizards’ magical newspapers. 

And it is also quite conceivable, indeed likely, that multimedia forms will reinvent how we do storytelling and how we provide information.  Why stick to just prose, or just music, or just newspaper, or just video? Why not create new models for information that combine elements of them all?

Why assume that a linear story is best? Why think that a book is necessarily different from a video-game? Someone will come up with a book that merges some elements of a game with different endings.  Analog examples already exist.  And digital multiple-choice endings already exist.  But we have not even begun exploring all the new possibilities presented by electronic "readers."

And why assume that a book needs to first be written and published, then read, then auctioned off to a Hollywood producer who then helps create a movie version of the movie? Someone will surely create a way to inform or entertain that combines elements of both – and more.

The potential for reinvention of the "book" is so far totally untapped.

Very much in OneVoice, and very much with a sentiment like that of the KIND Movement, Starbucks bested all videos I got this season with this awesome compilation (which I received from Jason Alexander): musicians and ordinary citizens across the world joined on the same day at the same time to sing the same song:

Among all of KIND’s retail partners, Starbucks certainly ranks among the classiest, most professional and most sincerely committed to truly make this a better world.  In this case the above is part of a partnership with Project RED to fight AIDS.