Japanese Fiddler On the Roof
Not lost in translation!
Reinventing Books for the 21st Century
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.
Bono and OneVoice
Bono just wrote an opinion piece advocating, among other things for 2010:
- A Festival of Abraham where artists celebrate Muslim, Jewish and Christian traditions (similarities to OneVoice’s OneMillionVoices campaign)
- The World Cup as tool for political change (similar sentiment to OneVoice’s Goal2018 Campaign)
- People Power, in line with the What Are You Willing to Do To End the Conflict campaign
- Non-violent revolution (in tune with why OneVoice was created)
So it seems OneVoice should invite Bono to join its Honorary Board, alongside music and change icons like Sir Paul McCartney.
Article pasted below…
Great Pop call-outs by TIME
While many of the choices on TIME Magazine’s Top 10 lists for 2009 were lame or uninspired, here are a few worthwhile picks:
MOST HILARIOUS VIDEO:
Bonnie Tyler spoof of 80s (Other viral videos: I had already noted great videos including of Susan Boyle, and there are other good ones like this wedding procession, the post-it film "deadline", the mock ad for Flutter that underlines the silliness of the world we live in, and the baby dancing that even my grandmother had forwarded me)
FUNNIEST AD:
Hulu
COOL AND DEEP:
The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.
Also Cool Scientific Discoveries:
- The Human Epigenome, Decoded
- Gene Therapy Cures Color Blindness
- A Robot Performs Science
- Breeding Tuna on Land
- Teleportation!
- Top 10 New Species
- A 3D Digital Camera
Mad Developed World
I was surfing through TIME Magazine’s Top 10 Everything of 2009 list. While many of their choices seem random and uninspired at best, some gems hidden among their finds included their choice of Adam Lambert’s "Mad World" among their top songs. I read the lyrics several times, pasted below, and listened also to the original Tears for Fears performance (also below).
When I was a kid in San Antonio, Texas, newly arrived from a sheltered upbringing in Mexico City, I enjoyed the song but didn’t relate to it - or understand why it resonated so much among American kids who "had it all."
In Mexico City, in every corner on popular streets there was an indigent kid begging for alms and struggling to survive, so kids that had a home and a family didn’t generally question their lot. Why then, would kids who could eat American cereals for breakfast and go to Malibu Grand Prix feel deprived?
In retrospect, this song hits such a chord with the alienation and loss of meaning that many feel in modern society, primarily in the developed world. Serious challenges of course are faced every day by struggling kids. But much of it also has to do with the framing of those challenges. "How bad do I have it relative to the 30,000 children who literally starve to death every day?"
The search for depth and meaning, and reaffirmation of our special fortune amidst so much wealth and excess, and of our role and duty to find our own way to make this a better world for others, are critical to the health and happiness of future generations.
In very real ways, thinking of others and kinding others (ie, doing conscious acts of kindness for others) gives us meaning and fulfillment.
Mad World lyrics
Songwriters: Orzabal, Roland;
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Goin’ nowhere, goin’ nowhere
Their tears are fillin’ up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dyin’
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
Children waitin’ for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sits and listen, sits and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson?
Look right through me, look right through me
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dyin’
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dyin’
Are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
‘Cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Mad world, mad world
A raunchy young world
Mad world
© ROLAND ORZABAL LIMITED;
Starbucks Love Project - 156 Countries Join at once
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.
Adorable GAP holiday Ad
Following on a great tradition for visually impactful, stylistically creative and unforgettable holiday ads, GAP just released this very sweet commercial for GAP Sweaters for kids.
Some of my favorite GAP predecessors:
- Among the funniest is this one
- Beyonce’s dance
- Will Kemp’s ad - makes you want to dance
- Khaki Swing
And of course the all-time best - Audrey Gap in Black:
Quote of the Week: What her Dad taught Angela Merkel
My father taught me a very important lesson when I was a girl growing up in East Germany. He said, “Always be more than you appear and never appear to be more than you are.”
-as told to Bono (U2) and captured by him in a New York Times opinion piece.
Tech & Entertainment for a New gen
Further to my earlier post about Apple’s cool ads, I got hooked on the songs in there and tried to find the original videos. For Chairlift-Bruises I came across the video immediately below and was struck by it. It seemed so cutting edge and professional, yet so casual and young (uncomfortably so for my wife - and I can understand why as a parent I’d also be concerned). Was it possible that kids did this on their own? Or was the video director so sophisticated as to make it look so down-to-earth? It turns out it was all done by an 8th grader who is quickly building a following. And it’s actually far better than the official video! You factor in these considerations and you understand why we are just in the beginning of what will be a revolution in content generation, with repercussions for business, culture and society that we cannot begin to comprehend.
Apple does it again!
Check out this new ad from Apple for their new iPod nano with video. How is it that the Apple team ALWAYS gets ahead of all trends and pop culture and sets the tone for advertising coolness and standards? Everything in this ad is so perfect - colors, steps, shots, all.
The song on the ad is Bourgeois Shangri-La from Miss Li.
This earlier ad from Apple - with the song Bruises by Chairlift - is also awesome.
-
Progressive Business Ventures
-
Enterpreneurial Social Ventures
