Monthly Archives: September 2005

RetroRevolution

Posted on by

Silent Revolution handbag

File this one in the “What-goes-round-comes-round” category. Via Josh Spear’s blog I came across an entry that took me to an interesting bit of indy product: Silent Revolution‘s clothing accessories for the hyper-connected cyberculture. The idea behind this start-up being “an effort to create futuristic, minimal bags and clothing reflective of the digital age in which we live.” Okay. But what struck me was how un-cyber these things seemed to me. They didn’t look to me like “minimal, sophisticated, cyber-influenced” bags. They’re nice, but they looked a bit like something else.

What got me in particular was the use of the term “cyber-influenced”. For me the look of all things cyber will probably forever be visually linked to the cover of William Gibson’s short story collection Burning Chrome (the book I owned back in ’88 consisted of only the graphic shown on the new one – no white border and no blown-out hype). That was the look of cyberspace in the mid-80’s when Apple computers were changing the print world with desktop publishing and dot-matrix printouts, frogdesign was designing “Snow White” computer housings for their gear, and videogames were still mostly colorful coin-op machines at arcades that assaulted your auditory system the minute you stepped within earshot. It wasn’t the clean, sophisticated computer-aesthetic of Syd Mead’s earlier Tron work. Nope. The word “cyber” instead evoked the famous first line from Gibson’s first novel Neuromancer, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” Cyber has always been a street term – people remixing technology to their own purpose and sometimes even merging with it. For me it’s always sounded dirty and looked noisy. It’s even now slang for virtual sex.

So what do I see when I look at these bags? Interestingly enough, I see pre-cyberspace. I see clean retro computer aesthetics. Stuff from the 70’s. Looking at these designs reminds me of the days when I was coding Fortran, hole-punching cards and sticking them into a card reader to run my program. Is that cyber? I don’t know. Not to me it isn’t. Maybe we need a new description for this aesthetic; a look which I have to admit I see elsewhere. How about PreCyber Retro? We could use another label before everything gets swallowed up into the singularity soup.

{Image source: Silent Revolution}

…and BW on Pro Gaming

Posted on by

Let the (video)game sponsorship frenzy begin! From BW’s article “Pro Gaming Attracting Big Corporate Sponsors“:

PC hardware companies have been sponsoring Counter-Strike teams and individual pro gamers for over seven years, but more general youth-oriented brands and corporations have been slow to catch on to the phenomenon. In fact, last week’s announcement that Johnson & Johnson subsidiary McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals (makers of Tylenol) was sponsoring pro CS team Ouch is believed to be the first of its kind.

I can’t help but think someone inside Johnson & Johnson has been working feverishly for years trying to convince a bunch of out-of-touch upper management types to do this. This news kinda makes my earlier post on CPL a little more interesting. Wonder if I can create something branded with a fake pain-reliever and let it go head-to-head with Tylenol. Or should that be headache-to-headache? It’s about time corporate America realized the importance of videogames in reaching a portion of their market, I just wonder if they also realize they’re now on a different playing field. Literally and figuratively. This could get interesting.

FusePercentage

Posted on by

AdAge is reporting (registration required) that agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky has bought a stake in Fuseproject, the industrial design consultancy headed by Yves Behar. I don’t often hear of these sorts of deals. The last one I recall was Plantronics taking over frogdesign. Hard to miss as that got plenty of press.

Of course in many parts of the world – especially Asia – design firms are joined at the hip with large partners; usually factories. Whether that kind of thing will become the norm in the U.S. I’m unsure. It might be worth keeping an eye out for more of these relationships.

Rubik’s Cube of Content

Posted on by

My “Long Tail” toroid gets a booster shot with some very interesting news over on BusinessWeek. I had no clue who Tony Li was until I read this article (link), but it’s obvious that what he and his partners intend to do is partially what I envisioned when I began looking at Chris Anderson‘s curves and concluded they looked a bit too static for me. Li and company are looking like catalysts for some important changes. Even if they don’t succeed at unifying distribution as they intend, the very fact they intend to try is probably going to get some people to sit upright and take notice. That idea isn’t going away now.

To get caught up on how Mr. Li fits into the toroid concept, you can read my initial “Long Tail” post here. Then read about (and see) some things in an interview with Second Life’s embedded reporter, Hamlet Linden, over on his blog. And maybe take a peek at a quick follow-up I wrote on the SL Future Salon blog (which has a nicer image I posted showing ancient to early 20th century variations of the Toroid).

The only thing missing is how real products fit into this. That’s coming.

Planar Reporting In A 3D World

Posted on by

Cyspace isometric view

BusinessWeek has a largish section devoted to the “New Web” – the one controlled by users and not media gatekeepers. Sounds interesting, but a quick read of the articles is disappointing. Many of us already know what’s happening (I even discussed the whole social influencing thang back in March, and I was way late). If I didn’t realize that BusinessWeek is targetted to a specific kind of reader, I’d really take them to the mat for not banging this drum more loudly months ago. Then again, maybe there are additional reasons for the somewhat late reporting: notice under “Graphic: Play” BW lists Cyworld along with games “World of Warcraft” and “Everquest“. Huh? How is Cyworld a game? I’m not sure they get it even though they’re reporting on this stuff.

Btw, you can read more about Cyworld in this article over on Wired. In the meantime, what I’m really wondering is how long will it be before BW reports on truly 3D spaces instead of isometric views pretending to be 3D. Now that Wells Fargo has poked it’s gold toe into the virtual waters, I give them six months. I’m also going to guess the next comparison will have Second Life listed along with “Halo 3” and “Grand Theft Auto“. Right.

{Image Copyright © Emil Goh}