Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is interesting or not. You are simply a witness on the stand to tell what you know about your neighbors and neighborhood.
Great comedians like Mitch Hedberg make us feel as though we’re hearing something we’ve known for eternity, yet also experiencing for the first time — revealing obvious truths in surprising ways.
Every brand or product has multiple truths. One of those will be surprising. When you find a surprising truth, people can’t just file it away. It’s psychology. Their minds have to stop and make sense of it.
Like comedy, a creative brief should make you feel uncomfortable. That means it’s working. If it doesn’t make you feel anything, it’s a dead end.
Source: Four Comedy Rules to Use in Strategy | Agency News: Viewpoint – AdAge
I’m only at 354 of 975 total pages of the digital copy of Cory Doctorow’s new book, Walkway.
Yet I’m highly enjoying the paradox between the haves and have nots, impacted mostly by those who are excited about thinking differently and embracing new technology — and those who are not.
Here’s how one of his characters classifies this natural resistance to change in the book…
“Anything invented before you were eighteen was there all along.
Anything invented before you’re thirty is exciting and will change the world forever.
Anything invented after that is an abomination and should be banned.”
–Excerpt From Cory Doctorow’s “Walkaway.”
To be clear, this isn’t how I think. But it’s how a lot of people think — consciously or not.
As a student of how people are influenced, this topic fascinates me. Looking forward to finishing Walkway soon…
“The AI neither hates you, nor loves you, but you are made out of atoms that it can use for something else.”
–Eliezer Yudkowsky, A.I. theorist
“…All great and honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages.” – William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1621
Source: William Bradford is one of the main reasons that the Puritan Movement got rolling
Good advice here. Talk is cheap. What have you done?
“People who are craftspersons and who have craftsmanship in their work, they will always happen, whether in the early stage or late stage.
When I see a particularly well-designed product, or somebody understands their metrics, I know that person cares.
You have to be able to build something and put it in the world.
People are in this wacky belief system that their idea matters, when it does not. All that matters is what you build.”
I am a futurist, and I am actually pretty good at it, as I am old enough now to know that the things that make me happiest are always surprises. I’ve had a bunch of people work on robots for my entire adult lifetime. I have a robot in my basement, and he is my best pal. I know what he smells like. I am not surprised by him. And I don’t jump up and down for joy because I have a commercial robot in the basement of my lab. It is just reality. What really interests me and surprises me is stuff that’s completely off the wall.
Advanced technology is not always going to seem good the first time, it’s like clouds and silver lining: every silver lining has a cloud. I am a guy in a computerised generation. I know it is not going to be perfect. A tree is not going to grow to the sky. But something else is going to happen.
Greg Swan, Brand Innovation and Emerging Media @ Fallon
