Using the five senses

It occurred to me that in a digital world, we never realise how few of the five senses we actually use.

Most of our online interaction with content revolves around the visual and auditory senses. In case you're wondering, that's only two out of five. We look at video, often without sound. We read a lot of text, not all of which makes a whole heap of sense, but we do read. We listen to music, jingles and soundtracks. And yes, I'll admit that we use tactile interfaces to do so, which could potentially count as involving touch. But what do we actually touch?

One thing we often forget is that digital content, whilst prolific, creative and captivating at the best of times, still remains a rendition of something otherwise real. Our tablets, phones, screens are but windows into another reality. And while we are staring at that window, we ourselves do not have a reality of our own to sample. Perhaps we ignore it, willingly, and perhaps we choose another, the rendition, instead of the real thing. But what is certain is that we are looking into someone else's reality. We are experiencing reality by proxy.

I believe this is why we are jaded about the content that we consume. It isn't really anything that we can touch, taste or smell. It is restricted by the size of the interface that we have at our disposal (who said size didn't matter?). It is filtered and censored by the creative choices made as that content was created. In other words, it isn't real.

Our reaction to the content is very much real. But since that reaction is dimmed by the emotional distance created by the window through which we experience it, our reaction is merely a shadow of what it could be if faced with the real thing.

Statistically, about 5% of content viewers are also content creators. This ratio applies to videogames, videos, essays and articles, as well as most forms of expressive production, though actual numbers may vary a little. What it means is that the creators are rare, and they control what we all see.

It may be worth taking some time to explore what other experiences we might sample with all five senses. In fact, I would argue that any experience that excludes one or more sense is not actually reality, but a filtered and diluted version of it. Taking a walk through a forest lets you smell the earth and the leaves, touch the moss on the bark of a tree, taste the moisture in the air under the canopy of intertwining branches. It blinds you with rays of sunlight pushing through the swaying arms of the wooden landscape that surrounds you. It calls to you through the countless songs of the brushing brambles, the crunching twigs underfoot and the hidden animals that you cannot name but can certainly hear. It is real. A video of the same walk can only hint at the experience. To quote Yoda, real that video is not.

Digital content interprets reality and delivers a version of it to us, edited and packaged. It can spark intelligent thoughts, compelling arguments and opinions. It can awaken dormant feelings that will change people, sometimes for the better. It can do all sort of wonderful and positive things. But it cannot, and should not, replace reality. It should only enhance it by showing us what we're not experiencing.

We live in a world that is only partly digital. The digital part opens our minds and our hearts to things we barely knew existed. If we become satisfied with only this digital experience, we will slowly sink into an existence where our senses are dulled through lack of experience. We can instead choose to navigate the digital shoals consciously, mapping our way to a better experience of reality. But we must be cautious not to lose sight of the real journey.

The world is vast and wonderful, dangerous and unpredictable. Our five senses are there to let us feel it in every possible sense and dimension, to ward off its dangers by being aware of them, to embrace its magic by making it our own. By all means, document your reality and share it online. Inspire others to follow you, and find people to be inspired by. Just keep in mind that reality is not a window. We must accept the possibility of failure, pain and wrong turns to go further than the digital frame. Just like Alice and the looking glass, it is beyond that window that very real things begin.

So next time you find yourself enjoying a particularly smart piece of digital content, consider embracing some reality of your own. This will be just as magical as smiling to someone, and seeing them smile back. It doesn't cost you and it enriches both of you.

Isn't that something?

Plug in, but know when to unplug. Only then will you awaken your five senses. And who knows, maybe more...

Creation vs collage

We live in a world of assembly. Following the motto of 'Don't reinvent the wheel', we've taken the thought to new extremes. Why create from scratch when you can plug together bits and pieces that other people have made? It puts a new spin on plagiarism - where does it begin or end in a world of cut-and-paste? It even repositions copyright as a means to an end.

Physically, we're seeing car manufacturers pool factory resources to build different branded cars using the same basic parts. It's LEGO gone wild. Prefab houses are spreading rapidly as an affordable way to build new homes. Ikea's colour palette is designed so that any piece of furniture you buy can match any other set you already have. No need to think, just plug and play. Innovation is no longer within the elements, it's within the process. It's now about how well we can build, not what.

Digitally, we're seeing a proliferation of templates for every application under the sun. Need a little motion graphics for your title sequence?  Template, cut in with some existing stock footage and you're home. Need some code for your new software package? Template, fill in the blanks and it's on. Recipes, posters, music scores, videogames, it's all canned and repurposed to suit your needs. And perhaps that's the point?

This approach changes everything, it forces us to first seek out what exists, to then figure out how to use it in combination with other things. It slows down the evolution process by breaking down the steps within innovation itself. Creation always begins by connecting thoughts that already exist in the creator's head. The key is that these thoughts were conceived by the creator in the first place, so it all remains part of the creative process. Now, however, we're just stitching together thoughts that others have had and we call the result our own.

Social media introduced the concept of 'sharing'. We now believe that 'sharing' content is equivalent to creating. We somehow feel that by spreading a piece of content around, we come to own part of it. 'Sharing', though intended as an outward gesture, has become egocentric. We share to own. And again, we take something that already exists, and we add a thin layer of personal veneer to then call it ours.

This creates a huge market for the few talented creators who can build from scratch, because everyone else wants and needs their work to make their own, like bricks in a wall. This explains the recent uproar of the last few years about the length and extent of copyright. A strong reason why people are asking for an end to copyright is because, in order to make their own ideas, they want more access to ideas others have had before. But who owns the copyright to the new ideas these people now spread out into the world?

Let's be clear, there are wonderful things that have emerged from these assemblies of ideas to derive new ones. After all, there are only 26 letters in our alphabet and yet we repackage them endlessly to produce new written work. There are only 10 digits, yet mathematics continues to surprise us. There are only seven basic music notes, yet symphonies continue to emerge. We can create this way, but it changes how we think. It would be wise to remember how to create from the ground up, lest we forget how to create in the first place.

We need to remember that the truly groundbreaking ideas, the ones that pull people through leaps of creative strides, are the ones that we build from scratch. Those ideas are the ones we come up with using intellect, intuition, trial-and-error, mistakes, ridicule, gut instinct, arrogance, daring and originality. Those ideas are the ones that make a difference.

So the next time you set out to create something, take a look at the building blocks you have, sure, but then take a step back. Look at the bigger picture, and see what's missing. Read between the lines, find the trees within the forest.

Then plant your own.

Nurture it, grow it and take pride in what it becomes. Because that tree is yours. It is unique and original. It is there for others to scale, to cling to and to embrace.

Original thought is the way to go.

Apple's dictatorship vs. Android's democracy

It's very clear that Apple is a dictatorship. Apple has decided to solve our user interface problems for us, even the ones we didn't know we had. It presents us with an operating system that is barely customisable, a closed ecosystem of applications and hardware, and charges us through the nose for the privilege of using these wonderful toys.

Android, on the other hand, offers a suite of fully customisable tools, designed to be arranged in any way you choose. It lets you configure pretty much everything so that your Android device is fine tuned to you. It's available on multiple phone brands and tablets. Anyone can twist it to their whim. In other words, Android is democracy incarnate.

Now let's think about that for a second.

By choosing Apple, we're basically saying, "We don't want to decide, we just want to be told what to use and what to do." Apple's popularity is a sign that we don't want choice, we want the result of the right choice. We don't want the responsibility that choice demands. We want the passive peace of mind that dictatorship delivers. We don't want to be free. We just want to be.

Android users are the hackers who want more. I say this as an Apple user, living in a monarchic society in the Middle East where freedom is vast but restricted for the well oiled social fabric to hold together. It works so well I don't want to leave. I revel in the solace that constraints provide. Android users live for the customisation of life, but I'm not as passionate about tweaking my life with icons and features. I just want to be.

A third of mobile users are like me, or at least send that signal from their chosen iOS device. A third of us, or roughly the population of the entire United States, prefer dictatorship over democracy. This begs the question: why?

Are we disenchanted with democracy? Are we so lazy that we don't want to change, even potentially for the better? Or do we simply not care?

I believe we just can't be bothered. Life is too fast to stop and customise. Too short, too intense to waste any of it pushing buttons around so our phones list just the right kind of apps on our home screen. We don't want to give personalisation any of our attention because we prefer the personal to the virtual. Democracy changes the wrapping but it doesn't change the package, so why bother?

In the end, we choose whatever makes our lives easier. If democracy is too demanding on us and doesn't deliver what we expect, we turn to simpler alternatives. Apple taps into our weakness for simplicity. Dictatorship makes our lives easy to live.

We still have a choice. But Android users exercise it more than Apple aficionados do.

What will you choose?

The world of a blueberry muffin

The cracked ravines that snaked through the slopes of the bulbous mountaintop were shaded under the fluorescent light. It must have been the angle of the rays, or perhaps how close to the edge of the precipice the whole construction was precariously perched.

I surveyed the landscape with careful consideration. There was no easy approach. No matter what face I attempted to conquer first, there would be damage to take. Below the mountaintop, the stout regular trunk fell off in sheer walls, scarred with regular folds of greasy skin. This was not a way in. It wasn't a way out either, just the hard facts of the territory to tackle.

I stood there, wondering what adventures had taken place in these ripples of terrain before my time. Did streams once flow through these sinuous grooves? Did midnight blue meteors crash-land on the surface of this foam-filled planet? What tectonic shifts created the almost perfectly regular summit of this fascinating world? So many questions, unanswered and unclaimed.

I shifted position to find a better angle. I could see the edge of the lower walls balance dangerously on the lip of the metallic slab where the whole entity was stationed. A creeping wind was rising. The slab began to vibrate with an unnerving rattle. There was very little time. I had to move. Fast.

As I signalled the beginning of the onslaught to the waiting crew, I reached out to rescue the microcosm from its impending fall. Just then, the angle of the ventilation twisted and struck the mountaintop head-on, tipping the balance to send the entire landmark into freefall. In a split-second, my hand closed around the oily base, crushing several layers of subterranean stratification in the process. My grip slipped a little. I tightened my fist. Several blue spheres broke free of the soil under the added pressure, tumbling down the slopes and into oblivion. More cracks appeared on the upper surface, tearing through the landscape. I closed my eyes. A world was meeting its demise.

Then, as suddenly as the mayhem had begun, it was over. I opened my eyes and looked at my hand. Though battered and bruised, my muffin was still there, saved from a deep fall off the tray that had hosted it within the glass display. Relieved, I took great pleasure in biting off the edge of it bulbous head. As I chewed into the delicate wispy texture of the dough, mixed with crushed blueberries and a hint of vanilla, I spared a thought for the imaginary but vivid adventures that had taken place on the hills of this proud pastry.

I wrestled, as expected, with the paper wrapping sealed around the central core. Taking bite after bite, closer and closer to the folded pulp skin, I closed the chapter of a dying world. With a final snap of teeth came the final claim on the muffin's terrain. The paper was bare. There was nothing left.

Where once upon a time, great invisible beings had led adventurous lives, fighting through the canyons of blueberry goodness, there now stood nothing but a memory. A memory for the world of a wholewheat muffin.

With a lingering taste of blueberries and a hint of vanilla.

Storytelling as chemistry

It all started with a glance at a link I found on Twitter: http://designthroughstorytelling.net/periodic/

It's author, James Harris, has put together a Periodic Table of Storytelling, complete with Identifier, Trope name and Popularity factor measured in kilowiks (thousands of links to its page via the wiki). First off, the kilowik belongs up there with the jigowatt as a cool measure of power. Also, not only is the Table very pleasing to the eye, it also represents a spectacularly creative way of looking at the storytelling world.

First off, the bottom of the page reminds us about the basis of chemistry, which is that elements seek to assemble and react off each other. This is exactly what Harris' Periodic Table encourages: assemble these elements into storytelling molecules and voila! You have the core of a story.

I firmly believe in the power of framework. Like recipes, frameworks are tools you can use to build your own story. The same framework will be used by different authors to construct different stories. It's not something to be feared or neglected. Just because you have a recipe doesn't mean you can cook, but it shows you the way and it helps you reach your goal. Frameworks let you concentrate on the flesh of your story, where the blood flows and where life is born. The bones are just the carcass, there to support the rest. That's what a framework is.

So when Harris' presents storytelling as building blocks, it breaks down the barriers that prevent people from attempting to write in the first place. It lets you see storytelling as something you can build, change, play with and fine tune. It presents a story as a living entity, able to adapt and to connect with other stories, thoughts or people. It shows you stories as the natural occurrence of everyday combinations. It puts stories within people's reach.

Beyond the sheer endurance that Harris must have deployed to put together this fantastic Periodic Table, it's the crystal clear vision that the man has for narrative that really blew my mind. You have to love stories deeply in order to be able to break them down so well, so thoroughly and so concisely. It takes affection for the medium and the form. Well done James.

Stories can be built. Stories can be assembled. Like any structure, it then requires polish and adjustment in order for the pieces to fit together seamlessly. That is where a writer's voice shines through. Some spend hours and days trying to re-invent the classic three act plot, while others write on the shoulders of giants and tell their stories high and loud.

To each his own. For me, it's just about the chemistry.

Imperfections are the backbone of artistic expression

When something is perfect, we notice. We notice because it feels a little wrong, a little off. We're tuned to slight flaws as signs of human presence, as signatures of personal expression. When these flaws are absent, we can't help but notice. Imperfections make us human.

When we strive to make anything 'perfect', what we usually mean is that we aim to give it our best effort. Achieving perfection in anything is as elusive as attempting objectivity. Our point of view is subjective, it is tainted by our perspective, our opinions. Our flaws. Our subjectivity is what makes each of us unique. Because this subjectivity comes across through our flaws, those flaws define us as individuals. Flaws are our identity.

Character is often defined as a series of imperfections that compensate some other positive attribute. It is what we put up with in order to enjoy the good stuff. What we often fail to realise is that the good stuff needs the flaws in order to thrive. In a strange karmic flow of balance, anything positive requires an offset of some kind, a negative yang to its soothing yin. So flaws can be taken as solid evidence that something precious and valuable is also hidden beneath the surface. They are the symptoms of quality.

In artistic pursuits, an author's quirks and unique touch can often be interpreted as mistakes. Picasso's cubism was inherently wrong from a geometric standpoint, but it brought so much more from its unique, flawed yet deeply personal approach. Balzac and Proust's heavy handed written styles, though hard to experience as a reader, made their prose stand out from an otherwise bland crowd of anonymous writers. And Brancusi's sculptures, abstract in their beauty and style, are true signatures of their author's hand. They are not perfect. Neither were the artists. And that is why they are beautiful.

The key is to see faults and quirks as tokens of identity and to embrace those as part of a larger whole that is unique and human. In trying to be like everyone else, in trying to erase these little imperfections that make us who we are, we lose ourselves in the crowd. That crowd is perfect in its uniformity, and therefore no longer truly human. If we become perfect, we are dead.

Particularly in art, but also in love and life, we must look for cracks in the veneer of perfection. We must seek out the kinks and the misalignments. We must distinguish what is hand made from what is machine made. When we learn to celebrate the departures of objective flawlessness as a step in the direction of human touch, we will be that much closer to a real emotional connection with one another.

Nobody is perfect.

And that's perfectly fine.