kip/bot/blog

Came across an old, supposedly Texan, quote this morning reading Thomas Friedman’s column:
“If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”

From today’s NYT Football for Smarties guide, a description of what quarterbacks are doing during the 3.5 seconds they have after the snap to throw the ball. Addressing the idea that a quarterback is rapidly surveying and weighing his options:

Unfortunately, the theory is wrong. If quarterbacks were forced to contemplate their decisions, they’d get sacked every time, a classic case of paralysis-by-analysis. What recent brain research suggests is that quarterbacks rely on their unconscious; an experienced quarterback picks up defensive details he’s not even aware of. Although he doesn’t consciously perceive the blitzing linebacker, the quarterback’s unconscious monitors his movement. When the QB glances at his receivers, his brain converts these details into fast emotional signals, so that a receiver in tight coverage gets associated with fear, while an open man triggers a burst of positive feeling. It’s these inarticulate emotions, and not an elaborate set of calculations, that tell the best quarterbacks when to let the ball fly. In the pocket, it turns out, it pays not to think.

The print version of HBR has been in my bag untouched for a couple weeks now. I know I need to read the article “How Pixar Fosters Creativity” but I’ve been avoiding it. In the midst of “here’s what we learned from Google and should do” and “here’s what Apple did and we should too”, I’ve begun to hear conversations where Pixar is invoked in support of some innovation or creativity plan and the fear of getting pulled into clusterf@*! rathole quagmire conversations has put me off.

So, today, I’m already doing a root canal on myself: installing a new terabyte drive and moving my iTunes library over to it. The last time I did this, I lost my playlists, and while I’m sure Genius will be awesome (I’m installing iTunes 8.0 and iPhone 2.1 at the same time), I find this whole thing stressful and my playlists, which include “Monkeys in Heat”, “Sublime Schmaltz”, and “High School Bad” are very near and dear to me. So, I figure, why not subject myself to the article and get all of the pain out of the way?

The intro blurb to the article was almost enough to make me stop: “Behind Pixar’s string of hit movies, says the studio’s president, is a peer-driven process for solving problems,” proving once again that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, at least in the ability of language to almost instantly drain the life out of anything.

But wait, in the very first paragraph is one of the most exciting statements I’ve read in months. Responding to a studio exec who says that there are lots of great people out there but that the problem is finding great ideas, he says:

I couldn’t disagree more with the studio executive. His belief is rooted in a misguided view of creativity that exaggerates the importance of the initial idea in creating an original product.

Now, I’ve had a long week — poker night where I tried to get my opponents to drink scotch by setting the example (and only got drunk myself and almost lose a mint), two nights of drinks with employees who needed a boost, and too little exercise — so I’m in an emotionally weak state. But I almost wept tears of gratitude. One of the top creative forces on the planet right now saying that the big idea is not the beginning, middle, and end of creativity and that there are no silver bullets.

I’m fond of quoting an otherwise douchey art director I worked with who, in a fit of frustration leading to a rare moment of articulation, lashed out at someone who talked about the big idea. He said something like “sheesh, it’s not just the big idea we have to come up with, we need the time to come up with all the little details and ideas that make the thing good.” Since then, he’s said nothing of worth, but as a person who will read any crap book or watch any crap movie for a good line, I will give him life-long respect for giving me that line. Especially since Pixar is saying it now:

People tend to think of creativity as a mysterious solo act, and they typically reduce products to a single idea: This is a movie about toys, or dinosaurs, or love, they’ll say. However, in filmmaking and many other kinds of complex product development, creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many problems. The initial idea for the movie—what people in the movie business call “the high concept”—is merely one step in a long, arduous process that takes four to five years.

A movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas. They’re in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, the pacing. The director and the other creative leaders of a production do not come up with all the ideas on their own; rather, every single member of the 200- to 250-person production group makes suggestions. Creativity must be present at every level of every artistic and technical part of the organization. The leaders sort through a mass of ideas to find the ones that fit into a coherent whole—that support the story—which is a very difficult task. It’s like an archaeological dig where you don’t know what you’re looking for or whether you will even find anything. The process is downright scary.

I’ve worked in, and talked to people who have worked in, interactive environments where the company is trying to get into the advertising game, or develop the creative oomph that advertising sometimes has. I’ve been told, literally dozens of times, that good ideas only come from a copywriter and art director with their feet up on their desks, kicking around ideas. While I enjoy Mad Men’s atmospherics, I cringe at the hero-worship of great white creatives it seems to be engendering. (I was wowed by the carousel pitch, and understood for once just how intoxicating the reveal of a big idea could be. Then I was scared of the intoxication and how many Don Draper wannabes we’d start seeing in the coming weeks.)

Most interactive design, at least the good, rich experiences are closer to computer games or long-narrative properties (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pixar movies, the Star Wars franchise) and are so big that they require creativity in many levels and places. This article might be a good start in getting past silver bullets, god-like CDs, and unproductive invocations of the big idea.

A friend of mine, who is helping me learn to appreciate college football as “chess with humans”, assigned me the USC-Ohio State game tonight. As prep for the game, I’ve been reading various sports pages. I decided to watch the NYTimes Inside College Football video as well. It’s got a nice integration of related articles into the video:

The links underneath the video come into view when the speaker in the video references an article directly or simply talks about a topic that the Times has covered recently. If you click on a link in the middle of the video, the video automatically pauses and opens a new window with the link.

BTW, the quarterback shown in the picture “enjoys reading the Economist more than he likes watching football.”

Nice quotation of Darwin in Glut recommended by @mokindo:

I am a firm believer that without speculation there is no good and original observation

I woke up with no sense of disorientation, nagging feelings of deja vu or reverse deja vu, and I feel like nothing has changed due to the launch of the collider. (I still haven’t looked out the window yet, and the only creature I’ve had contact with is my dog, so I may yet be in for a surprise. In the meantime, there is a cool comic describing the LHC.

Looks like Plastic Logic has an e-Reader that covers many things the Kindle doesn’t: touch-screen, larger display, Office document compatibility. None of the coverage talks yet about energy consumption, keyboard input, or better scanning/navigation of documents (though the touch screen could help that a lot). Also, not sure if 8.5 * 11 is the ideal size for a book replacement.

None of those concerns stops the ache to actually have one and convert my library . . .

While looking for information on Plastic Logic’s e-Reader, I found an Information Week article on the subject. The article was pretty weak, but the first user comment under it was priceless:

PZ has a post about McCain’s background visuals that goes a little deeper than the general pile-on. The best bit is this:

MSNBC reported that when asked about the middle school image, McCain’s campaign replied that “it’s simply a generic photo, like others used and it had no specific meaning.” But here’s the rub: images always have meaning, though it may be different from what you intended. The term “generic photo” is just one step away from “clip art,” both of which should be avoided by serious presenters.

Images always have meaning. It’s amazing to me how often the same “picture is worth a thousand words” people just drop in pictures whose meaning or value they can’t explain.

How much more am I loving my Kindle? I woke up this morning, flipped on the Kindle for the morning paper download and, lo!, there’s Anathem — Neal Stephenson’s newest novel. All reading of Pride and Prejudice, Nixonland, Click and anything else stop.

The timing is great, too. There is a bunch of reportage today that Bletchley Park is getting funding for renovation from a bunch of technology companies. (My favorite Neal Stephenson novel is Cryptonomicon, which is all about crypto in the 90s and during WWII. One of the characters, Randall Waterhouse, goes to Bletchley.)

Photos of WWII codebreaking stuff.

Couple more links at boinboing.