I'm a Hick (tech)!

I've been thinking a bit lately about whether location matters anymore. Now that we have all these tools for remote collaboration, does it still matter if you are physically proximate to colleagues? To a larger community? And if it doesn't, why do we still get together in physical space?

I suspect there are things we get from each other by being in real, physical space that we will never be able to replicate at a distance, but can we get better at 'doing' distance? For instance, the largest stumbling block seems to be creating opportunities for happenstance, for overheard conversations. What would it mean to replicate that idea of idle moments and happenstance over distance?

Anyway, it should come up in a couple of interesting conversations in the next while. Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'm moderating a wrap-up panel at HICK Tech, a very cool all-day conference about technology and rural issues, that takes place in Owen Sound. Very much looking forward to it. At the end of May, Spark is heading up a panel at this year's MESH conference, with the tentative title "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?" about this idea of location, and whether distance really matters anymore. I went to MESH last year and had a great time.

Karl Lagerfeld, DJ

Women's Wear Daily notes that Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld is going to have a 'cameo' in the new version of the Grand Theft Auto video game. He's going to play a DJ. (via PSFK) Aside from the fact that it's hard to imagine a significant overlap between Chanel-wearers and Grand Theft Auto-players, it's another example of the increasing range of 'stealth' marketing going on.

It's interesting how many of the more clever marketing techniques involve using alternate identities in fictional worlds, such as Alternate Reality Games. Perhaps it's simply a part of offering more of a sense of 'play' in ads.

Open Channels

Between my personal communication channels, and Spark communication, my morning routine now involves:
-checking my and the show's work email
-checking my personal email
-moderating the show blog comments
-adding my own comments
-updating my and the show's twitter feeds

And that doesn't include the semi-regular actual blog entries for the show or this blog, or thesniffer blog.

The one thing the morning routine almost never includes is picking up voicemail messages. Almost no one calls me on the phone, at home or at work. I wonder how common that is?

Lacunae of the Interwebs

We've all had that experience where we think we've 'discovered' some cool/weird new trend online, only to be met with eye-rolling from friends and colleagues and the inevitable "ungh. that's been around for ages." I had that experience today, talking to my colleagues about 'sweding', after reading about it in one of WIRED's blogs.

The term "sweding" comes from the Michel Gondry film, Be Kind Rewind ("sweding involves amateur filmmakers creating homespun homages to movies." says the blog). People make deliberately low-tech versions of beloved films. It's another great example of people connecting to deliberately lo-fi, anachronistic applications of technology. Sometimes, it's a deliberate time-shifting, but in this case it's more like a delight in 'roughing things up'. What's fascinating about that is that the same technologies that allow individuals to do things that formerly only professionals could do, are now being used precisely to make cultural products that are deliberately non-sophisticated (while at the same time, delighting in the inventiveness with which the homages are recreated).

Oh, and I got a new computer.