On a personal level and a professional level today was very interesting. I went down for a big meeting in Silicon Valley and was one of 2 women in the room of 14 or so. Nothing unusual about being the minority in technology once again.
Only this time the 2 women were the most senior folk in the room. Times they are ch-ch-changing.. though not fast enough in my opinion.
Am I on Facebook because it adds value to my life or am I on Facebook because of FOMO? I.e. is it a positive or a negative in my life?
Will I miss anything significant by not being on it? Is anyone else as pissed off as I am about their lack of transparency due to privacy? Or will I join in again because I am a solo protester? Let’s find out. I will catalog my feelings and more importantly ACTIONS on this.
I just realized that I forgot to let my ‘friends’ know I was deactivating my account. Kind of like wrapping a present and then wondering if you left the tag on. Or is this the beginning of the nagging sense of FOMO?
This is going to be interesting.
Is to Americans as football is to the British…
The average American (if there is such a thing) is interrupted every 17 minutes. The battle for our attention has never been more epic. We are used to digesting bite-sized bits of content. I think it is interesting to consider these facts in the light of the movie business. Asking Americans to give up 1.5 to 2 hours of their time on a movie is an increasingly difficult proposition, hence the rise of the lower involvement TV drama. A recent Vanity Fair cover story confirmed the ascendance of TV over movies.
I have recently noticed a phenomenon that confirms this struggle and that is the simple fact that the length of a movie trailer seems to be increasing. A few weeks ago I saw a trailer for ‘Robot and Frank’ that infuriated me. In Hollywood’s desire to pull me in to spending 90 minutes with their content, they spent a whopping 2.5 minutes on a seductive trailer. But in that 2.5 minutes they mistakenly gave far too much away. I could forecast the ending before the movie began. Do not buy popcorn. Do not pass go. And the promoters of this movie are not alone. In my opinion, most movie trailers should now carry a spoiler alert.
Forgive me for the crude analogy, but I see a strange parallel with the ‘oldest profession’ in the world. The cheaper the hooker the more they have to display to lure a customer. Personally I wish more movies were like high-class escorts and were confident to show less and charge more.
By the way, ‘Robot and Frank’ is an awesome movie (Frank Langella is a absolute delight) and certainly did not need to shed its clothes to get me to open my wallet. Just don’t watch the trailer…
Awesome transient art exhibit in the Bay Area today. Captured for posterity by Stamen Design. http://ishky.com/pi/
Excellent podcast on Charles Duhigg’s “Power of Habit” book.
http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2012/06/habits-why-we-do-what-we-do.html
Has anyone else noticed that some rich people (not all thankfully) live in a rather ignorant bubble where they assume everyone around them has the same level of wealth and access they do? When I see it it makes my blood boil. So I have decided to start a new category and twitter hashtag #Obliviou$
Example from today:
Monied older woman dripping with jewels asking the 21 year old flight attendant “how far is to the XXXX Resort (5 stars) when we land in Aspen.” Not remotely embarrassed by his head down, quietly murmured, ‘no.’
Some mystery crochet fiend is clearly concerned about the well-being of sf parking meters.
smellslikeaninsight 