Cycles of culture

In his recent SALT talk, Steven Johnson plugged the book Graphs, Maps, Trees by Franco Moretti. I just finished it, and it's hands-down one of the best analyses of literary history I've ever read.

Moretti practices what he calls "distant reading," looking at the full literary output of a society over time. His models—the graphs, maps, and trees of the title—bring some hidden cycles of human culture into sharp relief. He also offers some tentative, but compelling hypotheses regarding how and why new artistic forms arise, evolve, and decay.

P.S. Anyone interested in an engaging debate about cycles of artistic form should also check out the discussion of music—and specifically, David Levitin's book "This Is Your Brain on Music"—taking place in the North American Future Salon Yahoo! group. Look for the subject header "Accelerating Change."

Marketing vs. advertising vs. branding

Funny and accurate. (As seen on kottke.org.)

Plunge in CD Sales Shakes Up Big Labels

From today's NYT:

"Aram Sinnreich, a media industry consultant at Radar Research in Los Angeles, said the CD format, introduced in the United States 24 years ago, is in its death throes. 'Everyone in the industry thinks of this Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD sales,' Mr. Sinnreich said, 'and then everything goes kaput.'”

Open-source museums, open-source art

In April I attended the super fun opening of OSMOSA -- the Open-Source Museum of Open-Source Art -- in Second Life. I'm glad I went back a month later to see how far SL residents had pushed the concept of free, fully editable art in a free, fully editable museum. Check it out.

(Thanks to Kenny Hubble for the party invite.)

Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!

Clive Thompson at collision detection finds this amazing interview with Peter Howell, the arranger of the 1980s Doctor Who theme. Howell explains how all of the sound effects were generated, with Dalek and TARDIS effects thrown in to boot.

Disabilities in Second Life

A great article on how people with real-world disabilities are walking, flying, and becoming leading innovators in Second Life. The article also covers some of the attempts to re-create the experience of cerebral palsy, blindness, schizophrenia, and other disabilities in SL, as a way of building empathy for those conditions.

The wounds of commitment

Trust is on my mind a lot these days, as a driver for new business innovation, and as a more fruitful starting place for thinking about customer relationships than "brand love."

Vernor Vinge has espoused the idea recently that "in the modern world, success [will come] from having the largest possible educated population and providing those hundreds of millions of creative people with credible freedom." As Vinge notes, in an increasingly transparent society, that verisimilitude of freedom could approach the real thing closer than ever before.

With these ideas on my mind, I was happy to stumble across Elizabeth Doty's insightful article in this week's strategy+business, showing exactly how breaches of trust within an organization extinguish innovation and individual commitment. Good reading for any leaders looking to build trust internally, or struggling with the ethical grey areas that inevitably come with success and increasing complexity.

San Paolo kicks out billboards

An inspiring, if temporary, step forward for more human urban environments, as reported in BoingBoing and elsewhere.

This news item reminds me of the scene in Before Sunset where Julie Delpy talks about visiting Warsaw as a teenager:

"After a couple of weeks, something changed in me. The city was quite gloomy and gray... but, after a while, my brain seemed clearer... It took me a while to figure out why... My brain felt like it was at rest, free from the consuming frenzy. And I have to say, it was almost like a natural high. I felt so peaceful inside, no... strange urge to be somewhere else, to shop... Maybe it could have seemed like boredom at first, but it quickly became very, very soulful."

A greener Apple

Steve Jobs responds to environmental groups who have criticized the sustainability of Apple's products.

The Eye of the Beholder

Nina Simon at Museum 2.0 continues to serve up great insights about art, business, commerce, and marketing. This week, she asks: "What kinds of environments support focus, appreciation, and epiphany?"

Bravo without pity

Bravo finds TV fans where they already are by acquiring the venerable and ultra snarky blog site Television Without Pity.

(I'm a bit late in blogging this, but thought I'd share just the same. Bravo has been doing some really interesting things lately to make its on-line/on-air experiences as sticky as possible.)

Digg's favorite HDR photographer

I met Trey Ratcliff at the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference in NYC last month, and have been drooling over his stunning photographs from around the world.

Also check out the interview on his site Stuck in Customs where he talks about his technique:

"HDR brings the phi ratio [the 'golden ratio'] to colors and luminosity rather than to geometry and angles. Humans use their neocortex to patch together a visual scene. People do not take a 'photograph' in their head and store it at a single shutter speed, aperture, etc. On the scene, the human eye is constantly darting around and the iris lets in more light in some areas and less light in others. This “patchwork quilt” is made up of very different light levels and colors. These most beautiful scenes have colors that lay on top of the geometric patterns that traipse up and down the spectrum in a phi pattern. I’m slowing evolving my HDR process to nail those phi patterns within color and luminosity to bring a visceral reaction of beauty from the viewer."