Our Minds on Media

Well! Clearly, that’s the last time that octopus will give a pushy vending machine all of his garlic.

Wait. What?

Lake Superior State University (Lake Superior is a state?) does the world a favor every year by maintaining this list of banished words for the year—words and phrases that have been generally overused and abused through no fault of their own. These are the sorts of utterances that make you wish there was such a thing as copyslap; the ability to just slap someone who uses them after their reasonable expiration date. As you can see from my own mutation above, the phrase “Orange is the new black,” and its innumerable iterations are a particular architecture of bone-picking with me.¹ Definitely, a second runner up is the phrase, “It is what it is,”—a phrase that requires more energy to utter than it has power to explain. In other words, to use that phrase is like letting the Universe die just a little.

The whole business of the media picking a catchy phrase or term and just beating it with the rubber truncheons of mediocrity, until the belief that it was ever clever in the first place seems about as remote as the possibility of a blonde cable news anchoress being ugly, makes me want to email Susan Blackmoore to let her know that she could some up her talk in about 19 fewer minutes by simply pointing out that all memes are bad.² I’m very certain that George Orwell would agree. These phrase fads are just bad for all of us. They reduce conversation to a level of bipolar uselessness. The funny thing is, I really don’t blame us. That is to say, I don’t want to <sarcasm>throw modern culture under the bus</sarcasm>.³ I do think the media is to blame, the Media with a capital ‘m’, that is—the crew that’s a shill for paid advertising and wouldn’t know a serious story if it stopped them in a dark parking garage. You just don’t hear this kind of regurgitated drek on PBS Frontline. We hear these phrases over and over again and it induces a laziness of thought, a willingness to give in to the agenda of other people’s choice of words, rather than making the effort to think of something new for yourself. I don’t think it’s the end of the world or anything, but it just adds to the drudgery, you know?

So, I’ll end this bitter goodbye to the sheep-thought of 2008 with a New Year’s resolution for the writing on Banapana in 2009.⁴ In the coming year, I resolve to do my best to not use but identify these black holes of ingenuity and only mention them when I intend to call them out. Enjoy and Happy New Year’s Day to you!

I recently wrote John Gruber an email with regards to his note about Michael Robertson’s claims (Robertson is former CEO of MP3.com). In general, Robertson has made the argument that the cell phone is the iPod killer. But really, he’s got it completely backward. What I said to Mr. Gruber was as follows:

Unless Robertson is not including the iPod Touch, then he has his assessment quite backwards. iPods are actually the iPhone killer. Everything from television to the landline network is gradually being sucked into TCP/IP. I don’t think anyone would be surprised by that statement. Data is data and data only needs one network, and that one’s already up and running on wifi and soon, wimax.

As someone who owns an iPod Touch with a microphone and that lives amongst (a University Campus and my house) ubiquitous wi-fi networks, I didn’t even see the point of getting a cell phone attached to my iPod. There’s nothing special about all the cellular networks with the exception of the fact that they are not as open as the Internet.

What other technological channel has managed to attach itself to the Internet without being entirely absorbed by it? Cellular networks and cable TV are being assimilated. Cell phones aren’t Internet devices–the iPod is. In fact, that’s got me wondering about Jobs’ inspiration for naming the iPod versus the iPhone. Did he realize the iPhone was just a hybrid while understanding that the iPod (a much more generic and flexible idea) was still the end-all-be-all?

Seriously though, is the Reality Distortion Field^TM hitting me this far out from California? There is only one well-known device on the market that is prepared for the transition from cellular network to wifi transmitted IP. The cost of maintaining cellular towers that can utilize 3G seems much higher that wimax. I really think the iPhone is a transition device, a hybrid. Still though, Apple has its bets covered on this one.

Recently debated here at Banapana and elsewhere was the question: is graphic design art? As I stated before, I think that graphic design is a craft and that it can achieve art when it is practiced with mastery. ¹ One example of that sort of mastery can be found on Andy Mangold’s site where he has re-designed the monopoly game packaging. It is a stunning as well as functional re-design. It is, in short, a mastery of the craft. The aesthetic changes would increase the perceived value of the game, and the re-organization of the game pieces simply makes it easier to take care of and play. Brilliant.

And for those of you who have been looking for a good Monopoly strategy, I suggest you take a look at this simple instructive video.

source: Daring Fireball