What if, no matter the effort, you were never appreciated– for anything.
Imagine you’d never get famous, never get known, for anything you’d ever do. What if no one saw your work– your friends, maybe, but no one else. You’d never get noticed, never achieve any acclaim, ever. Terrible, maybe? Expected, perhaps?
But what if you knew [...]
Three men working in a design company are all gunning for the same promotion.
One has skill, the other works hard, and the other has luck.
Which one would you rather be?
George is skillful. He’s really good at drafting and he’s always had an eye for the thing. He can look at a problem and get [...]
We are cowboys. This place is a frontier.
The way we experience media right now is the way all future media will be. Nobody knows that yet, but we do. What we are trying right now may seem crazy to some people, fruitless communication with no purpose, but in reality what we are trying will become [...]
I was discussing with someone last night about the uselessness of the basic university degree. I compared it to an arms race– when one group has a BA, the other needs the BA to compete with them in the job marketplace, but when both sides have them, they no longer provide any employment advantage whatsoever.
Despite [...]
It’s ironic that Trust Agents talks about two things that are equally important, but actually contradictory.
What are they? The first of the behaviours is understanding social cues, and the second is pattern-breaking. Why are they opposites? See below.
Social Cues
Being a human artist implies an understanding of social cues, like body language, status, and a million [...]
Ok, I admit it. I am far too familiar with the self-help section of my bookstore.
Alternative diets, positive thinking, 7 habits, four-hour workweeks– yes, I’ve read them all. I have a very high tolerance for bullshit, especially of that type. Always have, despite being rather cynical and dismissive of the majority of the category.
If you [...]
Have you listened to the radio recently?
I was on a radio interview with the CBC last week with Jo-Ann Roberts. It reminded me about a lot of stuff I had forgotten about in radio culture– things that are necessary because of channel-surfing that goes on with most listeners.
One of those things is to constantly repeat [...]
I’m reading this amazing blog right now called Marshall and Me.
It’s Michael Hinton, a guy I met a few months ago, writing a post every day about something or other that Marshall McLuhan wrote. He’s doing 300 posts. (I love projects that have finite endings. Rules For My Unborn Son is another.)
Anyway, it’s interesting how [...]
When we’re young, we’re curious. We experiment a lot.
We don’t mind trying new things, whether it’s walking on our hands, running backwards, putting our hand in the toilet, or whatever. We do this even if the result is to get hurt, and that’s because our curiosity drives the understanding of how the world works. The [...]
Magazine readers still have a hell of a time finding out about the stuff they see inside, don’t they?
First, they write it down. Then they get to a web connection (computer or iPhone if they’re lucky). Then they Google it– and that’s just to get started. The percentage that lose interest along the way is [...]