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Jog on
This New Yorker piece about Brad Troemel is interesting. I don't know much about this stuff but these bits snagged me:
Fourteen-year-old Finnish-kid syndrome
"For the growing number of artists who use the Internet to distribute their work, a key problem has become how to stand out amid a torrent of information—what the digital-art pioneer Cory Arcangel has termed “fourteen-year-old Finnish-kid syndrome,” in which any teen-ager with an iPhone can make something attention-grabbing. For Troemel, the solution is to embrace frantic creative production and the skillful use of social media. In an essay from 2014, Troemel coined the term “aesthlete” to describe the type of artist who can maintain relevance today. The aesthlete, he wrote, “produces a constant stream of work in social media to ride atop the wave in viewers’ newsfeeds, or else become the wave itself.” Troemel has some fifty-six thousand followers on Instagram, and he typically posts a photograph each day at 1 p.m., when he finds that user engagement is highest."
Jogging as a 'pace' for the internet
"They posted photos of the sculptures on a Tumblr blog that they named the Jogging, for the sustained pace that they sought. Like Troemel, Christiansen had been a star athlete in high school—she had turned down a track-and-field scholarship from Arizona State University—and they shared a competitive streak, which they funnelled into making their trash sculptures as quickly as possible. At first, Christiansen said, “it was just a fun and, frankly, intimate thing we were doing together.”
Asshole-boy prank
"While Troemel’s work can embody the freewheeling creativity that is the best part of Internet culture, it often falls into the trap of the troll who mistakes a lack of accountability for freedom, provoking with obnoxious antics simply for the sake of generating a reaction, then laughing in your face when you fall for the joke."
The New IT
It's easy to complain about the Old IT. Really easy. But I started to wonder what The New IT would look like. (You know, like).
I don't know, obviously, but recent experience would suggest one version would be this:
Come into a business. Probably smaller businesses, but not exclusively. Have a look at what mix of PCs/Macs/Androids/iPhones they have, at what things they have to get done and what corporate or client systems they have to connect to and then recommend what they should download from various app stores. Don't install anything. Don't build anything. Don't sell anything, just advice.
For instance: which expenses app should we use? which timesheet app? Do they work well for the user? Are they accessible? Do they produce the right kind of reports for the corporate approver? Is the company behind the app likely to still be around in a year? Is it easy to get all the data out? Where does the data sit? Will the FBI be allowed to see it? What's the cost? How much time will it save? That kind of stuff.
Does that exist?
I, for instance, have been experimenting with Toggl and Expensify. Both seem good, but it would be good to hear from someone who'd seem them used in a bunch of other businesses like ours.
