Disqus - Latest Comments for Matt Searles

Re: Does Your Social Media Experience Extend

Matt Searles — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:43:56 -0000

Isn't the real problem, though, that companies don't value customer service enough? They aren't thinking about how every customer touch point is a part of brand experience?

I think the social media stuff is often kinda.. lipstick on a pig. Why should you have to tweet to get a human being to talk to you?

I mean yes, what you're saying is true.. and someone riding shot gun.. not a bad idea..

But its like the resistances business have had to adopting social media, and the superficiality of much of the adoption.. What's it going to take for a company to transform its self in substantive ways?

As just one simple pimple example of the problem.. the way things are run these days.. the focus and pressure is short term.. Thinking about long term sustainability is not something you are likely rewarded for.. so how do you get substantial change in that environment? How do you get people working proactively against large problems?

Re: Why I don't like 'crowd sourcing' (Scripting News)

Matt Searles — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:45:18 -0000

I'm with you in the sense that the language of "crowd sourcing" has implications that I find problematic... I tend to think that the form of a term or phrase is driven by underlying questions.. and the underlying question of the term "crowd sourcing" seems like.. in someway, the wrong question,.. or a wrong crystallization of an ecology of questions.

But still I think in terms of collective consciousness.. I apply concepts from Jungian psychology, Hindu metaphysics, and other fun stuff.. to how I'm thinking of this space.. the notion of crowd sourcing, as seen through this lens.. isn't so bad.. the bad of it is more the baggage of mass markets and centralization.. old models for thinking about communications and business..

I tend to think this is the big problem with most of the social media thinking I run into.. that so much of it is trying to think about this space from the point of view of old modes.. a management science that had newtonian physics as it's metaphysical presumptions.. but here we are in a quantum / new science world..

Its as if the new business ideas are largely hacks to the older ideas.. which probably have a lot of short term pragmatic value.. but this now moment of social media is.. seemingly more fleeting then other moments.. with the rate of change being what it is.. and to the extent to which the truth of our ideas are contextually dependent.. the flux of change in the ecology.. I think it will, as we move forward, give rise to a need for a different sorta existential relationship to these thoughts.. the challenge being like the challenge of Buddha.. to find the still point in the flux. And I think from the point of view of that place.. crowd sourcing doesn't work.

Re: Super Bowl Spinal Tap

Matt Searles — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:00:44 -0000

Yikes! Quite a story... get well soon! and

And on the football thing I always think of Joseph Campbell talking about the spirituality of athleticism. I'm not much into sports ether.. but occasionally enjoy a good game.

Well that and I often thing of Hunter Thompson at the ESPN Sports desk and his obsession with gambling on everything in the game.

Re: The question of influence…

Matt Searles — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:44:18 -0000

Perhaps sex is sublimated religion?

I don't think influence is primarily what I'm after. I want to do something great, and have success on in proportion to the merits of whatever the thing I did that was great was. So influence is really more of an unplanned consequence.

I suppose, when talking about SoMe, we are having a conversation.. and influence is a part of conversation.. it's like.. well the alienation of post modern whatever.. where we feel impotent to influence the world around us.. we are no longer an important part about making the sun rise.. and so there's that to.. but, on that level, I'm interested in a lot of influence.. its more like just participating in the unfolding of our times...

Re: The question of influence…

Matt Searles — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:41:44 -0000

Hey richard

LOL, well if you're a Freudian I'm sure it is... I think Jung suggested that sex might be sublimated religion.. somewhere.. and at the very least it's an interesting way to think of it. Or.. I've been chewing on it for the past few days anyway.

Well.. Labido as life energy that could be express in a power or sex drive?

Re: The funniest antivirus software ad you’ll see this year

Matt Searles — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:47:49 -0000

That's Delete Expletive Awesome! I love that damaged print look and the not quite Superfly sound track. Kinda makes ya want to write viruses!

Re: Who is a social media expert?

Matt Searles — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:35:43 -0000

I like where you go with all this.

My initial reaction is one of.. that social media is a lot of things to a lot of people.. that it has a quality of infinite granularity.. which gets configured into a "reality" by one's consciousness.. and from where I'm standing, an essential quality of social media is "creative content."

The values that lead to creative genius, at least in my experience, are not inculcated via a master pupil relationship... rather they come from a lonely inward journey into the abyss.. The abyss in terms of the dark side of your own personal psyche... as well as the dark side in the sense of our collective psyche.

I suppose the part of the process where you leave your master is where the master pupil relationship inculcates the creative genius values.... or at least could potentially... depending on the courage of the pupil.

George Lucas was following Joseph Campbell with his Starwars saga... Campbell has done the job of mapping out this journey.

I've never had really had a master pupil relationships... though my inward adventures have supplied me with many mentors.. of which I count you as one. I imagine there is also a granularity underlying the master pupil relationship that has simply expressed it's self, in my life, in a different way..

I imagine what the master pupil relationship does supply you with is you're light saber.. but in the context of you're conversation.. the sorta master who can supply light sabers are not around...

or, there are plenty of light saber suppliers around.. but you have to think like Jay Moonah.. which is to say to think of social media as a kind of synthesis of formally disparate fields, so to speak... so one must look to the old fields, all be it with a critical eye.. a sorta Viveka process by which you differentiate things who's truth are limited to a temporal context which is different then the social media context's new synthesis... and those things that have a truth that is transcendent of there context.

Re: Twitter has Pulver-ized me. Time to move to Plurk?

Matt Searles — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:11:14 -0000

Wow.. one wonder's who's making the decisions over there.. can you imagine the meeting where this decision took place?: "yeah, lets take the folks with the most followers, and there for perhaps the most influence, and push them away from our site.. at a time when everyone in the world is getting frustrated with our service, and there's a huge rise of upstarts nipping at our heals... I'm sure no one will follow them and leave our service."

Well one thing is for sure, myspace will never over take friend.. err, can't even remember what that site was called!

I'm thinking frank zappa must have been onto something when he suggested that stupidity is a more common element in the universe then hydrogen.

Re: Celebrate International Day of the Ninja!

Matt Searles — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:51:03 -0000

I really liked the instructor in the top video... and you're lesson was fun to

Re: Sex: The Man Killer | The Art of Manliness

Matt Searles — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:24:12 -0000

I find myself kind of disagreeing.. in the big picture. What I mean is I think we are focusing on the surface.. and the behavior of causality webs.. I'm not sure you're really get at.

I was reading, a few weeks ago, some stuff on the psychological structure of marriage from Carl Jung.. I'm used to the notion that.. you might very well choose a mate that.. doesn't really fulfill your needs.. you made the safe bet after all.. and so there remains a kind of lingering part of you that's still seeking out that fulfillment.. that can be the cause of the affair.. and you could argue that in some sense this might be healthy.. or.. perhaps the morality we impose on issues of fidelity are sometimes short sided and miss a larger good.

But what I was fascinated to meditate on is.. the structure and dynamics of the.. course marriages follow.. and there really is a stage where.. like it or not.. one of the partners is getting pushed away.. that this is the usual course of things, to one extent or another.. and that there are many factors that can influence the way things unfold.

There's an old debate in the story of sexual dysfunction.. if we should take the surface approach of sex therapy or the depth psychology type approach of Freud.. and clearly advances in neuroscience, socio biology, brain imaging, and what not.. do further complicate the debate, and its challenges.

I tend to look at these things from a.. Foucault meets Zen sorta perspective.. which is to say it's power relationships that are defining our definitions of good, bad, healthy, unhealthy.. rather then the intrinsic state of things.. The Zen problem is realizing that you are "it" despite the world constantly telling you are not.. another words its the power of "it" that should be doing the defining, not the external power relationships," because.. after all its what we might regard as inward subjective reality that's really driving the show here.

From an "it" centric point of view.. a psychotic crack up is healthy.. it's the psyche inflicting equilibrium on its self.. the question should not be if a thing is good or not, but what is the good of a thing.

So you know.. when we look at powerful men falling.. as a result of sex.. could that be a situation where in.. they where emphasizing external metrics of success over an inward, more subjective, reality? And perhaps it was that subjective reality imposing its "auh-thor-ah-tah" on the person in question.. that then forced them into a life where these subjective realties get more attention? And if so.. if the metric is mental health.. perhaps that's a more healthy condition then where they were before?

I believe in economics the term is "creative destruction?"

Which I suppose is not totally disagreeing with you ether.

Re: Why I'm Blue

Matt Searles — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:01:20 -0000

Congratulations Scott..

I must say I've never been too big a fan of the color blue, but I must say you're causing me to reconsider.

Re: Think Banner Ads Are Effective?

Matt Searles — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:43:23 -0000

OMG that's awesome

Re: Is America Ready For A Smart President? (video)

Matt Searles — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:03:04 -0000

As we used to say in the 7th grade, Awesome!

Re: Podcamp Boston 3 - Success!

Matt Searles — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:09:08 -0000

Well I had an amazing time, and some crazy adventures.. met a lot of cool people.. got to know people I had met before a little bit better, found job leads, had some really great conversations.. felt more a part of the community then ever before.. learned a bit.. it was just awesome...

My take a ways were.. well kinda hard to articulate really. Some of it was like.. how we are all just really people.. something in the humanness of it.. There was something to seeing people new to this space.. trying to help them out a little.. and then on the other hand seeing people who are.. like way beyond me and being able to say "well what do you think focualt would say about the shifting power relationships in emerging channels" and have those kinda crazy conversations.. listen to people who have this stuff down to a science to give you some perspective of what is possible and.. I guess the biggest thing I took away was the inspiration to take things to the next level.. to say "yeah, getting my act together over here is really important."

I think if you wanna save the world you gotta start with your self.. I don't mean that in some.. selfish-e sorta way... more that in just being a vehicle of light in the world is a pretty huge thing... and it's probably one of the more difficult things to achieve in this life.. I guess somewhere in the core of my interest in social media has been an idea of seeking out a mode of living that would facilitate that sorta thing... and I guess that's how I'm trying to do it..

Re: Social Media, Learn to Crawl Before you Walk

Matt Searles — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:45:25 -0000

yeah...

It's a very strange thing to me.. I guess I've been in social media for a while now.. 3 or 4 years I guess.. I have business goals but I haven't really bothered to execute on them too much.. so instead I've just been wandering around developing relationships with people, and having fun..

Still I'm the sorta personality that likes to fly before I learn to crawl.. always like to jump into the deep end of complexity before I've bothered too much with the basics.. the basics just don't interest me too much.. and I think of this.. and that there are some personalities that like to just go and jump in, and other's that tend to be a little more analytical about it.. if you jump in and make a lot of mistakes.. get bitten in the ass.. well, maybe you gain some wisdom that way.

I'm a little adverse to things like best practices or "this is what you should do" stuff.. not that it doesn't have a pragmatic value.. but because often this sorta thing can get in the way of our experience of the wonder of things.. And in a certain way, I think social media is sorta like that.. such a spirit of power diffusion.. the sorta economic creative destruction it brings to business as usual is like the voice of Dyonisious.. clearing the way of the old values to make room for the new..

None of this is to in anyway disagree with anything you've said.. its more about the question of how do we relate to it.

So idk.. hope that adds something to the conversation here...

matt

Re: http://michaelfruchter.com/blog/2008/12/social-media-learn-to-crawl-before-you-walk/

Matt Searles — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:45:25 -0000

Re: http://michaelfruchter.com/blog/2008/12/social-media-learn-to-crawl-before-you-walk/

Matt Searles — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:45:25 -0000

Re: Why You Don’t Need A Label

Matt Searles — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:12:08 -0000

I'm with you, growing up Frank Zappa was a major hero of mine.. and spoke endlessly about the problems with the music business.. I grew up feeling like if I wanted to make music my way, without compromises, Id have to do it all my self.

But now, lost in space some place, I wonder if it might not be a good idea too hook up with an indie label.. if for nothing else, for the guidance they might have. Major labels might not have done real artist development for years, but the indies still do...

But yeah.. maybe what I really need is marketer... but I don't really have any idea where to turn on that. I mean you probably really want someone who kind of specializes in the genera you're in...

I've made mentors of the cc's, mitch joels, joseph jaffee's, chris penns, etc.. but I feel like.. to do what I want to do.. I need to synthesize that guerrilla publicity, guerrilla marketing, and kinda music industry particulars.. mad more complex when you conceptualize your self more broadly as a media artist..

So I guess there's a feeling of.. well still wondering where the rest of the people are.. finding a community of people wrestling with the same challenges, all that kinda thing.

Re: Is creative content going to atomize even further? | Broadcasting Brain

Matt Searles — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:25:32 -0000

Well I kind of disagree.. I don't think we are going to see the end of the album or concept album.. It may very well be that the the prominence of the album or concept album.. as we know it.. will grow less and less.. but I don't think that spells the and of it..

I mean to the extent to which an album.. or a concept album.. a sorta longer form sonic experience.. has value to us.. as a unique experience.. that my friend.. is a market force.. that creates a demand for such things.. if it gets subordinated to mash up, lets make our own play list sorta thing.. that doesn't quite spell its doom, I don't think... It just means we get less of it.

If you spend much time working on music.. wrestling with music making.. you realize that what you're doing is kinda a dialog with a sonic ecology.. the way that you could classify experience into statistics and see a norm develop... and see that for something to exist, cognitively speaking.. it's going to be how it deviates from that norm, that its that deviation that we become aware of, as a pose to the thing its self.

So when you create an album.. and you sequence your tracks into a particular order.. you're playing with that contrasts of norms.. of the ecological norms of different tracks, and how they evolve over time.

When we do a custom play order.. we are thinking about those contrasts.. and in some sense creating something new.. If I follow Frank Zappa's Hungry Freaks with Public Enemy's Fight the Power.. and somewhere further down the line is Bob Dylan's Hard Rain.. and maybe somewhere before the Zappa is Allan Ginsberg reading something or other.. well now I have a new thematic continuity... but things that are more about musical DNA.. strange habits of an artist.. modal, hormonic, whatever.. there relationships are now largely the product of chance / indeterminacy..

But like right now.. i'm in the studio.. for a particular period of time.. so that all the music I'm creating is somehow representative of my state of consciousness.. There are certain set patterns.. along multiple axis's...

So for instance there are certain patterns regarding chord changes that are like.. harmonic minor modalism with microtonal abstraction.. but in each specific track.. this gets explored and stretched in a different direction.. over here it's dark, a little scary, bordering on the atonal.. over there it's stretching out into a feeling of falling in love while in a kind of vertigo... and then over there we are wrestling with the mysteries of existence... or.. over here we have Marilyn Manson like timbers.. over there we got some.. crazy Jazz timbers.. and then over there it's Brain Eno esk sounds..

So it becomes like a sonic adventure that we travel deeper and deeper into.. It maybe that I'm old school.. but generally.. I listen to music as albums... though it depends. A lot of albums are like.. a few good singles with a lot of filler.. and in those cases I'm not generally interested in hearing it as an album.. or sometimes it's like.. I'm not feeling like going into that album experience.. and I just want to hear that one song I really like.. or something like that.. so it all depends.

But I guess what I'm trying to get at is that it depends on what it is you want.. how you're feeling.. that there are values to each thing.. and that that value is connected to a market force in one way or another.. and even if the markets are in a state of rapid flux... the underlying dynamics driving it all is really just you and me.. it's a bit like we're just getting rid of the insulation and friction between the want and the content.. I'm thinking anyway

So that atomization of content makes it the fluid, and we are the containers who's shape it takes.. and that shape.. can include the un-atomized album.. if that makes sense.

Re: Do link blogs suck? | Broadcasting Brain

Matt Searles — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 14:02:14 -0000

I must confess that I have never actually encountered a link blog.. but

It seems to me if you make a blog that is basically just a lot of links, you have more curation powers then with micro blogging or social book marking...

A link blog could be something like a record of some of your online adventures.. and in that way it can tell a story that can be a kind of subtext to the links.. that could be a unique attribute to the link blog..

I think this is really the central issue to all of social media.. it's not a question if anything is good or bad.. but what is it good for.. or what is good for you with whatever it is you're trying to do.

I think a problem with best practices is that they have to do with what's the best practice for doing X.. which assumes a kind of ecological context for which the best practice is a crystallization of both that ecological context, and what folks are collectively trying to do. In this way it's really an expression of statistical norms.. but the ecological context is one of flux.. and what do we say of the unique moment? And it seems to me that.. in some special way.. social media is about the unique moment.

Re: Do you follow a calling? | Broadcasting Brain

Matt Searles — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:54:22 -0000

Perhaps you should go read, or listen to, some Joseph Campbell.. he does a pretty good job of describing what's up with the calling stuff.

Its kind of complicated.. to try and describe the underlying psychodynamics of the calling.. of hearing voices, and all the rest of it.. But basically.. the best advice one can give is to listen.. for it is often of a higher order then the silly stuff our conscious mind takes as reality.. and even if its not of a higher order.. the more you listen, the more you follow, the more the voice matures.. just liking using any other muscle.

There is a spiritual dimension to life.. but often when we hear someone say something like that we think.. well some of us might thing that kinda talk isn't really grounded in anything solid.. or I mean saying you believe something is different from saying you know something, and its a common misunderstanding to think you can't get to KNOW the spiritual dimension of things.

There is a whole self that extends far beyond whatever is occupying our consciousness at any given moment. Many times I will say "this is the position I'm taking on this thing" and not quite know why I'm taking that position, cause whatever it is that lead me there is not in my conscious mind.. though it might have been there a month ago.. and if I went to the trouble of trying to call it up.. then I'd understand.. but the point is that what we have to go on.. is very limited.. when you try to tie things down rationally.. when your basis of rational has to be limited to what you can be conscious of this moment..

So the calling and voices speak for this larger self.. a larger version of you then you even realize you are. I mean if you really want to get deep about it.. who do you think you are? Who you really are.. well, that's a mystery.. but... we all live more or less by these mythologies of who we area.. and somehow that seems safer then the crazy voices!?

So I think it's important to be open to the mystery of who you are, to acknowledge that you're more then your definitions.. and the same holds true for when we look at the people around us... and spend a little time, regularly, entertaining the possibilities of who you could be.. and engage in that becoming process.

Re: You say creative - I say innovative | Broadcasting Brain

Matt Searles — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:16:27 -0000

I'm not real comfortable with the distinctions between creativity and innovation.. feeling like they don't quite get at the real essence, you know? I think part of the problem is I like to think in depth psychology terms.. and even think about business in those terms.. and the definitions seem... like they might have some use value.. but I'm worried about what they might obscure.

I will say this though.. the importance of creativity is on the rise.. everything we consume.. it's for the creative content.. that's the big commodity... and it's value.. I think at least.. is only likely to rise..

But it's soo hard to tease out creativity from other things.. I mean if you look at it under a microscope.. structurally you do see it all over the place.. as common as breathing..

I guess what I feel like is.. and this is terrible to say.. but that business is sorta screwed.. or maybe it's that rule that only 10% of stuff is the good stuff? So maybe 90% of business is screwed (and hey, the economy seems to be backing me up on this one) And so the problem you're really talking about is the latest idolatry designed to help stupid people avoid becoming smart people..

And I mean if you really, really, really, think about it.. isn't that the big problem with social media? Or hasn't it been? That it's so "disruptive" which roughly translates to.. forces you're brain to get off autopilot a little bit?

I mean if you ask me what the problem was in that last dot com bubble.. it would be the stupid auto pilot people. I'll tell you a prayed for the bursting of the bubble.. cause I love the computer stuff so much.. I wanted a stupid person exodus...

but back to creativity and innovation..

I think it's a mistake to think of creativity as in anyway results orientated.. because.. if you try to manage creativity that way.. you often loose you're golden goose.. And innovation, I guess.. I see as creativity self actualized.

Or at least that's how it strikes me at this moment

Re: Heads or Hearts

Matt Searles — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:55:41 -0000

I've never been to comfortable with the notion of "an irrational mind." I tend to think it's Plato talking.. with his needs to hold those reigns so tight.. he would never be a grail king!

I think the irrational mind is only irrational with respect to conscious attitude / conceptual frameworks. It is certainly rational in that.. will, many years of evolution forged our instincts.. and now the trouble is how do we modern people relate to our own humanity.. especially those darker depths that seem somehow at odds with the value system of our times...

Of course Campbell talks about this.. lets go play in the labyrinth in search of the great values lost by our times.. perform the task of differentiating between eternal and spacetime dependent truths.. to meet whatever the challenge is..

It's also expressed in that.. the ratio of the world of the known to the unknown is about 1 to infinity.. God being the symbol of that ultimate mystery.. and isn't it the context of anything that provides the meaning of anything.. and how does one live when the ultimate context is mystery? I mean in that sense that.. what a thing is, at least consciously, is how it differs from a norm?

So our poor wimpy conscious mind, with the ego standing at the center.. the task is to find that bogia tree.. that grows at the true center of the whole self.. so that all of fear and desire might be transmuted, philosopher stone style.. in our support.. and after all.. doesn't anxiety have a survival value somewhere?

Perhaps I'm something like Job.. but that I gave my self over to God's values at 3..

In any event.. my life has a nice thick plot..

I've thought of this much.. in Freud's terms.. the issues of sustaining a wish, and how this relates to the construction of the shadow.. The issue of what wish / will might find it's resolution and fulfillment.. If what we know is so limited, how can we be the judge, and yet its our judgement that's defining it.. our judgment that builds the labyrinth.. builds the cages we live in.

At this point in my life.. I'm risking a future enantiodromia because I refuse to give up on wishes that have been defining my life since I was at least 3 years old. I have enormous fear and anxiety that I might go down in flames... somehow be destroyed.. should the wish not find it's fulfillment. I am simply too committed to it at this point.

But I'll tell you a secret.. that wish.. that was a secret pact I made with God. But can you really believe in God? Perhaps when I die I'll have to leave a formal complaint! But I'll also tell you.. that every now and again.. there are these whispers in the silence.. it's as if the very surface of reality.. as if it were God talking to me. And I must say.. he seems to forever be encouraging my rebellious ways.

Err.. but I must stop rambling..

Re: On Custom Condoms (Personal Branding)

Matt Searles — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:14:05 -0000

I'd imagine if it were good or bad for your personal brand would probably depend on the values of your personal brand.. I'd imagine if you're brand shares the values of say... Dirty Harry.. or something.. that might be a pretty good mix.. anything with a good macho bent to it.. on the other hand.. I could see something excessively queer being fun to!

I think the notion of using condoms for marketing is just toooo much fun to pass up..

God, wouldn't Buddy Christ, from Kevin Smith.. make for an awesome thing to put on a condom?

If indie bands put there likeness on them.. it would be a fun spin to the plaster casters...

OMG, i gotta get some condoms made up!!!

Re: Podcamp Boston 3 Wrapup | Cynosure

Matt Searles — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:37:37 -0000

hello,

I must say that I LOVED podcamp.. oh how great.. nice meeting you as well, should be added.

On the podcast thing.. you know there are different consumption patterns surrounding audio podcasts, video podcasts, and lets say streaming video content... last I had heard, and certainly it's true in my own case.. people consume a lot more audio podcasts then video podcasts.. simply because one can listen to them while driving, working out, or whatever.. were as video demands a little more of our attention.

Word has it that Google's android will give you data for your podcasts that will include if it was listened to, how long they listened to it.. and I suppose all the same kinda data you could get out of a flash app.. there's certainly weaknesses to the kind of metrics and analytics we use with respect to podcasts.. and other sorts of online media.. But there's also, of course, issues with stuff surrounding offline media.. which for some reason we tend to not look at the same way.. if for no other reason then because it's a little more established.

A podcast you might want to check out.. that relates to some of this stuff.. is This Week in Media..

For stuff related to marketing and pr and all that.. the ones I usually listen to are Marketing over coffee, Managing the Gray, six pixels of separation, for Immediate Release, and Jaffe Juice.

Hmm.. it might be helpful to check out the Boston social media club to, its generally very good for seeing how companies are adopting social media.. and all that sorta thing.

cheers,
matt

Re: More Fences, More Fear

Matt Searles — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:57:14 -0000

Yeah.. It's a weird thing.. society being so complex.. seems to me the strata that's trying to hit the reset is just the folks whom were benefiting from it most.. better to go out with a whimper then hear the heretic's cry?

I do think there's a lot of movement though.. towards building the new thing.. beneath the radar of traditional media.. I mean I'm having so many conversations like this..

I guess its just that heros wouldn't be heros if they were the norm?

The value of safety.. provided by our cages.. I guess its just a question of how the new values might spread through this collective medium.. that the ecology might shift.. so that the genes that spread are of the new order..

And you know.. at least we have a little heat moving that way?

Re: Wizzard’s Blog » Blog Archive » What do you have as your homepage and why?

Matt Searles — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 07:04:13 -0000

i confess I haven't thought to much about what my home page out to be.. so it's generally always the defaults.. google on firefox, and apple on safari.

Truth is most of the time i have one or another browsers open.. maybe more then one.. and often about 10 pages open, each with several tabs open.. and at the point.. home pages don't really matter too much.. since I'm generally just opening a new tab.

I find that I don't like apple as a home page simply because it takes too long to load.. makes me impatient... I think my preference would be to have a blank page.. and I suppose google is as close as you get

Re: Influence is in the eye of the audience (not the beholder)

Matt Searles — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:50:41 -0000

On twitter, I have multiple interests... vectors by which I actively connect on.. or am more likely to connect to be based on those interests.. I imagine we are all somewhat like this.. we have lots of interests.. and we seek information in proportion to our interests along these vectors. It seems to me that.. on a certain level.. this collectivized is what creates social hierarchy.

So.. lets say I'm a musician and interested in music business stuff.. I could connect up to a lot of marketers.. and we could look at how influential a marketer is in the marketing community... but that person might have very little to say on the subject of music marketing.. So.. in terms of my interests then.. that person might have some value in my conceptualizing what I'm doing.. but you could have someone.. who is much less of an influencer in the larger marketing world.. but is focused on music marketing.. and then, for me.. the balance of who's going to be more influential to me.. is going to be weighted a certain way.

I don't know that you can build an automatic recommendation engine that would work for this.. Further.. there's a difference between who I'm connected with now, and who I might want to be connected to moving forward... Or maybe.. of all my followers.. there are certain people who would have more weight in my thinking about who I should maybe follow.

I think.. if you wanted to do something that went this far.. you'd need to allow me, when I go to the page.. to some how say "well, this is how I look at it." Further.. at some point, if you're successful enough.. people could put in some kind of information about how they would characterize them selves.. so that you could have the interaction of what they put in, with what I'm trying to pull in, with the conventional recommendation engine stuff.

Other wise.. I think there's a certain subtlety factor.. in how you things work.. that can very easily not be revealed.. I'm thinking?

Re: Now, About Those New Online Music Business Models…

Matt Searles — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:47:28 -0000

Speaking as both an artist and someone who's been into social media since 04..

I think the point about business models.. well it used to be that the single biggest thing that distinguished a business that succeeded versus the one that failed would be.. did they have a business plan? But now we find our self in a situation where you kinda wonder about the shelf life of a business model, let alone a business plan.. do to the rate of change, and that's only accelerating.

Social media and this web 3.0 stuff is still so new that.. well its only been a couple of months that it's felt like the folks on twitter weren't all in just in the fish bowl. I mean the audience is still mostly not up on what's really going on.. which I think has dramatic implications for any business trying to leverage he space.

So I think the fact is #1 that we really have no idea yet what all of these changes are going to mean for the music business. #2 I don't think its best that we all look for the holy grail of business models.. I think what's best is we all try and experiment and search for what works for us. #3 Most musicians, and indeed labels and management and whatever, its my impression, don't yet have a very strong understanding of this space.. #4 The space is very immature still.. I think it was David Wienberger who said something of the order that its as if we've just landed on the moon.. versus.. star treck.. we need to bare in mind how primitive things are today..

Re: Sex Offenders Banned from Social Media Sites

Matt Searles — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:19:34 -0000

It just seems to me that if you were looking to do bad stuff to kids... twitter and linked in would not be where you'd turn.. or some of these other places..

I just think when legislation happens out of fear it never works right.

I'd be for some kind of thing that.. if you were making a social networking site.. you 'd have a thing that sex offenders would have to sign into that would make communication with minors or whatever.. not happen.. or I'd be more for that the banning all of it.

The other thing is.. say you have someone who's convicted of such a thing.. and say that person really does want to do right going forward.. I think we want to have a system that helps them to stay on the right path moving forward.. I think banning them from social networking sites makes it harder for them,, so on that level I don't think it makes sense.

I have no idea what percentage of sex offenders got into trouble for urinating in public.. but regardless of how small the percentages are.. I'd be against anything that kept them from using these sites..

Re: Sex Offenders Banned from Social Media Sites

Matt Searles — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:56:00 -0000

I just don't think its right to blame the parents.. its too close to blaming the victims.. On top of that I'm not sure that we were really aware of how bad sex abuse was at the time of Adam's abduction..

In my neighborhood parents actually drive there kids to the buss stop, and wait for them in there cars at the buss stop.. which just seems like over doing.. certainly when I was a kid this wasn't going on.. And you know.. its a small little well to do town with very low crime levels.. particularly in my this neighborhood.

Re: What do you have as your homepage and why?

Matt Searles — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 07:04:13 -0000

Re: Archetypes for the rest of us…

Matt Searles — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:31:21 -0000

Wow, what a thread we have going on over here..

Err, let me take a swing at a little of this.

Jung said something to the effect that.. the collective unconscious and archetypes are.. expressions of biology on consciousness.. but a little more complex then that.. so we are talking about.. well like instincts with personality, maybe?

Biology then.. is like.. well genetic history.. like how in the womb we go through these changes that seem like a history lesson in human evolution..

In terms of.. the scale of a life time.. who we are today.. what we are doing.. that kinda builds the foundations to support who we are tomorrow.. like rings in a tree.. the patterns of it.. and so the history of human evolution.. is imprinted in the same way in our biology.. or something sorta like that.

In terms of self preservation.. and Jung was onto this.. often when we talk Darwin we are talking a kind of popular idea of evolution.. which is perhaps different then it actually is.. and perhaps even our best ideas of such things.. are little different then they actually are.. but..

Humans are social creatures.. our individual survival is very often linked to the survival of the group.. so there's a survival value to a lot of things we might not normally think of as having survival value.. and then there's the goal of passing genes on and all that..

So I think that's a helpful way of thinking of some of that.

Back to archetypes.. there's also a number of things that are constants in the human experience... mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers.. etc.

To some extent we are talking about a kind of projection.. like.. we have this complex of associations surrounding Possums.. and you know.. particularly if you're living in sorta ancient hunter gatherer times.. a close study of the creatures in the echo system you share.. make some sense.. and then onto the Possum we project this part of our instinct system.. onto that.. well thing we are studying that has a pattern that.. lets say in the relationships that make up that pattern.. are kinda the same.

So the arising mythological system is a language that speaks both inwardly and outwardly.. and is about how we relate to our own nature and the world.. And particularly in these earlier hunter gatherer systems.. the Possum is holy.. nature is.. etc

There's also this sense that we all share the same biology.. to very high degree.. and who we are as individuals.. and for that matter as a group, is an actualization of a portion of that biology.. and there's this sense that in a mysterious sorta way.. we are one.. in that.. that actualization is sorta like.. more superficial to our totality. And its been said that when we risk our lives to save the other.. it is a realization that the other and us are one.. that we NEED to do this..

On a certain level all this stuff is amazingly complex.. I mean how we render all these issues, and questions, and whatever.. into a rational sorta verifiable form that makes sense to our modern sensibility.. but its actually a good deal simpler in a mythological system.. and Jung is sorta the builder of the bridge between these worlds

Or that's my take on it anyway.. hope that casts more light then shadow

Re: Complexes

Matt Searles — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:31:34 -0000

ever listen to Shrink Rap Radio podcast? ( http://www.shrinkrapradio.com/ ) the fellow who does it has done some archetypal marketing consulting I believe..

Other then that and a book on Primal Marketing.. which I don't know actually mentions archetypes by name.. I hadn't really heard of it..

Though it is sorta clear that.. consumer culture and like.. the star system of tv, music, and films, would seem to be the place where.. err, I'm not sure how to put this right.. but is like our religious substitute?

...kinda creepy.

Re: Meeting People at Events

Matt Searles — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:37:51 -0000

Really great advice.

Re: Whats Your Social Media Strategy

Matt Searles — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:38:46 -0000

My social media strategy is forever evolving... and its perhaps too complex for a blog comment.

I'm an artist, and particularly a sound artist, but a media artist more broadly.. And I'm also kind of uber intellectual.. There's a sense that I could, in a rather entrepreneurial sort way, use social media as one component of a larger strategy to promote / sell / whatever my music and art.. There's a sense that I can explore social media as an art form, there's a sense that social media is powerful for networking and seeing things inside the a more conventional idea of "career." And I have a set of, I think interesting, I guess philosophical.. ideas about.. well stuff. So blogging and podcasting and whatever.. can be an opportunity to share ideas, develop a voice.. and maybe even a platform to sell a book or something.. or in one way or another about establishing myself as an expert.

But Social Media isn't too terribly linear.. I mean it's like certain strands of Hindu metaphysics.. or it, to old media is like what quantum mechanics is to the classical Newtonian framework.

So I think it, in some sense, has to be taken as a new thing.. And I think there's this issue of how do we relate to the unknown.. Another words we are in the early moments of a grand revolution and we see a few shiny sparks here and there.. but that aint nothing compared to the larger systemic shift.. I think it's a mistake to base one's strategic outlook too much on the sparks..

To me social media has nothing to do with trends. Yeah, it's a groovy hip buzz word and we can all stand around feeling hip.. But for me I think about cat's like Michel Foucault who did philosophical histories of power relationships in the prison system, mental health, state power, and sex.. To the degree to which Social Media is fundamentally about power diffusion.. you can see how reading Foucault might have a certain pragmatic value. Or you could look at the media critique of a Theodor Adorno, and what does that mean in light of recent developments?

Beneath the surface everything from our sense of identity, the conceptual framework through which we understand reality.. is all now in flux. I mean... look at it this way,... power relationships play a huge roll in defining the box inside which some folks can't seem to think out side of.. another words the categories of our language.. What happens when we go from a Dewy Decimal system for organizing all human knowledge to using meta data? The answer is that now we have a framework for understanding reality that values subjective knowledge..

In a Jungian psychology type system the subjective is favored by the introvert where as the extrovert favors the objective.. If what we normally think of as the developed world is based on an extroverted psychology in it's foundation.. where as the East tends to be more introverted.. With our modern situation with the rise of the India, and China looming not too far over the horizon.. and a huge systemic shift happening in the very way we organize information.. I mean the implications of this sorta thing is amazing..

So you know.. if you're an artist and you're thinking about this sorta thing... I suppose you're work is trying to work this stuff out.. But also I think the way you approach questions of management science and what sorta business models you should be using.. how you internalize you're sense of strategy and execution... is different.

So I don't know what kind of a response this is.. but what the hell..

Re: Consider Your Media-as-Business Strategy

Matt Searles — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:36:17 -0000

I've found myself approaching this problem from what might be a different angel. When I think of the notions of personal branding I think "well, what are you branding?" I mean this in a very deep sense. This video gets to what I mean. According to Jungian psychology we each spend half our lives getting to know the world around us and the other half getting to know the world within us.

So within us is a very deep mystery.. The reason why I think this is important has to do with the question of what is you're definition of success? That definition would seem to be the metric all else is defined by.. And it seems to be that a "true definition of success" has to be the expression of that very deep inward mystery, and if its not you'll be dysfunctional in one way or another. According to Jungian psychology psychosis happens when the way you live is so far away from your nature that you're nature eventually says "stop it" and forces you into a new challenge of personality integration, basically.

Here's another good video that illustrates this idea.

As more and more the lines between our personal lives and our business / work lives becomes blurred, and the more this revolution that we are only in the early stages progresses, the more these kinds of questions will gain importance. So I think, when thinking about media monetization strategies its very important that we try and think holistically about these problems.

The journey I start off with is an inward one. My goals and strategies must come from a kind of inner voice.

I think the difference between this and a surface level way of looking at what you're talking about has to do with what defines the shapes that articulate our definitions. This comes down to the metaphysical presumptions that underly how we think. The evolution of language is driven by questions, needs, conflict, and power relationships.

So how you break up (or down) the problem of media monetization into a diagram, or a whatever, is all about the underlying questions. I think of Joseph Campbell talking about the problem of Buddhism: Basically Buddhism is about realizing your Buddha consciousness. We all innately have Buddha consciousness, we "are all it" the trouble is that the world is always trying to tell us that we are not it. So.. what's the center of all human values.. is it in us, or is it something outside of us?

I might have lost track of where I was going with all this, but anyway...

The way I go about it is not the "plan your work work your plan" sorta method, its more of a dialectic with the unconscious. It's sorta like plans are "these man made things," much like laws, and what does justice have to do with tragedy? Like that poor girl who committed suicide because a peer's mom pretended to be a boy who was interested in her and then turned against her. There was nothing illegal about it, but doesn't it make you want to do something uncivilized to that mom?

I find that when I set out to make my plans.. that there's something deeper inside that's more important that needs to be honored, I guess. So maybe it has to do with something like you're existential relationship to your plans, and what it means to treat something like business.

I suppose it doesn't help that business grew up, for quite a long time, by trying to eliminate the human element.. what with industrial engineering and all that.. and so now the challenge is personality integration, in a sense.. as the answer to our collective psychosis.

Hope that adds something to the conversation

Re: Social Media Starter Moves for Real Estate

Matt Searles — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:00:18 -0000

Hey Chris

I shot a video for my mom once.. who was working for twentyth century realistate. I guess it was somewhat a part of the way they do business... Production values didn't seem to matter, and they didn't even want me to edit it. It was a little strange.

My sense is that doing it yourself can take you a long way. In fact I've meet some guys who are doing what your saying Chris.. and there doing very well as a result. The better production values the better, of course, but we are talking about videos inside a kind of a social media ecology, and that does change certain thing.. including making it kind of more ok.

Another thing worth thinking about might be Quicktime VRs.. There are these special cameras, or camera attachments you can use.. My recollection is there a little chunk of change, but not so much.. and they'll produce a quicktime VR for you.. which essentially lets you sit in a middle of a room and look around.

I'm more of a Mac guy then a PC guy, so I could be misled on this.. but my understanding was that windows media maker is rather terrible. So my understanding was something like Premier Elements might be a better way to go.

On the subject of cameras, Id imagine you'd want to look at how well it deals with contrast and perhaps lower light levels, that you might not really be able to control when shooting houses.. my impression being that many a lower end camera can have trouble with this. I know my current camera has some.

Re: Chocolate Lovers Take Note

Matt Searles — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:35:36 -0000

I thought Joseph Jaffee sorta said it best when he said "If you want people to love your brand, you gotta make it lovable," which kinda seems like at the core of what you're talking about.

Re: Whats Your Take on Word of Mouth

Matt Searles — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:11:22 -0000

I guess I view word of mouth something belonging in my guerrilla marketing / communications tool kit... so it's not like I'm ever in a position to have to promote something I don't believe in.

I think when we talk about social media there's a greater premium paid to authenticity and transparency then other places... when you consider that word of mouth probably starts with your network.. if these are people you've connected with and feel somehow emotionally invested in.. I mean if you truly care about them.. that caring ought to be your guide, right?

Though I suppose that depends on how you feel about your network, right? And as I type these words out I can just imagine a voice saying "I beat you because I love you."

Anyway, so marketings a pretty big subject.. and I don't know if you would want to view it as totally differentiated from you're product.. so to say.. well every product doesn't sell its self.. misses the point that products selling them selves is a marketing strategy.. another words you went out, you did you're homework.. and now you got this groovy product that.. is so groovy... word spreads on it. Not that its that simple but..

I mean I suppose if you're a manure salesman.. things are different, but still!!!

Re: Why PodCamp Boston 3 Costs 50 Bucks

Matt Searles — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:57:09 -0000

I didn't get around to reading these comments till now.

One of the things I've always loved about social media was.. lol, I guess that most of the events are free. I say this from the perspective of a starving artists who's often been in a position to have to save up for a $50 book.. who demands crazy processing power from computers, but somehow was on the same Power Mac for... I want to say 8 years?

I've generally been forced to perceive things from the bottom of the social economic stratas... but in the social media space.. it really doesn't matter all that much...

I think a part of the dream, that is somehow at the spiritual core of social media.. has something to do with inclusiveness, democracy, equality.. that sorta thing. We dream of more people joining our party.. I mean isn't it great that those laps tops are going off to the developing world?

Globalization has this quality to it.. the petter parts of it that is, of being like a vision for told by Marx.. I often think of it like.. a dream that the amount that merit matters relative to power relationships.. seems like social media is in part about changing that relationship. Though maybe there's some nievety to this thought, I don't know.

I suppose I say this as someone who's.. I guess a consumer of radical progressive political thought... the deeper philosophical critiques more then the politics per say.. and when you look at social media from the stand point of those intellectual traditions, and indeed a few others, its hard not to go "holy shit!"

I mean, for those of us who try to wrestle with the shadow side of the American experiment.. what you find your self feeling most proud of are movements with a lot of collective weight behind them.. when the people spoke, and spoke loudly.. and what should social media be, in it's most ideal form, then the people speaking?

In any event, the charging for $50.. though it might not seem like a lot of money, that sorta depends on how much money you got.. and so it seems at least like a kind of symbolic thing.. that.. makes me at least long for a solution that.. might be different.

I appreciate the reasons for going this way.. and I see the virtues to it... and at the very least I'm interested in how it might change the experience.. I mean maybe there will be ways in which it will be better.. we'll certainly see.

Another thing I'd add is.. with an $50 admission price.. its harder to drag people to it. "No man, you really really really gotta check this out!"

In any event.. Podcamp is like my absolute favorite event of the year. It's one of these things I just can't wait for, you know? So my concern is really out of a deep kind of love of the event and the space, and what it means to me, and it is not in anyway about being critical of you organizer folks... I think what you're doing, and have done, is awesome.

Re: How Content Marketing Will Shake the Tree

Matt Searles — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:57:46 -0000

Chris,

my gosh, and you told me you didn't know anything about marketing!

You know, I drink the cool-aid as much as any other good fish bowl dweller.. but I don't know.. which is not quite to say I disagree.. I mean.. perhaps the question is "when talking about the future, just how far in the future are we really talking about," and that variable probably hides many a devil, don't cha know?

The strategy you propose makes a hell of a lot of sense in terms of our current understanding of communities and social media.. no question about it.. but how does technology contextualize our understanding? In all probability much of how technology contextualizes our understanding is unconscious.. or to put it more distinctly.. its simply taken for granted.. and when what is taken for granted gets pulled out from under our feet we call it "a disruption."

I find myself thinking "well just apply game theory to psycho-social dynamics and you'll have the answer." Of course you'll have to factor in some new fangled take on social biology.. and um.. other fun stuff.. but I mean.. the reason why I'd come at the question from this direction is because I think this is a way to transcend the issue of the container.. its a way to get out of the temporal flux and deal with the more or less none moving truths of things.. which are ultimately what are driving change anyway..

I mean one of the questions I find myself thinking is "well are with in the business of making the better mouse trap or in the content creation business?"

What I'm asking here is.. what is it that defines the box.. the box you live in.. the box that's "and this is the skill set I need to an inhabitant of this box." Think of box as.. like a persona.. a mask you ware.. it's the roll you're playing...

What defines boxes can sometimes be turf wars.. it can sometimes be power relationships (Foucault is the grand poe ba master of this subject ) we can see this in lexicographical evolutions.. in linguistics.. this is what David Weinberger is talking about with his miscellaneous shtick..

So.. you know.. what is marketing / communications, and whatever? Are they just boxes or is there something to them that is transcendent of human categories?

I tend to this of the differences of boxes as analogous to the differences in races.. its more a matter of ethnic identity then it's a matter of genetics.. and so.. if you want to be good at diplomacy.. you want to understand the history of a nation, in order to understand that national identity.. to know where its going..

That said.. when I look at the future of social media / the internet / technology / etc.. what I see is accelerating rates of granularity.. if the shifting power relationships of social media continue.. even after the feared business co-opting of it.. then eventually there will come a time where the lines that articulate the boxes are not externally imposed.. but internally imposed... which would spell the end of marketing and communications as we know it..

I'm not sure if I'm making total sense here or not.. probably flying through too many ideas to quickly.. but hopefully its food for thought anyway

Re: Write Your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future

Matt Searles — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:38:19 -0000

yeah, I've been thinking I need to look over my profile / pay a little more attention to the linkedIn... I suppose it's that I feel a little.. well mixed about if I actually want work right now... I guess it comes down to needing to kinda find the right balance..

I'm finding that, to the degree to which it's possible, I'd prefer to do work for folks whom I have some sort of a relationship with.. Which social networking / media is making more and more viable for me. So I suppose if I look at my profile from that perspective, well, I think it's a little different then how you would normally think about a resume because it's really more about relationships... It's not "hey look at me, aren't I the sexy thang."

The other part of it is that I'm basically crazy: I'm a sucky contortionist when it comes to fitting into the boxes that are a part of the prerequisites of the usual job search.. I'm a screaming red flag to the sain human services person "how can you say you're a mix engineer, composer / music producer, animator, interactive designer, painter, video artist, social media person.. who knows something about marketing and communications... and what's all that jive talk about psycho-social dynamics, jungian psychology..."

It's a lil like I took a giant dive into R&D, to the extent that.. well I'm kind of a contrarion product... so I probably need to work out a different sorts way of selling myself, and with this, where linked in fits in that mix. In a lot of ways I'm really just waiting for social media / the new web stuff to mature to a level where... well a level that's probably a few years off still

Re: Shut Up- You're Helping the Customer!

Matt Searles — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:07:30 -0000

God bless creative destruction! ...That force that makes the world end, not with a bang but a whimper.. as new ages are born.

Putting out feelers seems like a bit of an understatement.. but then I'm a stubborn bastard.. never been too good with authority.. I mean isn't this kind of a twisted sister moment?

I suppose maybe my stubborn streak is might be nieve.. but.. what motivates you? What's getting you out of bed in the morning? If you're company kills that, and they're own sense of self interest is... well heads stuck up certain nether regions.. I mean how can you even stand that?

Grrr

Re: Shut Up- You're Helping the Customer!

Matt Searles — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:33:22 -0000

I want to comment on some of the criticism of Bob here..

One of the biggest challenges business face in our modern age is how you manage change.. An answer to this is to empower your employes.. Management, as we inherit it, is to often based on ideas that.. it's all about this kind of command and control of making x happen by applying why force.. like its all this big mechanical system.. this system of managing things.. means that the folks doing the command and control have multiple layers between them an the market place.. between them and whatever it is that are the external market forces that they are operating in.. which is a big problem if you're dealing with a situation that's changing fast..

So you need to empower your employees to take initiative. Now we don't know that much of the larger context of Bob's plight in the company.. but it doesn't sound like they treated Bob terribly well. Did they bother to talk to him about what he thought he was doing, why he thought he was bringing value to the company? Or did they just shut him down without even even bothering to be open to what where he was coming from?

Yeah.. I think the right course of action for Bob would be to have tried to educate people in the company about what he was up to.. No question about that..

I also think.. there's certainly best ways of doing social media.. and some of the criticisms of Bob is.. sorta not understanding that part of the equation. I mean there are often issues to be cognizant of.. as far as what you can talk about.. and blah blah blah, that has to do with the particulars of your company.. but that doesn't mean there's no roll for this kind of communications...

My feeling about the future of business.. social media needs to be incorporated into businesses DNA.. There are huge changes that need to be made if you want to stay competitive..

If we look at Bob from the stand point of... someone not doing what "he was supposed to be doing," I think that's a kind of command and control centric view point.. I think.. well.. what are your values? It's not a black and white world.. its not one value at the expense of all else.. I think ultimately you have a kind of hierarchy of values... We don't really have enough to go on to evaluate how Bob relates to these values...

Values... and there hierarchies is a complex subject though... I think there's a way we can look at one person and say "bad person" and another as "good person" but I think this often obscures certain things.. like isn't Bob, in a certain sense, an expression of certain systemic forces that are forcing change at Bob's company? And perhaps the people making Bob's life difficult is the same sorta thing.. If you view it from this point of view.. I think Bob is a hero in so far as he is a force working for the companies survival..

I mean basically

Re: A Wholeness-Disability Paradox

Matt Searles — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:39:36 -0000

Hey Richard,

A podcast that talks about this a good deal.. well, its a web design podcast.. but one intended for folks whom run websites.. as well as for designers and developers.. is boagworld.. at boagworld.com. I think it might have been the first podcast I started listening.. anyway, I recommend it

Re: Spread Your Wings- Get More Retweet Action Today

Matt Searles — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:51:52 -0000

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I'll retweet.. and even what I'll tweet.. and often I'll find something I really want to retweet.. and I'll so edit you! And not only that.. I'm finding that after I edit your tweet.. I find other people retweeting it.. and.. get this.. editing it still further!

Of course you want to make it so folks don't have to edit.. you want to remove friction.. but at the same time.. sometimes you just want to make the best damn tweet you can.. and sometimes you need a little extra length.. and sometimes that's the more important thing.. so I think its a question of balance.. and what the right balance is.. changes from moment to moment.. as a combination of.. lets say your will.. and the will of.. lets say strategic / tactical considerations, and that of the ecology of the folks you're following / following you..

You know.. its like relationships.. good relationships are give and take.. and you don't want.. if you just went to the middle of that.. you'd never be giving or taking.. so I guess what I'm trying to say is its ok to be one way one moment, another another moment..

Don't know how well i got to what I meant to get to but....

Re: Don’t Trust My Review of Six Pixels of Separation

Matt Searles — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:48:43 -0000

I'm def looking forward to reading this one..

Re: What Part of the Film Are You Most Curious About?

Matt Searles — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:20:53 -0000

Well this is the first I've heard of it.. so I only know what little I can find on this site

I usually don't care what a film is about, or who's in it, or anything like that.. I care about it as an art form.. which makes me terribly snobby about films..

So I guess I'm sorta interested in.. what's interesting about what we're trying to do here.. Like speaking as an artist.. / film maker.. like are you trying to say anything that hasn't been said before, or needs to be said. Are you trying to do anything innovative..

My inner wannabe film maker is interested in stuff like the experience of the RED work flow in practice.. and how it's working for the project.. sorta the subjective experience of it.. what's the DP / Cinematographer folks feeling about.. perhaps that super technical stuff.. what sorta aesthetic implications might it have..

I guess also.. just what are the challenges of the production.. Do you find your self going down unusual paths because of this or that set of choices, and how you wrestle with the implications.. sharing the excitement of a discovery or a victory in one of these battles.. I guess just the drama of film making..

Re: Techno Unconscious…(Part 1)

Matt Searles — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:28:22 -0000

Well I'll tell you what I see.

First, the collective unconscious.. is kinda an expression of instinct mixing with the challenges of our time, and all that, right? I mean maybe I'm putting it poorly but..

So you know.. I guess Jung got a lot of criticism for his writing on Picasso.. but I kinda thought Jung was really onto something.. effects of industrialization on our psychology.. lets say. The alienation.. the feeling like we are impotent to effect real change in the world.. and all kinds of things that seem to be like us alienated from our nature.. or at least parts of our nature. All this we see in modernism / post modernism.

I mean once upon a time we participated in helping the sun rise.. and now we enter into this world where.. Idk, I guess I feel like it's a little to extroverted.. in terms of what's your metric for success.. the emphases of objective truth.. as if subjective truth had nothing to do with it..

Ok.. so structurally you'll go.. "our ideas of things get in the way of our experience of the reality of things" like saying "religion is a defense against religious experience" so.. what's the roll our putting things into categories plays in sense of what reality is.. and in our consciousness..

Ok.. so before we had this Dewy Decimal system.. and now we have meta data.. and now definitions of knowledge are able to take on subjective truth in a whole new way..

Power asymmetries used to alienate us.. but now we got this thing called "social media" and we participate in the media.. in the culture...

There's massive change going on.. and I'd argue that it's 100% about the collective unconscious and about a quest for a greater wholeness.

I mean it's funny, you read a book on economics and we are told that the economy is about realizing the societies potential.. and normally I tend to think.. well ok.. but you're job is defining what part of your potential you get to develop / cultivate.. its externally controlled.. but as power asymmetries change..

Really what defines our categories.. sorta drives the lexicographical evolution.. is the challenges we face collectively.. I mean what is a super ego but something saying "nope, we cultivate this part of our selves, and not that part, because that's what our world needs."

Of course if you turn to Nietzsche.. you'll be thinking "ok, so you had different moral orders at different social economic stratas" and.. well every persona, and in every industry / group.. sub group in the culture.. anytime two people get together.. you have variations on the moral order operating as a subtext as a part of how social cohesion works.. so.. via this we see how power asymmetries play a roll in the.. lets call it a democratic process of taboo system construction..

You see the roll of the masculine and feminine in that men and women create different kinds of hierarchy..

And then you look at social media and its like.. "well, what are you passionate about?" It's as if stuff is granulizing.. and you decide how you put the pieces together. So what I see going forward, and I don't think I'm telling it super well.. is a world where, more and more, what articulates the categories.. is the inward mystery / from where comes our bliss.. which is organically connected to how to go about realizing your true potential.

It's like the problem of Buddhism.. the whole world is trying to tell you you're not "it" and the what we are trying to realize is our own it-ness.

So that's like.. mega huge systemic structural changes..

Ok... I had this conversation with Jeff Pulver on twitter a while ago... about how the relationship of the digital world to the offline world is a little like Plato's ideas coming into the physical world.. and how issues of change management remove management layers.. and that what its really like is.. it's like moving from being Catholic to being Protestant.. In the sense that we are getting rid of our intercessions...

It's like.. a ritual is.. a safe way of reliving a numinous experience. And now we are coming into a place were we are going to be having more and more direct numinous experiences.. In the sense that "business as usual" was kind of a ritual..

And if you look at a lot of what's going on in business relative to social media.. you see this kind of thing where you feel like "yo, dude, you should really pick up this Jung stuff, cause we got us a road map over here."

Like once upon a time chance was used to divine the will of God.. and now people in business might talk about "purposeful mistakes" as a tactic in change management.. I personally think what ought to be done is a shift from change management talk to mystery management talk!

I feel like I'm doing a crummy job of articulating it but.. and I'm not sure I should be leaving so many long comments on your blog but.. at least to me.. if you want to understand what's going on in the world today.. where things are going.. you need to look inward. And I think Jung gives us a framework to see exactly what's driving the technology.. I mean it's down right creepy..

Re: Techno Unconscious…(Part 2)

Matt Searles — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 12:28:21 -0000

I like Joseph Campbell's idea of the Earth.. or social media seems to call to mind Indra's Net in a whole new way.

Out side of that apocalypse does seem more like a real possibility then we generally seem to think is really real.. and that makes me a little nervous as I think.. what is needed now is a whole lot of waking up.

I mean.. we got questions about the future of the oil supply.. there's the possibility that global warming could effect global food supplies, we have our current economic problems.. This along with geopolitical tensions.. often just beneath the surface.. there's just a lot challenges before us, that could, depending on how they are dealt with..

When you mix this kind of thing with the massive rate of change.. It seems to me that whenever you have high rates of change that we start getting utopic and distopic dreams.. Electricity brought us the frankenstein monster and... on and on.

I'm reminded of the art proceeding the second world war.. When you look at it you get the feeling that.. some kind of explosion was coming.. I'm not sure how to explain it exactly.. like sitting in the volcano.. as if God was coming or something..

I think one of the coolest things about technology.. and the accelerating rate of change.. is that there is an increased sense of mystery.. there is a certain sense of awe... I think sometimes we think this is just cool aid... and its not that there isn't a lot of cool aid.. but #1 that doesn't mean that things aren't huge.. and #2 this brings us to the question of cool aid psychology.

When you think electric cool aid tests.. you think dyonesius.. Nietzsche's lion eating thou shalts.. which is like a little death to intercession.. clearing the way for new dreams to manifest.

It's odd though.. in social media you often hear of best practices which always make me feel like a method for relieving us of having to have an experience of awe, mystery, and wonder.. and I wonder if perhaps.. our value systems have caused us to cultivate a part of our potential that isn't well suited for the disruption.. and that this might be a core problem.. the generation gap syndrome amplified to the nth degree by our new rate of change.. and here comes the creative destruction... across so many industries.

I see the resolution of this problem in the Hindu / Buddhist concept of Viveka.. discriminating between eternal and temporal values / truth. Much of what we perhaps thought was the rock.. that we built the foundations of our civilization on.. we are now learning only appeared static..

In economics we once thought supply and demand was a law.. but now in digital media the supply is infinite.. you can copy that file all day long if you like.. and what does that do to it's value?

So I think what needs to happen is a distinction between the temporal and eternal... in how we manage change.. because once you start playing with that sword.. you realize that the change isn't really all that fast at all.

So.. I guess that's kinda what I think on this subject..

Re: The Force and a New Generation

Matt Searles — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:04:06 -0000

Pop culture!? What's the real difference between the high and low brow?

It's been a long long while since I watched the trilogy... I mean I only have them on VHS... never mind the prequels.. Last time I watched from a somewhat films study point of view and felt like Star Wars was the good one, great even, and the others not so much.. but there's no denying the mythic in them..

Re: How to Compete

Matt Searles — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:10:51 -0000

err, ok, well this is how I think..

Big companies are screwed.. its like going to the coolest museum in the world where you can actually see living breathing dinosaurs..

I think the number one challenge of business today is change management... Businesses that are big.. the whole history of the study of how you manage a business.. it's based on a totally different situation then the one we are entering in now. So between that and just the nature of bigness.. from culture to how management is conceptualized.. it's just not about agility.. I mean being a little guy is like a skate boarder versus an air craft carrier in a game of.. well how well you can move on a dime.

I think even in you're best case scenarios big businesses have huge disadvantages.. the more we can conceptualize and approach markets asymmetrically.. the more we see democratization of things, shifting power relationships between customers and brand.. the less the power of a market position is going to matter.

There's a lot of things stirring in the tech waters.. that could change things dramatically.. like.. "what if open source figures out how to do user experience?" All the tools the social media kids are using are really just beta's of what will be.. etc, etc, etc, etc.

So um.. here's a few things.

#1 re conceptualize business structure: If individuals are inherently better at change management could the future of social networking have something to do with a granular organization system where we come together in new ways to collaborate on projects? So I've been looking into starting a meet up group to explore this.

#2 The contrarian advantage: How do people see the world.. how do big organizations see the world? What is difficult to quantize into there systems, that you can see, why there's an opportunity for you. To maximize the possibilities of this sorta advantage, when you think about the educational part of your career development don't identify too strongly with off the shelf carrier paths.. Innovation comes from a synthesis of disparate stuff.. what defines things as disparate is how stuff gets compartmentalized. Remember it's all miscellaneous! If you conceptualize your path in such a way that you are a synthesis of different compartments.. you will see lots and lots of stuff know one else sees.. cause everyone else is to narrowly focused.

#3 I've personally been looking at the hollywood visual effects industry. Turns out for an investment of about $15K or so beyond what I already have invested, I can do what they can do with the only expense being my labor. I could there for work on very short piece of content where I could rival what they can afford with respect to production values.

Does that matter in the DIY Youtube age? How about if micro theaters become a reality? Think more broadly about digital distribution possibilities? I recently saw a panel where Quentin Tarantino "if you kick ass there is no competition, the competition becomes a bunch of beached whales." I think he was onto something.

#4 Don't be chicken shit. People freak out about twitter "but they don't have a business model." I understand your old Boss, Chris, wasn't big on business models? Don't be afraid if you can't see the way.. be like a Jedi and don't let what your eyes see confuse you.. cultivate that inner intuition and voice and learn to rely on it. Come to trust in your ability to discover the way. Above all, make sure you are on the right / true path for you as an individual.. which more or less comes down to something a little deeper then doing what you're passionate about.. but following you Bliss to quote Joseph Campbell

Re: Cluetrain

Matt Searles — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:09:07 -0000

folks always used to think I was related to the Doc.. and I'd see my last name spelled his way on local blogs, when I was new to the local boston meet up scene

Re: The Objective Psyche

Matt Searles — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:39:42 -0000

you know I think its sorta the natural order, almost like a hydraulic esk model of the psyche, that we wish to wake up to this, and we see this wish expressed expressing its self in manyfold ways throughout our culture.. The trouble, it seems to be, is the inhibiting force of authority.

We are, of course, living in times where what qualifies as authority is shifting... the dawning of a new revolutionary age. I believe what you are talking about WILL happen as a result... and it may not be something we have to actually will..

It does seem rather "short trip to another day" esk?

Re: The Objective Psyche – take two

Matt Searles — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:22:46 -0000

There's a zen saying to the effect that once you reach enlightenment.. everything is sorta the same accept that you're feet are a foot or so above the ground. Which is a little different from another sorta thing thats like folks feeling so spiritual that they forget there feet are on the ground and are surprised when they trip.

Re: Putting a finger on the problem…

Matt Searles — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:03:58 -0000

I sometimes orbit around the problem.. going into phases where I'm super focused on developing one or another attribute relative to one or another aim.. I used to be really really bad that way.. some of which was kind of a compensation thing.. but as I can get older I'm less motivated that way... and sometimes I think I should be more motivated that way! Still, there's the feeling like "well, if I can find some success then that can facilitate this other stuff," As if you were Indian and saw the point as retirement.

Mostly the solution for me is to try and cultivate a whole self.. To try and aim for a situation where I have balance between trying to achieve and trying to just.. be sorta.. or trying to make achievement my bliss.. or to make the task I'm going on the thing that's like.. in doing it sorta resonates with why I'm on this planet.. like work as a vocation kinda.

Re: The Persona and Personal Branding in Social Media

Matt Searles — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:45:57 -0000

What I take away from Brogan is not so much that you shouldn't play a roll as you shouldn't identify with the roll.. As I say this I'm not 100% sure of myself.. and it would seem to have some strange ramifications but.. I think about it a little more and.. it doesn't seem so strange.. Like if the police are doing work in the community... they're uniform isn't so front and center as when the lights go on as a result of your speeding a little too fast.

And yeah.. a brand is essentially an association complex.

On the subject of my heat... I think its like most people are talking about communications in social media.. and I think what I'm interested in is expression in social media.. so I don't actually do my personal branding by conscious design.. so much as expression.. which is kind of a different way of working with association complexes.. or at the very least that's how I conceptualize it... which.. I suppose produces a different kind of heat? LOL, probably a wild knuckle ball...

Re: Perspective

Matt Searles — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:16:42 -0000

I sorta don't even notice the darker days.. I often keep strange hours anyway.. staying up a little later every night, and kinda flip over the dial.. though I try not to do this too much.

I suppose I always kind of reflect on the year past, and think of the year forward.. though.. at this point I seem to be marking it more by the anniversary of my mom's passing, which was a little more then a year and one week ago, then new years.

I guess I'm a little estranged from the earth's rhythms? Or maybe I'm just sorta polythmically orientated?

Re: When Search Becomes Paramount

Matt Searles — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:29:19 -0000

When I first read this post I thought "I'm not a real good searcher" and.. thought I didn't have much of anything to say on, but then I ended up thinking about it a bit and....

I think how search works is going to change, so.. if I were developing a class around this.. I'd want to see if I couldn't prepare the students for this...

There's a subject.. I gather it's called "collective intelligence" which is what underlies how search engines work. So I think exploring that would be a good thing.. I mean you could go so far as to be like "ok, lets build a search engine." Perhaps not coding it or anything, but maybe sorta architecting it in terms of talking about how it would work.. particularly in the context talking about the future of search.

I also think there's a bunch of related subjects.. One of the bigger things is just how we categorize information, from Dewy to meta data.. folksonomies.. etc.. onto semantic web stuff. You'd wanna talk about how recommendation engines work.. how Pandora works.. You'd want to talk about de.licio.us versus stumbled upon, versus what have you.. Certainly talking about twitter search in micro blogging.. like what do you get when searching conversations versus searching blogs versus searching over here..

You might even want to look at what Adobe is doing.. where when you start a video project.. you're digitizing the video.. and its analyzing the audio and generating an xml file.. that contains the text of whatever was said in the video.. talk about how great this is for documentary film makers who might have sooo many hours of footage to go through.. when editing.. which is perhaps an application to search that we don't normally think about.. but also that this xml, or whatever file.. stays with the video the whole way through.. and thus we enter into a world where you can search video on the net.. and search Flash content for that matter, as a result of this.. and you'll probably be able to do this with podcasts shortly to.

There's new stuff going on, and I don't know how related this is to the subject of collective intelligence.. but you'll feed text into this software... say via scanning it / ocr, or whatever.. and it will do pattern analysis.. and say "well this is where the person probably said there name" and "this is probably what this form box is." And from here we could talk about how the government is using this to try and search for terrorists.. or how in marketing you might be looking for people who fit a certain profile as your target audience..

I think this is a conversation that naturally leads into metrics and analytics.. just how you go about finding patterns in data.. and with this you might want to talk about data visualization..

Of course you want to talk about the context of search.. like mobile search.. location search, and all that.

Maybe once you've covered all this sorta thing.. then start talking about.. how your dream search engine might work.

Re: The work as the path

Matt Searles — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:50:57 -0000

Recently I had been in a very dark mood.. the part of my being that has to be dragged by destiny was the dominant experience of my consciousness. It was a kind of feeling of being oppressed by the labyrinth.

Usually when I think of the labyrinth I think of it as the Freudian unconscious.. the Shadow.. and the problem of having to go into to find the boon.. that part of are total potentiality that hasn't made it to adult realization.. that is needed for the challenge of becoming that we are confronted with.

It was at this point in time that I started a new art project.. well a musical one really.. The process of which was a real Minator tango.. where in very short order I felt helpless to make anything of value.. it was a deep wrestling with self doubt.. which characterized my over all feeling of life at that moment.

And then I had a conversation with a friend. I have a number of friends like this.. who look at me when I'm wrestling with self doubt as if I'm out of my mind.. which I suppose, in a certain sense, I am. They talk to me in this ridiculous manner... like some language I can not understand.

At a high point.. when I'm really feeling in the groove.. and the "it" is happening.. I feel like I'm dancing with the Gods.. As if to say that the God's where always just a projection of inward potential, and here.. in the "it" well they are no longer projected outward.. we are one..

Anyway.. these ridiculous friends talk to me in a way that would make sense to me if I were in that kind of "it" state of mind... It's as if they are telling me that "dances with Gods" should be my Indian name.. and what am I doing in this silly despair.. and how have I gotten so confused, yet again, about my true nature and sense of identity.. I'm not an ugly ducking for I'm not a duckling at all!

Well.. whatever part of my that's able comprehend this sorta ridiculous talk.. seemed to be able to knock on my thick head enough to inspire something or other..

So in pretty short order the sonic crap I was wrestling with in my sound project.. got transfigured into some golden thing.. and suddenly I'm catapulted to the "it" with the God's again.

There's still some problems to be worked out in the sound project.. and I've really only just barely started it anyway.. but there's a giant neon sign pointing to it's potential.. and I'm ready for the adventure.

What struck me was.. as a result of the catapulting.. my whole mood and feeling about life shifted. I no longer felt the oppression.

So reading you're blog post, sorta struck me about it.

It's as if.. life is an adventure in the Labyrinth.. In the kind of Freudian Civilization and it's discontents sorta way.. that sense that we are forced, inside of a certain sense, to give up our whole self.. or at least deal with constraints of the labyrinth on our becoming.

At moments when I feel over come by a feeling of enlightenment.. I feel as if every thought, feeling, impulse.. whatever.. that's in my conscious mind.. or maybe inside my being.. is good, and is there for reason.. that all the demons we try and throw out are angels.. are our helpers.. It's just that they need to find a place in the order of our lives.. they're constructive roll.. that this is the real problem.

It's as if the labyrinth is the responsible party, as far as transfiguring our angels into demons.. All these paths we could go down.. what is the right one? And really, all the paths are for us to walk down... was it Led Zeppelin who wrote a song about this? Something about how there's two roads you can go down, but in the end it's one road? Something like that?

In any event.. so my feeling is.. that the art making process was kind of like a meditation on these disparate wills.. In much the same way that making a mandala would be.. a process by which you think "jesus, these disparate wills will never come together to form a whole" like.. they just don't go together.. I mean that's a demon over there!

But if we can just explore the paths.. we come to find the angelic in our demon friend..

So as in our daily life.. the way that we can, as you say, only fully commit to the possibilities of the path we find in order to create the opus of our lives.. That path is rather like Odysseus being the no man who is every man.. it is the no path that is every path. We and the path are one, and all that...

Err... and something, something. something.. lol, guess that's my thoughts for the day...

Re: Who’s Chasing Who?

Matt Searles — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:39:37 -0000

I think I must have a bad habit of teasing people that must be suffering from stockhausen syndrome.

The way I think about psychology.. or maybe anything really.. it's like we have this definition of a thing or a concept.. and the definition delineates a shape.. and if the concept is true in the terms of the shape, you can apply it any where you see that shape.. and the truth of the original thing will still speak. Language and cognition breaks reality up into shapes.. so there's some question of if this process has anything to do with reality.. accept as a part of a critique of experience.. err, something.

I think.. well you know.. I'm sorta just getting to know you.. and I always feel like when you're getting to know someone or something.. one mustn't take ones.. lets say impressions.. though that's not the right word, too seriously.. because our understanding of the ecological context of that which we are having the impression.. is different from the context it takes in the evolving revelation we are having of the thing in question.. so about the only thing I take seriously in this kind of thing is a kind of intuition.. So you know..

To complicate matters one step further.. I think it's important that we regard everyone, and everything, including our selves.. and the ones and things that we regard as the most well known ones and things to us.. as being more mystery then known.

So all this is to say.. don't take my teasing too seriously! I guess?

The thing about your post on leaks.. It strikes me as very much a matter of our collective consciousness.. errr..

There's a certain part of me that is very suspicious of psychology, particularly clinical psychology.. and even more so of medication for mental disorders.. not that I think there are no merits to these things.. but I have read a little Foucault.. and I do think.. well what is it that defines x as a disorder in the first place?

Much of this might have to do with how evolution doesn't work as well as it used to in "the good old days" in the sense that... the passing on of genes isn't really effected by environmental factors in the same way it once was.. and this does present certain challenges...

But what is a disorder? As Nietzsche would say 'beware in throwing out your demons that you don't throw out the best thing you got going for you.' How painfully immature, it seems to me, our current collective understanding of our selves is.. and what damage might our stupidity be causing us?

We live in a world where things are managed by quantification systems.. where what is difficult to quantify doesn't "work" in our systems.. essentially rendering them a disorder.. We have no idea what Buddha was doing sitting at the center of the universe... cause everyone knows the ego is at the center of the universe! Perhaps we say to the eastern philosopher "well really you're problem is that you're not able to differentiate between ego and id."

But of course ego isn't at the center of the universe.. and to think it is does create a collective psychosis.. that we try and plug up.. with our pop psychology, a few pills, and whatever.... When the real answer to our problems is probably to rage against the machine!

Of course there's some danger that raging against the machine won't lead to our freedom ether...

As an artist.. the problem is one of creating a new vision.. which means a journey into the deep dark unknown.. and I think all of us have this problem.. and it does create a kind of stockhausen syndrome.. a kind of neurotic relationship to a possible way our destinies could unfold.. a could that requires the heroic..

On the who's chasing who I think of Schoepenhouer's reflection on "who has written the plot of my life anyway?" Neurosis would suggest that he, or at least his plot, is the captor.. and interestingly enough.. the super old school yogi wouldn't disagree with that too much.. seeing as the ultimate goal of all those breathing exercises was to stop breathing!

Err, I'm not quite sure what I'm driving at in all this.. For some reason my head keeps producing an image of Woody Allan parodying, or commenting, on Socrates... and his shtick about if even in the cage... if you're really a captor.. which I suppose is me questioning the idea of the stockhausen syndrome... leading me to feeling like a tail eating snake...

Re: Who’s Chasing Who?

Matt Searles — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:55:15 -0000

that they must be suffering from* --opps

Re: Hows the Transmission?

Matt Searles — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:55:42 -0000

Because of this fact I find myself adverse to self discipline.. or I haven't quite worked out a proper relationship to discipline. Some people look at me and think I'm super disciplined.. but really its more like I'm doing what I want.. or what kinda gets me off.. and simply prioritizing certain things...

Though I did recently have this feeling.. almost as if it were a visitation.. where the spirit.. it seemed as if.. well as if depending on the conscious attitude I take today.. that could shape a future enantiodromia... and this spirit was like "look.. I know you've been on this introverted path since you were about 3 years old, but have you considered pleasure?" And though from a certain conscious attitude point of view this sounds like throwing my life away.. everything I've been working towards.. the true feeling it greeted me with was like a fresh breeze accompanied by "wow, that would be awesome!" And so now I have half a mind to go find a mate, shack up, and all that goovy stuff. And so this sorta seemed like a proactive measure my unconscious was taking in relationship to a future malaise.

It must have been a little more then a month ago.. I was feeling a real malaise kind of feeling. I was trying real hard to get my music production to a certain level.. and struggling with various projects.. and just wasn't feeling it. And then one day I said "perhaps I should start working on the videos?" I had been procrastinating the video / motion graphics stuff cause.. well because of a fear of sucking basically. This and its a real mammoth project.. and requires investing a lot of money into gear.. and I didn't want to cash out that CD till it had matured and..

Though I was totally clueless about the new tools I was trying to work with.. and didn't really have the experience.. almost instantly the magic hit.. It hard in that way that can kinda blow your mind a little... I worked hard from then up till about now.. and about now I've seemingly fallen off the wagon a little bit. See.. now I'm looking at visual effects and realizing.. I could have to be dumping about 10 or 11 grand or more to get where I want to go.. not to mention a video camera that could easily run around 7 grand.. and I'm feeling like "oh crap, I gotta look real seriously at my priorities here."

My unconscious.. being the troublesome thing that it is.. doesn't really care that this is a lot of money, and that the implications of spending that money are serious.. and it doesn't care that I've barely learned much of the gear I already own.. all it seems to want to say is "yo, dumbo, go that way!"

My conscious attitude is one of.. feeling for sure that I'm making a horrible mess of my life... and now that my father's well being is now my responsibility to.. there's like this giant guilt over it.. but then a funny thing happened today.. I took my Dad to the doctors.. and the blood work came back.. and accept for his memory.. The doc say's he's healthier then he is. As he said this it was as if a voice from my unconscious was speaking up "you see dumbo we know what we are doing."

This last point is a sorta very deep point in my biography.. this very difficult struggle to believe in myself... From time to time there are these Flash's as if to say I'm on the right path in this crazy bad ass sorta way.. and that the only reason it feels like I'm all wrong.. is because of just how bad ass it is. ...Which of course is something I can only occasionally bring myself to believe.. and then in only in the most bashful of ways.

But I guess this sorta brings me to the core of what I wanted to say.. which might be something like the unconscious is the bad ass, and the conscious mind is the sissy... but more importantly that a root problem is that the modern collective conscious mind.. is sissy-ish.. That in how we look at our selves when we come to this revelation about the malaise being about a the old unconscious conscious conflict.. that we kind of shouldn't think to ill of our egos.. that we should appreciate what our ego's are up against... I mean they are in that Matrix / Labrynth in that certain way.. and not just on a personal level.

I mean I don't even know how many times I've looked at the world around me and thought "is it even possible to try and live as a whole person in this place?"

I don't know if in saying this I'm really just expressing my own darkness.. maybe I've failed to unite my own personal suffering with that which is grave and constant in human suffering.. or at least grave and constant in our own age.. but that's kind of my thought for the day... even if not quite fully developed..

Re: Raising the sails

Matt Searles — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:59:33 -0000

I'm SOOOOO Jealous of that Jung collection you have there! My local library used to have it.. it was one of my best friends in high school! But now the evil bastards seemed to have gotten rid of it! I have heard that some of that stuff might actually be available for free public domain style?.. if so, perhaps I should just get one of those new fangled Kindles.. In the interum I content myself with Jung's Seminar's on Niezsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.. which I've been lusting after since it first came out and was like.. 2 volumes for something ridiculous like $100 a volume.. recently found an abridged version for $10 used at the Harvard book store.. and OMG, so far I LOVE it!

Re: Raising Digital Natives

Matt Searles — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:48:06 -0000

I'm no parent, so feel sorta unqualified but..

#1 Sound's like we are already off to a kick ass start here. How many kids growing up are lucky enough to have parents who understand this space and help give them the literacy in this stuff, and help nurture them through it.. when we all know how bad the schools are relative to this? So sounds awesome to me so far.

I suppose it depends on the child.. some kids like structures.. others, like myself, needed to follow there bliss so to speak. My prejudice is that all kids should go that way.. and then as a parent you try to introduce them to the possibilities, issues of dangers, and whatever.. and just kinda facilitate there own becoming.

I'm just such a believe in following your own inner voice that I think to often the voice of the authority for kids is a bit like the roll of the english empire in various african tribal regions once upon a time.. where they lost there ability to have there big dreams cause that's what the english were for, right?

LOL, that might be one of the biggest things to try and protect them from.. school's systems instinct to turn them into a good little cog of a machine that won't even be around by the time they get there!

I imagine in someway, as adults, we need to somehow dream big.. to understand the world our kids are going to live in will be so different then our own.. and when we inculcate our values.. to try and go through that viveka type discrimination process of discriminating between what are the values of our time, our world.. what are the eternal values, and what maybe things will look like for them. I think the good news is you're already engaged in that bigger dreaming..

But I imagine the values are like the parameters really.. at least till adolescence sets in. LOL, then it's all about faith, and praying a lot.

Re: The Fix Is In

Matt Searles — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 12:55:55 -0000

LOL, this is why I point the finger at my parents! Seriously.. I spend my life trying to overcome the damage.. and now my mom passed away a couple weeks less then a year ago... I'm taking care of dad.. and feeling like I'm not doing to great a job of it.. but in that darkness I laugh at my parents and say "Karma's a bitch, ha?"

But I mean that's a very hard thing.. trying to deal with toxins and abuses in the family thing.. without necessarily pointing fingers.

My sister and I are adopted.. from different parents. She has saver mental retardation and autism... which created an enormous amount of stress for my parents when I was growing up. It lead to my mom's heart problems.. which in combination with cancer, lead to her passing.. and added to my dad's alcoholism.

In my individuation fights.. after art school.. I would shout these Jung quotes my mom.. about how its always the parents fault.. what you're quoting.. when she was diagnosed with the cancer.. my dads alcoholism got bad enough that it could no longer be covered up... and this finally broke the spell.. or much of it anyway.. and I was able to have a much better relationship with my mom before she died.

Still.. there's that secret pack mom's like to make with there son's that they might not have to grow up.. this was a somewhat one sided pact in our case.. "No mom, I want to be a superman, not a child." So via her wish not to have me grow up.. I was able to have a situation where I wouldn't have to worry about external demands.. and go about my hero's adventure in bliss chasing..

While growing up.. the problem my parents gave me was to tell me that who I was trying to be was wrong. Of course children very often explore there parents shadows... but my parents had managed to leave me emotionally handy capped, and totally unable to function in the world.. It was only my rebellions that brought me some modicum of.. ability to function.

Well the good news is that period of not having to deal with external demands allowed me a massive amount of development.. and while the damage done to my foundations still exerts a terrible effect on me.. hope blooms.

Now is a time for trying to meditate on compassion.. to try and heal.. so that the anxieties influence might lesson.. so that freedom from the cage might be achieved, and we might find what kind of an animal the ugly duckling really is.

Re: A rose is a rose…or is it?

Matt Searles — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:49:17 -0000

I've never felt myself to be too great at dream analysis... but Jung also talked about collecting a mass of dreams, and through that learning the language of the dreamers dreams... and wasn't it Reich who pointed out that dreamers dream languages would often conform to the school of the analyst?

But I am an artist.. and I do like to see a lot of an artists work... to peer into what's perhaps really going on in there work..

It's maybe a little off topic but.. someone was posting some stuff about the death of the album.. the rise of the mash up, personal play lists, and all that.. anyway.. this was striking to me as I just finished making an album... and I'm not terribly in love with any of the individual tracks, but as a whole I really love it.. and I think that that has to do with... this sense of it being like a a collection of dreams in a sense..

I'm not sure how this adds to the conversation here.. accept maybe thoughts on the collective consciousness of our times, un or other wise... Though it makes me think of of Freud more.. and the channels thoughts must travel to dawn on us, and the impact those channels have on the content of our thoughts.. which I suppose has everything to do with dream analysis and symbolism?

Re: Notes on Composing a Twitter Stream

Matt Searles — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:59:54 -0000

I think I'm much less conscious of my twittering.. Or its like.. there's a bunch of issues which.. lets call them social media strategy issues.. or maybe social media life issues.. and then those that are specific to twitter.. and so you know.. I've meditated on those endlessly.. but when it comes to actually tweeting, I don't think of them at all. Kind of like when walking I don't actually think about putting one foot in front of the other, or balance, or any of that.

When I was first on twitter I was more then a little shy and self conscious.. and feeling like my tweeting was kinda bad.. then at a tweet up somewhere.. I met someone who was like "oh yeah, you're Matt Searles, I follow your tweets!" to which I of course extended my sympathies.. but it turned out he was "a fan" and what he liked was that I'd seem to say anything.. or that I wasn't holding back or wasn't sorta.. doing a lot of image management stuff. Or maybe I was just debating with a lot of marketers at the time..

I was at.. I think it was a social media breakfast sometime back.. on twitter.. where Pistachio batted clean up on the presentations.. and of course she was brilliant on it.. I think her point was more or less that twitter is a million things to a million different people..

I think of it like "what is good web design?" Well.. the measure of what good web design is.. kinda depends on your business strategy, or whatever strategy... how you present your self in social media vill depends on the values of your personal brand.. so everything, maybe sorta, comes down to that.

I think of Allan Watts asking "who are you." Apparently Odysseus was the no man who is every man.. that there burning bush simply said "I am," while the Zen masters ask us to show us the face we had prior to being born... I've read articles trying to tell me that these kinds of questions have nothing to do with personal branding, say in the Harvard Business Review.. lol, but they can't fool me!

I think the more we embrace the inward mysteries.. the more we see the possibilities. And ultimately.. I think its those mysteries thought ought to define one's twitter strateg-a-ry

Re: Here we go again…tagged

Matt Searles — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:34:37 -0000

So the idea is just to share like 7 things? Can be totally random or? What's the story?

Re: Embracing Synchronicity

Matt Searles — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:00:25 -0000

Hmm... It seems to me this is one of those tricky areas in Jung where one can get carried off into mystical fun.. but where.. to suggest that there's any pretense of science here.. is sorta tricky.. depending on how far out on that mystical limb you want to go. One can look at information theory and see in the configuration of matter... information, and that seems to come to.... complicate what one might put in the mind box or the matter box..

At the same time.. its pretty easy to see that the unconscious is always compensating for consciousness... and always expressing its self on us... and, in sometimes strange ways, contextualizing experience.. And as super groovy as detached objectivity, with its God's eye quests might be.. reality is never actually experienced that way... well accept, perhaps, to the degree to which we are all God..

So in comes the roll for magickal thinking, and what not.. but I feel like this is a tricky pace.. and maybe I'm just not sure how to think of it myself... like,... you can find a kind of escapism here that Freud would have rightly criticized.. but at the same time I think you can make a very serious philosophical argument that allows someone who's... well skeptical.... to travel down these paths.

I suppose this is the power of Jung... to bridge, as they say, the rational and "irrational minds." But in terms of the popular imagination of what synchronicity is... I feel like what is kind of needed is that deeper discussion.

Or that's my thought of the day anyway

Re: Cleansing the Doors

Matt Searles — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:06:14 -0000

Wow, what a refreshing post.. sometimes I feel like 90% of the posts I read are all saying "cling to your ideas, it's the only thing that can save you from an encounter with reality," or perhaps the idea is to cling to they're ideas?

I'm in the middle of a strange psychic experience... feeling like I'm being called to disintegrate, which is a little scary.. the last time I felt this it was the preamble to a numinous experience.

The disintegration is.. well its like "who are you" and you have your little stories that make up you're identity.. a useful fiction.. all these things holding us in place.. and when that falls apart.. the figures start speaking. Of course the trouble is.. the various dangers of the unconscious.

You know I wonder.. I know in art school they didn't teach you about relationship to the muse. I visited the school last night actually, for a sorta social media meet up group.. with a very good presenter.. anyway.. where they normally put up signs for gallery shows.. there was graffiti saying "dream bigger" and I thought.. "Hell yeah."

But I think relating to the muses is like.. one of those mysterious things that.. it seems like us moderns don't quite know how to do.. and so often it feels like we've become entirely "too civilized" in a certain sense.. like you're post sometime ago about over protective parents.. this incredible need for safety.. laws for waring seat belts and.. and all the rest of it... like some systematic.. lets child safe our society for adults.. repress dyonious at every corner.. and turn our notions of everything into as solid stone as possible...

As I experience my feeling of being called to disintegrate.. I'm reminded of that crazy.. was it a revelation? "Stop everything, let God do it all," and then the most mind blowing mystical thing imaginable happens.. it seems that God actually does do it all.. as if to say the only thing standing between us and the life we dream of is us..

Re: Cleansing the Doors

Matt Searles — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:18:22 -0000

Really?, or in what sense do you mean you sense the collective / political system has always been conservative?

I guess I think sorta Nietzsche dyonious apollo.. a forever oscillating pendulum.. or something sorta like that..

Although clearly the mystics relationship to the church... or the whatever.. not that I know the history terribly well but it would seem the mystic is always challenging in that sorta way.

But that's not really the same notion of conservatism as we'd get in a modern right left debate.. I mean it seems sorta like there's a psychology of conservatism that on the apollo side / would be the church's side but.. liberalism is certainly capable of being just as dogmatic.. I mean I think both sides are like.. well lets say scared of the numinous.. or prone to be.. perhaps in different areas..

But you know.. you think back to say Tristan and Isolt.. and its like anticipating Nietzsche in the sense of it's valuing the experience of the individual over inherited value systems.. which.. seems sorta anti Christian until you go pre Constantine.. or get to Luther..

But I don't know that I really feel like this is in its essence a power structure issue... this is a how do you relate to the numinous issue.. for which we don't even have much in the way of safe outlets today... I think an awful lot of people don't have the foggiest notion as to why one would get on one's knees to pray.. other then maybe as an expression of desperation... I mean certainly not out of an expression of awe..

That's sorta funny, isn't it? How we cling to so much out of a fear of what amounts to a real experience.. and that fear is the awe.. and yet we don't make that connection.. I guess its all just a sorta spiritual illiteracy?

Re: Cleansing the Doors

Matt Searles — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:20:05 -0000

I think I'm going to have to think about this some more.

I think I see it in those Nietzschean terms of getting the right balance of health and sickness..

There's a part of me that wonders... how much of the conservatism of a culture is an expression of the interests of power.. for the obvious reason that preserving the status quo helps to preserve there power... and then I wonder how the structure of power impacts all that.

On some levels at least, when I think of the collective I think personal.. I think of it as just what's in me.. in an idea I have of my whole self.. which I suppose means there's a need to make a distinction, when talking about the collective, between what is conscious and what is unconscious.. and if we where to talk about a "whole collective self," what would that look like...

In a whole self I'm not sure that I really see the conservatism.. if we are preserving a status quo, we are getting in the way of the becoming, which is not really in the interest of the whole self.

But.. it certainly would seem to be in human nature.. though I wonder if it might not have more to do with the container of human nature, on some level.. that we are fearful of the unknown and leaving our safety zones.. leaving where we are strong.

I know personally I'm trying to take these jumps into the unknown with my creative work.. and its lead me to feelings of overwhelming self doubt.. to such an extent that I doubt what I once thought was good. And it doesn't help that nearly all the plans I've laid out for myself are like this..

I have a pretty good threshold for self doubt.. which I guess is just experience with the process.. but.. it does have the effect of making me withdraw... cause its hard to share what you're doing in such circumstances..

In any event.. a lot of the challenge seems to be with ego.. I have a strange belief that genus has something to do with humility.. and so much of my identity is wrapped up in my creative work that I kinda need to be humble if I have any serious aspirations.. It's like when self doubt is at its worst ebb you kinda have to detach from the wheels of fortune and embrace something like faith in order to keep going.. and you kinda do need to be on you're knees.. because at that point you don't feel like you can afford to miss a single thing a muse might say to you.

In a strange way I guess its like being willing to suffer. Hmm.. maybe that's what it all boils down to?

I always used to equate it with Freud's pleasure principle and like.. the development of the super ego.. that if you don't believe you're wish can find fulfillment.. and particularly as a child.. the tension of the unfulfilled wish is too great.. down into the unconscious it goes.. and so how many wishes never even dawn on us? And those wishes, those dreams.. they are like the words of a muse.

Re: Don’t forget the real world…

Matt Searles — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:58:01 -0000

I'm think I must be the patron saint of forgetting the fake world.. I think I'm connected with more social media people offline and then on. I've probably had more beers with like.. Chris Brogan then I've actually commented on his blog.. I often forget that social media is about more then just meeting people in person..

Though I recently went to a DIY audio festival.. and met a twitter friend.. it was I think my first experience of being friends with someone online and then meeting them in person.. well, with the exception of my dating life. What was really kind of cool is I met him offline as a part of an improvisation session with like.. circuit bending / noise whatever making.. which is can be a very intimate way to interact with someone. He being an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music.. and what a great guy.

But I guess it's what I love about social media most.. the connecting, making friends.. kinda thing. Normally I understand people often don't make so many friends post college.. and off in social media vill.. its like.. well just awesome... And the way you would probably never meet these people other wise. I can tell you that I generally didn't like people too much.. before I got into social media..

Re: Thinking like a publisher…pluck?

Matt Searles — Sat, 02 May 2009 17:02:25 -0000

It's a process.. My thinking is you start with you're core values and work out word.. I'm not sure if that really always produces a clear signal though.. Like.. if a core value to you is becoming.. in the process of becoming.. well at the very least the signal isn't always super clear... so which is more important, clarity of signal or becoming?

So I take the becoming and try to clarify it.. which is more about maturing it then it is about communications... maybe communications is a trajectory of maturation? And of course action is communications..

At the very least I'm thinking in terms of the issues relative to leadership.. and relating that to the Tribes thing. I'm also thinking that a lot of what's really important is somehow invisible.. that you gotta put on the blind fold to see properly.

When I think of the fad / shiny object aspect of social media.. I'm reminded of some recent episodes of Marketing Over Coffee.. on the subject of.. learning marketing versus learning web tricks.. as if the cool aid was the propaganda of the tricks.. and when you get to understand the deeper stuff.. the cool aid becomes transfigured...

I suppose it depends to, on just how you're interfacing with social media.. like if you get on Twitter cause Oprah, who's only tweeted 17 times, says its all groovy.. and all this mass media tells you its all groovy.. and you're all "I want be be groove-ified" and nobody told you what it was all really about.. before you go there.. etc, etc, etc..

Re: The Sealed Vessel

Matt Searles — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:53:17 -0000

This reminds me of a Bob Dylan Quote

"Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you're about will come true. It's kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your self, because it's a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It's best to keep that all inside."

Anyway, I have this feeling all the time.. excitement about something and if I tell the wrong person.. the spirit escapes... at which point I ether have to work to recapture it or just move on, though sometimes you can just let it rest and it'll come back to you.

What I find tough as hell is being an artist where you have this kind of feeling in your work, and what you gotta do is let the work out into the world... never mind just the part of asking for feed back!

Sometimes the magic of it is sooo like inter twined with your own kinda personal whatever.. that its like.. I don't know if you can even experience the magic of it without that personal whatever providing the context for it.

It has this strange relationship to consciousness.. the way you can only hold a certain amount in mind at anyone time.. and so much of what's making it resonate for you has its foundations outside of your conscious mind... so its like.. just standing there.. it's like the parts you'd need to sorta say why it resonates so.. you don't have access to.. which somehow makes it fragile..

I think this is made particularly so by.. well I've been thinking about how the important things to say.. are somehow more difficult to say.. which is what makes them important.. and why people don't say them.. and a part of why people might not see the magic you do.. because its somehow hard to see in the same way its hard to say.

I think the way to work this out is.. to have some kind of a faith in it.. a crazy deep faith.. I mean you can read most of the bible.. about folks and there relationship to God, as really being about your relationship to this magic.. the more you appreciate that the magic is like a personal gift for you.. and the more you can be like the fool tarot card.. or like not connected to the wheels of fortune in your commitment to the magic.. the more the magic grows in your life.

I think this is really what its all about.

Re: The Objective Psyche

Matt Searles — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:48:23 -0000

Hmm..

Ok, well that's complicated! I'm going to have to think about how to respond..

I think.. well you have the Freudian civilization and its discontents thing: What we sacrifice of our selves to be a part of society... What we have to sacrifice I would suggest is a combination of power relationship and social needs. This inherited value system then frames our conception of reality... and creates the labyrinth. The problem is one of a hero's adventure of going into that labyrinth to rescue those parts of our potential needed for the adventure ahead.

When I think of answer to job I think about the relationship between human and eternal values... and I think what we are dealing here is clearly human values.

I'm at least feeling like it's a very.. we must quit the world somehow to do it.. or go on a labyrinth quest.. That one needs to get out of the usual consensus notion of reality... And I think this is tricky given it's nature of being interwoven with the existing sorta economic realities... In the I need a job to survive sense.. and the job forces me into a certain box which has this set of ramifications on how I experience reality / how the job frames it.

But I'm not really sure about the direction I'm driving in's relationship to where your driving. From a lot of your recent posts it sounds like you're driving towards the transcendent function sorta stuff.. Buddha at the Bogia Tree.. search for the philosophers stone.. which.. is a little different from how we might go about this on a collective level, I'm thinking?

I'm thinking that the systemic forces are already pointing us in the right direction and its basically up to us in our participation with the unfolding.. that's the key.

Re: The Objective Psyche

Matt Searles — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:38:33 -0000

Richard

In the train of thought I was on the authority of the self is pushing towards this change, but its civilization that has said this is not to be cultivated.. It reminds me quite a bit of racism.. In a society where black people aren't allowed to be educated it's a lot easier to think black people are inferior. So when we look at ether parts of the self, or people in the world / culture / around us.. whom are in some sense going with this reality, because we are seeing less maturated examples then what our society is really supporting the cultivation of.. we think of it as an inferior direction.

I think of it very much like the Sealed Vassel where this stuff becomes harder to say, and harder to see.. My feeling is that what we need is a heroic adventure where someone, or many of us, cultivate this stuff to such a degree that we are like exemplars.. so that the life patterns would then be more easily cultivated...

It seems like such a mammoth project to.. that our society is soooo swung in this other direction.. that it would take a number of generations for this kind of.. social-psycho migration to happen... or to reach its heights anyway.

I think maybe what I was thinking about in relationship to the self's authority and this problem was.. well what I got into race studies and like.. Cornel West and stuff.. and what was required for that transformation.

lol, I think anyway.. These aren't all terribly well thought out ideas.. just whatever comes to me in the moment so..

Re: The Role of the Artist

Matt Searles — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:22:20 -0000

Lately I find myself.. an artist desperate in his search for the broad highways... I've spent so much time on the back ways that I've never really had a good look at the broad highways!

I must say its the oddest of feelings.. For one thing I don't know if I can even function on the broad highway.. while at the same time, possessed by an insecurity, I wonder if I need to take the highway.. and I'm insecure about.. what value the stuff I found in the back ways might find on the highways.. will my gold turn to ash?

I understand Jung received a lot of criticism for his thoughts on the Arts.. that he wasn't real good in this area.. But I think that perhaps the critics might not have understood Jung deeply enough..

I have this experience often as well.. of the posers in Art.. or sometimes its not so much a thing of the poser as feeling.. sorry for there small spirits.. wondering if they even bother to really work at it.. I don't have an issue with an artist seeing a market.. and being like "ok, I need to paint pretty flowers and like.. light houses.. cause that's what the tourists are buying.." Where I do find the problem is when you don't take that as an opportunity for something more.. or.. when you get to a place where it's all nice and safe.. and for the sake of safety don't venture further out.

Re: Archiving the Lifestream

Matt Searles — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 04:29:14 -0000

I love this idea, how hard could it be?

I've been thinking about building such a thing for my sites.. It's perhaps a reasonably steep learning curve to work out how to do such a thing the right way but.. well what would you want in such a program?

It looks like you can build stuff on top of that life stream plug in?

I was thinking some kind of combination interactive data visualization of the stream form of navigation.. could it be that that we could discover new patterns in streams?

And then facilitating some kind of social interaction with the stream?

But then you probably don't really want your stream silod off on you site? Have it more like some notion of a distributed twitter architecture, or something like google wave?

But then I wonder if what we really need is like a multi layers / modular system.. As if to say different applications essentially remixed what other applications did.. something that could really only happen if sites were less walled gardens... but that you could chain these applications together in different ways to get different results.

What if we just radically rethought what a blog was?

I wish I was bumping into more conversations about this kinda thing...

Re: Adjusting process, even slightly

Matt Searles — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:38:56 -0000

Richard,

You know I don't know if it's just me or not, but I think there's something interesting going on in your blogging.. like all these pieces coming together.. like you're leveling up..

It's kinda neat to watch.

Re: Countering Tendency

Matt Searles — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:22:49 -0000

On some level I wonder what it matters what path you go down.. as if to say even being stuck can have its value, that it could simply be a matter of finding ones self in a place where one can not perceive the value. I was thinking about this recently in relationship to the idea of death and rebirth.. that in essence it's just a reconfiguration of the same old stuff.. that where you find your self, on what path, has much to do with the configuration of conscious awareness.. and even.. when we talk about paths, to what extent are we speaking internally versus externally.

I confess to being more focused on the internal in my life.. the over all objective is a wholeness I may never find in this life time.. but any path seems to be a part of that whole.. and this way that.. lets say as a part of some sort of psychological issue.. that this can push us down paths that.. are our little psycho dramas or whatever.. that this can be like a working out of a part of some puzzle.

Growing up I felt stuck in a too womb like world.. where things like say drug and sex ed that seems geared to save you from gathering too much wisdom.. so at some point in college I thought.. ok lets explore some of this.. lets individuate a little.. while a certain amount of self destruction was a part of that path.. that seemed dwarfed by the value of the adventure of it.

In any event, for me at least, the key is try to keep an ear open to the deep inner voices.. that having the right sorta sensitivity here can steer you through anything.. The trouble is when something blocks that sensitivity.. and how you approach that problem.

If you're sensitive enough you are at least aware of the blockage.. of what's going on on some level.. and you sorta change your existential relationship to you're own awareness at least.. and so seek solutions.

That's usually how I handle ruts to.. It's exactly as you say.. you decide you're going from point a to point b, for got that at least have of what its all about is the adventure.. and party way through you're like.. having trouble pushing your self.. and because I'm not terribly disciplined I can go goof off for a little while.. or just say "ok, what do I want to do now?" I look at the whole.. the whole that is my goal.. and I figure anything that leads there is progress.. and what I find quite often is that the problem is, to move further along on this path, I really need to move further along on some other path.. that the development of that will help the going over here. So maybe 6 months from now I come back to it and make it work.

Re: Countering Tendency

Matt Searles — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 13:16:49 -0000

Oh dear lord you ask a complicated question, one that I think is at the heart of what's getting wrestled with in some of your posts.

I tend to like both Marx and like.. free-market-isms.. but I think its pretty clear that free market fundamentalism, to echo Cornel West, is kinda a mistake.

I like to think of business as an amplification of natural human processes, so markets are just echo systems, but I think there's something in a sorta constructed layer that acts as an intermediary between the echo systems I'm speaking of and business.. which basically has to what how the echo system gets quantified into a conception of a market. As the rate of flux in the echo system / rate of change generally.. increases.. I think the only way a business can manage that is to deal with the intermediary layer.

One method that does this.. hyped to no end is "the wisdom of the crowd." Individuals not having the same change management issues as large organizational structures.

What I'm sorta wondering about is a possible future of social networking for granulizing organization.. a way for individuals to come together and collaborate on various projects.. sorta a self organizing business model. This is perhaps not so much a shift in economic systems as a shift in how we relate to the economic systems.

In terms of mass adoption... I think its that normal think where you have early adopters.. and then it slowly spreads out, perhaps Seth Godin Tribe-a-ly.

My feeling is that if you take a Jungian view of who we are as people.. how we function.. the degree to which we are forced to function differently then is our nature.. that's almost like an entropic force working against our potential.. and to the extent to which an economist might say "basically the economy is a big machine for realizing potential" then I think you could argue on a systemic sorta level it has to go there.

But it's complicated.. and no doubt something that would take a long time.

Re: Your Online Presence: Are you “That Guy”?

Matt Searles — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:17:47 -0000

oh I don't know, I think you might be over stating it a little.

First off.. I have a crap load of friends who's job is to tweet and facebook and all the rest of it. Isn't this a part of personal branding? To some extent shouldn't this be a part of everyone's skill sets? In that interview with the facebook friend.. I'm sure we'd have a great conversation on that..

How much people care about your struggles and successes I think.. isn't so black and white. For me there is a very personal quality to social media and my social media engagement.. where I care about the people I'm interacting with.. dare I use the word love?

I didn't get a BMW.. but if I did.. I'm sure I'd be posting something about it.. cause I'm sure I'd be excited about it.. and the people who care about me would probably be excited for me.. If it was purely me bragging about the BMW.. that's another story.. but that's sorta my point.. is that I think it all depends.

Also I think people do want some of the personal stuff.. people want real flesh and blood humans.. I mean you can over do it and its about balance.. but I think it's a real mistake to leave all that stuff out.

I know I got a big response when my mom died and I posted stuff about it. A lot of people reached out at that point.. and when I thought I would be the most alone I felt the most connected.. it was beautiful..

To me that's a very key thing.. to me social media is about trying to connect with people on a genuine level.. and.. when we connect with people on a genuine level we have these kinds of conversations.

None of that's to totally disagree with you.. I mean.. well I have a friend who puts out way too much stuff.. He's a part of a graduate program I've been taking a class in.. and we've all said as much and he understands.. but it keeps going.. but still we know where he's coming from so he's not that guy to us.. and I guess our critique of him is to help save him from being "that guy" to others.

And to be someone who things the world revolves around them.. and constantly take a "look at me" sorta attitude.. well.. I think that's maybe what you're really point at? Or people who's approach to these channels is sorta like that.. in the same way that there are some folks whom you would think very well of.. but as soon as they get behind the wheel.. it's Mr Satan time..

I don't know.. hope that adds something to the conversation.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/04/you-have-entered-no-retweeting-zone.html

Matt Searles — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:10:52 -0000

If I see something interesting, I re tweet it.. I try and be generous about it, but its always to the question of "does this have value in relationship to the values I'm trying to keep at the core of what I'm doing," does it have value to my network? My network is.. well its not like I'm purely connected to one group.. like its not all marketers.. so the guys trying to work out the future of the music business.. might find value from something a marketer was sharing.. a marketer getting into creating videos as a part of whatever.. might find value in finding out about something to do with sound or video that might help with production values.. So I don't think I'm usually a part of the echo chamber in how I re tweet.. I see it like innovation comes from a synthesis of disparate stuff.. and so I'm just synthesizing.

So I don't really see it as lazy.. I see it as curation..

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/05/adobe-support-our-products-are.html

Matt Searles — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:43:19 -0000

I've def had bad luck with adobe customer support to.. and for a company that produces soo much in the way of web design and development tools.. you'd think there site would be better from a usability stand point..

I will say I got in from a somewhat cheap perspective.. I had Macromedia Studio 8, and it was a $500 upgrade to the web premium... which meant upgrades to Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, plus my first time owning photoshop, illustrator, and acrobat..

However, "back in the day" I also owned premier and After Effects.. premier left the Mac.. they recently came back.. and there were no discounts on bundles.. even though I owned those two plus the Macromedia Studio 8 Stuff.. now..

Then they changed the upgrade path when I wasn't looking.. so that I can no longer upgrade my old version of After Effects.. which only runs on OS9.. it is old after all.. but it looked like I'd be able to upgrade it.. and now.. I have to spend 1000 for that upgrade... I haven't upgraded the web premium bundle.. which is like $500 or $600... a kind of pricey upgrade if you ask me.. so I'm going "hmm, maybe I should upgrade to like.. the complete adobe bundle..

The complete bundle is appealing to me as you get the whole meta tag work flow thing.. with Premier, After Effects, and there audio stuff.. which is perfect for the kinds of video projects I have in mind.. I could use some spectral audio editing.. and I'm very much wishing I had InDesign for print work.. but then once you get all that stuff it's $800 to upgrade the whole thing.. plus.. I think I really need Flex.. which really should be a part of there web bundle!

So I'm thinking "well, maybe I'll wait till they put out there next version." My 3D graphics software, C4D, is like $1000 for an upgrade.. so comparatively.. when I think how much is in that complete Adobe bundle.. it actually doesn't seem that unreasonable.. but...

Well if you don't buy stuff in bundles.. and you don't really need all the stuff in the bundles.. or you need stuff that's not all in one bundle.. it's ridiculous.

You look at a program like Dreamweaver and its like.. What exactly is the use of a WYWYG web editor if what comes out the other end isn't standards compliant to begin with? You look at there AJAX framework and its not unobtrusive.. so its like out of the box.. the software does stuff the wrong way!

You look at Flash.. there's a whole lot of advanced stuff that you really need to do if you're going to do Flash right.. as far as usability, SEO, accessibility is concerned.. but it takes most folks at least 6 months to learn the software well.. and learning about that stuff isn't a part of that.. cause the software doesn't address that stuff easily.. and it's stuff that you really do have to have a decent command of AS3 and OOP... and this is the real reason the Flash platform has such a bad reputation.. 90% of reason people say "Flash is Bad" in web design.. is not because it's actually bad.. but because people aren't using it right.. and Adobe, at this point.. is responsible for that! And when you consider what Flash can do with Analytics.. there's an argument that can be made that Flash is probably the better route to take in way more situations then most people really think.

For what I do.. and aspire to do.. I don't really feel like there's reasonable alternatives to the Adobe stuff.. There's alternatives to After Effects, but they are for people with much bigger budgets.. Photoshop for digital illustration, photography, working with 3D, motion graphics.. I don't see there being a realistic alternative.. there doesn't seem to be good stuff out there anymore to compete with Illustrator.. Dreamweaver isn't necessary as it once was.. I like the site management features, and I've just sorta grown used to it.. but.. other then being able to drag stuff around between folders and have all the links updated.. and having a somewhat visually orientated working environment.. I don't really feel like.. I need to be here.. Fireworks is.. well a lot of it's legacy doesn't make sense.. but.. being able to do vector and bit map graphics, in the same app.. is pretty cool.. haven't gotten around to checking out its prototyping features.. or see what its CSS output looks like.. and frankly I probably prefer the hand coding route at this point.. even if I'm not good at it.

Premier's an interesting cat.. Final Cut as rubbish media management.. and Avid has a lot of issues to.. so a lot of people are looking to Premier as a possible alternative.. and when you look at the Adobe Production bundle versus a Final Cut or an Avid system.. it does look rather nice.. back in the day I bought Premier and After Effects.. for the same money as Final Cut.. figuring I was going to primarily be interested in Animation anyway.

My sense is there's lots of alternative graphics programs out there.. particularly on the Mac with its core graphics in the OS.. Arguably the problem with Photoshop is that it tries to be all things to all people.. which is what makes it seem like a bloated beast.. but at this point I kinda feel like I'm trying to do all those jobs..

I think the real problem at this point is that Adobe is basically a monopoly in a lot of areas

Re: Finding Entry to The Red Book of Jung

Matt Searles — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:58:26 -0000

I confess I cringed a little when I heard of the Red Books coming publishing.. The light that Jungian psychology is often understood under is.. a similar light as all new age stuff.. including the stuff that's a little.. well lets say escapist.. I think Jung is generally understood as having a little more substance.. but..

Well 90% of the time I end up in a random conversation with someone about Freud.. about all they have to say is that he was obsessed with sex... Seems to me, if you're going to be obsessed with something.. at least sex is on the more fun side.. but I mean that's what he's reduced down to for so many people today.

Just knowing a little of the origins of the Red Book.. it seemed like this could add to the problem of how Jung is understood..

It's also worth noting that Jung had tensions with his handlers.. with how he was being packaged.

On a person level.. I'm excited about the Red book cause... it just seems like.. "oh my gosh, what could we find in here" sorta thing.. like this is that particular moment in Jung's history that..

In term's of what's good for Jungian Psychology.... I think there's two things.. One is that you really want to facilitate study of the subject matter.. so.. on that level.. clearly, having the Red Book out.. is a good thing. The second thing, I think, is finding a way to communicate to our times.

Communicating to our times is like.. I think people need to understand it in a way that isn't some far out new-age -e thing.. They need to feel the solidity of the ideas.. On the other hand.. I don't know how many times I find myself in these situations where.. you know like out side of some working class bar.. people musing on so many things that have that kind of new-age-e quality comes up.. and the conversation expresses a kind of hunger that people have.. that Jungian psychology speaks to.. so I think this has to be a part of it as well.

I think the question of timing is interesting to.. It still feels like just a dawning thing.. this idea that human health should be thought of holistically.. this way that we see a certain amount of new-age-e ness creeping into treatment.. the dream that medicine might one day be more geared to the individual.. with advanced in our genetic understanding.. etc.. that one thinks the time for this sorta thing ain't too bad.

And finally.. I don't think one should worry too much about the critics. In the end, I don't know how much say they really have.. I think its much more about how the Jungian community communicates its self.. its about our journey.. and hell.. its not a bad thing to embrace one's critics.. especially if they have some kind of truth going on.. but.. most of the critics I encounter.. there truth has more to do with how badly stuff gets communicated then the stuff its self

Re: Finding Entry to The Red Book of Jung

Matt Searles — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:30:55 -0000

what do you mean about our need for some guidance through the pages?

Re: Finding Entry to The Red Book of Jung

Matt Searles — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:43:24 -0000

Oh, I wasn't sure if you meant.. "the quire" would need guidance..

But yeah.. reading a thing like that.. if you don't already have a framework for understanding this stuff.. well without reading it.. I'd imagine it would be difficult.. to then further it and read it with these sorts of modern prejudices... Mmmhmmm...

So I suppose the best that can be done is to participate in the surrounding conversations?

Re: Finding Entry to The Red Book of Jung

Matt Searles — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:34:58 -0000

Interesting...

Most people's relationship to the numinous, it seems to me, has many layers of intermediation to the extent to which there is very little consciousness of it at all.. to the extent that it all sounds like just a superstition.. and so I would tend to think that an encounter with the red book would be like.. they would feel no connection between it and there own layers of protections.. but clearly they would meet it with the same sorta attitudes they meet with it within them selves..

We have a different god.. a different set of ideas we are devoting our selves to.. we modern world beings.. from which flows our sense of what to value. To journey to this something else.. this numinous thing.. to our values.. what madness! Never mind going on a journey deep enough to find new values!

In this sense I don't feel like the numinous is really the feared thing so much as the wrath of the new god.. and then perhaps all numinous stuff is to be interpreted this way.

It's a little like.. the difference between temporal based fears of the numinous versus eternal fears of the numinous.. that is that the real numinous is.. this might sound crazy to say.. but when you look at the culture we give very young children.. we warp some of the archetypes in soft fuzzy outfits.. as if we are telling our kids something about this worlds relationship to the world they are coming to us from. "Look what we've figured out." The creators of this culture being like the ambassadors of the temporal world to the eternal..

And then.. of course.. they get into college.. and they question the carrot.. and the stronger among them perhaps harden to the stick? Or perhaps that's just what rock'n roll is about?

Err... but that's not a fear relationship to the numinous.. that's more just a soul urning.. the very sorta thing that if followed leads to places where numinous encounters are less threatening. It's the identification to the Matrix sorta thing.. and the taking up of Darth-Vader-Hood.. that's the issue. Which of course the new god has been very skillful at making unconscious.

I am greeted by the strange question of this social web.. what does it mean to our children that they can encounter the culture created by other ages ambassadors? Will we eventually come to a point where in.. all directions might be fed? Jesus, I never thought about that... The future of socialization...

Well I don't know where I am at this point in the train of thought.. I guess it all seems sorta complicated?

Re: Finding Entry to The Red Book of Jung

Matt Searles — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:27:39 -0000

lol, linear is difficult! I think it's a little like mind mapping.. where you take a jump and you know your on this meditation where anything that comes into your mind is gong to be related to whatever the question is you're asking.. but the little journey you go on.. takes you in crazy direction where on the phenomenological level of your experience of the journey, you feel like it has nothing to do with the question.. and you probably wouldn't want to do it publicly cause.. like.. the folks around you will have the same phenomenological experience... so there judgement would be to stop the process or that the process is wrong, or whatever.. but if you follow it long enough, it can be like an exquisite answering of the question.. if that quite makes sense. But it does require a certain willingness to leap into the dark...

On numinous experiences and the ego: I think I sorta come at it from the opposite direction or something. Most of the time I'm down right afraid to embrace my ego.. and that's something I think I need to work on. And I guess, thinking about it now, the less I embrace my ego, the sorta easier it is to... I'm not sure the word.. but for some things ego can be like extra baggage that encumbers your journey.

Most of the time my highest goal is something numinous. Like trying to break through.

That's not to say numinous experience doesn't shake my foundations.. or like.. doesn't have a lot of awe associated with it... or that I don't freak out and question my sanity.. But I think if you're experience with it is pro-active.. then.. as Campbell said.. the difference between a psychotic and a mystic is the mystic swims in the water the psychotic is stuck in.

The then I read this recent blog post by Franklin McMahon http://www.franklinmcmahon.com/embrace-your-ego... on the importance of embracing your ego... for business purposes.. and.. while I think I disagree with much.. I did start to wonder "well, what if I do embrace my ego?" Should I treat it like an archetype where I recognize but am careful not to identify with it? Or should I go so far as to identify with it.. but just try and stay mindful that it's not the whole of the story?

LOL, yeah.. so the Ego is what scares me!