When I can’t think of anything to write about, I surf Flickr’s Creative Commons sections for cool art. (Keyword “illustration” or “collage”, sorted by latest upload.) Here’s what I found this time:
Computers, in the hands of talented and/or interesting humans, make gorgeous things, no? People also prove creative with little bits of paper snipped out of magazines…
The spider is especially sinister. Somehow the whole collage reminds me of the recent Gawker debacle — probably because I’m primed to think about it. (That’s what happens when you follow a bunch of reporters on Twitter.) It’s something about the Uncle Sam “I want you” vibe, pointed finger and all, and the figure’s vague resemblance to Nick Denton.
“Revenue follows user attention, not the other way around; unlike money, there is a finite amount of minutes in the day, and a finite amount of users. To put it another way, attention is a zero sum game; every minute spent in Snapchat or LINE or WhatsApp is a minute not spent in Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.” — Ben Thompson on Stratechery
Scarcity is the key to economic value. If something is abundant and easily accessible, it’s not valuable. If something is limited and hard-to-get, it is valuable.
The concept of supply and demand — the relationship between the two forces — is so fascinating to me. Simple principle, but I keep turning it over in my head.
Supply and demand pressures come from asymmetry. From lack of balance. If Billy has more oranges than Sue, he has leverage, assuming Sue wants oranges. If Erica has more information than Rohan, she has a different kind of leverage, as long as Rohan is interested in her information.
Essentially, the key to business success is persuading someone to give you money for an object or a service. You have the thing or the skills. They have the money and desire.
Again, I know this is all very basic, but thinking it through makes my brain happy.
Yesterday I thought of a really good premise for an article. Now I can’t remember the idea. It arose after I listened to the first episode of The Awl’s podcast on the way to work. Editor John Herrman served as the show’s host and interviewed Jenna Worthman, the New York Times reporter who profiled Instagram gossip rag The Shade Room.
They talked about how weird and exhilarating the internet economy is, how platforms like Facebook respond to the way users interact on them more than the companies innovate independently. This dynamic makes room for miniature entrepreneurship in the cracks between the code — for instance, The Shade Room.
As Herrman said in The Verge’s profile of the publication, “Our entire economy is just a giant science fiction writing prompt.” (The editor should have hyphenated “science fiction” — I can’t turn off my proofreading brain after work.)
And yet, for the life of me, I can’t remember the idea sparked by his discussion with Jenna Worthman. I suppose I could just replay the podcast and hopefully retrieve my notion, but that seems tedious. I’d rather be uninspired than bored. So I’m watching The Good Wife instead.
It’s fun to have a blog because I can document inanities.
Excessive lyricism lies ahead. Sometimes I can’t resist over-writing.
I love cities, but I don’t want to live in one. Every time I visit San Francisco it smells more like piss, you know? For me, home is a mid-size town, a suburb on a hill. But of course I’m grateful to be able to access urban cultural nodes, to watch live theater and buy pricey drinks, to browse bookstores and pretend the panhandlers aren’t talking to me. Momentary immersion is exciting. High-profile cities are glamorous despite all the grime — the word “cosmopolitan” accrued its connotations honestly.
Photo by Mike Babiarz: “My downstairs neighbor Marni doing some maintenance on her Yamaha XS650.”
City women are easy for me to idolize. Do people find the opposite of their own attributes attractive, or is that just me? I’m drawn to sophistication, to convincingly affected indifference. What’s more enchanting than the ability to stroll past mounds of trash without paying attention?
Photo of NYC’s Greenwich Village by Ryan Vaarsi: “There is not, despite appearances, a garbage strike underway at the moment.”
I’m not a city woman. I could never be a city woman. I care too much about how I’m perceived, and the temperament for regular cocktail parties has never been my strong suit.
Yes, realistically, my two-dimensional idea of a city woman doesn’t exist, but let’s roll with it.
Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter in the movie version of The Golden Compass.
I think of Mrs Coulter from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Vaguely evil under the tight dress and well-cut wool coat. (In Mrs Coulter’s case, extremely evil.) A tool of power who nevertheless wields it, a woman among men who relishes her feminine influence because the alternative is recognizing their masculine advantage.
I realized while writing this that all of my notions about femininity are particular facets of an inferiority complex dressed up by certain aesthetics. The observation is not new. Besides, I have the same reaction to, like, indie music. I’m such a born hipster but I feel mad defensive about it. (A reaction that became classically hipster immediately after the phenomenon achieved meme status.)
I want to be aloof and reserved and brash and sassy and especially never self-conscious. I want to have Marie Antoinette’s cake and eat it too. Okay, fine, I want to be Blair from Gossip Girl, even though she’s excruciatingly self-conscious.
I am continually trying to parse femininity, to practice ladyhood, and stumbling on contradictions. Being human is weird. (QED.)
Sam Biddle wrote for GQ, “When even our genuine friendships are being quantified, what hope can we possibly have for treating labor as more than a pack of pixels?” This is an obvious reference to Facebook and all the other social networks. Personal relationships are uploaded piece by piece — voluntarily, it’s worth noting — and then rigorously monetized.
We are eager to feed snapshots of daily life into websites or apps that promise to show our acquaintances. Soon we learn to rely on digital hearts and stars when defining our social value.
Biddle seems afraid that the same laissez-faire, click-happy attitude will apply to labor and transform the American job market. The evidence behind this notion is ample. Worry has spread so widely that I don’t feel like I need to substantiate with a link. But I do want to help tweak the argument’s focal angle.
Biddle touched on this topic again when he responded to a “gig economy” advertorial on Medium’s tech site Backchannel. The article, called “The Full-Time Job Is Dead”, was sponsored by Upwork, a middleman freelancer market created when Elance and oDesk merged. Biddle wrote, addressing the Upwork authors, “What you’ve described is a societal nightmare in which the only employment is deeply precarious, and only employers benefit.”
I don’t disagree. However, as far as I can tell, we are just seeing the repercussions of supply and demand. (Upwork still bears responsibility — like Biddle, I think their business is heinous.) There are more workers than jobs, so employers have leverage. It’s that simple, right? Of course the people hiring can do whatever they want. The only way to deal with the problem is regulation. (Or is there another solution that I’m unaware of?)
Alternatively, we could wait for the market to change on its own… which might not happen. Unless some bizarre disruption takes place.
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