André Klein's Blog, page 30

The Role Of Reading In The Age Of Constant Digital Distraction

While some people still entertain themselves with the predictable mudfight of "ebook vs paper book", I find another question far more interesting, namely the role of reading in the age of continuous partial attention. How do we read in the 21st century? What do we read? Or do we read, at all?

As Seth Godin wrote in a recent blogpost:

One of the very real truths of our culture is being hidden in the dramatic shift from paper to ebook–lots of people are moving from paper to 'no ebook'.

So, instead of lamenting the lack of paper smell and the disappearance of book covers to impress potential mating partners, maybe we should observe our own reading habits first. I'll start:

For example, I have to admit that sometimes the Internet makes me crazy. It's just too fast, too much, too random sometimes. I found out that reading can be the perfect antidote to the darker sides of the "always online" state where the horrors of multitasking, procrastination and twitchy eyelids reside.

Reading seems to counter many of the negative behaviors that come with daily Internet use: they make you slow down and use your imagination, they allow you to experience psychological realities not from an outer but from an inner perspective.

As much as I love the Internet and its infinite amounts of awesome, inspiring, informative, (insert adjective) content, I notice that the more I consume of it, the less I seem to be able to value.

Therefore: the more I use the Internet, the more books I need to read.

(If I don't get to read my daily portion, I don't want to know what happens.)

Reading good books (mostly novels that are mentally and emotionally challenging, not just "entertaining") I seem to be able to retrieve some of that focus lost on the bottom of the first graph.

sidenote: I don't always use graphs, but when I do, they make total and immediate sense without being contrived in any way, shape or form. *load sarcasm module*

But enough with my own pseudo-scientific observations for now.

Publishing In The Age Of Immediate Gratification

I had this idea a while ago that if I'm beginning to see my attention span being altered by daily torrents of online information (especially the "social media" stuff) I'm probably not the only one.

Then I saw that a lot of people were complaining about overpriced ebooks.

So I put two and two together and starting building "books" that were geared at small wallets and short attention spans. And, surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly they sold very well and still go like hotcakes.

I put "books" in quotes because I'm not even sure they are really books. I look at them more in terms of the old Marshall McLuhanism of "the book is an information service." The publications in questions are little information snacks that can be consumed in 5-10 minutes, complete with some experimental illustrations and not more than necessary text.

If a novel by Thomas Mann is a full-fledged three course dinner, for example, these mini-books (not sure that is a better term) are like a sandwiches in between two meetings or changing trains.

The idea here is not to downgrade quality in favor of quick consumption, rather to shorten its quantity to allow people with increasingly limited amounts of time and attention spans, to read them in the first place.

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img credit:  Some rights reserved by TangYauHoong

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Has Content Curation Become A New Creativity For The Masses?

When I first heard the term "digital content curation" I thought of Picasso-peddling online arts merchants, vernissages on Facebook and high heeled iPhone users staggering through Italian designer boutiques.

But what does it really mean?

Traditionally, the term curator refereed to a person who selects, manages and collects works of art or (cultural artifacts of any kind) in a museum, art gallery, library, etc.

Digital content curation seemed to be the buzzword of 2011. A digital content curator does more or less the same things as his analog equivalent, except he deals with digital works of art, bits of information, etc.

Where The Academic And The Layman Intersect

There seem to be two ends of the spectrum here. In its best sense, digital content curation could refer to gargantuan projects like archive.org which collects, files and stores all kinds of digital content for future generations, from old movies and advertising clips and newsreels to student films and much more. A lot of this content is in the public domain and can be used in all kinds of projects. When I was hosting a little experimental TV program with friends, for example, we relied heavily on the Prelinger archive for its infinite reels of footage.

But this complex archiving and building of digital libraries is only one example of digital content curation.

On the other side of the spectrum we have (micro)blogging such as Twitter and Tumblr and services like paper.li or scoop.it!, or even Facebook, all of whose users are participating in digital content curation, whether directly by posting and summarizing, or by reblogging, retweeting and sharing.

The idea here is that we're drowning in an ocean of information and we desperately need people who select, store and manage these mind-boggling amounts of data so that we can consume them more easily.

Many of the people I follow on Twitter are great curators of obscure and/or unique finds. Together with Reddit and Instapaper they have long replaced the daily newspaper for me (not that I ever liked the huge flapping paper thing) and with their help I find articles, videos and news I could never find by consuming a prepackaged magazine or newspaper alone.

On the other hand, I've dabbled a bit with content curation myself, both on my personal Twitter account and on our Learn Out Live Tumblr and my experience with it was and still is … ambivalent.

Content Curation As Ersatz-Creativity

There seems to be a growing notion that in an age of informational abundance curating content equals creating content. And while I do see the importance, necessity and benefits of having people sift through the daily torrents of bits and bytes to order, summarize and distribute materials, there's also a growing sense of wariness, at least on my part.

There's just so much content out there that I could spend my whole day just sifting through Tumblrs, twitter accounts, blogs and RSS feeds, selecting the interesting bits, grouping, tagging, and redistributing my finds.

And what I've found is that it generates a very different experience than actually creating content. It feels like moving horizontally through an endless expanse of stuff, sighting content from an objective bird's-eye view of the mind, horizons forever receding. It feels rather impersonal and detached, in other words and couldn't be further from the intensely personal and psychological adventure of creating things on my own. Even the most mediocre drawing or short story I can produce is still more meaningful to me than the most awesome regurgitated content. And if I didn't organize my day in a way that encourages creative activity, I would soon drown in an ocean of curation.

In an age of Social Media we've all become content curators. Everyone who posts a Bob Dylan video on Facebook, who puts an "inspirational" poster on Pinterest, who reblogs vintage movie clips on Tumblr, tweets Marylin Monroe quotes, we're all sifting endlessly through a neverending flow of information, constantly rehashing past centuries, infinitely reiterating, like pressing repeat on the record-player of human history.

But does it really replace creating works of our own, finding a voice and learning to "speak" with paintings, music and words?

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img:   Some rights reserved by onesevenone

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Has Content Curation Become The New Creativity For The Masses?

When I first heard the term "digital content curation" I thought of Picasso-peddling online arts merchants, vernissages on Facebook and high heeled iPhone users staggering through Italian designer boutiques.

But what does it really mean?

Traditionally, the term curator refereed to a person who selects, manages and collects works of art or (cultural artifacts of any kind) in a museum, art gallery, library, etc.

Digital content curation seemed to be the buzzword of 2011. A digital content curator does more or less the same things as his analog equivalent, except he deals with digital works of art, bits of information, etc.

Where The Academic And The Layman Intersect

There seem to be two ends of the spectrum here. In its best sense, digital content curation could refer to gargantuan projects like archive.org which collects, files and stores all kinds of digital content for future generations, from old movies and advertising clips and newsreels to student films and much more. A lot of this content is in the public domain and can be used in all kinds of projects. When I was hosting a little experimental TV program with friends, for example, we relied heavily on the Prelinger archive for its infinite reels of footage.

But this complex archiving and building of digital libraries is only one example of digital content curation.

On the other side of the spectrum we have (micro)blogging such as Twitter and Tumblr and services like paper.li or scoop.it!, or even Facebook, all of whose users are participating in digital content curation, whether directly by posting and summarizing, or by reblogging, retweeting and sharing.

The idea here is that we're drowning in an ocean of information and we desperately need people who select, store and manage these mind-boggling amounts of data so that we can consume them more easily.

Many of the people I follow on Twitter are great curators of obscure and/or unique finds. Together with Reddit and Instapaper they have long replaced the daily newspaper for me (not that I ever liked the huge flapping paper thing) and with their help I find articles, videos and news I could never find by consuming a prepackaged magazine or newspaper alone.

On the other hand, I've dabbled a bit with content curation myself, both on my personal Twitter account and on our Learn Out Live Tumblr and my experience with it was and still is … ambivalent.

Content Curation As Ersatz-Creativity

There seems to be a growing notion that in an age of informational abundance curating content equals creating content. And while I do see the importance, necessity and benefits of having people sift through the daily torrents of bits and bytes to order, summarize and distribute materials, there's also a growing sense of wariness, at least on my part.

There's just so much content out there that I could spend my whole day just sifting through Tumblrs, twitter accounts, blogs and RSS feeds, selecting the interesting bits, grouping, tagging, and redistributing my finds.

And what I've found is that it generates a very different experience than actually creating content. It feels like moving horizontally through an endless expanse of stuff, sighting content from an objective bird's-eye view of the mind, horizons forever receding. It feels rather impersonal and detached, in other words and couldn't be further from the intensely personal and psychological adventure of creating things on my own. Even the most mediocre drawing or short story I can produce is still more meaningful to me than the most awesome regurgitated content. And if I didn't organize my day in a way that encourages creative activity, I would soon drown in an ocean of curation.

In an age of Social Media we've all become content curators. Everyone who posts a Bob Dylan video on Facebook, who puts an "inspirational" poster on Pinterest, who reblogs vintage movie clips on Tumblr, tweets Marylin Monroe quotes, we're all sifting endlessly through a neverending flow of information, constantly rehashing past centuries, infinitely reiterating, like pressing repeat on the record-player of human history.

But does it really replace creating works of our own, finding a voice and learning to "speak" with paintings, music and words?

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img:   Some rights reserved by onesevenone

~

About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Kindle & Co: Between The Revolution and Degeneration of Reading Ebooks

The first ebook I ever saw (it was at the end of the 90s) was one of these "How To Make Money Online" schemes. It came with all the obligatory gratuitous images of bank notes, long sales letter including "social proof" of how Anne and Herbert became millionaires by following the "three step guide" and repeated oversized "buy now" buttons, not to mention a 3d-mockup of the "book", which in fact was just a flat pdf.

I always wondered who would be so stupid to give these people money for their hopelessly overpriced publications. Even if the content of these dubious electronic books was beneficial, who would actually read a book on a computer? It seemed so counterintuitive.

From The Gutter To The Stars

Somewhere around this time I also discovered the Gutenberg Project and its hundreds of freely available classic novels and plays. Downloading a text file that contained Goethe's Faust I wondered what to do with it.  I certainly was not going to read it staring into my pre-TFT era screen. To the surprise of my friends, I started consuming these pieces by letting a computerized text-to-speech voice read them out loud. To cover the uncanny effect of listening to a lobotomized virtual "Sam" or "Harry", I put some Brian Eno ambient music in the background. My friends thought I had gone crazy, listening to the slaughtering of one classic text after the other, its broken limbs and innards insufficiently bedded in "music for airports".

Ebooks: The Resurrection

Fast forwarding to the year 2012: ebooks have shed their dreary past of cheapskate schemes and clunky delivery. They have become a fixture of contemporary culture, although I still don't know when exactly the ebook stopped being something you wouldn't mention in public, and started becoming a serious alternative to dead-tree reading.

For me, at least, it was with the discovery of e-ink. The main drawback of electronic reading had always been the glare. With e-ink, even though the words were rendered on the "page" not by ink but by circuits, the feeling was comfortably unlike staring into a desk lamp.

But the further the ebook makes its foray into our homes, minds and hearts, a new generation of Luddites is fighting its advance.

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(img via libraryland.tumblr.com via jeffreykoterba.com )

Of Book Fetishists and Coffee Table Literates

Whether it's articles by Jonathan Franzen claiming that ebooks are "damaging society" or those worrying about an ebook-induced memory-impairment, the criticism is rising parallel with Amazon's ebook sales.

Speaking about Amazon and ebook criticism, I've been following a blog called "The Kindle Monologues" for the last few weeks whose purpose is to collect and address the complaints of e-reading critics worldwide, its tagline saying: "I'd rather read books, than whine like a child with a skinned knee, about formats, and what constitutes a "real" book."

Surprisingly, the arguments of ebook critics are highly redundant:

ebooks don't smell goodwith ereaders it's impossible to show off your book to people in publicereaders need to be charged too oftenetc.

Here's a link to the entertaining rebuttal of these and more by the Kindle Monologues. Reading and thinking about this, it seems that a lot of ebook critics are in fact not as interested in the actual reading as in the secondary effects such as being seen as a literary person, touching and smelling, etc. Here's a telling quote from the article:

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first image credit:   Some rights reserved by kandinski

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

3 Things To Do Instead Of Facebooking

To those who've been reading this blog for a while, it will not come as a surprise that my relationship to Mr. Zuckerberg's all-seing Social Network is… well… complicated.

I haven't yet deleted (sorry, it's not possible to delete one's Facebook account, I meant of course "temporarily deactivated") my Facebook account. The only reason I still "exist" there is because I need to keep a few pages and apps alive, and no – there seems to be no easy way to transfer these to a new account.

So, when I use Facebook once in a while in the form of replying to a private message or group thread, I do it via email. Social necessities are being met, and I don't need to set foot into the colorblind world of the brain-sucking Book Of Faces. Period.

And while I described here how to use a Chrome app to block Facebook, I recently opted for an even deeper approach, allowing me to not just avoid the time-wasting but also block the infamous Like-Button and it's cookies on all browsers at all times.

Having said that, there are far more fun, creative and stimulating ways to waste time! *cough*

1. Reddit

This is a platform that many people shy away from due to its somewhat clunky-looking interface. In many ways it is the opposite of Facebook and a true example of what an Internet community can look like in all its glory (and gore).

Instead of just giving a lobotomized thumbs up or staying silent, users can downvote! Let's face it, some posts on Social Networks are really bad and they don't deserve "Likes", they scream for a clear and unequivocal NO!Going through the hundreds of sub-reddits there are thriving communities of witty and knowledgeable individuals to be found about almost any topic from linguistics to, well… birds with arms?.It's anonymous. People don't have pictures or extensive background-info. There's just a nickname and the value of the written word or posted content. And it seems to make for a lot more revealing, intensive debates.please note: if you aren't careful you might step into some dark, obscure corners. Some parts of reddit are not safe for work (or life!) but they are usually marked as such. In other words: Watch your step! (You have been warned.)2. Tumblr

If there's one way to describe Tumblr I'd say it's a blogging platform for people too lazy to write or a visuals-based Twitter. Here are few of my favourite things:

you get your own blog and full control over the look & feel (edit the source-code until satisfied)follow other blogs or tags and find interesting new materials around a certain topicsee something that you like? hit reblog and it now appears on your blog in all its gloryNext to Twitter, Tumblr is a great tool for content-curation and we've been using it intensively here to find always fresh and exciting content about education, books and (paperless) publishing. Check out our Tumblr here.3. Twitter

Many people don't get Twitter. Facebooking seems so easy. But Twitter? What to do with it? How to use it? And these hash-tags? It all seems too much, so people rather post more baby photos and "inspirational" quotes on their walls. But here's why Twitter is awesome:

pin-point certain users or topics to receive live-updates about almost anythingget bite-sized novelty input in the shape of articles, videos, images and witty 140 character statementssend your own Tweets out into space. Most of them won't get a comment. And they don't have to. People acknowledge tweets, sometimes they retweet or respond but generally the experience is of a great field of ambient connectivity.

Note: Using Twitter effectively will take a while. It's all about "following" the right people and not following too many. Once you get a batch of interesting folks, the party begins.

Conclusion: Even besides Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit there are tons of other wacky ways to spend or (waste) time on the Internet. So, why Facebook? Just because "everybody's doing it"? Or is there really some deep unfathomable value to clicking Like until the cows come home?

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 img:   Some rights reserved by Lillais.Burke

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

Online Teaching Platforms: Why We Don't (Really) Need Them To Make A Living

The blogosphere has been on fire for the last few days, ablaze with articles, comments, rants and promises, all regarding this simple question: If it's really possible to make a full-time living teaching online, why isn't it working out for so many?

It was almost as if a wormhole had opened up in time and space, because as this fiery debate was unfolding over various blogs and platforms, I was busy addressing the same issue working on the re-release of a book about exactly this topic originally published in May 2011.

Spurred on by the impression that this question was still a pressing one, I kept on writing and enjoyed the discussions from afar.

It all started with a simple question by one of my colleagues who posted that he was looking for alternatives to a well-known online teaching platform in order to make his teaching activities economically viable.

Kirsten Winkler dedicated an article to this question, titled The Ant and the Grasshopper – Why (most) Teaching Platforms fail  in which she wrote:

I said it a thousand times: the key is to build your own brand on your own turf. Get a domain, start your own website and online shop. Lead social media efforts to your own home, not to your platform accounts, they come and go.

To many teachers starting out this seems tough. And, well… it is. You'll have to learn to build a (semi)-professional homepage, create something appealing and set up a way to handle lessons and payments, but even if you've done all that technical stuff, the real work only begins: attracting students and promoting your service.

And yet, whatever work you invest into this process, you own it.

There's No Easy Way Out

If you sign up for a teaching platform, they will never force you to grow. Instead, they will tell you to drive traffic to your profile on their site, because their business models are built on the commissions they receive from students taught through their platform.

Teaching platforms promise an easy way out, based on (at least) three false claims:

you'll get lots of students by teaching on a platform: It is true that you might "get" more students, but many of them were lured into the platform by offers of free or highly discounted lessons, as Kirsten points out in her article. Even if some of them are willing to pay, it will be tough to accumulate enough to to pay the rent, especially if you live in the Western world!they'll do marketing for you: They don't. They will market their site as a whole.  In fact, they couldn't care less about you as an individual. At least this is the feeling that I had when working on several of these platforms. You're just a number, generating commissions, an exchangeable gear in a complex machine.you can use their classroom technology: almost all virtual classrooms I've seen up to this day are running on Flash and are either highly complicated and/or buggy. In other words: you don't need them. If you want to make a living online, it's best to focus on 1-1 sessions and handle all of this through a free Software like Skype.Starting The Journey Or Delaying It Indefinitely

Now, to be fair, if you want to experiment with online teaching, experience a virtual classroom session or do voluntary work, these platforms are interesting. But if you need to make a living by teaching online, it will be hard to pay the rent by relying solely on these platforms. Due to the competition of teachers from all over the world, prices are in a rush to the bottom, and in order to make this viable, you'll have to teach so many hours per day that it won't be worth it.

Becoming an independent online teacher is not easy. As Kirsten pointed out in yet another article:

If you start building your brand right now (or after you finish reading this post) it will probably take you at least six months of hard work every single day (no weekends) before you'll see any kind of relevant traction.

No matter how long it takes, you're not working for a company that doesn't care about you! Instead, you're investing into the future with each line of code, each blog post you write. And it's so much more than just being a teacher. It's the beginning of an adventure, a completely new lifestyle which first of all pushes you to grow and secondly opens up endless opportunities.

To give you an example, when I started out as an online teacher I had no clue that I would one day write books and produce language learning materials that would sell in major ebook stores all over the world.

I had no clue that I would write a blog with a growing followership which would open up all kinds of interesting connections and opportunities.

Little did I know that with the experience gained along the way I would one day help people build their own businesses and websites.

And if I  had continued searching my luck on a teaching platform, I would still be searching and wouldn't have stumbled onto any of this.

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img:   Some rights reserved by HikingArtist.com

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

The Blue & White Blues or: How Facebook Protects Your Content From Yourself

Recently, I had an interesting talk with my mother who fervently refuses to be pulled into the fangs of the Social Network.

She said something to the effect of: "Well, you see I'm not sitting in front of the screen all day long, I do understand that people who are working with computers will often quickly check Facebook during the day, but I just don't have time for that."

Thinking about this, it seems that her concept of Facebooking (far from being any kind of "productivity tool") relates more to the cigarette or coffee break of 20th century office workers: to quickly check out of work and into some idle conversation.

Now, these breaks have been keeping office drones alive for decades, head above the waterline of work, quick injections of socialized and caffeinated distraction.

But there are only so many breaks a worker can take during a day before her work will stack up and his boss come knocking.

The Infinite Coffee Break

With the Facebook Break on the other hand, we have an entirely different species of diversion.

In the innocent belief that it's "only a few seconds" the worker will continuously check in, while these seconds silently add up to minutes and hours. Facebook is a never-ending coffee-break, in other words. And not just that, it's constantly accessible, just a click away.

Add to this the fact that Facebook has encroached so much onto our work and private lives that your job may even require going to Facebook, whether to retrieve a client's lost email or phone-number or to invite colleagues (who don't read their email but do check their Facebook) to an important meeting.

In this sense, Facebook is the perfect example how our modern concept of work is increasingly fused with pleasure. Another example are the offices of Google or Lego that look more like playgrounds than workplaces. The Workplace has long ago stopped to be just a place of work. Now it's the hipster's first frontier, a surrogate family, a lifestyle choice.

Peculiarities Of Facebook Standard Time

I've already discussed the problem of Facebook striving to become an Internet within the Internet, a walled garden, pruned of all dangers and excitement: flattened blue & white boredom. Read the article Why Facebook is Not the Internet or: The Difference between Leading and Cheerleading for more information)

The implications of this are hard to exaggerate, for it seems that anything posted on Facebook enters some kind of gargantuan centrifuge that strips it of all meaning and context.

I'm not sure how this works exactly, but it seems to have to do with the fact that anything dropped into this well is dressed up in blue & white uniform and set marching in line – flanked by billions of fellow Newsfeed items – all racing towards some end-point of absolute meaninglessness.

Somehow, the word Gleichschaltung comes to mind.

Even the most controversial or despicable content seems to be flattened out by this Great Equalizer, stripped of its dimension and context by likes and comments, spiraling towards some kind of lobotomized permanent repository along with billions of holiday snapshots and drooling pets or babies.

Delete History: A Mission Impossible

These latent feelings regarding Facebook recently became amplified when I set out for a simple experiment: to see if it was possible to "reset" a profile by removing all likes and posts and start out fresh.

What started out as an idle idea quickly turned into hours of frustrated and ultimately futile attempts. I looked for a "delete history" button: negative. I tried to use different macros to automate the task of deleting items, one by one, off the wall. Many of the "recipes" posted by other users trying to accomplish the same didn't work, some of them just a few weeks old, posted along with their apologies that Facebook "kept changing stuff". Some of them worked partially, they deleted parts of the new "Timeline". But ultimately, there seems to be no way to "wipe" a Facebook profile.

In doing all of this I noticed a few things:

Facebook fastidiously categorizes all actions on their Network in groups such as "Likes", "Posts", etc. making it impossible to centrally access all of the data.As easy as it is to add new stuff, once you start trying to remove it, a lot of bugs appear, among them:

switching to the old profile view by downgrading the "user-agent" to Internet Explorer 6 or 7, only a part of the posts show up. – switching between the mobile site and the main site, there seem to be severe discrepancies between content: what shows here doesn't show there. – trying to delete "likes" of pages, companies, etc. on a personal profile keeps older "likes" present even after removing everything on screen, making the former essentially immortal and irremovable aspects of a user profile.

It may be that these bugs were only related to the browser or system that I was using, but for that they seemed far too diverse and commonplace.

I couldn't help shake the feeling that Facebook was either really clumsily built or militantly asserting its territory and protecting my content from deletion.

In the end, you can't blame them. It's their servers. Whatever you put there, it's theirs. Your content and preferences, meticulously entered into its database is the fabric of their business model. It's the old "If You're Not Paying for It You're the Product" and never did I realize it more than after this little experiment.

And as usual, I have to admit that while Facebook is an easy target, Google and Twitter and others are no saints, either.

In the end, if you want a certain amount of control on the net, you'll have to rent your own web space. Period.

Related Articles:

The New Facebook: Your Life Story in Likes Or: The Perfect Surveillance Machine

Why Facebook is Not the Internet or: The Difference between Leading and Cheerleading

How To Use Facebook Without Using Facebook In A Few Simple Steps

Where's Your Home On The Internet? Of Refugee Camps and (B)log Cabins

How The Like-Button Killed All Credibility

How To Give Facebook A Face-Lift!

Are We Using Social Media Or is Social Media Using Us?

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img:   Some rights reserved by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

3 Ways To Get More & Better Ideas

People sometimes ask me: "Where do you get all these ideas for your blog posts and books?"

Do I climb the looming summits of some private Kilimanjaro of the mind, digging for gold with a pickaxe?

Or do I descend into some underground lair of wild ideas, slaying the best and dragging them to the light?

It is far less adventurous than that, I'm afraid.

The honest answer is: I absolutely don't have a clue where they come from.

Far from having a systematic process of generating them, I'm more or less at their mercy. There are many methods of "being creative" and while I don't think that they're bad, real creativity can't be coerced, at least in my experience.

But there are certain things that at least seem to provide a heightened probability field for their gestation:

1. Milking The Mundane

The only summit worth climbing for ideas, as far as I can see, is a mountain of unwashed dishes. Now, that doesn't sound all too exciting? And yes, it isn't. But it seems to work better than any smart mind-mapping method or $19.99 "creative thinking" manual.

I've read somewhere that the sensation of running water may be beneficial for stimulating certain neuronal currents, hence the many reports of "shower thinkers" who get their Eureka moments in the bathroom.

Apparently, the phenomenon is so widespread that someone managed to turn it into cash by selling waterproof notepads for the shower.

2. Networking Vs. Facebooking

In his book "Where ideas come from" Steve Johnson takes us on a tour of the "history of innovation", hunting down behavioral patterns and environmental settings that create new ideas.

What he found is that the classic Eureka moment of the lone thinker sitting at his table contemplating something until suddenly the big picture comes together might be a concept that needs to be updated.

Behind the stories Johnson tells about historical innovations we see a larger pattern: Instead of the individual that comes up with new ideas alone, we see social networks in which innovation is emerging.

For more about this concept, I highly recommend his presentation on TED or Youtube:

 "Social Network, you say? Great, I'm on Facebook all day long but I never get any ideas, at all."

It seems we have to make a distinction here between social networks in an outer and an inner psychological sense.

As far as I understand it, each idea is generated by another one, a bit like cell proliferation in biology. Therefore, there needs to be some kind of starting point, an input with a certain quality.

These inputs can be generated by reading good books or talking to people. They form a network. My high school philosophy teacher used to tell us that he enjoyed regular conversations with Plato and Aristotle and while we laughed about his "voices in the head" what he really meant was that he had created an inner social network.

Also, it doesn't seem to be enough to just add 5,000 friends or "follow" smart people. There needs to be some kind of mirror-image of these networks on the inside of a person.

3. Not Looking, Not Knowing, Being Surprised

Now, after having speculated about the effects of water on the brain and esoteric concepts of an "inner pantheon of ideas" I have to return to what I said above: I don't have a clue where good ideas come from!

It seems that the best ideas come unexpectedly and seemingly out of nowhere.

There certainly is some sensation of just going with the flow or even being in an almost dreamlike state, where the everyday consciousness is somewhat faded out or in the background and doesn't block new idea downloads.

And again, while methods like Oblique Strategies can sometimes work, it seems that it can't be learned to have ideas. Many people will disagree with me, especially those who make a living selling books and seminars about "how to be creative" but I think in the end we have to admit that we don't have a clue about certain things and over-analyzing them won't yield their inner workings.

I've found the following quote from an interview with science fiction author William Gibson also very telling:

"[T]he part of me that sits here having this conversation with you is incapable of doing any very original literary work. The part of me that creates stuff is right now largely offline and unavailable, and I couldn't summon it if my life depended on it. I have to make myself available and hope it turns up. To me, that's where the good stuff comes from. It's like, William Gibson doesn't get ideas for novels while I'm walking around in the world" – source

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 Some rights reserved by blankdots

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

The Unbearable Uncertainty Of Ebooks

A book, printed on paper, bound in leather or glued together is a comforting thing. You can put it on a shelf, and it won't go anywhere. If you scrawl in the margins, it will remain. If you leave it in a dry place and don't drop any water, fire or bombs on it, it might even survive hundreds of years without any effort!

Ebooks on the other hand can't boast such a certain fate. In fact, it's rather difficult to pin them down. They change their fonts and paragraphs on a reader's whim, they fill the pages horizontally or vertically, they move from smartphone to desktop to ereader, they seem to be in constant motion and transformation.

The books you purchased on your Kindle, for example, where are they? In the "cloud", they say. Which sort of means that they're everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time.

We don't have a clue if people in the future will treat PDFs or ePUB files in the same way our archeologists look at ancient Sumerian clay tablets, for example.

Ebooks: Little Quantum Critters

Some people hate ebooks for that. They don't want their tomes to act like Schroedinger's Cat, all uncertain and shifting between existence and non-existence like flickering lightbulbs. They want something solid and reliable which doesn't change once you look away or accidentally press a button.

And while I do sympathize with the general sentiment to preserve and conserve the time-tested, fighting ebooks seems a rather Quixotic attempt.

It is often said that we live in 'uncertain times'. And while this may or may not be true (haven't people always claimed that their times were the worst?) uncertainty surely has some great advantages.

One of them is flexibility. Another one is ubiquity.

These are among the reasons why ebooks are an increasingly popular alternative to paper books.

The flexibility part I already discussed above (changing fonts, size, paragraphs, etc.). But what about ubiquity?

Instead of lugging around cardboard boxes full of dictionaries and paperback novels the next time you move, you can put all of them on your ereader, slip it into your pocket and be done with it. And if they're in the cloud, there's no need to even carry a device. A username and password is enough.

Unfortunately, there are some barriers to this ubiquity. These barriers however are more of an economic and political than a technical kind.

Reclaiming Ubiquity

For example, if you buy a book over at Amazon it may not be that easy (or almost impossible) to copy it to a different device such as Kobo or Sony Reader which, of course, use different formats.

Luckily, software like Calibre makes it relatively easy to convert and transfer your tomes above and beyond artificial platform boundaries, but the ebook market of today can nevertheless  be confounding with its different formats, prices, devices and (arbitrary) limitations.

From a publishing perspective it gets especially confusing once you try to decide on what platforms and under what conditions you want to place a work while taking all your different readers (who own different ereading devices) into consideration.

Therefore, I'm happy to announce that after days of intense code-wrangling and database-tinkering we now have a completely revamped bookshop, in which you can find all our publications in all their available formats at one comforting glance! (After all, with all this uncertainty, it's nice to have things organized a bit, don't you think?)

learnoutlive.com/shop

If you have any suggestions, wishes, etc, please do tell us!

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img:   Some rights reserved by h.koppdelaney

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.

All You Need Is A Good Idea: How We Create Our Own 'Entertainment Industry'

In the wake of publishing two picture books for German language learners I became aware again of how how the Internet is the perfect roadbed for fresh ideas. Both of these publications have become instant best sellers.  Did I need expensive equipment to produce them? No. Did I have to pay a gatekeeper? No. Did it take years from the first idea to the final product? No.

I went straight from idea to application, to publication, all in just a few hours.

Am I saying that it's dead simple to publish a bestseller? Certainly not. It's still a lot of work.

But the playing field has been significantly leveled.

Perfect Is The Enemy Of Done

Did you ever meet someone who's great at drawing, making music or anything and you said: "Wow, that's great, why don't you share this with a wider audience?" and then the person said: "Well, I just don't think it's good enough, yet."

Now, this is not to say that there's a sleeping Beethoven or Shakespeare in all of us. (If there is, he has to be coaxed out with some serious work or by the right environment.) Maybe some things really shouldn't be published.

On the other hand, there is indeed lots of mediocre stuff out there. And much of it is by no means the product of people like you and me but backed by corporate capital. If you take any engineered pop starlet of the day and scratch the glossy surface, beneath there's just mediocrity. Mediocrity all the way down.

They just slapped on so much make-belief make-up that we don't bother to look twice.

The Entertainment Industry's Fear Of Risks

Maybe, Hollywood and Co. aren't in a crisis because of the Internet. Maybe, it's not piracy that keeps their sales down, but mediocrity. How often does a big label sign an unknown artist just based on his gut-feeling? How often is not a great idea but simply extensive marketing research the raison d'être for that next Blockbuster or thinly clad "diva"?

The entertainment industry, despite all of its apparent evil, is also "just human". They don't want to take big risks. If there are millions at stake it's better to be on the safe side than to do something new and ground-breaking. So they're just busy rehashing whatever worked the year before. The result: increasingly boring books, movies and music.

An Army Of Ideas: Just Pick One

On the other hand of this spectrum, there's people like you and me. We don't have access to expensive equipment or mountains of cash to dominate production facilities and distribution channels.

But we don't have anything to lose. And our ideas are legion.

Shifting away from physical goods to digital goods, online production and distribution are just a click away and often free.

Whereas movies are still difficult to make without a lot of funding, making music has become available to almost anyone with a computer and a bit of recording gear. Writing and publishing books seems to least depend on the technology: Theoretically, anyone with access to a keyboard can write a bestseller. But in practice, it all depends on that one idea.

If you got one, go for it! If it succeeds, great. If not, get up and try again!

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img:   Some rights reserved by TangYauHoong

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About the author: André Klein was born in Germany, has grown up and lived in many different places including Thailand, Sweden and Israel. He has produced two music albums, performed and organized literary readings, curated an experimental television program and is the author of various short stories and non-fiction works.