Viva La Revolución

PUT YOUR SPACE SUITS ON

Exciting News.  Space travel is in our near future. That's great, because the view will change our world. 

It’s called “the overview effect," a term coined by Frank White that describes the life altering effect seeing Earth from space can have, intensely changing our perspective of the world as we know it.

So what does this mean for us Earthlings?  It means we must expand our world. Brands, people, society as a whole need to continue to chart new territories.  Don’t follow rules, test your limits, take a walk, just go beyond what you know.  Explore more.  Get away from the trees so you can see the forest, you know?

And don't forget your space suits.

Vacuum-Sealed Consumers

Adam Devine writes:

It's probably a good thing that I'm not good at taking on-the-fly pics with my cell phone.

If I were, we’d get sued, because you'd clearly make out the identity in this botched shot of the young woman I spotted walking west on 16th street in Manhattan this past Sunday. She was nodding her head to music played through headphones the size of danishes while tapping away on her Crackberry, oblivious to anyone or anything not in her hand, on her head, or in her mind.

I was struck by her not because her headphones were fancy or because I covet the new Blackberry Pearl (and wish Verizon would add it to their equipment stable so that I, too, could be cutting edge like my Cingular and T-Mobile subscribing colleagues), but because she’s an unmistakable embodiment of a trend that’s swept urban landscapes and is creeping up on the rest of the world: she has self-selected what she takes in to such a degree that getting a word or thought or image into her consciousness that she hasn't chosen herself is like serenading a cinderblock wall. She doesn’t need to follow any kind of a collective consumption schedule or suffer through content that’s halfway up her alley because she can take in exactly what she wants, exactly when she wants it.

She is one of millions of entirely self-contained I-Choose-You-Lose Consumers.

Who you callin' viral

Thank you to Chaz Mee, producer of Shaveeverywhere.com, for contributing an idea to Start A Revolution.

Chaz writes:

We are constantly seeking the next best thing, the next big idea, the next trend.

Is it blogs? Second life? User generated content? Mobile? Social networking? Youtube? Myspace?

Is it word-of-mouth, viral, scrapeable, embeddable?

Or are these even the right questions to ask when we think of ideas that we eventually intend to send out to the world and hopefully have the world respond back?

So let’s talk about “viral” or whatever you want to call it these days since this seems to be the current buzzword. Everyone wants to do it. But what is viral anyway? How do you create something “viral”? Is a “viral” idea more viral than just an idea that happens to be so great you can’t possibly keep it to yourself?

Cry, Cry, Cry

Lee Maicon writes:

Perhaps the most accurate response to today's news that James Brown was dead at 73 was not "How did it happen?" but rather "How did it not happen sooner?"

The fact is, the Ambassador of Soul is to be remembered for a hard driving effortless effort to create a new world. He created a unique voice out of pain and hardscrabble roots that the rest of us will spend years getting at and not get. Maybe that's why lots of those years he was so troubled.

Revolutions need charismatic authority. From the '60s on, he was a battery for change, a vortex of possiblity and Soul Brother Number One. These authorities don't always make sense, you don't always know what they stand for, but charisma can take you a long, long way.