broadcast utopia

Please.

Tell me which is the best product. Tell me which one you liked best.

Obviously different products, services, movies would be best suited for different people, but please have an opinion, take a stance, and tell me.

Increasingly, as we begin to publish more and more, how much do we expect people to “just know” and how much can we repeat ourselves? When you publish your calendar to friends, or make status updates via Twitter or Facebook - do you expect your friends / contacts to keep up with you?

When you have a lot to say, it can be annoying to repeat yourself.

Then again, sometimes when you have a lot to say, it might be most wise to remain silent.

I logged into my music sharing service to find songs / albums / artists that are similar to Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights”.

I was recommended a delightful song by Architecture in Helsinki - “Souvenirs”. I give it a go, and sure enough, it’s pleasing to the ear… at first. I start to get this sinking feeling that something’s not right, the song seems familiar, but not in a good way.

Yup. Product association. I definitely remember hearing the tune during a Sprint commercial in a movie theatre. I can’t remember the time or the place - but I’m sure it was the song.

Trash. Another perfectly normally good song ruined by an ill association.

I am ever so thankful that U2 keeps it’s songs (mostly) out of commercial placements.

It’s taken long enough, but I’ve finally realized that it doesn’t matter if I think about things, it doesn’t matter if I have ideas, and it doesn’t matter if I’ve formed opinions if they aren’t in some way shared with the world.

I use a nice piece of software called VoodooPad to jot down all my ideas. It’s like a wiki on your desktop. The big thing about it that I feel is invaluable is that it auto-links what you write. As you write, it pattern matches for other page titles and creates the links for you. It makes it hard to ignore things you’ve written in the past.

If anyone knows of a web-based wiki engine that does this, please let me know.

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose the ventures before us.

- William Shakespeare, Julias Ceasar

In Haiti, the poor eat dirt.

I’d been obsessed with the phrase “broadcast utopia” for at least a few months now, saying it to myself every now and then. Just a whisper under my breathe.

I don’t know what it means to me yet, but we’ll find out.