Dery defeated by the internet

It seems likely that Dery is aware that, in the contemporary context, he’s “doing it wrong.” But rather than adjust to the milieu tonally, he often becomes overtly defensive and tries to establish that he still gets it by dumping in huffy long-hyphenated-string-of-words adjectives plus what he takes to be relevant cultural references to an imagined straw-man audience. That strategy in itself feels dated, a holdover from the time when the Quentin Tarantino approach to discourse was ascendent and writers tried to bully readers with the unexpected breadth of their allusions. Riddling readers with references, in that cultural moment, conveyed a gangsterish toughness rather than pretension. But the reactive immediacy of online cultural critique, and the ease of information access, has depleted that tactic’s sting. You don’t drop a reference and leave people feeling dumb anymore; instead you link a reference and everyone can feel smart. Or instead, there are increasingly customized “trending topics” that everyone in a niche responds to, which earns one more attention and cultural capital than trying to invoke something unusual and obscure.

-- Rob Horning works his magic

Romanticizing the urban pioneer

After nearly two years of looking, my wife and I bought a house in November of last year. We wanted to live in a specific neighbourhood (The Junction Triangle) and we wanted a basement that I could stand up in (a tough ask, since I'm six foot five). Also we didn't want to buy a total piece of crap. Hence, it took us almost two years to find a house. And I will be the first one to admit that we were lucky -- although we were also smart enough to act immediately on our good luck when the right house finally appeared.

Since we had been looking for so long, it was impossible not to notice that prices were steadily (and in some cases exponentially) increasing in the neighbourhood. The rail path, plus a few new restaurants/amenities in the area helped push up property prices. Plus it's on the subway line, and it was clear the neighbourhood was on the upswing.

Of course if I had a time machine, I'd want to buy a house in the area back in 2006 or so, back when Yasi's Place first opened. You know, back when the neighbourhood was more edgy and thus less expensive.

That was, until last Saturday evening, when our next door neighbours (literally, we live in a semi-detached) invited us over for drinks. A few other couples who live across the street joined us and we had some wine/beer and talked about our block. Everyone but us had purchased their house at least four or five years ago. And it turns out that it wasn't all roses and sunshine back then. The usual palette of drugs and prostitution, along with assorted other random craziness.

I really would like to say that this sort of urban pioneering lifestyle appeals to me, especially given how much less my neighbours paid for their houses. But it's only in retrospect that this kind of endurance contest is worthwhile. The city of Toronto doesn't send you a letter in the mail saying "Congratulations! Your home is in a somewhat sketchy area, but we guarantee it will improve by 2009 or we'll cheerfully refund your money." There is a price to be paid for navigating these type of pioneer frustrations.

All of this is a fancy way of restating something I heard fairly often while we were looking for a house -- there are no bargains or magic deals in real estate. The market does a fairly good job of figuring out what houses are worth. It's just sometimes you have to pay in less obvious ways.

Art is like a silkscreen - each work almost the same

“Despite art’s reputation for distinctiveness and originality, its value is established not by the narcissism of small differences but by the megalomania of sameness.”

-- “On the Market” in N+1 #13, Alice Gregory

The dystopic potential of gamification

Although there is a certain utopian appeal to McGonigal’s “games for change” model, I worry about the dystopic potential of gamification. Instead of just bombarding us with jingles, corporations will be able to inject their messages directly into our minds with ads disguised as games. Gamification seeks to turn the world into one giant chore chart covered with achievement stickers — the kind of thing parents design for their children — though it raises the potentially terrifying question of who the parents are. This, I fear, is the dystopian future of stupid games: amoral corporations hiring teams of behavioral psychologists to laser-target our addiction cycles for profit.

-- Sam Anderson writing in the New York Times Magazine

Get PhysiDigital with me at NXNEi this June (and save!)

I'll be speaking at NXNEi this June (2012), giving a talk entitled Let's Get PhysiDigital: How to Convert Online Memories Into Offline Artifacts. To quote the write-up on the NXNEi site:

Now that social media has become a black box recorder for countless emotionally significant moments, artists and brands are searching for ways to turn our digital milestones into physical keepsakes. The results include a .poster of your Tumblr followers, a book filled with your favorite Tweets and a unique origami shape built around the content of your favourite text message. But what is driving this newfound interest in physicality? Is it a reaction against the ephemeral nature of digital communication or simply the result of the online world bleeding into the offline? Drawing on my experience as co-creator of txt2hold and tweet2hold, I will explore how fleeting digital communications like texts and tweets can be converted into permanent memory objects. While locating the sometimes fragile intersection between the online and offline world requires careful research, the creative opportunities are numerous for those willing to get PhysiDigital.

If you are looking for an incentive to attend, here is a discount code good for 10% off: NXNEiRocks

Don't say I never give you nothing. Visit nxne.com for more info on the festival.

When in doubt, quote yourself

In November of 1999, Mike Usinger, writing in Saturday Night ("Call him Nardwuar") noted that: 

“But what's really made Nardwuar infamous is that, like those who read America's leading white-trash tabloid, he has an enquiring mind and he wants to know. With his high-pitched voice -- which doesn't sound so much like nails on a chalkboard as a chalkboard being dragged though a nail factory -- he's become North America's pre-eminent guerrilla journalist...”

Almost 13 years later, Usinger was interviewed for a Feb 21, 2012 RRJ profile of Nardwuar by Sara Harowitz: 

As [Mike] Usinger says, “Most of us don’t have the balls to dress up in a plaid tam and speak in a voice that sounds like a nail factory being dragged across a chalkboard.”

Given that I can't remember what I ate for breakfast last week, Usinger clearly has an incredible memory.

Welcome to NYC 1YL

I'll be blogging with a bit more frequency again in order to tone and condition my writing muscles. Shorter posts, but more often. The world needs a few more Bigge Ideas. Or Bigge Snark.

I'll start with my concept for a new Toronto restaurant called NYC 1YL. That's short for New York City One Year Later. It's a simple idea -- every month or so, the restaurant will switch up and serve whatever food and cocktails were popular in Manhattan exactly one year previous. Decor will also change accordingly.

Shockingly, since Toronto is at least 12-18 months behind Manhattan when it comes to food and drink (witness the painful delay between the pre-prohibition cocktail craze in New York and its appearance here) NYC 1YL will probably manage to stay ahead of the curve.

Keenan insight into Ford business card debacle

Rob Ford defined the standard by which use of expense accounts and sole-sourced contracts should be judged abusive or corrupt. He defined the principle by which $1,200 in spending should be considered an outrage. Then he spent $1,200 in taxpayer money he did not need to spend, and funnelled the money into his own company. Saying “whoops” and cutting a cheque now that the press has pointed it out cannot erase the misdeed. By the rules Ford defined, he ought to resign. And if he won’t judge himself by the standard he set, council ought to do it for him.

-- Edward Keenan calmly explains why Ford should be sent packing in The Grid

Indie bookstore ponders the merits of social media

I subscribe to the newsletter for indie bookstore Of Swallows, their Deeds, and the Winter Below. (The descriptor "indie bookstore" is probably redundant for an establishment with a name like that). The November issue contains one of the better skeptical debates about social media I've seen in awhile:

1. Bust or facebook

Banker: "You suffer from a traffic problem."

Swallow: "Yes."
Banker: "Why not use social media?"
Sw.: "Would a priest visit an analyst?"
B: "The priest has no Landlord."

We now have a facebook. You can recommend our facebook. It might help others know: they could be traffic.

www.facebook.com/283college

tweet2hold is brilliantly simplistic according to Metro

But perhaps the most brilliantly simplistic exhibit is their social media app, which takes the data from tweets sent to the project’s dedicated Twitter account, @tweet2hold, and converts them into physical objects, in this case origami birds.

--  Ian Gormely of Metro provides us with some much appreciated print media coverage

Photo by Dylan Reibling