virtualDavis

Monday Morning Meander (Image via Wikipedia)

My Mondays typically are energetic, frenetic, anxious. All weekend I’ve been building up To Do lists and massaging my timelines, and by the time I crawl out from under the comforter to share breakfast with Griffin, my Labrador Retriever, my mind is already off to the races.

I suspect that there’s a Monday Morning archetype with lots of other caffeinated-before-your-caffeinated folks who know exactly what I’m talking about. Which validates my suspicions that we all need to break pace for a few moments and meander to refresh the dreams and go juices. If you’re understanding me so far, this post may be for you. Let’s meander together for a few minutes before we pull back into heavy traffic or return to slaying dragons or charming venomous snakes.

Are you social? Digitally social? Plenty gab to be had of late regarding merits and demerits of social networks, but GigaOm‘s recent post, “Do authors have to be social? No, but it helps.“, is worth a look.

Mat Johnson described the people he follows on Twitter as his “dream party guests — interesting strangers whose wit keeps me coming back.” But Johnson also put his finger on another reason that some authors like him have taken to social media like Twitter: the ability to connect directly with potential readers. As he put it: “I’ve never had a single ad for any of my novels, had a movie made or been given a big budget push by a publisher. Usually, they just throw my book out to reviewers and hope it floats. Twitter lets me hijack the promotion plane, sidestep the literary establishment and connect directly to my current and potential audience… It’s a meritocracy; if you’re interesting, you get followed.” (GigaOM: Tech News and Analysis)

I’m borrowing Johnson’s Twitter/dream party guests analogy the next time I try to explain the joys of skinny dipping in the tweet stream to a perplexed (or dismissive) audience. And while I’m thinking about dream party guests, what happened to Kevin Smokler? Was he abducted by aliens? Or is he just giving kevinsmokler.com a fall/winter rest. Back in the spring?

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/karlsprague/status/156430329165520897″]

Are you familiar with narrative pollyannaism? Fellow optimist Karl Sprague just introduced me to its antithesis, died in the cloth story skepticism. Economist Tyler Cowen’s TEDxTalk distills the dark, devious, dangers of storytelling in his warning, “Be suspicious of stories“.

Cowen admits a weakness for compelling narratives, but he’s concerned that stories oversimplify our messy lives. He reminds us that stories distort complex human nature, interactions and institutions potentially misguiding us and fueling bias and self-deception.

He’s right, of course.

As Holbert C. Harris Chair of economics at George Mason University and co-author of economics blog Marginal Revolution and an avalanche of economics books, Cowen is right about a lot. And despite taking a few laps to warm up, his dry, self-deprecating sense of humor prevails, gradually softening his admonition. And his nod to Gabriel Garcia Marquez‘s Living to Tell the Tale ultimately won me over.

“Life is not what one lives, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Stories do distort and oversimplify. But so do street signs, the nightly news, education, modern medicine, music and virtually every other human invention. His bottom line?

“Be more comfortable with messy. Be more comfortable with agnostic…” (TEDxTalks)

I can live with that.

And what better way to wrap up than a digital recap of Sunday’s meander? Yesterday John Davis (@trekeast) and I escaped with our brides and progeny for a Parch Pond adventure. This Eddy Foundation wilderness holding includes a handsome pond which was frozen and snow-free, perfect skating. Here’s a clip shot by Mr. TrekEast on his iPhone:

For additional images from the outing, check out “Skating Parch Pond“.

Related articles

• Skating Parch Pond (e-marginalia.com)
• Do authors have to be social? No, but it helps (gigaom.com)
• My tech 2012 wishlist for Twitter, Amazon & Instagram (gigaom.com)
• Mindfulness and Flânerie (virtualdavis.com)

I mutter on and on about storytelling in the digital age, but storyteller Joe Sabia (tumblr/facebook) whips out his iPad and geeky glasses for a waltz with Lothar Meggendorfer. Sabia’s quirky narrative quickly, deftly demonstrates how storytellers have always leveraged innovative technologies to improve their craft.

No doubt Meggendorfer shook up the book world when he launched his storytelling technology, the pop-up book. Bibliophiles, teachers and book printers/publishers/retailers must have ranted and raved. “Three dimensional images? Are you crazy. That’ll be the death of imagination! That’ll be the end of reading…”

But his history-altering technology was a hit. It still is today. And yet we’re still imagining, still reading. Bravo, Lothar!

Sabia’s TEDTalk, “The technology of storytelling” reminds us that technology — from the walls of caves to projected iPads — have long served creative storytellers. Bravo, Joe!

I’m curious what you think of this video. Several commenters on the YouTube video have suggested that Sabia’s performance wasn’t TED caliber. I disagree, but I’m a storytelling pushover obsessed with digital storytelling. What’s your opinion?

Related articles

• The technology of storytelling: Joe Sabia on TED.com (ted.com)
• Storytelling from Cave Fire to Kindle Fire (virtualdavis.com)
• Technology and Storytelling….An evolving partnership (resourcelinkbce.wordpress.com)
• A Brief History of Storytelling (virtualdavis.com)
• Papercut has designs on a new storytelling genre (radar.oreilly.com)

Day three of the new year. Already! I’m plugging diligently away at my 2012 resolutions, but what good are resolutions without some predictions?

I’ve polished up my crystal ball, and an image is emerging… A thinly veiled wish list? Are you kidding? No way. This is the real deal, a sneak peak into the future!

I’m seeing a sea change in the publishing world, a dramatic shift throughout the creator-to-consumer landscape. Old news? Yes. But what exactly does the new publishing landscape look like? Here is my oracular best.

My top publishing prediction for 2012 is book bundling. It’s time for user friendly digital book and audio book integration. If I want/need a book, I should be able to instantly find and purchase a digital version. And it should include both the text and audio version of the book. Not a computer generated voice struggling through the language. A whiskey tenor bringing the story to life. A current favorite is  Michael Ondaatje‘s The Cat’s Table. Splendid! I want to listen while driving, exercising, showering and cooking. And when I settle into my armchair or flop into the hammock by the shores of Lake Champlain I want to be able to switch seamlessly from audio to text so that I can read. And when I want to jot marginalia or forward a quotation to a friend, I want it to be equally simple in both formats. This vision of book bundling should be the bare minimum. But my prediction goes further. Print books can remain relevant if they include the digital bundle. Gift giving demands this. I want to write a personal inscription in green fountain pen ink in the front page, and I want to be able to wrap and hand the familiar bound heft of a book. Most of us still love print books. And the appetite (habit?) will die slowly. But what better incentive to buy the print version if it includes the digital bundle so that readers can also be listeners, etc. Personally I love experiencing books in multiple formats. But the bottom line is that the future is all about flexibility. And as long as we’re imagining the perfect giftable book bundle, let’s through in the Vook or other digitally enhanced, value added version too. Icing on the cake. Consumers will love the bundle even if they only use a fraction of the content.

Are you with me so far? My crystal ball is not blurry on this book bundling issue, though it’s still not clear if the major strides in this arena will come from the “Big Six” or brave, savvy upstarts. A few publishing companies are already venturing into the territory, but who’s going to redefine the book publishing marketplace. I’m ready!

My second publishing prediction for 2012 is for an app/digital book convergence (or at least blurring). I love the crack of a book’s spine and the smell of musty old pages and contributing to the tangled marginalia of a treasured hand-me-down. But one’s head must be deep in the sand to overlook the smartphone’s manifest destiny. Not only have smartphones become ubiquitous throughout the developed world, but they’re quickly becoming the one stop shop for, well, for just about everything content/communication/entertainment/etc. Phone, email, camera, secretary, navigator, coach, movies, games, news, flashlight, car key, you name it, the 21st century smartphone is almost divine. Like it or not, your smartphone is the ideal book bundling vehicle, and the app strikes me as the most obvious cheap, user-friendly packaging for tomorrow’s book bundles. Enough said? And it is the ultimate inspiration buy!

My third publishing prediction for 2012 is platform androgynous content.  When I purchase a new digital title, I don’t want to be limited by my device. If I’m using my iPhone, Mac Pro or Mac Book Pro I want the same access and experience. Ditto for Kindle Fire, Nook, Sony Reader, in-air entertainment console, etc. Make it easy for your audience to consume your content no matter where they are and no matter what interface they use. Unshackle good books from the devices which we use to read/watch/listen to them and we’ll consumer much, much more of your liberated content. I promise!

These are my top three, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg. The media is awash is publishing oracles, but Jeremy Greenfield’s “Ten Bold Predictions for Book Publishing in 2012” (Digital Book World) is the best place to start. A couple of highlights:

• We will see more self-published best-sellers next year with an exponential rise in the number of million-selling authors.
• Large publishing companies will go through major restructurings, creating new positions and redundancies of all shapes and sizes.
• Authors will become disenchanted with the rights they sign away to publishers. Shorter and more flexible copyright terms will become more attractive to authors.
• Standards of what an app and what a book is will change and apps will eventually be sold in the iBookstore.

The publishing world is a’changing… And it’s changing fast! If you’re trying to catch up, stop. If you’re an innovator reinventing storytelling in the digital age, then sing, dance and celebrate because you are the change. And you’re living in the garden of opportunity. It’s a great time to be a storyteller!

What are your 2012 publishing predictions?

Update: I was honored by Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) with inclusion in his January 5 Writing on the Ether.

“as we flee from the prediction-prone and nostalgia-noxious equinox back into our present, we’re going to cast one brave look over at George Davis’ set of what he calls 2012 Publishing Predictions – but, ah, these are actually wishes… What Davis says he wants is a seamless read across several media… Davis wants to start in the print hardcover. Then have the e-version know where he left the bookmark. Then have the audio edition’s narrator pick up at the same place. And — I’m extrapolating here — finish the book by streaming the film, as before from the last point he left off in the audio-, e-, or tree-version. (Writing on the Ether)

Although Porter almost perfectly summed me up, I’d like to clear up one detail about the tree-versions of books. To be sure, the best-of-bundling will be seamless integration across media. To easily, instantly switch between audio, digital (text and/or multimedia à la Vook), video and print is an ambitious but enticing dream. And most likely a pipe dream, at this stage.

However the opportunity for seamless integration across digital media is considerably more attainable today than the seamless integration of print. So my prediction is for seamless digital integration bundled with the print book as “wrapper”. Many of us still prefer to hold and read and smell and marginalia-fill and gift print books. This habit will likely diminish over time, but not overnight. So give buyers what they know they want. But include a scan-able digital bundle which immerses readers in the riches of digital publishing.

Related articles

• Ten Bold Predictions for Book Publishing in 2012 (digitalbookworld.com)
• No predictions this year; just questions (idealog.com)
• Five things we learned about publishing in 2011 (radar.oreilly.com)
• 2012 Publishing Predictions, Part 1 (futurebook.net)
• 2012 Publishing Predictions (dearauthor.com)
• 2012 Publishing Predictions (authormedia.com)
• What’s your prediction for publishing in 2012? (chipmacgregor.typepad.com)

Storytelling from Cave Fire to Kindle Fire (image by virtualDavis)

Isn’t digital storytelling just enhanced storytelling? It’s just the newest chapter in humanity’s quest to improve the way we tell stories. We instinctively yearn for better communication, for storytelling innovation. And yet digital books, audio books, multimedia books tend to meet resistance despite their obvious appeal.

New scares old. Old doesn’t quite understand new. Or doesn’t want to…

In “Is It A Book, Is It A Movie…No, It’s Movie-Book!” we get a glimpse at the book world’s awkward response to digitally enhanced storytelling.

Many eBook writers shy away from multimedia publishing, preferring instead to stay with straight text… An eBook that features multimedia is not an eBook, they say. It’s… an app… What IS an eBook with multimedia? Can we continue to call an eBook an eBook knowing that now it may feature multimedia? … What about audio books? … [Or] movie-books… (Technorati Entertainment)

Let’s call it digital storytelling. Or storytelling in the digital age. Maybe we should just call it storytelling, because — no matter how resistant the publishing industry and book critics and schools and libraries may be — the public is embracing (and will continue to embrace) storytelling in all of its innovative new forms.

Let us imagine the first time a storyteller added innovative new technologies to their bag of tricks. Picture the proverbial caveman standing by the bonfire with his family, talking about the hunt from which he’s returned with a week’s food. In telling the story of creeping up on his prey, he describes his cautious steps, following the fierce Bigmacosaurus, slowly, quietly all afternoon. Until afternoon turned into evening. As daddy caveman describes the fall of night he slowly extinguishes the campfire leaving his wife and children sitting in the dark around the glowing embers. They pull closer together, absorbed in the story. Now dad begins to pace around them in the dark as he speaks, so that they are never quite sure where he is, and he begins to breath deeply, hoarsely, imitating the sounds of the Bigmacosaurus. And suddenly he leaps across the embers and pretends to drive his spear into the Bigmacosaurus, just barely illuminated as he writhes on the ground, bathed in the dull red glow of the embers.

The end.

“Time for bed, cave kiddies!” he bellows. But they don’t move. They cling to their mother, scared to death.

So dad adds kindling and blows on the embers, resuscitating the fire. Within a few minutes the interior of the cave is once again illuminated. The children are less afraid, but still too nervous for bed.

“But what if the other Bigmacosauri followed you home?”

“Yes, what if they come and get us tonight while we sleep?”

Dad takes a charred branch from the fire and proceeds to draw a picture on the cave wall. In the crude illustration a hunter with a spear crouches in tall grass beside a herd of Bigmacosauri. He explains to his children that he discovered the heard around mid-day, far away. He draws the sun directly overhead, and adds wavy water to portray the lake located half a day’s journey from the cave. Then he moves down the wall and draws himself in the mountains pursuing a single Bigmacosaurus, the sun much lower to the horizon now. He explains to his children that he successfully split the heard, forcing the biggest Bigmacosaurus to run toward the mountains which lay between their cave and the lake. He draws a herd of stampeding Bigmacosauri running off into the distance where the sun sets on the far side of the lake. His next drawing is of the the hunter right next to the Bigmacosaurus, spear high in the air about to plunge. A crescent moon is high overhead. He explains to his children that he wanted to drive the Bigmacosaurus as close as possible to home so that he could minimize the distance he would need to carry the meat. He explains how hard it was because wild Bigmacosauri are scared of cave men and don’t like to come near them. But daddy cave man succeeded, and now they have plenty of food. But the next time he wants to hunt a Bigmacosaurus, he will have to go all away around the lake to the far side where the sun sets. He draws one last picture, looking across the vast lake at tiny Bigmacosauri no larger than ants speckling the horizon beneath the setting sun.

The children have fallen asleep in their mother’s arms, so the parents carry them to their beds and tuck them in.

So far, nothing’s unusual about this, right? Just another evening at the cave.

But when the parents tuck themselves in, the cave man’s wife rolls over to her husband to whisper.

“I don’t know what you thought you were doing tonight, extinguishing the fire, making all those beastly noises, reenacting the hunt, drawing on the walls. Look how much you scared the children.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare them so much. I always tell them stories…”

“I know. Stories are good. But all that other stuff, it’s just, I don’t know. Not right. Can you just stick with storytelling? Just words?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Thank you. Good night.”

“Good night.”

But the next day the cave kiddies beg for a story. “Like last night, daddy. Not the boring old way.”

“Yes, like last night. Pleeease?”

Mother grimaces.

Father looks at mother and shrugs.

Fast forward. YouTube, Audible, Vook, iPad, Storify and SoundCloud blur past. From cave fire to Kindle Fire… Onward!

Related articles

• Storytelling Is Just The Beginning (virtualdavis.com)
• Smile! I’m blogging you… (virtualdavis.com)
• A Brief History of Storytelling (virtualdavis.com)
• The technology of storytelling: Joe Sabia on TED.com (ted.com)

You’ve heard of Square. Buy on the fly. Accept credit cards through your mobile device. Cool, right? Listening to a Salvation Army bell ringer the other day I imagined a chilly Santa passing his iPhone around to pedestrians to swipe their cards instead of tossing change into the dangling cauldron. Off thought. But not out of the question.

In fact, universalizing (and lowering the bar for) credit card transactions could revolutionize micro-commerce. Remember that “clever web-based platform for social action, fundraising, group action” called The Point? A whole new boom in micro-philanthropy could emerge virtually over night.

While Square has been the darling of the venture capital world lately, its honeymoon may be coming to an end…

Enter iZettle, a smart new way that anybody can transact commerce on the fly.

Take card payments. With your iPhone or iPad!

Now anyone can take card payments. You and your friends. Your business. All you need is an iPhone or iPad and iZettle. (iZettle website)

iZettle (image by JonasG106 via Flickr)

Hold your horses, fellow Americans, the Swedes have pole position this time. We’ll have to wait until it deploys in the US. Or move to Sweden!

Why might this nifty gadget and service give Square a run for their money?

iZettle… is Europe’s answer to card payments app Square, only it is a better solution. While Square uses the magnetic strip on your credit or debit card, iZettle securely handles the card’s chip… this could be one of those technologies whose time is about to come. (WSJ)

Having lived in Europe (1999-2003) I’m quite familiar with these smart chips. I’m not a finance tech wonk, but I suspect there’s an added security element when the chip is integrated. Maybe not. Whatever the case, much of western Europe used these cards, so even a non-US, European roll-out of the iZettle could make some waves. And it seems already to be receiving a warm welcome.

iZettle offers huge advantages over other systems that let businesses accept chip-card payments. (Forbes)

iZettle — the New, Better Square — Coming Soon to America? (Huffington Post)

I’m not one to prognosticate in the world of finance, but I can’t resist good storytelling. And this little video is good storytelling. The story arc is compelling, and the mashup of realistic video with cartooning is intriguing. It transforms a boring topic (credit card readers, financial transactions) and into something hip and fun.

Doodling plays on our earliest memories of drawing fantasies into realities. A scribble on a page was actually a friendly dragon just waiting to carry us across the river to a fantasy land filled with chocolate and trampolines. And if they can de-business-ize (It’s my blog; I can make up words if I want to! Consider it blogger’s license.) credit card transactions, make them easy, accessible and romantic, well then they deserve to give Square a run for their money. And hopefully along the way, some good will trickle down to the rest of us. I’ve mentioned micro-philanthropy (imagine a church service in which an iPhone with a card reader is in the collection bowl with the cash and envelopes), but the image that really tickles me is a busker entertaining an audience on a street corner and then tip via credit card using the busker’s mobile phone. That’s the day I slip away to wander the globe as an itinerant storyteller!

Related articles

• What’s the Point? (virtualdavis.com)
• Europe’s Square iZettle Raises $11 Million For Mobile Payments Technology (techcrunch.com)
• iZettle credit card reader for iPhone now available in Sweden in limited numbers (tuaw.com)
• iZettle Lets Europe’s Mom-and-Pops Take Chip-Cards (forbes.com)
• Europe’s Square rival iZettle officially launches its iOS card payments service (thenextweb.com)
• iZettle, Europe’s answer to Square, is out of beta (gigaom.com)
• iZettle now officially open for business in Sweden (intomobile.com)

Smile! I'm blogging you... (image of and by virtualDavis)

I remember seeing a t-shirt for sale once that said, “I’m blogging this.” Nothing more. Just a black t-shirt with bold white lettering across the front. I’m blogging this!

I should have bought it. It would make people laugh. People who know me. Especially the ones who don’t quite get it. Blogging, I mean.

But I didn’t buy it. I liked the idea, but I wanted to edit the message slightly as follows:

Smile! I’m blogging you…

On the one hand, it’s humorous, and on the other it’s an increasingly relevant disclaimer. The “fine print”. Not just for me, but for all bloggers. All journalists, storytellers, writers, artists, etc.

What do I mean by relevant? We are photographing and video recording and quoting each other around the clock nowadays. Look at the ubiquity of blogging, micro blogging, YouTubing, Facebook-ing and Google Plus-ing. We are busy documenting our lives as well as anyone else who flits across our paths.

I walked down Madison Avenue this evening as a man filmed all of us. Not a news reporter, but a plain clothed civilian. John Doe. Or Juan Sanchez… Why was he filming us? What will he do with our stolen souls? Thievery! Or not…

Smile! I’m blogging you…

One of my favorite English language writers, Michael Ondaatje, returns again and again to the theme of thievery in his writing. It’s a large part of storytelling. I suspect many writers, artists, etc. ponder the idea.

I prefer to think of storytellers as borrowers, not kleptomaniacs. We borrow characters, scenes and plots. We borrow the smell of bacon cooking three doors down, the sound of a cello being practiced (badly) somewhere on the other side of an overgrown juniper hedge.

Vicente Huidobro (image via Wikipedia)

Not all writers admit that they are recyclers, borrowers or thieves. Chilean poet Vicente Huidobrodeclared, “The poet is a little God.” He aspired to invent worlds of words out of thin air and ambition. I invite you to evaluate his success.

With the advent of widespread social media it’s easier and more enticing than ever to collect and curate the perfect pair of eyebrows, the seemy backstory, the unpredictable twist of fate, the melodic denouement peppered with the fragrance of jasmine and fireworks on a summer evening… All from the comfort of our own desktops. Or smart phones. The 21st century storyteller is everywhere you are.

Of course, flanerie still serves the storyteller well, but his boulevards have been extended exponentially. I am an unabashed flaneur, but not just in the Baudelarian sense. I’m an urban flaneur, but I’m also a rural flaneur. I’m a café and sidewalk flaneur, but I’m also a digital flaneur. And I’m collecting and curating 24×7 (to the occasional regret of my bride and friends, I hesitate to add.)

I apologize. I understand that not everyone wants to be onstage all the time. Not everyone wants to have their almost lofty soufflé or their offkey arias recorded for posterity. I get it. I’m with you.

But, I can’t resist. You’re interesting. Not just your eyebrows and your bacon and your cello practice and your seemy backstory and your perennially deflated soufflé and your upside down melodies. You.

But rest assured that mine is an imperfect lens, a distorted microphone. I won’t steel your soul. I promise. I can’t. It’s yours as long as you choose to nourish it. I will borrow liberally, borrow, not steel, and I’ll do so with a sometimes distorted, always playful filter.

Will you lend me the mischievous glimmer in your eye when I ask you what you want for Christmas? Will you lend me the fierce gate, knees high, hips restrained, stride impossibly long that I remember from the first time I watched you walk toward your airplane when heading back to New York City from Paris? Will you lend me your hurt and confusion and quirks and dreams?

I’ll do my best never to betray you, and I’ll always resist your soul.

I promise.

virtualDavis Caricature #2

Remember the last caricature experiment? This next virtualDavis caricature was created by a gifted digital artist who goes by konko on fiverr. He was a friendly fellow and I’m considering having him create some additional images, this time of non-virtualDavis subjects. Vanity be damned! You can check out some examples of konko’s digital artwork in his online portfolio.

Soon I’ll share another fiverr caricature, an image that endows me with a fatter but tougher look. Until then, you might want to invest five of your own hard-earned ducats in a personal caricature to adorn your holiday card. Or your business card? Might be a handy way to let clients know you don’t take yourself too seriously. Of course, if you’re a surgeon or an attorney, you might want to pass on this genius idea. Back to the drawing board…

I’m not sure what I like so much about caricatures, except they seem to offer a self-deprecating way of looking at ourselves. And that’s categorically a good thing!

Have you ever noticed how many realtors include their photograph when advertising the properties they are listing? It’s weird. If I’m looking for a house, use that extra space in your ad to show me the kitchen, the back yard, the bathrooms. We’re in love with our own images. In the age of social media, we eagerly post pictures of ourselves all over the place. I’m no exception. Google keeps track, so there’s no denying it. But — despite frequent advice to the contrary — I tend to post goofy pictures of myself. Snapshots in quirky hats are a favorite. In other words, I try not to take myself too seriously, inviting others to chuckle when they see my photos. If I ever run for president, this may come back to haunt me, but I see it as being a bit like caricatures.

When I was young, there used to be a Mexican restaurant in Plattsburgh, NY called the Tijuana Jail where caricatures covered the ceiling. Diners who frequented the restaurant were eventually memorialized in exaggerated cartoons for the amusement of others. Both of my parents were up there, looking about as silly as they’ve ever looked. I never asked them, but I’d guess they liked being up there on the ceiling for everyone to laugh at. And probably all of the others did too. I hope so.

Related articles

• Charting the evolution of the caricature (salon.com)
• Ben Franklin-approved caricaturing (emilyanthony.blogspot.com)
• New exhibition shows lighter side of art (travelnews.britishairways.com)

Brooding & Sultry: An apparition summoned from the glossy pages of Wine Spectator early in the morning…

Saturday morning found me soaking up the early December sunrise and flipping through the Wine Spectator‘s Top 100 Wines of 2011. Perhaps the only oenological pleasure surpassing sipping (and swallowing) fermented grape juice is reading (and imitating) wine reviews.

Wine Review Caricature

I’ve scribbled a few “caricature” wine reviews over the years and toyed with collecting them into a collection of vignettes and doodles. Not to worry, I won’t submit you to my bizarre brand of wine esoterica, not yet. But you might enjoy this curmudgeonly if slightly pompous fart that wafted out of the magazine pages briefly before vanishing into thin air (much to the surprise of my dog, Griffin, who sighed and rolled over to reflect on breakfast past and a sunny walk to come.)

Did the audio clipped (above) play for you? If not, I’m sorry. Audio clips can be memory gluttons, so — depending on your internet connection — it may be a bit grumpy. Or slooowww. If listening requires too much patience, abandon the mission. It’s a mere trifle. A goofy trifle. A half-baked (at best) audio sketch.

Skip the Sketch. Quaff!

A better idea altogether would be to tuck in next to a roaring fire after opening a brooding but sultry bottle of claret to quaff with fresh baguette, pheasant pâté and runny Époisses. Aaahhh…

Mesopotamia (image by harvest breeding via Flickr)

Storytelling is often thought to have originated in Mesopotamia, where shamans would tell stories orally as a means of teaching and entertaining communities. Before we had written language, storytelling was told through a combination of drawings, which were often prompters for the storyteller to then bring the story to life through voice, dance or music. When writing was adopted in societies, various forms of media were then used to record these stories, for example etching on bark, or drawing on pottery or bones. (Simply Zesty)

A bit slapdash, perhaps, but a tidy nibble at the bigger story… Check out the post, “Social media has evolved into the art of storytelling, and we must all become masters of it.” if this nibble’s made you hungry for more. Though I should warn, the post’s thin on history and long on latter day storytelling jingoism.

Related articles

• The Age of Immersive Storytelling
• Smitten by storytelling
• Transmedia storytelling: It’s the story stupid!
• Indigenous Storytellers Festival, 2011
• Leading Through Storytelling
• 8 Steps to Leading Through Storytelling

“Like it or not, a digital you is out there.”
~ Lawrence Joseph

Lawrence Joseph’s latter day truism is sandwiched between layers of post-9/11 offal like a slather of mustard or a thin slice of onion, a piquant but ancillary ingredient trying to mask the repugnant meat of the poem.

Digital display 2 (Image via Wikipedia)

It fails. The poem “So Where Are We?” (Granta, Issue 116) and most of the other sketches and reflections in Granta’s Ten Years Later, edited byJohn Freeman, are deeply disturbing. But that’s the point, I suppose, looking back on a decade that scrambled and irreversably transformed much of the free world.

And yet Joseph’s assertion about digital redundancy clung to me. The notion of digital clones has become ubiquitous. It needs no explanation. It is a contextualizing, familiar point of reference that justifies the grotesque world conjured in this collection.

Like it or not, there’s a digital you out there. In fact almost every aspect of your life is probably reflected in some computer somewhere. You could say that information, that data, has a life of its own. If you have anything to do with modern society, you are no longer a purely biological, analog being. (New York Times)

I’m not altogether uncomfortable with this idea as the name of my blog plainly suggests, but I am fascinated with the implications of this analog/digital duality. I’ve said before that we’re living through a storytelling renaissance. Though we don’t always see it that way (teachers lament ever shortening attention spans for reading and literature; publishing executives panic as books become ebooks become Vooks become…), the proliferation of digital selves and the near universal acceptance of digital identities suggests a convergence of real world and narrative world. We are becoming our stories. Or vice versa.

The one big idea from the original “Tron” that maintained relevance was that some binary version of you is running around out there in all those ones and zeros, to a certain extent under your control but also, in a profound way, forever beyond your reach. Now we can all have multiple identities all the time: just make another user name, and you’re someone else, right? That conceit is not always accurate… (New York Times)

Are you keeping track of your digital selves? Are they still in your story, or have they defected? I’ve seen a few new faces wandering around in my own stories lately after all.

Related articles

• Your Digital Legacy (Part 1) (sixestate.com)
• Avatars with your body language get your point across(newscientist.com)
• When Virtual Sex Becomes Real (passionatereads.com)
• What is a Vook? (virtualdavis.com)
• The Ever Evolving Social Media Revolution (virtualdavis.com)
• Digital Storytelling: A New Paradigm (virtualdavis.com)