A cartoon about how we live & work in a digital world
This cartoon goes out to three people:
I figure this one will strike a chord in anyone who uses Netflix on a desktop computer.
For everyone else, there’s this version:
I drew this on the iPad using Procreate’s pencil tools—so kind of a first. Hence the change in style, in case you were wondering.
Today’s cartoon was sparked (heh) when I learned about a new project supporting citizen science (and the professional kind, too): Banu. Founder Rastin Mehr‘s idea is to let anyone make their raw scientific data available online. Once it’s uploaded, others can access it using an API through a Creative Commons license.
I’m fascinated by the rapidly emerging field of citizen science. Turning to the crowd for help with research, data collection and analysis doesn’t just make new resources available to the scientific community; it can build a larger, better informed constituency of support for scientific research of all kinds.
I drew (well, wrote) this right after walking the book spiral in the Seattle Public Library’s Central Library. If you’ve never been, and you find yourself in Seattle, go—it’s an architectural marvel.
By the way, 2999.9 is reserved for authors other than Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck, should that be necessary.
Instead of hoisting glasses of egg nog or ordering in Chinese food, I made you a cartoon. Happy holidays.
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Wondering why your family was the freakish one that didn’t raise you with the Elf on the Shelf™ family tradition™? Turns out it dates all the way back to… 2005.
I think the damn thing’s creepy as hell (Santa’s agent spying on you on behalf of the North Pole Stasi!) and doubly so now that it’s been extended to children’s birthdays. And I’m in no way reassured by the Mensch on a Bench.
(In case this cartoon is baffling.)
If I don’t talk to you lovely folks before January 1st, happy holidays and a terrific, bug-free new year to all.
Let’s see: my hairline’s been receding since I was 30. I have a 32″ waist and a 38″ chest, which seem to be the first sizes of clothes to sell out.
(As a white middle-class heterosexual university-educated cis-gendered able-bodied man…)
People don’t always want to talk about how cute my kids are. Canadian Netflix has a much smaller selection than American Netflix.
(…I figured it would be a lot faster to count the ways I’m not privileged than to count the ways I am.)
I don’t like eggplant, and restaurants keep putting it in friggin’ everything. And… uh…
(I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.)
Most of the reading I’ve done on the right to be forgotten has been U.S. tech media commenting on what crazy people the Europeans are, and how big a pain it’ll be for Google et al to deal with. I’ve also read a few pieces weighing freedom of expression against the damage that revenge porn sites do to people’s lives, and the legalized extortion conducted by mugshot sites. The headline today on this front is the EU’s application of the right to be forgotten not only to Google’s European properties, but to Google.com itself (when accessed from within Europe).
It’s fraught, but it’s also fascinating. And part of the reason it may clash so severely with sensibilities of libertarian-leaning North Americans is that it has its roots in French law’s droit à l’oubli—“a right that allows a convicted criminal who has served his time and been rehabilitated to object to the publication of the facts of his conviction and incarceration.”
This is a right I had no idea even existed: the idea that once you’ve done your time, your crime should be allowed to fade with people’s memories.
As someone pathologically unable to remember people’s names once I’ve met them, I seem to have this right hard-wired into my cerebral cortex. (I once spent two hours having a delightful dinner conversation with someone, only to re-introduce myself to them five minutes later in the foyer. In my defence, there may have been wine involved.) But my inner jury is still out as to whether I want that to be enforceable in a court of law.
Thanks, Uber, for giving me the chance to combine two of the issues I hold dearest to my heart: privacy, and awkward forced conversation with strangers.
It may not look like it, but this cartoon was 16 years in the making. (Give that drawing a driver’s license!)
I first had the idea for it in 1998. I can even remember where: the NOW Communications office at 401 West Georgia. I related it to a few friends, who snickered and urged me to draw it, so I did.
And discovered I really couldn’t draw camels. I’d say they looked like hideously mutated cows, except I couldn’t draw cows, either. (Still can’t. It’s a form of lactose intolerance.)
But a decade and a half makes a difference. So here you go.
By the way, I’m pretty sure this is the first Noise to Signal cartoon ever to be not just drawn on paper (a rarity itself these days), but colored on it, too. Downright artisanal.
There is no shortage of hot-button issues to yell at other about on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. (Maybe less so on Pinterest. The comments seem a lot more civilized there.) And it’s really, really easy to decide the other party in a shouting match is a troll, because nobody could seriously believe the outrageous crap they’re spouting, right?
Enter Alexandra Samuel’s “How to Survive an Online Sex Scandal,” spurred by a recent Canadian controversy. (To my American friends who think that’s an oxymoron, how dare you?!)
It’s not, as the name suggests, a reputation-management handbook. Instead, it’s a survival guide for those of us who don’t want to get swept into acrimonious online disagreements over highly-charged issues. There’s a lot of wisdom in there to digest, but this passage in particular jumped out at me:
But the most powerful tool, and the most fundamental protection, is simply to recognize what’s going on when we explode online. We explode because we come to each of these debates with different ideas about the social media spaces in which our conversations unfold, with different ideas about who is in our online community, and with different levels of investment in the issues at hand.
Often, a troll isn’t a troll at all—at least, not in the classic definition of someone who’s just trying to stir up sturm und drang. Often, Alex points out, they’re just coming to the table with much different expectations and assumptions: “If you’re approaching a conversation as a citizen journalist, and I’m approaching it as a therapeutic process, you’re likely to get frustrated, and I’m likely to get hurt.”
Add to that the fact that we’re all notoriously awful at judging each others’ motives in conflicts, and it’s a recipe for degeneration into shouting.
There are genuine trolls out there, of course. There are also abusive bullies and people who’ve never learned to have a disagreement without waging total war. But I’m going to take a few breaths in my next online dust-up. And even if I can’t see things from the other person’s point of view (which, honestly, we usually can’t), I can at least try to identify the assumptions and expectations they have coming into the conversation. It might lead to a more productive discussion—or at least a shorter one.
P.S.—Longtime readers will know this already. Disclosure: I’m Alex’s husband.
I’m starting to think we’ve reached a tipping point on the issue of misogyny in video games in particular, and a big chunk of tech culture more generally.
To get here, it’s taken a lot of courage from a lot of women. One of the most notable is Anita Sarkeesian, whose video series has done more than anything else I can think of to force a conversation on the issue. It’s also drawn a backlash: some of the ugliest, most vicious responses I’ve ever seen.
There’s a lot further to go. If you’d like to support her work, you can make a donation here.
Updated: Lloyd Dewolf added a link on the N2S Facebook Page to Sarkeesian’s talk at the XOXO Festival, where she described the range of attacks she’s received after launching Feminist Frequency. Well worth watching.
A new social network has launc— WAIT! Don’t run away!
For quite a while, Alex and I were constantly hearing from people who wanted us to help them build “the Facebook of x“, where x was some industrial vertical, demographic or affinity group. Nearly all of those folks hadn’t taken into account the fact that, with a large and growing share of the population, Facebook was already the Facebook of x.
But now there’s Ello, which has no ambitions to be the Facebook of anything. They don’t want to be Facebook at all:
Your social network is owned by advertisers.
Every post you share, every friend you make, and every link you follow is tracked, recorded, and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.
We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity, and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.
We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life.
You are not a product.
From everything else you’ve read here, you can guess that second-last paragraph is the kind of language that sets my heart a-flutter. All they’d have needed to get me selling my worldly possessions and hitch-hiking down to light candles outside the Berger & Föhr offices in Boulder were a few references to the open web and maybe a Tux.
Right now, Ello’s a very interesting platform, and I like what I’ve seen of their publishing mechanism; it’s a lot like the Storify editor crossed with Medium’s. There aren’t a lot of folks there I know yet (although hey, the day’s still young), but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either. It’s nice to have a little space to stretch your legs before the crowd shows up.
If you’d like to have a look as well, let me know in the comments and I’ll send you an invitation. All out of invitations — but I’ll let you know if Ello coughs up some more.
Updated: Check out Alexandra Samuel’s take on all of this. Fly or flop, Ello’s sudden rise has a sobering message for brands, business and marketers: change the way you use social media, or risk losing your audience.
Corrupt cops and politicians? Bruno and me, we like ’em. Corrupt removable media? Naw, that ain’t so good. That’s the sort of thing that makes me and Bruno upset. And when we get upset, we like to hack things.
Only Bruno, here, he doesn’t hack with a computer, you get what I’m sayin’? He’s more like what you’d call a social engineer, except he beats the crap outta you.
We’re lettin’ you off light, you know: muss up your hair a little, wrinkle that shirt up, give ya something to think about. But lemme tell you: if Kingston Technology gets wind of this, you’re gonna be ejectin’ body organs and unmounting bones. You hear me?
Now get lost.
Google has just announced that “Google Apps for Business” are (is?) being renamed “Google Apps for Work“. And as someone who does a lot of work with the nonprofit and government sectors, I’m giving that branding a thumbs-up.
That said, it would make me happy to think that there were at least a few days when “Google Apps for Getting Shit Done” was a real contender.
[emoji cheering megaphone]
Hey, there’s this thing where you tell jokes instead of drawing them. I believe the kids call it the standing-up comedy.
And I’m going to be doing it on Wednesday, October 15th at 7:00 pm, at the La Fontana Caffe. There’s no cover charge, and the venue (on Hastings Street at Boundary) gets a lot of love on Yelp. Come on down! More details here.
Beth Kanter gave me a kind nudge on Facebook to draw something about the Ice Bucket Challenge to support ALS research. Here it is!
Now, if you’re looking for something beyond graphic smartassery — like, say, real insight into the success of the challenge and what it means for the non-profit sector — check out Beth’s blog posts on the subject:
And watch Alexandra Samuel in this panel on the challenge on CBC’s The National. (Alex wrote a blog post about participating on this panel, which I recommend not only for its keen analysis of the role of time zones in western alienation, but also for the phrase “Rob’s smoking-hot robot body.” And yes, she backs that assertion up with a photo.)
I’m a few years away from having to see one of my kids leave home for college or university for the first time. So at the moment, it’s still an abstract thing.
But it’s coming, this thing where they grow up and move out, it’s coming like a bullet train, and it’ll be here before I know it. And as proud and excited as I’ll be, I know it’ll hurt like hell.
So: parents who are saying goodbye this week to your kids for the next year… this cartoon’s for you.
By the way, it was a tossup at my end between this caption and the one below. Big thanks to the NtoS Facebook posse for helping me choose!
Many great novels, like a lot of great art, force us to confront things we’d rather avoid. I get that.
But oh my lord, literature can be a massive downer. I first encountered that in high school, when we read the short story “Paul’s Case” back to back with The Mayor of Casterbridge. Let’s be clear: astonishing works of art are astonishing. But after years of stories where plucky protagonists invariably wrested victory from the jaws of defeat, they were a shock. As an introduction to tragedy, it was like learning how to eat spicy food by eating a scotch bonnet salad.
Later in life, I read Fall On Your Knees. It’s a truly beautiful novel, one of the best I’ve ever read. It’s also like peeling an Onion of Horror: just when you think the day at the centre of the plot couldn’t possibly get any worse, holy Jesus does it ever. I recommend it strongly, with the caveat that a list of trigger warnings would be longer than the book itself.
It’s taken me years to realize that I have a limited capacity for bleakness, even in the context of immense beauty. (Maybe especially in that context.) It’s what stopped me from reading the rest of A Fine Balance: after a few chapters, you get that dawning recognition that this is not going to end with everyone enjoying a hearty laugh and a second helping of trifle.
The cost of avoiding books like that is obvious: you miss out on some transcendent experiences, and some profound insight into what it means to be human. The older I get, the keener my sense of how steep that cost really is.
Maybe it’s not too late for me. Maybe someday I’ll get to the point where I seek out novels that unflinchingly stare into the darkest crevices of the human heart.
Until then, I’m working my way through the Jasper Fforde oeuvre.
I see a lot of parent-shaming going on over mobile devices. The narrative goes that we’re updating Facebook, playing Candy Crush or seeing who’s checked out our fake Tinder profiles that we created just to salve our egos, except it’s backfired horribly and confirmed every fear we ever had about our own attractiveness (no? just me, huh?) — and meanwhile our children are tugging our pantlegs and whimpering “But daddy, dinnertime was seven hours ago. I’m sooooo hungry and the guinea pig’s starting to smell really tasty.”
I have moments I’m not especially proud of. But I also have a memory of my own parents and, loving though they were, they had their own ways to lower the Cone of Silence.
See, when it comes to child-ignoring technology, digital devices are strictly the new neglected kids on the block. As a parent, I represent a proud tradition of burying your nose in whatever’s handy: crosswords, the newspaper (“But honey, I hate sports!” “Shh! And don’t look up — you’ll make eye contact, and then we’re screwed!”), television, novels, the undersides of jalopies, papal bulls or cave paintings. (“Aw, that sabre-tooth tiger wants cheezburger.”)
It’s not all self-indulgence; sanity demands some alone time, and kids do need to learn a little emotional self-reliance.
But there’s a price to pay. While I’m writing this, I can’t help but think of how much I wish I was with my kids right now – joking with them, enjoying their laughter, loving each others’ company. I forget the moments of exasperation, the stress, the need to be alone with my thoughts now and then. (That’s one reason why parent-shaming works: it’s a reminder of the opportunity cost of everything we do, and it preys on our tendency to look at that opportunity cost in only one direction.)
The issue, as with so many things, is striking a balance. And being, if not comfortable, then at least at peace with knowing that means some frustration for everyone.
Also, putting a good child-proof lock on the guinea pig’s cage.
Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. But dammit, when an app gets a dot upgrade, I think we deserve more from the release notes than just “Bug fixes and performance upgrades.”
Like maybe,
Version 1.3
What’s New:
The app uses the mic to monitor stress levels in your voice, senses when you Can’t Even, and suspends notifications for 20 minutes.
Added an experimental “Upload your consciousness to Evernote” feature. Try it out!!
All core features are now available without in-app purchases, and prior purchases have been refunded. Swipe up to see a video of the marketing genius who said “Hey, I know they’ve already paid for the app, but let’s make them pay again if they want it to be actually useful” cleaning out his desk.
Extends Location Services to actually change your physical location to any point on the map. Try it out!! (Pro tip: Use satellite imagery to avoid materializing inside walls, mountains or an American Apparel.)
We’ve listened to the estates of several users, and removed death ray functionality from the front camera.
Bug fixes and performance upgrades.
By the way: if you write release notes, and you try to make them even a little engaging and fun, then please know that I love you.
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Hi, cartooning-process fans! If I was doing release notes for this cartoon, they’d include “Switching from Photoshop CS5 to Manga Studio 5 for drawing. Fewer bugs, nicer pens and OMG those perspective rulers.”
Last night, just after midnight, I put this up on Facebook as my little hi to any night owls (and residents outside the Americas) out there who might be listening and thinking about unplugging, disconnecting and digital fasting — or in 60s terms, tuning out, turning off and dropping Klout.
Turns out a lot of people were. Among the folks sharing it: the Zeeburg Canoe Association (do I have that translation right?) in the Netherlands! As far as my limited Dutch can tell, they aren’t saying “Egads, is that what he thinks a kayak looks like?” so I’m going to take that as an endorsement of my watercraft portraiture skills.
That limited Dutch, by the way, comes courtesy of Radio Nederland’s shortwave service. When I was a kid, I sent away for their Dutch by Radio course; they sent me a few of those floppy 45 RPM records and a workbook. My work ethic (and the City of Gloucester’s baffling refusal to adopt Dutch as their third official language) meant that I got through about three lessons before throwing in the towel.
Their English-language service closed two years ago. I can understand the decision. But it saddens me to think the friendliest English-language voice on the shortwave spectrum has fallen silent.
I loved shortwave listening, particularly because it really was conversational. So many stations would read letters online and reply to them, and they fostered a genuine community among their listeners.
Human connection comes in many forms: face-to-face conversations, handwritten missives and 140-character updates are just a few.
So this summer vacation, disconnect completely; post to Instagram once every three minutes; schedule Facebook breaks — whatever. Do what works for you. And if it does work for you, don’t let anyone tell you you’re doing it wrong. (Right: including me.)
At some time or another, you’ve probably read that famous life-work balance quotation, “Nobody ever said on their deathbed, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office.'” Or words to that effect.
It’s based on some big assumptions: that work isn’t fulfilling, while spending time with your family is; that any time taken from family and given to work is a mistake; and that it’s a zero-sum game: that time given to work must necessarily come at the expense of family.
But I derive tremendous satisfaction from my work life. I’m often more present, more engaging, more open and more joyous a parent on a day when I’ve felt effective at work, because I believe my work’s important — and that it springs from the same values that I bring to my personal relationships. (For the record, those are love, compassion, justice, kerning and proper spelling.)
So many people yearn to have a larger impact in the world, and that’s not always going to be through family. Yes, by all means, if you see your family life suffering because of long hours at an unfulfilling job, find a new balance. But maybe it’s not just a question of the hours you work. Maybe we should demand more from our work. Maybe meaning should be a bigger part of the compensation package.
That would go a long way to cutting down on a lot of other deathbed regrets.
Odd: I get this weird blinding headache whenever I even think about criticizing Facebook for conducting a psychological experiment on unsuspecting users.
Okay, so arguably it’s not that much different from A/B testing. It’s still a little unnerving to think that Facebook might be able to tweak its algorithm with affect user emotions — perhaps opening it up to FDA regulation as a mood-altering drug.
It’s probably the most disturbing for those of us who read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Empire at an impressionable age:
The Mule is a fictional character from Isaac Asimov‘s Foundation series. One of the greatest conquerors the galaxy has ever seen, he is a mentalic who has the ability to reach into the minds of others and “adjust” their emotions, individually or en masse, using this capability to conscript individuals to his cause. (From Wikipedia)
Fortunately, we’re a long ways from that. And even if we weren’t, I’m sure it would never occur to Facebook’s leadership that they could, say, subtly suppress voter motivation in a few key districts and thereby subvert entire elections. (You’re welcome, conspiracy theorists!)
I’m not going to pretend I’m indifferent to whatever Jeff Bezos unveils at tomorrow’s announcement. There are all sorts of rumours of cool 3-D razzamatazz and drone technology a leap forward in online search.
But market dominance, technological disruption and all that stuff aside, I’d just hate to see the Kindle — yes, proprietary platform, DRM and all — drift once and for all away from its roots as an e-reader. I like the fact that my Paperwhite lets me read and do very little else; there’s no constant temptation while I’m reading to sneak away and check Twitter or play with Draw Something. (I’m looking at you, iPad.)
Honestly, trademarking pi? What an alpha-sigma-sigma-hole.
By the way, π. π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π, π.
π
And you, Zazzle. Really? Yes, you eventually restored the merchandise you pulled. But this didn’t inspire confidence.
Today’s cartoon is in honour of a friend who’s about to become the CEO of Creative Commons.
Ryan Merkley’s an all-around mensch who works awfully hard on behalf of the open web. I met him in his Mozilla incarnation, and then his Sharp Political Thinker incarnation. This one’s his most exciting yet, and I can’t wait to see what he gets up to.
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Let the record show that these vows are published under a more restrictive Creative Commons license than the cartoon itself.
I’ve tried Secret, the mobile app that lets you anonymously post about polyamory.
No, wait, that’s not fair. Secrets lets you posts secrets about anything: how much you hate San Francisco, how real and down-to-earth you still are even though you cashed out big-time in that last Google acquisition, or polyamory (and specifically, how you’re engaging in it right now). In theory, you can post about anything else, too, but let’s be real.
The near-complete anonymity ought to mean you see less attention-getting clickbait, but I was seeing a lot of “Swipe right if you agree with this statement that you’d have to be an inhuman monster to disagree with.” People, there’s no need to recreate Facebook. For that matter, any time I posted something, I obsessively checked the stats to see if anyone had liked it. It’s possible I just can’t handle anything with metrics.
By the way, after thinking of this cartoon, I saw a similar joke at least once on Secret. While we thought of it independently, I’d normally give that author a respectful nod here… but I can’t. (Why not? See the first line, 10th word.)
Which may mean Secret’s greatest utility is as a trawling ground for comedians and cartoonists: “What, you already saw that joke on Secret? That was me, dude.”
The overreach in those user agreements and terms of service we all click through so blithely is just…
…well, yes, outrageous…
…uh-huh, good point, it’s terribly unfair…
…mm-hmm, I can see how they are evidence of an amoral, nay, sociopathic drive to seize as much profit and property as a skewed and corrupt judicial and legislative process will allow, but that wasn’t what I’m going for here.
I was going to say beautiful.
The human race is capable of such great leaps of invention, intuition and imagination. Yet they are all eclipsed by the sheer brilliance of this move:
General Mills, the maker of cereals like Cheerios and Chex as well as brands like Bisquick and Betty Crocker, has quietly added language to its website to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, “join” it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes or contest or interact with it in a variety of other ways.
That’s elegant, and it’s unfortunate that so many selfish people couldn’t see past the impact on their own petty little lives to the aesthetic glory of what General Mills was trying to accomplish. Like a supervillain saddened that James Bond can’t understand the majestic sweep of his vision of turning the world’s oceans into Poly Filla, the corporation has had to reluctantly back down.
But where a giant has fallen, a thousand smaller but no-less-artistically-minded companies may yet get the appreciation they truly deserve, with user agreements capable of stifling negative Yelp reviews.
Those agreements — those beautiful, glorious epic odes to avarice — are now threatened by legislation and the courts, which may take the short-sighted view that burying the wholesale surrender of legal rights in a landfill of legalese can’t constitute informed agreement.
My hope, though, is that we can take a more enlightened view. Under the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, surely grotesquely unfair user agreements qualify as artistic expression, and a protected class of speech.
Remember, you can’t spell “consumer” without “censor”.
My kids’ favourite game/staving-off-bedtime-gambit is Ask Siri Something Weird. A win can be either getting an unexpected, amazing answer — my daughter once got Siri to tell her a detailed story featuring celebrity AI ELIZA — or a hilarious speech recognition failure. (“Ha! Daddy, Siri thought I said ‘anthrax’! Oh, by the way, someone’s at the door.”)
Their biggest triumph to date has been asking “What Does the Fox Say?”
I don’t know why I’m as captivated as I am by the language of spy movies, books and TV shows. But whether it’s the euphemisms in a George Smiley story or the verbal tics of Elizabeth, Philip, Stan and the occupants of the Rezidentura, I eat that stuff up.
* * *
I never got this briefing. Instead, I stumbled on The Conspiracy when I was nine years old by seeing a present (the game Battleship) hidden on a shelf in early December… and then receiving it from Santa on Christmas Day. I didn’t talk to my parents about it until months later.
In retrospect, the explanation that might have worked is that Santa stows gifts above a certain size at children’s homes, because there’s only so much room in the sleigh.
A big hug to the staff of Vancouver General Hospital.
Those hand sanitizer stations are everywhere in the hospital… but those next to the elevators on the main level were empty. A sign nearby explained that they weren’t being refilled any more because of theft.
That is, people steal it to get drunk on it, despite the fact that it’s toxic (and tastes horrible).
So if your life isn’t so desperate that you’re stealing hand sanitizer, maybe count yourself just a little lucky.
I’m seeing a growing number of errors in Facebook posts, tweets and comments that look an awful lot like speech recognition errors. That tells me both that we still have a ways to go before the technology is as good as we’d like it to be, and that a lot more people are using it.
Maybe the tech will catch up, with some combination of heuristics and better audio discrimination. But I’m not sure I want it to. Maybe if speech recognition had been around 30 years ago, Michael Stipe and REM might have produced songs with discernible lyrics. (By the way, my Mac’s voice recognition interpreted “Michael Stipe and REM” as “my goal star you and are in the am”. Which could actually have been from Automatic For the People.)
For now, we’re stuck with the digital equivalent of an aging uncle who’s in denial about the fact his hearing is going. And I’m going to have to run; my kids are yelling something from the living room, but I’m damned if I can make it out.
Adding a word like “infographic” to a spell check dictionary is the sort of unpleasant task that, like butchering animals, should probably be done out of sight of the end user.
I’m not sure why I’ve grown to dislike infographics so much. As a visual guy (hence the cartoons, right?) I wholeheartedly endorse graphic communication. But like so many other things, infographics are often conscripted into the ongoing War Against Informed Decision-Making. Not all of them: just the ones that are all graphic and no info (if that), or that use wild, unsourced statistics to back up an untenable position (which just so happens to support the need for the publisher’s product, service or policy prescription).
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I haven’t drawn fan art since high school (gads – more than thirty years), but there’s something irresistible about Noelle Stevenson‘s Nimona. So in response to Tuesday’s rampaging hellbeast triggering “LOCKDOWN INITIATED IN LEVELS B1 – B3,” here’s my take on how that’s going over one floor up:
When’s the last time you doodled something fan-art-like? Was it a Snoopy? A Lisa Simpson? An X-wing fighter?
Contrary to speculation, World War III will not break out in Crimea. Or the Middle East. It’ll start over that whole one-or-two-spaces-after-a-period thing. (Robin Williams, let me know where to enlist.)
. . .
A slew of cartoons just like this one will be appearing soon in an exciting new book, TOUCH: Five Factors to Growing and Leading a Human Organization. It’s by two very smart cookies, Tod Maffin and Mark Blevis, and it suggests that businesses that abandon human-to-human interaction in the rush to technologize are missing out on the real power of connection and relationships.
More details will come as we get closer to publication date, but I’m delighted to have my cartoons appear in it.
Doritos, deep-fried fish sticks, deep-fried chicken nuggets, Black Forest cake, deep-friend Black Forest cake with a Doritos crumble topping… It’s like they’re saying “We know you’re just visiting, but we’d love you to come by for a longer stay.”
Man tries to do the right thing against a backdrop of deadly espionage, 1959: North By Northwest.
Man tries to do the right thing against a backdrop of deadly espionage, 2014: South By Southwest.
Immunity for Edward Snowden sounds about right. Instead, he has to live under the threat of abduction, interrogation and if some especially awful U.S. politicians got their way, execution.
There’s little indication that President Obama’s administration is open to leniency, or even an alternate perspective on Mr. Snowden. But as LGBT Americans can attest, the president has changed his mind before. We can hope.
If you’re in a line right now at SXSW, you really do have my sympathy. Especially if you don’t try to wave your Klout around to bully some poor employee who’s just doing their job.
The great and glorious Kris Krüg came up with this cartoon, and his idea was relayed by Alexandra Samuel (whose panel on going beyond social media metrics actually trended America-wide yesterday: wahoo!). Big thanks to them both!
In the quest for a punchline about Bitcoin, it’s hard to top the way Newsweek’s statement about its reporting ends with “[Newsweek] encourages all to be respectful of the privacy and rights of the individuals involved.”
Right. Starting… now.
I’m tempted to bang out a screenplay about how a gang of 4chan types decide to frame up some poor schmuck they pick from out of the blue as a Satoshi Nakamoto-type character. As his life is shattered, the real Satoshi Nakamoto-type character secretly contacts him, and together, they conspire to bring down both the jerks who framed him, and the publication that ran the story and refuses to retract as evidence to the contrary mounts. But in the process, they trigger an international financial meltdown. As the world teeters on the brink of economic collapse, the sole credible currency is…
…no, not Bitcoin. Linden Dollars. Ha! Twist ending!
I’ll wait by the phone.
My kids do not understand the idea of broadcast TV. The idea that you’d let someone else choose when your favourite shows will be on is utterly alien to them (to the point that when one of them saw it in a department store a few years ago, they gushed to their mom about this amazing new feature. Shows that change by themselves at the top of the hour without you having to pick a new one? What will they think of next?)
Years from now, as I enter my doddering years, I plan to go on at length about how you used to have to wait a week to find out what happened next, and what reruns were, and how you if you missed an episode of something with a long arc, boy, were you screwed. And how we couldn’t rewind or fast-forward. And how we all basically lived like bonobos, flinging feces at each other and picking fleas out of our fur while we watched Barney Miller. (Which is still one of the best effing sitcoms in history, kid — here, let me see if I can find an episode on YouFlix or whatever they’re calling it these days. Maybe the one with Dietrich and the conspiracy guy.)
Aside: If YouTube acquired Hulu, could they please call it YouHooLu?
“Hey,” I thought a week or two ago as I typed the write-up for this cartoon about wearable technology, “that last line would make a pretty good cartoon on its own.” And now here we are. Enjoy the Oscars tonight.
I’m wearing a Fitbit Flex myself. My quantified self turns out to walk roughly half as much as Alex does, which has tempted me to secretly buy one of those paint can shakers, keep it in a closet at NOW, and duct tape my Flex to it for 20 minutes a day.
(On re-reading, “duct tape my Flex to it” sounds kinda filthy. And painful. And permanent.)
By the way, since I mentioned the Flex, the good folks at iFixit did a teardown of one
One last thing: if you’re discerning enough to know about the good folks at Adafruit Industries, then the version below is for you. (It’s also for them, because their customer service is freaking awesome.)
Key Performance Indicator, in case you’re wondering.
I’m having my own wearable-computing issue these days: between my Fitbit Flex, my watch and the Rainbow Loom bracelet my daughter made me, my left wrist is getting crowded.
* * *
Quick question: how long before this happens? A red carpet interviewee who’s asked “Who are you wearing?” replies with something like “Jacques Azagury, Samsung, AMD — and the earrings are custom Adafruit.”
Because you’re never fully dressed without Bluetooth.
Okay, people: the question that will tell me once and for all what kind of folks you really are. Which is the definitive version of the Arthurian legend: Boorman or Python?
(Tough question, I know. I’m asking you to weigh the Knights Who Say Ni against Helen Mirren as Morgana and Nicol Williamson as Merlin. Essay answers are encouraged.)
Here’s the movie that played out in my mind as I was drawing, by the way:
EXT. FOREST GLADE
A group of KNIGHTS, including BORS, ECTOR and URYENS, are gathered around a large STONE from which protrudes a wooden sign, facing away from us (and toward them). They study it intently.
BORS
E... nine... R... G... 7...
3... 8?
A bolt of LIGHTNING vaporizes him. The other KNIGHTS step back, shaken.
URYENS
Ector?
ECTOR
No, no, I... I'll defer to you,
noble sir.
URYENS
But you have sons, a lineage.
They'd be awesome heirs to the
throne. You go.
ECTOR
(glancing at his bare wrist)
You know, thanks for reminding me.
It's time for Arthur's Ritalin.
He hurries off. URYENS, stricken, looks at the other knights. No takers. He takes a deep breath and steps forward.
URYENS
S—
He gets no further. There's a flash, and he's reduced to cinders and a wisp of smoke.
KNIGHTS
(muttering)
We could try this tomorrow. It's
getting late. We're starting to
lose light.
ARTHUR (OS)
Oh, for God's sake.
A lanky boy, ARTHUR, pushes through them and peers briefly at the sign.
ARTHUR
(impatient)
It says "ermine 927." Okay?
He walks away, just before a beam of heavenly light illuminates the glade. A crown descends from above, resting gently on a bed of moss atop the stone.
One of the KNIGHTS sidles over to the crown and picks it up nonchalantly. They all innocently shuffle away.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s a page of cartoons about love. (I’ve tried to balance it pro and con, but I’m kind of a softie.)
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Upworthy gets a lot of grief for its headlines, but one reason they work is that they very often deliver — or come close enough that I’m okay with it.
I really did tear up at 3:12 of that video, even if I didn’t actually cry. I am thinking about poverty a little differently. And I was surprised and impressed, even if I wasn’t shocked and amazed.
It helps that I’m part of Upworthy’s target audience: politically progressive and prone to clicking on things. But as I wrote a year ago or so, a link is a promise to your audience. So far, Upworthy’s been keeping theirs.
And they’re going to try to do even better, with a new algorithm geared to measuring engagement with a lot more subtlety. (Please, please, please tell me this will help to kill slideshows-that-ought-to-be-lists-but-aren’t-because-we-want-to-pump-up-pageviews.)
tl;dr:
Know an online publication or news site
where Noise to Signal would fit in perfectly?
Let me know!
Here at Noise to Signal, we’re looking for a home. We’re scouring Craigslist for something like this:
ROOM AVAILABLE.
500 x 600 px. Nice up-and-coming neighbourhood. Convenient to web traffic. Bright, open standards.
For several years, Noise to Signal ran weekly at ReadWriteWeb (thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick‘s kind introduction to Richard MacManus, for which I’ll be forever grateful). It was a terrific experience: I got to reach a wide, diverse audience who shared my interest in the social web, not to mention a great community of fellow contributors.
Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to some wonderful projects (Measuring the Networked Nonprofit and Open Community, to name just two). And I’ll keep looking for new collaborations, because damn, they make me happy.
But there’s still something I’ve missed since the RWW days. And that’s the chance to be part of an ongoing project aligned with my belief in the open web.
So I’m looking for a venue for a regular Noise to Signal cartoon. I’ll be knocking on a few doors in the coming weeks, but I’d also love your suggestions.
If you know the perfect socket for this particular chip, please let me know. It could be a tech news site, a web advocacy campaign, or something else entirely. (For example, if The Guardian, O’Reilly Media and the Mozilla Foundation are launching a new online magazine curated by danah boyd, Sir Tim Berners Lee and Baratunde Thurston, I would like very much to know about this.)
Let me know in the comments, tweet me (robcottingham) or drop me a line at rob@robcottingham.ca. Many thanks!
There’s a filter most people have in their brain. It ensures there’s a safe distance between the mouth and that part of the cerebral cortex that identifies errors in other people’s work. As news of the error makes its way mouthwards, this filter steps in and says, “Hold on. Is this really important? Will identifying this error do more harm than good? Is there any way this person can do anything about it, or will you just make them feel bad?”
You may be familiar with this filter because you have one yourself. If so, do you happen to have a spare?
– * –
This, by the way, is my reaction any time I notice even the tiniest error in my own stuff. You can imagine how I reacted to noticing the relationship between the doorknob and the hand in this cartoon.
I don’t typically go in for that whole “Like if you…” “Share if you…” thing… but if I did, I’d say “Share if you hate seeing ‘business casual’ on an invitation.”
You could probably run a pretty profitable service for people, assessing the context and translating “business casual” into, say, “newer blue jeans, not too tight, polo shirt, sports jacket, dark socks, loafers but not sneakers.” Or “dark business suit; loosen the tie three millimeters.” Or “Speedo.” (Pro tip: it’s never “Speedo.” Or so I’ve been forcefully reminded on a few occasions.)
* * *
Hey, big news from my partner Alexandra Samuel: her new Harvard Business Review Press ebook Work Smarter, Rule Your Email just launched today. It’s a short, lively read, but don’t let that (or the low price) fool you: her approach to managing email is a powerful one. It’s easy to implement (it’s an email strategy, not a way of life), and it will get you out from under your inbox.
You can get it for Kindle, iBooks and Kobo, or buy it straight from HBR Press.
Wait, what’s that? You’d like a Noise to Signal cartoon embedded in a promotional image suitable for sharing online because you love Alex and think she’s brilliant and want to help spread the word?
Friend, that’s what I’m here for:
This cartoon took more than 10 years to make. An evening of drawing, some time to fine-tune the caption, and a decade to create the daughter who came up with the idea. I’ve tweaked it a little so I wouldn’t be a total plagiarist, but you ought to know that this cartoon is really by Little Sweetie.
She’s already far enough ahead of me in Doctor Who that she’s now explaining some of the finer plot points to me when I join her for an episode. She’s reading webcomics and science fiction books, correcting my Star Trek: The Next Generation references and suggesting graphic novels to me.
Any of you parents out there, have you had the same experience of delighting in the way your kids enjoy some of the same things you did, while being in complete awe of their unique take on it?
Mere hours after I posted last week’s Internet of Things cartoon, news broke that Google had acquired Nest, maker of truly nifty smart thermostats (and now smoke alarms). I’m now wondering how I ever lived without either of them.
At least, the techno-optimist side of my brain is. The techno-grump side (which is a much smaller, wizened little stump that dangles beside my amygdala like some kind of cerebral hemorrhoid) worries that connected devices and the Internet of Things are the first step in our inexorable conversion from customers to hostages.
That techno-grump was also deeply concerned that keying “r-o-b-o-p” into Google yields the autocomplete suggestion Robopocalypse, until Ryan Merkley intervened:
@RobCottingham What else would you type starting with "Robop"?
— Ryan Merkley (@ryanmerkley) January 19, 2014
His point is well-taken, although maybe I might have been Googling “robopoop”. It’s only a matter of time before that’s a thing. (Actually, at nearly 4,000 Google hits, I’d argue it already is.)
One last mild FWIW to my inner techno-grump: Google may have taken a little time to implement Do Not Track, but it’s been supported in Chrome for quite a while now.
Meanwhile: my predictive algorithms suggest that: