Because I say I do.
Yah...
There are wolves, for sure,
and loons up late. They hoot,
black charcoal shadow cartoon fools
whose gloom assumes
we, too, mourn loss of bright
fiery blaze;
patent days.
There are none, though, walking ways
of cratered, corduroy, rolling, dust-grey
hills and basins. Peaks and vales
like battlefields of grim grenades
and silent, sentient cosmic chum.
None
but me.
And I say, "Pay!"
You lovers on my white-glow leaning;
you hunters creeping, deer-spoor seeking;
you children peering, “One day,†dreaming;
all who look upon this, frankly, dreary, lifeless face,
this wide-eyed, gaping maw of rock and shining, lantern jaw,
you now owe toll!
No more free ride. Pay up. Way up.
The Man in the Moon be damned.
Homage? For the loons.
I own the moon.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Continuous Partial... Look! A Bunny!
I've heard the term Continuous Partial Attention a few times recently. It was coined by Linda Stone. Some quotes and comments here on O'Reilly.
Partly it rings true. There are days, of course, when the email piles up and the cell phone vibrates and the Blackberry blinks and umpty-nine people walk into my cube looking for ring-around-the-whatever, etc. etc. and I think, "Is this what I am? A thrall to my toys and tools and a help-desk for everybody within range of my loud, annoying voice?"
But then I remember something. We humans are hunters as well as gatherers, and successful hunters are marked by skills that are very well defined by the term "continuous partial attention." If you are very, very focused on one thing -- let's say, spoor -- you won't pick up sounds. If you are only listening to the sounds of one kind of prey, you won't hear the sounds of other, possibly more valuable dinner-time meat.
Gathering, of course, rewards more single-attention-focus behavior. And the ultimate forms of gathering -- modern, mechanized, industrialized, assembly-line systems -- are ones in which we are each expected to be one thing, all the time, thank you. "Round peg, round hole." Sit down, shut up. You need continuous, full, single-task attention when you are only expected to do and be one thing every damned day for your whole working and family life.
What do you do? What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you plan to make of your life? What does your dad/mom do for a living? Where do you work? What does your company do? These are all questions that, more or less, presuppose a single answer.
But we've been told, for quite awhile now, that we'll all have a number of jobs and careers before we buy the big dirt nap. And if that's the case, if we will "gather" a number of types of rosebuds while we may, then aren't we, possibly, coming into a time when our hunter attributes are going to be more appropriate to success?
The landline telephone was supposed to be incredibly disruptive to our social well-being when it first came out. It would interrupt family time. Allow people whom we did not know to fracture the peace and tranquility of our domestic castle. It would encourage a breakdown of the wall between "business" and "home." Oh, dear! My whole life, me attention has been continuously parted by the telephone!
Sarcasm aside... perhaps it's a case of learning to cope. I've seen this in just the 15 years I've been involved in the wireless industry. In 1992, when I got into the business, people had no coping skills. The few people who had portable phones pretty much answered them every time they rang. Partly that was because so few people had them, and so few people had their numbers. By 1999, after the initial popular explosion, millions of people were carrying flip-phones, and most of them hadn't learned how to deal. Everyone was answering calls everywhere, mostly rudely, and they had to start reminding us to, "Please... silence your cell phones," before movies.
Now? In most places, our phones are on "vibrate" all the time. Most of us don't mind if a friend glances at a phone for a sec to see who it is on Caller ID, and then says, "I have to take this." The assumption is that it's the spouse or the boss. And we wait... because we have spouses and bosses, too. And cell phones. But if it's another call... we let it go to VM. And we don't much care. At least I don't. Either about checking mine, or you checking yours.
About four months ago I got a Blackberry-like Pocket PC that lets me surf the Web and check my work email and calendar at all times. Do I sometimes check it during a meeting when I should be listening? Yeah... if I'm waiting for an email that is (imo) more important than what's going on in the meeting. Do I see other people doing that, too? Yup. And if I need to repeat a question... NBD.
Hunting. Not gathering. Active. Not passive. Looking for spoor and listening to the sounds of the jungle. Lots of little sounds and the crackle of twigs and hoots and calls in the distance and smells and... you get the picture.
We aren't round pegs anymore. We are hunting for and pounding different pegs every day. The pace of change is only accelerating. Our ability to sense markers, to be verbs and consumers of verbs rather than trying to exist as nouns will help us to succeed.
Also... If you're looking for a cute bunny that shouldn't be hunted but helped to the stars, please take some time with the absolutely charming Orsinal Games. The one in the upper left is "Winter Bells," and is just delightful. Many of them are, but there's just something about that bunny...
Partly it rings true. There are days, of course, when the email piles up and the cell phone vibrates and the Blackberry blinks and umpty-nine people walk into my cube looking for ring-around-the-whatever, etc. etc. and I think, "Is this what I am? A thrall to my toys and tools and a help-desk for everybody within range of my loud, annoying voice?"
But then I remember something. We humans are hunters as well as gatherers, and successful hunters are marked by skills that are very well defined by the term "continuous partial attention." If you are very, very focused on one thing -- let's say, spoor -- you won't pick up sounds. If you are only listening to the sounds of one kind of prey, you won't hear the sounds of other, possibly more valuable dinner-time meat.
Gathering, of course, rewards more single-attention-focus behavior. And the ultimate forms of gathering -- modern, mechanized, industrialized, assembly-line systems -- are ones in which we are each expected to be one thing, all the time, thank you. "Round peg, round hole." Sit down, shut up. You need continuous, full, single-task attention when you are only expected to do and be one thing every damned day for your whole working and family life.
What do you do? What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you plan to make of your life? What does your dad/mom do for a living? Where do you work? What does your company do? These are all questions that, more or less, presuppose a single answer.
But we've been told, for quite awhile now, that we'll all have a number of jobs and careers before we buy the big dirt nap. And if that's the case, if we will "gather" a number of types of rosebuds while we may, then aren't we, possibly, coming into a time when our hunter attributes are going to be more appropriate to success?
The landline telephone was supposed to be incredibly disruptive to our social well-being when it first came out. It would interrupt family time. Allow people whom we did not know to fracture the peace and tranquility of our domestic castle. It would encourage a breakdown of the wall between "business" and "home." Oh, dear! My whole life, me attention has been continuously parted by the telephone!
Sarcasm aside... perhaps it's a case of learning to cope. I've seen this in just the 15 years I've been involved in the wireless industry. In 1992, when I got into the business, people had no coping skills. The few people who had portable phones pretty much answered them every time they rang. Partly that was because so few people had them, and so few people had their numbers. By 1999, after the initial popular explosion, millions of people were carrying flip-phones, and most of them hadn't learned how to deal. Everyone was answering calls everywhere, mostly rudely, and they had to start reminding us to, "Please... silence your cell phones," before movies.
Now? In most places, our phones are on "vibrate" all the time. Most of us don't mind if a friend glances at a phone for a sec to see who it is on Caller ID, and then says, "I have to take this." The assumption is that it's the spouse or the boss. And we wait... because we have spouses and bosses, too. And cell phones. But if it's another call... we let it go to VM. And we don't much care. At least I don't. Either about checking mine, or you checking yours.
About four months ago I got a Blackberry-like Pocket PC that lets me surf the Web and check my work email and calendar at all times. Do I sometimes check it during a meeting when I should be listening? Yeah... if I'm waiting for an email that is (imo) more important than what's going on in the meeting. Do I see other people doing that, too? Yup. And if I need to repeat a question... NBD.
Hunting. Not gathering. Active. Not passive. Looking for spoor and listening to the sounds of the jungle. Lots of little sounds and the crackle of twigs and hoots and calls in the distance and smells and... you get the picture.
We aren't round pegs anymore. We are hunting for and pounding different pegs every day. The pace of change is only accelerating. Our ability to sense markers, to be verbs and consumers of verbs rather than trying to exist as nouns will help us to succeed.
Also... If you're looking for a cute bunny that shouldn't be hunted but helped to the stars, please take some time with the absolutely charming Orsinal Games. The one in the upper left is "Winter Bells," and is just delightful. Many of them are, but there's just something about that bunny...
Friday, March 9, 2007
The Twelve Little Pigs
Another post inspired by conversation with my 7-year-old son...
So, Danny was telling me about an assignment at school where the teacher asked them to draw or describe tools that the Three Little Pigs could have used to help build their respective houses of straw, sticks and bricks. Neat assignment, btw, I thought.
He told me about his ideas, and then went on to tell me about something else that day, I forget what, but the story also involved the number "3."
"Why," I asked him, "Do you think the number '3' is in so many stories? Why is it '3 pigs' and '3 wise-men' and '3 blind mice' and all those other '3's?'"
His initial answer proves he's my son...
"Well," he replied. "If it were always 9's, you'd just be asking me the same thing about 9's, wouldn't you?"
Right. It has to be something, don't it? Anyway...
"That's a good point," I agreed. "But why should it just be three pigs? Wouldn't it be a funny story if there were a lot more? Like twelve little pigs? Andthere their houses were built out of lots of other stuff?"
"Like stuff that's not hay or twigs or bricks. Weaker or stronger stuff?" he asked.
"Exactly. What would the first pig have used, if it was weaker than hay?"
Dan thought for a second and then said, "Grass?"
"Sure," I agreed. "That's weaker than hay. But if we're going to do twelve... I bet you can think of something even weaker than grass to build a house out of."
"Cotton candy!"
"Excellent! That's amazing. That would really be an awful house to hide in from a wolf."
"What would you choose, Dad?" he asked.
I thought and said, "Bubbles."
He nodded. "That's a very weak house."
"Can you," I asked, "think of anything worse or weaker than bubbles to build a house out of?"
He paused for a long moment, brow furrowed in concentration before answering.
"Chickens."
I may have peed a little I laughed so hard. Of course. Because, and he confirmed this was his reasoning, chickens would run around a lot while you tried to build out of them.
So I asked him to list the full Pig House Building Material Manifest of Twelve. It went like this:
That would be such a better story.
When he was done, he wanted to know if he could add one more. I said, of course, "Sure."
"I think," he said, "it would really freak the wolf out if you built a house out of wolves."
I agree. I truly, deeply agree.
The moral of this story for writers and creative types is... multiply. If you have three blind mice... how would the song change if it were 300? Farmer's wife... watch out! The song "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," really only lists 5... can you think of 45 more?
"Then the pigs built a house of pants..."
Totally cracks me up. I have no idea what it means, but I love it.
So, Danny was telling me about an assignment at school where the teacher asked them to draw or describe tools that the Three Little Pigs could have used to help build their respective houses of straw, sticks and bricks. Neat assignment, btw, I thought.
He told me about his ideas, and then went on to tell me about something else that day, I forget what, but the story also involved the number "3."
"Why," I asked him, "Do you think the number '3' is in so many stories? Why is it '3 pigs' and '3 wise-men' and '3 blind mice' and all those other '3's?'"
His initial answer proves he's my son...
"Well," he replied. "If it were always 9's, you'd just be asking me the same thing about 9's, wouldn't you?"
Right. It has to be something, don't it? Anyway...
"That's a good point," I agreed. "But why should it just be three pigs? Wouldn't it be a funny story if there were a lot more? Like twelve little pigs? And
"Like stuff that's not hay or twigs or bricks. Weaker or stronger stuff?" he asked.
"Exactly. What would the first pig have used, if it was weaker than hay?"
Dan thought for a second and then said, "Grass?"
"Sure," I agreed. "That's weaker than hay. But if we're going to do twelve... I bet you can think of something even weaker than grass to build a house out of."
"Cotton candy!"
"Excellent! That's amazing. That would really be an awful house to hide in from a wolf."
"What would you choose, Dad?" he asked.
I thought and said, "Bubbles."
He nodded. "That's a very weak house."
"Can you," I asked, "think of anything worse or weaker than bubbles to build a house out of?"
He paused for a long moment, brow furrowed in concentration before answering.
"Chickens."
I may have peed a little I laughed so hard. Of course. Because, and he confirmed this was his reasoning, chickens would run around a lot while you tried to build out of them.
So I asked him to list the full Pig House Building Material Manifest of Twelve. It went like this:
- Chickens
- Bubbles (my only contribution)
- Cotton Candy
- Grass
- Paper
- Hay
- Twigs
- Pants (I have no idea... he just inserted this one on his own)
- Bricks
- Concrete
- Iron
- Diamonds held together with Super Glue
That would be such a better story.
When he was done, he wanted to know if he could add one more. I said, of course, "Sure."
"I think," he said, "it would really freak the wolf out if you built a house out of wolves."
I agree. I truly, deeply agree.
The moral of this story for writers and creative types is... multiply. If you have three blind mice... how would the song change if it were 300? Farmer's wife... watch out! The song "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," really only lists 5... can you think of 45 more?
"Then the pigs built a house of pants..."
Totally cracks me up. I have no idea what it means, but I love it.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Different vs. Better: Worst Blinders Ever
We are genetically programmed to fear change. Period. I know this, you know it. It's OK. It makes sense. When you do something the same, you're less likely to be poisoned by a strange berry or wander into a dangerous alley and get the crap kicked out of you or marry someone who speaks a language you don't. Because of the predisposition, we almost always regard new stuff, different stuff, immediately as "bad," or at least "worse." Those who do it the other way will qualify it as "better," of course.
We have a hard time with "different." We're just too dang competitive. See "evolution," "professional sports," "org charts" and "last piece of pie."
Problem is, a natural inclination to regard "different" as immediately "worse" or "better" is not logical. And we end up defending our first inclination because, well... we like to be right rather than sensible. Or successful.
Shoshin, or "The Beginners Mind," is a Zen Buddhist concept that suggests we're better off always behaving as an appropriately open-minded amateur, rather than a "I know everything" professional. Shunryu Suzuki said, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few."
So... Let's have an example.
A recent Media Post "Online Publishing Insider" post titled, "Gobbledygoogle," talks about how the TV advertising industry shouldn't let Google sell "scatter" TV advertising; ie, the ads that are left over after the upfront. His point is basically that by letting Google in the door to sell to people that can't currently afford TV media, it will let in people who also can't currently afford to make good TV creative. His metaphor is that of high-priced real estate:
New Canaan, Conn. has one of the most exclusive Zip codes in the country. Residents include David Letterman, Paul Simon, and, ironically, Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric. The town maintains its immense value because not everyone can afford to live there. Television is like New Canaan — not every advertiser can afford to live there. What Google fails to recognize as it tries to play in this neighborhood is that, while it does make it easier for advertisers to pay the mortgage, those same advertisers can’t afford to build a home. Google advertisers pay a buck or two a click to advertise on Google right now. How much money do you think they are going to spend on the production of a television ad?
This piece is, frankly, the best example of defending "different" as "worse" I've seen in awhile, and I am grateful. Because it really helps us see how change can frighten the bo-jangles out of us while keeping us from seeing, as Suzuki said, the many possibilities.
Rosenberg, the author of the Media Post piece, has seen one possibility -- that the same people that pay low dollars for pay-per-click search ads will pay the same dollars for pay-per-spot TV scatter... and (assumptions continue), that their creative will suck (more assumption) because (additional assumption) it will be similarly low-budget... AND (still more assumptions) viewers will cringe and turn away from badly produced ads. The number of assumptions in this chain of reasoning is quite impressive, and gives us lots of room to back up and behave like a proper beginner. And what does a proper beginner do? Ask questions. Smart questions. Lots of questions. Because questions lead to possibilities, and possibilities lead to more avenues to success. Questions we might ask about the, "Google TV ads will lead to great buckets of suck," conclusion:
- Are all advertisers using Google ads that don't currently buy TV doing so because of lack of budget? Or are there other reasons? Could the logistical difficulties of spreading a decent ad budget over a national buy, but on local stations, or in tight verticals have been something that has kept advertisers out of that media? If I have a product that I sell, spread out, in 50 states, but don't have the time to negotiate local ad buys with 50-250 Tier 2 or Tier 3 stations... and I don't feel like paying a media buying service a huge cut to do that for me... is it a question of not having money? Or not having time or an appropriate tool for spreading my money appropriately?
- Are we even talking about the same people? Google AdWords can appeal to mom-and-pop shops with ad budgets as low as $50-100/month. If your ad word campaign is specific enough, you can get good results. I don't think "cheap" in TV is ever going to be "cheap" in ad words. And the stations will still, clearly, get to set a basement on their prices, eh? We're not talking about a 30-second spot going for $11. So though Google will be doing the selling, and though they will be attracting an audience of advertisers that is "different" than some current TV advertisers, that doesn't mean they will be "different" in the same way that ad word advertisers are different front current TV advertisers. I suspect that there will be some overlap, yes... but that we'll find lots of current TV advertisers simply upping their levels and finding new places to put current creative. Which leads to...
- Why must the creative be cheap simply because the media is cheaper? That's just a bad assumption. If I have X to spend on advertising, I may decide to blow 2/3 on the creative, in the hope that it goes viral. If the price for TV comes within my range, it may open the door into some creative production that we haven't seen before. Which leads to...
- Since when does "big budget" = "good" in creative land? Land'a Goshen... Think of the worst TV ads you've ever seen, and my guess is that they all cost more than $200,000 to make. Jeez. And last time I looked, home-made, low-bud creative was taking the world by storm, eh? The Quizno's Spongmonkey ads kicked ass for them. And the production values were... uh... not there.
- And even if the ads suck... Does that mean that viewers will turn away? That's the craziest part of this chain. Yeah. I'm watching a show that I like (probably on my DVR). And a bad ad (meaning most of them) comes on. I'm so turned off by the production values that I leave the station, never to return to the last 10 minutes of my show. Yeah. That'll happen. Here's the thing... If I'm watching one of the Big Four networks, I'm much more likely to be turned off by the low production values and fantastically bad writing of the local news team or an ad for a used car dealership down the road, which we've had for decades.
I have no idea if Google handling TV ad remainders would be good or bad for the industry. I'm not well versed enough in the details. But I know enough about how *not* to approach a new situation when it's just out of the gate. Don't make assumptions. Don't take one trail all the way from "what I like now" to "what will be the worst case scenario if one little thing changes." Don't confuse "different" with "worse."
And don't forget to ask lots of questions.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Update: MTYT as nightmare repellent
About a year ago (jeez... time flies when you get old and buy an Xbox 360 anyways), I blogged about a creativity / drawing game that my son and I play called My Team, Your Team (MTYT).Short version: One of you draws a thing (creature, robot, superhero, bug, whatever) with a power or powers, and the other person then draws a competing thing that opposes (cancels out, stomps, frustrates, distracts) said critter. You go back and forth until bored or the paper is filled up or Dan clearly wins. We still play the game. Fun times.
Well, last night, we found a new use for MTYT -- as a method of warding off nightmares.
Our family likes to watch Animal Planet's "The Most Extreme" together as a family. It's one of a variety of science-y, nature-y, discovery-y shows that are soooo much better than most of the "edutainment" crap that was on when I was young. On the episode we'd most recently DVR'd, there was apparently clip from some old horror movie featuring a giant aligator bursting out of the sewers into the streets above. I think the context was something about toilets, but am not sure, as Chris and Dan had watched this one without me. Anyway, for some reason this particular clip was really scaring Dan.
He's normally not scared by monsters, per se. But something about this clip had gotten him worked up, and we were approaching bedtime, and he's seven, and was all freaked out. Reason wasn't working. It never does with our fears, does it? We tried to explain that alligators would never get that big. That they could never break through streets, concrete, etc. Not. Working. At. All.
Then, for some reason -- I have no idea why I thought of this -- I asked Dan, "How would you beat a giant alligator in a game of 'My Team, Your Team?'"
He immediately perked up and said, "Well... first, I guess, I'd grab him with a giant crane."
OK. Not bad, but not the kind of creativity we usually get in MTYT. So I pushed a bit harder.
"Can you come up with three other, weird-o ways to beat a giant alligator?" I asked.
"Uh... Well, we could get a giant toilet and flush it back down!"
"Nice one. Any other ideas?" At this point, he was really getting into it. With a bit of help from Mom and me, he also came up with:
- paint a permanent, pink dress on the alligator and super-glue a tiara on it so that it would be too embarrassed to come out of the sewer
- tie a bell on its tail so that it would always be hearing the bell and distracted and trying to bit itself on the butt
- something about a parasol; I forget, but it was funny
The point being obvious -- by the time we were done, the sewergator was no longer an object of fear and potential nightmares, but a vanquished foe in the realms of a comfortable, family game. Dan went from scared and freaked out to laughing and in control.
What we fear often grips us most tightly right before bed. Still happens to me, I must confess. Whether it's work, health, family, faith or the NSA... for some reason, the demons do like the twilight times. But if our imagination is the place where unreasoning, fantastic, creative fears like to take root, maybe we just need more ways (and games?) to paint pink dresses on them and flush them back down the toilet.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
New novel bit is up. "The Side Ways 3.2: Into the Stream"
New chapter of the novel is posted, "3.2: Into the Stream." Here's a chunk.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Kendra shook her head, checked for cars again – the street was empty – and stepped into the road.
The swirling lights and shadows seemed to tickle at the part of her that wanted to get going. Her legs felt light and twitchy. She began to tap a rhythm with her fingers on her hips. A kind of syncopated, martial drum-beat. She looked around and though she was standing still, the houses and trees, parked cars and telephone poles beside the road seemed to blur a bit, as if she was moving past them at great speed.
And she knew, instinctively, why Tess didn’t understand her checking for cars. I’m part of it now, she thought. If a car were to drive along, it wouldn’t touch me. I am, she realized with more than a little wonder, a part of the road. I am the reason of road.
And now, it’s time to go, Kendra thought. So let’s go. Go, go, go. And with the thought, came motion.
She had sensed the general direction of their destination before, and her informal knowledge of the city gave her at least a rough notion of what to expect in terms of streets, turns and the city’s layout. And she may have driven those roads a few times in the back of her mom’s car, or seen them from a bus a few times.
Still, she was not at all prepared to live the journey as a continuous series of snapshot, lightning-fast thought-pictures that delivered her to her target almost instantaneously.
Afterwards, she would estimate that she’d traveled about two miles. At the time, as it happened, she couldn’t have told you if it was one-block or a thousand.
It’s that way, was what she first thought as the Way entered her and she entered it, and the next thing she knew, she was somewhere else, somewhere closer. But there was also knowledge in her mind. As if she had a map of the places in between where she’d been and where she was now. In case I need to back-track, she thought. How handy.
Still, she wasn’t where she wanted to be. She could feel it, and it was at least a few blocks away. And she didn’t know the route. And there were buildings in the way.
What is the best way?
That was her thought. “Best.†Not, “quickest.†And so…
Flash. Flash. Flash.
Holy crap, she thought. I’m triangulating.
Sensing the place she wanted to be from at least three different vantages, two of which had moved her further along from where she’d been standing than the place she wished to be.
That’s odd, she thought. To best get where I’m going in the end, I can now go beyond it first. She had a very strong feeling that this was an important lesson, but the lights and the shadows in the stream were tickling the go-go-go impulse and she knew, now, where she wanted to be, how to best get there and…
Kendra was standing in the road, still in the stream of the Great Way, just outside the parking lot of a small strip-mall that included a Thai restaurant, a dry-cleaners, a couple specialty shops and a convenience store. The last slot in the row was a closed-up, walk-in dentist’s office. Though dark, closed for the night, and hidden behind tight-shut venetian blinds, it was clearly the spot where the vibes that Kendra was feeling were coming from.
She stepped up onto the curb and felt the Way slip off her like a blanket falling from her shoulders.
“Wow,†she said. “That was really, really odd. Cool. But odd.â€
* * * * *
Check out the main page for “The Side Ways,†and request the password for all parts after “Chapter 1.1: Stray Girl,†if you’ve got a mind to.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Six Degrees of Metadata
I don't talk about my day gig much in this space. Mostly because my day gig involves marketing, and if I'm going to write about what I do (marketing) and where I do it (OCLC), I should do it there, on the clock, get paid for it, and give the shrift to them what pays me.
This separation of blog and job should not be confused with any antipathy towards work on my part. I really like what I do and think my company does some very excellent stuff. I just don't talk about it here. Much.
But the gang in our research division just launched something uber-cool that I'd like to point out to my buddies what ain't already hip to the library land groove. WorldCat Identities.
This service pulls all kinds of library links from WorldCat into one page, based around the identity of... well... "somebody important." Could be an author, could be a character in a work. And it links out from one to the next, in a way that reminds me of a social networking service like LinkedIn, but for... well... "somebody important."
For example. Start with one of the biggest names in the cloud. William Shakespeare. Truck on down the page to the "Related Names" section and click on Julius Caesar. [Note: don't click on the wee, litle "+" sign... that does something different. Well, sure. Go back and do that, too. But not right now].
Now you're looking at works about and by Julius Caesar. Oh, right. Caesar wrote stuff himself. He wasn't just a character in other people's plays. That's good to keep in mind.
Related people to Mr. Caesar include George Bernard Shaw, who wrote a play called "Caesar and Cleopatra." Right. I'd forgotten about that, too. Another related name is Joan of Arc, about whom George also wrote.
Now if you look closely at the Identity page for Joan, you'll see a little link number next to it: 944.026. That's a link to the Dewey Browser view of WorldCat... another cool tool from our friends in Research. Click there and look at the books you'd see next to books about Joan on the shelf at the library.
Turns out that some of the books next to Joan on the shelf have to do with the history of the English longbow... and that's directly related to the current historical fiction series that I'm reading. And to a lifelong interest I've had in archery, instilled in me by my maternal grandfather, who was a bowyer and fletcher.
WorldCat Identities is, I think, an incredibly interesting way to paw through content collections and areas of interest. Stories are largely about people; much more interesting (in most cases) than stuff or places. At least to me. And so a "data cube" that rotates around the people at the heart of stories -- both them what writes 'em and them what's in 'em -- is a great way to navigate a sea of potentially interesting information.
This one was just way too cool for me to not share with my 9 regular readers. Major, major props to the guys in Research.
This separation of blog and job should not be confused with any antipathy towards work on my part. I really like what I do and think my company does some very excellent stuff. I just don't talk about it here. Much.
But the gang in our research division just launched something uber-cool that I'd like to point out to my buddies what ain't already hip to the library land groove. WorldCat Identities.
This service pulls all kinds of library links from WorldCat into one page, based around the identity of... well... "somebody important." Could be an author, could be a character in a work. And it links out from one to the next, in a way that reminds me of a social networking service like LinkedIn, but for... well... "somebody important."
For example. Start with one of the biggest names in the cloud. William Shakespeare. Truck on down the page to the "Related Names" section and click on Julius Caesar. [Note: don't click on the wee, litle "+" sign... that does something different. Well, sure. Go back and do that, too. But not right now].
Now you're looking at works about and by Julius Caesar. Oh, right. Caesar wrote stuff himself. He wasn't just a character in other people's plays. That's good to keep in mind.
Related people to Mr. Caesar include George Bernard Shaw, who wrote a play called "Caesar and Cleopatra." Right. I'd forgotten about that, too. Another related name is Joan of Arc, about whom George also wrote.
Now if you look closely at the Identity page for Joan, you'll see a little link number next to it: 944.026. That's a link to the Dewey Browser view of WorldCat... another cool tool from our friends in Research. Click there and look at the books you'd see next to books about Joan on the shelf at the library.
Turns out that some of the books next to Joan on the shelf have to do with the history of the English longbow... and that's directly related to the current historical fiction series that I'm reading. And to a lifelong interest I've had in archery, instilled in me by my maternal grandfather, who was a bowyer and fletcher.
WorldCat Identities is, I think, an incredibly interesting way to paw through content collections and areas of interest. Stories are largely about people; much more interesting (in most cases) than stuff or places. At least to me. And so a "data cube" that rotates around the people at the heart of stories -- both them what writes 'em and them what's in 'em -- is a great way to navigate a sea of potentially interesting information.
This one was just way too cool for me to not share with my 9 regular readers. Major, major props to the guys in Research.
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