Our generation has a short attention span. We’re also pretty design-savyy, I admit.
So if you want to teach us something, all of the lengthy articles on blogs and essay-format. Give us a break. We’re growing up, or should I say grew up in the brand-whore advertising generation… BOOM.
We’re already bombarded by text everywhere a la advertising. Why do you think we rely on text messages on our cellphones instead of talking to someone on the phone? Keep it a short and concise conversation, old lady.
- Feed us information
- Make it bullet form
- Summarize it in a few sentences
- If you can’t keep it simple, well, it’s not stupid
- It’s not smart either
The most important things to give to your audience is a fish-hook:
if we want to learn more, we’ll be back.
The concept of time stamps on twitter has always frustrated me. Not only are they akin to bullet points, or scratches on the proverbial sun-dial, these dates are by no means organized in such a shape or form that allows us to read and interpret tweets outside of their 140 character context.
Word on the Street Festival, 2009
If one wished to read ‘tweet’s from other users within a desktop client, app or on the main website, our neurons would have to be re-wired again to automatically skip the additional details, excluding meta data simply just to focus on context of the text.
Similar to reading, the page numbers within a book are unobtrusive and serve as marker of a specific quote or the measurement of the distance from beginning to end. But that is a tangible object, and can also be physically discerned by the weight or size of the different halves on either side of the bookmark.
Mimi Li, Artist 2009
As a literature student (and sometimes designer) the quality of the paper or style of font affects my overall reading experience. If a text was published within the 1980s deca or earlier, the cover or scattered page illustrations influence why I accept certain aspects within the story or interact with the narrative, most likely as a result of my extended-reading history with children’s stories.
Texts aimed at teenagers were rather boring so I began reading histories of medieval England, analysis of Shakespeare’s comedies or National Geographics instead.
unknown student, Emily Carr Graduation Exhibition 2009
However, reading online requires building another filter to ignore additional or deemed unnecessary information. And as a designer, or more literally, as a creative person, this conflicts with the fact that require ourselves to “(be) more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment*.”
Architecture for Humanity, Gastown, Vancouver, 2010
How are we to determine how to interact with twitter as a historical influence? There are no standards as yet to create calendars, weekly archives or categories. Instead, we rely on the individual and their recent twenty or so recent tweets within their stream. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, they’re allocated number of tweets or favorites are minimal
It makes me wonder now how much of the information we read on twitter (or an extended note, any social network) is relevant anyways, if some time in the future no one will be able to, from an organizational and tidy method, to read these snippets of information that defines who we were at a specific time, place outside of this instant.
If I wished to read say, the very first tweet you posted on twitter, or the first tweet you posted at the beginning of month and created a data visualization from this information, it would be impossible to do so.
Everything is rather inconveniently organized, meaning no organization at all.
Or, if you rather, the devil is in the details 
*a link to a stand-in article, I’m sure I’ve read something similar elsewhere but currently having difficultly teasing out of my brain WHERE I read this point [online? /website, google reader, twitter/ offline? book? magazine? conversation?]
Waiting for the stars to begin dying in the skies
and wondering if Venus will appear again
as her dual role of morn’ star and evening
twinkle, while nightly inhabitants go about their business
among overgrown lawns and curly ferns, avoiding
those metallic garbage cans shining like ominous
deus ex machina and filled with splendors. There should
be more to this witching hour at 3am, a clock striking
a perfect 90 degrees. Only sleepy-eyed students
and graveyard shifts beat rhythm, while across the
city little children cry in frustration to the problems
of a blue and green orb. I remember endless
conversations passed from phone receivers to
tiny message windows about self doubt and epiphanies,
wandering topics fro and to with an endless curiosity,
questions of news, long ago.
photography by klaire lee
Over the past few months, almost a half-year really, a fellow classmate and I have been maintaining a correspondence almost-entirely by email. He doesn’t live far away from the campus, and we sometimes meetup for lunch or other activities yet these conversations always pales a little in comparison to our virtual letters.
In essence a letter is written and read in retirement from the social scene; this is certainly true of… major epistolary clarification. (Tanner)
It’s a somewhat unusual occurrence, abandoning the instant message chats (he also doesn’t own a cellphone) & other social media modes of communication. If it weren’t for those similar flashes of insight from our meshed personalities, during our offline interactions, I would not know how to weigh this friendship. » Read the rest of this entry «
Concurrently confused by settings of aperture and shutter priority modes (has it really been that long dear lens baby?) Oho! and for a brief five daily sunshine nocturnes, my favorite photo walk activity partner Ash was in town again!
Three years ago we would wander downtown for hours per day, skipping classes or afternoons for a camera lover stroll. Late spring and early autumn hours, exploring the city in digital format (with our trusty point and shoots in tow’).
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Tonight’s fourth year’ english discussions were borderline sleepy, a grim foreshadowing of empty silences and knock-off’s for the rest of the semester. Attempted thoughts with open topics in answer to presentation & points in reference to Titus Andronicus’s a la femme despair Lavinia, and Shakespeare’s transferences of anachronistic mythology askewed with Ovid’s Metamorphoses mythos of upheaval and mutations were met with heavy blank leaded bullets.
Could Lavinia’s loss of limbs indicate a reversal of functions? ie. the tasks and actions that once defined her gender within the ancient world of non-existent democracy-iotic Rome, are no longer accessible, thus she has been de-sexualized from her femininity?
Would it be possible that her attempts at humanity, utilizing her body’s other properties to replace limbs she has lost be regarded as a pre-cyborg function? Are these tools assimilated into her body or merely extensions of her self?
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Therapy is not quite what I expected it to be.
You walk in, introduce yourself to the counsellor and the video camera. Discussions ensue about the what and why’s you are here in this room with no windows and soft florescent lights glow. Try to avoid looking at the video camera as much as possible while reminiscing about yourself as a kid, a highschool bookworm and a precocious college camera brat.
Wave your hands a lot: it will distracting you from fidgeting with zippers and fringes on couches, not to mention twiddling your toes and glancing at the clock’s hand above her head. Stare at the giant bowl of candy several times before consumption begins.
Worry about talking too much. Discuss where it happened and why you did what you did. Start feeling nervous. You gotta do what you gotta do ‘back then. Isolate the trigger of these reactions. Eat more candy and drink water. Forget the video camera is still recording.
The point of this blog entry was to discuss about everything without discussing it at all.
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