Interrelativity

Category: Film

  • Thumbs down on Netflix ditching of 5-star ratings for a thumbs-based system

    The Netflix video streaming and DVD service announced Thursday that it is switching from a 5-star rating system to a simpler thumbs up / thumbs down system. I've been a Netflix user (and fan) for many years, and love their personalized ratings predictions. I have often used their model in presentations and brainstorming involving other services…

  • The Gaps, Crap and Gumption Traps in Creative Work

    The poster above reflects hard-won wisdom acquired and shared by Ira Glass, host of PRI's This American Life, emphasizing the importance of perseverance in developing mastery of creative production. While Glass focuses on storytelling for radio and television, his insights and experiences about the gaps between ambitions and realizations – and the connections between quantity…

  • Reflections on Connections: A Review of Connected, the Film

    Watching the recent Seattle premiere of Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death and Technology, a documentary directed by Tiffany Shlain, I experienced a cascading and interconnected series of thoughts and emotions evoked by this loving tribute to the intellectual and emotional influence that her late father, Leonard Shlain, had on his family and the world…

  • Irritation Based Innovation

    If necessity is the mother of invention, irritation is the father. People can be motivated to make changes based on so-called positive emotions, but I would argue that anger is more often the spark for fueling innovation. Some people live by the credo Don't get mad, get even. But as Mohandas Gandhi so adroitly observed,…

  • Violent communication, emotional contagion, genocide and eliminationism

    Last night, I watched a disturbing show on PBS, Worse than War, "the first major documentary to explore the phenomenon of genocide and how we can stop it". Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, narrator of the film and author of the book upon which it is based, argues that contrary to common conceptions of irrational and spontaneous…

  • Twitter: a witness projection program

    Twitter has become the ultimate (or at least current favorite) tool for addressing the fundamental human need to matter, to have a witness. The increasingly popular web service "for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" is, more…

  • The Past, Present and Future of Green

    My wife and I attended the Seattle Green Festival last weekend. Amy spent most of her time in the exhibit area while I spent most of my time in presentation sessions, seeking and finding inspiration from Amy Goodman, Lawrence Lessig, Brett Horvath and Gabriel Scheer. Amy (my wife) spent part of her time helping out…

  • Augurs of hope, past & present: MLK, Milk, Obama & all of us’s

    Last week, on Martin Luther King Day, Amy and I watched the film, Milk, about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California (back in 1978). When we got to the Egyptian Theatre, Amy asked for two tickets to see "M-I-L-K", spelling out Milk's name. We laughed about…

  • The Dalai Lama and the Reflectance and Resonance of Greatness, Understanding and Humility

    His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, is in Seattle this week. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to see him, personally – I’ve just returned from Florence, Italy (CHI 2008), with a really bad cold – but I just read a report by Ward Serrill in The Seattle Times on connecting Eye-to-Eye with the…

  • Locked-in Syndrome: Diving Bells, Butterflies, Freedoms and Families

    Amy and I recently saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (or, more properly, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon), during an unexpected extended layover in San Francisco. The movie is about the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, former editor of the fashion magazine Elle, who at age 43 suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed except for…