Since I no longer have cable, the show automatically fails to achieve my audience in its distribution and reach – content, be damned. But that’s an insight on shifting technologies. Grant’s musing considers the shift in cultural aesthetics and presentation over time.

His words could stimulate a whole evening of discussion on cultural hegemony, the formulaic articulation of a degenerative zeitgeist, and how the push of philanthropy-in-action by the everyday hero has shifted who can and what it means to make a difference.

And..if you’re buying the wine, I’m in on the discussion.

For Grant’s insightful blog post, in entirety –> Harry’s Law: flourish or fail?

BTW, I haven’t disappeared.  I was just caught up in a 3-month kitchen + bath remodel that turned my world upside-down! I’ll get back to blogging soon.  So much has happened and so many things to consider!

EDITED TO ADD (It’s happening in NYC next Wednesday My bad…it was yesterday! Damn it!):

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of its $200-million-per-year U.S. e-commerce business and the launch of its e-commerce site in the UK, Ralph Lauren is staging a “four-dimensional” light installation on Wednesday night at its flagship locations in New York and London.

Ralph Lauren has architecturally mapped the foundation and contours of its stores on Madison Avenue and New Bond Street, respectively, and will use light to make the buildings look as if they are being rotated, squeezed, disassembled block by block and so forth. From the spaces will emerge 3D replicas of some of the brand’s most iconic images — such as galloping polo players and four-story tall models walking invisible runways — and accessories, such as bags, belts and ties, from the current collection.

The so-called fourth dimension will be a series of additional sensory effects, including sound (music), touch (breezes) and smell (wafts of the brand’s fragrance collection), timed in sequence with the show.

It’s an impressive spectacle that should delight and engage audiences, and has already snagged the media’s attention. But it’s also an expensive one that, because of being staged on a local level, could potentially have limited reach.

When asked why the company had chosen to stage an on-site event rather than a big digital media spend, and how the event would translate into sales, Senior Vice President of Advertising, Marketing and Corporate Communications David Lauren explained that the event was all about building mainstream awareness for the company.

“We want to make sure we are seen at the cutting-edge of technology and trends [by everyone],” he said. The company also plans to post video footage of the show on its website and mobile applications, hoping the event’s novelty factor will make it “go viral.”

The show, which begins at 8 p.m. ET in New York and 9 p.m. in London, will last a total of 10 minutes and is open to the public. Those who won’t be able to attend in person can check out the behind-the-scenes video below, as well as a video from a similar event Nespresso staged in Brussels in May. We’ll post a full video of the show later this week.

(courtesy: Mashable.com)

Behind-the-Scenes Video

Nespresso Demonstration

Yep, I got to hold the medal. (And it was more of a kick than I expected it to be!)

If you read my blog post on the Coupe de Monde of Fencing last week, you’ll understand why I’m posting the piece (link below) by Tim Morehouse. Tim is the #1 ranked men’s sabre fencer in the U.S. (14th world, I believe), two-time Olympian, and Olympic Silver Medalist (2008 Beijing, Team). His determination to open the floodgates of interest in the sport through increased public participation and branded corporate sponsorship is something I’ve been watching for about 3 years; and, it is unwavering.

Admittedly, with many years in luxury brand management, I’ve tried to do my part for the cause by alerting several of my luxebrand exec-friends to Tim’s cause – passively beating them over the head with “Hey! Watch Tim! Just sayin’…”, but budgets have been slashed. Empathetic to the difficult measures many have needed to consider during these tough economic times – laying-off several quality members of their respective teams, I’ve merely attempted to keep Tim on their radar. Even my most senior friends (EVP/SVP) are required to justify anything beyond their standard placement of marketing dollars.  IF sponsorship has been fit into the [marketing] mix, it’s mostly for the big events — like the Veuve Cliquot Polo Classic (Prince Harry offered a TON of press, of course).  I dig the situation on both sides. My goal has simply been to plant some seeds. You never know when budgets may be shifted to “try something new.” While the luxury market remains soft, recent reports are showing signs of optimism.

The dip in the luxury manufacturing was the opportunity that prompted me to shift my focus/place under the branding umbrella, moving from management + execution to brand conception, platform development + strategy. Literally, as I stepped out of the luxury scene, Tim arrived.

My part 2 of 2 blog post will go a little further into how Tim’s journey has evolved; and why, as a brand and marketing professional, it caught my attention.

Please visit Tim’s (prolific) blog to read his take:

Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic 2010: The Sport of Polo Continues to Outshine Fencing (For No Good Reason!)

Bud Caddell is a change-maker and a cultural curator.

I forget how I first came across Bud on Twitter, but I had already been following him by the time I had the opportunity to chat with him in person at Grant McCracken’s Chief Culture Officer Boot Camp. Bud’s a wicked-smart, culturally-aware, and downright talented man who authors one of my favorite reads on this here Internets – What Consumes Me. It’s an aptly named blog for the curiosity that drives Bud. That curiosity is what consumes me, too. I have flipped my life on its head because of that curiosity. And based on the number of people I’ve surrounded myself with lately who also seem to have caught this bug, I am incredibly bullish on supporting Bud’s new project: The Bucket Brigade.

The Bucket Brigade is the formal proposal for a new book Bud will pen with contributions and support through the micro-funding site, Kickstarter. My excitement over the work Fred Benenson (another of my connections) and the industrious crew at Kickstarter is an whole ‘nuther blog post.  Today, it’s about Mr. Bud Caddell.  The basic idea behind is project is this:

This book will be for anyone interested in creating products that are not just market exchanges, but cultural exchanges – for anyone that wants to build or reshape an organization for doing business in a world gone digital – and for anyone just finding their footing in the marketing industry today.

Largely as part of the major shift in my own paradigm and understanding of what consumes ME, the connections I’ve made over the past 2-3 years are with people who will do nothing less than change the way we view the world. If they’re not on the leading-edge of technology or new media communications, they are creating new ways of doing, changing and building new platforms for business, and showing the rest of the world that not only CAN you prosper financially and culturally by shifting the way things are done to a more integrated “both/and” experience, but the benefits of doing so can net MORE prosperity than anyone would have imagined, allow for insanely creative initiatives, and build momentum for even larger benefits.

Bud is one of these new connections in my life and my life is richer with him in it.

$1, $5, $25, $100…whatever you can be spared will go into the coffers and will benefit this project. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing form of micro-funding, so it is way important to get the project to the $5000 goal by July 23 (he’s already at $3842!). But what is so cool about Kickstarter is that any project is not confined by the limits (often conservative) we’ve all been conditioned to adhere.  We only ask for what we absolutely need, and if we receive it, it will be only for what we’ve asked.  Kickstarter allows the goals set by the project owner to stand as baseline values. The market and audience will ultimately set the value of an idea and a project through their support of it.  *diaspora is a recent example of this support valuation and was one of several projects that were supported through Kickstarter that raised exponentially more than they had requested. *diaspora asked for $10,000 and raised $200,000.

Bud rocks. Kickstarter rocks. Support something awesome and help fund Bud’s project.

Source: www.timmorehouse.com

Steve Mormando (my coach), Dagmara Wozniak (seated) + Daria Schneider (on strip)

While I have only been fencing for a few years, I have been blessed to hold incredible proximity and association to these world-class athletes whom I respect and admire, and whose influence and mentorship inspire my journey in ways that they are largely unaware. Peter Westbrook, Steve Mormando (my coach), Tim Morehouse, Jason Rogers, Keeth and Erinn Smart, Dagmara (“Daga”) Wozniak, Daria Schneider and Mariel Zagunis have all touched my life in some way.  The privilege to watch them perform in this hemisphere and on this side of Greenwich Mean Time was a rarity and a treat.

But as I said, this post isn’t about fencing…really.

Opportunity is knocking down the damn door. Can somebody please answer it?

I have been to my share of fencing tournaments. For a sport that triggers association with attributes like chivalry and elegance, the reality of the event, itself, is decidedly neither of these. When en garde is demanded by a referee at the commencement of a bout, indeed, chivalry and elegance serve as the standard to which all most fencers engage their opponent. But most tournaments are unglamorous, sweaty, hurry-up-and-wait, eat-when-you-can, multiple day happenings. I don’t know why, but I expected to see at least some level of elevation at this event.

Hurry-up-and-wait...in action

The elegance of a hotel ballroom is infinitely more in line with perceptions of the sport then the average sports venue. However, this venue – the Brooklyn Marriott – was way too small for the number of attendees.  Similar to golf, the audience in fencing moves with the action. Often, significant bouts will happen concurrently, as was the case on Saturday. An engaged audience will literally run between the active strips to catch the action. Standing on chairs, cheering, and climbing over each other is not unusual and is exciting to experience, but because of the limitations of space in this case, it became a bit of a sport in itself.

I will admit that my nascent passion for the sport may color the optimism I hold for the opportunities I believe to exist.  But since becoming involved in fencing, I’ve recognized this weird mix of frustrated apathy and tenacious optimism that permeates the community.

Credit: Lynne Sladky / Associated Press (via latimes.com)

Those who fence, do so because they love it. While the face of fencing has changed significantly over the past 25 years, and now represents a broader demographic spectrum, fencing remains a strategy-intense sport where intellectual muscle can often out maneuver physical brawn. From where I sit, I watch as talented and dedicated individuals that managed to strike a balance during their academic pursuits simply move away from the sport after graduation because of a lack of support at any level of participation.  Likewise, I’ve seen the sacrifices made by those who remain in the sport and actively train to realize their full potential.  Sadly, there seems to come a time when an all-or-nothing decision has to be made.

Fencing is RIPE for sponsorship, yo. Seriously.

The Nike Ballestra Fencing Shoe (credit: Nike.com)

Dear Nike and Adidas: you’ve both developed state-of-the-art, aspirational, performance-based footwear for fencing; and yet, you were completely absent from this International event.  Oh sure, there was that other World Cup happening at the same time, but you have already spent the R+D dollars and have these shoes in production. Based on the wall-to-wall attendance to an under-advertised event, not only would event representation have impressed a thousand (or so) immediate eyeballs, but a mere peppering of the event across your media platform and a few co-op dollars toward greater advertising opportunities could have easily driven attendance by enthusiasts and the curious, alike.

Next Top Model (Switzerland, even)

Luxury brands looking to open the doors to new markets in fresh and inspired ways, here is your memo:  Fencing is aspirational and the potential audience is larger than you can imagine.  There is a HUGE opportunity to open the sport to a demographic who are incredibly curious about it – 25-45 year olds – in such a way that it aligns with many of the positive notions the general public understands the sport to be (elegant, aspirational, sexy, mysterious, physical – Note: Guestofaguest, one of several Morehouse/Rogers hosted Fencing Clinics in 2009 ).

Likewise, brands willing to invest in the opportunity to reach a younger, focused, and cross-cultural market through scholarship initiatives and meaningful reinforcement of positive behavior over a period of time help build a momentum in these young lives and become a touchstone of loyalty to those they have affected.  From here, the door of opportunity blows wide open.

The fencers I witnessed on Saturday were not merely an example of an elite group of athletes doing their thing. Most of them shoulder the economic burdens of travel, equipment, training, and participation costs while attempting to keep some level of progression in their still quite young (read: underpaid) professional lives.  These are not only the ambassadors of a sport, but they are educated, enthusiastic, passionate, and focused messengers for various causes and philanthropic efforts.  Many of these endeavors, such as Teach for America (Tim Morehouse) and The Peter Westbrook Foundation, aim to promote life success through education and achievement through sport by supporting access and opportunity to those who may not have the options many of us have.

Jason Rogers is "Sharing the Dream"

Even a little sponsored support would mean a lot, and not just to the quality of life for the athletes. Their journey, and any subsequent sacrifice made, has been by choice.  While that choice comes with a price tag of about $30,000 per year in expenses (above and beyond the “regular” cost of living we all maintain), most will agree that the sponsorship is not for them. Because of their athletic success, many are asked by schools and youth groups to speak about the sport, their individual successes (Olympics, etc), and give a little hands-on demonstration.  This is an opportunity for both the fencers and the students they reach.  The cost of this opportunity often falls on the fencer in a day of lost wages.  Through either expense management or event sponsorship, a platform of support could be created that would allow them to extend their reach. To a fencer, even the smallest advantage in reach may garner a touch.  That touch may help them win the bout.  If they win the bout, they will advance to the next round.  Every touch gets them closer to their goal.  This sense of achievement through singular accomplishment is a thread that runs through many of the charitable interests performed by those in the fencing community.

Source: Serge Timacheff/FencingPhotos.com (With permission: http://www.fencingphotos.com/shootingfencing.htm)

Wrist to wrist, all fencers are the same height and are in possession of similar abilities. Shielded by their masks, all fencers are the same race.  Cloaked in their white uniforms, all fencers are the same class.  When you understand the democracy in fencing, you begin to understand the opportunity for expansion – cultural and economic – that is inherent in the sport.

Part 2: Branding and Fencing and Men (Pounding the Red Carpet, Post-Beijing 2008) – will follow shortly!

Many of you have been curious about fencing, but find it overwhelming. Some of you have even been so brave to try it! Bravo! I’ve fallen in love with it, and occasionally put some of these videos up to help those of you who are curious to understand the sport better.

I agree, it is a complicated sport. Imagine jumping in as a newbie at the National level of competition! Even completely immersed and supported by my wonderfully empathetic teammates, I was lost for the first year. One of the major barriers to the sport is a lack of information afforded to the interested adult participant or spectator.

Most competitive fencers start fencing between 8-14 years of age. Learning is layered over time. The opportunity to advance the sport is really in the 26-45 age group. Adults learn differently than kids, but most fencing clubs (and arguably the fencing community, as a whole) remain kid-centric.

Enjoy!

The website is not my blog.  But the blog will (hopefully) be one of the most active parts of my website.  I am in the throws of creating a whole new environment for sheilagermain.com. I’m in the finishing phase right now and linking things to other things and making sure all of the bells and whistles do the appropriate dinging and chirping.

Thanks for your interest, patience and understanding!  Construction is always a challenge, but generally pretty rewarding.

Here’s a preview:

It's the landing page. Spiffy, right?

This isn’t breaking news.  Many of us have been on the Cluetrain Manifesto for a while. You’d think that corporations, owners of those major brands, would know this stuff by now.  But as WABC/Disney has shown, they’ve pulled their programming from Cablevision on one of the most viewed (read: advertising placement dollars) of the year.  If I’m a media planner, I’m going to be considering my placements in major markets and WABC/Disney’s relationships in that market. WABC/Disney set a precedent telling everyone that they’re not afraid to pull the trigger in a negotiation, even when the casualties are their own advertisers and end-consumers.

And so in honor of WABC/Disney’s gross display of antiquated operations and strategies, here are the 95 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto:

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
   
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
8. In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.
12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
13. What’s happening to markets is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The Company” is the only thing standing between the two.
14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.
16. Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.
17. Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.
18. Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.
19. Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.
21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.
22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.
23. Companies attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.
24. Bombastic boasts—”We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ”—do not constitute a position.
25. Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.
26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.
27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay.
28. Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market might see what’s really going on inside the company.
29. Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”
30. Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.
31. Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own “downsizing initiatives” taught us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”
32. Smart markets will find suppliers who speak their own language.
33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can’t be “picked up” at some tony conference.
34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
35. But first, they must belong to a community.
36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.
37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market.
38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.
39. The community of discourse is the market.
40. Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.
41. Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.
42. As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directlyinside the company—and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.
43. Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when the conditions are right.
44. Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.
45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.
46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.
47. While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.
48. When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.
49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.
50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.
51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.
52. Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.
53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.
54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.
55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.
56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.
57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.
58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ, then very few companies have yet wised up.
59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
60. This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.
61. Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false—and often is.
62. Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.
63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk toyou.
64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.
65. We’re also the workers who make your companies go. We want to talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.
66. As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other?
67. As markets, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.
68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what’s that got to do with us?
69. Maybe you’re impressing your investors. Maybe you’re impressing Wall Street. You’re not impressing us.
70. If you don’t impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Don’t they understand this? If they did, they wouldn’t let you talk that way.
71. Your tired notions of “the market” make our eyes glaze over. We don’t recognize ourselves in your projections—perhaps because we know we’re already elsewhere.
72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.
73. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!
75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.
76. We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?
77. You’re too busy “doing business” to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe.
78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.
80. Don’t worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it’s not the only thing on your mind.
81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?
82. Your product broke. Why? We’d like to ask the guy who made it. Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We’d like to have a chat with your CEO. What do you mean she’s not in?
83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
84. We know some people from your company. They’re pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play?
85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn’t have such a tight rein on “your people” maybe they’d be among the people we’d turn to.
86. When we’re not busy being your “target market,” many of us are your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar web site. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing’s job.
87. We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we’re holding our breath.
88. We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
89. We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.
90. Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we’ve been seeing.
91. Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.
92. Companies are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can’t they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.
93. We’re both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down.
94. To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.
95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting.

100 years into our post-industrialized, modern existence and technology is most often reconciled in beneficial terms (“progress” and “advancement”) that can be utilized for personal or consumptive profit.  However, we often fail to recognize the impact of emergent technologies in shaping the politics of identity, as well as the sociopolitical trajectories of our habitus.  Like an awkward teenager, we have struggled through the formative rites of passage.  When performance and technology synchronized well, progress proved a momentary coup.  But we have realized in retrospect that these moments were greatly evanescent and not maintainable by the antiquated expectations of behavior we, as the audience, posit to those who perform for our idealistic benefit on an ever-amplifying stage of technological succession.  Old doctrines of information exchange must be reconsidered; instead of changing our performance in an attempt to project and reinforce an outdated and constructed ideology, we must strive for a level of maturity allowing both the active and passive participants the freedom to exchange in an authentic and trustworthy manner.

If we compare how tenets of ritual and rhetoric were the means of integrating technological systems in the mid-19^th Century as suggested by the sociological observations of de Tocqueville, Veblen and Hawthorne (Marx) against the late 20^th Century “public-private” commentaries on the contingencies of electronic media by Meyrowitz, Turkle, McLuhan, and Sennett, we can see how the expectations and ideologies of role performance remained exalted while the performers themselves became evermore repressed to find themselves in what Hawthorne describes as a counterforce, or “a complicated order of existence.”  This juxtaposition shapes both the way the message is formed, as well as the resulting receipt by the audience.  The performance of self decentralizes and multiplies into a fragmented collection of truths, based on the medium of choice.  In time, the audience begins to recognize the inconsistent delivery of the message over various mediums and is left to guess which is natural, and which is artifice.

The primacy of image is often maintained through the use of highly expressive, easily incorporated, and readily accessed semiotic gestures.  Holdovers from the earlier influence of technology on individual performance, these devices serve both as an enlargement of meaning (when consistently used, and used well), as well as a coping mechanism to bide time in decision making.

We act and respond intuitively without full comprehension of the reconfiguration of society and selfhood.  This ignorance is reflective of our still nascent understanding of our postmodern platforms of information communication.  In other words, we are teenagers on a joyride with only our permit.  It is our responsibility as producers, manufacturers, and consumers to recognize a true liberation through a mature discernment for the systems of utility available, as well as the quality of the information being exchanged. With maturity comes the comfort and self-awareness necessary to step out from behind delusionary memes and embrace select mediums from a level of experience and to respectfully integrate the transformative powers of media technology on society and ourselves.

My last Valentine was in 2008.  We broke up 2-weeks later; just as the beautiful parrot tulips he’d sent on the “big” day were dying.  The year before that was “crazy Brett.” A) February 14th was his birthday, so the day was kind of hijacked for that purpose. B) He was a big whig at the toy fair in NYC, which always lands during this week. And, C) He was certifiable.  I never expected much, and he didn’t disappoint.  LOL  He was also kind of liminal in being that first “boyfriend” after a significant and long term relationship. Last year, because of my dad’s illness, I wasn’t dating.  And this year, well…it takes two to tango.  Or to fire up a hot Salsa Cubana.

Earlier today, I was working on some research for a paper/presentation I must deliver in 50 days. Ralph Waldo Emerson was my de facto Monday Morning Boyfriend.  I thought I’d share one specific passage that punctured me pretty hard, as I am certain it will you:

I MUST BE MYSELF. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you.  If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.  I will not hide my tastes or aversions.  I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and the moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints.  If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not burt you and myself by hypocritical attentions.  If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.  I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly.

Cited: Emerson, Ralph and Richard Whelan. Self-Reliance. New York: B. Tower, 1991. p.81.