The Age of Recommendation

"We are leaving the Information Age and entering the Recommendation Age. Today information is ridiculously easy to get; you practically trip over it on the street. Information gathering is no longer the issue-making smart decisions based on the information is now the trick... Recommendations serve as shortcuts through the thicket of information, just as my wine shop owner shortcuts me to obscure French wines to enjoy with pasta. " - Trend-watchers at Frog Design

Web 1.0: They were the Producers who generate information as much as they could - websites, blogs

Web 1.5: they were the Distributors who makes informations reachable to as many as possible - search engines like Google, youtube

Web 2.0: and lately they become the Tastemakers, who directs people/traffic to specific information via reviews/ratings/tags/links/embeds/etc, based on their own opinions and self-interests - social networking programs, Diggs, stumbleUpon, technorati,etc

"Your products and your customers are your ads, and so are your employess." Robert Scoble, FastCompany.tv

Even Joshua Bell can't escape consumerism

Joshua Bell the violinist performing in Washington DC Subway:

What commodification does is teaching people to read labels, dollar signs and brands to determine what's valuable: A performance given by Joshua Bell at the National Theater with tickets sold at hundreds of dollars drew sell-out crowds, while the same performance given for Free at the subway station the very next day caught no attention and interests in the crowd, except for one girl in the end, who happened to recognize Bell initially via his previous appearance, but still not his work. Consumerism can sometime blind our perceptions in discovering the real value that often constructs those labels/dollars/brands.

"當你看的懂 聽的懂 一見事情 一個道理以後, 並不代表你會.
當你會的時候, 並不代表你會做的很好.
當你做的很好以後, 並不代表你做的最好."
- 郭建良, album producer

Collective Design Intelligence

" I don't suggest that design should be a democracy. But shouldn't design at least be a conversation? Designers can put their ideas on the web. Customers can make suggestions and discuss them. Designers can take the best ideas and adapt them, giving credit where it is due." - Jeff Jarvis

Although Starchitects and single authorship will probably never disappear in the design industry, however, as our world becomes more flattened and interconnected due to hardware (broadband, wifi, smart phones, portable notebooks, etc) and software (social networking, blogs, Google) ubiquity, the number of off-mainstream & off-the-shelf design opportunities for the amateur or the 'not-yet-famous' becomes greater.

A decade later
Starchitects will continue to serve the rich and powerful elites, covering 5 % of total commissions & clients...and diminishing, but its the Emergent Designers who will accommodate the needs of the mass of niches, which accounts for the rest 95%...and increasing, meaning if a portion of niches are gathered, they will combined to achieve more significant cultural influence over a major starchitects' project. Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory has been true in movies, music, and publishing industry, design might also be true. Whats for sure is that Internet allows present and future of design process to run on open-meritocracy over hierarchy.

Design is in the service industry

Observe changes in which other disciplines are conducting their businesses and innovative means of establishing relationships with public and ask potential clients "How may I help them to make what they wish to do Better?"

好想童年的回憶

躲避球 操場 運動會 畫畫 月考 早自習 營養午餐 糾察隊 打手心 訓導處 娃娃車 涼麵 小龍包 麥克雞塊 七龍珠 蠟筆小星 櫻木花道 大雄 297公車

童年就像這首歌很輕鬆愉快 度過無憂無慮的時光...




時光機

牆角迎風的雛菊
茉莉花開的香氣
閉上眼回到過去

劃分界線的桌椅
下課卻靠在一起
我就是離不開妳

一路乘著溜滑梯
我們說好走到底
以為從此就分離

用黑板上的日期 倒數找妳
慢慢清晰 原來思念妳
是加了糖的消息
我用鉛筆 畫的很仔細
素描那年天氣 蟬鳴的夏季
我想遇見妳

那童年的希望是一台時光機
我可以一路開心到底 都不換氣
戴竹蜻蜓 穿過那森林
打開了任意門找到妳 一起旅行
那童年的希望是一台時光機
妳我翻滾過的榻榻米 味道熟悉
所有回憶 在小叮噹口袋裡
一起盪鞦韆的默契
在風中持續著甜蜜

周杰倫
方文山

Meaning of "Just do It."

Employees of Nike are told by their managers to better seek 'forgiveness' than 'permission', so just do it !

"Sometimes, success can blind you to the oncoming possibility of failure. And fear of failure can keep you from success." - Jeff Jarvis

Architecture/music/mood

"Architecture is like the soundtrack of a movie; it controls the way we feel about the movie, although we never quite pay attention to it. We are always giving credit to the actors, producers, cinematographers, but its really the music in the background that tells us the plot and how to feel." - Jeffrey Kipnis

"Success seems to be largely a matter of Hanging On after others have let go" - Willim Feather

"Future is here, its just not evenly distributed" - William Gibson, writer

Capitalism 2.0

Internet is changing the fundamental principles of our economy by providing an alternative way in which businesses are formed, run, and profit under the new principles that now we call Capitalism 2.0. The old rule of generating 'scarcity' under capitalism 1.0 has been replaced by managing 'abundance' under capitalism 2.0 made possible by the internet. This change, so far, is most evident in the media retailer industry. Traditional music, book, and dvd rental stores provide a finite amount of shelving spaces, limiting the amount of products each could carry in the store. This 'scarcity' drives the product prices high because the producers had to competitively bid and pay higher rent to get their products on the shelf. However, internet changed all that; music, books, and dvd's are now digitized into mp3, pdf, and mov which takes almost no physical space to store. This allows new generation of stores to carry much more music, books, and videos than their previous non-web based. Rhapsody, online music download store carries over 1.5 million tracks, that's 150 times more than a traditional cd store you see in the malls. Plus its price - $13/month for unlimited downloads, is equivalent to cost of a cd you buy at HMV. Amazon has over 3.7 million books and digital books, while hosts over 1.3 million misc. product sellers online. Netflix carries 55000 dvds through mail and 12,000 movies via online streaming. Customers can access all of these titles at $9/month, who would want to go to Blockbuster? With internet, stores like these become capable of storing infinite quantities of products catering to an extremely wide-range of global customers, at minimal prices (because inventory is no longer an issue). Being 'abundant' certainty is an advantage. Industries that are still operating under the 'scarcity' model by controlling quantities of supplies and access to them (newspapers, broadcasting co., movie industry) are doomed if they refuse to acknowledge and adapt to the new 'abundant' business model.

Capitalism 2.0 over Capitalism 1.0:

1. More: abundance - more (supply) yields more (profit), over Scarcity - less yields more. Learn from Amazon, Netflix, Rhapsody, itune Store.

2. Free: minimal entry & capital cost, over expensive entry & capital cost. Internet minimizes production, distribution, and inventory costs, thus the suppliers & could sell their products at lower capital cost. Internet allows businesses to profit from being cost "free." Learn from Asus - seling EeePC notebook at "$0."

3. Share: see 'sharing' as an intuitive human behavior by acknowledging the power (knowledge & labor) of the mass, over sharing that requires profit incentives. People love to share ideas, suggestions for free if there is a place for them to do so. Learn from NASA's clickworkers ,Wikipedia

4. Open: offer a platform that surrender authority to the mass, over authority reserved to the executives and specialists they hired. Learn from Dell's IdeaStorm and Starbucks' my starbucks idea.

5. Distribute: distribution model: network to as much as possible/ Exclusion model: network to selective/targeted public. Learn from Facebook, Google Adsense.

6. Meritocracy: promote a culture of merits where best ideas survive and get carried forth, regardless of where the ideas come from, could be executives, specialists, employees, customers, or public. Transparency and collaboration are keys in the process.

Imagine design business running under principles of Capitalism 2.0...

只有願不願意

"Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice" - Jim Collins

Please your mind, and it will do a lot more for you in return.

What you think is who you'll become.

Diller Scofidio speaks faith

"In many of our projects we didn't know how we are going to achieve them. When we did a "Cloud" in Switzerland, we didn't have the slightest idea how we were going to achieve that. So I think that one of the things that is important to us is taking that leap of faith and believing that you are going to get there as you have to do it" - Ricardo Scofidio

"We usually take that leap of faith off a cliff without a parachute and we figure it out on the way down..." - Elizabeth Diller

Uncertainty is the direct route to certainty. Think while act.

Mainstreams of tomorrow

Consumerism become producerism: as a result of more production tools becoming available to public (Final Cut, Cinema 4D, iMovie, Garageband, Aperature, SketchUp, etc - entry threshold is lower/flattened for most discciplines.

Amateurs become professionals (ex: wiki writers, Amazon product review critics, Youtube Symphony, online celebrity like Sarah Swift).

Mobile network takes over the world: mobile phones/notebook gradually replace personal computers & mini laptops as basic tool for web surfing, communication, and text processing. Already there are more mobile phones than there are PC's in the world.

Google ventures into mobile services, follow by MSN, Baidu, & Yahoo (always a bit slow).

Film, media (major newspapers, magazines, tv broadcast), and home entertainment goes digital, made available online: PCs marry with televisions. Peer to Peer streaming becomes a commercialized industry (Netflix, PPStream, Amazon video, Rhapsody, itune & iphone store, etc).

Next generation video game consoles become graphic & animation tools: Gamers would enjoy creating own aminations, games, and distribute them to the public via internet & phone apps. Ex: Spore: open-source pc game