Calling on the hive mind: Writing the future
This Thursday, I’m giving a university-wide public lecture at my alma mater (Drake). This would normally be terrifying, except that I did essentially the same thing last year at Trinity University (”Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur“), and loved it.
Writing a one-hour speech is different than a typical essay. For one thing, the stakes are higher. There’s an implied social contract between speaker and listener: the former will keep it interesting, while the latter will pay attention.
One can stop reading an article at any point. One can’t walk out of a lecture without being a dick.
My title for the Drake talk is “The Challenge of Writing in a Digital Age.” My thesis is that in the age of the internet, good writing has become both more important and more difficult. And while my speech is directed at a university community, part of my premise is that the distinction between “academic” and “professional” is artificial and irrelevant. A university isn’t “real life with training wheels.” The same issues that matter on a history paper about the Reconstruction come into play in business memos, screenplays, annual reports and US Weekly.
There are (as of now) seven qualities I want to examine. But since this is in fact a digital age, it seems appropriate to invite readers to comment upon and redirect my theses. So have at ‘em:
1. Authority
When I was a student in the early ’90s, if you could find it in a book or magazine, it was a fact. You worried more about citing it properly than questioning its accuracy. But when you’re using online resources, who’s to say whether a source is worthy of inclusion?
I’m using “authority” to denote the confluence of expertise and reputation on a specific subject. For example, I have a lot of authority on issues of screenwriting, not only because of my credits, but because of the consistency and accuracy of my articles on the topic. Although I’ve written about mathematics, I have a lot less authority on this subject, and you’d be foolish to include me in any serious paper on imaginary numbers.
And yet, as evidenced by the virulence of internet hoaxes, way too many readers seem to believe whatever they read online. They’re still treating life like a early-90’s term paper.
2. Authorship
I was calling this “copying,” since it’s largely about plagiarism and copyright infringement (related but frustratingly incompatible issues). But I went with “authorship” in order to cover what I think is a bigger issue: the degree to which you can claim and defend work as your own. To me, it has less to do with the law, and more about how you define yourself as a brand.
As a writer, I’m very careful not to steal, and not just because it’s illegal or morally wrong. I don’t steal because doing so would gravely hurt the reputation of John August, Inc.
One thought: If every class paper you turned in went not only to your professor, but also online for the whole class, would you be less apt to plagiarize? I think the social pressure would be enormous, and helpful.
3. Exposure
With the rise of blogs and internet forums, the boundaries between public and private, publisher and reader, have disintegrated. For all of the positive benefits — reaction, clarification, the gadfly factor — it’s brought a lot of bad writing into the world. Worse, I think it’s reinforcing the two-sides fallacy, where extreme positions are given equal footing by the “real” media in a misdirected attempt at fairness.
There’s a term for when this happens in forums, which I’m finding impossible to Google. It’s something like tumbleweeds. If this rings a bell, please share.
4. Transparency
It’s an over-used term, so I’d love to find a replacement. I’m talking about how difficult it can be to identify the source and motivation behind a message.
On last night’s Desperate Housewives, was Bree’s shopping spree at Macy’s a scene, or an ad? A bit of both, it turns out. And while there have always been “advertorials,” the rise of stealth marketing makes it harder to trust any sources.
5. Permanence
Do you want to see what johnaugust.com looked like in 2003? It’s all there, archived for eternity. Along with every comment you typed in a forum, and what you wrote on your friend’s Facebook wall. Pre-internet, 99% of what we wrote disappeared, with term papers thrown away and diskettes rendered obsolete. For better — but often for worse — an increasing percentage of our work is everlasting, retrievable not only by the author, but by anyone else.
During production, AICN put up a review of my script for CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. Only it wasn’t. It was a complete fabrication, an intellectual masturbation that was actually labeled “a loving work of fiction.”
When I complained, they put up a follow-up article saying that, “Oh, yeah, that wasn’t real.” But they still left up the original fake review, with no amendment.
6. Transience
The flip side of permanence, I’m talking about how difficult it can be to lock down the “final” version of anything. Links break, and articles are revised. When Variety first published Michael Fleming’s article about the Fox writers’ deal online, the quotes kept changing. Every 20 minutes, it was a slightly different article, with a slightly different spin. Once upon a time, you yelled, “Stop the presses!” Now you just click “update.” It’s not just less dramatic. It’s a fundamentally different act, with the stakes so lowered that there’s less pressure to get it right the first time.
7. Immediacy
Not only does news (or its bastard cousin, “entertainment news”) get reported more quickly today, but the reaction to it is much faster. Chris Crocker got his 15 seconds of fame not because of a particularly insightful reaction to Britney Spears, but because of a timely one. If he’d delayed one day, it wouldn’t have been worth mentioning.
But it raises an obvious question: If 24 hours makes something unimportant, was it ever important?
Journalism pundits will argue whether the rush to be first has eclipsed the need to be right. But I think it misses the larger point — that we’ve all essentially become journalists. By allowing anyone to reach a global audience, the internet has destroyed the traditional channels. The challenge is to find a way through the chaos.
My hunch is that it depends on Authority, Authorship and Transparency — a way to trust that the individual writer is speaking honestly about a subject within her sphere, with verifiable facts. In academics, this happens through peer review. I think it’s a similar type of social pressure — the need to be liked, to be respected — that will ultimately shape writing in the digital age.
Thoughts? Examples? Objections? That’s the point of the hive mind. If you have something to share, please do.
Articles
October 1st, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Great post, John. The only other thing that springs to mind is formality/informality. It seems these days that everyone speaks and writes as though they’re long-lost friends. Beyond the obvious LOL/BRB/BFF language break-downs, there’s something in modern syntax that often doesn’t seem credible to me. It’s one thing to pick up a copy of InStyle and read sentence fragments, pop-culture references and awkward applications of the word “girlfriend.” It’s another thing in professional and/or academic writing. That relaxed, conversational tone can be great when a skillful writer uses it stylistically. But it can be downright annoying when it comes across as false warmth or worse yet, ineptitude.
October 1st, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Sounds like a great speech. When are you suppose to give it? I am from Des Moines and while I attend the University of Iowa, I would still love to see if I can make it.
As far as your topic goes the only flag I see is the idea of authorship. The more unpublished academic content is put online the more it will be copied. Making classmates papers online will cause an increased dissemination of unpublished material to all corners of the internet. Just like one bottlegged DVD will get downloaded 1 million times, an academic paper about “The Importance of Vedic Sanskrit on Social Class in 10th Century India” would get passed around from Vasser to UCLA to Florida to Harvard and everywhere in between with very lazy frat boy putting their name on it. Now the question becomes is the act of stealing more of a threat or the homogenization of ideas accross an academic populous. If you have a vast network of available content to pull and take as you choose, and even claim as your own, you are not talking about the proliferation of incompetent writers anymore, your talking about the proliferation of generic ideas and stale thought. Now I know this is an exaggeration, but what if anonymous P2P sites or exchange lists popped up, akin to a craig’s list or Limewire, to swap pre written, cookie cutter academic writing? There are people who still go to great lengths to cheat on their tests and don’t think they wouldn’t jump at this opportunity.
That was kind of a rant…sorry.
October 1st, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Sounds like a great speech. When are you suppose to give it? I am from Des Moines and while I attend the University of Iowa, I would still love to see if I can make it.
As far as your topic goes the only flag I see is the idea of authorship. The more unpublished academic content is put online the more it will be copied. Making classmates papers online will cause an increased dissemination of unpublished material to all corners of the internet. Just like one bottlegged DVD will get downloaded 1 million times, an academic paper about “The Importance of Vedic Sanskrit on Social Class in 10th Century India” would get passed around from Vasser to UCLA to Florida to Harvard and everywhere in between with very lazy frat boy putting their name on it. Now the question becomes is the act of stealing more of a threat or the homogenization of ideas accross an academic populous. If you have a vast network of available content to pull and take as you choose, and even claim as your own, you are not talking about the proliferation of incompetent writers anymore, your talking about the proliferation of generic ideas and stale thought. Now I know this is an exaggeration, but what if anonymous P2P sites or exchange lists popped up, akin to a craig’s list or Limewire, to swap pre written, cookie cutter academic writing? There are people who still go to great lengths to cheat on their tests and don’t think they wouldn’t jump at this opportunity.
That was kind of a rant…sorry.
October 1st, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Not coming up with the term, but when I’ve seen “tumbleweeds” it was to signify that the conversation was dead, or to comment on a flat joke or awkward observation.
October 1st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
I thought the term “tumbleweed” sounded familiar, and according to urban dictionary, it is used when referring “to a web page that has no hits, or a forum that has no posts”, but I couldn’t think of a similar term that describes your concept, sorry. Also, another issue I think should be addressed is relevance. Maybe it isn’t the right word, because while someone can find a particular subject relevant, others might not. For example, when the whole Paris Hilton-in-jail ordeal took place, almost every major news source (and therefore, a lot of news web sites and blogs and podcasts) in the U.S. devoted an (in my opinion) unnecessary amount of space to it; while more important stories (again, in my opinion), like the war on Iraq or the political climate of the country at that time, got less coverage. My point is, that in this age, it can become at least a little bit harder for someone to find information on a particular subject (specially a current one), when the web is filled up with subjects that the masses deem as more important.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:12 pm
John, interesting thoughts. Instead of transparency, how about “motive”?
Also, if you are looking for an additional topic (or perhaps one that encompasses a couple of your topics), how about “Perspective”? As in: when writing is immediate and ubiquitous, we lose the benefit of perspective, whether in the form of considerate editing or thoughtful hindsight. We rely more on instinct and an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of the facts, which has mostly negative consequences, but positive consequences as well (are we more honest about ourselves if we have/take less time to figure out how to spin?).
October 1st, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Interesting topic. If I was in Des Moines I’d show up. When I was at Drake I don’t remember anyone interesting ever coming to speak!
Authority–I had this discussion with people long before the internet became popular. I think some people are geared towards wanting to believe anything they hear or read (think: mom gives birth to alien!)The rise of so much diverse information means no one source can control its dissemination.As an example, I can ask pertinent questions about my health because my doctor isn’t my only source of information. So if you want to be THE authority you better be able to back it up and if you want to believe some source is the authority you better check their credentials and be ready to argue as to their relevance.
Authorship–this is a sticky one. I think many people “adapt” other’s work and view it as their own. I also think that with certain circles a certain style evolves so that it all begins to sound the same–it may not be copying per de but an assimilated way of communicating the same information.
Exposure–same thing has happened in other media. I have a family member who is an award winning amateur photographer–but everyone with a digital camera or a camera phone thinks they are good photographers too. All that bad writing you’re referring to has exposed all the “bad” thinking out there. I don’t mean in right or wrong sense –I mean people who can’t think clearly used to just bore their families but now they spread it around. There’s no method or standard of qualifying something as worthy on the internet.
Permanence–I recently advised a family member who is just beginning to pursue an acting career to be really careful about what and where she posts anything. I told her even the most innocent of comments will come back to bite her. So I think it can be harmful in some cases. On the otherhand, perhaps it will cause some people to reflect on what they do allow on to the internet under their name.
Transience and Immediacy–this ability to constantly refresh just feeds in to the instant gratification urge too many suffer with. We used to have to wait till the morning paper to relive a Cubs victory now we can see it over and over within minutes on tv and access dozens of sites with video of the game and read about it 5 mintues later. If some one gets accused of something we can have –within minutes– “dozens” of experts telling us all what it means before we have even had confirmation of the charge.
I think the way through the chaos is the same as it’s always been–have a mind trained to think and exercised in the art of communication. I don’t think social pressure will quite do it. There’s too many poeple proud of their texting skills and abilty to talk in IM code to care. Who’s to say the traditional channels were any better? It may have given us some comfort going to bed at night thinking our daily paper had all the news but we were just kidding ourselves. It’s the readers job to get through all the mush if they choose.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:15 pm
How about translucency? What I mean is sometimes we never really know the motivation behind say, a review of an Apple product on MSNBC.com. We assume that the writer has journalistic integrity but if he/she writes too many glowing reviews about Apple products, will he/she have much of a future on MSNBC.com? It isn’t always clear.
Of course, whenever an ABC affiliate runs a long segment on Disneyland/Disneyworld, etc. (instead of reporting actual news) it’s very transparent.
By the way. What are you going to say to the audience member who types away on his laptop during the lecture, presumably to post a blog before you step down from the stage?
October 1st, 2007 at 9:30 pm
More on transparency:
Perhaps another layer to this issue is authors blogging or posting comments in forums under false identities.
Some Examples:
http://valleywag.com/tech/john-mackey/whole-foods-ceo-proud-to-be-an-internet-blowhard-277793.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/20/AR2006042002375.html
http://www.mguerrilla.com/mediaguerrilla/2006/02/nvidiaaccused_.html
October 1st, 2007 at 10:23 pm
On Immediacy… As a writer, you understand the importance of timing for a joke to work. That’s where timing came into play for Chris Crocker, because he’s the butt of a joke and the joke wouldn’t have worked 24 hours later. It had nothing to do with importance or relevance.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:29 am
I’m going to do my best to disagree with you, purely for the sakes of devil’s advocacy. I think it’s useful to consider the inverse of any arguments I make in these contexts in order to make them stronger.
The problem here isn’t so much with people when they’re producing content on the internet, but with people when they’re consuming content on the internet. I mean, yes, it becomes harder and harder to tell who’s an authority on what and who isn’t. When we had books we could just assume that they knew what they were talking about.
But should we assume? Just because something got printed doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Books disagree with each other all the time, and many books are patently false. Authority as a source of accuracy is a fallacy. The prevalence of false authority or lack of authority in the digital age is a godsend for critical thinking. It’s teaching us not to trust something just because it’s written, not to assume accuracy from authority, but instead to examine ideas and judge them on their own merits rather than the merits of their author.
Furthermore, the internet allows us to access more people who are experts in certain fields. If it weren’t for the internet, my screenwriting advice would be restricted to the printed works of Robert McKee and Syd Field. Just as you the internet has created a much larger amount of non-authority than there was before, it has also created a larger amount of authority.
I don’t think plagiarism is that much more of a problem these days because of the internet. It’s true that one can steal ideas and words and content more easily, just because there is more ideas, words and content available.
But it’s also easier to get caught out. If I go and plagiarise from some obscure books in the back shelves of my local library, how is my professor going to know? He can’t read them, access them, double-check me on them. But if I copy from the internet, my professor can know, easily. At my university, they’ve told us, they have a program where they can input phrases from student papers. The program then scans an extensive database of papers, articles, theses, books, the internet and so on, searching for wording similar or exactly the same to the student’s. I know that some of my professors automatically check Wikipedia on a topic before reading a student paper on it, because it’s one of the sites most popularly plagiarised.
You’ve briefly mentioned some of the benefits, with clarification, reaction, and the gadfly factor, however, you’ve missed out an important one. Just as exposure on the internet means that one can have their work seen by many, it also means that one can see many works. Yes, the internet is filled with a lot of bad writing. But it also gives us access to a lot of good writing. I manage to find a lot of interesting, engaging and amusing content on the internet that I wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere. The internet can be a great source of diversity, if used properly.
I would go on and talk about the others, but this is becoming long enough for a blog post on its own. I think the most important thing to remember is that the internet is a tool, and if used effectively and with the right intentions, it can be a great intellectual stimulant, a great aid to writing and make important contributions to society. Everyone loves to blame the internet, as though it is its own sentience, but it’s just the misapplication of the tool that causes problems. The points you’ve listed here aren’t problems with the internet, just qualities of the internet.
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:36 am
Interesting insights!
John wrote:
The challenge is to find a way through the chaos.
Absolutely agree with you on that one. “Attention” seems to be the new currency in the www-age. Are we Amusing Ourselves to Death?
BTW, why don’t you use the term “Trust” instead of “Transparency”?
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:39 am
John, a lot of what you’re planning to talk about is also being discussed by many academic librarians under the term “information literacy” (sometimes “information fluency”), which is the ability to find, evaluate, and use appropriate, accurate, credible information in one’s academic and professional work. The “evaluate” part seems to give students (and everybody) the most trouble. Why, students ask, can’t they use Wikipedia as a source in their college-level research papers? Figuring out what bias a source might have (what you’re calling transparency here) seems an important skill that students don’t realize they need (fortunately, once they realize it’s important to pay attention to potential bias, they are usually able to do it quite well).
Good luck, and hope you post your final talk here — I’d love to read/hear the final product.
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:55 am
Hi John — long time reader, first time poster. Thanks for a great site.
I agree with all your points, but I can’t help but think you’ve neglected to mention something important: yes, these new media models have been largely disruptive, but that’s just what we need.
Regarding authority: “When I was a student in the early ’90s, if you could find it in a book or magazine, it was a fact.” This was a much safer assumption then, but it was never completely true, and it was one of the difficult things that people had to unlearn in order to become critical thinkers. People are being taught from an increasingly young age to question sources, and that doesn’t mean that they’ve lost their innocence — it means they’re sophisticated readers.
Regarding authorship: there is nothing new under the sun. (Especially that cliche.) While straight-ahead, dumb plagiarism has been made much easier by the internet, the larger problem/benefit is that it has made us more aware of just how derivative every creative work is. Citing one fact from another scholar’s paper is a fairly simple thing, but aside from that things get murky. When I talk about eternal truth, must I cite Plato? Should those peppy posters in elementary school classrooms declaring that “knowledge is power” cite Foucault? The internet is making clear that nobody really has original ideas, only creative twists on things that their ancestors have said or done. Even the most common sensical statement was a new and radical idea of a storyteller, scientist, or some other thinker centuries ago. The upshot to this realization is that the same tools that provided us the means of finding out (those of instantaneous, global communication) might provide us the means to grapple with it. Imagine your writing searched for phrases that are statistically improbable but similar to your own, providing you a list of long-dead thinkers who are the forefathers and -mothers of your very consciousness. Plus, with Google Mark-Up ™, effortlessly link those writings to your own and open up your writing to be linked to by others.
Maybe I’m too much of an optimist, but this confusing upheaval in how we handle our ideas could come out making us all more critical, more sophisticated, and more self-aware in the long run.
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:58 am
“But when you’re using online resources, who’s to say whether a source is worthy of inclusion?”
Isn’t that wonderful!
In the bad old days, our teachers used books as sources - and believed that if it was printed, it was very likely to be true.
You know what? It seems that much of what I learned in school is totally false. I was taught using books that claimed that Ben Franklin’s kite was struck by lightening. Yep - totally false.
We even had pictures in our science books showing that rainbows had seven distinct colours, and a diagram tracing the light through raindrops showing how they were formed. The only problem was that for the diagram to work, you had to be facing the sun to see the rainbow.
Did it matter to the science teacher that we couldn’t see seven distinct colours, or that rainbows always seemed to appear with the sun behind us ? Of course not - a printed book trumped thought and observations.
Thankfully we are now in this brave new world were anyone can easily created a POD printed book or a webpage. Now the simple fact that it is printed or seen isn’t enough to give it instant credibility.
We’ve all heard of the study that demonstrated Wikipedia had an average of 4 errors per article. The sad thing is that the same study found about 3 errors per article in Encyclopedia Brittanica.
So it isn’t a case that we now need to think and evaluate our sources. We’ve always had to. The only difference is that now we know we need to - instead of living in ignorance.
Mac
October 2nd, 2007 at 10:15 am
John, I think you are spot on in your summation, it all comes down to finding ways to trust the author. In academics, it is the peer review. In journalism, it is editor, although recent brouhahas at the NYT show some cracks in that arguement.
It’s hard to imagine what the final arbiter of trust will be online. Currently, I think, we’re relying on quantitative statistics: number of RSS subscribers, number of Digg posts, numbers of readers, number of postive Amazon reviews, eBay feedback ratings, etc. On one level, these are a democratic way of seeing who has the most interesting, and by extension, most trustworthy things to say. For arguments sake, let’s just assume that a site or blog with high readership did not get that way because of blatant lies and misrepresentations of truth.
On the other hand, popularity most often has little to do with truth, quality, or integrity. We could exhaust ourselves on citing examples of this truth.
I, too, am an optimist and think that these early, early days of the Internet and citizen journalism will go though many growing pains until we all finally come to a group consensus on wait the basis of online trust is. I think it will be a combination of quantitative numbers and some perhaps as yet uninvented independent ratings systems for all user generated content on the Web.
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:15 am
John,
Great post. Sounds like it’ll be a great speech. A couple of things I’d like to add:
1) It seems to me that the idea of ‘permanence’ has gained acceptance by the younger generation. Social networks like myspace and facebook have given online diaries a new power and it seems like nobody is ashamed of the things they did in their mispent youth. I think a shift has occurred where people are no longer ashamed of their little mistakes and are willing to admit they are flawed human beings who change over time. I can foresee a political ’scandal’ in the future where perhaps it is discovered that a political candidate posed naked or said something controversial about Muslims or something and is able to survive because people no longer expect their politicians to be perfect from childhood to adulthood.
2) Authority - This concept is moving away from established ‘experts’ towards more of a ‘track record’ approach. And this track record can come in many forms, from books, to magazines, to blogs, to vlogs. With the newfound permanence I spoke about above, it’s much easier to discover what a person has said on a subject before. Therefore, it’s also easier for each individual to judge for themselves whether they should regard a person as an authority or not.
For instance, I would be as willing to trust the opinion of an anonymous poster on a bulletin board with a track record of excellent posts as much as someone who has written a book on the subject, but doesn’t talk often about their ideas. While one may have a more reasoned opinion, honed through the publication of a book, the other has actively entered their ideas into the ‘marketplace of ideas’ and shaped their opion in the face of opposing viewpoints.
In another vein, Google has also reshaped what an authority is. A significant facor in their algorithm is how many sites link to a specific site. If others feel that the site is worth linking too, it is probably a worthwhile site in Google’s eyes. Google doesn’t (generally) care at all what the site says, what the author of the site has done before, or if leading lights in the industry recomend the site. It (mostly) only matters if others find the site interesting. In this way, the historical basis of what defines ‘authority’ is being re-written. I suppose it’s a bit of a ‘what have you done for me lately’ situation.
Anyway, my two cents.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Maybe “authenticity” instead of “transparency”? Seems more to the point of what that section was speaking to.
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:49 pm
interesting points. should be a great lecture. but regarding permanence, you make an assumption that words written on a blog in 2003 are safely archived for posterity. yes, they may be. but that is only as long as the typepad monthly fees are deducted off a credit card. what does it mean when permanence is tied to commerce and available only to those with the means to pay for it?
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:17 am
Hey John, we met at the austin film festival last year, or maybe the year before, I mentioned I was from Des Moines, the Drake area, specifically (although I didn’t go there.) Anyway, I will be at the talk, of course. If you are around town, drop me an email, we can have a couple beers or something, I don’t know, watch the cubs game. We can shoot the shit or whatever.
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:43 pm
John,
I like you points and think you are doing a good job of covering writing the future.
While this is probably too late because you are delivering your speech tomorrow, I’m going to add to the topic. This may fall under the topic of exposure…what about the implications of making writing available globaly? Now your internet published content is available everywhere and to people that don’t even speak your language. Google has language translators available, but if you use an internet translator, does it accurately translate the message across? Does something get lost in the translation or changed?
Another touch point is that the rules of writing have become lost. Especially in email and blogs. People forget to use spell check. People don’t proofread anything. People make up abbreviations. They become lazy writers in informal electronic media and I think that this sometimes impacts them when they should be writing at their best.
Just a couple of thoughts.
Good luck and enjoy the experience. I’d love to pass wisdom on to my school.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:01 pm
A questions on writing in the digital age that I’ve been pondering:
There’s been many times I’ve been at a bar or in line somewhere and overheard a funny piece of conversation and thought “that would work well in my script”. As long as the person saying it isn’t an aspiring writer themself, I don’t think there’s really any ethical issue with occasionally using ‘real life’ dialogue in your own work.
But what about if I’m online using a forum, or a blog, and I read an interesting comment or a funny anecdote? If I reproduce that in my script, am I guilty of plagiarism, or are anonymous online comments just the digital equivalent of overheard chatter in a bar?
October 4th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Hey, John. I just wanted to say thanks for making your way out to Drake. I go to school there, and it’s always nice to see that Drake can produce some quality grads. Plus, it’s a nice break from being invaded by presidential candidates. I’m definitely looking forward to it. You should stop by Mars Cafe at 24th and University after it’s over. Any beverage on me.
October 4th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
On Authority…
I just read a great post from Doris Egan (co-exec producer on House). It’s about the lack of authority out there — even from sources that are authoritative.
The full post is How Research Leads to Nihilism and it’s here: http://tightropegirl.livejournal.com/#10920
xJ
October 5th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
John, it was a pleasure to finally meet you during your visit. The lecture came together beautifully (I’m anxious to get the audio, if you post it). I’m left with the challenge of (a) discovering those subjects in which I can become an authority and (b) growing and protecting my brand - Joshua Tomme, Inc… Bravo!