The Unprofessional Boy #13
Drinking Water and Visualizing the Future
Hello everyone,
I’ve continued to consider the effects of sleep on my thoughts and actions; after a brief Twitter conversation with Alexey Guzey, I’m going to try making an effort to take short (20-25 min) naps during the day in one form or another.
Continuing to follow up on Tuesday’s post, I’ve read another couple books. One of these is The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which coincided with my drawing out of writing tactics from writing like Jon Krakauer’s. It’s similarly non-chronological; this is due to the main character’s trait of living circuitously, but it’s employed beyond those narrow bounds to serve the story. To allow myself the indulgence of self quotation, last week I observed (emphasis mine)
“Krakauer…is able to draw comparisons between similar past events as he progresses, interspersing the most significant periods and papering over those which are dull or about which little is known.”
This device is frequently employed in Harry August, wherein Harry will (via word, image, or topic) associate one event with another; subsequently, as Krakauer does, he
“…eschews transition sentences between his main throughline and a historical digression, choosing instead to switch abruptly in the paragraph break. Once or twice, this is jarring; largely, it is more seamless than if explained.”
In both cases, the technique is established early in the book, with the effect that, on its use in the midst of action or suspense, the distraction is minimal, with the lack of a defined transition allows the reader —as the character would— to apply the same mindset across these categories. With action simmering in the background, or with the introduction of the passage of a period of time, these events can then be omitted from the main story. It’s an elegant device for the elimination of narrative redundancy; quite frankly, a variation of this abruptness might be an interesting tactic for ramblers to use in conversation.
Nothing of particular visual interest has happened since the last episode; that being said, I’ve attached a logo design which I made up for a class project (the background being this one, but modified) as an all-too-trendy reminder to drink some water.
Hopefully, that’s helpful.
Before we segue to the usual discourse, a brief programming note: I’m thinking the Friday episodes might go out at night (reminder: Tuesday = 6 a.m.,) since it splits a little more evenly (read: gives me some more time to write) and seems only fair to readers from other time zones. If you have any issues with this for some reason, you know where to find me.
Now then, to the main body of content; there’s one topic that I’ve half-inadvertently avoided discussing for several episodes. In my spreadsheet of ideas, I called it some time ago “The Camera: Comics and Visual Focus.”
One sub-branch of this generality which fascinated me two weeks ago in its various applications is the Kuleshov effect, which stipulates essentially that in film, two shots in sequence convey more information to the viewer than one alone. It’s somewhat obvious, yet foundational, and it explains a large portion of why film editing is important: an editor of any kind’s primary responsibility is to structure material; in other words, to determine its sequence.
Another effect is described in Scott McCloud’s fascinating book Understanding Comics (p. 36-37 here,) as he describes his decision concerning the manner of his self-portrayal:
As McCloud states, simplicity is freedom from distraction. It’s why clear, clean sentence structure is a key tenet of business writing, and it’s why good design is simple. It reminds me of this meme:
It’s perhaps a darker sort of expression, along the same lines: things exist when you observe them; the world is a sort of Weeping Angel, unknowable, if your eyes are closed.
This axis of focus and perception, on which rests this Scott-Ralph nexus, juxtaposed with the Kuleshov axis of separation through distance and time, create a graph which explains large portions of our everyday experience. Let’s plot it.
This is my basic thesis: at the moment, there appears a trend, somewhat along the lines of x = y; it’s imperfect, but it’s clear. It doesn’t necessarily have to be this way, and it’s increasingly untrue. These quadrants are moving.
(Sidenote: I’ve previously mentioned that I’m bullish on Snapchat, and, in summary, it’s because they understand how these four quadrants are shifting.)
The (deeply incomplete) categories I’ve enumerated here are being added to and moving to fill the empty spaces at the top left and bottom right, for two reasons, both results of the democratization of creation and subsequent volume of content production.
1. Firstly, I believe that these more impermanent media will continue to hold the majority of our Zeitgeist, and therefore continue to take on an effect of deep meaning through the mental/visual application of the Kuleshov effect. Any individual item has little significance; their collection undoubtedly matters.
2. Secondly, I predict that the Internet-centric archival of vast amounts of gathered content will change the existing paradigm by decreasing the correlation between permanence and meaningfulness.
Altogether, this will lead to the following alterations, either by the modification of our existing media as its direction continues, or by the addition of new forms:
The second-order effects of each path will likely follow:
I hypothesize that
3. The meaningless and permanent will eventually become meaningful in ways we can’t measure as limited by our time in the present, and anything of high relevance and quality will be maintained to take on future value, imbued with agenda and purpose. This is a more localized extension, of, again, my thoughts in TUB #11.
4. Lastly, it is likely that in some form, a method will be found for the capture and condensation of “ephemeral” media, and it will be preserved as a matter of historical interest, taking on for future generations the import of, for example, literature.
End result: I think that a certain class of Intellectuals will internalize that this change is taking place —in fact, it seems they already are— and dig in their heels; however, I believe this cultural shift has taken on a non-malicious inevitability. In the long run, I think that the democratization of creation of content will lead to a democratization in the permanence and perceived value of such media, as with print, television, comics, and cinema. It’ll probably still follow power laws, but the days of cultural hegemony aren’t yet over— things won’t continue to explode.
That’s why I need to break in soon.
Caveats:
(1) It’s possible that our neurological inability to remember these vast amounts of information yields diminishing returns on their ability to influence us subconsciously; I don’t quite know enough to definitively state otherwise. If this concern is founded, it also undermines (4).
(2) is likely overstated, given that link rot is persistent (5% Internet/year, 10% Twitter (which may translate to other social and new media.)) Things may erode and delete at random; this in turn undermines (3).
(4) This is the longest-term prediction here, and perhaps the hardest to measure. Not sure about this one, given those two factors, and the fact I haven’t done much research into the technology or mindset required. Something to consider, in any case.
This is probably poorly thought out; I think it is nevertheless directionally correct, and I welcome (as always) any suggestion for improving this idea.
Links
In this newsletter, I’ve often mentioned my somewhat ill-fated tendency to work on poorly conceived projects; David Laing’s summary of one decision-making framework has provided me with one useful guideline: kill things that won’t work early.
I’ve also written about Amazon; in light of that, it’s interesting to see that the narrative hasn’t really changed in the last eight years: nothing’s particularly slowing them down.
That, perhaps, is a concrete example of the argument made in The Mundanity of Excellence: that qualitative shifts matter at least as much as qualitative ones, and that being great can be broken down into many small components.
Work
I’ve written a book chapter.
That’s all for now, I think. I’ll report back shortly.
Best,