A chance at nuances

Those of us who went to school which required students to wear uniforms can relate to this: we learned to fit in. By the time we entered corporate world, the dress code and work-place behavior come as second nature. Yet without differentiation, our products and personal brand get lost in the shuffle.

So we try to take a photo for Twitter (thumbnail) so we can look like Guy Kawasaki (except for the smile).

BTW, since when do we need someone to snap the shot for us. It’s a DIY (Do It Yourself) culture. Equal playing field for women in corporate America, and soon the world.

I am struck by the milestones we  have traversed since shoulder-patch and elbow-patch days. The yuppies are now at the peak of their career, and yet no station-wagon in sight.

Now arrives the frontier of automation, precision and efficiency.

Leave nothing to chances. A producer friend mentioned that during (film) production, everyone knew exactly what they were doing “just like engineering”. In other words, gone are the days of going over budget, of getting drunk on the set (Apocalypse Now) or Director’s Cut (Woodstock).

In fact, movies about machine, made by machine, seem to make money predictably.

Where is art in all of this? One more take (for my mother) in the days of film stock?

One more chance, another dance! George Clooney and company are pushing those gem-like material.

The possibility of miracles, of surprises and of the unexpected?

(Jackie Chan’s out-takes actually made the theater audience stay in their seats while end credits roll).

Or the exercise of free will, of stumbling across the universe “Mr Watson, come here”.

We have let the machine mentality creep in and dominate our lives like the camel’s nose sticking under the tent, pretty soon,  it ends up inside the tent, with us sleeping outside.

I can’t see someone crazy enough to pen “War and Peace”, or “Les Miserables” in our age of short tweets. 140 characters vs monumental masterpiece.

Preserve our humanity! Put up some resistance. Fight in the shade. Fight in the dark.

Don’t give up on us baby.

Lord knows we’ve come this far.

We still worth one more try.

A whiter shade of grey. It doesn’t have to be black and white, just because of the damn one and zero.  A chance at nuances.

P.S. To make my point, the spell check “red-flag” Les Miserables. It suggests “miserable”. Yeah! right! You, miserable! Not me. I cry, I laugh, I love and I live. You do not.