Tag: Andy Warhol

Your chance

Elton John had a song out a while ago. Your Song.

Newsweek, when it was still in print, had a page called My Turn (that had been before the Internet with immediate comments and re-tweet).

Now, the Art of the Start‘s author, Guy Kawasaki, asked readers what they want included in his next revision of the book.

Your chance.

Your 15-minutes of fame.

Smile, take the diploma and get off campus.

We all know that feeling of emptying out the space made for incoming replacement.

An office, a house or even a car with too many mileage on it.

We know we have had our chance, or exhausted it.

Others will see and seize the opportunity differently, from their angle and maybe the timing is better.

Tina Turner  said that she had sung Proud Mary a thousand times, but the way it was delivered was different each time (largely because of different venue and audience).

So we have had our chance. Or making ways for new ones.

As long as we don’t waste our talent pursuing second-best options.

At work or in life, natural selection will nudge us along the time continuum.

No way around it.

Something in the DNA combo that send out signals to the world.

I am here.

I exist in the now.

Come and get me. Find me. I want to be found, to be validated and to be heard.

Some need stroking more than others. But all of us need and deserve a chance to make our marks.

With current almost-bounced back economy, here is our chance. Once again, to “see the good side of the city… on the riverboat Queen”.

The fact that we are still here is a testimony to everyone’s resilience. I might not write as smoothly as Tom Clancy, look as husky as Paul Walker, or think as different as Steve Jobs. But I am still here, blogging along. So are you. Go celebrate life. Explore and exhaust all your chances. Chances are, there are still plenty , unexploited and begging to dance (to quote Jackson Browne ” Opportunity likes to dance with those who are already on the dance floor”). “I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind, I wrote down…these lines”.

Albert Einstein once said ” the saddest tragedy in life is a wasted talent”. Along that line, I would say, the most disappointed thing in life is to miss your Andy Warhol’s 15-minutes of fame. So walk up there, take your diploma, and smile at the camera. And one more for your mom. It’s a digital age now. Don’t worry about those wasted shots way back then, when each of us was rationed with only 36 shots on a roll or  the weekly My Turn. In Marketing class, we used to dream of inventing deodorant to sell to the billions in China. Now, we got 14 Billions eye balls ready to peruse our pitch, 24/7. Turns out that it’s not the lack of opportunity on the dance floor (or the floor itself for that matter). It’s our feet which are reluctant and us recluse. Frogs-in-slow-boiled state. Don’t know where to start? Tell Guy Kawasaki. Your chance to have input and insecurity dissipated.

Lonely crowd

Back in the 60’s , David Riesman already concluded that “the more might not be the merrier”.

Social network researchers have come up with diverse conclusions about Facebook and Internet use.

Passive vs active participation makes a difference whether we are happier or less happy when using social media.

We have yet fully exploited this new social platform (democratized, groundswell stuff).

Social media and digital content not only have width (geographically), but also depth (time irrelevant).

THIS PLATFORM FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY, ALLOWS US TO MAKE KNOWN OUR EXISTENCE ACROSS TIME AND SPACE.

Right now, these platforms are monetized, politicized and socialized.

But in time, they will also be memorialized and multiplied.

People of all races, creeds and generations can access and translate someone’s blogs and tweets into their languages,

and to understand what made someone react and respond at a particular time in history.

In other words, open platform.

Yes, if we passively participate (just browsing) in social network, we might feel lonelier. And vice versa.

Riesman’s Lonely Crowd again, even with Smart Phone and Wi-Fi (wireless on the beach).

Social Network is not a utility (Application layer, not Physical Layer). It allows each of us to create and share content i.e. collective cognition, not dumbing down.

Sort of what I am doing and have experimented with Liking, Blogging and Commenting (hopefully filming and video someday).

My Warhol‘s “15 minutes of fame”.

Neither Warhol nor Orwell could have predicted the rise of the Internet. Or else, they wouldn’t have staked their claims on

limited fame or state control, respectively.

Turns out that Riesman has been ahead of his time: we are social animal subjected to existential loneliness, a fate from which we can not escape with or without Facebook.

 

Your story

During the 60’s, when computers were too limited for personal use, Andy Warhol had already predicted that in the future (which is NOW) each of us would have 15 minutes of fame (just like his signature Campbell soup ).

Naturally, he couldn’t have predicted the rise of social media  which upend traditional broadcast media, turning it around from one-to-many (old) to many-to-many (new) forever and free (Cloud computing + mobile + social media).

Unrestricted and unleashed i.e. texting while driving (we have yet come up with an acronym similar to DUI).

We “Like”.  We “tag”. We “tweet”. Yahoo now bets big on Mobile.

We prepare to lay ourselves exposed: photos (even pictures when we were babies), home-recorded songs and secret sauce.

We learn the art of filmography and biography e.g. story board and story line, scripting and screen playing (Youtube).

We share lessons on sewing and  selling.

It’s quite an open world and open society.

It used to be that the only time someone asked “tell us about yourself” was at a job interview.

Now, we tell them about ourselves even when not asked. “They” here means the World Wide Web:

Facebook, Google + and more.

A narrative was supposed to have a beginning, middle and end. Since we keep discovering and reinventing ourselves, our personal narrative evolves. Every day, we put on make-ups off line and  make-over on line. Some even called this “the start-up of you”.

The more interaction on-line, the more detailed our social graph, the richer our narrative. Fresh content generates higher Search Engine Optimization. This process also creates Digital Addicts or DigitAl-holics  who cross-comment  and follow each other. A band of brothers, only more inclusive and extensive (coincides with austerity).

This domain used to be exclusive for professionals e.g. product improvement and placement now laid bare for all (design your T-shirt contest etc…).

Now, people are the product (sold to advertisers). Their tweet or post could go viral, to the tune of a million hits.

Self-branding.

Self-aggrandizement is in. Self-effacing is out.

The modesty of Asian mystique faces serious challenges, perhaps more so than last century’s cultural invasion of the West e.g. China and Japan with men eventually do away with braided hair or Samurai tradition. This time around, the invasion is technology-enabled, a spontaneous explosion of personal freedom and expression second to none (including the 60’s Flower Power. This time, it’s trans-cultural and trans-continental in nature.)

As a result, we need to put up personal “firewalls” to protect our privacy and safeguard our brand.

To trade ourselves up. Tier-One (as in Premium LinkedIn accounts etc..).

Sort of like LV who refused to offshore the manufacturing of its handbags. Planned scarcity.

We first expand, then contract our circle over time.

This retrenching was mentioned in The Tipping Point (maximum 120 in your circle to have a meaningful conversation and community).

In the early days of Social Media,, we enjoyed new-toy stage (friending everyone).

Then Google + came out. By then, we became social-media fatigue.

Once  you lost that first-mover’s advantage, it’s hard to play catch-up,

Good luck yahoo, with revamping.

Yahoo was late in Search, and Social.

I wonder whatever else it could do to innovate and leapfrog competition. Perhaps with the yCloud? or Ymobile.

Meanwhile, we still want to find new ways to connect, to share and to show off.

We are members of a digital country club, where strangers suddenly become intimate i.e. know more about our personal stories, or at least, more quickly, than family members . These are our intimate strangers.

So, if you share, learn to show and tell properly. Learn the 2-minute summary like our presidential candidates just did tonight. Tell them what you are all about, your hopes, fears and dreams, all scripted and rehearsed (elevator speech). And maybe, someone out there, can identify with your vulnerability, your shortcomings and your humanity. Maybe they will endorse you, adopt you as family member, and you then become  “famous” for 15 minutes. Warhol would have never guessed someday (today) we would be showing off our secret sauce, while he, could only photocopy the (Campbell) Soup he touted as arts.

Disco distraction

That’s what we need. Late 70’s, we also got gas price hike.

We got “a crisis of confidence”. And we got Middle East hostage situation that drove Nightline ratings over the top.  But we also got disco. It helped.

Distraction did not solve any problem. It just got our minds off the situation at hand. For however long the studio, most famous of all, 54, still opened.

Shiny shirts, bell-bottom pants, and yes, the disco ball.

Travolta, the Soul Train and the Bee Gees.

Everybody boogied.

Everybody heard of or listened to “Le Freak“.

Actually, it’s not the kind of music to be listened to, like “Air on the G-string“.

It’s dance music.

And for 15 minutes (Andy Warhol was there at studio 54) of fame, the disco era was gone.

For good.

Dancing Queen (no longer seventeen) and the Abba, all gone.

The hostage rescue effort failed. The Star Wars shield was dreamed up then took the Wall down along with it.

The Challenger went up in flame while the Concord got canned.

Now, NASA has to hitch a ride, and the Chinese bullet train hit its target (another train going on the opposite track). Everybody outspent their allotted 15 minutes of fame. Middle Eastern and Western terrorists also got their air time and equal time (Fort Hood in uniform vs Oslo, also in uniform).

I know now why we need a disco distraction: it arrived at the time when race, gender and class were all blended on the dance floor, under the ball. As long as you can afford some tight clothes, hitch a ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, then you are in.

Take your turn in the middle of the circle, and take some steam off (Saturday Night Fever).

Everybody got his/her turn in that tribal circle and the DJ was our Priest.

We melted from one disco song to another and the beat carried us through the night. Distraction? yes. Destruction? no.

Fast forward to 2011, everybody forms into “circles” (we used to call it cliques).

And with google’s SEO, google’s Plus etc…we only hear and see what we most want to “search” ( selective revelation and association). To stand out, we must pay attention to personal branding and (first) page-ranking.

No wonder the Oslo’s terrorist planned ahead not only his exit, but also his defense, his manifesto, and his image (preppy crusader and defender of an imperial past), all well crafted to maximize his allotted 15 minutes of fame. And we (and the cable news media) ate it up.

Without disco distraction, we have to face gas price, debt talk, and death toll with nowhere to turn to, except online, his planned pulpit for hate and intolerance. Disco, a distraction? Yes. The Oslo terrorist, a destruction? Yes. Now we know who is “Le Freak”.