Sticks and Stones

Today, Monday 21st January 2007, is officially the most depressing day of the year. Yep that is right, it is Blue Monday.

By using a formula involving the weather, debt, time since the festive season and general motivation levels, today is that day that nobody looks forward to. I must say I probably have to agree. I arose this morning and saw out the window nothing but grey skies, rain and trees blowing in the wind. I followed the news to see that £77bn has been wiped off the value of stocks in London (Northern Rock’s 46% increase being a notable exception). I then saw that government finances are £46.3bn in the red, and looking at most of the personal finances of the nation, a similar situation of debt is occurring.

I was now really searching to find some good news, but sadly to no avail. The government has lost more data (the MOD at fault this time), a British soldier has been killed in Iraq, flights are still delayed in Heathrow, the Diana inquest still appears to be going nowhere, and the Home Secretary is afraid of walking the streets of London alone at night.

So what good is left in the world. I could only find two things: this blog is continuing and the DFS sale is still on. Yipee!

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I wrote that piece about naval warfare on my T-Mobile MDA compact. That was an exercise in patience and an exploration of true frustration. I would draw an ‘a’ and see a ‘c’, which I would attempt to remove by drawing a dash: indicating ‘delete’. Instead, all I see is ‘c-’ and a blinking cursor. The verbal diatribe that I promptly emitted was an effusive and thoroughly profane lament aimed at this hapless little device which believed it had done exactly what I had requested.

This conundrum is a perfect example of a dichotomy. On the one hand we have our perennial desire to shrink devices. So it fits in our jacket pockets (Apple Newton), now let’s have it fit in trouser pockets (iPod), now let’s have it fit in that loose change slip on jeans (iPod nano) - and so it goes on. On the other, we have hands. And fingers too, eight of them with some thumbs thrown in for free. As our devices shrink, we face the increasing problem that they are too small for our hands. Amazon’s Kindle is considered vast because the iPod shuffle is absolutely tiny, but anyone who has used the Kindle will notice that it is ergonomically sound.

Ergonomics dictates which devices succeed and fail. Touchscreen devices and thumb-pad keyboards have not taken the cell-phone market away from phones with numeric keypads because 12 buttons of that size makes ergonomic sense. The irony of demanding gadgets that will fit into the pockets of skinny jeans - pockets which hands can’t go into - is lost on those who want the newest, shiniest, smallest little phone/MP3 player/web browser/camera on sale. We use our hands to operate these devices and so there is a minimum size, which devices like Neonode’s N2 are hopelessly beyond. I remember Alex trying to press ‘Messages’ on his N1 only to keep hitting the ‘Start’ button.

The iPhone is that minimum. It’s no wonder that we keep praising Apple for great design: they understand ergonomics. One failing there is the keyboard, and Apple concedes it as soon as you press a key. Those who have used the iPhone know that it shows an enlarged icon after you press a key: that enlargement is the correct size, but consider the size of the physical device if Apple built to that specification. It wouldn’t fit in your jeans pocket.

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Unaccustomed as I am both to blogging and to writing to another’s editorial standards, I was recently perturbed to see my pride and joy, a lovingly written, fervently believed diatribe against the so-called Seven Deadly Sins, divided into five sections. Having been told that it had too many notes by the Emperor Udayan (attention spans etc.), and having read with irony His post “The Lost Art of Reading” (the lady doth protest too much, methinks) I set to ruminating upon the prevalent reluctance (one hopes not inability) in modern times to read more than 100 words in a sitting, which had led to my pearl being cast before swine.

Gone with the wind are the Daniel Derondas and Tom Joneses, replaced with semi-literate drivel; dead the art of correspondence, while in its place we communicate via texting and instant messaging, not even taking the time to write words out fully. Rather than the epic, day long debates that used to inflame the House of Commons here in England, or, say, in Illinois between Douglas and Lincoln, we are left today with the pithy, manufactured sound bite on Sky News. Indeed, the effects of this culture of abbreviation can even be seen in cricket, as with the recent “20/20″ tournament.

It is my belief that this strenuous idleness is related to the current propensity for quotations - after all, why should one waste time trying to articulate a given sentiment when someone else far more eloquent and authoritative has already done so? Why search for that perfect piece of vocabulary when there already exists the ideal stock phrase? While every quotation may contribute something to the stability or enlargement of the language, the ready availability of quotations and cliches has led to verbosity and ambiguity (in fact, Orwell writes brilliantly about this, but if Udayan is to be believed, since it is rather lengthy, none of you has the attention span to read it; here is the link anyway: http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html).

In this very post, for example, I have thus far (albeit consciously and deliberately) referenced Shakespeare, the ever-popular anon., the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, Shakespeare again, St. Matthew, Ernest Dowson, William Wordsworth, Dr. Samuel Johnson and, of course, George Orwell. Notwithstanding my pretentiousness and self-gratification in doing so, the references, some more contrived than others, are attempts to illustrate my point that we rely too heavily on the sayings of the past which have been assumed into the canon of English idiom and cliche, and that their over-usage in modern-day discourse is unhealthy, and the fruits of this cranial atrophy have, in my opinion, begun to show.

I hope that this wasn’t too long, but it is to be expected: the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts (Longfellow); that having been said, by the time you read it in all likelihood it will have been butchered and carved into a 12-part series.

The rest is silence.

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I’ve been using CreativeCommons to license my creations ever since I started podcasting in 2004. I think copyright is flat out dead. That doesn’t mean you’re allowed to go running rampant across the internet and violate everything by stealing, it just means that we need a new solution.

I like CreativeCommons because it is in effect a ‘grant’. I am granting you, the right to share and/or remix my work as you see fit, with the condition that you don’t make money off it and with attribution (which means, put my name on it).

With CreativeCommons we can be freer in our usage of copyrighted materials. You’ll know how important this is if you’ve ever listened to Danger Mouse’s Grey Album. Without fair use at its full, and CreativeCommons licensing being used, art is limited. As a line-drawer, graphics designer, author, and blogger/podcaster/twitterer/etcetera I hate the idea that art would ever be limited.

I use the ‘Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 Unported’ license.

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