Brian Thomas Clark
@btc
Strategist/Producer/Collector
Digital Experience Director @risd
Brian Thomas Clark
“I don’t need them,” he admitted, sifting through his boxes containing thousands of old records. “No one needs them.” But he suggested they fulfill some spiritual purpose that might benefit us more than ever today. “It’s nice to have a curated collection of the things you like around. Especially with everyone trying to ‘Marie Kondo’ their lives and... See more
Cereal Box Records Sound Horrible. They Still Look Incredible.
taste and
n this sense, Labubus do seem to be a defining moment of 2020s culture. For those interested in moving culture away from fads such as these, resistance requires much more than a refusal to consume. If fads are narratives as much as products, they need to be starved of engagement, as well. We haven't figured out how to do this yet.
W. David Marx • Only Fads: A Culture (And Economy) of Labubu
attention and
intentionality
Cool means different things to different people, but to me, it’s about authenticity—which is very different from “relatability.” People who make great art that moves the masses are not like you and I. They have a point of view, laser focus, a pinch of delusion, and a level of execution that is required to make something great and be able to sell... See more
Why Celebrities Stopped Being Cool
Having a digital product strategy means your organization has defined the value you want to deliver to your customers through software and digital tools. It’s a plan that tells staff and customers where you are applying your focus. It also includes a strategic plan, or product roadmap, for how to get there.
Having a product strategy isn’t the same... See more
Having a product strategy isn’t the same... See more
Adriaan Bouten • A Complete Guide To Digital Product Strategy and Management
The ones and zeroes of the digital map tolerate no error or noise. It’s an auto-tuned reality where everything is on the note or it doesn’t exist. Never mind that James Brown reaching up to that note is where we find the soul of the music. In the world of digital figures, that expression of the human soul — that stuff between the official notes —... See more
Douglas Rushkoff • Pockets of Weird: The Fight Over Reality
As much as I share his concerns, this book repeatedly made we want to yell back at him for willfully underplaying obvious exceptions and counterarguments.
Chief among these is to what degree Chayka’s “flattening” is anything new. When he writes, “If anything, mass culture lately appears more aesthetically homogenous than ever,” he seems to forget... See more
Chief among these is to what degree Chayka’s “flattening” is anything new. When he writes, “If anything, mass culture lately appears more aesthetically homogenous than ever,” he seems to forget... See more
bookforum.com • Kyle Chayka Looks at Our Supposedly Flat New World
subcultures and
We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests... See more
nytimes.com
culture-2526 and
The Wisdom and Prophecy of Jimmy Carter’s ‘Malaise’ Speech
The trends he saw emerging two generations ago now bear their poisonous fruit in our body politic.
Carter’s central insight was that even if the country’s political branches could deliver peace and prosperity, they could not deliver community and belonging. Our nation depends on pre-political commitments to each other, and in the absence of those pre-political commitments, the American experiment is ultimately in jeopardy.
Meaningful friendships develop when things are intense, and involve peril, beauty, jeopardy, drama and self-development
Why is it so difficult to cultivate meaningful friendships?
Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in... See more