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- Another Case of Bad LanguageNovember 27
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Here we go again. A report by something called the the National Organisation of University Art Schools says that schools should be teaching ‘visuacy’. The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) is similarly focussing on the “outcome” of visuacy being a stand-alone subject for years K-10 and the National Review of Visual Education says visuacy should be given the same prominence as literacy and numeracy.
So what is this strange new skill that will be so fundamental to students in the 21st Century? Judging by the fact that the report cites the example of deconstructing an advertisement for Elle Macpherson’s kickers to establish “conditions of value and meaning” alongside an examination of Picasso’s Guernica, visuacy appears to mean visual literacy plus post-modernism minus a sense of humour.
Am I taking the #*&!? Absolutely. It would be silly not to. Doubtless members of the Visual Education Roundtable (“a coalition of key stakeholders to be an advisory body to CMC and MCEETYA”) will paint me as a pedantic philistine but I can live with that. Newspeak like this is a mutant life form from outer space and needs to be killed off before it infects the whole planet.
To put the record straight I’m all in favour of visual literacy. So is my mum, who used to be an art teacher. Our brave new world is saturated with images and it’s going to get much worse in the future. Everything from walls and tabletops to cereal packets an
- Some Statistics…November 27
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I did a talk a couple of days ago at the Group of 100 National Congress. This is essentially an audience of CFOs. Here are a few of the statistics that I used to illustrate a few trends…
1. The Power Shift Eastwards
• 85% of the world’s population will live in emerging markets by 2050.• In 2005 there were 16 Chinese companies in the Fortune 500. By 2007 there were 22.
• Trade between India and China was worth US$2 billion a year in 2000. By the end of 2007 it was worth $2 billion per month.
• Today Asia (including Japan) represents around 13% of GDP. Western Europe represents around 30%. In 20 years these two figures will have converged.
2. Rising Global Connectivity
• There are currently 1.5 billion devices connected to the Internet. By 2012 there will be 14 billion and 95% of these devices will NOT be computers.• There are 210 million Internet users in China
• 72 billion corporate emails currently sent every single working day. Predicted to be 150 billion within the next 3-4 years.
3. GRIN Technologies
• If you index the cost of robot labour to human labour with 1990 as the base (i.e. 1990 = 100) the cost of robots has fallen from 100-18.5 while the cost of humans has moved from 100-151.• In 2004 there were 610,000 robots in ‘domestic service’ worldwide. By the end of 2007 this figure had increased to 6m.
• When the telephone was introduced in the US i
- Always Turned OnNovember 25
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Things are getting really weird. I have a female friend that goes to bed with an electronic device every night. Her husband is getting fed up and claims it’s ruining their sex life. Her response is that she’s in meetings all day and needs to take a laptop to bed to catch-up with her emails. This is a bit extreme but I know of lots of other people that hardly ever switch off.
You can see this first hand when passengers switch their mobile phones back on the minute their plane lands. What’s quite so important that it can’t wait ten minutes until they are inside the terminal building I have no idea. Perhaps it’s yet another example of how people feel insecure if they are not always available or constantly connected.
Something is going on here. Soon after the millennium (probably the Tuesday around 7.08am) we collectively decided to redefine the concept of freedom to include notions of speed and wireless connectivity. It’s certainly a seductive idea.
We are now free to work anywhere we want. We can do it on aeroplanes at 39,000 feet, in the back of the car, in bed or on the kitchen table. Should children be exposed to their parents doing this? Most people will say, “what’s the harm?” but I am worried about the signals these devices are sending out. Surely what people are saying is that I am more interested in being alone with my digital network than being with you?
The desire to be connected isn’t limited to work either. Twitte
- Are We All Going Google Eyed?November 24
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Here’s fun game. Visit an ATM and play “Guess your PIN.” If you win you get some money. If you don’t you loose your card, usually after the third attempt.Other versions of the game are available for credit cards and removable car radios.
In a survey, 63% of Australian’s said that they had difficulty remembering things like PIN numbers. Personally, I can’t even remember my own home phone number these days. I’m also starting to struggle with passwords to social networks that I’ve joined during moments of midnight madness. I even ‘lost’ my new bicycle for a few days last month because I couldn’t remember the padlock code and couldn’t remember where I’d written it down either. Still, it was better than last year. I padlocked my bike somewhere but, to this day, I can’t remember where.
This might be my age but I doubt it. My lack of memory is caused by too much data. Digitalisation has made it too easy to create and distribute information, with the result that I’m drowning in a sea of endless trivia.
But there’s a much bigger problem on the horizon. The Internet might be making us stupid. For example, have you noticed how attention spans are shortening? Perhaps you are scanning newspaper articles because they appear too long? Or perhaps you’ve read bits of books twice because you weren’t properly concentrating.
The problem is that infinite choice is fragmenting our attention. Digitalisation is also fuelling an obs
- Brian Eno’s DiaryNovember 23
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Spent the weekend on Dangar Island with no phone. It rained. Hence I managed to re-read A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brain Eno’s Diary, which I must have last read in about 1998. There is some truly wonderful stuff in this book.
For example, the question “What the **** am I here for?…. is a very modern question, only available at a certain level of luxury and self-importance.”
Other gems include the following:
8 January
“Spending lots of money is often an admission of lack of research, preparation and imagination”24 February
“Young boy riding at high speed on a bicycle shouting repeatedly, “I am here”. Perhaps the central and single message of humanity”. (Twitter anyone?).23 March
“The more ‘richly connected’ we make our world the more vulnerable we make it. Empowerment cuts both ways: as the complexity of things increases, so does the ability of an increasingly minute number of people to destabilize it.”12 June
“Luck is being ready”I also appreciated the idea of cosmetic psychiatry (made me think of cosmetic brain surgery in the future) and cities having ‘idea districts’.