More Things, December 3, 2012
In many ways, Rob Ford is a study in absences. He came into office looking like a man who would galvanize the city. He promised to stage a winner-takes-all battle between city and suburb, between pedestrian and driver, between city builder and city manager, a grand contest of ideas between socialists and conservatives. As it turned out, he wasn’t so much with the ideas. That battle ended as soon as it began. Having been resoundingly elected, Ford turned out to be splendiferously bad at the brass tacks of running a council. He seems forever stuck at half-a-Dale Carnegie: he can make friends, but not influence people.
Korean designer Yu Hun Kim created ‘Aid for Multi-tasking’, a series of products that are designed to help us with doing several things at once. Often we do not even recognise having much difficulty performing different activities at the same time, unless the tasks are physically mismatched. Thus Kim created ‘Reading Tray’, ‘Lining Mug’ and ‘Knork’.
It takes a certain amount of courage, thinking out loud. And is best done in a safe and nurturing environment. Creative Departments and design studios used to be such places, where you could say and do just about anything creatively speaking, without fear of ridicule or judgement. It has to be this way, or you will just close up like a clamshell. It’s like trying to have sex, with your mum listening outside the bedroom door. Can’t be done. Then some bright spark had the idea of setting everyone up in competition. It became a contest. A race. Winner gets to keep his job.
But something seems to make peoples’ brains drop right out of their heads when it comes to streaming media, causing them to issue pompous lectures to folks in other businesses about how their revenue model ought to work. The idea seems to be that if you like to watch television, you probably have a pretty good idea of how to make and market it to consumers, particularly if you have some actual experience in a completely unrelated digital content market.
Well, I guess I looked out of place. Red lips, long blonde hair, innocent looking freckles. I shrugged and picked up my knife, carefully folding it and stuffing it into my bra. “Just lookin’ for trouble, I guess.” A phlegmy laugh wheezed out of his lung bags as he held onto his suspenders, doing a cold lean on the table. “You are trouble.”