While “Talk to Me” in MOMA provides a more optimistic, holistic view to see our relationship with technology, “Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities” in Museum of and Arts and Design and “Pro Tools” in Whitney Museum of American Art might see technology in a more critique way. After seeing how “Otherworldly” underlines our longing for “real” in digital flood, I think it would be interesting to recall a theme in “Pro Tools”: everlasting frustration.

“Pro Tools” is a collection exhibition of Cory Arcangel, a famous hacker-turned-digital artist. He is extremely mastered in mixing different media–static and animated, high-tech and DIY–to create thought-provoking artwork in a humorous, awkward, ironic way.

In the exhibit, the centerpiece artwork is Various Self Playing Bowling Games(2011), a large-scale projection of six bowling video games from 1970s to 2000s. While it may represent how digital revolution improves the visual quality from 2D to 3D, it creates a dramatized theme to address the constant frustration which we have experienced: the character in the bowling game keeps guttering the ball, no matter how hard they try. Standing in front of the screen for five minutes, watching the balls keep rolling into the gutter, I really have an impulse to find out the game controller and correct this pathetic scene. But there is nothing I can do, because the game software is hacked by Cory Arcangel to show you the frustration comes with our inability to control technology.

Technology promises us a better life, but it’s exactly our fascination with technology leads us to the destiny of everlasting frustration. When I walked close to another project Masters(2011), a interactive golf game allowing audience to play with a golf club, I saw a lady joyfully tried to toe the ball into the hole. Without noticing the description of this project, a hacked game keeps twisting your swing, she failed again and again. Her facial expression showed a perfect transition from excitement, confusion, frustration, finally to desperation. Like us, she is just one of the victim falling from the Eden of technology.

“What is real?”

This is an universal question we constantly ask ourselves since media explosion. With so many channels to mediate our worldview, our scope of perception has achieved to a historical high. Digital technology significantly empowers us to track, preserve, archive the phenomena happening in the world. What comes with this evolution is a “mediated world”, where everyone perceives the reality from media. It exactly echoes what Marshall McLuhan said: the media is the message. We treat what we see from the media as the real world. But the explosion of the messages comes with the counter effect of cognition overloading and insecurities.

In this exhibition, what curator really intends is to dramatize this insecurity by telling us there is only one fine line between reality and illusion. By challenging our belief of what’s real, with a reality-TV style, behind-the-scene-comparison between virtual (photos) and real (micro landscape), the entire exhibit actually confirms the concept of “constructed reality”, which infer everything is purely subjective existence; objectivity doesn’t exit.

That is to say, we are actually our own making. We human being, the creator of digital technology, have ability to define, create, shape our reality. We are literally the God in the matrix we create for ourselves.

The implications? This exhibit may sounds like a critique about how technology manipulate our perception, but it’s totally not. It actually provides a “recipe” to ease our anxiety for longing the “real” reality. Just like watching the behind-the-scene video never makes us treat the film as a non-real one; we still enjoy emerging in the world created by the cinema. The more we’re aware or the trick behind the delusions, the more pleasure we feel. The reason is simple: the reality is entirely built upon “meaning”, and the meaning always comes with every mind activity. Just like artist Guy Laramee described his belief in the exhibit:

You cannot put feelings on a physical scale, or try to measure them. And we live in feelings more than in the “physical” — which is but another name for “feeling.”

What is the size of your feeling for life? What is the size of the word “size”?

Small worlds are not fake worlds, because: We are not in the world. The world is in us.

(Image from mtsofan)

From this standpoint, physical books may not become extinct animals. No matter how convenient Kindle is — long battery, portability, dictionary, note taking — I would still miss the feeling of flipping book pages across fingers. Whenever I feel impatient to read chapter by chapter, I would flip to the last few pages to have a few glimpse of the ending, just like Bill Crystal would do in When Harry met Sally. Sometimes, the flexibility of cross-checking pages could even enhance understanding and bring pleasure.

Furthermore, another article in NPR pointed out that e-reader actually dissolves the bond between readers and books. We hardly feel excited when downloading e-books; it’s totally different from the old time when we receive a book, we would touch, smell, hold it. In a way, we’ve lost the sense of ownership of the books. And this further flattens the whole book purchasing experiences, because there is no difference between buying a 300-pages classical literature and a 80-pages guide for dummies. Consider book consumption is, or was, such an important way to identify our taste, the instant gratification promised by e-books is truly pale, weak, and incomplete.

Noticing Apple has launched a short-formed book service Quick Read, similar to Kindle Singles, I further believe the incompletion of e-reading experience would be deteriorated. When a book can be purchased by individual chapter, how would this influence the way author and publisher choosing topics? And, should we still call individual chapter a “book”? The traditional definition of book is facing challenges, but I believe it will still keep its presences in the sideway. The concept of “author as a curator” would become a new wave. Just like more and more music companies re-encourage the value of album, we can imagine someday, when Kindle Singles and Quick Read become mainstream, we will hear another voice to recall the uniqueness of reading a whole book.

Munich-based artist Mario Klingemann created a real version of Like button as an art work. Whoever likes this “Like This” interaction box can press the Like button to leave a record. Just like the author said, this is totally a self-referential art work; the interaction (the counts of like) is the art work itself (we can see how many people did press the button). It’s such an ironic setting that vividly depicts how Like button literally become its own creature.

Pressing Like button doesn’t necessary mean we really like the person or things. It’s more like an impulse to show“I’ve seen/visited here”. Last year, Coca-Cola Village Amusement Part in Israel hold a marketing event using real life Like buttons to engage with teenagers. Visitors were provided an ID bracelet which stored each person’s Facebook account information. As they play in the park, the can literally “like” specific activities by touching the panel with their bracelets. These like actions will immediately be posted on their Facebook walls. I wonder how busy these visitors would be. But probably it’s a no-brainer job for these teenagers.

Like button’s icon status was pushed to a new high when people literally adopt it as their physical identity. Three months ago, a Israel couple named their daughter Like to prove how much they love this icon. Early on, rapper T-Pain even got a tattoo with Like button.

Seeing how Like button becomes such an ubiquitous icon flooding our life, I wonder what culture impact might come after when people are so obsessed with using an oversimplified click to replace real comments, making everyone become complacent for being “liked”?

Obviously, we have drown in a culture inducing us to show our preference instantly– pressing “Like” button. When I heard a friend showing her appreciation of another friend’s shoes by saying “I wish there is a Like button on you that I could press,” I started to wonder how this social media mechanism would drastically influence the way we interact, online and offline.

Vicious Conformity Caused by Little Button

An article on Wall Street Journal had analyzed the consequences of “Like” Culture. The author Neil Strauss believed this button had created a system of tyranny, molding our thoughts online to conform to popular opinion. He worried about how content creators succumbed to the numbers of Like, as well as how audiences tended to read contents by checking first how many people liked it. Another article on GigaOM argued with Neil Strauss by saying that while these phenomena do exist, people’s eagerness to see if our voice and action get attention from others is not something new. Social network just amplified our constantly occurring tendency of finding our idealized self.

It’s true that this quasi-voting mechanism has become such a reckless way to show our confirmation and even a mechanism to evaluate the popularity of brands or performance of campaigns online. It’s undeniable that, however, most people have already been obsessed with this button. And this actually happens in a very short time. According to Neil Strauss, “Like” button was first used in FriendFeed in 2007 and appeared on Facebook in 2009. Within two years, with the widely adoption by YouTube and even Google (+1 button), “Like” becomes the fast culture showing and determining the values. How on earth does this happen?

A Stressless Way to Gain Sense of Belonging

The way we speak up online seems evolve from time to time. From website, blog, micro-blogging, to social network, we use less and less words to create and maintain our online identity. This tendency seems very counter-intuitive. We seems become lazier than we used to be. I highly suspect this phenomena is related to two contexts. One is the information anxiety. The amount of information has increased to a level way beyond our capacity. With our nature of inventing new thing to solve the problems resulted from our own inventions, we create button. It is such a stressless way to interact with the world. No cognition overload at all.

In the mean time, our need of belonging is amplified with the syndrome of information anxiety. We are so afraid that our cognition would lose track, as well as worried our existence in this world would be further diluted. We need to connect to this world, at least as much as others do.   And the reward of making connections online is always fast and dramatized, making us highly addicted to such kind of instant gratification. What this little button really does is to amplify this instant gratification through a dichotomized voting mechanism: either you choose “yes” or choose “not to choose”. The result only shows partial opinions, the good one, as well as oversimplify the different degree of likes. But it indeed creates a happy illusion, avoiding the debates and conflicts, fulfilling our desires to be recognized by the world.

Now we even see the emerging of mobile tagging, which I believe further proves that  “Like” culture would not only keep existing, but also gain a new momentum to prevail. It is one of the most strongest fast culture now. Let’s see how it would penetrate into our slow culture.

“Slow Data” is the term I heard in last Friday’s Creative Morning. It’s not from the speaker John Maeda. When an audience asked John Maeda how to slow down when everything is changing so fast (although I have no clue why he came out this question), another audience shared his opinion that Google recently launched an online/print publication “Think Quarterly” which could be termed as the trend of “Slow Data Movement.”

When hearing this catchy term, my friends and I are all feel excited. Recently some of my friends just researched the implications of slow movement which could be traced back to 1970s. When I got home, I tried to do some search about this term and found out an article in New York Times analyzing why Google launched Think Quarterly. The journalist described it as Google’s intention to communicating with advertising clients through providing more insights for Google’s data and technology, in stead of solely pouring tons of chart and data through the service like Google Trends.

This sounded interesting. After I read through the Think Quarterly, however, I felt a little bit disappointed. The insightful contents and clean layout is really great. But claiming it as the initial of “slow data movement” is too dramatic. For me, what Google does through launching Think Quarterly is positioning itself as a “think tank” in digital marketing. In order to leverage their uniqueness in digital marketing, they have to stop playing the role of “selling advertising”. They need to be a consultancy, providing insights, predicting future, creating solutions to clients.

Nevertheless, it’s still amazing to see how this term attract so much attention from the public, including me. “Slow” has become a high density word with multi layers of implications. In a way, the emotional response to “slow” reflects our anxiety for “speed”. The voice of slowing down reflects the urge to solve the tension between feeling powerful and powerless at the same time in the world which is changing exponentially. And just like the slow food movement represents a way of living and eating, what “slow” really enchants us is our eagerness for “meanings”. The desire to slow down, make a pause, see the detail, and explore the stories is all about creating more meanings. This is exactly the essence of every slow movement. Knowing what we eat. Understanding what we see. While we have experienced tons of “spectacles” resulting from “speed”, sometimes we need to find a balance by acquiring “meaning” through “slow down”.

When Google+ launched several weeks ago, I concerned this would be another failure like Google Wave and Buzz. This judgement was mainly based on two reasons: firstly, why bother to move my Facebook social network to another Facebook? Google+ does provide a very excellent UI, but it has no way to compensate the potential risk of loosing track with my friends. Secondly, the privacy control Google+ claim is meaningless. We all concern for our privacy, but it’s only when we really loose it that we will speak up and argue. Most importantly, how we define privacy is usually contextual. Privacy is not an attribute we can “tag” on our friends to seperate different circles. At least to me, it’s always the mood influencing me to decide whom can join my private conversation today. From this standpoint, what “circle” really represents is solely for “group with different interests” (high school classmates, working colleagues, etc..)

Today, however, I find out that it was probably too early to make this conclusion. A guy I follow on Google+ posts that he decide to accept every connection request even if he has no clue who they are. He says as long as he categorize these people in a specific circle, it is a lot of fun to make connections with strangers, in the end even knowing new friends. He is not the only one who intend to do so. Lots of comments of this post say they have exactly the same feelings that making friends in Google+ is a lot of fun.

The fun of knowing strangers. How long we haven’t seen this term in online social network? When receiving a friend request in Facebook, none of us would accept it without wondering “who is this guy?” or “is it ok to let this person see my wall?” With the mechanism of circle in Google+, accepting request from strangers could be no longer a cognitive burden for us. In a way, the circle serves as a safe net or a filter, allowing us to experiment the relationship with strangers without immediately using our privacy as an exchange.

Google+ turns out to be a field of experimentation. Google takes it to experiment their ambitions in social network. We take it to experiment a new way of knowing people.

The question itself is interesting, especially when knowing this idea is from a piece of video art that director Mike Cahill made in which he interviewed himself in the screen. It just like when you look at the mirror, what would you say if the reflection of you has an identical soul ? In micro scope, we constantly rely on a recursive cycle of self dialogue to know who we are, realize what we want, explore where we have to go. The process seems endless, because the spiritual dialogue with ourself is always unclear and full of conflicts.

The eagerness to meet “you” as a real person seems imply how desperate we need to pinpoint the true self. No more fuzzy self construction. We need “someone” who subjectively, vividly knows me to tell me how to be a better person now. It’s indeed that people in modern society have more chance to experiment and play multiple roles. The opportunity of transformation is abundant. We can always choose the life we want. But at the end of the day, the irreversibility of time is doomed. The fast forward technology would only enhance our anxiety of must choosing each transformation well.

For Rhoda Willams (Brit Marling) in the film, flying to another earth seems about escaping for a second chance and finding redemption. But what she really expect is, just like most of us, to meet her ideal self and knows she has a chance to live with no regret.

Old media may not be entirely obsolete, as long as technology is culturally based.

Last week, when I told a literature teacher that BBS is still widely used in Taiwan, he couldn’t help but showing his shock and excitement. For him, it’s so hard to believe that this entirely text-based billboard system didn’t be abandoned by this multimedia age. Even though we could take Craigslist as another manifestation of plain text system, BBS is still extremely unique, because technically speaking, it’s even not browser based. You have to use specific client software to login. This entry barrier further mystify the longevity of BBS.

There are many angles to explain this outdated-technology-as-mainstream-media phenomena. One of them is relevant to its historical connection with college system. Way before the spread of WWW, every college in Taiwan had taken BBS as an online communication platform. Each department or program had his own site. Even each student was allowed to build his own billboard as a personal space, which could be the ancestor of blogging. When Windows OS (especially Windows 95) gradually lead to the pervasion of web page, BBS was no longer used as an official platform of school, but it’s still widely used by students, who were stuck on the contents and culture long nurtured in this cyber space.  As years go by, students came and ran, what they did was not only adopting this technology for fulfilling social purpose, but also played as culture innovators, injecting value and creativity into this space. What we witnessed here was how influential a culture/subculture could surpass the restriction of the technology.

BBS culture, indeed, has literally become mainstream in Taiwan. The community power of BBS is way beyond imagination, even some mass media takes this cyberspace as a source of searching news topics. Despite its power is based on a closed system with unique value and culture language, sometimes even controversial, Taiwan’s BBS is still a good manifestation proving the toughness of old media.

I have never bought any HTC smartphone, but I know this Taiwanese brand so well. I am not that into this brand, but it’s still amazing to witness this company rapidly expand globally. Last year, when they launched the first global campaign, I am really impressed by the advertising created by agency Deutsch LA Inc. What further intrigue me is the brand positioning statement, Quietly Brilliant, created by London-based creative agency Fig Tree. It’s really a clever interpretation through deeply understanding this company’s history and culture. 

In the early days, HTC Corporation was an unknown Taiwanese company partnered with Microsoft to manufacture smart phones with the Windows Mobile OS. Focusing on the smart phone sector, betting on a single OS, and partnering with mobile phone carriers have turned this company into a world leading smartphone manufacturer, dominating 80% of all Windows Mobile smartphones.

Prior to 2006, however, HTC Corporation might have been the most successful cellphone company, but most consumers had never heard of it. Many people owned smartphones without knowing they were from HTC. Since 2006, this company has been using ‘HTC’ as a brand name to sell their own products, but there was no large-scale promotion until the end of last year.

Challenges

Due to the changing environment, HTC faced two main challenges:

− Competition in the smart phone sector has become severe since Nokia, Samsung, LG, and Apple launched their products. HTC Corporation is no longer the dominant player in this market sector, and its low brand perception is a disadvantage when attempting to attract first-time buyers. In some aspects, HTC is still just an industrial name, not a household name.

− HTC Corporation used to see itself as an innovation company. Since Apple entered into the smart phone field, however, it is Apple who is seen as the leader in innovation by consumers. The low-profile gesture that HTC has made, allowing partners to put their logos on HTC products, weakens the perception of HTC.

To solve these challenges, HTC needs not only to enhance its brand awareness but also to appropriately reposition itself in such a competitive market.

Brand Positioning

In the past, HTC did launch many different phones in global market, but its brand lacked a significant and coherent image in consumers’ minds, even for people who knew of the brand. This company did an excellent job on product positioning, but a bad job on brand positioning. During the global campaign that began at the end of last year, HTC decided to reposition its brand with one tag line, Quietly Brilliant, which is a great leap forward, as compared to the past.

The ‘Quietly Brilliant’ positioning vividly depicts HTC as a brand with great ideas and humility. It not only reflects HTC’s expertise of creating breakthrough products and continued innovation, but also explains its low profile gesture in the market in the past. This positioning strategy smartly shifts HTC’s original message, innovation, which is ordinary, to a newer level, innovation with humanity.

Creative Works

To promote this new positioning, HTC unveiled a multi-million dollar marketing campaign targeting 20 countries in October 2009. The central theme of this global ad campaign is “You”, one common factor of all phones, and most of the ads include one message, “You don’t need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you.“ The strategy behind this is to put the consumers at the center, instead of focusing on the cellphone or applications. This is how HTC thinks it can differentiate itself from Apple.

In some perspectives, this campaign really hits the emotions of consumers by showing each precious moment of their lives, with the companionship of cellphones. However, it does not really say much about how or why HTC’s cellphones understand them. It may successfully communicate a feeling that the cellphones of HTC really surrounds everyone, but such companionship does not guarantee that HTC is a consumer-centered brand; in part, it just implies its market share. The message of this campaign is really catchy, but for me, it is still a hollow phrase, with only the support of emotional images.

The design creativity of this campaign really impresses me. Nevertheless, it does not really convince me that HTC’s understanding of the consumer is superior to that of its competitors, especially when compared to Apple. When seeing the flip effects of the touchscreen at the end of advertisements, most of the audience probably cannot tell the difference from Apple’s iPhone. In this area, HTC still uses a traditional mindset to demonstrate its innovations.

In terms of timing, this campaign was launched just after another “You” campaign, unveiled by Yahoo. That is a great pity for HTC, because this will cause confusion in consumers. Another interesting observation about this campaign is that it reminds me of another campaign held by Sony Ericsson last year. These two campaigns, perhaps coincidentally, use logos and product images, respectively, to replace a letter, successfully creating a new kind of visual language.