mose's posterous

I have never made New Year's Resolutions. I am not that type. But, right now, sitting here I think I have just made one.

I don't know if I will be able to do it, live up to, nor maintain it into 2012 and beyond.

BUT, BY GOD, I THINK IT IS A GREAT IDEA.

Social media is everywhere. And it has turned a wee bit sour for me. Now, whatever you folks do is quite alright, carry on, but I am planning something different.

I will no longer post anything that I did not create. Call it my Creative Manifesto.

The idea of RTing, or finding that great meme, or reposting the funny shot of the kitten (God forbid!) seems like, well, so anti-Cluetrain.

It says in da book … "Once we get tired of hearing ourselves speak, then we will find the power of the internet." I think it should read … "When we get tired of repurposing, something that someone else posted, that someone else posted, of someone doing something creative, then we will find the power of the internet."

I am going to try and find the purpose of this thing we call the Intertubes.

I am not a videographer. If I happen to see something that is life changing I could capture it and post it. But I probably will not. There is something that bugs me about the plethora of video. TV minds. TV modality. If I was that enamoured with TV I would have one. I do not. It bugs me. I think it does stuff to us when we watch TV. I have done some research over the years and I simply do not like what I hear, and have never heard a single doctor or psychologist say "TV is great we should all watch more!"

I am a photographer, if I see something interesting, I will capture it and perhaps post it somewhere. (The pic at the top I shot in San Francisco a while back.) I am a writer, if I have a thought, or something I want to say I might post that too. I am a musician, I might post stuff I write, record or play.

Not that I do not appreciate all of the wonderful things that float around in these here Intertubes, I just do not want to subscribe to the laziness I feel is inherent in the social web. I have never been lazy. Why should I be lazy here?

Let me take you back to the early 80s. A hand coupler modem, where you placed the handset of a phone in it. It squawked and squeaked and after much prodding a command line came up on my old PC "Hi Pete!"  it said. I then typed … "Hi Al!" This was my first experience in the digital world. Two guys - one in his office way downtown, me in my apartment communicating to each other on our computers. You have no idea how hip that moment was!

The next foray was the BBS - I fell in love. MAGIC, BMUG, The Well, Atavachron, TVO and on and on … serious, heady shit. That was real exploring from the mid 80s till the early 90s. Then the web. Weird, when I first saw it? A thing called a browser - Mosaic - the first ever web page my friend at MAGIC pulled up for us was the Rolling Stones site (Well, we didn't call it a site then, did we?) It was a strange experience. New things always are.

From there it all went along with the flow. From cybermalls, to e-zines, to storefronts, to MLM, to email marketing, SPAM, databases, Flash and so forth. And then I went personally to building sites, to running internet firms, to blogging, to portals, to The Cluetrain, to social media.

And all of a sdden (Although some of us saw it coming) video hit. Hit big time. A tsunami of epic proportions that has drowned us.

I feel sometimes that I am that weird guy standing on the overpass with the flimsy sign that says "THE END IS NEAR!"

And, much like that guy, my voice is not heard as I am drowned out by the steady whoosh of traffic below, the occasional yell from a car - similar to the Loogans who drive by a farmers field and scream "Moo" at the cattle. Or the highly-evolved types who drive by goof courses and yell, "Four!" (They are so stupid they jeers are misspelled!) but, no heed.

Sorry, je digress …

So the Intertubes are now becoming nothing more than cheap TV. And again the Cluetrain states quite eloquently that, "The more the internet is like TV, the less we will need it."

I have believed the power in these here Intertubes are in the utility and tools they provide us. Productivity, delivery, customization, SEARCH and the data that can talk to other data. Remind me of events, hold things for me have your data talk to my data. The best explanation I have for what social media is:

"Up until SM we put word docs online. Now we can put up Excel! docs. Data interacting with data!"

Sadly most online video is like PowerPoint. And don't get me started on that!

Seeing someones video, which is more than likely a shitty, low quality recording of some tune with a static picture, or a kitten vid or the latest viral piece of shit, or the multitudes of self proclaimed video celebs, does nothing for me. It would be like having a last meal and asking for a Big Mac. No thanks. I will have the rack of lamb, please ... and a bottle of somethingred from the 12th century!

Now there are videos that are beautiful. Of course. Old clips of artists, athletes, thinkers and pure genius that was captured and preserved - no doubt about it. But when the web started we all knew it was 90% garbage. You had to search for the sites that were gems. With video the stats are:

• 82.5% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed a video online.
• By 2013, 90% of Internet traffic will be video.
• 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day
• Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day
• Users upload the equivalent of 240,000 full-length films every week
• More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years
• 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
• YouTube's demographic is broad: 18-54 years old
• YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010
• 800M unique users visit YouTube each month

My question is how much searching does one have to do to get to that 10%? And more importantly, how much fucking time is being wasted!

Mind blowing!

If you have a chance to do something, should you not try and do your best? Experience the best? Be the best?

That requires effort. Social media to me is the antithesis of effort. It is too easy.

My challenge for myself is to make an effort - it is going to be very very tough. I probably will have to post a video on one of my blogs, I probably will RT something I care about, and I will no doubt find something so damn funny I will share it.

But I will try and do what I think is necessary - and that is be original.