Posts Tagged ‘Instagram’
March 19, 2013 (3 weeks ago)
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Yesterday’s newsletter was all about the transient nature of the universe, here’s more proof.
This is a little doodle I made back in the day, popular “Web 2.0″ names, businesses and buzzwords from around late 2005 or so.
How many of them are still front of mind, collectively? Not many.
No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Foursquare. Imagine.
Stuff like reminds us of JUST how quickly the world is changing.
My advice?
Become Antifragile. And stay that way.
January 20, 2013
7 Comments
The good news is, this is my favorite cartoon I’ve done in the last few weeks. And judging by the number of likes I got on Instagram, y’all seem to agree, for the most part.
The bad news is, how many people can relate to it, from painful experience. Far, far too many.
The Find-Hate-Lose-Repeat cycle is REALLY hard to break out of, once it’s already sucked you in.
And you don’t even need to be flipping burgers at minimum wage to end up there, you can have a fancy job title and a massive salary and still hate your life, this way.
It’ll kill you eventually. You already know that, right?
The only antidote I know for it is, find something you’re really passionate about, and then spend a few years, maybe even a lot longer than that, figuring out how to turn it into a living. Hell, it took me TWO DECADES and a lot of bad times to learn how to do it with cartooning.
Good thing it was worth it…
[P.S. If you want to follow me on Instangram, my user name is “gapingvoid” etc.]
January 10, 2013
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The big web story today is about how Instagram just removed its API from Twitter. My old friend, Dave Winer (also one of the great web pioneers of the last decade or so) wrote a great post about it. I drew the cartoon in response to Dave.
True enough, most “civilians” don’t give a damn about all this API talk, as long as they can post their fart videos wherever, they’re happy.
But this stuff matters.
December 14, 2012
6 Comments
The big Web story last week was about how Instagram just removed its API from Twitter. My old friend, Dave Winer (he is also one of the great web pioneers of the last decade or so) wrote a great post about it. I drew the cartoon above in response to Dave (“Commons” refers to the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, in this case, the Internet. It’s also where people grazed their sheep in the old days).
Then yesterday, another blogging buddy from the old days, Anil Dash wrote this great blog post, “The Web We Lost”, about how much the web has changed in the last 5 – 10 years, along similar lines.
In the early days of the social web, there was a broad expectation that regular people might own their own identities by having their own websites, instead of being dependent on a few big sites to host their online identity. In this vision, you would own your own domain name and have complete control over its contents, rather than having a handle tacked on to the end of a huge company’s site. This was a sensible reaction to the realization that big sites rise and fall in popularity, but that regular people need an identity that persists longer than those sites do.
When I think about the era Anil speaks of, I feel like an old hippy talking about how great the ‘sixties were, but he does have a point. The early-blogging seemed a much more fun, edgy, interesting, giving and independent place back then. And then the big boys came along and took over, sucking in all OUR content like a big ol’ industrial turbine. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.
I’m not saying everything was better back then, a lot of things we far harder and slower. But I do miss that indie, “We’re on the verge of something important and wonderful” feeling that permeated the air. It’s not nearly as palpable as it once was. I hope we can one day get that feeling back.
October 29, 2012
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[I’ve really been enjoying using Instagram these last couple of months– it’s fast and dirty, it’s spontaneous; it reminds me of my earliest days blogging, a decade-plus ago. To see more, follow me on Instagram (Username: gapingvoid) or check out the archive on the Tumblr page. Thanks!]
March 30, 2011
9 Comments
[Don’t get me started…]
You may have already noticed, I’ve been doing a lot of rapid-fire cartoon postings lately.
It goes to a point that came up when I was recently talking to Doc Searls on the phone…
“The Web works best when it’s spontaneous, creative, irreverent and slightly anarchic”.
With that in mind, I decided to do something about it. The Web had been feeling kinda stuffy of late…
So when I draw a wee business-card cartoon, at Starbuck’s or whatever, I simply take a snapshot of it then and there on my iPhone, then instantly post it on the web via Instagram… which automatically feeds onto Twitter, this WordPress blog, Facebook and my Posterous page.
Simple, fast and fun.
Art is more interesting when it’s liberated from its own self.
Not unlike human beings…
Spontaneous. Creative. Irreverent. Slightly anarchic.
Exactly.
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