Welcome to day one of an experiment that I’m calling the dotmatrix project.
Don’t look too closely. Take in the big picture. It’s all pie in the sky type stuff.
This spot is going to start off rather lonely — it’ll primarily serve as a place for me to share my thoughts on information architecture, design and the future of the internets (yes, those crazy tubes).
Much more of a dot than a matrix of any sort.
I mean, sure, my thoughts will definitely weave through and cross over numerous topics and mix in with commenter’s perspectives, eventually taking some form of a representative shape — you’ll know my approach to design and how I’m thinking — but that’s not necessarily the sort of matrix I’m interested in watching develop.
I deal with that mess every day.
Here’s where I hope it gets interesting:
- As time passes, I’m going to extend an invite — one at a time — to fellow independent colleagues to join me in this space. Further criteria I’m using is that the person will need to be either a designer, technologist, artist, musician or a thinker.
- Each person who receives an invitation will already need to be publishing to the internet. Tagging is going to play a large part in the evolutionary design of this space and I’m going to make cross-posting to the dotmatrix project super-duper simple.
- As consulting opportunities come my way, I’m going to tap into this organically developed pool of brilliance to form like Voltron on gigs. Hopefully, each member will feel free to do the same, creating a loosely connected network of professionals that are vibing with each other more and more each day.
- As our conversations develop in the ether, I’m going to keep an eye on opportunities to develop dotmatrix project conversations into potential service concepts. My underlying premise is the more smart folk at the table, the more chances for brilliant solutions to become exposed.
(originally uploaded by Robinnnnn)
After a period of time, I’m hoping that our individual personalities, experiences, skill sets and voices will begin to form a distinct shape, tone and representation — individuals crossing over and coming together as one for brief moments in time.
Is the sky the limit?
Only one way to find out.
Personally I don’t do things bottom up, I do things mostly backwards, but I love the essence here, I really do - there are not many blogs or thought kitchens in cyberspace that actually live up to the words of what they are about - my database log of November 28th opens with the words
1. Syven Your comment is awaiting moderation.
November 28th, 2007 @ 10:51 pm.
What surprised me is that 3 weeks have elapsed since then, because it seemed far much less than that, but what emerged here in terms of shaping my thinking and creativity for the future, I am grateful for, and so the journey continues towards ever new spaces, new people, new places, where the mantra can be viewed as:
to sow, to flow and to grow or just as well captured in your own words “Only one way to find out”.
…as for the collective called the dotmatrixproject - I can see that it lines up very well with my view of the world, except of course for my own fierce need to create an independent journey and my determination to keep online and offline activity mostly separate, so I really do wish you guys all the best with this project - for I can see that it is built from a really neat foundation, one that does highly resonate with me.
M.
PS and since you all are music people - why not leave one thing which is the kind of lyrics that personally resonate with me:
Thanks for engaging with me on this trip…
M.
i’m glad you’re digging this space so far. not really sure where we’ll end up, but if we get thoughtful participation like yours, it should turn out to be an interesting ride.
Sean, it is simply a paradigm shift, the blogworld has taught people to write vertical, but it hasn’t taught people write horizontal, and until bright people share their thoughts in a multitude of waves across blogs, there will no cross-functional power to blogs - there will only blogs which will continue to be chronological in nature - and what is the point of putting creating content if all it manages to do is generate plaudits and kindness or puffs of useless frustration and negative nothingness.
We all have content in our stomachs, it isn’t more content we need, it is the development of a new form of intelligent nutrition. Otherwise we really are simply reading newspapers designed as toilet paper on the web. I think what Jack Kerouac wrote in his mood journal sums up this utopia in his journal entry of Monday 23rd June 1947 (from the Brinkley Book)
The utopian dream today is still that universe of literatures, but also remember that even with the advent of better, faster and greater media, where is the next Shakespeare, in a population numbered in billions, how can we still not find another?
Sadly there is no such thing as a unfinished blog, they are more or less all finished before they are begun - what is the average blog life - 3 or 4 days - a week if the rage or rants are particularly wicked and then what to do we than what we do with toilet paper - pull a new sheet and start again. We are not going to get an iambic pentameter out of this kind of mentality never mind a complete Shakespearian play with this inferiority complex (I don’t know if that is with traditional media or our own selves).
What is that mindset but an expectation that others read what we write - how selfish, how vain, how self-absorbed - why not write to think, to create, why not write like an artist rather than a traffic cop - how far have we evolved as thinkers from the natural world of the hunter and the farmer compared to the machine world of industrial mechanization and now semantic technology?
The answer is easy to say, but far too threatening for most to contemplate - it still boils down to basic and primitive fears about ownership of our very own imagination.
M.