All consuming ideas

The first book I ever bought from Amazon was The 500 Year Delta by Watts Wacker. In fact, I would have to say it was my first experience of ecommerce, and a pretty good one at that. I learned about Wacker from an article What Comes After What Comes Next in Fast Company magazine, my magazine of choice in 1996. It seems like ancient history now. I recall being impressed with the idea of being a 'futurist'. Prior to that a futurist was an Italian artist between the world wars who was in love with technology and speed. Ok, I guess the difference isn't that great.

I came across W.Wacker again through Jack Yan's blog. Like him I was fascinated by this quote from an interview published on the media (radio) blog Hear 2.0

"Perhaps the biggest trend that I would pay attention to in the short run is that while consuming is never going to go away, consuming as the defining criteria for individuals is. We are now using our media consumption as opposed to our physical consumption to explain who we are.

So you don't go to a party anymore and say, you know, "Where'd you go to college? What kind of car do you drive? Where do you live?" Now you say "What do you blog? What websites do you surf? Have you read the article in Vanity Fair on terrorism in South America? Are you an Imus or a Stern person? Have you seen The Departed?

Whatever it is, we are revealing ourselves through our media. We are becoming focused in life around ourselves as media. So today, "I am the medium."

I think this is a very prescient idea. I've had feedback from some of the visitors to this blog that one of the things they enjoy is that I find stuff to share - I guess there is a curatorial aspect to blogging(?).

It also gels with my personal mantra for 07.

Say Yes to saying No.

Buy less. Eat less. Drink less. Drive less. Consume less.

Think more. Do more. Share more. Love more.