27 FEBRUARY, 2012

How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love

by Maria Popova

Why prestige is the enemy of passion, or how to master the balance of setting boundaries and making friends.

“Find something more important than you are,” philosopher Dan Dennett once said in discussing the secret of happiness, “and dedicate your life to it.” But how, exactly, do we find that? Surely, it isn’t by luck. I myself am a firm believer in the power of curiosity and choice as the engine of fulfillment, but precisely how you arrives at your true calling is an intricate and highly individual dance of discovery. Still, there are certain factors — certain choices — that make it easier. Gathered here are insights from seven thinkers who have contemplated the art-science of making your life’s calling a living.

PAUL GRAHAM ON HOW TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE

Every few months, I rediscover and redevour Y-Combinator founder Paul Graham’s fantastic 2006 article, How to Do What You Love. It’s brilliant in its entirety, but the part I find of especial importance and urgency is his meditation on social validation and the false merit metric of “prestige”:

What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world.

[…]

Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like.

[…]

Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious.”

A very worthy meditation from Maria Popova. Click the link to read the whole post! DH

When writer Daedalus Howell left Hollywood and returned to his native Sonoma County, he found it transformed into "Wine Country." He embarked on a journey of wine and words that became "I Heart Sonoma: How to Live & Drink in Wine Country," a collection of hilarious personal essays.

Berkeley, CA (PRWEB) February 10, 2012

When writer Daedalus Howell left a middling career in Hollywood and returned to his native Sonoma County, he expected to find the rural, rolling hills of his youth. Instead, he found the bucolic landscape strewn with vineyards and overrun with tourists. In short, Howell had found “Wine County."

A fish out of water in his home town, Howell embarked on a personal journey through words and wine, writing an award-winning column for the 138-year-old Sonoma Index-Tribune and other regional and national publications. Berkeley-based digital publishers, FMRL (http://fmrl.com), has published these hilarious personal essays as "I Heart Sonoma: How to Live & Drink in Wine Country."

The new ebook features Howell’s dark humor on a variety of subjects like the unspoken war between Sonoma and Napa, how “artisanal” is the New “Xtreme” and how wine country weddings can lead to heartbreak (which the Sonoma-born star of ABC’s The Bachelor can’t tell you). Here's some useful information from Howell's ebook:

1.) How can I tell if a wine is corked? Look at the neck of the bottle – if the cork is still lodged within it, the wine is, as it is known in the trade, “corked.” Similarly, if the wine is closed with a screw cap it’s said to be “screwed.” Hence the term “screwed up,” which is colloquial slang for “empty bottle.” For example, the bottle presently in front of me is empty, thus, “I’m screwed up.”

2.) You can’t judge a wine by its label. True, but you can judge a label by its wine. During the first glass, opinions run the full gamut – from “Hmm” to “Uh-huh.” The second glass of wine leads to more in-depth label observations like “Hey, this bottle has a label on it.” By the third glass, label critiques are often characterized by proclamations of “I love you, man” and “Let’s get another bottle of – wait – what’s it say on the label?”

3.) Sonoma’s winery owners are filthy rich. Well, winery owners used to be filthy rich but, as the adage goes, to make a million in wine, start with ten million. Wine is largely a labor of love. And a tax shelter. The trick is getting the owners to “write off” a bottle in your presence. I’ve written off many a bottle since moving to Sonoma and a few have even written back.

"I Heart Sonoma" is available on a variety of digital platforms, including the Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo and Sony eReaders. It is also available through the Google eBookstore and at independent bookstore sites through IndieBound.org.

For more information about the "I Heart Sonoma," visit http://iheartsonoma.fmrl.com. For more information about Daedalus Howell, including an author bio, blogs, short films and availability for readings, workshops and events, visit http://daedalushowell.com.

 

How do you autograph an ebook?

by Daedalus Howell

Dec 29, 2011 - 03:40 PM

Daedalus Howell

  Given Amazon’s pre-Christmas blitz and Apple’s prowess with any object they care to precede with a lowercase “i,” there’s a significant chance that you’re either reading this on a Kindle or an iPad. Dozens of e-reading devices have proliferated in the market. Even brick-and-mortar stores like Barnes and Noble proffer a book device some marketing type convinced them to call a “Nook,” which sounds more like a place one might have breakfast or a word you’d repeat three times to summon the ghost of Curly from the Three Stooges.

  If you’re presently swiping and hyping the written word on your shiny new e-reader, let me personally welcome you to the 21st century. You’re evolution from pulp to pixel is not only saving the backs of hacks but some trees as well. But don’t worry, your media diet won’t suffer for lack of roughage. There will be much to chew on, from breathless editorials eulogizing the passing of print to the inclusion of paperboys on the endangered species list.

  It’s notable that in 2011, Kindle ebook sales overtook those of traditional printed books at Amazon. In an unmarked grave somewhere in Mainz, Germany, a man named Gutenberg is beginning to turn. Though this might betoken a critical shift in how we read books, it also changes how we handle books – or, for that matter, mishandle books – now that they’ve gone from physical objects to merely data on an expensive device.

  For example, how do you burn an ebook without having to visit the Apple Store afterward to replace your beloved iPad? There should be an app for that. In fact, there are several apps waiting to be born into this brave new world of reading without paper (it’s when we start reading without words that we should worry).

  Here are my prospective “5 eBook Apps that Amazon and Apple Fear:”

  1. As mentioned: The ebook-burning app. This app allows you (or the fascist regime you live under) to “burn” your ebooks by erasing their data with virtual fire without harming your device. As the author of a forthcoming ebook, I invite my critics to purchase and “burn” as many books as they wish. Seriously, go big – then watch your money burn a hole in my pocket.

  2. An autograph app. There’s nothing sadder than watching a fanboy trying to wipe Neil Gaiman’s scrawl off an iPad 2. Yes, you can effectively tattoo your tablet with a Sharpie but it makes using it similar to wearing glasses that have been tagged with graffiti (attention, “cool hunters,” this could be a hot trend for 2012).

  3. An overdue library book app. Many libraries now lend ebooks but unlike printed books they don’t need to be returned, the data just evaporates from your device – as does the library’s revenue stream in overdue fees. Using geo-location to virtually hide your borrowed ebook somewhere in your house, office, car, etc., the library can charge your credit card until you find it. If you find it.

  4. Smarty Pants eBook Covers. Change lowbrow Stephen King into highbrow Albert Camus with a mere tap of this app, which will stock your virtual bookshelf with a pile of “trophy” books that make you look smarter than you are. 

  5.  The Used College Textbook app. This app adds a yellow “used” sticker to the cover of your selected ebook, covers its text with erroneous notes and charges your parents and extra $50 for the privilege.

• • •

  Daedalus Howell’s "I Heart Sonoma: How to Live & Drink in Wine Country" is coming to an ereader near you in January. Learn more at FMRL.com.

Sure, 2011 saw a congressman inadvertently tweet his boner to the masses, Steve Jobs' permanent departure from Apple, and Amazon's overheated foray into the tablet market. The media and tech news of 2011 that will likely have the most enduring effect on our culture, however, is the rise of the e-book.

The Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group released a report earlier this year that indicated e-book sales in 2010 were 114 million. When sales data for 2011 rolls in, I expect it to have doubled.

Thank the iPad and the Kindle. Though e-books existed in various form long before tablet devices, the sales for Apple's iPad (about 25 million sold by June of 2011) and Amazon's Kindle Fire (reportedly selling 1 million a week) suggest cultural ubiquity.

Moreover, these guys are ruthless. Amazon recently raised the ire of indie booksellers and their patrons with its price-check shopping app, which enables consumers to scan a barcode and compare the prices of goods at brick and mortar stores with Amazon's prices. This in itself wasn't necessarily offensive; it was the 5 percent discount offered by Amazon for choosing to purchase from the online juggernaut instead of Main Street.

Predictably, an "Occupy Amazon" movement ensued among booksellers, which might seem like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. E-books now account for about 20 percent of all book sales, which is remarkable when one considers that movable-type press was created 561 years ago and the iPad only two years ago. At that rate of disruption, e-books will entirely supplant printed books within the decade. Real life, of course, doesn't work this way. But still, the numbers are staggering.

Consider this: in 2011, a mere four years after the introduction of its first Kindles, Amazon reported that e-book sales have surpassed those of printed books. Even sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury, who's been publicly skeptical about digital media (e-books "smell like burned fuel," he famously opined to the New York Times) has finally permitted Fahrenheit 451 to be released as an e-book.

Of course, the revolution has not been without its casualties—like, perhaps, fair trade. The European Commission recently opened formal antitrust proceedings to "investigate whether international publishers" including Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster and Penguin, have engaged in "anti-competitive practices affecting the sale of e-books in the European Economic Area, in breach of EU antitrust rules." Moreover, they allege Apple may be helping them.

Be assured, the outcome of this investigation is coming soon to an e-book near you.

Daedalus Howell's e-book 'I Heart Sonoma: How to Live and Drink in Wine Country' comes out in late January.

Pop-up stores function like gallery exhibits—they appear for a spell, often with a theme, make some dough, then vamoose. Some are seasonal, like Petaluma's annual Christmas store put up by Marisa's Fantasia. Others are a means for brands like Wired magazine to showcase its curatorial prowess, as with its temporary location in NYC's Times Square.

Trendwatching.com, a self-described "independent and opinionated trend firm" based in London, claims to have coined the term "pop-up store" in 2004. Their cool hunters noticed that the now-defunct airline Song had opened a store in New York's SOHO district with the lifespan of the average fruit fly. As planned, it closed a week later, after seven days of selling samples from the in-flight menu, travel gear and tickets.

Now a new mutation of the pop-up concept is appearing on the retail event horizon—the store-within-a-store.

Consider the recently announced launch of micro–Martha Stewart stores inside JCPenney locations. I had no idea JCPenney still existed or that Martha Stewart was still relevant, but my demographic is likely irrelevant to the department store's new CEO Ron Johnson, who's shepherding the midrange brand's revitalization. (He's also acquiring an almost $40 million stake in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc.)

On its face, it might not seem like a very exciting premise—the doyenne of domesticality branding some shelf space in a retail chain. What's germane is that Johnson was the brain behind Apple Stores. If Johnson can bring any of the mojo from Steve Jobs' in-house shopping experience, he may be able to create a successful retail Frankenstein out of JCPenney and Martha Stewart. At which point, the editors of Trendwatching.com will explode from smug self-satisfaction as the store-within-a-store trend will have crossed into a hard, cold economic reality.

For some, "it's a good thing." But for those holding the note on vacant retail space, this nesting-doll approach to commerce is trouble. Due to the economic downturn, there's no dearth of available storefronts in which one might temporarily set up shop. Pop-up stores in these spaces could represent a minor reprieve, and would surely be welcomed with open arms like the Spirit Halloween stores that are ubiquitous through September and October. Founded in 1983, the come-and-go costume seller has perfected the large-scale pop-up store model. This year, it filled 900 temporary locations in 48 states and Canada, all in "high visibility, high-traffic strip centers" that would otherwise be empty.

But then, as JCPenney's Johnson probably realized, a standalone Martha Stewart store might also end up empty.

Daedalus Howell is at FMRL.com.

Many have written about the changing news business, how the economics of inefficiency that characterized newspapers ad sales, which still are the lion's share of revenues, don't apply in a world of plenty; how anyone with a smartphone and camera can act as a reporter and draw eyeballs away from so-called mainstream sites; how publishers are hoping the iPad and the teeming apps ecosystem will somehow toss them a lifeline. Fewer, however, have addressed how the actual content is changing.

But we are in the midst of a transformative shift in the craft of journalism. Text-only stories, the kind your parents found in their morning newspapers and characterized by the classic inverted pyramid (most important stuff at the top, least important stuff at the bottom) could eventually go the way of 45-rpm records. The MP3 of journalism may be the "live blog," which relies on the merging of platforms and weaving of text with video, audio, external links to other articles (including those of rival news organizations), blogs, tweets, Facebook posts, and whatever other useful information is available. It doesn't matter if information originates from a New York Times article, a tweet from an eyewitness on the scene, or someone offering astute commentary and curating links, a video shot by a protester or produced by a team at CNN. Because in the live-blog format disparate platforms become irrelevant, and the walls between these separate silos of content simply dissolve...

via fastcompany.com

Now, consider live-blogging for fiction. Could be something akin to Nanowrimo.org (National Novel Writing Month) but published in real time. Add the notion of collaboration and an exquisite corpse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse) might emerge like a digital Frankenfiction.

Transmedia: A New World of Opportunity for Authors and Publishers

By Javier Celaya

As a writer in the 21st century, I am rather curious as to the different opportunities transmedia storytelling has to offer in the process of creating a work. Which multimedia languages are the most appropriate in which to tell a story? What role do the various platforms play in creating a story? What is the production process like? What role does a publisher play in the entire process? How is a transmedia story marketed? How can the production costs be made profitable?

I have been reading all sorts of articles, blogs, studies and books in relation to this concept for several months. Although there are today more questions than answers on how transmedia will impact the book publishing sector, the objective of this article is to get a clearer picture of the challenges and business opportunities offered by the new world of transmedia to authors and book publishers...

via publishingperspectives.com

There's a frequent misapprehension that "transmedia" is merely a kind of creative diversification. To invoke a finance term, authors aren't merely "reducing risk by investing in a variety of assets" or, to be glib, creating those assets through risky reduction of a single creative narrative into other media. Transmedia is really all about creating complementary narratives in different media that culminate in a story world bigger than the sum of its parts. It's like playing god but on deadline. It's no wonder that terms like "story bible" are used in this trade. And "development hell." Or, wait a minute... Are we all just toiling in some kind of transmedia Paradise Lost? Or is that transMiltonic? What studio did Lucifer go to?

"STEREOFOUND: A collection of ‘non-music’ and ‘oddities’ on vinyl, found at thrift stores and flea markets. Think of stereo-test records, jingles, sound effects, instructions, spoken word, language courses and, well, basically everything recorded out of the ordinary."

Via Experimental Jetset (http://on.fb.me/u7ZLk5).

Once heard that John Lennon was looking into producing disposable cardboard records as a sort of statement about the nature of popular music (someone please corroborate this!). On a sadder note, it seems the Flexi Disc is dead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexi_disc.>

How to Gift an eBook

by Chris Robley on November 29, 2011 in eBook Distribution, eBook News

 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales reports are in; Kindles, iPads, and Nooks are flying off the shelf! I was in a Barnes & Noble on Friday and the line at the Nook station almost went out the door. What does that mean? eReaders will be under millions of Christmas trees this year. But it’s a little more difficult to imagine gifting something as virtual as an eBook, right? Wrong!

Now you can easily gift an eBook with a few clicks of the mouse. Amazon and Kobo allow you to purchase specific eBooks as gifts. All you have to do is type in the email of the recipient, along with the date you’d like the eBook “delivered.” Or you can print out a gift receipt to put in a Christmas Card.

For iPad, Nook, and SonyReader, you can purchase gift cards. (Amazon and Kobo also have gift cards.)

Digital publisher Open Road Integrated Media made the above series of videos for anyone wanting to gift an eBook this season. The video can be a little bit glitchy, so give it a second to warm up. Also, click the “See More” button to select the appropriate video for the appropriate eReader.

 

via blog.bookbaby.com

This could be quite useful to ebook publishers/authors doing select press outreach. The ebook format provides a better reader experience than a pdf and also serves to remind that the work has inherent value -- it's not a freebie, it's a gift. Or a bribe, depending on your marketing strategy.

Kudos to uber-designer Julian Montague for taking the time to salvage and share these eye-catchers (click the "flipcard" for an eye-gasm). More about Montague at montagueprojects.com. Check out his original work too – if the man sold prints, I'd wallpaper my apartment (then promptly lose my deposit... Or would I?).

Take that, Photoshop!

Intern Olympics – exploiting naïveté for course credit

by Daedalus Howell

Nov 23, 2011 - 02:16 PM

Daedalus Howell

It’s that time of year again, for those of us in the media game – intern season. Time to bag some shiny, brand-spanking-new interns to replace the used-up, gnarly ones that have suffered the corrosive powers of capitalism while “working” for despots like me. And by “despots” I mean entrepreneurs, lauded for economy-boosting “job creation” while actually exploiting the naïveté of teenagers who thought they’d slum it in media for course credit.

  As the fall semester winds down, the spring intern applications begin to trickle in. Ahh, there is nothing like a semester of sublime sadism to systematically replace youthful arrogance with anxiety and regret. You see, an internship is not an apprenticeship. Apprentices actually learn something, like carpentry. Or sorcery. I can guarantee my interns will learn little more than how to cork a bottle and wash my car. For this, I grant as many credits as they wish. To me, credits are as worthless as Monopoly money, which at least has inherent value to the game, whereas, in this sorry economy, a college diploma and a new grad’s resume are woeful wastes of wood pulp. They’re of better use mopping the flow from their parents’ bank accounts than actually scoring a job. And an internship, remember, is not a job. It’s a gateway drug to a life of received notions of success drenched in masochism.

  In some countries, a tradition of raising competent employees persists. In Germany, for example, they have a journeyman tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages. And they have wacky costumes to boot. Traditional journeyman garb consists of a broad-brimmed black hat, or a top hat if one prefers, black bell-bottoms and a “stenz,” or curled walking stick. The look is finished with a gold earring and bangles, which might lead one to believe the journeyman can either ply their trade (usually carpentry) or join your band. This is apropos since they’re said to be “on the waltz” while journeying, as it were, through the Teutonic countryside.

  Yes, I’d rather my interns dressed in top hats and bell-bottoms than hoodies and flip-flops. And, yes, I’d rather they didn’t speak in, like, declarative interrogatives? But you get what you pay for. Still, I’m circumspect when conducting intern interviews. Here are some red flags that I endeavor to turn into checkered flags so as to better match the past of their future employer:

  When a prospective intern says they’re “good at multitasking,” this is code for “I have ADD.” After a long, hard stare they generally offer up their Adderall prescription, which gets them hired on the spot. Not only does this prove that they’re willing to share, it also increases their relative street value.

  If a would-be intern says, “I’m a team player,” this refracts in my prismatic mind as “I’ll take one for the team ... And do all the work.” If they’re a “team playa,” that means (red flag) they plan to have sex with the team. If they follow up on this with “hate the game, not the playa,” I remind them that anyone who repeats such a shallow aphorism has as much depth as the tattoo on their lower back.

  As an intern, you’re not just being asked to work for slave wages, which is to say nothing, you’re also being asked to sell out your generation. At heart, most media businesses have no idea what’s going on in terms of youth culture. Our interns are extremely valuable in this regard as they provide insight we’d otherwise have to pay a marketing firm to attain. And since all media companies are ultimately just marketing companies anyway, why be redundant?

  And speaking of redundancy, bring a friend or two when you apply – chances are we’ll burn you out in the first week and need a back up unit. Funny, that’s how I got my job.

  To apply for a spring semester internship at FMRL, the Future Media Research Lab, email your 600 word essay “Why Daedalus Howell is so Frickin’ Brilliant” to dhowell@fmrl.com. Fair warning: You’re essay may be used for this column (and, yes, I’m keeping the fee, naturally).

 

This article appears in the News 2011 issue of Sonoma News

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“Skywriting by Word of Mouth” was a posthumously published book of prose penned by John Lennon that I was gifted a quarter-century ago. It was writing born of an anarchic love of language that sufficed as depth when I was 14 and sometimes still haunts me. Well, at least its title haunts me.

When general awareness of so-called “cloud” computing burst into media consciousness in recent years, I couldn’t help but think of Lennon’s book title and it’s reference to skywriting. Though the term is usually reserved for daredevils with an airplane, it’s become my personal metaphor for writing directly into the “cloud.” Whether that was with Google Docs, or ever increasingly, Evernote, the idea of putting words into some ephemeral-sounding digital mist appeals to me.

Moreover, I can access it anywhere and on any device. Now, moments otherwise lost waiting for the train or between bouts with baristas for refills could be productive. I could “skywrite” my columns, my blogs, bits of books, scenes in screenplays when I would otherwise be twiddling my thumbs, or more likely, using my thumbs to scroll through the Facebook or in engaging some other digital distraction.

Now, my thumbs are producers, world class hacks, hunting and pecking these very words you’re reading. What’s interesting to me is that writing to the cloud makes the creative act both incidental and opportunistic — with the right device in hand (an iPhone in this case), writing is like spackle filling the fissures in one’s schedule. Many a colleague might bristle that I’ve not ennobled the act of writing with it’s own appointment in my Google Calendar. Mind you, I do occasionally make a date with the muse but as a man with a toddler and a full-time career writing hokum on the clock, I have to let any “extracurricular” writing spring like weeds from the cracks in the concrete.

Writing into the cloud allows me to do this into a single document, always waiting for me in the sky when inspiration strikes. Of course, the “cloud” is just a server farm in an air-conditioned warehouse but by the same token, one’s muse is more neurochemistry than a visitation from the divine but we can romance it all the same.

Of course, I haven’t yet bothered to extend the cloud metaphor to its logical conclusions, namely the various forms of digital precipitation that might occur if Google flipped the wrong switch. Would words rain from the heavens? Not likely, but the waterworks would be real for me and thousands of other bawling scribes who entrusted their work to a couple of Stanford dropouts in Mountain View.

This is where a healthy denial mechanism is useful. Having lost an opus or two to various snafus (I once watched the lone copy of a terrible play I’d written wash out to sea), one might think I’d reconsider my precious “skywriting” notion and commit everything to good old pen and ink. Try emailing a page from a notebook sometime. I try to keep about a hundred miles between me an my editors for safety’s sake, so emailing is the only option for deadline writers like myself. And if by some miracle particle physics I was able to email my handwritten scrawl it would be unintelligible anyway. My carefully-keyed missives are borderline as is, so I don’t want to push it. For now, I’ll keep putting my words in the sky and hope they don’t get lost amongst the Lucy’s and the diamonds.

Art? Commerce? Ads? Who Cares!

By Fast Company Staff

Some early examples of Siliwood Madness at its best

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec's Moulin Rouge Posters
Those alarmed at the increasing incidence of "serious" artists creating works for brands can take comfort, at least, in the fact that the art-marketing convergence is nothing new. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was, in part, an ad man. His fin de siecle posters of the colorful denizens of Paris's Montmartre district, including dancers at the Moulin Rouge, were ads, paid for by the performers and local establishments and posted along the Boulevard de Clichy.

Procter & Gamble's Soap Operas
Packaged-goods giant Procter & Gamble pioneered branded content with its sponsored radio serials (soap operas) in the 1930s. When attention spans moved from radio to TV, P&G dominated with shows such as Guiding Light. The last P&G-owned show, As the World Turns, was canceled in 2010, but the idea of this type of programming lives on.

BMW Films
The idea of brand-backed content wasn't new in 2001 (see P&G) when BMW launched its online film series, The Hire, but the project marked the first web-focused entertainment campaign from a major brand and represented ad content as destination, not interruption. Created by agency Fallon with David Fincher consulting, the campaign also distinguished itself with the involvement of big- name stars (Gary Oldman, Don Cheadle, Madonna) and directors (John Frankenheimer, Ang Lee). BMW Films hit the ad business so hard that the Cannes ad festival, the industry's top award show, had to create a new category--the Titanium Lion--to recognize it.

Nike
A tiny product with a gargantuan impact, Nike elegantly demonstrated to the ad industry how important technology had become to brand creativity. A collaboration with Apple and agency R/GA, the running app was an early example of marketing as utility instead of just message.

Apple Ipod and ITunes
Like many other world-changing products, the iPod wasn't the first in its category. But it was the device that ended up blowing up the last vestiges of the music industry and our ideas of what a tech company could be. The covetable gadget represented the power of design, the convergence of tech and creative vision. With its companion iTunes store, it also represented the importance of content to a hardware maker and set Apple on the path to become one of the world's most valuable companies.

The Art Archive/Paris France/Amoret Tanner Collection (Poster)

A version of this article appears in the December 2011/January 2012 issue of Fast Company.

Related:
Welcome To Co.Create Nation

Brands as patrons – Finally acceptable to the art crowd? I can't remember when I first "sold out" but I can say that my received notions of artistic integrity can't hold a candle to living indoors. There was a strident strain of the "Us vs. Them" indie mentality that I caught in the 90s that probably cost me years of creative productivity. Patronage, wherever it's from, is a tool – it's how you use it that matters. And, hey, Art School Robin Hood, if you're feeling conflicted, pay it forward: You know where to find me.

How to make In Time: Mix equal parts Philip K. Dick and vintage Vonnegut, add a spritz of Logan's Run, a twist of Alphaville and have Gattaca director Andrew Niccol serve it up with a wedge of Bonnie and Clyde. Then do a spit-take when Harlan Ellison sues you.

“Newspapers, encyclopedias, they are just gone, at the touch of a hyperlink,” New Your Times reporter Quentin Hardy quotes Too Big to Know author David Weinberger. One would think a newspaperman like Hardy is tired of hearing about the death of the newspaper. Oh, wait, he's an NYTimes Bits blogger... Nevermind.