Screen time

Sharing is a symptom of scarcity (or just lameness)

100 percent screening of airline
passengers

In the land where individualism trumps the group, it seems we keep finding ways to avoid shared experiences. Sure, we share experiences after we've had them -- on Facebook. But why should we waste time experiencing music or film or other mass media with other people when there's even a small chance our tastes may differ? That's what headphones and iPads are for. This trend (if that's what it is) was in my face on a flight earlier this year. One seat, one video screen. It's assumed now that only people flying on food stamps need to be offered headphones. Having been on just a few planes with this one-face-one-screen accommodation, it would already feel dreadfully pathetic to confront the long standard choice: watch the movie or don't. But the old standard would also fly in the face (pun intended) of this trend (if that's what it is) because watching a movie in an airplane, on a shared monitor, with a bunch of strangers, would now seem less like an in-flight premium than like being stuck at a bad summer camp. So toddlers take note. Your parents' repetitious insistance that you share and take turns is oblivious to the trend (if that's what it is).

Maybe I'm wrong

iPad can be wePad but it's myPad
and it's gone.

For Fathers' Day this year, I got an iPad. Apparently, I'm supposed to share. While I wasn't sure at first what the void was between my smartphone and my laptop, apparently the distance from ears to lap  represents a huge market for apps that could change my life... if I'd only let them. But it's been difficult to explore these new frontiers because first, I have to track down the 'pad. I started hiding it and taking it to work with me. The compulsive sharers have found the hiding places. I tried to see how I'd use it at a meeting. Flipping open the "smart cover" at a conference table in Vancouver last week, I had to make the snap judgement that it would be worse to attempt an explanation of the wonderfully high resolution page of pink bikini bathing suits (those things are expensive btw). And see? If we all had our own iPad instead of my new wePad, I would know less about all the game apps that are now loaded on to it, less about all the cool stuff we may or may not be buying, and my colleagues would be less inclined to wonder about my fetishes.

It gets worse

Survey says... what the f*** is that guy doing fishing for
for file folders in a coat-and-tie-dress?

The banality of PowerPoint is a tired cliche, it's true. But it's still happening. With a generation of rising Teletubbies taking over soon, we can't seriously expect this trend (if that's what it is) to reverse. See the screen. Be the screen. Giggle and coo. Among the most unfortunate spinoffs of this mediocre medium is clipart. Where other art has the potential to imagine life's complexities, clipart's agenda is bluntly opposite: obfuscatory reduction. And so I posit that clipart is not cute. (Though, by using the word "posit" I may be giving off the vibe that nothing in this world is cute.) Coupled with the deference to the screen that we're taught in self-referential duplicate by Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La La, and Po, clipart is management consulting's weapon of choice against scrutiny. Analysis, if it is actually performed, can be synthesized into bulleted truisms and paired with clipart to cement the abstraction. And so, maybe because we just want the meeting to end, we're unwilling to argue with the insight of hard working experts that organizations dedicated to success should not wade into water, fully clothed in dysfunctional garb, to pull up oversized file folders with a fishing pole?

We are what we clip (?)

I am car driving man. I have three skirt-wearing people, a dog, and two cats.

A lot of people are now embracing clipart as a way to affirm their domestic arrangement -- at least to those who may be tailgating them. You've seen this -- those white vinyl line-art decals used to represent the people and creatures affiliated with the household car (sometimes depicted with their favorite toys. A quick Google search (of family stickers) tells me that if I only want to mock this trend (if that's what it is) I'm really late to the party. But nonetheless, it seems sad. What compels this stickering? I can't think they're stuck up in hopes of starting conversations at stoplights (Hey there. Two cats, eh? Wow, you're a lot fatter than your window sticker).  So, sticking with the clipart analogy I'm going to, you guessed it, posit that these mountings are driven by a need to reduce domestic relationships to a simple, stable, and most importantly projectable form (that can survive the stresses of a drive-thru carwash). Maybe I'm wrong so to end I'll say, thanks for reading this far -- my love for you is like window glue.