This autumn, I have been involved with something that is rather brilliant. ( I am allowed to say this without it being bragging, actually, since said brilliance is more other people’s than mine.) My company, business magazine Veckans Affärer, has joined forces with Resumé, the largest Swedish communication industry mag, and B2B agency Hilanders, to start a conversation. A conversation about where the industries that define Sweden (hard and heavy stuff like steel and paper) are heading, and what actually drives their growth in the 21th century.
This discussion, between the communication industry, top management in B2B coorporations, and the odd publicist, has been played out on – yes, yes, yes – all our platforms, of which the site b2bconversations.se might be the quickest one to access. (Or, if you’re one of those Facebook-is-the-new-Internet kind of people, well, here then.) It is in Swedish, so it’s not for everybody, but for Swedes, there is some quite interesting stuff in there.
And on the 7th December, the next step on this journey will be the B2B Conversations seminar, at the lovely Berns Salonger in central Stockholm. Big name speakers, a panel with a couple of communication people with very good resumés who will occasionally ring a funny bell of some sort (Yes, buying a funny bell is my responsibility. I haven’t yet gotten around to getting one, but whatever I choose, it will be spectacular.), oh yes, and wine. Stockholmers, I hope to see you there on the 7th. Do get in touch for discounted tickets, I’m sure I can get you some, but you have to act quickly – we close registration this week.
‘Welcome to the new WillSmith.com. In the coming months we’ll be bringing you several ways to communicate with friends and interact with content and information from around the globe.’
Do you know what I think? I think that people are so obsessed with the idea of “ordinary people” desperately wanting to Interact With Brands, that they don’t see that the logic of digital is not biased towards engagement. It’s a constant flow: visual, extremely fast, ruthless, volatile, hyperactive – and p2p. There’s where you find your bedspread for example, thrown between actresses, mega-cities, pop songs. All appropriated from other people, based on quick, aesthetic decisions. And then before you blink, it’s gone, lost in the flow.
Also, he seems terribly smug about it, probably in part due to the “Oooh! You are CRAZY!” tone of the presenter, who apparently came straight from year 2000 (“You’ve digitized ALL your music…?”). What this man’s done, obviously, is to take his bachelor’s pad to its extreme consequence, where he erases everything in it that can signify anything about him. Women (and gay men, see Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) are traditionally thought to be the family specialists in the symbolic language of consumer goods – knowing and appreciating what a pair of shoes or yellow walls say about you, compared to the traditional male stereotype who “don’t know what they want”, or “don’t care about how it/he looks”. Everytime someone gets attention in media for leading an ascetic, digital life, it’s a man – usually of the badly dressed, geeky internet start-up entrepreneur variety.
I’d say that escape from this difficulty is a part of the temptation to sell all your shirts (including, yes, the “Unidentified Robot t-shirt”).
But don’t think this is an easy way out, oh you worn-out ironic t-shirt wearers who roam the internet. Because if my research isn’t completely wrong, girls and better dressed men than you are quickly moving symbolic value online too, and you’ll be lost again. Look at this, for example:
It’s a year old, but it’s a good read. Polyvore, the site where you can appropriate designer clothes and other items by putting them together in image sets, has two million users, by the way, did you know? (In related news, Polyvore wants to make fashion more data-driven, which is yet another opportunity to ponder if one should do an Apple 1984-style uprising against the tyranny of the crowd, or try to find another level of creativity on top of the giant pile of user data. Let’s go with the latter, shall we.)
I couldn’t find an original article that didn’t require uni access, but this second-hand account will do fine as an introduction to Denegri-Knott’s research on digital virtual consumption.
Communication and consumption is mutating and converging. And increasingly it’s played out completely in a digital, immaterial space, where monetary value, brand value, symbolic value and use value don’t align in the same old comfortable way it’s done before. That’s the basic premise of my Master’s thesis, and I thought I’d share some random thoughts on it. This, below, is not what I’m researching, but it’s a good starting point for talking about modern (oh! let’s call it postmodern!) consumption – consumption of experience, access and immaterial value.
These things are now everywhere, even though I’ve more often seen them talked about than used by someone I know, to be frank. It’s sustainable and smart for the most part, so let’s go for it. One or two things can be noted from this little promotional film, however. For example, having objects you’ve collected and consumed earlier, in your home – library style – is, at least in future consultant’s speak, now totally reframed into having things “idling around”. The turn from downloading to streaming points in the same, interesting direction – the ideal of no dead meat, always staying a fresh, white, clean canvas that can experience the next thing without looking back. But that’s another (long, windling, rambling) post.
In short, I’m interested in when digital ways of consumption (especially communication as consumption) are integrated into this (unembeddable, so click here, please). It’s that great scene from Manhattan, when Diane Keaton’s character uses language basically as cultural warfare in an art gallery. Art consumption might be at the extreme end of a scale, but this complicated dance with signs is driving the vacation home barterers too. The vacation home barterers more than your average city weekend tourist, in fact, as the very idea of this form of consumption is a more deliberate sign.
And that’s what’s missing in all these consultants’ accounts of an exciting new, Negroponte-esque world of How we do it now: the Why and the What of leisure consumption on a cultural level. Which is where it gets really interesting: the crossroads between new digital possibilities and Consumer Culture, and how it affects how we build our selves with symbols. Someone who has never lived in a modern society would probably have problems grasping the idea of a p2p handbag rental.
This picture, by the way, is from the exact moment (around 0.53 in the clip) where Diane does one of the most skilful dismissive ah-eh-ah-ah’s (truly the sound of cultural capital) I’ve ever heard. Very impressive.
