The sad irony of writing on a blog about the woes of technology is not lost on me.  Let me be clear, I do not want the internet to disappear.  I don’t want to revert to a time before cell phones and I definitely don’t want LOST, Survivor, Mad Men or Ninja Warrior going anywhere.  Technology and personal media technology, in particular, can be incredibly entertaining and enriching and there are so many parts of my life that are better and more amusing because of it.  That being said (sorry Larry), I have noticed something insidious happening in the land of idle distraction.  A slow and clandestine expansion of typing, talking, watching and reading is moving across our daily lives like the scene in every World War 2 movie of Nazi territory spilling like ink across a map of Europe.  We acquiesced to this expansion not only because we clearly benefitted, but because it followed a relaxed and logical progression – first we were untethered from the desk by the laptop, then a few years later wifi allowed us to roam even further and a few years later 3G networks brought media anywhere we wanted to be.  The only limits to our ability to distract ourselves today are battery life and reception.   Each level of intrusion into our lives was accepted because we had already become fully adjusted to the last push.    It’s almost like having a friend slowly moving his things into your place until one day you wake up and you have a roommate, who doesn’t pay rent.  You like the guy, but you didn’t realize what you were allowing to happen until it was too late and now he’s around constantly.

What’s so bad about distraction?  Nothing about it inherently is.  When a situation is too much to handle, distraction is a great thing.  We can avoid pain and discomfort or give our wearied minds a space to recuperate.  Life without any distraction would be unbearable.  But, I’m not making an argument against distraction in general, I’m just pointing out that perhaps it needs to be balanced out by…not distracting ourselves so much.  Tasks can be divided into two types: heuristic and algorithmic.  Without getting too technical, the difference between them is that with algorithmic tasks you narrow a lot of information down to a little and with a heuristic task you start with nothing or almost nothing and create something of value out of it.  This is relevant because daydreaming is a heuristic process.  Daydreaming and contemplation are the ultimate mental act of creation and there’s one main prerequisite for both: time to burn.

(Part 2 will be coming in just a bit)

Take, for example, video games. For almost two decades now, video games have been blamed for everything from bad grades to school shootings. Then the Wii showed up and suddenly video games were bringing families together instead of separating them. This was followed by Beatles Rock Band and I’m sure the trend will continue. Just a few years ago, no one would have anticipated that parents would embrace a video game console; it’s a textbook example of disruptive technology.

In my mind, the technology that has done for social life what the Wii has done for families is FourSquare and pretty soon it may be revolutionizing customer service too. Foursquare is an app for the iPhone that utilizes the GPS tracker to allow friends to find each other, discover new spots and compete with each other for figurehead positions. Before FourSquare, the iPhone was inhibiting social interaction as much as promoting it, which anyone who’s waited in line with a friend playing Papertoss can attest to. I have to admit that I can see how this might encourage people to stick to familiar territory even more, but overall I think that any digital tool whose primary purpose is to support interaction in the real world is a good thing for humanity. I’m more excited, however, for the potentially endless uses of FourSquare for small businesses and organizations.

Smart businesses are already offering specials for their most frequent visitors, also known as mayors. Foursquare is going to the next level in a few weeks by introducing a tool that will allow business owners to track check ins by time and frequency and surely other variables as well. It’s almost like Google Analytics for real life. Imagine if FourSquare could track the duration of a visit and set goals (purchasing a product, ticket, etc). There would be a whole world of statistics awaiting the small business owner that was previously only available to those who could afford massive surveys. What if FourSquare could offer coupons for the tenth visitor of the day that could show up as scannable upc codes on the iPhone screen?

An even better idea would be to figure out a way to team up with websites like The Point or Groupon. These are services that create deals that only become active once a critical number of customers have agreed to make a purchase. A coffee shop owner could, for example, clear out a batch of muffins that would otherwise be wasted by creating a deal that would make that product half off if ten people made the purchase. Anyone in the area would see the deal and once the tenth person signed up, they’d receive the coupon.
The possibilities for the use of foursquare are bountiful and if its popularity continues to grow then it will continue to level the playing field in the favor of the responsive small business. I can only imagine that as the features on the iPhone and other smartphones continue to improve, the potential for applications like FourSquare will as well.

We named ourselves Magis Creative for the precise reason that we don’t want to be known specifically as web designers; we want to develop a broad reputation for approaching life creatively. It’s the modern, western way to pigeonhole and to wrap life neatly up into discrete packages. It certainly makes living easier to look at the world and see it divided into sport, art, policeman, music, etc; everything we encounter inhabiting its distinct world, with no confusion as to where one ends and the other begins. But when you look closely, although defining our world in this way adds a level of convenience to our daily lives, it shuts us off from possibilities. It keeps one from seeing the humanity in the employee serving us, the beauty in the workings of a mundane kitchen appliance or the profound meaning of an everyday coincidence. Breaking down our socially constructed notions of the way the world works lets us see it in a new light. It allows us to work with what Zen teachers call “the beginner’s mind”, where all true creativity emanates from.

That’s why the topics covered in this blog will cover so much ground. We want to find new connections, new possibilities and the big ideas in little things. If we limited ourselves to just talking about design or ecommerce, we would be missing out on an entire world of inspiration to fuel our designs and to energize our lives. The greatest scientists and artists have often found their creativity on the fringes, in the places no one had considered to look or in the things that we thought had already been fully investigated. They took the insights they gathered with their endless curiosity and brought them into their paintings, poems and inventions and, in doing so, changed the way the world thinks. We think that’s a pretty good game plan to follow, so we’re going to try to cover as much ground as we can too. If only a tiny fraction of our investigations end up in our professional work, we think this will have been a huge success.

Necessity is the mother of invention. As a result of the epidemic, Father John Foley, SJ was called into action from South America. The Jesuits, an organization respected for their educational ingenuity, asked him to leave South America and come to Chicago to help start a school for the needy with the caveat that they had to create it with no money; a tall order for anyone. So Foley, in conjunction with consultants, came up with a novel concept: a merger of education and business. He knocked on doors of local businesses and the community rallied behind the idea.

They quickly formed partnerships with respected businesses and donors.  The passion and ingenuity of the project drew the attention of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which made a  $14 million donation to the project. Gates has always been a proponent of the importance of work and once said, “If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.” I think any professional can echo those sentiments.  Within a short time by education standards, a school system was created where kids would work one day per week to pay for an education, which would push them to achieve at and often above the level of more fortunate peers. Cristo Rey was born.

Experience is life’s greatest teacher. One of the biggest problems facing our young workforce is that, even after years of rigorous study, the importance of a firm handshake, making eye contact and being on time have not been stressed enough and, though these things seem simple, this “polish” is not missed by employers.  Enter the Cristo Rey Network, who created one of the most innovative educational systems to address this need. The students involved with Cristo Rey work with Fortune 500 companies, law firms, retailers, and a series of other organizations. The school itself has an employment agency inside the school. In order to gain admission into the school, you have to be employable. From the very first day of school kids are taught how to dress, how to look people in the eye, and how to shake someone’s hand. They learn how to answer phones and work copy machines. These are skills that some may take for granted, but not if you have absolutely no experience with them.

Admission is scientific. Cristo Rey follows a formula in which admitted students must come from families whose per capita income is no greater than 75% of the median per capita income of the city where the school is located or the nation, whichever is higher. The school is for the needy. As founder Father John Foley, SJ has said, “If we succeed, we will never have legacies.” Cristo Rey has overcome the inherit obstacles of their admission guidelines. Of those that graduated from Cristo Rey schools in 2008, 81% are currently enrolled in college. The national average is 61% and for Cristo Rey’s particular demographic college enrollment is 41%. In other words, if you are needy and your goal is to attend college your chances are doubled if you enroll in a Cristo Rey school.

Currently, Cristo Rey has 1100 job contracts and the participating organizations love employing the students. The school started with great success in Chicago but now they have two dozen schools across the country. The retention rate amongst companies that partner with the schools is 98%. They love the youthful spirit and pride that Cristo Rey students bring to the work environment.  On any given day 25% of the students will not come into school because they are working.  By the time a student graduates he or she is likely to have four companies or organizations on their resume plus they will have developed a network.

Cristo Rey gives kids structure. This is incredibly important, especially as the kids get older. The transition for many college kids into the real world is difficult. It can feel overwhelming to be thrown in foreign environments, with little idea of how businesses work firsthand. It can cause a tremendous amount of unintended anxiety. In this regard I think that Cristo Rey students will have an upper hand in their adult lives. Having worked since they are 14, they are going to be able to assimilate themselves into the professional lifestyle with relative ease compared to other students.  In a time in life when young adults develop anxiety over job uncertainties many of the Cristo Rey graduates will have confidence because they will already have some semblance of what they want out of life.

Albert Einstein once said, “Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.” Cristo Rey has provided an incredibly logical structure that has spawned innovation and success. Cristo Rey is a beacon of light that will undoubetedly continue to shine upon young people for years to come.

This realization came to me during a commercial touting the excellent educational background of an unnamed Philadelphia meteorologist whose trademark glasses and bowtie has become the weapon of choice for his network. When the commercial closed with the line, “trust the bowtie”, I laughed. I laughed because the premise was comical, but also because his bowtie was actually emphasized more than the years this man had spent studying meteorology. Then, I realized that the notion of trusting a man’s skills of prediction because of his neckwear was actually the least ridiculous part of what I had just watched.

The more I thought about it, the more I was astounded that a significant amount of time and money was being spent by local affiliates in towns and cities across the country to argue a point that is as close to being completely and utterly inconsequential as you can get. If you’re not following me, consider first how rarely the weather significantly impacts your life outside of vacations, wedding days and World Series. Maybe you forget your umbrella once in a while, but, for the most part, if a hurricane is coming you’re already aware of it. Then consider the fact that modern radar and satellite technology is so advanced that pretty much every meteorologist is getting the same exact picture to work with anyways. Then consider the fact that, being weather, it’s nearly impossible to nail down the specifics any closer than an hour or a five degree swing of temperature.

Probing deeper, I realized that it’s almost a law of nature that weather forecasts have to be the same. What would be the reason for one predicting snow when the other predicts sun? How could one come to a conclusion so radically different than the other that you would ever be forced into choosing a station based on merit alone? It’s impossible for them to be different because they’re too good at what they do to be different. They both know what the weather will be and the only way one could possibly set themselves apart in practice would actually be to bet the house on a completely unforeseen occurrence most of the time, which I would guess is meteorological suicide.

Despite all of this, local news stations, like 18th century British soldiers, have mutually chosen meteorology as the battleground from which they stand still and lob attacks at each other. They rarely openly attack another station’s credibility (because they can’t, their forecasts are exactly the same), but they do insinuate that their satellites and software can gather better data and their graphics teams can display their models in such a compelling way that you would be downright foolish to consider getting your weather anywhere else.

This may all seem like a rambling thought, and it mostly is, but I think in some way it’s indicative of the way life is today. There are so many things being thrown at us every second that it would just be too difficult to actually think very hard about everything we see. For a world in which we have little choice over what and how much we receive, it can unfortunately be a useful coping mechanism to be intellectually passive. I do know it’s useful to wonder if there is something strange behind the curtain every once in a while, though, even if it’s just for a laugh.