photography and its discontents

Penguin has plans for the iPad, and they go beyond the epub format.

“We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about.

“So for the time being at least we’ll be creating a lot of our content as applications, for sale on app stores and HTML, rather than in ebooks. The definition of the book itself is up for grabs.”

what defines a story? Changes, significant moments and ENDINGS. Psychological present is 3 seconds long … most moments are completely ignored by the remembering self. Yet this is our life. A difference between the experiencing self and the remembering self, with the remembering self dominant.

The difference is in the handling of Time. Time is the critical variable yet – it has very little impact on the story. Choose between memories not experiences. We think about the future as anticipated memories. – Nobel prize-winning econo-psychologist, Danny Kahneman.

what makes people share articles they read with others?

They’re seeking emotional communion, Dr. Berger said. “Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” he said. “If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/science/09tier.html

article on alistapart.com about how to not only provide information but to influence a decision. make the traditional “call to action” zingy. great example from It’s YOUR (Sex) Life, a campaign sponsored by MTV and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

hit the mark with appropriately zingy text.