#and lightbulb from 2012 to nowadays

[evanwevand]

Gotta confess something

Lately I've been thinking more on Clight than Lightbulb idk 😕

[jacobsmith321]

Contextual Studies: Hyper Connected World and Design

The world as we know it today is full of technology and the internet, in fact it’s become so wide spread, that in 2012, 566% of people had internet access (this was within 12 years and this is the third of the world). But in 2020, there are now 4.6 billion online (which is over half the world’s population).

Nicholas Mirzoeff said that ‘this is not just another form of mass media. This is the first universal medium’. This quote implies that this goes beyond the normal reaches of the earth, as shown by the fact we have satellites around the earth and we were able to create devices that can take interstellar photographs.

As to why this matters towards visual communication, it’s helps to promote content and help spread your brand. This also helps to provide inspiration, as well as receiving feedback.

In 2015 there were 100 hours of YT content uploaded every minute, which is immense and 6billion hours were watched of youtube, which was only 5 years ago, which may be a lot higher right now. However, there are way too many ads, even for songs.

2015 also shows that every 2 minutes, more photos have been taken, than in the whole of the 1800s. 1 country, the USA, took more photos in 2 minutes, than within 100 years.

1800s become for accessible and wide spread. In 2014, 1 trillion photos have been taken, which is 1000 billion. This shows how large and accessible it is.

This is because back then, you’d have to destroy a single lightbulb to take 1 photo but now and tech wasn’t as advanced, you can have 1 smaller lightbulb and take a million photos.

The blue marble, is actually the first, most clean picture taken of the earth, all the way from space, showing how beautiful and big the planet is (this was 40 years ago). But in 2012, the world’s very first selfie was taken in space by an astronaut, from Japan (ignoring the planet and wanting him to be seen instead).

Nasa wanted to create an anniversary image of the Earth called “Blue Marble 2012″ and the 3 man Apollo 13 crew are the only ones to have seen the Earth in all it’s beauty and 2012 blue marble, was false and was made using digital composites.

With a film camera, you’re a lot more careful as you have limited ammo, but phones make work less worth it, because you have unlimited chances.

How did the advent of the internet differ from other mediums? Simple, it’s easier and simple, more room for expansion; unlike a camera or a printing press, it’s less work and doesn’t require as much labour. It’s easier to store images and pieces. This also creates the shrinking world theory, where we’re “becoming more connected but also more distance”.

Lev Manovich makes a point about how nowadays, this new form of digital media, changes the way we communicate. It effects all stages of communication as well.

People watch TV but it’s considered to be hard to put their work on TV, radio or books. It’s not as easy to communicate with and share.

Digital media differs from broadcast, as broadcast media has more receivers but less distributors. Where as the internet is very active and has more receivers with an equal amount of distributors, with the ability to answer back.

John Barlow and many others used to the think the internet would revolutionise and change society and life, making it engaging and amazing. Utopian like and such.

However Vince Miller says ‘it’s no longer its novelty, uniqueness, or potential to transform life, but its mundane nature and pervasiveness that now gives the internet its significance’. Which is sad and the opposing to what we all think. It’s now all around us and we can’t escape it. We can’t live without it now. The internet can be beneficial but also harmful.

What does privacy mean to us? It’s to have our own information and lives to ourselves and not to be spread around, but with spyware and such, it’s become a lot harder to know if we’re safe. As the internet makes it harder to consider things more sacred or fair.

Marshall McLuhan says ‘Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left’, which essentially means that what we once saw or thought to be something for us, basically becomes useful and easily manipulative to others.

When we were asked how the internet changes the way we do things, we talked about how we take photos everywhere, make life easier and learn anything we want/need to know.

There have bene graphics pieces to represent the internet, such as “all these windows but no air’ which has images of windows tabs showing us we need to get some fresh air and get off our laptops, ‘Tabagothci’ to eat up any tabs we don’t need, which also helps reduce our anxiety when it comes to tabs or there’s photography of people who have become so distant but are still together, thanks to the web.

There are also ‘Algorithms’ which are decided by what you want to see and what things don’t want you yo see.

It’s also believed that social media is killing art and that it’s no longer what it used to be, because of the internet.

Design

When asked if design is harmful or helpful, it’s considered both. This is because you’re able to connect more, see a lot of cool things and learn new experiences, as well as gaining advice, but there are dangerous and subliminal places you don’t want to go to and some people may not be very open to criticism and can’t handle it. However, thanks to it, it even made the pandemic easier, we could work, manage our lives so much better and when we need something, we can get it next day.

Online copyrighting can also be a pain because people may try or do steal you work and because of how some terms of service works, it’s almost aggravatingly impossible to get it back or report them. Mozilla & Moniker even created a poster to #fixcopyright.

The internet is also considered to be “f##ked” to a lot of people, such as with the piece ‘Unfck The Internet’ made by Mozilla again.

Nesta created a website about taking control “using the CTRL” key on the keyboard as an idea for it’s look and how to control what you do on the web. It’s called ‘Finding CTRL’.

Over on Finding CTRL, there are drawings by kids to describe the internet and some are in the forms of webs/mind maps.

Hello Velocity created a typeface where letters are replaced with the significant letters of brands and there’s Martin Grasser which made type based off coloured dots on his pieces and websites.

When asked about things from the past that were weird on the web, we mentioned a lot of things like numa numa, addicting games, the signing hamster, even that annoying paper clip no one liked. And there have even been pieces made on them.

Conclusion?

Overall, the internet is an easy, fun accessible place everyone can go into and enjoy, but at the same time it can be hard and you need a break from it from time to time, to for your own health.

But even despite it’s faults, it has a lot of good features and helps in today’s times and has allowed us to discover new information and expand upon creative practices.

[topicprinter]

"We were so young then, too young to even book hotels, we needed fake ID's. Up until that point I was definitely no expert outside of my own personal use."Smoke Cartel was founded in 2012 by two Savannah College of Art and Design students, one majoring in Service Design and the other studying Advertising. Darby Cox and Sean Geng were frustrated by how difficult it was to purchase and the lack of quality of smoking accessories.Determined to rise above the haze and with $600 between them they launched. Over the next few years, Smoke Cartel became the go-to name in the head shop market. Darby has gone on to become the first woman in the US to be appointed as CEO of a publicly-traded cannabis company and the company has earned a market cap of $13m."We primarily used reddit for early marketing. We were successful by being authentic and doing AMAs. We arrived at this because we couldn’t do the traditional social media marketing."Hi Darby. Who are you and how did you decide you wanted to create an online head shop?In my early 20s, I began using cannabis to treat an intestinal disorder and found tremendous relief. I was hesitant when my partner, Sean Geng, decided to launch an e-commerce shop for smoking accessories from our living room in 2013. But when we attended our first trade show and I saw how many people were being helped like I was, I was all in.📷Before helping to found Smoke Cartel, I was a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design and in 2014 I started a small terrarium company called SproutSouth (SS).Once Smoke Cartel got rolling, I knew that had to be the focus. It required so much of my time and attention that it would a disservice to allow SS to just sort of wither over to the side. It's important to me to give things 100%.How did you come up with the idea? Was it a gradual process or lightbulb moment?It was much more of a ‘lightbulb’ moment. Going to that first trade show really awoke me to the power of what is possible in this industry. I ​saw what it was doing for medical patients, and that changed my mind completely. We were so young then, too young to even book hotels, we needed fake ids. Up until that point I was definitely no expert outside of my own personal use. I’ve learned everything along the way. Once the ball started rolling faster and faster, and I decided focussing on the business was the best use of my time.How did you initially fund the idea?The business was founded with just a $600 investment from my partner and I. Sean and I met while we were both studying at SCAD, Savannah College of Art and Design. I was a Service Design major and he was studying Advertising.Any tips for finding first employees?My biggest hiring tip is, don't hire you friends, don’t ask your friends for references.How did you market the company initially?We primarily used reddit for early marketing. We were successful by being authentic and doing AMAs. We arrived at this because we couldn’t do the traditional social media marketing.What are the biggest challenges you've faced?Early on our biggest challenges were the barriers of social media. Traditional companies are able to rely on social media to grow their businesses so we had to get really creative to grow our brand and name. Nowadays, the challenges we face are on the public markets side. Understanding all the compliance laws has been challenging, and we are still learning exactly what we can and cannot say about the process. Accountability is so super tight now. We’ve lost a little bit of that crazy, startup excitement and traded up for structure and procedures that feel a bit more corporate – and it feels great. It’s allowed us to view our growth differently and opened us to possibilities we previously hadn’t seen.Do you have any advice for someone just starting out?Do you research, it’s a lot more cost intensive than it was 5 years ago and the laws are laws are always changing, just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s legal.What apps can you not live without?The top apps we can’t live without are all internally built - Data Den, the Warely Suite, and our AI search.Warely is a multi-channel inventory management system that features advanced tracking capabilities, consumer data analytics, Shopify integration, manufacturing cost profiling and predictive inventory ordering.Data Den is Shopify add-on that is designed to give Shopify entrepreneurs peace of mind and minimize potential downtime. Key functions include accurately maintaining up-to-date copies of store data and event, exporting detailed data faster than traditional Shopify exports in CSV, Excel, and more, data recovery and rollbacks, and so much more!We were unsatisfied with the programs out there, they had no long term solutions and were not thinking through how it would interface with the business. We knew we needed an in house solution. Our development team worked long and hard hours but we’ve come out with something that is smart, accurate, customizable.Do you have any advice for someone just starting out?We always see in increase in search traffic as new place legalize or decriminalize. We are very excited to help those in the older silver dabbler category.What are you family’s views on the industry? What did they think when you were getting started?Right now they could not be prouder, but it definitely took many years of convincing and for them to see the full value of the work we do.Full Interview Here: https://www.nathangrieve.com/how-to-start-a-head-shop-worth-13m/