A quick series of thought-reactions to the interesting program Grant McCracken has put together for Culture Camp London#.
Culture is at the root of understanding what people do or at least seeing it through a new lens. In turn, this gives us the ability to be engaged with the motivations that support why this rather than that scenarios to help us design responsive experiences in a broader-than-screen sense.
In a conversation a couple of million words away from this post, Peter Tunjic and I talked about the modern virtues. I am now juxtaposing his take on composition with the ideas of movement put forth by McCracken and finding some threads.
My line – I find myself more and more interested in the space between things — notes, words, events, etc. There is a lot of life happening there.
Peter: Composition is really interesting— concepts I play with when working through how context composes is:
- What moves slowly or even stand stills (buildings, mountains, streets, trees, people in some capacity)
- What moves fast (weather, people and things that can move around.)
- The relationship between slow and fast (resistance) – leading to composition – think of a river – the direction is determined by resistance of the banks to the flow of water.
- The roll of patterns on composition (seasons, the way people walk to work).
- The relationship between what we intend (seen as intellect) and our intent (seen as behavior) on composition.
- Time as a poor measure of composition.
I also play with metaphors— one I’m working on is chess where the pawns can never be taken off.
McCracken Structural Changes:
1.1 The end of status as the great motive of mainstream culture.
1.2 The end of cool as the great driver of alternative culture.
1.3 The movement between dispersive cultures and convergent cultures.
1.4 The movement between fast cultures and slow cultures.
1.5 The shift from a “no knowledge” culture to a “new knowledge” culture.
I'm relating the first two to relationship between what we intend (intellectual) and intent (behavior); dispersive and converging are potentially qualities related to patterns; the fourth is related to speed and time; is knowledge the pawns that can never be taken off?
(perhaps Peter can provide additional insights when he reads the post).
As for "1.9 shifts from single selves to multiple selves (especially for Millennials)" I do wonder if it is a product of selfies-driven awareness -- seeing oneself as placed in a specific picture, and composition throughout one's experience.
The ethnographic research lite I conducted came after a more robust immersion in anthropology and human development – both are super useful contributing factors in the current concentration of my work on network behavior.
Speaking about cultural analysis, growing up in Europe I learned to appreciate how popular wisdom and regional jokes were rooted in experience as well as expression. Translated into user's and buyer's journey terms how interaction and conversation animate behavioral changes and learnings.
Ability to see relationships is a valuable quality for making memes.
[image courtesy Yanko Tsvetkov’s Atlas of Prejudice 2]