Among other things

It may not be the real Ajay V. Bhatt in the spot but Intel's "rockstar" ad is a winner nonetheless. The spot is part of Intel's "Sponsors of Tomorrow" campaign developed by Venables Bell & Partners. Funny, smart, and approaching the right audience the campaign expands on the company's brand message that it 'makes things work' by putting their agents first, allowing the audience to appreciate relevance, and framing their product as a key to innovation.

The real genius here is the move to hold onto their brand image without focusing on any one technology or product. The timing couldn't be better either. With a diffuse market and uncertain consumer futures, the imaginary 'tomorrow' is looking much better than the dismal today so owning that message puts you in the right frame of reference.

The "Sponsors of Tomorrow" campaign builds on the "Intel Inside" campaign which rode the personal computer surge that began in the late-'90s and lasted through the early millennium. As desktops got faster and more powerful, then gave way to laptops Intel was branded as the core of everything the consumer needed for their digital lifestyle. The universe of products that have 'Intel inside' is growing exponentially as the laptop surge crests and is giving way to the broad range of mobile platforms. To boot, Apple now also uses Intel chips and so differentiation is less clear and therefore less valuable for Intel to capitalize on. This is a key point - Intel relies on companies to integrate its products and innovations. It will continue to do so and the diversity will buoy the company through the lean consumption era that we are now in.

As everyone should know by now, industries are networked and change spreads easily. Consider this; the single largest growth business in New York City this year was Dunkin' Donuts [ http://bit.ly/nychange ] followed by other chain stores. These are perishable retail establishments. During this same period New York has seen the closure of a significant number of retail stores along Madison Avenue and the complete disappearance of Fortunoffs, a cornerstone of the New York's retail history - [ http://bit.ly/fortunooffed ] . If, as the NYT article suggests, budget hotels replace garment industry production and storage houses it would have an impact on a broad spectrum of industries that consider NYC a center for business and its profile as a global culture magnet. This is not intended to be a doomsday premonition but an observation of simple fact - who will stay in these hotels and what is the future for a city with a creamy filling?

When large, long-term establishments are replaced by franchise purveyors of perishable goods, it is time to consider its future. This is not the first time the design industry in New York has been priced out of existence. I personally felt the impact of commercial rent defense in the late 80's and early 90's when large commercial spaces on Park Avenue (in my case our family's photography studio c. 1995) were priced out of their long-term leases. This coincided with the rise of the money-making-machine that has been the profile of New York in the past 20 years and suggests the cause and effect relationship of leasing policy in urban centers. In the case of the commercial photography industry high-prices came with a wave of other challenges that completely changed the business landscape for the worse. As the rents rose, so did chemical waste removal costs and a drive to invest in unproven and expensive technologies (like digital photography). The internal costs of the changing industry hurt many businesses and shuttered more but the real impact came from externalities due to the recession (...). The sharp consolidation of merchandise industries and the cost-cutting decisions by the survivors took business away from the commercial photography studios that served them.

Any of this sound familiar? It should because the very same issues are abound in a broad spectrum of design related industries - advertising and marketing, architecture, and retail industries such as garment production, product design, and luxury merchandise development. Of course, New York has not been a manufacturing center of the world for quite some time but it certainly has kept its deal-making aura and in the case of the garment industry it actually kept its manufacturing base. This base greatly helped the economy and the profile of New York as the aggressive dealmaking on Wall Street that was has long been its calling card complemented the edgy style-makers in midtown. The pairing established a clientele that consumed kobe steaks and bottles of Lafite to infalte the culinary profile of the city rose to new heights.

So I wonder therefore, if a significant consolidation of the garment district will impact the city in ways that we've yet to imagine. Could this be a sign of a sea-change or is this merely a sign of the times? What is New York? What will it be?

Television has actually made us into a very sophisticated culture with reference to our expectations visualization and our assumptions about its mythical power. Serial Dramas such as House M.D. on FOX and the CSI clones have conflated the classic 'thinker at work' legend with the contemporary music video. Thus the traits of classic hermetic genius - innovation, originality, and against-all-odds-success are bound to our social imaginary in a contemporary, and accessible way. Think: Rocky's training scenes.

"Saint Jerome in his Study" was one of the most widely applied themes from the middle ages throughout much of the renaissance, into the enlightenment, and beyond. I think that the array of renditions depicting St. Jerome in his study actually relate quite well with the way in which the crime and medical inquiry is depicted in contemporary media.

For example, compare the images on the left to those on the right...

images from: Technofetishized TV: CSI, Bones, and ReGenesis as Science Fiction Television? by Rochelle Rodrigo / Mesa Community College on November 16th, 2007 [Photo: © 2009 CBS, all rights reserved]

Image courtesy of Project Gutenberg - here

I think that we are now reaching an era when art and fantasy is giving way to practice and pragmatism. In my opinion, these are the traits of great innovative ages. This example from streetfilms.org

So think about the data you use every day. Can you see it? If not, someone will surely be presenting it to you in short notice.

I think that Dean Bowen has the right idea but I don't think that this is the right approach. After he's removed all of the computers what is gained? Have the learning environments changed? The article notes that he has removed the computers from lecture halls, and yet the lecture halls remain.

It may be difficult but the only way to get faculty to come out from behind their presentations we need to change the technology, not remove it. Bowen makes a good point when he points out that podcasts are great opportunities for additional examples to be introduced to students and that removing a computer from a classroom can actually encourage students to bring their own but the problem of the classroom still remains - we need to rethink that environment so that it can support many computers and the only way to accomplish this is to put the computer in the classroom and make it USEFUL again.

Its a bold step so kudos to Dean Bowen for taking the computers out. But I am waiting to see what he decides to put back in and how his colleagues respond to their new found freedom from the bonds of 'powerpoint'.

I wonder if he dislikes keynote too?