Media

Every Hollywood Film Seems Alike? We May Have Found Writer Zero

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save-the-cat-imageThe book Save The Cat seems to have had . . . undue influence on the writing process in Hollywood.  As in, most of it.

It’s hard to argue with the thesis of this article (especially with the checklist right there) and with the fact Hollywood films have gone awful checklist – as we’ve talked about here endlessly.  So this might be “Writer Zero” in any attempt to track the epidemiology of sameness.

I might be skeptical that one book could have an influence, but then again there’s the disturbingly believable claim that it looks like one dumb idea helped lead to our cultural-econmic-financial-business culture problems.

Serdar of course will be writing more of this on his blog, which I look forward to.  I wish I could do more than nod and go “probably” and may in the days to come.

– Steven

Kill Your Cable A Year (and more) Later

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As we migrated to MuseHack, I got to review past series, and by review I mean suddenly discover the insane amount of links I had to check and reconfigure.  This got me looking back at my own attempts to Kill Your Cable and what I learned.

Well that’s been over a year, Fan To Pro is now MuseHack, and I figured I’d share the repercussions now that the lack of cable has had time to become part of my life.  Or not part of my life.  Or something.

Let’s face it, cable has been part of our lives and culture, the fact we can and are leaving it is affecting our lives, our media consumption – and the technical direction of various companies.

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Glad To Sell You The Power: Consumerism Meets Creativity

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There’s no doubt we live in a consumer culture in America, and a good part of the Western (and Eastern) world. There’s plenty of things made, plenty to buy, and we do so beyond our basic needs. Obviously, not everyone is happy with this situation, as you can read . . . well anywhere. I myself, always a fan of technology and new things, am not thrilled with waste, passivity, and commodification.

However, at least in some spheres, I’m noticing there’s turns away from standard consumerism. There’s the DIY culture, and its offspring the Makers. There’s focus on simplicity and zero/low waste.

However, I noticed a curious phenomena building over time, one I’d like to discuss for it’s relevance in geeky careers and opportunities; we’re already getting “outbursts” of people wanting more control over what they do and more creative outlets – and people serving their needs by providing ways to do it.

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