Matter/Anti-Matter

In May this year, frog design founder Hartmut Esslinger spoke at the German Trend Day in Hamburg. The Trend Day is an influential annual forum that gathers thought leaders from business, media, and academia to discuss emerging social and cultural trends. This year's theme was "Identity Management," and other speakers besides Hartmut included Richard Florida, Danny Choo, and David Bosshart.

The organizers have synthesized the research, interviews, and lectures of the two-day symposium into a manifesto that is worth reading:

http://www.slideshare.net/TrendBuero/identity-management-manifesto-presentation

The paper argues that today's "attention economy" will be succeeded by a "recognition economy," in which opportunities for design will continue to increase: "Compulsory self-responsibility will force consumers to optimize their self. This self will call for deliberate decisions and new orientation frames. Identity will become a management assignment. Recognition will become the new key quantity." The result is what the authors call "Egonomics - an economy geared to the own self." Egonomics comprises of the following pillars: Body: Healthstyle; Security: Authentification; Relationships: Connectivity; Recognition: Reputation; Self-actualization: Creativity.

I work for frog design, and frequently at conferences and parties, people ask me about the name: What does it mean? Where does it come from? While some suspect it symbolizes the agility of that animal species, the truth is that our German founder, Hartmut Esslinger, coined it as an acronym for "federal republic of germany" -- the lower case spelling of "frog" referencing the egalitarian tradition of Marxist semantics, back then in the 60s when frog was born.

Sam Birger, the founder of Nomenon, a renowned naming firm, whom I met in NY last week, thought it was an ok name because it'd start a conversation by offering a good dose of ambiguity. He and I talked about the value of brand names, and Sam cited Hulu, the IPTV site, as a good example of an effective name ("distinct but universal") that helped them establish a premium brand in record time.

In today's New York Times, I came across a whole new twist in the naming game that may further validate or jeopardize all fidem nominem, depending on your viewpoint: pseudo-credibility. At first glance, Thornberg & Forester may sound like "a stodgy, corporate Wall Street firm that's been around for a 100 years," the Times writes. But, as it turns out, it's the concocted name of a one year-old Manhattan design and communications group, none of which three co-founders possesses a last name of Thornberg or Forester. "We take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously," says Elizabeth Kiehner, one of the founders. Hence the fake name that promises one thing and delivers another, in almost a situationist way of manipulating the public perception.

Not a bad idea, as the Times reports. The small, local firm has been referred to in print as a "worldwide agency," and the article quotes Justin Meredith, another one of the founders: "We get calls from banks asking for Mr. Forester. We say, 'He's not here right now.'" On top of all that and most importantly, the naming choice got them into the Sunday New York Times.

What can we learn from that? In the past, we knew that, simply put, branding was giving your offering a unique name and a meaningful narrative. Nowadays, you must meta-tag your brand if you want to stand out from the crowd. You must generate attention by distraction. Your brand story is the story of your brand.

...or just a workaholic?

In a poignant post, Seth Godin explains the difference:

"A workaholic lives on fear. It's fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn't show up because she's afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it's a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation... because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it's a lot more fun than watching TV.

It was hard to imagine someone being passionate about mining coal or scrubbing dishes. But the new face of work, at least for some people, opens up the possibility that work is the thing (much of the time) that you'd most like to do. Designing jobs like that is obviously smart. Finding one is brilliant."

That sounds good and reminds me of the "four-hour work week," as laid out in Tim Ferris' best-selling book: "How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent mini-retirements?" Ferris' book is a manifesto for the mobile lifestyle, and a detailed manual for outsourcing your work and disassembling a cohesive, consistent work life into ultra-flexible and ever-changing roles and tasks. This allows him to live a nomadic and excessive private life in many microverses: "I race motorcycles in Europe," "I ski in the Andes," "I scuba dive in Panama," and "I dance tango in Buenos Aires."

A similar concept is the "slash lifestyle," a term to describe the identity concepts of people who are no longer satisfied with just one professional identity and instead mash up professions and hobbies into a hybrid work/life fulfillment that unleashes their true ever-changing self: "Doctor/author," "Mom/consultant," and "Bellydancer/Scientist" are just some of the possible combinations.

Yet slash-lifestyle and passionate worker attitude have some ramifications. There is a dark side to all the Kumbaya freedom of the new passionate entrepreneurial self. More and more A-list bloggers (i.e. Steve Rubel and David Armano) are admitting a certain blogging fatigue. "Blogging is an addiction," a friend (and avid blogger) told me the other day, "it is a passion that can kill you." So does passion not equal happiness? And how do you draw the line? In a Fast Company cover story, Mike Rowe of "Dirty Jobs" offers some good advice: "Never follow your passion but by all means bring it with you."

With everyone becoming a producer in the YouTube age, self-branding ("The Brand Called You") has evolved from a fancy to a necessity.

Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame have shrunk to 5 seconds of microfame, and in the contained public arena of social networks, amateur paparazzi--thanks to the viral nature of social media--have the power to grant celebrity status. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis of Clive Thompson's poignant piece for Wired on the rise of "microcelebrities."

As Facebook walls make personal communications open to the rest of your trusted network, even your most private moments become public relations. What used to be said in e-mail is now "the writing on the wall." This radical transparency lets more and more Internet users nurture their image, manage their privacy, stage their public appearances, and distribute carefully chosen content to their circle of online friends.

PR professionals will have mixed emotions about this trend, as the borders between profession and confession are increasingly blurry. Thompson quotes Theresa Senft, a media studies professor and one of the first to identify the rise of microcelebrities: "People are using the same techniques employed on Madison Avenue to manage their personal lives. Corporations are getting humanized, and humans are getting corporatized." And he writes: "In essence, I'm sending out press releases. Adapting to microcelebrity means learning to manage our own identity and 'message' almost like a self-contained public-relations department."

The growing sophistication for managing one's online reputation is supported by the findings of a recently released study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, stating that Internet users have become more aware of their digital footprint: In 2007, 47 percent searched for information about themselves online, compared to just 22 percent in 2002, and 60 percent of U.S. Internet users surveyed were not concerned about how much information is available about them online.

This stands in stark contrast to the 84 percent, who, in a similar study in 2000, had expressed concern about third parties getting personal information about them from the Internet. Teenagers, the Pew study shows, understand the implications of their digital footprint best, protecting their privacy by using pseudonyms or private accounts, and locking personal details into "walled gardens."

I just saw the newest release of the classic noir sci-fi film Blade Runner, subtitled "The Final Cut". Undoubtedly it is the best version so far, surpassing the various other cuts that have come out over the 25 years since it was first released. I found that it raised new questions about identity in this MySpace world.

Like every designer nerd, I've seen Blade Runner at least a dozen times, a couple of times on the big screen. This Final Cut has been digitally retouched from a 70mm print and both the visuals and sound are stunning. The richness of every frame is breathtaking - everywhere you look at every moment there is something intriguing to see. It is a universe created whole and seamlessly in a way that very few other films have accomplished. I was fortunate to see it on a very large screen at the famed Grand Lake theater in Oakland, CA (complete with opening Wurlitzer).

Vangelis' score thunders away (at times a bit too obtrusively), and the opening crashes are startling. The special effects give away almost nothing to CG effects today, in fact I would put the cityscapes of Blade Runner, made with miniatures, up against the last three Star Wars movies any day.

When the movie first appeared it was widely seen as a philosophical questioning on what it means to be human, combined with angst about the growing power of computers and concerns that they would eventually surpass humans in intelligence with apocalyptic consequences.

Today those concerns have to a large extent abated, and instead Blade Runner now resonates with themes of construction of identity and how much of our own identity we own. In the movie, the robot Replicants have memories implanted to make them more mentally stable, but they all share the same memories. The memories exist in their minds, substantiated by a handful of photos.

In the MySpace/Facebook/blog/Flickr world, we externalize our memories more than any time in history, constructing our identity one posting at a time. But by the same token, people are able to create their own memories of us, and therefore create their own versions of our identities, sometimes without our knowledge and usually without our control.

While the Replicants of Blade Runner were beholden to their makers for their memories, we today are also highly reliant for others on the construction of our self identities.