Archive for April, 2010
Goals
Learn what is truly important to you and what defines you in the digital space. You’ll get a sense of the size, scope and involvement and wrap your head around your digital lifestyle.
Identify what holds you back.
Free you from those Limitations.
Develop a deep understanding and desire for mobility. Many people have crippled mobility by using devices, services and solutions
Exercise
In order to become more productive in the digital domain, it is important to make some choices to define who you are. A good starting point is to make separate lists of the software (including web apps and networks) and hardware (including devices) where all of your digital “stuff” is stored. Make a list of all the applications, accounts, and devices you are aware of and stick to what comes quickly to mind.
Things to include in your lists:
-Hardware and mobile devices. Be sure to write down any additional laptops, netbooks, PDAs, smart phones, etc.
Start with your computer. Look at your desktop(s) and write down all the software you need and love.
-Mobile Applications- List your mobile apps.
-Content- Not just the files and folders but your tweets, blogs, blurbs, status updates and profiles, include the networks that you use.
Think about the photos of things you look at, like, and create.
-Make a list of dependencies (software or hardware) no matter how seemingly ridiculous. If you are addicted to your CrackBerry, Shazaam, or anything else write it down.
This might take you a while but try to focus or take a brief glance at your computer, phone and web browser and note what you have, thinking in terms of how often you use it.
A. Disaster strikes and you must move on.
Now, imagine a major catastrophe were to happen and all of your digital stuff was in danger. Imagine if, for whatever reason, you could only back up everything to a smart phone, or a device that runs a different operating system. What would you bring? What could you bring? How could you bring everything? Use your list and answer the questions and feel free to say “I have no idea” and move on.
1. If the devices and hardware were stolen or destroyed, what would you miss the most?
2. What aspect of your computing experience would you miss? What are your favorite interactions with your operating system?
3. What were you’re hardware requirements to enjoy your current computing experience? Is it a cell phone, iPod, 5 year old computer? Write it down.
4. Is any of your information or data stored anywhere else and if so where?
5. If the web applications, tools and social networks, changed or closed shop, what might you lose? Where would all your content go?
6. Could all of your information fit onto a mobile device? How much space would it take?
For most people, it’s what’s on the inside that counts! You’re not your Operating System or your hardware just as you are not your house. There are very few cases where you are really dependent and locked in to a specific operating system or system. Your hardware, devices and operating systems are just shells and apartments for your digital selves. If you were to lose a limb, would you still be you? Identifying our digital lifestyles by operating system is a complete joke. We are pressured to do so due to the marketing ploys of big companies and most give in to that pressure because they believe it will help them make complicated choices quickly and pain free. Your digital identity has a lot more to do with content, filters, experience and interaction.
B. Prioritize and Sort by format.
In this exercise, use your answers from the previous questions to help you prioritize your software lists and rewrite them in terms of the general type of information or output (formats) they carry.
For example, PhotoShop deals with images, so I would write down images. If I am a designer, my answers may be more involved and specific with the file type like PSD files, brushest and so on. Your list can be as simple or complicated as you want but try to cover all aspects.
What You May Notice
The first thing you may think about is the importance of backing up all your stuff, but take it a step farther. What exactly are you backing up and why?
1. Your answers will reveal what you really care about, what your dependent on, and how it limits you. These answers offer hints to your identity as well as the virtues and vices of your current digital lifestyle.
2. When reduced to their most liquid forms, most people have a similar list of irreplaceable information: contacts, images, documents, content, contributions profiles, settings, plug-ins, files, applications, filters.
3. We share common hardware requirements for our experience. That is to say that there is a certain standard of hardware performance we all seek (not necessarily have) in terms of graphics, processing power, memory and space, that allows us all to lead our digital lifestyle in the way we prefer. No one chooses a slow computer. Most people are tricked or forced into one by marketing ploy or economic status. We desire computers that are fast and easy to learn; (Speed and Simplicity).
4. The Importance and Power of Lists. Simply having a list of where all your stuff is stored is a great resource. You will become aware of just how much of your life is spread out across the web and various devices. Your list can help you restore your files and applications and be used as a reference when making purchasing decisions.
The Big Revelations
There are several aspects of your lifestyle that make up your digital identity are often overlooked.
Content, Contributions and Profiles
What makes you, you on the web? In this day and age you might instantly think to your social network, blog, website, or other content, but I bet they didn’t make it onto your list. You may also have private content that you keep all to yourself that is on the web. Where are all these contributions stored? Social Networks, various profiles, accounts, and contributions might not have even made it onto your list but they are incredibly important to you. These things tell others who we are and serve as reminders to ourselves. What would you do if Facebook shut down? Are your photos, blogs, backed up in an space that you control? Are your best one liners and status updates recorded and stored in a vault somewhere? For many people the answer is no. If you are a typical connected consumer, your digital identity is likely overly dependent on commercial structures, applications and devices. For example, without Facebook, you probably would not have a web presence, personal records, photo albums or contact information.
Mobility is liberating
If you were able to cram all the important stuff on a mobile device and synchronize it anywhere, you wouldn’t be so dependent on your computer, or reserved to a desk and office chair.You would be free to move and live again.
Personal Story-Losing a lifetime collection of media
Once upon a time, I stored all my media, all the music and movies I obtained over a few decades, on a single, very large hard drive. One day that hard drive fried and with it went all of my data. So after I replaced the drive, I discovered that luckily for me, much of what I had lost was easy to find and obtain again. The difficulty was not recovering the content but remembering the titles and albums. In this day and age, the list, the inventory that made up my digital DNA was more important than the data itself. If I had the list, I could always hunt down the media. The list could fit on the smallest Flash drive and would have saved me hours of brain-wracking searches to recover my collection. To this day I use various tools to inventory my collections and make simple logs of the lists that are stored as text files. I can carry it with me in my pocket and if catastrophe were ever to strike again I could use my lists and any number of methods to recover everything.
Personal Story-Ending My MySpace Dependency
I love to write and blog. I started blogging
Tips
1. Take the time to write down the various recipes of your digital lifestyle, making blueprints and digital DNA. This will help you get in the habit of protecting your stuff, preserving ownership, control as well as coming in handy when backing it all up.
2. Make an inventory, a simple list, of all your media files, favorite applications and web resources. (I will mention specific tools to help you do this in future lessons.)
3. Try to use liquid formats as often as you can so you can take your content with you, anywhere, to any OS or device. Images and text are the best places to start.
4. Send your lists to your phone or consider emailing them (encrypted or unencrypted) to a trusted friend for safekeeping.
5. Don’t just backup your data. Backup your lists.
6. Consider switching to applications that aren’t platform dependent (IE programs that work on Apple, Linux and Windows platforms.) This is a good habit to develop to keep you working in formats that can be taken anywhere. Furthermore, No single application should stop you from exploring and finding the best computing experience. You might be happier on something else and never know it because of your dependency on a platform.
Conclusion
The recipe for your digital lifestyle is not a list of applications or devices. These are not the essential ingredients to your identity. What is truly valuable to you and everyone else is the information, the content, contributions, filters, preferences, settings, and arrangement that is unique to your individual experience. It’s not the applications but the unique data set and the input information you provide. It’s true that hardware and devices are expensive and valuable, but they can be replaced easily, where as family photos and your unique arrangement of all your digital stuff cannot.
Mobility is important to Everyone!
These elements make up your Digital DNA and are most important. Often times the most valuable digital assets in our lives can be expressed in a simple image or text file. These files are more liquid and can be transferred anywhere. Make a new list, a list of lists to make.
The Power of Listing is amazing! Think of all the hundreds/thousands of websites, applications, images, resources you know and love. Keeping a list of them is more portable and easy to access than backing it all up.
Controlling the environments where you input and store information is very important. Having an independent HQ on the web is an irreplaceable resource.
This is a round up of the digital elements that play the largest role in sucking the life/time/money for most people. The list is based on research and my experience over the past decade as a consultant in IT, Business and New Media. Put simply, these are the bread and butter money makers for guys like me, (IT and Media professionals), and the sources of the most frustration for the average connected. The truth is we are all guilty of looking for solutions that do all the work for us and by doing so, we develop bad habits and surrender all control and freedom. Many people are looking for ways to step in and reclaim control of their digital lifestyles to save time and money and change their ways of blind consumption and laziness. All of these bad habits and resource pits can be overcome with practical solutions and alternatives offered with lessons of digital liquidity.
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