Here is a wordle created with some of the many concepts surround digital liquidity.

How would you define freedom in regards to technology?

That is a broad and yet vitally important question. I believe the pursuit of Digital Liquidity encapsulates the answer.

What is Digital Liquidity?

It is an even split between a technical measurement and philosophical concept.

Digital Liquidity is literally,  how well we can control and move our digital assets. The things that get in our way and slow us down hinder our digital liquidity. Things  like cost, time, learning curves and more specific things like platform, operating system, standards and propiety also hinder this ability.

Digital Liquidity, as a mindset is a more natural approach to technology. It is the concept that keeps your technology working for you and not you for it.  Deep down, each and every one of us, wants these wonderful gizmos and gadgets to carry out our wishes, free flowing and uninhibited. We simply want it to work. Digital Liquidity is a measuring stick, pursuit, a wake up call as well as a wonderful opportunity

Together, the full definition of digital liquidity is a hybrid mindset/philosophy where one seeks to establish a redundant synchronistic relationship with their data, multiple systems and the web for the sole purpose of utilizing speed, simplicity, mobility to control and extend freedoms to the modern computing experience.  Simply put, we all naturally want to control our digital stuff  and have it quickly available whenever and wherever we may wander and we don’t want anything else to interfere.

The principles of digital liquidity, in order to keep things flowing are:

Independence

Simplicity &  Speed,

Mobility,

Control.

The Implications of these simple themes are vast, far reaching yet can help us make specific choices to empower our everyday lives.

INDEPENDENCE

Platform Independence- We should strive for a computing existence that is not defined solely on one platform, operating system, or device. The goal is to be liquid like flowing water; flexible and adaptable to any form. When describing the liquid lifestyle, it should have a form that is viewable on any medium, that can take shape of its container, (think OS,  phone, laptop or desktop). Our experience and thoughts regarding technology should not be reserved to the container and it is important in this day and age to rid ourself of the mental cage.

For example, I use a Mac, I also use a PC, a phone, and Linux. My digital Persona however, is not reserved to any of the boxes or brands that I use.  The things that make me, me when I am at the computer or on-line, the real essence is something closer to a code that is read by all of the different devices, like the web. So in this example, understanding that when I think of the digital version of myself, I am and always want to be something independent of all of those other things, an assortment of data and code.

Digital Persona- all the digital you- the box you explore on.  The digital persona is like the imperfect representation of who you are, treated as a unique operating system. What’s more you? Your favorites, images and files, browsing habits, or your iPhone, laptop or desktop. The best way to think about your computing experience is to recognize yourself as your own operating system, that is compatible with many systems but exists independently of them.

SPEED & SIMPLICITY

In order to flow freely on the digital domain we must have speed and simplicity. We do not want to waste our precious time learning to use these tools and gadgets, they are all just means to our ends. We want a simple and fast interaction to improve our productivity and effectiveness while empowering our lives. People look at the word “simple” and dismiss it as childish, idiotic, and boring. Yet when it comes to interacting with a gadget, the simple interface on the gizmo allows us to simply do amazing and complex things. The wheel, for example, is perhaps the simplest invention but look at what we have done with it. Armed with a simple and quick interface, we can change the world.

Our minds can get in the way of our goals. Our perceptions, the ways we digest information and process visual environments, consume our most precious resource; time. The training required for  basic interaction is an important factor to consider. The longer the time- trade off, the more likely we are to become conditioned to use that one system.  Pursuing fast routes and simple intuitive representations allows us to move closer to our goals without losing time or our sanity.

This of course is a natural human tendency to pursue familiar patterns. We all want to keep our sanity and eliminate stress yet few know how to do so when facing technology.  However, balanced with a liquid awareness, we can identify and choose  products, services, gizmos and applications that empower us and quickly allow us to pursue and explore our original goals.

Identifying the natural flow and encouraging the  pursuit of the simpler route before using force is important.  A 10 minute search for a solution on Google is far better than a 2 hour training session, especially if the kink is but one stepping stone on your path. People have an overwhelming tendency to fight their instincts and take the long and rough road to a solution. We all do this subtly. Often without knowing or knowing where to look, we attempt to reinvent the wheel.

It does not matter if we are beginning or advanced users, programmers, writers, or playful children, the bottleneck on our time sneaks into our processes and puts a wrench in the machine. It takes a lot of brain power to understand that mental process or computer process is a tool. We often forget to first check for a existing tool, before inventing our own. The first thoughts send us on

MOBILITY

Our thoughts come with us everywhere (save for the bar, bedroom, bong and some times ballot box). Computers are tools that store and communicate our thoughts, therefore it is only natural to wish these experiences to come with us and be shared with whatever we interact with and this is very obvious with our gadgets.

Fear can be immobilizing, so in order for us to be truly mobile we must be connected, synchronized redundantly and sharing with others where appropriate. This allows us to  move confidently without fear, knowing that if one aspect fails it exists elsewhere and can be easily retrieved.

CONTROL

Control = security+ownership+options

Control requires us to preserve ownership over our digital lifestyle and to do that we must also keep it secure.  If our habits are not secure,  they can be easily stolen, copied and made irrelevant. Ownership of  our data, accounts, experience, processes, thoughts and methods are all part of  the Personal formula, including the filters and favorites that make up our digital DNA.

Also, one must seek to expand and preserve options so that no one element of the computing experience can dominate our lives. It is true that we eliminate options the moment we make a decision but some decisions can cripple and restrain, while others can bring you to new horizons.

Connected, Synchronized and Shared

Finding Personal Digital Liquidity

1. Understand the concept and principles of Digital Liquidity.

2. Know what your fighting for- Know thyself-Identify and accept the independent digital persona

3. Embrace intuition, identify and encourage solutions that satisfy your gut instincts and natural tendencies.

4. Avoid the things that limit and annoy you.

5. Extend and apply our freedoms to the digital domain.

Some of us our bound by logic and prefer text, representational systems. boxes and borders to more visual and organic alternatives. When you face an obstacle it is important to know what you like and to encourage the pursuit of the things that empower you. We all interact and arrange things in a unique formula but  share common patterns. The people who create our wonderful tech toys often forget or ignore the natural reactions, and we are sometimes forced to use these crappy tools.

There is an unspoken expectation that the monkeys who design and build these systems have the end user in mind the whole time. They often don’t and many forces work against consumers. Engineers get wrapped up in their craft and forget who ends up using the work. Not to bad mouth them (as most of my friends and colleagues are engineers) but this notion is general knowledge and almost cliche to mention.  More often though, it is the money hungry corporate structure that cranks out these soul sucking devices. Greed ruins most products.  Microsoft for example has knowingly unleashed crappy products on the world. They have also kept crappy mentalities that prevented them from innovation. Apple and iTunes as well as the iPhone and App Store have an ongoing saga that provides both a blessing and a curse to users all in the name of profit.

It is important to rid ourselves of the idea or expectation that others have our best interests in mind. It is natural to think it in the coorporation’s best interest to make something with you in mind, yet business  is a balance between craftsmenship and profit and rarely is profit the first to suffer in the name of survival.  The responsibility falls to the individual; the consumer. Digital Liquidity must be a mindset, a personal pursuit and must  not be a corporate  product.

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Google is launching a new rich media communication platform called Wave. Their intuitive approach and user interface is absolutely mind boggling. It’s open source, cross compatible with many popular services like Twitter and Blogger.

Wave is a configurable mix and mashup of livechat/email/forums with blogs/collaboration and document sharing. You have to see it to believe it. It is that amazingly different from how we compute now. Smooth, liquid and seamless. Many of the interactions are visible in real time to the group unless you opt for a delay (which is accomplished by simply checking a box). Perhaps even more interesting, are the bots that can be dropped into a wave that allow to publish waves to blogs in real time or live translate chat in real time.

The translation tool alone will change the way we do business with the entire world.

I can’t wait to hear about a wave plugin for WordPress.

If you are looking for links- no need, use the above embedded Apture  contents to get the rundown on Google Wave.

Consumers want more functionality out of their gadgets for lower prices. One way to achieve this is to use  an operating system that can be used on multiple platforms. A method to develop a multi-platform operating system, would be to focus on the low power devices of today such as netbooks and cellular phones. The phone market is one of constant use and a likely large development community while focusing on netbooks and developing a user friendly, feature rich environment and system for business and life. The netbooks of today are likely the cell phones of tomorrow, as technology seems to shrink these gadgets and drop into our pockets. Google and the folks at Android are doing this very well as they strive to develop their operating system.

The Android OS can now be booted onto a netbook, unifying the user experience between computer and phone. Others like Apple, Palm and Microsoft have worked to simulate this with their systems but Android is no simulation. It follows logically that if creating an operating system with limited or mobile hardware, the developer will focus on efficiency, productivity and all the things we long for in our computing experience. Up-scaling from that, adding features and applications filtered through a lense of mobility and a mobile architecture, you get quite the handy operating system that is connected, free and can be fully utilized anywhere.

In terms of diigital liquidity, which is partly the pursuit of platform independence (and the ability of data to uninteruptedly flow anywhere under your control), the news that Android is focused on multiple platforms is great news for the consumers and certainly earns them kudos from the DLP. It is still young and has a long road to hoe to make it to the status of Ubuntu but it has done more than others to show commitment to consumers and their digital liquidity. However, multi-platform is not platform independence. We have seen what one operating system to rule them all has done to our computers (Microsoft monoply) and our phones (Apple iPhone evil shenanogans). So, the best we can hope for are programs that work on many platforms, or use the web to synch databases between them.

Tales From The Future
Digital Liquidity is also the constant consumer push and demand and a great indicator of things to come so expect to see small steps towards the following.

1. Focus on mobile and underpowered markets to create a new dominant OS.
Google has Android and Apple has the iPhone. The one you don’t know about is Intel. They have been experimenting with web and Linux distros for quite some time now and may eventually enter the market.

2. Universal yet personal user environment.
Pimpy my ride invades the PC. As we shift to augmented reality and constant connectivity, we will determine what art and icons we hang on our wallpapers and how it is organized.

3. Global language & Heiroglyphics.
Our standard symbols and language are determined by the masses who now have the authority of the ruling majority. Changes are made constantly and now determined by popularity and exposure, sense has little to nothing to do with it. The successful symbols are those whose purposes are intuitively determined from their rendering. The image rules and not every one is literate in the visual medium.

4. Web OS hybrid.
Expect people of the future to be connected everywhere at all times.
We see this already in and should expect to see more from the Palm Pre, Android and Apple Tablet oh my!

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I wrote this email of recommendations to a marketing director colleague of mine.

I love my netbook (Asus Eee 1000h), and if I were to ever complain it would be about the screen. Bare in mind that you can also connect the netbook to an external monitor, mouse and keyboards. The Dell mini 12- you can get the same functionality/mobility/battery life for a little more in price. The Dell mini 12 is a netbook w/ same 1.6GHZ Processor and specs as the others $529- plenty of cool colors and styles, very light and the battery won’t die quickly.

If you are replacing your entire @ home computing experience and still want to be mobile, then I’d spring for one of these laptops.

The HP DV310NR and the Dell XPS M1330 offer a nice weight and performance balance for a good price. Around 4-5lbs and can run Adobe Creative Suite.  The HP DV310NR $1000 4.6 lbs 13 inch screen-great specs, glossy screen, 4.6 lbs which isn’t too bad. (Check this one out @ Best Buy). The Dell XPS M1330 4lbs and plenty of power- I upgraded the battery to a 6 cell. 13 inch screen and windows vista $779.

Dell Studio 15 – this is your standard solid running typical laptop but nice none the less. Also for the price of my 2 primary recommendations you can still get a new Macbook.  If you are really mac hungry we can save you money and buy a used/refurbished one w/ an applecare warranty. I still love my Macbook- it required the least tweaking and allowed me to just work.

If life is more about  uber mobility and battery life, then go with the ACER Aspire One or the Asus Eee 1000HE. They don’t disappoint and are nice to sit on the couch and chat away for hours without burning up your lap.

I hope this helps.

-Nicholas

Tips for a Liquid Lifestyle:

1. If you can afford it, treat Netbooks as a secondary, fun, efficient and expendable extensions of your digital lifestyle.

2. There is no such thing as a desktop replacement laptop. There are such things as heavy, immobile laptops.

3. Understand the Personal Digital Liquidity (PDL) model of computing- Mothership/Drone/ Syncrhonized on and offline.

4. When Buying a laptop- consider buying a netbook and a desktop for the same price. All the mobility and power, as well as a safe, secure and solid home base to return to.

Netbooks are excellent secondary home machines and I take mine on most of  my dangerous, outdoor adventures. They require a more efficient approach to computing and will likely increase your productivity @ work if you learn how to master them. I keep a secondary monitor, mouse and keyboard at home when I want to click on to a larger screen. My best friend uses this as his primary setup. However, netbooks are not desktop/home server/primary computer replacements. Think of netbooks as a mobile port, a row boat, sister ship and extension of your digital lifestyle. There will always be times when you want to return to mother ship. When Buying a laptop- consider buying a netbook and a desktop for the same price. All the mobility and power, as well as a safe, secure and solid home base to return to.

Don’t buy a laptop as a desktop replacement. If it weighs more than your head (8lbs+)(I have a big head) then it isn’t something you want to haul around with you. Unless it is a part of your workout routine, heavy laptops are under utilized. Desktop units are cheap as well and provide you with more affordable upgrade and expansion options.

The modern personal computing model should be thought of as a mothership/cloud/drone relationship. The Work computer synchronized with home computer, houses all media, downloads and streams, and is in turn synchronized with the various mobile devices, laptops, netbooks, iphone, TV, what have you.  Information is synchronized via the web but editable when offline. BAM! Understanding and utilizing this model will save you money and increase your digital liquidity.

Expandable, fits all those clunky adapters.

Plenty of Power: 2160 joules of surge protection compared with 540 of most protectors.

Price: $30

Bottom Line:

Find it Here

1. Look up recommended/best performance specifications for the OS.
2. The touch, the feel, of cotton keyboard and trackpad when shopping for a laptop.
3. The heat is on-Consider it as an issue
4. Always go 4 industry leaders in hardware
5. 7200 RPM or bust
6. Bring a Picky Person Who Talks a lot With you.
7. Hell Day Visualization is A Must

In Detail:

1. Look up recommended/best performance specifications for the operating system (OS).

With Apple- They aren’t big on letting computers out of their doors that are underpowered, but certainly think of the rule of 2.

Microsoft recommends 1 Gig of RAM, 1GHZ CPU= Complete and utter lie! Firing up Windows with a gig of RAM is like driving a VW bug full of fat people up the Grape Vine, it is not going to be a fast or a pleasant experience. Go for 2GB MINIMUM of RAM, 2GHZ Intel (not AMD) Processor. Realize the more you compromise on this rule- the slower things will be,  and the longer repairs will take and therefore more costly if you have a software issue.

THE RULE OF 2 = 2 Gigs 2 GHZ INTEL CORE 2 Processor. 2 gigabytes of ram 2 gigahertz of a dual (meaning 2) core processor. This of course will soon give way to the rule of 3. I will update the lingo as the world turns.

2. The touch, the feel, of cotton keyboard and trackpad when shopping for a laptop.

Pick it up, shake the display model, piss off Best Buy Employees. Find out how solid it is by feel. You should no cheap, by the rattle and airy feeling it makes. The squeaks and give of a casing too.

3. The heat is on-Consider it as an issue

If heat is an issue and if you consider throwing this laptop on your lap then it almost certainly is, feel the bottom of display computers. Even the new Macbooks are unbearably hot, so consider netbook if it is going on your lap most of the time.

4. Always go 4 industry leaders in hardware

Guess who makes better parts (more likely to run faster, smoother, more solid and reliable)? Don’t Know? I’ll tell you.

Right now, Nvidia, Intel, OCZ, CORSAIR, Western Digital, beats AMD, ATI and many of the others. Stick with these guys and you won’t inherit extra burdens and bugs.

5. 7200 RPM or bust

Most laptops have cheaper, slower hard drives. ALWAYS hold out for the models w/ 7200 RPM hard drives. They’re faster= You’re faster.

6. Bring a Picky Person Who Talks a lot With you.

Someone with class/refined taste, who prefers the finer things can spot genuine care and value in a product design and in a blind taste test, are more likely to find the better product by initial look and feel assessments. If you are in a retail store they can use their super powers to ceaselessly nag the sales staff leaving you to play and investigate. Also, these under-appreciated picky, style police can help you consider different angles you did not even consider.

7. Hell Day Visualization is A Must

Imagine the worst work day or returning home from the worst day and you need to use your computer. Try to imagine you @ your bitchiest, crabbiest moment, and imagine what would bug you about that laptop choice. If it could be used without falling victim to your frustrations on your worst day, chances are it’s a good buy- if you have already assessed the previous tips.