There are plenty of posts floating around the blogosphere with approximately the same title as this one. At the time of writing, Google clocks over 300 million results for the phrase “why I left Facebook.” I don’t feel it necessary to link to any of them, but I will say that this Sunday is Quit Facebook Day and that it’s easier than ever to Delete Facebook profiles.

Each of these deserters have their reasons, from concerns with privacy to wanting to reclaim wasted time, and it might seem like narcissism to throw my own log onto the fire… except that my story is a little different.

Why did you leave?

The morning of April 21st, as the keynote of Facebook’s F8 conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had some exciting news. In front of an eager crowd of developers, he unveiled a new vision for the Internet. Facebook’s “Open Graph” would make the web “social by default,” with Facebook serving as a hub connecting social content like Yelp reviews or Pandora stations. Facebook would be the much yearned for key to unlock the rest of the web.

It was approximately this very moment that my sister’s Facebook account was hacked.

Her contacts—all of her contacts—received an email saying she was stuck in England after a surprise vacation and needed money to get home. Family members, co-workers, ex-co-workers, ex-boyfriends… everyone got this message. Take a moment to think about who you’re “friends” with on Facebook. Imagine them all getting scammed through your account.

She even witnessed the hacker chatting over Facebook with friends, responding to doubters that “lol of course its me”.

Luckily, my sister uses correct spelling and punctuation, which twigged her friends and family to the ruse.

The hack spread to her Yahoo account, answering privacy questions that were now easy to find (hometown? mother’s maiden? pet name?). My sister finally convinced the sluggish customer service to suspend her profile before any more damage could be done.

Admittedly, this story is an anecdote. It still paints a picture of the ramifications of an Internet with Facebook at the center. It wouldn’t have to be Facebook, of course. Having any single key that opens all doors in your life, from your car to your bank account, is dangerous. It’s just happens that Facebook is both well-positioned to be that key and have broadcast that very intention.

But Facebook is a business!

Yes, that’s true. They need to make money to survive. I’m neither faulting them for that, nor saying that everything should be free on the Internet. It’s a bad habit we’ve gotten into.

But FedEx is a business and they don’t open your packages, see what you’re sending, and then tell their strategic partners in order for them to better advertise to you. They could. Nothing’s keeping them from changing their terms of service. If they did, they’d probably lose a lot of customers… and future customers would know what to expect and decide if it was worth it.

Since Facebook stores (but no longer “owns” thanks to past outrage) your content, our example doesn’t quite hold. The hypothetical FedEx policy would mean they’ve retroactively looked at every package you’ve ever sent through them, not just after the policy change. Past customer decisions, made when privacy was intact, would no longer be valid and what was merely poor business with our mythical FedEx becomes a very real justice issue with our very real Facebook.

Why should others quit, too?

There’s reason to believe that Facebook sees the need to address users’ concerns about privacy, considering yesterday’s announcement. Maybe they’ve wised up or maybe they’re scared. Unfortunately, this is hardly the first time Facebook has launched a major change and then wheeled it back under pressure from their users.

Facebook is not going to stop leveraging its size and depth to pursue potential income. It’s nothing personal; not trying to be dicks. They’re just a business (see above). That’s why we have to speak their language and deny them income. Make it hurt in a way they understand. There will be another Facebook and its creators (and investors) will need to learn the “Lesson of Facebook: Respect your users or they will leave.”

Don’t you do web strategy?

Yeah, it’s funny right? I’m either being hypocritical by telling people they need to be on a site that I’m not on myself or irrelevant by warning them off the biggest site on the web. I’m comfortable with that. I’m also comfortable saying that having a multi-channel marketing strategy that includes a mission-relevant action your friends/fans/followers can take is far more important than just having a profile.

Let’s not put the cart before the horse.

My friends were split right down the middle on Colts vs. Saints, but I think we can all agree that the NFL’s plans to keep the new Superbowl logo the same year after year will deny generations to come the ability to say, “Shiny VAG Rounded and a Reflection? What were they thinking?”

Some of my favorites of yesteryear, complete with accompanying snark, below.

1966. The first Superbowl wasn’t a Superbowl at all. Very sporting of us to hold a “world championship” for a game only played in one country. Still, I can’t imagine how such a logo was approved during Don Draper’s 1960s.

1970. This one looks like The Future, or what The Future must have looked like in 1970 back when flying cars seemed right around the corner. The curved multiple lines are very IBM.

1974. A typographically interesting specimen; the curvy “X” is most unexpected and vaguely feminine for the manliest manfest in sports. It reminds me of a yearbook or a Carpenters album cover. I bet the designer got canned that year.

1975. But the very next year, something just as fonty. That’s the legendary Friz Quadrata, by the way, none to the masses as “the Law & Order font”. Also, back in 1975 the letter “X” must not have been as incredibly badaXX as it is nowadays or it would appear bolder. Or maybe the standards for what qualifies as “bold” have changed.

1981. This one just screams Wrath of Khan to me. No?

It’s worth noting that the slab-serif-plus-bezel style of the Roman numerals would be hard to shake for the next few decades.

1995. Peculiarly southwestern. Yes, it was in Arizona but I have to assume that—tame as the Mid-Nineties were—it was a deliberate decision not to play up the XXX theme. I could imagine a logo adorned with neon mudflap girls going over with the Nascar crowd.

2008. What are the chances this just so happens to so closely resemble the Obama logo of that same year? Why didn’t I notice that the first time?

You can see all of the old Superbowl logos here. What’s your favorite?

As a renter, dropping thousands of dollars to renovate my roof into a field of solar panels wasn’t an option for me. A couple years ago I was inspired to attempt a more modular solution, buying a panel at a time and spreading room to room throughout the house. While easy as DIY projects go (no sawing, soldering, or even sewing), it was not without a few snags.

The first problem was parts. The initial list that I put together was lacking in some very important ones, namely all the cables that let energy flow from one component to the next. Here’s the grand list of what I ended up buying (with suggested replacements for products that have since been discontinued).

1. Photovoltaic (PV) panel. I bought a Uni-Solar US-64 (which I love) but it’s since been discontinued. I still think the wattage and price was about right for this system, so I’d replace it with a Kyocera KC65T 65-Watter for just over $300.
2. Output cables. These emerge from the panel’s junction box (or J-box) and travel to the charge controller. They’re “two strand” with both positive and negative wiring inside a single weatherproof shielding (#10 AWG). Ten feet (10′) is about $25.
3. Output terminals. You can’t connect bare wire to the J-box or charge controller, so you need terminals. Luckily, they’re super-cheap. An assorted 75-piece package is less than $5. Fitting the terminals to the cable will require a stripper/crimper.
4. Charge controller. The charge controller keeps your battery from overcharging once it’s full. The Morningstar SunSaver (20-Amp) is great and still available for $80 but the ProStar (15-Amp) is tempting with its battery indicator and covered terminals for only $20 more.
5. Charge cable. This cable connects the controller to the battery and often comes with its own terminals and a built-in fuse (so your battery doesn’t explode if your solar panel is hit by lightning). Depending on how far apart your components are, a three-footer for $20 should work.
6. Battery terminals. You might not need them, but I used some ring terminals from the assorted package above.
7. Battery. Absorptive Glass Mat (AGM) is a lot safer than gel or sealed and maintains okay health under deep-cycling. I’d stick with my choice in the 92 Amp hour MK 8A27 for $180.
8. Inverter cables. See, lots of cables! Since these are thicker and thus more expensive than the others (#4 AWG), I’d recommend keeping them short. $30 for 3 feet isn’t bad, but you could probably pick up #4 wire and add your own battery clamp terminals for cheaper.
9. Inverter. The Aims 1000W is a little bit loud and possibly overkill, but still a great catch at $75.
10. This space intentionally left blank. You really should plug something into your inverter. That’s sort of the point.

The above system was, more or less, what debuted at last year’s Burning Man camp and powered our hanging lights all week. After that, it tried to move to the roof of our apartment but was soon discovered by our landlord who followed the cable into our bedroom window (and accused us of throwing “graffiti parties” up there as well).

Now it finally has a (semi-) permanent home in our new apartment. Attached with wire (more wire!) to the back deck, the output cables run into our laundry room and the charge controller. The battery is currently in a cardboard box until it gets a more secure container.

It began sweetly enough. Surrounded by good friends, my wife felt comfortable to admit her sci-fi snobbery. Her highbrow literary inclinations had prevented her from enjoying anything containing even a hint of dragons or spaceships. That much is forgivable. Her regret came from the accompanying knee-jerk derision of those with less discerning taste. She was over that now and she thanked her husband (me) for showing her the light.

Then she dropped the RP-bomb.

Dork heroes Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade

Since high school, I’ve kept the fact that I roleplay secret to escape the scrutiny of those less understanding than my wife. Despite being in good company with paragons of manliness Vin Diesel and Stephen Colbert confessed players of Dungeons & Dragons, anti-intellectuals and actual intellectuals alike manage to find personal defect with pretending to be someone else.

Here’s why I’m willing to withstand their disapproval.

Friendship

At its heart, roleplaying is no different than poker. It’s a group of friends getting together, sitting around a table, and mixing skill with chance to create a fun atmosphere to enjoy one another’s company. Perhaps better men than I can simply “catch up” but most require an activity at hand to ostensibly occupy their attention so that they might excuse the wastefulness of bonding with friends. See also: watching sports, working on cars, knitting.

I’ve also roleplayed with the same group of friends since 5th grade. We’ve jumped from system to system and lost a member or two along the way but the ritual has changed very little for the last 20 years. Now the experiences we’ve shared have become a collective library that in turn supports the friendship itself. In casual conversation, we reference past adventures to describe our take on current relationships or world events—much to the chagrin of anyone in earshot who doesn’t speak our “language”.

Creativity

Drallar, undead hunter, c. 1999

Roleplaying also provides a blank canvas to pursue a variety of creative endeavors. It’s not unique in this aspect, considering the spectrum of videogame cosplayers to fan fiction authors, but undeniably stands alone in terms of breadth. Roleplaying is a bottomless void that provides endless raw material for anything else you want to do.

GURPS Online, web app, c. 2009

High school was filled with countless drawings of characters and locations, improving my technique with every menacing portrait or breahtaking vista. Eventually, I went to college for fine art. In my adult life, it helps me push my professional edges. When I wanted to teach myself Ruby on Rails with a side project, I wrote a roleplaying web app. In recent months, I dove into HTML5’s Canvas in order to stay at the cutting edge of my field (and the JavaScript library I wrote to draw hex maps is just a useful byproduct).

An entire series of fantasy novels is based on a world the author originally conceived for roleplaying.

In a world where we’re constantly encouraged to “think outside the box,” roleplaying pushes you to create the box itself. Discontent with off-the-shelf adventures, my friends have always baked our roleplaying worlds from scratch (leading to some really weird ones, like a dimension ruled by intelligent rubber bands). These worlds have required researching geography, religion, government, infantry tactics, time dilation due to special relativity, and of course narrative structures in which the audience is also co-author.

I know—for a fact—that roleplaying has helped me score higher on at least one biology test.

Perspective

Notice that I haven’t even gotten to the playing itself.

Many of the same benefits it offers when used in psychotherapy, roleplaying affords to its players. Most prominently this is seeing things from someone else’s perspective, but experiencing your own perspective from a distance can be just as useful.

When I am playing a character, I use that opportunity to explore an issue that I’m going through myself. When I left the state for college while my friends remained back home, my character was an estranged wizard unable to translate his newly learned spells into something his companions found useful. When I worked for an environmental non-profit constantly butting heads against intransigent corporations, my character was a religious fanatic with a passionate but entirely unquestioned worldview.

Although D&D famously has a “Dungeonmaster” who runs the adventure, most games are content with “Gamemaster”.

On the other side of the table, I have a chance to delve into more worldly issues. During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the players were insurgents resisting the occupation of their homeland. Questions like “Is an enemy soldier inherently innocent or complicit?” and “Would we rather have peace or revenge?” came up all the time. The current adventure that I’m running has the players as citizens of the fantasy-standard “Evil Country to the North”. The tyrant has been overthrown and the people are trying to forge the path to a benevolent democracy… but old habits die hard and staying alive takes precedence.

According to the RGFA Threefold Model of roleplaying theory, all this would make me a “Simulationist”. I enjoy immersing myself in fully-realized characters or worlds and then playing them as realistically as possible. That way I can attempt potential resolutions to personal or global conflicts at which I myself am unable (or unwilling) to fail. Contrary to criticisms of roleplaying being pure escapism, for me it’s always been a way ultimately to learn something about myself.

Game on.

I’ve been writing and rewriting annual goals religiously since the ball dropped in 2000, back when I was a senior in college. I take them seriously. A decade later I’ve thrown raves (2001), gone vegetarian (2003), moved to San Francisco (also 2003), and have my own business (2008). Despite such achievements, every year has the same leftovers. Make more art. Exercise more. Spend less. Stay in better touch with family and friends.

A new strategy was called for. Despite Sarah’s success with intentions over resolutions, I have clung to my SMART goals like a wobbly buoy. Wildly successful at life-changing leaps, they admittedly leave behind daily behaviors. Now fully comfortable in my own life, I no longer need transformation. I need grace. I need focus. I need intention. And so my intentions for 2010 are “Less Waste, More Life”.

Less Waste

Worried that my intentions were ambiguous bordering on glib, I almost wrote this as, “Less Dicking Around on the Internet” but as I reread my Tao Te Ching…

So, as ever hidden, we should look at its inner essence:
As always manifest, we should look at its outer aspects.

…I decided that keeping the specifics unnamed might actually let them remain more specific.

Either way, “dicking around on the Internet” had to go. I unsubscribed from all the blogs that consisted entirely of crap entitled “10 Essential Mac Apps for Simplifying Your Workflow” or “25 Vital Wordpress Plug-ins for Converting Traffic” or “[number] [superlative] [nouns] for [desirable outcome]“. Every single one made me mad to read, because I either already knew everything it mentioned or—worse—I didn’t… and then had to evaluate each hyperbolic claim as either worthy or worthless. All those feeds are gone. Bye.

Also, blogs written by Hipsters making fun of other Hipsters. Even ironically. Gone.

One step further, my laptop now lives at the office during the week. Yes, I will be sans computas post-six o’clock every day. It will still make it home on the weekends, for purposes of copying torrented content to our media server and whimsical side projects, but otherwise is 100% property of Diligent Creative (who owns it anyway, for legal reasons).

These behaviors have already demonstrated their potential. As Sarah returned from her haircut on Sunday, I sat in the kitchen making DIY moonjars while baking homemade bread (cracked pepper and Gruyere) with the old solar panel primed for installation on our new back porch. Solar projects (Less Wasted Energy!) and home baking (Less Wasted Money!) aside, moments where—merely a week before—I would be reading about things to do had become doing things. Gently setting down my 4-in-1 screwdriver, I looked up and said, “my life used to be like this all the time.”

More Life

It becomes an inevitability that the holes abandoned by retreating waste are filled by something. In my case, I’m resolving for that something to be life. I don’t mean this in the socially normative “Choose Life” sense, but in the literal sense. Plants. Animals. People. Life.

For someone with so many hobbies, I rarely enjoy them in the company of others. San Francisco has a fantastic electronic music scene, but I’ve sat on my ass as great artists have come and gone, weekly events went under for lack of attendance, and acquaintances that could’ve become fast friends have moved on to other cities.

Likewise, I hang out with only a handful of other web designers. Yes, we’re solitary creatures requiring only coffee and the warm glow of Apple logos for survival, but still… we could at least get coffee together. I’m talking the IRL meatspace.

Speaking of, I tried El Diablo at CoffeeBar today. Chipotle-chocolate cappucino. Would’ve loved a wing man.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the biggest example of “More Life” of all:

Sarah’s desire for the pitter-patter of little feet around the house.

By which I mean a kitten. What did you think I meant? Oh, the thumbnail for this post? That’s from the poster for “2010: The Year We Make Contact“. Not a science-fiction fan, I guess?

I’m not one of those guys who is totally supportive of a cause until its activists block my commute with their protest, although that did happen yesterday. On my way to discuss strategy with a non-profit client, I crossed paths with a bunch of people getting arrested in front of San Francisco City Hall. Despite their witty t-shirts, the scene struck me as especially tragic. Both Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Superior Court of San Francisco (and virtually the whole city of SF) have been solidly against Prop 8 at every opportunity. Perhaps someone involved can explain the action logic to me, since I’m sincerely interested, but the scene smacked to me as a lack of either critical thinking (who are the decision-makers and how will they be influenced?) or leadership (is anyone leveraging the predictable groundswell toward an organized campaign?).

Here are three ideas I think would’ve been more effective.

No one goes home single

If you’ve already decided that nothing short of being arrested will do, make it mean something more than just “we’re willing to get arrested for our beliefs.” That’s wonderful—and absolutely necessary to underscore the vitality of this fight—but stops just short of authentic civil disobedience. Instead of having the lockdown party at SF City Hall, move it to Sacramento. Attach demands to the lockdown, like, “We’re not leaving without someone marrying us.”

Borrowing a historical (and therefore cliché) example: Rosa didn’t block traffic, she refused to give up her seat. Her action forced people to choose between a bad law and human decency. The analog here would be to swarm the Clerk’s office and demand equal treatment. Don’t get out of line, don’t take a number, don’t move until they agree to marry you. Then, if they forcibly remove you, you’ll be arrested for doing the exact same thing as straight couples in the same line, not the illegal-for-everyone sitting in an intersection.

Fake it ’til you make it

The Supreme Court ruling provides a strange and exploitable loophole. If you were a same-sex couple married during the period where same-sex marriage was legal, your marriage still stands. There’s an estimated 18 thousand couples who fall into that category. Who’s to say you’re not one of them? Since there’s no way to tell without demanding documentation (and being a dick) that you and your honey aren’t legally married but merely everything-but-legally married… Just be married!

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the principle of the thing matters and it’s incredibly hurtful to know that the state is—let’s not mince words here—against you. The long-term goal of this strategy would be to leverage the logistical nightmare of the state having to constantly prove that every marriage was or wasn’t within a certain window, making enforcement of Prop 8 impossible. Considering that everyone in the executive branch from the Mayor to the Governor to the President is against Prop 8, it’s unlikely that Federal Marshals will bust down anyone’s door and make you return those ramekins you registered for.

Appropriate Valentine’s Day

This is the “Nuclear Option” for same-sex marriage.

The historical Saint Valentine was a Roman priest martyred for marrying Christians during the reign of Claudius Gothicus, who had deemed it illegal to do so. He was discovered, imprisoned, and ultimately beheaded because he defied the state and brought couples together out of love. Our modern Valentine’s Day celebrates this concept of romantic love, but conveniently forgets the defiance aspect of the tale. It’s time to bring it back.

Forget the rainbow. The new iconography of same-sex marriage should be the pretty pink heart, Cupid and his bow-and-arrow, smooching lovebirds, and every symbol, idiom, or typeface that advertising guys now employ to sell greeting cards reinforcing hetero-normative relationships under the guise of showing how much you love someone. Nice idea, it’s ours now.

I’m mad, like everyone else. Obviously, I fully acknowledge that the decision hasn’t hit me in the same visceral way as it’s hit others, but I’m hardly an innocent bystander. While my fianceé and I don’t bring them up because we don’t want to politicize our relationship, let’s just say that we’ve made non-trivial decisions based on the injustice we see around us. Prop 8 was a defeat for us, just like the rest of humanity.

So let’s beat this.

Although inspired by Vigilante Design years ago, I had doubts. Could design really succeed without knowing how the client measures success? It felt too much like spec work. If I hadn’t stumbled into trying and failing to aid someone in incorporating Fair Trade into their buying habits, I probably would’ve left well enough alone.

To be clear: Transfair USA has not asked me to do a redesign of their logo, nor has my fianceé—who works for them—expressed any displeasure in the logo.

By the age of 6, my mother had trained me to look for the upside-down Spidey in the corner of comic books. If he wasn’t there, I couldn’t buy the comic. Decades later, I discovered that Spidey did not represent any actual certification scheme, just a way to keep me away from Punisher, G.I. Joe, or anything with guns. In the big picture of changing buyer behavior, the logo is less important than value propositions, availability, or even habit, but that doesn’t excuse us as designers for not doing what we can to help consumers recall, recognize, and recommend the Fair Trade Certified label.

The problem to be solved

A good logo needs distinct shape and character. It doesn’t have to tell the whole story of your brand, just serve as a conceptual container for what the brand may ultimately deliver. The Nike logo doesn’t mention shoes (smart since they’ve moved far beyond shoes) but the checkmark does evoke accomplishment. Similarly, the Apple logo doesn’t mention computers but a bite from the forbidden fruit well conveys their iconoclasm.

As for shape, the current Fair Trade Certified label may not hold up to the Nikes or Apples of the world but still has a lot going for it. When we consider imagery associated with fairness, justice, or equality the first that springs to mind is the scales, closely followed by an “equals” sign. Both are embedded, although understated.

Accentuated instead is the laborer’s half-white, half-black aspect, a juxtaposition I assume is meant to represent race? A single-color silhouette (either black or white) would represent humanity in its totality, but a two-color makes the contrast undeniable. Before I understood Fair Trade as a concept, I thought this meant that trade between different nations should be without deficits. Ignoring the symbolic confusion, it also confuses the overall shape.

The globe underlines the global nature of cocoa from Ghana ending up in Switzerland or sugar from Paraguay ending up in the United States. It may offer a typical consumer some insight into supply chains (“my food comes from somewhere?”) but it seems redundant for consumers already looking to buy Fair Trade. Regardless, it confuses the overall shape just like the bi-racial protagonist.

As for character, the lines are thin, mostly straight, and the grid of the globe has a technical feel to it. While the main figure has a noble posture, his or her lanky build doesn’t impart happy or healthy.

Constraints & considerations

Let’s not do this in a vacuum, eh? We’ll first download the label usage guidelinesand learn the flexibility the label requires. Next, let’s take a look at the existing landscape of certification logos.

Transfair USA certifies a lot of different products, but coffee remains what they’re best known for. The ooviest of grooviest coffee-makers will “triple certify” their beans. “Triple” means Fair Trade, Organic, and Shade Grown (typically certified through Rainforest Alliance). Unfortunately, not every coffee-maker falls into this oovy-groovy (OG) category and many certify with only one scheme. A consumer in a hurry, despite wanting to do right by both his or her own family and the family growing their food, might be content with coffee certified by somebody, even if it’s not Fair Trade. This (quite tragically!) introduces competition among schemes.

The Rainforest Alliance logo is fun, interesting, and easy to recommend (I could’ve just told my mom to look for the frog). The USDA Organic logo, while a little boring, is easy to recognize. Unfortunately, when we’re actually shopping, the labels of certification schemes that a product carries—not to mention nutritional information, ingredients, or even weight or volume—are tiny and hard-to-read.

Here are those same logos at half the size and blurred to simulate our quickly scanning a shelf of products. The frog, like his real-life counterparts, disappears into a mass of green. We’re left with two colored circles and a black & white rectangle. Fair Trade Certified wins this round; in fact, a “black & white rectangle” is what I actually scan for when shopping for Fair Trade…

Unless I’m in Europe. Fairtrade has a different logo everywhere else in the world. The United States decided to be different (surprised?). The minimalist in me really, really wants to just recommend the U.S. adopt the global brand.

Unfortunately, it’s not a terribly great logo. Nice colors, but in terms of shape it’s meant to convey either a laborer with fist in the air, a dead bird skull (ONCE YOU SEE IT YOU CAN’T UNSEE IT), or… uh… I dunno, maybe a coastal highway during a solar eclipse? Anyway, I’m unimpressed.

Chiseling away inessentials

Bruce Lee, in describing logo design:

The extraordinary aspect of [logo design] lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way; the closer to the true way of [logo design], the less wastage of expression there is.

In building a statue, a sculptor doesn’t keep adding clay to his subject. Actually, he keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions.

Okay, so he’s talking about martial arts and not logo design but the same principles hold.

The parts of the current Fair Trade Certified label that work are the colors (black and white stands out) and the vague association with the scales of justice. The parts that don’t are the bi-racial aspect of the main figure and the confusing background. Let’s keep the good and drop the bad.

We immediately increase legibility in the small and fuzzy version versus the original. It still retains its shape as both a human figure and a set of scales. The character is round and friendly, the buckets break the border—suggesting abundance and generosity.

Without a client to require additional constraints and considerations, I have to admit this process feels empty. Excellence comes from the dance of wild intuition and callous evaluation. What do you think? A successful redesign or no forward motion? Does it accidentally resemble anything?

The waiting is over and we’ve finally seen what Star Trek looks like in the hands of Sci-Fi wunderkind J. J. Abrams. Abrams is a fitting choice to revive the series, as he’s nearly single-handedly awakened a Sci-Fi renaissance in popular culture. His resumé reads like “Seminal Works of Modern Science-Fiction”, with Lost, Cloverfield, Fringe, Alias… and Felicity.

This last entry is especially important to note as it explains his artistic trajectory. While he may surround his characters with photon-torpedo hurling starships, uncharted time-traveling islands, or 50-story monsters ravaging New York, they all manage to remain character-driven dramas. Felicity is perfectly at home.

This human approach brings much-needed gravitas to a series that has long since jumped the Tribble. While the story remains semi-plausible plot and contains twists enough to keep it moving, it’s the dramatic arc of the characters that really captures out attention. Abrams knows that showing vulnerability and intimacy, like a fun exchange where Kirk and Spock reflect upon their troubled relationships with their respective fathers, creates contrast and allows acts of heroism that much more weight. Perhaps Shatner’s Kirk had these moments of doubt but 60s-era culture disliked showing men (Captains, especially) anything less than capable, therefore they occurred off-camera.

However, the Star Trek reboot cements a troubling trend of this new generation of Sci-Fi. Science-Fiction has long been called the “Literature of Ideas” or “Thinking Man’s Fiction”. In fact, Robert Heinlein, author of classics like Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land, preferred to call it “Speculative Fiction”. All of these titles reinforce the understanding that the genre was about concepts first, characters second.

The great Science-Fiction was still character-driven in plot, but this new generation ascends to character-driven in concept. Abrams’ own Lost is perhaps a hallmark example, but the contagion has spread. Fans of Heroes (whose big bad, Sylar, is also played by the new Spock, Zachary Quinto) frequently complain that plot development seems arbitrary if not mercurial. Writers of the acclaimed reboot of Battlestar Galactica, despite assurances at the beginning of every episode that the menacing Cylons “have a plan”, admit that their conceptual choices were driven by character drama:

[T]hat’s sort of how the show has always been, it’s been about taking leaps and seeing how things fit in together…. It felt like all the pieces would make sense and that it would be a satisfying thing.

Yes, satisfying unless you expect the basic realities of a world to be based on more than what would be most shocking for a particular character during a particular episode.

What we gain from character-driven concepts is relatability. Even those utterly uninterested in the intermingling of identity and freewill brought up by Philip K. Dick in everything from Bladerunner to Minority Report to A Scanner Darkly can appreciate the humanity in characters like Cloverfield’s protagonist—who simply wants to reunite with his ex-girlfriend.

What we lose is the inspirational role that excellent Science-Fiction can play in society. Star Trek is legendary for the “show don’t tell” ideas it has provided us; inventors of technological innovations from cell phones to flat-screen televisions have all thanked Star Trek. Beyond devices, the original Star Trek was landmark in many ways that we forget in the 00s. It would be difficult task to find a more multicultural hang-out than the bridge of the Enterprise. Even ignoring that the first interracial kiss on television was Kirk and Uhura, there was a frickin’ Russian in control of the weapons. The characters in the reboot, while all true to the original (Karl Urban’s McCoy is a stand-out, slinging down-homey aphorisms that make DeForest Kelley seem a refined gentleman), fall short of conveying a world as-it-could-be… although the tongue-in-cheek nod to Sulu being gay was outstanding, if comic.

No doubt, it’s all a difficult balance to strike. Concept-driven Science-Fiction that ignores character lacks punch, just as character-driven Science-Fiction that ignores concepts ultimately lacks relevancy. But it’s not an impossible task. An example in recent years to wed the two approaches successfully is Wall-E. The basic realities of the world inform the development of the characters, which then drive the plot. As a result, Wall-E manages to inspire both an emotional and intellectual response from its audience.

And now I’ve used up all my hyphens, so I’ll stop.

Let me be the first to say that this post is just chart porn and contains no real science.

Hypothesis

Metallica has become less relevant over the last twenty-five years, which will be evidenced through declining search engine ranking for their song titles.

Methodology

Metallica has opinions about the Internet. They famously spoke out against Napster back in 2000. In 2006, they begrudgingly joined iTunes. They once leaked new songs to bloggers but sent cease & desist letters when they were reviewed. It is fitting that the Internet, in all its raw democratic ability, should serve as their jury.

Each song on each album will be scored from 0 to 10, with 10 signifying a #1 result from a Google search referencing the band and a 0 signifying an absence of the band’s name from the first page of search results. The song’s album will then receive a composite score as an average of the song scores.

Results

“Kill ‘Em All” – Metallica, 1983

Yes, they make the first page for “whiplash”. Upsetting lots of lawyers.

“Ride the Lightning” – Metallica, 1984

“Master of Puppets” – Metallica, 1986

“…And Justice for All” – Metallica, 1988

“Metallica” – Metallica, 1991

“Load” – Metallica, 1996

I’m shocked they made the first page for “2 x 4″.

“Reload” – Metallica, 1997

Seriously, first page for “fuel”?

“St. Anger” – Metallica, 2003

The Harrison Ford movie just barely wins for “Frantic”.

“Death Magnetic” – Metallica, 2008

The final single, “My Apocalypse” is the only result that links explicitly to Metallica.com.

Analysis

First, it should be noted that Metallica took a few albums to get started. Here are the Billboard peaks for each album in the year it was released. Their first #1 record was the eponymous “black album”, no doubt propelled by their single “Enter Sandman”, and they have been able to reach that position for each new release since.

Rising throughout the 1980s, the search engine visibilty of Metallica’s song titles did indeed wane in the late 90s. Although it has recovered again with the notoriety of Metallica’s 2004 documentary “Some Kind of Monster” and the release of their latest album, “Death Magnetic”.

In fact, if we remove the albums “Load”, “Reload”, and “St. Anger” from the data, we see the trendline of the band’s early rise closely predicts the relevance of “Death Magnetic”. While many reviews claim that “Death Magnetic” is a return to form for the band, recapturing the glory of pre-”Metallica” albums, we now have the unassailable scientific evidence.

Think I’ll go torrent that now.

I’ve attended South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) for several years but this year was special since it was my first (last?) as a speaker. My session was intended to be about non-profits using their website to accomplish their mission, but we never seemed to make it there. Since SXSW decided to format it as a discussion, I was relying on content to come from the audience members—who were unfortunately relying on me. The idea of letting people down is not something I’m either terribly familiar or terribly comfortable with, so now I’m sharing what I would’ve said if my session had been just me with a microphone (two turntables optional).

Edge of the Web

Every new medium emerges from the husk of the old, inheriting a number of soon-to-be anachronistic metaphors. The early web brought with it the book’s concept of pages, whose final vestiges as a mode of organizing content have been all but erased by the Web-as-Platform concept. The web as a place where you read is no longer true, if it ever was. The web is where you do.

Should the last point not be self-evident, go now and count how many of your bookmarks are about reading vs buying, selling, searching, inspiring, or communicating. I’ll wait.

One thing we increasingly do on the web is self-organize. On every social network from Facebook to Flickr, we form groups. Most of the time, these groups are purely recreational alliances of common interest. Every once in a while, they are political. Consider some recent examples:

1. The Facebook Bill of Rights & Responsibilities group that achieved greater democracy in the site’s management
2. Concerned citizens flocking to support a designer whose work was stolen by a stock art company
3. Last weekend’s #AmazonFail uprising that investigated why gay, lesbian, and feminist books vanished overnight from best-seller lists

These three particular victories are interesting because they all have two things in common. First, none of their efforts are centered around or guided by an outside organization, non-profit or otherwise. Second, they were all—what’s a nice way of saying this?—wrong.

1. Facebook’s back-pedal traded a vital discussion (Do I “own” my comments on your Wall? Should I have access to them even if you delete your profile?) for Democracy Theatre.
2. The designer, it turns out, may have been plagiarizing others’ work himself.
3. Even Clay Shirky, “Here Comes Everybody” author and post-organizationalist, admits that #AmazonFail was about misguided emotion and not justice.

The lesson that I take from this ad hoc activism is that the general population is neither apathetic nor disorganized. The multitude is brimming with passion about even “niche” issues like intellectual property law or transgender rights (which have received far less media coverage than global warming) and have the means to come together to make demands of top decision-makers. But, given their respective failures, these campaigns also illuminate the need for non-profits to assume a new role in online activism: providing a strategic avenue for collective action.

No more educate-motivate one-two punch? Their most primary roles wrested from them, where does this leave non-profits websites that raise awareness and compel action (two things they no longer need) only to then bill you for it with a donation request?

Your mission, online

It seems appropriate to confess at this point that I feel blessed to work with non-profits on exactly these issues. This post is written not out of frustration with them but a desire to vastly improve their lot.

If a committed and easily mobilized online audience seems like a burden, it’s clearly because we’re looking at the situation incorrectly.

It might be as simple as structure. If your website is handled by Communications, it’s going to be a place to read and not a place to do. If it’s handled by Development, donor conversion is probably your #1 metric. Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org, once noted there was a trough of online stagnancy in middle-sized non-profits. The larger have independent web teams, the smaller has a “web team” who also happens to be the Executive Director. At this top level, directly in service to your mission, is precisely where a tool so powerful as “the Internet” belongs.

Is it as simple as looking at your mission and saying, “How can we use the Internet to achieve this?” Almost, but before you go running off to reinvent your whole website, my experience has found two crucial principles that should guide you: sincerity and granularity.

Consider the top 3 actions on WeCanSolveIt.org: sign a petition, tell friends, donate.

Robin Beck, an online organizer and co-worker emeritus of mine (uncharacteristically optimistic here), claims that we’re so used to dodging the Internet’s scams and spams that to really provoke online activism requires a higher order of sincerity. Non-profits are offering big boxes of “make the world a better place” or at least “feel good about yourself”. If we take the lid off and discover instead a “fundraising ploy” or “list-building exercise”, we’re not going to buy another box.

On its most basic level, this means that the action you’re requesting has to directly solve the problem you say it will. Adam Green of MoveOn and Change Congress publicly dropped some science on a recent email action alert he received in a blog post entitled, “Profiles in Bad Online Organizing, Part I”.

I’m not saying the DSCC has no role to play in getting Coleman to step down. I’m just saying they should play an honest and effective role.

But beyond that, it means asking for something that you couldn’t do without your supporters. You have a task that seems impossible, but you’ve figured out how to break down into smaller pieces so—if everyone does their part—it’s a snap. Which brings us to granularity…

A full academic discussion of granularity is available in “Wealth of Networks” if you can wade through it.

The root of granularity is “grain” and sand provides a great metaphor for understanding it. A sand castle is made of very small granular contributions. A single grain or a heaping bucket all contribute to the achievement of building the sand castle. Donations are granular, as supporters can give any amount they choose. Signing a petition is not, as you can only sign it once—lacking the heaping bucket. A video contest is also not, as it takes a high initial investment—lacking the single grain.

Online, this translates into the scope of transactions that your website is capable of handling. Wikis are notoriously successful at granularity. I could write an entire article on “Wookiees” or, if some reason I lacked the time or motivation to do so, I could merely correct someone else’s spelling of “Wookie”. This range of involvement allows for increased participation (and increased accuracy, but that’s a different article).

Enough theory. Let’s see these in action.

A case study

In my final year as Senior Webmaster for Rainforest Action Network, we pulled off an online campaign using exactly these principles. The organization’s mission is:

Rainforest Action Network campaigns for the forests, their inhabitants and the natural systems that sustain life by transforming the global marketplace through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action.

The impossible goal was to catalog enough products that contained palm oil or its derivatives to map the supply chain back to the primary forces of deforestation in tropical rainforests. The team consisted of a palm oil campaigner (Brihannala Morgan), an online organizer (Robin Beck, see above), a web designer/developer (me), and three awesome interns.

Step 1 was to ask supporters to go to their local supermarket and find products that contained palm oil, palmitate, etc. For this step, the team created an instructive yet entertaining video on YouTube. We further incentivized the mission by awarding the top “Supermarket Sleuths”.

Step 2 was to ask our online activists to enter the UPC numbers (the form is down now) of products they found. For this we connected to a third-party database to help verify that products were real. Since activists could also mark certain products as not containing palm oil, it was mostly self-regulating.

Step 3 was to ask those same online activists (I use the term “online” loosely here, since they’ve spent most of their time in grocery stores) to return, warning stickers in hand, to mark those products containing palm oil. RAN headquarters followed this up with a letter to companies whose products were getting stickered.

Was it sincere and granular? Cataloging every product that contains palm oil was certainly not something that three staff and three interns, all located in San Francisco, could pull off. It was also sincere in its intention to find the major players in rainforest destruction. The project was granular, too. An individual could find, submit, and/or sticker just one product and still add value or could spend a whole weekend (and we had activists that submitted hundreds). If you just wanted to correct false positives, that was also an option.

Was it successful? Wildly. On the first day of Step 3, the phones were ringing off the hook with companies whose products contained palm oil. A few days and they were disclosing their supply chains. A few weeks and the major producers were calling to schedule meetings.

I don’t want to downplay the amount of energy that the team dedicated to this project but, in absolute terms, it was a small investment. Everything from the online form to the backend database could’ve received a lot more attention—although the stickers were sweet—but they still managed to do the job with only a few weeks of staff time and a few hundred dollars (mostly the stickers). Not bad ROI for getting a meeting with a major player in the palm oil business.

Next steps for your organization

If you’ve read this far and want to shift your website to a mission-driven strategy, here are your next steps:

1. Put together a team. Find folks with a past history of pushing the technology envelope (anyone who secretly signed you up for Twitter or has been caught on Yahoo Pipes will suffice). Balance these with folks who have a handle on the strategic goals of the organization. Bonus points if these are the same folks. Three is ideal.
2. Give the team some space. If they’re successful, these people are about to pull off a task that your organization currently deems impossible. Give them some time to figure out how. Tell them not to come into the office for a week and instead generate 100 ways to accomplish your organization’s mission online. The first few dozen ideas will be boring, but then things will pick up.
3. Ground it in reality. Wow, the team came up with seriously wacky stuff, some of it ignoring current realities. Cut anything that you can’t start small and then slowly build up, along with ideas that aren’t both sincere and granular. From the remaining list, ask the team which idea they’re most excited about and do it first.
4. Provide success indicators and time limits. Measure the impact. At what point will the team get more resources and at what point will you pull the plug or say, “That didn’t work, try something else?” Make the measurements matter to the mission.
5. Start small. Don’t try to do everything out of the gate. Do the most important thing. Then the next. Then the next. All the while, keep an eye on those indicators.
6. Celebrate. It can get lonely on the edge. If you’re really doing something innovative, make sure you take the time to pat yourself on the back. Valuing your team’s motivation, rain or shine, is going to be the key for long-term success. Because…
7. Repeat. The first project may catch or it may not. Even if it does, repeat this process. Figure out how often you can afford to take a chance on something new (every quarter? twice a year? annually?) and re-assemble your team when it’s time.

If this seems exciting but a little bit daunting, then we should talk. Diligent was started with organizations exactly like yours in mind and with a mission “to harness the dynamic and democratic power of the Internet for social change.”

That’s mine, what’s yours?