In my part-time alternate life as a consultant, I have often pondered why a person chooses to buy a Billabong sweatshirt as opposed to a Quiksilver one. The choice is not an obvious one. The products themselves are essentially the same. The name is the only real difference. The gradient between one and the other is an infinitesimal pattern of grey, yet the decision — and millions more exactly like it — happen everyday.
Jonah Lehrer has emerged over the past few years as neuroscience’s strongest and most interesting voice. His …

With the widespread adoption of formalized social networks (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.), there is a need to assess our sense of identity — intentionally and unintentionally — revealed in these public profiles. You might not be your khakis, but to some people you are.

I made a “Master Cluster” notebook. Check it out.

When pressed about his motivation for painting in the documentary Style Wars (1982), graffiti artist Duster explained that the elder writers give you a name and tell you to see how big you can get it. After watching this movie again recently it struck me that branding and advertising are charged with similar motivation and similar challenges.

The other day, Soft Skull’s Richard Nash posted a link to a speech by Mike Shatzkin on the future of books and booksellers, calling it “dead-on.” Having heard the doors to traditional book publishing creek as they close, I have to agree with Richard: insights abound. It looks like the Cluetrain has finally reached the dead media…

I can’t remember the first time I heard Gang of Four, but I do distinctly remember a lot of things making sense once I did. Their jagged and angular bursts of guitar, funky rhythms, deadpan vocals, and overtly personal-as-political lyrics predated so many other bands I’d been listening to. Dave Allen was the man behind the bass, and now he’s the man behind Pampelmoose, a Portland-based music and media blog.

Marié Digby was lauded as the internet’s next big find, a phenomenon that had grown organically through digital word-of-mouth, but the media’s multi-roomed echo chamber told on itself. Maybe it was too much, too quickly, but just after Digby’s couple of homey, simple YouTube videos started spreading online, she was featured on radio stations, MTV, iTunes, announcing that she’d been signed to Disney’s Hollywood Records. The official press release headline read, “Breakthrough YouTube Phenomenon Marié Digby Signs With Hollywood Records.” What didn’t come out until later was that her name …

Something about this Belvedere Vodka commercial has haunted me since its constant airing during the holidays last year. I must’ve seen it fifty times. I’m not shilling for Belvedere here. Hell, I’ve never even tasted the stuff, but I can’t get this ad out of my head.

V. Vale sent this out in his most recent newsletter (thanks, Vale). It’s a mini-documentary of a six-second drum break from the B-side of a Winstons’ record, a track called “Amen Brother,” that’s been sampled, looped, and reapproriated — by everyone from N.W.A. to car manufacturers — since its release in 1969. This is Nate Harrison’s meditation on that break, the “Amen Break.” It is “Amazing Grace” to his Bill Moyers, and this is a deep monologue on the ownership of cultural artifacts, the legality of sampling, and this six …

Columbus killed more Indians than Hitler did Jews, but on his birthday you get sales on shoes — The Goats
What at first might seem mundane subject matter is made illuminating and interesting by Thomas Hine’s engaging narrative, personal and historical examples, and downright deep digging. Excavating our culture of consumption from the perspectives of power, responsibility, discovery, self-expression, insecurity, attention, belonging, celebration, and convenience, Hine unearths the desires and rituals that have made us all shoppers in one sense or another. In the spirit of the quote above, I Want …