More Strange, More Happy

Okay, so after getting mentioned on Velcro City, Futurismic, WorldChanging and picked up on io9, let’s pre-empt the next New New Marketing article for a follow-up.

A lot of people have said, “Happy doesn’t make for good fiction,” or expressed disbelief that “strange and happy” can, in any way, describe what is happening today–or in the future.

So let’s look at some examples of strange and happy today. And then let’s take a look at what I really mean by this.

First case in point. If you had told me, say, in 1990, that Microsoft’s most serious competition for control of the single world-spanning network came from a bunch of guys pitching together to create, maintain, and extend a completely open software base they shared everyone else, I’d tell you that you were nuts, pure and simple. “Communism” defeating Microsoft? No way. Won’t happen. But it’s not communism, it’s open source. And it’s one of the reasons I’ll be writing the next New New Marketing article.

Or let’s look at Google. A giant company giving things away for free to improve the world, supported entirely by advertising revenue. Benign ads. Ads that are widely accepted. Ads that some people make their living on. Nope, nutty, would never happen.

Or how about the ability to put your video in front of the largest television network on the planet, unvetted and uncensored? Did you know that the most popular videomakers on YouTube now have Hollywood agents?

Or let’s talk about all the stunning opportunities that the internet has brought us in toto. There has never been a time in history where is was so easy to make stuff, sell stuff, write stuff (and have it read), communicate via text and sound and video, set up new companies that offer groundbreaking services or technologies or products, ad infinitum. If I’d had this opportunity when I was a teen, I wonder what I would have made of it (rather than my actual reality, spent browsing Recyclers rather than eBay and writing HP-71 code for a handful of geeks rather than PHP for hundreds of millions of potential users.)

That’s strange. And that’s happy.

And–let me stress again–strange and happy does not mean looking forward to the boundless and perfect frontiers of a science-saturated future. It can easily encompass cynicism, hard realities, difficult sacrifices, ugly worlds, and many other hard, gritty scenarios. Consider Winning Mars. A group of (largely) unlikeable people who care only for themselves come together to do something born solely from the desire for fame and profit. People die. Corporations do their normal self-centered corporate maneuvering and machinations. The contest does not end in the way any sane person would like to see.

And yet, because of this, something wonderful happens. Because, even as we stumble forward along largely self-centered paths, there is the potential for greatness. And that makes me happy.

February 20th, 2008 /