By Lindsay Bell
Welcome to the 70th edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss – from Howie Goldfarb (Blue Star Strategic Marketing), Joe Cardillo (Visual.ly), and yours truly.
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t subscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.
Today we explore the GOP and Ted Nugent, Google Glass and it’s staying power, and your 40s being the best decade ever!
The GOP’s Real Ted Nugent Problem
Howie on the Source of Rebellion and Political Movements. Anyone who knows me is aware I am a center-left capitalist who champions human rights, animal rights, freedom, and ethics. But as U2 said in Under a Blood Red Sky…this is not a rebel song. This is not a political post.
Often when I post articles, the insights I share have nothing to do with the actual subject of the article.
At least in this case the subject – The Nuge – has nothing to do with these insights, and to be honest while I think he is crazy and not someone I would want to be around today, I grew up a Nugent head.
He was one of the first rockers I took to. I owned six albums in vinyl and in sixth grade would go to Brian Landy’s house (future Cincinati Reds Minor League Pitcher) with Scott Dunfee (future Rock Singer) to raid Brian’s older brother Tim’s record collection. We would play Double Live Gonzo just to hear the Nuge say ‘If you want to be mellow you can turn around and get the F out of here’.
Back then no one cursed on albums or in lyrics and we did it because of that hoping Brian’s mom wouldn’t hear it. This article highlights a very interesting shift from the 60s through mid-90s when bands had an outsized affect on our politics and youth movements….to pretty much none today.
Today it is the media. Today they craft the messages and rarely are objective. And that is a huge cultural shift due to technology and media consumption habits.
I partly blame U2. They backtracked their political roots to become vanilla pop music icons. And while they do some good work outside their music, they surely created no movements or cultural shifts with that work.
Name a band today with any political affect or voice…..I am still waiting. That makes me very sad.
Seeing Fox News almost single-handedly create the tea party as a force by motivating old white people into outrage, vs eager ambitious stoner youth wanting change was very strange to see indeed. And that is a huge noteworthy cultural shift.
Joe on Getting Millions of People to Help You Iterate Your Product. The reviews of Glass so far are fairly predictable (like this one, or this one). If you’re going to read one, I recommend Robert Scoble’s take, linked in the headline.
In general, they focus on expectations (it can’t yet provide information contextually), product weaknesses (battery life, few apps), and public perception (the “glasshole” problem). I suspect most of these were already on the radar for Google, with the exception of real world workflow, like how people decide to and execute on uploading / sharing photos, and how much and how often people want to share their lives vs. being private.
What’s notable to me about Glass is it’s the first time a huge company has publicly iterated a product they expect to be a core offering. This is a shift, and you won’t find Apple, Microsoft, or any other company doing that. But one of the inherent risks of making something perfect is, what if it’s not perfect, and the problems are enough to sink it?
It’s a calculated risk – being open vs. being closed, and Google is investing in the former (at least in product development, certainly not in other areas). So far I see valuable questions raised that are a lot easier to address before and not after a major product launch. One way to look at Glass is, it’s a huge information gathering operation, similar to Google Plus (again, just my opinion). If that’s true then they’ve already made it a massive success.
Lindsay on Why Your Forties Really are the Best Decade (So Far!). Whoa. I just had my birthday. It occurred with a bunch of other cool Aquarius kids, including Gini Dietrich, and Martin Waxman. This year, I seriously hit the tipping point between “my 40’s” and OMG I’M ALMOST FIFTY!!!!
Ugh.
While I like to joke about my age – this is the honest truth – my 40s have been the best decade of my life.
There are many reasons why: I made a huge life decision to end an unsatisfying marriage (don’t worry, we’re still good friends!), and I completely changed my career, virtually “on a dime.” I remarried (which I never thought I would do), and landed my dream job.
And, for all those reasons and more, this article really spoke to me. I was a wreck in my 20s – insecure, damaged, unsure of my path, or where it was leading. My 30s consisted of a marriage, and a baby, and all the difficult juggling that – toss in a rather challenging job – comes with both.
Aging ain’t no fun. Granted. You are, well, aged. You think “Well, there’s HALF MY LIFE I’ll never get back again.” You go through various physical challenges, and see your face and body change in ways you never could have imagined. That said, I’ve had people ask me, “Wouldn’t you want to be (insert younger age here) again?” And I always say “Not a chance!!”
Because the person I am today – with everything I’ve learned, and all the confidence I’ve gained – is worth more than better skin and a more forgiving body. So, to all you young’uns out there – hang fire. Your time will come. It just might not come until you hit your 40s!
As the author notes in the piece: “By your 40s, you don’t want to be with the cool people; you want to be with your people.”
BOOM! And bingo.
Now it’s your turn. Is there a book, podcast, article, TV show, blog post, or story we should read?