Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

My life was pretty much transformed when I met the Mac. I discovered technology I could relate to the year the Mac was born, when the two halves of my brain were finally united in a Macintosh 128K.

Yesterday, I learned of Steve Jobs’ death while sitting at my generations improved Mac, watching a Twitter feed. The irony was not lost on me that I learned of his death on a device he inspired. So many of us were likely to have experienced just that.

I knew his death was inevitable, but I was surprised at how hard it was to take. I stopped working at 4:43 Pacific Time on October 5, when I realized that first Tweet I saw was true.

• Friends said they cried - for the first time - at the passing of a CEO. I know!
• News and blog coverage has been consistent in personal remembrances. I’ve been moved to blog for the first time in a month!
• His impact, while it will continue to be felt for years, is already feeling too small. What would even ten more years have offered him? Us?

In true Apple fashion, their home page tribute to him is actually something I captured for posterity:

Apple's tribute to Steve Jobs

And Google and Amazon have honored him as well, today, each in their own ways.

Inspirational. Creative. A champion of simplicity.

Thank you for your extreme leadership. Rest in peace.

I read the most fascinating book this summer, by Nicholas Carr, called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. It’s up for a Pulitzer prize this year.

Here’s the deal. Most of us (especially “information workers”) have the attention spans of gnats, as adults. And our attention is being pulled in all sorts of directions by virtue of the tools we use. Mr. Carr exposes why, and how that has happened.

An exerpt (published on NPR):

“Some thinkers welcome the eclipse of the book and the literary mind it fostered. In a recent address to a group of teachers, Mark Federman, an education researcher at the University of Toronto, argued that literacy, as we’ve traditionally understood it, “is now nothing but a quaint notion, an aesthetic form that is as irrelevant to the real questions and issues of pedagogy today as is recited poetry — clearly not devoid of value, but equally no longer the structuring force of society.” The time has come, he said, for teachers and students alike to abandon the “linear, hierarchical” world of the book and enter the Web’s “world of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity” — a world in which “the greatest skill” involves “discovering emergent meaning among contexts that are continually in flux.”

Upon finishing the book (which I DID finish!) I have made a deal with myself: I read every day, for about an hour, while I’m on the elliptical machine. And I read books. Sometimes involved books, sometimes easy books. But I make myself have deep thought for at least that time - exercising my lungs, heart, legs and brain!

What do you think? Is it time to abandon the “linear, hierarchcal world” of the book? Or are we (virtually) doomed because of the tools we use?

Talk about mining the best of the world’s collective spirit! My lovely has been enchanted by Pinterest for some time. She has been devouring collections of all sorts of things people have collected there.

This delightful little community is simply “a virtual pinboard. collect the things you love.”

Well.

Talk about enchantment.

In an “Animal Kingdom” pinboard, I found this:

Fabulous post from long-time (12 years!) blogger Anil Dash - talking about social responsibility in a new way.

New information from IDC on the sheer growth of data - digital data is 10x what it was five years ago - and zettabytes are the new exabytes!

Meanwhile, people wonder why we’re tired by the end of a day.

On the other hand, there’s never a dull moment, if you like this kind of thing.

(and I do.)

I had every intention of blogging today to start my week off perfectly. But I can’t really concentrate on marketing technology (beyond my already scheduled work today) because my dad is in the hospital up north. He came down (pretty suddenly) with pneumonia, and has to hang out in the hospital for a couple of days.

I went up yesterday afternoon to see him, and to take my mom over to hang out with him, and it was really touching how much they still absolutely adore each other. I just can’t imagine one lasting long without the other. (He’s 86 and she’s 87… she’s pretty much blind, and he battles dementia; and I often joke that together, they make a pretty well functioning pair.) They’re inspirational to me in many ways. Seeing them in that hospital room together added another one to it.

(Updated - proof is in the photo!)

I’m extremely grateful that my brother and sister-in-law both work at the hospital where dad is spending some time; so I know they’ll be able to check in on him. Meanwhile, I’m concentrating on light flowing from Portland to Longview… knowing that’s pretty much all I can do today to help make him better.

So there’s my blog. Sometimes they just don’t turn out the way you think they might. Huh.

Kinda like life.