The Reuters quote used to promote the documentary film I.O.U.S.A. is pretty much spot on. It is: “To the U.S. economy what ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was to the environment.”

In what has to be the best timed release of any movie this year, I.O.U.S.A. explains and examines the enormous and rapidly mounting U.S. national debt. It shows just how serious the consequences of it are for current and future generations of Americans, not to mention its influence in shifting geopolitical power over the long term. The film’s makers focus the story on the so-called four deficits: budget, savings, trade, and leadership.… more

Nine Inch Nails were in town last week; a stop on their Lights in the Sky tour. And as good as Trent & Co’s music was, it was the on-stage light show that was truly spectacular.

I’ve never seen anything like it. The whole set was at times engulfed in light from no less than 108 backing spotlights. But the really innovative bit was three light screens which would descend upon the stage, sometimes behind the band and sometimes in front of them. The screens would alternatively display some beautiful ambient images and interactive walls. You kinda have to see it to understand it.… more

Something I’ve been working on over the past several months: the launch of Rovio, a WiFi-enabled robotic webcam from WowWee. You can drive this little omni-directional 3-wheeled guy using an intuitive interface in your web browser. Give it a try. Through mid-December you can book a fun 5-minute test drive around a specially constructed loft. Meet Rovio test drive.

[Demo video and microsite by Montreal’s Twist Image]… more

Back in March I posted about my forthcoming involvement in The Age of Conversation 2, a book about the shift towards new business and marketing techniques for evolving dialogue about brands, experience, and community.

Well, it just released today. Ta-da!

This book has 237 contributors and I am one of them, writing about this creative generalism thing of course. The book is now available in both hard and soft cover from Lulu. All proceeds go to Variety, the international children’s charity.… more

A few top-tier idea conferences recently wrapped up: Picnic 08 in Amsterdam, Idea Festival in Louisville, and BIF-4 in Providence. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend this year but fortunately there are enough articles, videos, and firsthand dispatches floating around the net to experience vicariously through.… more

Let us enrich ourselves with our mutual differences. — Paul Valery, polymathic poet and philosopher (1871-1945)… more

As a longtime night owl – perhaps stubbornly so – I find this headline rather vindicating: Bright ideas come to us at night, not in office hours.

The article claims that, “research now suggests that if you want to be the wisest, you really need to stay up – well, until 10.04pm at least. This is supposedly the best time for a eureka moment, according to research.”

Good stuff. Now, if only the article’s author would actually cite what research study says this I will sleep better at night.

(Thanks Jane)… more

Saw a pretty impressive play this weekend. Theatre so good that it elicits a reaction of silence by both using silence as a major plot theme and a dramatic device.

Described by [playright] Wajdi Mouawad as an exploration of “the questions of origins”, Scorched centers on Jeanne and her twin brother Simon, who are summoned to the office of a notary to hear the last will and testament of their mother, Nawal. They are each handed a letter written by their mother; one is to be delivered to their brother and one to their father. The mystery begins, sending them on a journey into their mother’s past, to a Middle Eastern country engulfed in a civil war where she was a political activist and later became a prisoner.… more

More Banksy brilliance.

This time it’s a fake pet shop in New York called The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill – his first official exhibition and the first Banksy project to employ animatronics – which aims to question “our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming”.… more

“First of all, let’s ask the questions: What do we need the skin of a car for anyways? What’s it there for? Does it have to be metal? Do we always have to make it in the same manner?”

These are the questions BMW’s Director of Design Chris Bangle asks in this stunningly sleek presentation of the GINA Light Visionary Model, a car shape-shiftingly skinned in fabric. Every season car companies advertise that their new designs are, well, new and revolutionary. This one actually is.

(Thanks Michael)… more