Each week, I inherit the previous week’s New Yorker from my husband. Why not read the online version the day it’s published rather than wait to get the hand-me-down print version, you ask? Well. That’s the topic of another blog. So, for now, let’s just go with this – I just really like knowing someone’s been through those articles already and that I’ll have someone to talk with about whatever topics and ideas those articles stir up.

Despite our unspoken hand-off routine, a few weeks ago, I got to the issue first! Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker’s pop music and cultural navigator / critic, has an article on one of my latest fixations – Lady GaGa. I saw her live last fall as an opening act, and ever since, have been trying to figure out what’s behind her magic. And since Frere-Jones picked up on this, too, I now feel like I can take being gaga for GaGa public. So, here goes . . .

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I’d like to report on a weekend after-dinner conversation that reminded me how critical the structure of language actually is. Too often I write off those late school nights I spent with Foucault and Saussure as irrelevant to my day-to-day work as a marketing content developer - but no more!

This renewed passion for structuralism even promises to put myself in a more natural dialogue with my fellow computer scientists. Needless to say, I’m a sucker for intersections and interrelations, and I hope the paraphrased pseudo-transcript below serves to open up a new nexus or two for its readers! Note: names have been changed to protect those involved in the inevitable event that I’m misquoting them!

Christy: Did you hear that scientists proved the human brain is programmed to process language according to structural patterns (“cat” is either the sound made when someone says the word or when someone signs the word) and semantics (“cat” is a furry creature that says meow)?

Mike: They also located the specific areas of the brain where those functions occur, too. So fascinating! Before, it was believed that the capability to recognize structural patterns was developed over time but not innate to the human brain.

Mandy: So, you’re saying that structural patterns are necessary to a human’s experience of verbalized or sign language?

Christy & Mike: Yes!

Mandy: Wow. I wonder if I could use this to support an idea I had about punctuation and standardized usage rules affecting an individual’s experience of language – reading or hearing it.

Christy: I’ve always thought that punctuation and usage rules DETERMINE how one reads language – aloud or in one’s head from a page – so, I think that could work. What do you mean about “experience” though?

Mandy: Well, even though someone may not realize a comma is in the wrong place or that the word “your” is used incorrectly for the conjunction of “you” and “are” (which should be “you’re), I suspect – or would like to believe – that their brain recognizes the error to some degree and experiences the error on a level somewhere between subconscious and conscious. Like with html code, if the bracket is missing before “b>”, the output will not be the intended bolded text.

And, if this is true, then I also suspect that a company or product that defines itself with language rife with errors contributes to individuals’ experiences of that company or product – experiences that ultimately shape conscious belief or actions – being impacted by those errors or conflicted in some way at the very least.

Mike: I think it’s bigger than that, actually. I think usage and punctuation errors impact the explicit meaning, even if it’s not as blatant as the Oracle at Delphi’s story when the Oracle told its questioner, “You will go you will return not in the battle you will perish.” If you put the comma before “not,” the individual will live. If you put the comma after “not,” the individual will die in battle.

Mandy: Hmm. So even if the stakes aren’t as high as death, meaning is sacrificed when punctuation and standardized usage rules are ignored. Guess we’ve just provided job security for proofreaders everywhere.

Jake: Well, let’s just keep this between us until I sell all my Derrida books on eBay. Cool?

Allow me to take you back to high school English class, when all but the bravest of introductory paragraphs began with a deeply thought out quote snatched from the thickest book to be found in the non-fiction nether regions of the library (or media center - for the younger ones in the bunch).

“The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception.” - Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium Is the Message,” Understanding Media

Brilliant, right? The last few weeks, I’ve been revisiting some texts I too hastily read back in the day, and when those words went from page to perception for me yesterday, I was utterly floored. I’m pretty sure I made some sort of sound of astonishment to mark the occasion, too. I mean, come on. Not that I fully grasp the fullness of McLuhan’s statement even 24 hours after I read it, but it’s clear the implications of just this single set of words and ideas are massive - for EMG, for my role and responsibility within the company as well as for me personally not to mention what this means for everyone who considers themselves a serious artist (whatever this means should be saved for a later post!).

Now, since I’m writing a blog post and not the novel I’ll never write, I’ll stick to the first couple ideas McLuhan’s prophetic prose brought forward for me - specifically regarding EMG as an organization. First off, EMG functions best when all three of its operational efforts - Strategy. Artistry. Technology. - are organically giving and taking, working toward unified project-specific goals, and McLuhan’s belief’s about the Artist and his or her unique ability to identify and respond to Technology’s impact on the user illustrates the wild need for Artistry when developing effective Technology solutions. And, if what McLuhan says is true - that a “serious artist” is the ONLY person able to engage in technology without being significantly changed by the technology itself, an artists’s input and inquiries from a user perspective is vital to an effective process for us and an effective end product for our loyal client.

This leads to another thought, and this one’s about why the EMG team works as well as we do together. Artists of all kinds have found a 9-5 home at EMG - painters, musicians, composers, essayists, directors, producers and even a quilter or two to start a short list - and up until now I thought our good rapport had more to do with personalities than job function. But, after considering the artist’s role and responsibility for shaping technology, an artist at EMG is in his or her element - continually shaping technology from a place of difference as McLuhan proposes. So, it’s okay that the user scenarios we propose in meetings seem to come from left field sometimes, and it’s okay when we need assistance from time-to-time understanding what seems so logical to techies and analysts because it’s essentially an artist’s job to see things differently. As artists we are - for better or worse - hardwired to be in tune with the way an audience accesses or perceives a message or process as much as we are equipped to create artful products to best serve these sense perceptions - in their endlessly unpredictable and dynamic glory.

There are no real rules for kicking off a blog, I guess. And, even though this may seem on the surface contrary to the creative process, rules are a very good thing in my book. At the very least they channel energy and provide texture for ideas to bump up against, shaping and defining impulses and impressions until they become viable “somethings.”

So, when it comes to things like this blog - something that (fingers crossed) will sustain itself because of its liminality - a girl like me finds herself without much of a place to start. This coupled with the fact that the majority of my time is spent observing and processing practical and phenomenological subtleties that scream “writing for a vacuum is for crazy people” makes blogging a conflicted task.

(How’s this for a contemplative little start to our blog!)

With the “why blogging is weird” behind us, let’s move on to what makes blogging powerful: connections, connections, connections. I had a professor in college who, when he described postmodernism and what he called THE WORLD TODAY (even though him using that word to describe “today” immediately discredited him) would link his fingers, palms flat in front of him and say something like, “Today, we are always at an intersection of influences.” That’s not something unique for us today, though.

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