The Content Wrangler
From The Start We Were Different … An Amazing Video From Mark Logic
February 5, 2010
10 Comments
This video was used to open the Mark Logic 2009 User Conference. It’s an amazing presentation that tells the story of humans and the paradigm-shifting information explosion we find ourselves in today. When the video ended, the crowd went wild with applause. I’ll have to admit, I’ve never seen such response from an audience, not even to a great presentation delivered by a human opening keynote presenter.
Watch the video and let us know what you think.
And, consider attending the Mark Logic 2010 User Conference, May 4-6, 2010 in San Francisco.
It is a very impressive video indeed – and I probably would’ve cheered along with the audience.
Yet, I believe it’s a great example for style over substance, for medium over message: It’s presumptuous and self-congratulatory. It obscures social and economic contexts. It’s childish and stupid. We, the lucky ones, are today’s elite few, the storytellers. Try reading the transcript and see how much you still like it:
From the start
we were different
from other living creatures.
We slept under the same sky
awoke to the same SUNRISE
But we were DIFFERENT BECAUSE
we told STORIES about the STARS
their shifting POSITIONS
why they didn’t fall to EARTH
And the SUN
why it was HOT
what made it RISE and FALL
we asked questions
And looked for answers
And turned those answers into
images songs poems stories
And we wrote them down
sharing our knowledge
from one generation
to the next
And over time this knowledge
became the foundation upon which
human civilization was built
But for centuries that knowledge
was locked up in ivory towers
shared only among an elite few
FLASH forward
past the ancient Egyptians and their hieroglyphs
the Romans and their alphabet
Guttenberg (sic!) and the printing press
Turing and the electronic computer
Berners-Lee and the world wide web
to today
TODAY we are the LUCKY ones
In our lifetime KNOWLEDGE in all its forms
written spoken envisioned
has been set FREE from the storyteller
set FREE from the PAGE
words numbers music images
now fly at the speed of light
landing on a million desktops
cellphones digital devices
in the instant it takes
to turn the page
Our shared INFORMATION
has BECOME a UNIVERSAL CURRENCY
INFINITELY REUSABLE EXTENSIBLE ACCESSIBLE
closing the gaps between us
allowing us to make
new and unexpected
discoveries TOGETHER
We are the lucky ones.
TODAY THE ANSWERS WE HAVE ACCUMULATED
ARE WITHIN OUR GRASP
TODAY OUR COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE
CAN BELONG TO US ALL
and therein lies its POWER
MARK LOGIC
Well, help me out here. What’s the problem with this type of video introducing a user group conference of software that is totally transforming — and freeing — knowledge from silos, making it possible for us to do amazing things with it?
I read the transcript and like it even more…less impactful than with the video, but that’s only because I saw the video first.
Personally, I believe this is an excellent use of storytelling techniques, good design, and motion to entice and entertain an audience. I don’t really see the point of dissecting it or analzying it. I just appreciate it and plan to mimic its approach in the future.
Scott, I agree, it IS very enticing and entertaining – it’s just my skeptical nature to ask “What’s going on here? What are they really saying?” So I, for one, am bent on analyzing it…
It just irritates me everytime a company goes all universal on me. How we’re all one big human family. And how their proprietary products (cool and useful as they may be) are in one league with the alphabet, the printing press, etc. Such universal appeal often runs into skewed comparisons.
As if freeing knowledge from the storyteller and the page required an Internet company. As if they are making knowledge freely available to everyone. As if a currency that’s infintely extensible and accessible was worth anything.
From what little I understand about the MarkLogic Server, it’s a really cool technology. As a tech writer, I bump up against siloed information every day and wish my readers and I wouldn’t have to wrangle with different delivery formats to get at the data.
But data is not the same as knowledge, information is often proprietary, and access to it is frequently limited by forces beyond personal control.
So I’m wary of universal stories that end in a company name. I just find benefits and features more palatable and more credible.
Kai:
As a professional communicator, you more than most people, should understand the concepts of 1) understanding your audience, and 2) the intent of the communication. Again, this video was played to existing customers of a company who clients (audience) use their software to do exactly what the video says it does. The video was designed to get a technical conference off on the right foot and get the attendees excited (intent).
So, from this point of view, I think you are reading way to much into this. I’m often guilty of the same thing, so I’m not trying to insult you, just making a point.
By the way, no one said knowledge is the same as data. Information is often proprietary, but no one said it wasn’t. Freeing information inside a silo-addicted corporation (their own universe) is what Mark Logic Server helps organizations do and it’s what smart companies/organizations want to do. And, if they want to expose it (free it and make accessible) to the citizens of a nation — or to the world — which many of Mark Logic’s customers are required by regulation, law, purpose of business, corporate policies, marketing goals, etc. they can do so in ways that have never been possible before.
Scott, I had initially looked at the video along the lines of Mike Wesch’s “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us”. So watching the video out of context, I’m guilty as charged.
To me, it still smacks of hyperbole, though I can see how it served its purpose well.
Maybe it’s one of those things where you really had to be there… while I’m just flopping down in front of the TV with chips and guacamole (gratuitous Super Bowl reference included)…
If nothing else, now I know more about MarkLogic…
Loved the video. Scott, thanks for posting. On my own blog, I’ve been sharing personal experiences as we ‘think outside the book’… I thought it was exciting and engaging and that, perhaps above all else, should be our goal.
We make jokes about users who don’t RTFM… when was the last time a user manual excited you? I certainly can’t think of one and I write them. But if I could create a video that generates even a fraction of the excitement you described here, maybe those people will go to the website, go to the doc, go to the forums, open the Help… now that would really be something, wouldn’t it?
Patty,
there are a few posts dedicated to exciting manuals, check them out for inspiration:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/09/how_to_get_user.html
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/10/getting_users_p.html
from Kathy Sierra’s defunct “Creating Passionate Users” blog
And David Carkeet’s article “The Muse of Mopar” to which I’ve linked here:
http://kaiweber.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/grace-class-and-subtlety-in-a-manual/
Kai, loved the line in the first post : “We need to build a better FM”… LOL. Good point.
Thanks for posting these links. Tom Johnson just posted about story and narrative in tech comm… http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2010/02/10/the-common-language-everyone-speaks/
See parallels here.
Reminds me of the Web 2.0 “The Machine is Us/ing Us” video by Professor Michael Wesch of the Digital Ethnography program at Kansas State University. I think his had a bit more depth of visual examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g
May I say that the video and the text reminded me of “2001″ by A.C. Clarke?
The difference between us – humans – and the rest of the living creatures is the need to apply our intelligence in exploring and changing our world, never being satisfied.
Intelligence is a way of seeing the world and what could be of it, and indeed there are as many different ways as there are people.
Everyone can contribute nowadays, the elite few who could read and/or write is no more.
We who live today are indeed the lucky ones, if one believes intelligence is the most valuable thing in our universe.