Blue Mouse Monkey Blog

Technoschmerz, according to this Boston Globe article on neologisms, means,

“…the emotional pain (schmerz comes from a German word meaning “pain”) caused by difficult interactions with electronic gadgets or unhelpful websites. If you’ve ever felt your cellphone was out to get you, you’ve suffered from technoschmerz.”

This word is long overdue. (Thank you, Kate Greene, for the coinage.) I expect to use it often. If I take my personal experiences with digital technologies (and in running a web design company, I have plenty) and multiply these by the number of people in the world with dependent connections to contemporary digital gadgets, I can only imagine the amount of confusion, delay, errors, and the resulting stress from wrestling with technologies that keep changing, or don’t work intuitively or correctly must be global and massive. Has anyone analyzed the overall cost of this? I wonder what it would amount to when weighed against the overall benefits…

Bruce Sterling's chart of technological adaptation

Bruce Sterling In his book Shaping Things (one of my all-time favorite books, btw) examines the evolving interplay between objects and people. He divides the technosocial realm into several epochs, beginning with ARTIFACTS, which are hand-made, muscle-powered objects, such as spears. Then moving to MACHINES, which are artifacts with moving parts that rely on a non-human, non-animal power source, and require an infrastructure of engineering, distribution, and finance. Think steam engines. Next up is PRODUCTS, and they are mass-produced, non-artisinal, widely distributed, and operate over continental economies of scale. Think blenders. Since 1989 we have been in the age of GIZMOS, according to Sterling. Gizmos are

“…highly unstable,  user-alterable multi-featured objects, commonly programmable, with a brief lifespan. Gizmos offer functionality so plentiful that it is cheaper to import features into the object than it is to simplify it. Gizmos are commonly linked to network service providers; they are not stand-alone objects but interfaces.

Unlike artifacts, machines and products, gizmos have enough functionally to actively nag people. Their deployment demands extensive, sustained, interaction, upgrades, grooming, plug-ins, plug-outs, unsought messages, security threats,…

Sterling goes on to argue that we are moving into the epoch of SPIMES, which are already among us in primitive forms such as the RFID tag. But that’s a topic for another post. For now, GIZMOS are enough to deal with. And according to Sterling, we have long passed the Line of No Return on them. This is the moment when a revolutionary technology becomes the status quo, and a culture has become so reliant that it cannot voluntarily return to the previous technosocial condition, at least not without social collapse.

And dependent we are. Not just on the objects, but the networks that connect them. IMAP email that shows up at home, work, on my iPad, on my iPhone. Dropbox files that do the same. Writeroom for synched notes, BaseCamp for synched project management, FreshBooks for synched book-keeping. Compared with how I managed files and communications a mere two or three years ago, a revolution has taken place in my personal life, and I know it’s been mirrored in the lives of many.

Infographic by Randy Krum, coolinfographics.com

We are firmly in the age of the GIZMO. Thus I pledge allegiance to the new overlords, and I interact, upgrade, groom, and protect them from security threats whenever they demand it. Because if I fail to nurture these overlords, I become invisible and mute to anyone not standing directly in front of me!

Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch

Suzy Vitello and I are distantly “related” in the literary world by virtue of our involvement in separate writing groups that sprang from the ur-group, Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writing. While we’ve never sat at the same writing table, we’ve chatted at parties now and again, and we’ve worked together in our other lives — in the world of communications, branding, and websites. Suzy is an editor and copywriter, and I’m a web designer, and we have delightfully collaborated on many projects together over the years.

And she edited the text on my Parts Per Million website!

And I got to redesign her new author website!

And she interviewed me on her blog! Check out Writers and branding: an interview with Julia Stoops for our discussion on the importance of author websites, the effect of DIY technologies, and the impact of art, teaching, and creative writing on my branding and web design practice.

Author Suzy Vitello needed a complete website makeover. Her old site was built in Flash, which has become problematic since the iPad and iPhone do not support Flash viewing. Suzy Vitello’s new site uses lush background imagery to showcase her two novels and her extensive involvement in the Portland literary world. (Image by Brooke Shaden, used with permission.)

Now it’s time to present a personal project! Parts Per Million is a novel about a group of Portland environmental and media activists. I’ve been working on it for a decade, finished it this year, and am in the process of seeking agent representation. Check out the site for photo galleries, excerpts, illustrations by Ryan Alexander-Tanner, and more.

Last night Portland author Scott Sparling read from his debut novel Wire to Wire (Tin House, 2011). His story of how the book came to be was funny, poignant, and inspiring. Twenty years in the making, and now it’s a beautiful edition, lovingly produced by one of indie publishing’s top houses. I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of being associated with Scott’s work in two ways. Firstly, for several years I shared a space at the Pinewood Table with Scott. Pinewood Table is a critique group facilitated by Stevan Allred and Joanna Rose, and it’s where many Portland writers learn, in a challenging but supportive environment, the craft of fiction writing. Each week writers bring a handful of pages to share around the table and read aloud. Then the writers get verbal and written critique of their pages. During my time at that table I read most of Wire to Wire in small weekly chunks, and Scott’s amazing prose worked its way in under my skin. But I read the story out of order: I’d come in in the middle, and the controlled chaos of the character’s lives never quite gelled for me until Scott started again at the beginning. Then things fell into place, and I could appreciate the work anew.

Later, after the news that Wire to Wire was being published by Tin House, Scott approached me to make him a website. He needed a look-and-feel as cool and edgy as the book, as well as an easy way to keep it updated as the reviews rolled in and the events calendar grew. So far Wire to Wire has received glowing reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Playboy, and the Oregonian, and Scott is in the middle of his book tour.

Scott Sparling signs a copy of Wire to Wire for Portland artist Brenda Mallory

Here are photos from his presentation on June 30th at Powell’s Books (Burnside location). Scott told the story of the book’s creation, read three excerpts, then signed copies, while the art show on the wall behind him happened to create some great visual juxtapositions!

Scott Sparling signs a copy of Wire to Wire for Portland writer Yuvi Zalkow

A depiction of John Nelson, the protagonist of Parts Per Million. The painting is titled 'Waiting for a Sign'. Mixed media on paper, mounted on panel.

There’s this other thing I’ve been doing these past few years; some people know about it, many don’t. When my writing friend Laura Stanfill posted her interview of me on her blog yesterday, it felt like a coming out of sorts. After all, what business does a visual artist and web designer have writing a novel? Well, the project started as a compulsion ten years ago, a story that took hold of me and wouldn’t let me go until I wrote it down in a rush. Then I went back and revised it. Again. And again. And again. I lost track of the number of drafts. Now Parts Per Million is a complete novel. Pared down, tight, thoroughly critiqued by many, and ready to go out into the world. The next step is finding an agent to represent the MS.

Laura’s a wonderful writer with a couple of novels under her belt already. I learned much for her when we sat together at Stevan and Joanna’s Pinewood Table critique group. I’m so grateful for her generosity in including me in her interview series!

Read Laura’s interview here: Novelist Julia Stoops on Anti-War Activism and Using Research to Build a Realistic Fictional World

Scott Sparling is a Portland writer and author of the forthcoming novel Wire to Wire (Tin House, June 2011). Scott came to Blue Mouse Monkey for an exceptional and innovative design solution to showcase his edgy novel. Combining large-scale imagery with content that pulls you into the world of the book, this author website transcends the genre.

Austin Granger is a photographer and writer who has produced three books, and wanted us to create online versions of each of them. The challenge was to reproduce the books in web form in a way that preserved as much of the flavor of “book”, with its concomitant hierarchies of information, while maintaining good digital user interface and information design. The resulting triple-website presents nearly 400 photographs, along with Austin’s 9-chapter essay on Point Reyes. Check out the three books: Elegy from the Edge of a Continent: Photographing Point Reyes, Lights and Keepsakes, and Astoria.

Inara Scott is the author of The Candidates, the first is a series of young adult fiction books called Delcroix Academy. Inara wanted to counter a recent trend in YA fiction (think Twilight) and created a series about a strong young heroine. Inara is living the writer’s dream: she’s quit her day job to focus on the next books in the series!

Jackie Shannon Hollis is an author whose fiction and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, including: The Rambler, Rosebud, South Dakota Review, Inkwell, Flashquake, High Desert Journal, and Oregon Literary Review. Her work has been recognized for several awards. Her novel-in-progress, At the Wheat Line, is near completion, and you can read an excerpt on this site.

To create this site a custom “skin” was wrapped around a WordPress content management system, which for Jackie makes updating her site as easy as keeping a blog.