Michael Banovsky

On motion

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:30:00 -0400

Lights and lanes, ticking by. Thoughts and dreams walking by. Body at ease, mind at the ready. Driving…

So much of life in the West is devoted to the pursuit of wealth and status, with personal happiness seemingly related to both but really a different idea altogether. I say idea because although 10,000 can pack a comedy theatre and enjoy a few laughs, true happiness is personal and exclusive to that person.

For me, it’s motion without destination. Despite the backlash I get for saying that I both enjoy driving and cycle to work, it’s not about mode of transport. What I’m on about here is keeping clean your mental health.

What does it for me is the motion. The fact I have control over an object that can move me far faster through the world than I am capable is an absolute rush. It never gets old. Thinking ahead becomes a necessity, and adding chaos to the road means that I have to start flowing in relation to those around me.

When movement consumes my thoughts, my heart slows. My fingers and toes rest. It’s like standing in the shower with warm water running over my face. At. Ease.

I’m saying: find what puts you at ease. What takes you away from life. What allows you to disconnect without losing yourself in the process.

After Future's

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:39:37 -0400

Note: Something I wrote back in 2009.

A deep breath won’t help shaking, or goosebumps. Depression, self-loathing, runaway thoughts, too, aren’t curable; not from breathing, at least.

Her nostrils gathered, embraced, and slid the night air into her chest. It took her at least ten steps to overcome the moment, feel her winter-wreaked fingers, and slide her exposed hands inside wool pockets. For the first time in years, she’s not using his.

It’s strange to use pockets that aren’t yours. Like borrowing a space closer to but still separate from someone. Somehow they’re always warmer than your own. She could use the heat. She’s full of motion, with feet are soaked in winter.

Cold.

Time and mind race forward, her steps still laboured. Left, right, just get to the car. Close the door. Hands on the wheel, out comes the first shred of emotion. Hands still cold, they wipe nothing but a chill onto her face.

Fuck his pockets, she wants him.

A deep breath doesn’t help shaking, or goosebumps. It’s over. She exhales with breath smothered in pain; like smoke from a house with people still trapped inside.

It’s freezing.

M&Ms

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:00:05 -0400

Red, brown, orange, yellow, blue, green is the order in which I eat M&Ms. I’m not sure why. It just happens that way.

It may seem absurd, but there are far stranger things in the world worthy of your interest.

Child soldiers. Malaria. The widening gap between rich and poor. Tar sands. Religious fundamentalism. Etc.

The way I eat M&Ms, like a thousand other things you’ll experience today, aren’t important.

Do you live by making candy your business, or do you have more important things to do?

Headwind

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:41:47 -0400

I was fighting a headwind on the way to work yesterday. It reminded me of the first time I experienced blustery weather on the way into work. It was horrible.

I was on my heavy Batavus city bicycle, loaded down with a laptop, change of clothes, lunch, and things for work. The whole ensemble—including me, obviously—weighed close to 300 lbs, I’m sure.

No matter what gear I was in, no matter how much I tried to crouch, I couldn’t make the journey any easier on myself.

It’s been a solid year of commuting nearly every day by bicycle along Lake Ontario, and my approach is completely different now.

Instead of the heavy Batavus, I take instead a nimble, sporty single speed bike. Instead of a heavy pack, I take only the essentials. No change of clothes, no laptop, no papers for work.

But the biggest change is how I ride. I now look straight ahead, into the wind, instead of looking down. I don’t fight it; I pick a constant speed and look to where I’m going.

I don’t try to out-accelerate any cyclists, I just try to maintain a comfortable, constant speed.

What I’m saying is that when you encounter resistance, learn what you can compensate for and what you’ll have to accept. Never stop moving forward, even if you’re going a little more slowly initially.

Turns out that constant, deliberate actions usually give the best results.

I wasn’t even breaking a sweat, which is better than the mess I arrived in a year ago.

Steppin' out

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:07:38 -0400

I used to make mix tapes all the time. I’d still do it, if it wasn’t for DRM and the gigantic pain in the ass music sharing has become.

What I love about custom playlists is the possibility of making the listener feel something they wouldn’t necessarily feel.

I love art and writing for the same reason. They’re quick and easy ways to have people consider a different point of view.

Video mashups, .gifs, Tumblr, and many Twitter feeds are being used in the same way. When the cost of offering people a perspective is lower than it ever has been, why not choose to express yourself?

I’d like to hope that’s why marketers are finding their jobs increasingly difficult: personal expression is taking the place of purchase expression.

I'd rather…

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:10:12 -0400

What I’ve realized, in a fit of wonderment at how people like Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk and Jason Fried can get so much done in a day, is that there’s enough time.

There is always enough time. An abundance, actually.

At first, it’s hard to believe. With nearly everything we use hard-wired to leave the echo of time—date stamps, cable TV schedules, expiry dates—life is reassuringly simple.

Alarm, 7AM. Milk expires tomorrow. Finish breakfast before 7.45AM train. Arrive at work before 9AM. Go to meeting. Lunch. Go to meeting. Replace expired milk. Watch show at 7PM. Sleep until alarm at 7AM. Repeat.

Karl Pilkington once said something to the effect of, “If we had no calendars, you couldn’t put anything off. Things would just get done.”

That’s what I must work toward. “Now” is not a time, it’s when things need to be done.

Society of stuff

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 12:37:00 -0400

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

– Henry David Thoreau

From the Google generation comes one of my pet peeves: WIYB, aka, “What’s In Your Bag?” syndrome.

Something so personal just 10 years ago has become an explosive growth area for restless amateur creatives trying to fit in by sharing that, they too, use Field Notes in place of a Moleskine journal.

I occasionally fall victim to the lure of bag porn too, usually when people whom I deeply respect—like Frank Chimero—post what tools they use on a daily basis.

But it’s the captions that kill me, always spouting an inane description, and, if lucky, the rationale for owning and carrying something on a daily basis.

“Handmade bag with a portable hair brush, makeup, and a roll of undeveloped film” via

Often, what’s posted is vanity in its purest and most manicured form—Do you think anyone will believe you carry two film cameras and shoot 10 rolls of film per day? Or that your grandmother’s hand-me-down Hermes satchel would look this great if you really did wear it through several Wyoming winters?

More and more, personality is not about ethics or in-person presentation, but how many e-friends we have or how rare our limited-edition Porter x ________ collaboration billfold is. We sketch the traits we wish we had using a trail of product we stretched to acquire.

Cataloguing of our stuff affords people of Generation G cheap digital status*. “I’ll let you Google mine if I can Google yours!”

Actions, creativity, and skill will always trump the tools used. If people really want to curb needless consumption, bag porn must die a swift death.

Showing people your stuff is, frankly, pious and drags the very creative freedom many have fought for down to the bottom of the bag.

* Tweets, Likes, reblogs, backlinks, comments, etc.

"People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home."

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 08:27:23 -0400

““People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.””

- Dagobert Runes, historian

Fear, doubt, and opting out

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 23:24:32 -0400

Fear, doubt, and opting out

Fear and doubt are the same, with varying degrees. They’re cruel sisters, really: when you see a bear, you’re afraid because you doubt your abilities to survive.

See a beautiful person and you fear being alone, doubting in your capacity as a person to interest someone else.

Fear death because you doubt in the life you’ve lived.

It doesn’t have to be like this. There is great power in choosing your battles, using your mind constructively, and tackling problems as they arise.

Fear and doubt force you to examine the person you were in order to judge your abilities in the present and future. That’s why change is scary for most.

Can I handle this? Can I do this?

Live in the present, and past mistakes have a way of staying there. Fear and doubt can’t happen, because you haven’t failed yet—if you ever will.

When your mind concerns itself with the past, mistakes, and all the fear that manifests afterward, opt out.

Opt out.

Do something menial. Distract your brain. Not to skirt real problems, but to determine if they really are worth thinking about.

As someone who could barely sleep for the better part of two years, I say it’s because my mind was living in the past.

Opt out. Get excited about the present: it’s where you’ll be living for the rest of your life.

Rituals

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:36:25 -0400

I enjoy doing the dishes. That is not a lie.

I can’t stand making time to do them, or interrupting what I’m doing to throw them in a sink filled with soapy water, but once I’m there…

I often laugh at the breathless intensity with which my friend Derek shares when he writes about karting.

The furrowed brow, sweaty forehead, clenched knuckles. I’m sure it’s all very exciting.

But it’s only a ritual.

I have a few: dishes, Sunday latte and book reading, cigar smoking, bicycle repair, soccer playing, and (mostly classic) video games.

Some are (book reading and cigar smoking) more important to me than others (damn dishes) but they all have something in common: they are systems in which I trade personal freedom for clarity of purpose.

Doing 120 in a kart and washing dishes are no different. They’re fully contained systems with a few key components with which to work into an outcome.

More complex ones let you determine or create a very involved process. But the act is personal. They’re essential for a few reasons, but mainly because they force us into a new mode of thinking.

In my opinion, a chance to step out of my mind every now and then is a luxury worth indulging in.

What are the worst cars in the world?

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:26:12 -0400

…and why? I’m thinking of starting a project that may consume my free time, but I’d like to crowdsource a healthy list of the worst cars in the world. Here are some of the suggestions so far:

Cadillac Cimmaron
Pontiac Aztek
1982 Chevrolet Camaro
Chevrolet Aveo
Chevrolet Cavalier
“90s Buick anything”
1987 Chevrolet Nova
Chrysler PT Cruiser
Chery QQ
Geely CK
Fiat Palio
Iran Khodro Samand
Iran Khodro Runna
Trabant
Tata Nano
Dodge Caliber
Daewoo Fantasy
Probably everything from SsangYong

Static and spray

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:38:30 -0400

What I didn’t expect was the spray hitting the front of my ankles. Ankles are such a forgettable body part, especially during work hours. But there they were, getting wet.

Minutes earlier I had been standing among other white collars, waiting for the rain to pass. You know the one: a short summer shower just enough to make prima donnas cower in fear; just enough to give the city back its scent.

I guess static will be obsolete again, so the sound of spray will be above comparison. It’s truly a magical noise, constant, with ebbs and flows; water leaping, mixing, and returning to pavement.

Rice on a speaker cone.

FROM MY FEET ON UP: Pedals, YNOT pedal straps, Tom’s, ankles, Naked & Famous, Kryptonite (in back pocket), American Apparel, Persol, Nutcase.

I didn’t take the fenders off my bike to feel spray on my ankles, but here we are. My back is wet, too. Not bad things: more like cookie dough stuck to fingers.

I am in that moment, now. Hands on pink leather, twitching the lever that twitches the wheel. Feet planted, making constant circles. Eyes scanning road, wind exploring face.

In this moment I am free.

Free from white collars, Outlook, clean old carpets, faux wood cells, cell phone, meetings, appointments, lunch—and—learns, waster coolers, water cooler conversations, conference calls, read receipts, CMS, KPIs, UVs, and PVs.

Static may sound like spray, but it’s still static.

Push yourself and learn how to tell the two apart.

"It does seem a bit odd that while the government bans texting while driving, its own state agencies..."

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:33:45 -0400

““It does seem a bit odd that while the government bans texting while driving, its own state agencies send out alerts to be read on a handheld device; the agencies protest the tweets are meant to be read before a motorist hits the road.””

- Very, very true. In Ontario you can’t operate a hand-held device, yet: @OPP_GTAtraffic… via the ever-amazing Tom Vanderbilt

"In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity..."

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:48:22 -0400

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.”

- True. via the99percent

"Sometimes, however, I think we lose sight of the purpose of the poster itself and instead create..."

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:46:00 -0400

“Sometimes, however, I think we lose sight of the purpose of the poster itself and instead create misguided monuments to our own ego, adding yet another piece to an already huge pile of production and consumption.”

- Brilliant. via The Best Part

How to fix Scion

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:45:54 -0500

Scion is barely four months into its tenure in Canada, and already seems destined to live out its days ordering pizza, waking up at noon, and watching That 70’s Show in Toyota’s basement.

Sales? Well, despite Toyota saying that—contrary to every other vehicle line on the planet—Scion isn’t really “about sales,” I’d bet that more single-speed bicycles have been sold on Craigslist in Canada since the xB, xD, and tC debuted last October. How few Scions have they sold since? 841. Honda sold more CR-Vs in January. Womp womp.

The problem here is that—of course—young kids don’t have jobs any more. I’ll spare you a tirade on how even as a leftie (Marx not Flanders, you spanner) I can honestly say most kids deserve a Hush Puppy to the backside of their skinny jeans, and merely say this:

Scion needs to grow up quickly if it’s ever going to teach its parents a thing or two.

Kids (I can still say that at 27, right?) have always yearned for things that bring them closer to their peers. That’s why I believe pensioners in 2080 will be as nostalgic for antiquiated cell phone throwbacks as today’s baby boomers are for muscle cars: young people yearn to connect.

As far as I’m concerned, Scion was D.O.A. as soon as websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp added smartphone apps to cell phones. Why? Young people, ever the early adopters, are now more likely to connect over a Yelp recommendation than at the local drive-in. (Coincidentally, Scion sales peaked in 2006; the first iPhone entered the market in early 2007.)

Let me channel the spirit of a do-gooding-yet-creepy-uncle here and suggest five ways for Scion to flourish:

1) Your tagline is lame, bro. “What moves you”? Really? Bran moves me. Here’s a better tagline: “Your first new car.” Why? Kia is heading upmarket, Mitsubishi is, well, sinking, and Suzuki would rather sell you a dirt bike. Combining Toyota quality (yeah, I said it) and reputation to a low-price alternative would be the automotive equivalent of No Name food, and it’d sell.

2) Stop marketing to kids. Visit scionnation.ca, and peep this contest: “Play our augmented reality game for a chance to win a tC.” Kids play games. Kids also go to concerts (Scion sponsors events) and listen to music (Scion makes mixed CDs.) Here’s a problem, though: kids would rather play Angry Birds on their iPhones than a proprietary flash game that you have to register with before you can play. Hell, I made a dentist appointment instead of registering.

I’d adjust prices (including offered accessories) and go with a simple marketing campaign: “Tops out at 25.” You can still go with young people in ads, but the brand really resonates with Canadians who will know that—no matter what accessories they install—no Scion will cost more than $25,000. “Can I afford this car?” is totally answered, and for most, $25,000 is an acceptable sum for a fully-loaded small car.

3) Be a concierge. When in high school, I used to sell cars. I was licensed and everything. Since, I’ve written about cars for eight years. You know what? I have no freaking idea how to buy a new car. That’s somewhat a lie—I think money is involved—but Scion should make it as simple as possible to buy a new car.

In fact, the experience should be more about information than the cars themselves. Show people how to shop for insurance. How to negotiate. What to ask a salesperson. How to determine if a vehicle fits into their budget. Providing shoppers with a real resource is the only way to build brand equity and, from the sounds of it, it’s not like Scion salespeople are all that busy anyhow.

Imagine a salesperson saying, “Since I have all of your details in front of me, let me call a few insurance companies and see who gives you the best price…”

(While they’re at it, why not set buyers up with a mint.com account and consolodate their accounts so they have an easy way to track car/insurance/credit card payments?)

4) The car is a network—for both drivers and Toyota. Remember what I said above, about how cell phones and social networks are killing car sales? Turn the experience on its head. “I bought a Scion, now I can…”

Offer really good, really worthwhile deals. Maybe a cent off of fuel. Discount at Tim Horton’s. Deal on a smartphone. Let people “Check-in” to Facebook so it shows: “Checked in to [place] in my Scion.” Maybe a discount on parking, too… Hell, make the first Friday of every month a free parking day in major cities across Canada.

These offers should be a mix of long-term and short-term deals. It should pay to drive a Scion, and it should be automatic. Imagine how pumped you’d get if you pulled up to a coffee shop and the barista said: “Oh hey, awesome Scion! You get your next drink for free.”

How does Toyota benefit? Sites like Groupon and Gilt offer advertisers access to a distinct group of people. For Toyota, penning marketing deals for access to their Scion customers will not only help them make some sweet side revenue but test out a model that would work well with its upper crust brand, Lexus. (There are already deals in place between Lexus and hotels; what about an automatic room discount for Scion drivers at Super 8 or something?)

In North America, more than 790,000 Scions have been sold since 2003. Seems like an advertising network worth pursuing—this is something you grandfather to current owners, too. (Imagine the improvement in residual values if you provide an ecosystem in which drivers of a certain car save money automatically.)

5) Experiment. Tell owners how to join RelayRides, a peer-to-peer car sharing service that can earn the vehicle owner thousands of dollars per year in short-term rentals. Make a mobile-enabled website for owners to share fuel economy numbers, and how to get the most from their car. Maybe find a way to “Check in” at a gas station by scanning a barcode printed on a reciept—which gives the owner a free car wash and uploads the fuel economy information into a database, helping them keep track of how much they spend.

The point of all this? Give owners a reason to talk about their Scion as much as possible. Give them a reason to talk to other owners. And give them a reason to positively associate personal experiences with the car they drive.

Right now, I just can’t relate. And judging by current sales, neither can most Canadians. A shame, too: I love the box but hate the packaging.

Information and mobility

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:17:00 -0500

Information and mobility may well be the two lenses we need in order to reexamine humanity.

Through our industrial revolutions, we’ve devised ways to augment our bodies, mostly our minds through easy-to-consume information and our limbs through easy-to-produce motion. It’s time we learn how to empower our mental and physical selves without using intensive natural resource-based systems as a crutch.

A car. Thousands of parts, thousands of pounds, thousands of kilometers of potential sit, motionless. A wrapper of rubber, glass, and metal hide those thousands, plus its vehicle. Not make or model, but fuel: how its thousands become motion.

A newspaper. Thousands of stories, thousands of words, thousands of bits of information, sit, motionless. A wrapper of ink, colour, and paper hide those thousands, plus its vehicle. Not publication or edition, but pulp: how its thousands become information.

It’s no secret that newspapers are declining in importance, for many more reasons than I can name here. Most importantly, though, is the simple fact that we’ve found ways to strip the information from raw materials; those stories, words, and bits are far more useful—and far less scarce—when moved into an electronic medium.

And that’s what has already signalled the decline of the automobile.

Is it really so difficult to imagine motion without a vehicle? Without fossil fuels? Our ever-connected world is producing two rapid, alarming truths: people are moving to cities, and people are more connected than ever before. More city dwellers means less distance is required to complete work, whether physical or intellectual.

“I can’t go anywhere without my car” will one day be as silly as saying, “I can’t know anything without a book.”

Work. I’d like to see data, but I have this hunch that it requires both less travel time, distance, and calories to earn a living in a hyper-connected society. If you strip vehicles to their measurable economic impact—oil usage tied to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—you’ll find that more fuel burned equals a faster-growing economy.

Take away the oil, and does the work stop? Not a chance. Manual labour just begins to command a premium. And takes longer. And slows growth. Take away paper, and does information stop? Every spoken word proves otherwise.

Information. It already takes less time, distance, and calories to learn something in this hyper-connected society. Imagine, post Dark Ages when your local library had quite literally one copy of one book. Now you can keep nearly every copy of every book written in the last year in your pocket.

What has happened to information since being (mostly) liberated from pulp? It has exploded. Information has become less of a commodity and more of what it has been all along: something intrinsic to the human experience.

What will happen when motion is (mostly) liberated from oil? We will move like never before. Motion will be on human terms, serving long journeys and short jaunts with different methods. Just as e-books are replacing books and tweets are replacing Post-Its, electric trains will replace highways and human-powered transportation will replace cars. Or something like that.

The gradual liberation of information from mass media will affect automakers in the same way it has the media. Newspapers are no longer the de facto information source; no longer will vehicles be the de facto way of getting around. Automakers will fight back, with new ways of looking at personal transportation. They will offer motion in new wrappers, as information is now sold onto different devices.

Studies are showing that, among young buyers, vehicle purchases are in sharp decline. Where is this most prevalent? Japan: the world’s first hyper-connected society. That country not only has high adoption rates of Internet, but electricity—its position as a net importer of natural resources from other nations will only serve to accelerate their move toward a data-based economy.

Here’s the only problem with this new world order: electricity. Will we shake off our addiction before we’re out of oil inexpensive enough to be worthwhile? The signs aren’t good, if you consider that the Internet hasn’t exactly spared our forests.

Scenario 1: Star Trek. The liberation of information and motion will come gradually, through our governments, regulations, and economies. We will learn, eventually, to harness an untold amount of electricity to power our devices, whether for reading or moving. We will digitize humanity on silicon chips that outnumber this planet’s inhabitants. We will move closer together, negating the need to travel huge distances. Location-aware devices will become inhabitant-aware systems that our digital cities manage with our consent, but without our input. Cloud computing will be our ark.

Scenario 2: The Road. Or it will be forcefully dropped upon us. We will continue to consume natural resources at a rate that strips our forests and drains our wells. We will use trees, fuels, and other things for vain pursuits—printed media for already digitized information and personal transportation for small distances. Then things will go black; without a meaningful electrical supply first-world economies will crumble—just ask your local teller to ring up a purchase when the power is out to see how quickly we’ve become dependant on computerization. Information will be trapped on silicon, indefinitely, as good as lost.

We’ve increased the speed at which we can experience life, while decreasing the time we have to save it. Is humanity learning and moving at an augmented pace all that different from time travel?

Perhaps the future will catch up to us before we know what to do with it.

A look at my day job

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:35:31 -0500

I love winter cycling.

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:14:43 -0500

I love winter cycling.

Textbooks

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:28:38 -0500

However, Donna Quan, the TDSB’s academic deputy director, cautioned that while schools will be equipped with wireless Internet by 2015, students will likely have to wait several more years before digital textbooks become reality.

I read my friend Jenny Yuen’s piece on how kids in Toronto are using outdated text books (see above quote) and thought, “We can do better.”

Friends in the publishing industry: start taking notes. Build a textbook marketplace for schools using an ebook format, allow in-browser viewing, email-able notes and annotations…

Why stop there? To compile sources for an essay would be simple: highlight the text you want and save it to an online bucket (nobody has bought Delicious yet…) It’s also easy to make tests (just highlight the text to create a question), track plagiarism (have kids upload their documents into the system and parse essays for terms similar to the research material) and promote collaborative learning (the students could read, track and share digital notes written by classmates.) You could also be creepy and allow the teacher to see how far a student has read into a particular book.

Once the raw data is in the system, creating things like iOS apps and games that help kids learn the material before tests is simple.

All you’d really need is a robust indexing system, a method of searching…If you combined 37 Signals’ Basecamp, Amazon Kindle software, Layers (or Awesome Highlighter), and the best parts of Wikipedia, well, you’d be onto something big.

Charge school boards a subscription fee based on unlimited use and a certain number of students—once you get enough source material each curriculum could be tailored accordingly (Catholic schools, public schools, French language schools, ESL—English as a Second Language—programs, colleges, universities, trade schools, etc.)

If you could build hubs around specific topics that show text books with links to ever-changing news feeds, Wiki pages, and other online information, you’d be the darling of every shrinking school board budget in the West. Imagine the impact of thousands of music students, say, posting on YouTube their practice videos, or drama students comparing the delivery of lines for a school play.

Hell, if anyone thinks this is a good idea and wants to create a startup…Don’t worry, what I’ve written here is only the tip of my thought process on this one.