Subject:  Viridian Note 00041:  The Viridian Product 
Catalog

Key concepts:  imaginary products, Web commerce, Viridian 
Catalog

Attention Conservation Notice:  it's another mad scheme 
that will probably end up creating a lot of unpaid work 
for somebody. Over 1,000 words long. Eruptions of Viridian 
whimsy rather dominate the argument here.

Entries in the Viridian "Fungal Typography" Contest:
http://members.aol.com/stjude/
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jtlin/viridian/
http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/Viridian/viridiantext.html
http://www.erols.com/ljaurbach/
http://www.empathy.com/viridian/
http://www.spaceways.de/Viridian/Viridiantype.html
http://www.stewarts.org/users/stewarts/viridian.html
http://way.nu/greens/typography.html
http://abe.burmeister.com/viridian1.html
http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/viridian/
http://www.msys.net/reid/main.html
This contest embraces decay on January 31, 01999.  
For contest instructions see Note 00027.

From: steffen@eskimo.com^^^^^** (Alex Steffen)

Bruce:

I've always thought that, when possible, one should create 
the expression of one's ideas and not merely point to 
another similar idea  (Roethke: "Am I reduced to the 
indignity of examples?"). 

(((Absolutely, Alex!   You've hit on a key concept!   
There's a growing famine of personal originality in our 
fin-de-siecle culture.   Given our unprecedented capacity 
to store-and-forward digitized information, it's become 
fatally easy for us to pass the intellectual buck, by 
cutting-and-pasting an idea, rather than  internalizing 
it, thinking it through, and expressing  it in our own 
authentic  voice.  We're committing an intellectual sin 
here; we're substituting information for  thought, and 
communication for comprehension. We  take comfort in the 
illusion of control that comes with  the frenetic scutwork 
of using computers and the Net. That's a very cogent issue 
for contemporary thinkers, and if I took a couple of days 
and really developed this idea until I grasped it fully 
and made it my own, I think I might have something really 
original and illuminating to offer the debate.

    (((But...  Well, it's more efficient to refer you to a 
recent paper that explores a very similar phenomenon in a 
really provocative way.  The URL  is right here on my 
hotlist...  Darn, I was sure I had that site bookmarked... 
Wait a sec, I think I had it downloaded in this folder...   
Yeah, here it is....   Oh wait, no, that's the right 
author but  that's not the piece that I remember...  Let 
me do a FIND  search of the whole disk... No, that's not 
the right Windows drive, I guess....  My wife's got 
SHERLOCK on her gumdrop  machine upstairs,  but it's not 
worth it to interrupt her.... Well, we just don't have 
time, I guess.  What were you saying?)))

    It would clearly be nice for Viridians to redesign our 
artistic and material cultures, our cities and homes, and 
while we're at it, certain aspects of our political system 
as well, and all by the kick-off date in Jan. 3, 2000. I 
find this unlikely, however.

(((Oh ye of little faith *8-/ )))

    That being the case, perhaps a catalog of Things 
Viridian, Nearly-Viridian and Viridian-leaning is a good 
start. I think about how influential the old Sears 
catalogs were at the turn of the century, or the Whole 
Earth Catalog in the late sixties, and I see a potentially 
useful tool for Viridian outreach.

    To look at the underside first:  much work; perhaps 
(again like the Whole Earth catalogs) quickly obsolete; 
publishing things on a short time frame is difficult; the 
variety of almost-Viridianisms might obscure the search 
for things actually Viridian; etc.

    The advantages would be: looking at catalogs is fun 
for many, many people; we don't actually have to invent 
all this crap, just document it; we'll have wider 
dissemination of some good ideas, the further elucidation 
of what "Viridian" means and might come to mean, a 
template for further thought and exploration; it's an 
opportunity to both capture attention to Viridian 
principles (by releasing the catalog and being willing to 
discuss it with media, etc.) and to provide regular people 
some opportunity to connect to those principles (by 
getting the catalog). It needn't even be a retail 
operation: merely compiling the list of good stuff will 
have beneficial effects.

(((Philippe Starck's got a catalog of the ilk you 
describe, but you can *buy* the stuff.  Giving people a 
catalog of cool, enticing stuff that they can't even 
purchase is so cruel and annoying as to be almost 
satirical.)))

    Nor need it be confined to material culture. It could, 
like the old Whole Earth catalogs, include ideas and 
connections to people as well.

(((Did you ever see those grainy b&w photos of huge crowds 
of semi- and un-paid staffers in the *backs* of those old 
Whole Earth Catalogs?  There were swarms of 'em, laboring 
away in this drafty shack in Sausalito, trying to survive 
on granola and volleyball.)))

   In fact, as I've thought about this, the idea which 
excites me the most is a catalog of things which don't 
exist yet, but should.

(((Wait a minute == now you're on to something.)))

    An idea  worth kicking around? You tell me.

    (((Sure. This is the kind of idea you can't kick just 
once.  The Web is starting to finesse the org problems in 
certain ways, like Amazon.com for instance.  You can do a 
private catalog of books on your own website.   Bezos cuts 
you in for some calculated fraction of the action while 
his analog-world  distribution elves do all the heavy 
lifting, sorting and straining. I'm tempted to engage in a 
little Viridian web-commerce there, if only to give people 
a handy place to swiftly accumulate a Viridian-approved 
design library.  If it made any money, I could blow it on 
Big Mike giveaway mousepads.

    (((A website listing Viridian-approved real-world 
products would be an excellent idea, especially if it had 
links to sites where these objects could be purchased on 
the web.  We make no money through all this earnest 
recommendation, but neither did Whole Earth Catalog.  This 
list would require a lot of grooming and maintenance, but 
not impossible amounts.

   (((However, the idea of a core Viridian catalog of 
Viridian *conceptual art* consumer products sounds truly
inspired.  Because we don't manufacture them.  We don't 
engineer them.  We don't retail them.  We don't ship them.  
We don't store them.  We don't do tech support.  We just 
*make up cool things that we want.*  Then we hold Viridian 
Contests to create the best *graphic image* of this 
imaginary consumer object.  Then we write some glowing ad 
copy about it, and append an imaginary price.

    (((We could publish a commercial-style snailmail paper 
catalog of this kind, and leave it lying around in 
dentists' offices.  I think that if handled properly, a 
prank Viridian publication of this kind could cause 
unsuspecting people to blow a mental thermionic valve.  
Leveraged correctly, their frustration of not being able 
to buy these products would be transmuted into a holy rage 
at the fact that these things didn't yet exist.  They 
would demand for them to come into being!

    (((In the next Viridian Note, I will offer up a 
potential candidate for a Conceptual Viridian Product.)))

Alex Steffen (steffen@eskimo.com^^^^^**)