This site has lacked focus, but it has one now. The word Void will no longer be just part of site name. It will be the subject. The concept and reality of emptiness continues to fascinate me, so it might as well become the focus of this website. Philosophical, scientific, spiritual, and practical aspects of emptiness keep showing up in articles from a diverse range of sources. I plan to share those here along with my own writing on the subject. My previous post, The Value of Space and my 2009 Ignite Corvallis presentation Digitalization and Reality show some examples of the angles I plan to cover.

The following text was adapted from a script created for my 5 minute talk at Ignite Corvallis 2011. Each image was part of a slide deck which advanced automatically during the talk.

I want to briefly promote the value of space. I’ll start by discussing the element of space as it is used in creative disciplines, and then refer to it more generally.

Music is the space between the notes. – Claude Debussy

First, let’s consider music. The space between notes feels like the connective tissue of a song as well as a creative element. The silent parts of a song and the gaps between notes serve to enhance and compliment the sounds. Music is defined by silence. The image is of Annie Clark, a current favorite of mine who knows how to use silence. Her stage name is St. Vincent.

The space within becomes the reality of the building. – Frank Lloyd Wright

Then there’s architecture. The architect creates structures that literally define space. Buildings may be beautiful and keep the rain out, but the most important part of a building is really the space inside and around it where everything happens. The central purpose of a building is acted out in that space.

Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep. – Le Corbusier

Space is also critical in the elements of construction. The architect needs to strike the right balance and rhythm between where there is something and where there is nothing. Space is not just emptiness. It can be a quality of things. House walls, free of decoration, become elements of space. Hang something on a wall and the surrounding space frames the object.

When people don’t understand this, at least intuitively, they can fill all available space with stuff, creating a claustrophobic feeling.

You may be aware of ‘negative space’ if you have ever taken an art class. Paying attention to it can offer a new perspective on the subject and help the artist communicate better. But negative space can also become the subject. You can see how the black birds in this Escher image become the space defining the white birds and vice-versa.

Here is a clever use of negative space. In this case it’s a “space invader” the artist has created. I think it’s important to understand how space can be seen as an object in life as well as art. It defines the substance of life and frames what we experience.

Consider how your life as work of art or design. What might the element of space look like in a person’s life?

An obvious answer is physical. Is there enough emptiness in your physical spaces? It can also just mean more free time throughout the day.

We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable.

– Lao Tzu, translated by Stephen Mitchell

The idea of space having value is actually quite old. This quote is from the Tao Te Ching, written 2500 years ago.

If the content of this post resonates with you, and you’re not already interested in eastern philosophy, I suggest looking into Buddhism or Taoism. Space and emptiness is central to both.

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. – Steve Jobs

This guy had more than a passing interest in Zen Buddhism. By deciding not to do certain things, Mr. Jobs gave Apple the space to pursue a small number of carefully chosen projects with incredible success.

Are you consciously choosing not to do certain things in your life? Are you allowing enough space for what’s really important to you?

The yin yang symbol can represent the interplay between space and substance, between activity and stillness, between negative space and an artistic subject. The dark defines the light, just as a building shapes the space inside. It can even represent how notes and silence can complement one-another.

Click on any credited image in this post to find the creator.

Before the digital revolution, it would have been prohibitively expensive to sell 2 or more versions of a magazine or newspaper. Now it is far easier and cheaper to create variations taylored to every individual’s personal tastes, as anyone with a Twitter or Facebook account knows. I’m not suggesting that every online magazine or newpaper become endlessly customisable, but I do think readers should be offered ad-free options.

Ad-blocking plugins, available for all major browsers, create plenty of examples of how pleasant websites can look like without ads. Readability and Instapaper, take it a step further by allowing consumers to view articles in ad-free, easy to read formats. These plugins and services give tech-savvy readers what I suspect most people have wanted since the dawn of advertising: no ads. Unfortunately, ad revenue keeps many digital publications in business.

The time is ripe for online media outlets to offer ad-free experiences for those willing and able to pay for them. Instead, we are seeing major publications, like the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe, requiring paid subscriptions and still serving ads. I find this mildly insulting.

Double dipping

Marco Arment articulated this problem well in his post Double-Dipping, where he complained about digital magazines available through Apple’s Newsstand.

Consumers have tolerated double-dipping — products that cost customers money and have ads — for over a century. It doesn’t feel as offensive in contexts that have always had it, such as printed newspapers and magazines, or cable TV.

In response to criticism, he posted two more follow-up articles.

I think the reason it feels more offensive to get ads shoved in our digital content is because we are frequently offered at least 2 ways to pay for other types of digital media–either with money or with attention, but not with both. These models provide consumers with more respect than publications that continue to “double-dip”.

More attractive models

Examples of more respectful revenue models include some of Amazon’s Kindles, Apple’s iPhone apps, and many network Television shows.

All of Amazon’s e-ink products are offered at 2 price-points. The lower priced version includes advertisements on the home screen (renamed “special offers”). You can pay $30 – $40 more and get an ad-free version. Likewise, iPhone applications sometimes have a “free” ad-supported version available alongside a paid version with no ads.

Great shows like Fringe are available on television or over the internet for “free” if you watch the ads delivered with the show. As with many other shows, you can also purchase episodes ad-free from Amazon or Apple at $2.99 per episode or $3.99 for high definition. These seem like reasonable prices to pay for 17+ minutes of life (per episode) that won’t be wasted watching ads.

Another decent option is to show subtle, well-crafted advertisements. Ads tacked onto the front of videos on major news sites do not qualify, nor do interstitials or blinking banners telling visitors about record low mortgage rates. All of these significantly degrade the user experience.

Examples of well-crafted, subtle ads can be found on John Gruber’s Daring Fireball, and many of the other sites showing ads from The Deck. John also makes plenty of money off of ads in his RSS feed, but even this is respectful. There is a separate post every week in the feed featuring a sponsor. He does not stick a tacky flashing banner at the bottom of every post in the feed. This kind of attention to user experience is nearly as good as ad-free, in my opinion.

Why pay for an ad-free experience?

Paying for an ad-free show, newspaper, or magazine establishes that you, the viewer, are the customer. Read or watch with ads and you are paying with your attention, which is then turned into an aggregate product, with the attention of many others, and sold to advertisers.

I would rather be a customer than a product, but too often, I don’t have a say in the matter.

Many publications could not survive without advertising and I’m not suggesting that a pure subscription model is the answer. I am saying that customers should have the option to buy their way out.

Reducing “theft”

When music first became available online, people started stealing it through illegal downloads. Today that still happens, but it is far less prevalent because a legal marketplace for digital music exists. A similar transition is taking place as traditional media tries to replicate the revenue stream it enjoyed before the industry was upended by the Internet. While people aren’t technically stealing when they install plugins like Adblock Plus, they are no longer paying with their attention. Many more may do so as ads become more intrusive. I believe that fewer people will “steal” content by installing ad-blockers if they can pay for an ad-free option.

Customers are becoming more aware of things like revenue models. We know digital products are available that do not force unwanted ideas into our consciousness. Why not give us the option to pay for great content without enduring the irritation of advertising?

This site has been recreated with WordPress, leaving the Tumblr version behind just 5 months after moving from Posterous.

Recently Tumblr took on another $85 million in funding, which lead me to wonder exactly how they will monetize the service around user data, adding to my growing trepidation about using “free” media services. I decided not to wait and moved out. This site already feels more comfortable with the current standard theme, Twenty Eleven. The team at WordPress.com created an impressive adaptive and responsive design, which I am slowly personalizing.

I intend to use Facebook and eventually Google+ as platforms for conversation, retaining the original post here. As should be clear by now to anyone paying attention, these services are selling our attention and our aggregate data to advertisers. We are not their customers. In return, they offer an unprecedented level of connection to others online due to wide adoption. At least one, if not all of these services will eventually fade into obscurity or/and use our data in unacceptable ways (if that’s not already happening). This change gives me the option to disengage whenever it becomes necessary.