think demux

Nothing like a Credit Crunch to get people recycling. And I don’t mean going to the bottle bank.

TV channels, media producers and advertisers have less to blow on booze and bad suits, so they’re busy repurposing. Mass cultural recycling. Compost the old ideas and content in the hope of new fertility.

And while the media business reseeds for new platforms, where does that leave the salt-of-the-earth punter? We need new love and energy in the old machine. If it’s the same old shit, it needs to work better for us. So we lifehack.

Take Danielle Aubert’s Excel art (above, via). Why not lifehack your spreadsheet? Puts some new spectacles on the prospect of staring at a computer screen. Or transform your hardware, Steampunk style.

OK – so Steampunk isn’t an everyday solution. But it’s fun. It’s surprising. It’s bringing fresh personality back into invention.

And every once in a while, as the vehicles move faster than the ideas, you’ll see someone’s remembered there are people behind the wheelbarrow. We’re not just shovelling out recycled thoughts to fill a hole.

I liked these playful 404 pages, because they’ve given a personal expression to an experience that normally has none. It’s reassuring in a cyberspace that connects and alienates in equal spadefuls.

So whether you’re pimping out your cabbage patch or hacking your iPhone, keep at it.

We weren’t put here to sponge up recycled ideas or accept impersonal, inhibitive design without so much as a whimper. There’s a simpler, more playful way of living. And sometimes you’ve got to tinker to get it.

(N.B. Wikipedia defines lifehacking differently from its application in this post. If you want to speak impeccable geekish, check it out. What can I say. I was repurposing.)