Andy Laub

While I usually try to avoid doing the self-quiz/meme/etc thing, especially on this site, one occasionally comes along that I find genuinely interesting. The latest as such is spreading though Facebook, and simply asks users to share 25 personal facts. As I read a few lists put together by friends and acquaintances, it became apparent that when you start to add up all these relatively miniscule bits of data your result is a good portion of the writer’s personality. It’s not just the actual facts themselves, but the way they’re presented and the fact that those were the points that were included.

With that said, here are some things about me you may not have known:

1. I like a good conversation, but I have a hard time telling people about myself when they say “tell me about yourself.” And I’m awful at small talk.
2. I prefer multiples of 5. I always have – for some reason, that seemed like the ideal number to me. I’m pretty consistent in my work about following this compulsion, as a number like 625 or 630 just makes more sense to me than a number like 627.
3. I never finished college, even though I was there for four years. It would’ve taken another year or so for me to get a degree, and instead I started a full-time job doing the thing that I was originally getting the degree for. Even so, I remember looking at the calendar occasionally and thinking “If I was still in school, I’d be almost graduated, etc”. That feeling has slowly gone away over the years, because…
4. …I’m not convinced having a BFA would put me any further along in my life than I already am.
5. I own a lot of stuff but I feel guilty about it, especially given the current economic situation.
6. I somehow manage to be both hard-of-hearing when somebody is talking to me, and hypersensitive to ambient noise.
7. I am not totally sure how I should be spelling my middle name. For the longest time I thought there was only one T, but there may be two. I continue to use one.
8. It wasn’t until I got to around fifth or sixth grade that everybody started to call me Andy instead of Andrew.
9. I don’t think I know anybody in my family all that well, and while this makes me kind of sad, I also feel as though it’s too late to change that, partially because…
10. …I don’t think anybody in my family knows me all that well either, and I’m not convinced they are that concerned about it.
11. A project as it ends up on paper very rarely lives up to the standard I’ve set in my head.
12. I’ve had a blog since 2002, more for my own sake than anyone else’s. I’m not deluded into thinking anyone else cares that much about what I have to say.
13. I’ve cut my own hair since I got out of high school.
14. I’ve never broken a bone.
15. I didn’t take any serious art classes until college. My electives in high school were geared toward drafting and engineering. I originally wanted to be an architect – sometimes I still do.
16. I would like to live in a house of my own design someday.
17. I feel that there is no such thing as “too much” garage space.
18. I worked at a library in high school – it was my first job. As such, it only supported what was already a pretty voracious appetite for books. However, when I left that job, there was a sort of stigma placed on libraries in general and I while I would happily still read a ton of books, I don’t go to the library to get them and so I end up not reading very much at all.
19. I generally prefer remakes of movies to the originals (sorry). On that subject, I have not seen very many of the movies that people consider to be “the classics.”
20. I rarely prefer movies that were based on stage productions – for all the added budget they seem to lose an awful lot of personality and creativity.
21. I like seeing myself in the mirror but I rarely like photos or videos of me – what I look like in my head is nearly always different than what I actually look like.
22. I am trying to be less of an asshole this year.
23. My favorite musical instrument is the piano. I think it’s one that can contribute something of value to any type of music, and the acoustics of a grand or baby grand are just amazing to me. Close runner up is drums, because I like rhythm. I wouldn’t mind a piano + drums band.
24. I go through spurts of really needing to hang out with people, and then some of wanting to just spend some time alone. It’s not your fault.
25. I have a million grey shirts, I prefer my electronics in black, and I want a white car.

Lately I’ve been thinking long and hard about the internet. It’s amazing to be living in an era when knowledge is essentially instantly accessible.

But at the same time, I’ve been thinking about lines that have to be drawn when it comes to the types of knowledge and content that are available. It’s the golden age of Web 2.0, where a typical person is probably subscribe to at least 2 or more social websites. I know that holds true for me.

And there are so many of them. And a lot of them are good and interesting and have neat technology behind them. But I’m reaching a point where it’s all just overload. Dino and I were talking yesterday and he said that he’s been observing an exodus of sorts from Twitter to Plurk. Great.

I’ve been trying hard to only subscribe to a service when I feel it can genuinely be a benefit to me. Flickr is a no-brainer; it’s the best in the biz when it comes to photo sharing. Facebook is excellent for shooting a quick note or comment to somebody, since a huge percentage of my social circle resides there. LinkedIn seemed like a good idea at the time, but I really haven’t reaped any benefits from it. Twitter, for what it is, is decent. When it works.

The services that I’ve given my attention to have typically been of the more mature, widely-used variety. Call it peer pressure, but why use a social service that none of your friends are using?

But when I started using WordPress three years ago, blogging was the standard fare. The question wasn’t “do I want a blog?”; it was “which blogging software do I want?”. Now with services like Plurk, Pownce, and Tumblr it’s not the de facto choice any more. So then what should I do? If nobody reads my writing on andylaub.com, how much do I care? Should I go somewhere else? Do I want to go somewhere else?

And that’s where Web 3.0 comes in. I predict that very shortly, people are going to get tired of all this sharing. Tired of signing up to the service of the month, finding people they know, and then abandoning it when something new (notice I didn’t say “better”) comes along. Tired of reporting on every little experience they have and calling it “content”. I’ll wager that we’ve all had the feeling – that little, niggling impulse that says “Record this! Photograph this! Twitter this!” And that twinge of guilt when you opt not to do so.

I guess it’s because we want to acquire a sort of tangible catalog of experiences and not rely strictly on memories. I respect that. But if you’re too busy documenting something for posterity’s sake to actually experience it, that’s just crazy.