I really enjoy reading The Believer. Just the kind of magazine I need to read at the end of a long weekend, after completing my Sunday evening chores.
You see, I’m with Doc. I believe in VRM. I believe that in the 21st century, product-driven advertising is fundamentally flawed. Personal recommendations, whether direct or via collaborative filtering, count for a lot more. Recommendations from people I know and trust, recommendations that scale now that I have the tools and the technology to discover the recommendations and act on them.
So I enjoy reading magazines that have no ads in them. Magazines printed on good paper, with loving care taken on format and layout. Magazines that cover a range of subjects, enticing me into finding out more about things I know little about. Magazines that have copyright-free content. Magazines like the Believer.
While reading an article in the latest issue headlined The Modern Lovers: Ten Contemporary Artists Who Make Images of Their Beloved, I “discovered” Keith Arnatt, and as a result I’ve ordered a recent book by him. I was particularly taken with his “Notes from Jo, 1990-1994” exhibits; Jo, his wife, sadly passed away in 1996; Keith has chosen to share some of the notes she wrote to him, notes of the kind usually stuck on fridges or pinned on kitchen notice boards; notes that have a sense of easy familiarity that I cherish, that reflect a warm and worthwhile relationship.
So thank you Believer, thank you Leanne Shapton for selecting Keith Arnatt, and thank you Keith Arnatt for sharing Jo’s notes. And thank you Jo for writing them.
and thanks for posting this, I’m really glad to discover it too
Thanks for the magazine recommendation – and for stimulating my interest in VRM.
I think you’re right that recommendations based on trust work – and I think they’ll inspire a move towards a relationship based interaction – rather than transaction based.
Of course, if you have been recommended – you’d better not disappoint… and I’m sure The Believer won’t.
… and thank YOU for writing about it all (and no thanks for adding yet another blog (Doc Searle) to my blogroll). Only kidding — I’ll ditch something else one day, like when I get around to it, maybe, possibly.
No cricket anywhere at the moment?
There’s quite a lot of cricket on at the moment, Hazel. India just beat Pakistan in Delhi, the action moves to Calcutta now. England are in Sri Lanka and South Africa are playing New Zealand as well. I am getting used to waking up way before dawn to watch a little bit before work, and then there’s the weekend. Eden Gardens is my favourite ground, I watched every test there between 1966 and 1980. Heaven.