Brilla.org

The last couple years have been about things cheap, fast, and accessible. Google and Wikipedia cemented themselves as de-facto brain extensions for anyone working on the web. Twitter became the 140 character venue for the A.D.D. blogger. Life hacks, lists of 46 best blanks to do blank. Even a broader sense of advertising: getting ripped in two weeks with one simple rule. Lose weight & get rich fast have been around for a while now, but you see what I’m getting at.

But there’s a new trend we’re seeing here. Lots of brilliant web thinkers (and even celebrities-turned-Twitter allstars) are turning a new leaf. Project52 insists we start blogging again and revive this mostly-dead medium. Guys like Anil, Merlin and Seth are beckoning us to reach a little deeper and put a lot of creative force and focus into what you produce. Derek dissects burnout beautifully. My buddy Jay has kindly asked all the hack get-rich-on-bullshit-content people to leave his internet alone. Rob Goodlatte preaches it. Even Mister Santa Maria’s new manifesto is fucking righteous.

I am thrilled to see a slow shift away from the hyper-multi-tasking life. From spreading ourselves so thin; we’ve done that. I feel like we as a small society of designers, developers and nerds, have proven to ourselves that we can juggle 528 things at once. But also, we’re going to start getting picky and turning away the 524 things we don’t want to do, and start focusing the handful of engaging projects where our passion lies.

THEN. Oh man. Big beautiful nasty things are going to start surfacing. Geeks being geeks for the sake of being geeks, and not just to fulfill a stakeholder’s wish or some bloated business objective, man. The Pictorys, and the Favrds (bless its little heart); the stuff EJS is talking about.

And, as I wrap up this post now, I see Jina writing on a very similar theme.

I have seen the future, people. It is lovely.