Paul Kemp-Robertson was kind enough to interview me for the British magazine called Contagious. He was following up on the FutureFlash conference at which we both spoke in the spring.
Here is the first page.
Here is the second page:
Thanks again for Paul for including me in the pages of Contagious.
References
Kemp-Robertson, Paul. 2008. Abandon ‘Consumer,’ An interview with Grant McCracken. Contagious. Volume 16. Third Quarter, pp. 28-31.
Grant, thanks for posting this. Great stuff.
You argued that there hasn’t been a good book on how culture and commerce shape each other, but are you familiar with Thomas Frank’s ‘Conquest of Cool’? I think that book fits that description.
Grant: Nice summary. Seeing your ideas in that format gives it more big-picture cohesion than on a post-by-post basis.
Regarding your last point–the low status of branding folk among the intellectuals despite their importance–I am reminded of Francis Bacon’s New Organon. He made the shocking claim that lowly mechanics were more important than philosophers (because the mechanics’ enterprise was the only one which had made progress since ancient times; the philosophers merely argured in circles without advancing over the centuries). It’s interesting that cinema managed to cross over to respectability despite its commercial roots, but branding is just “too commercial” to overcome the Classical and Romantic prejudices still dominant among the intellectual gatekeepers.
grant
this is a great piece. i’m especially thankful for: multiplier, cloudy, and phatic communication.