Introducing the Yes! Button

As a blogger, it is incredibly encouraging to feel that something you have written is reaching people. Every comment I receive on this blog, even the negative ones, is an encouragement to me because I know someone felt like what I have to offer was worth their time to read. It's an honor, really.

In turn, I try to be the kind of blog reader I hope will visit my blog; someone who comments whenever I read a post I like, even if it's just to say I enjoyed it. But commenting isn't easy. Sometimes I just want to read a blog like I read a magazine, without feeling the need to respond. Often jumping through the hoops of posting a comment just to say "cool" isn't worth the time and effort.

So today I want to try something new, something I hope will make it dirt-simple for folks who read this blog to let me know what they like. It's called the Yes! button. It's at the bottom of every one of my posts, and it looks like this:

This button is a one-click way to tell me you read a post, and you liked it. That's it. The button doesn't share the post on Facebook, or tweet it, or "plus one" it, or email it, or tell your mom and Mark Zuckerberg that you read it. It's just a little tally that sends me some love.

So if you like a post you read here, it would be just awesome if you clicked "Yes!"—and even more awesome if you left a comment. Heck if you wanna go crazy you could go back to a past post you liked and click "Yes!" on that too. I leave it to you.

Image: Artotem

Do You Hear the People Sing?

I used to say that experiencing a performance of Les Misérables was the closest I've ever felt to God. Last night Erin and I went to see the show here in DC and I can say without a doubt this is still true.

I know that sounds too strong. I know it's a musical, in the same category as Cats and Rent and Showboat for many people. But G.K. Chesterton said every good story is a retelling of the Gospel, and that is what Les Misérables is. A story of a broken man who is shown mercy and grace and given strength to spend his life showing mercy to others. A story of how mercy does not abolish the Law but fulfills it. A story which calls all of us to look down in compassion upon our fellow men and women, caught in the muck of a hellishly damaged world. A story of how as we do this, we hasten the day when the wretched of the earth will live in freedom with God, how violence will cease and chains will be broken and redemption will be made complete.

I hadn't seen the play since high school, and I gained so much understanding this time through. In the context of DC, I finally realized how important the political themes of the story are. Here is a play that could have been about the triumph of the oppressed over tyranny. Until today I thought Victor Hugo's novel was set against the French Revolution, but it's not. It covers the June Rebellion of 1832 (a century later), in which a group of students tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the French government. Though the play is sympathetic to these students, it is obvious that their efforts are futile. And so the play isn't ultimately about political freedom, it is about the ransom of the miserable, and how the hope, love, and mercy of God will ultimately redeem what the systems of angry men cannot.

And the music, the music, the music. I don't know if you've ever listened to something so awe-inspiring you felt you couldn't hold it inside you, but I will admit publicly that I cried nearly nonstop through the first act.  I used to complain about the synth-heavy arrangements in the show bringing down the beautiful melodies and blistering vocals, but it has recently been re-orchestrated and the new score is breathtaking. I just couldn't handle it.

Les Misérables makes me remember. It reminds me that there is deep beauty in the story I believe. It reminds me that beyond the Christian kitsch and corpreligion, there are creative people who see magnificent art in the Gospel and the Gospel in art. It reminds me of the ancient interplay of justice and mercy, and the call to serve the least among us. It reminds me who I am.

Image: daliborlev

The World is Just Awesome

Watch in HD

Watch in HD

Why I Miss Steve Jobs

George Harrison died when I was 18. I remember I was in the car with my dad when I heard it on the radio, and for a number of reasons it didn't have a remarkable emotional effect on me. I was young. I didn't know the Beatles or their music as well as I do now. I didn't understand how great an artist had just disappeared.

The emotional response I lacked then I felt this week when I read Steve Jobs had died. You'd be right to think this is odd. Jobs was not a respectable figure on all accounts. He terrorized, humiliated, overburdened, and sometimes expected the impossible of his employees. He denied being the father of his first child for years, leaving her and her mother penniless while he raked in millions. He did little to improve conditions at the Asian factories where Apple products are made. He had a colossal ego, preached elitism and consumerism, and gave little to charity. To an arguable degree, he stole some of the ideas he is famous for from their creators. He was in many ways infamous.

Yet he was someone who inspired me. I think it started watching Pirates of Silicon Valley my freshman year in high school, being introduced to the small gang of kids who saw the future in the late seventies. The story of how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built and sold the first usable personal computer from Jobs' parents' garage was the stuff of dreams for a kid like me. It's one of the reasons I'm an electrical engineer today.

I think Jobs' most enduring legacy isn't the iPod or the iPhone or even Apple itself; it's the vision he had thirty years ago that one day there would be a computer (or three) in every home, that these amazing machines held the ability to change the world in the hands of ordinary people. In 1985 Jobs told Playboy, "The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone." Five years before its creation and ten before its fruition, Jobs foresaw the internet.

Of course it wasn't just his ability to stay five to ten years ahead of everyone in his industry that inspired me. It was also his ability to reshape entire markets (smartphones, digital music players, digital music, tablet computers) by injecting his brilliant understanding of simplicity and design. It was his industry-changing understanding of the purple cow, the idea that it is better to create a remarkable product for a specific group of people than a bland product for everyone, and product design should therefore drive marketing and not the reverse.

And then there's the idea that making legal purchases convenient can beat piracy, the idea that people would love computer-generated films if story was king, the idea that "real artists ship," the idea that branding should be about convincing customers that they are the kind of person that buys your product, the idea that it's not the customer's job to know what they want, the idea that succeeding in business means learning to focus and say no, the idea that ease of use is more important than feature count, the idea of a non-threatening computer store, the idea of using software and content to sell hardware... Jobs was a man of ideas. Enormous ideas. And ideas inspire me; they're what this blog is all about.

Sure there were duds: Lisa, Apple TV, and MobileMe to name a few. But taken altogether, Jobs was able to sort the good from the bad well enough to create the most lucrative technology company in the world. Certainly he wasn't the same kind of innovator as Thomas Edison or Henry Ford (his gifts were insight and leadership rather than engineering), but when we look back on the impact of the personal computer over last thirty years, I think it's obvious his influence was just as significant.

Near Atlanta, gathering dust in my parents' basement, is an Apple IIe a family friend gave me when I was in high school. It's one of my favorite belongings. One day I will have my own garage or basement, and that computer will sit there as a reminder that revolutionary ideas come from such places. That art and technology are not at war. That the entrepreneurial spirit is the American spirit. That great thinkers are complex people. That the information age is still in its infancy. But mostly, it will remind me why I chose to work in this field full of visionaries and madmen in the first place.

More on Steve Jobs: New York Times | Wired
Image: Jonathan Mak

Gungor – "God is not a White Man"

I was recently introduced to Gungor in my search for worship music that breaks the mold, which they unquestionably do. This video gets too happy hippy for me by the end, but there is some extraordinary truth in there too.

Here's Michael Gungor on the Gungor view of worship:

"If leading worship is just about bringing a group of people into a room so we can get goosebumps and sing songs together, there's not much value in that. But if leading worship is a means to an end, that we leave this place as a different kind of people, as part of a new humanity that God wants to create—the people that are caring for the widows and orphans, that aren't bound by the systems of this world but becoming free, becoming fully engaged in our world—then that matters."