Vanlife and the Beat Generation

I this episode I explore gamification as a remedy to the crisis of engagement in vanlife. Music: Road Trip (https://soundcloud.com/user-427503922/road-trip)by Lane Petrosenko featuring Racquel Deveau (CC BY-NC 3.0) User-427503922 – Road-trip Soundcloud Lead Image: Dolomites (https://flic.kr/p/SFY5rC) by Louise Feige (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Sound Effects: Regular Game Sound Effects 28 (https://freesound.org/s/219975/ ) by B Lamerichs (CCby0) Regular Game Sound Effects 20 (https://freesound.org/s/219983/ ) by B Lamerichs (CCby0)NC-ND 2.0) Sound Effect; Typewriter (http://soundbible.com/827-Typewriter.html ) By tamskp (CC BY 3.0) My Blog: communication-generation.com/ Transcript: As we have explored previously, Vanlifers, in a tradition traced from the transcendentalist’s trough to the #vanlifers suffer from a crisis of engagement in what mainstream society is offering them. You already know about gamification, because of flyby rewards systems. LinkedIn prompts us to complete profiles and a big balloon shows 80% complete. But whatever I do I can never actually reach 100% because the more data LinkedIn has the more money they can extract trough advertising. I instead gave the SuperBetter resilience building gamified platform a try as an elixir to this crisis of engagement. Resilience is the ability to stay strong, motivated and optimistic even in the face of difficult obstacles. Dounds good to. The founder Jane McGonigal sees gamification as a means of building collective intelligence to improve the quality of human life and combat social ills. I’m in. I signed up, modified my avatar and I choose a chellenge. I then had to choose a realistic but challenging Epic Win - something that is hard right now and will involve some degree of difficulty to achieve. I typed in “Enjoy Life”. Supper Better then used almost all the available game like mechanics and elements to help. Quests built confidence and optimism by providing practical concrete steps. Future boosts provided incremental rewards. Power-ups provided the strength and energy to achieve quests. I killed bad guys which were the thoughts, habits, and situations I wanted to avoid. I found Allies to encourage my progress. M progress bars which measure my current physical, mental, emotional and social resilience went up and I earned badges. I faced tougher challenges without giving up and my resilience grew further both in my life and on the screen. I relish challenges and have become stronger, happier, and more connected to the positive people I surround myself with. I’m focusing less on outcomes and goals and enjoying the moment and each small victory. Gamification and resilience can work together to help individuals and society achieve hard-earned wins. Can gamification can work in countering the malaise of contemporary society and the crisis of engagement from which the #vanlifers have long suffered?

This video brings attention to the role hyper-neo-liberal-capitalism was taking in creating the algorithms which occupy the digital space, and increasingly our attention. While humans have always used technology to enhance our world the way new technologies like virtual and augmented reality are evolving and interacting with hyper-capitalism and the attention economy reveals some troublesome trajectories. While this assessment may seem a little dystopian also I want to encourage viewers that we can win back the digital zone from the extractive interests of hyper-capitalism and harness the democratising potential of our machines for the humans. We have a choice. Music Credit: Future (https://soundcloud.com/leonimuz/future) by LeonimuZ (CC BY-SA 3.0) Great tips to get you started in online marketing. http://communication-generation.com/ References: Douglas Rushkoff - www.rushkoff.com/ Tim O'Reilly - https://www.oreilly.com/ Jane McGonigal – https://janemcgonigal.com/

How the van life phenomenon is an attempt to swim against the tide of consumer culture and live more authentic lives. http://communication-generation.com/home/van-life-traveling-and-blogging-movement-podcast/ https://twitter.com/_ricky_w_ Music: To be Minimalist by Ix Prospectum CC0 4.0 http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ix_Prospectum/The_Second_Step/4_-_To_be_Minimalist die kälte feat. adamned-age by Die Minimalistin CCO 4.0 http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Die_Minimalistin/end-welt/02_die_minimalistin_-_die_kalte_feat__adamned-age

We go on an adventure in the exploration of van life's roots in the beat generation writers and poets of New York, discuss finding your voice., Are you planning a van life adventure? http://communication-generation.com/home/van-life-traveling-and-blogging-movement-podcast/ https://twitter.com/_ricky_w_ Music: Road Trip by Lane Petrosenko featuring Racquel Deveau (CC BY-NC 3.0) User-427503922 – Road-trip Music: You Gimps by N Dropkick (CC BY-NC 3.0)http://freemusicarchive.org/music/N_Dropkick/Is_Jazz_a_Gateway_Drug_1405/N_Dropkick_-_Is_Jazz_a_Gateway_Drug-_-_04_You_Gimps

Ideology and the #Vanlife Movement The Wanderlust of #Vanlife (2015) examines the travelling and blogging movement established by Foster Huntington, who quit a Manhattan corporate job to travel full time in Volkswagen. Huntington says, “I felt like I was kind of pissing away my 20’s doing that” and changed to a more authentic way of making a living, documenting his travels on social media. The documentary examines the phenomenon of Huntington and others becoming social media blogging, and Instagram sensations with, sometimes, millions of followers. Hashtag #Vanlife now refers to the subcultural movement of thousands of successful, financially viable Van Life channels, enjoying this youthful, countercultural lifestyle which rejects dominant cultural consumerist ideologies. Music: Road Trip by Lane Petrosenko featuring Racquel Deveau (CC BY-NC 3.0) User-427503922 – Road-trip

Full text This is Episode 1 in the Van life Culture series. Where we put the lens on the van life travelling and blogging movement established by Foster Huntington, who famously quit a Manhattan corporate job to travel, and blog full time in Volkswagen. Vanlife is made possible thanks to the democratising potential if the internet, and crowdfunding sites which allow the little guy to participate. But increasingly the digital media legends I follow who have been there since the internet begun and we're celebrating this democratising potential are now claiming capitalist monopolies are now crippling those early utopian visions. What does this mean for van lifers? like a lot of creative people, van lifers depend on a relatively level playing field if they are to participate successfully. References: McChesney, R. 2013, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy, The New Press, New York Music: Road Trip by Lane Petrosenko featuring Racquel Deveau (CC BY-NC 3.0) https://soundcloud.com/user-427503922/road-trip Image: CC0 Tropical Retro Volkswagen by Free-Photos https://pixabay.com/en/van-volkswagen-travel-trip-summer-1209169/ https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en My Blog: http://communication-generation.com/

Vanlife 101 explores the theory and practice of van life. Topics such as authenticity, subcultures, crowdfunding and even democracy will get covered in this series. Music: Creative Commons 3.0 Licence Travel the World by Del 2016 https://soundcloud.com/del-sound/travel-the-world https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/