benkraal:
Steve Portigal and Stokes Jones recent article On Authenticity for Interactions is wonderful. So wonderful I’m not going to extract a bit here for your edification. You’ll just have to go read the whole thing.
Not having quite the self-possession of Ben, I am going to extract a quote (emphasis added):
Even if authenticity is hard to define, this is not true for its opposite. If authenticity is subtle, inauthenticity is flagrant. It’s easy (and effective) to channel Supreme Court Justice Brennan with “I know it when I [don’t] see it.” We’re certainly able to determine when something is not authentic (and there’s probably an evolutionary biologist out there who can tie that pattern-matching skill to some fight-or-flight reflex). If we, as makers of something, strive to be authentic in the thing that we are making, is that really authentic? And yet if we fail to strive for authenticity, are we likely to fail?
That’s a wonderfully phrased question. If authenticity is valued in the marketplace (as, at least, a veil of authenticity arguably is), corresponding with a designer’s incentive to appear authentic, should I begin to suspect contrived authenticity?
I love those Kraft cheese slogans: “100% REAL cheese!” OK, now define “REAL”, “cheese” and “100%”, please. Of course I am about as qualified to say Kraft is “not real” as I am to call the stinky époisses in the fridge “genuine”, as I know practically nothing about making cheese or the town of Époisses, I only know it tastes good.
I think the question is deeply personal. I should ask myself and not the world: is this authentic? “This” could be a film, or a book, or a website I’m designing, or ancient ruins, or a blog post. I think that relying on some external judge to know a thing’s authenticity is itself inauthentic. Film critics are a great example. Film critics tend, as anyone will, to interpret what a film “tries to be” — the intention of the film’s director or ensemble, and judge how it executes this. A few reviews for the film Where The Wild Things Are criticized the inauthentic voice acting; for me, I had to see it. (It was good.) But to blindly take a film critic’s interpretation as anything more than one persons perspective, as the True reading of the film, would limit my own viewing, and my response would be inauthentic. The act of reading, not a critic or blurb on the inside cover, determines the intention of a director or author. (Not to say one shouldn’t read the critics, there is so much to learn about the language of film; that’s like not learning Spanish in order to have an “authentic” reaction when visiting Spain.)
Often I struggle with how a place may or may not be authentic. It’s wonderful to say, “I was there, I have experienced this [authentic] place.” I recently visited Central Park for the first time. I had seen it in many films, of course. Was it “authentic”? Did I experience the “essence” of Central Park? Probably not; I was there for thirty minutes and I don’t live in New York. (Though it’s lovely all the same.) When I traveled in India this question often bothered me. I visited Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples, mosques, shrines, the river Ganges, all with rich histories and traditions I knew nothing about. Was it “authentic”? I think honestly I can only answer no; to say “I have now seen Islam” would be ignorant of the 99 percent I missed.
My ramblings have totally departed from the corporate context of the linked post. Having no experience there, I don’t have an answer for it.