The name ZigZag was derived as our business name after many
discussions between David Bannister (Zig) and George Szubinski (Zag).
Importantly we did not want to be a normal business. We did not want to take on
employees. We did not want offices. We did not want overheads. But we wanted to
work with other like-minded people. People wanting to be creative. People
wanting to invent. People wanting to impress others with the work they do and
wanting praise more than money. People looking to act quickly working through
day and night to meet an objective. People wanting the buzz of working in a creative
setting. So we decided to have these people called “associates”. We also like
the so called “gig economy” where people work on many different things. Maybe
some of their own projects whilst contributing to ours. We also wanted to be truly
international with no boundaries in terms of what we do and where our associates
work.
Another part of the thinking was Google had just created Alphabet
as their holding company for all their digital brands. We had visions of one
day becoming a similar sized operation owning digital brands. So with Alphabet
occupying the early alphabetically ordered slots in any search we thought only
fair to go to the other end of the alphabet so we focussed on Z. Out came the
dictionary with us reviewing all the words beginning with Z. Zen was a popular
since it represented our relaxed approach, since we were retirees, to
undertaking creative work. But ZigZag, indicating many sharp turns, seemed to
represent the way our thoughts kept zigzagging all over the place. One thought
triggering another and so forth often just zigzagging along and achieving
nothing rather than just generating the warm glow of creativity. It was not
long before we broke zigzag into its two components of Zig and Zag these
becoming our nicknames. So Zig (David) and Zag (George).
So the name ZigZag sort of resonated with our sort of semi digital
bohemian philosophy. Not surprising really since Zig and Zag are children of
the 1960’s. Only those that were fans of Bert Fegg’s Nasty Book for Boys and Girls
by Michael Palin and Terry Jones could truly engage with our thought processes.
Working in digital creativity had to be fun. Locking yourself down into systems
with multiple variations in digital transactions was never fun. Fortunately the
go to computer of choice, the smartphone, with its tiny visual interface soon
demolished designers desire to fill screens with multiple functions. Keep it
simple became the mantra. So ZigZag Associates is simple and only does “simple”
things.
But the name ZigZag also held an important place in computer
history. Our hero Ted Nelson had developed a database called ZigZag along his
Xanadu documents.
Ted described as “a bit crabby
but what a clear thinker” had challenged the whole way the computer and
software industry had developed by randomly jumping from one technology to
another. Ted argued it was essentially commercially driven without adopting the
purest principals he believed so firmly should have been the adopted
development path. He is sometimes called the principal dissenter in the
computer field. He was the maverick. Just read this below from the introduction
to one of his papers.
“The computing world is based on one principal
system of conventions -- the simulation of hierarchy and the simulation of
paper. The article introduces an entirely different system of conventions for
data and computing. zzstructure is a generalized representation for all data
and a new set of mechanisms for all computing. The article provides a reference
description of zzstructure and what we hope to build on it. From orthogonally
connected data items (zzcells) and untyped connections (zzlinks), we build a
cross-connected fabric of data (zzstructure) that is visualizable, interactive,
and programmable.”
Yes Ted thought about things differently. This is extracted from a
paper that goes on and on conveying his enlightened wisdom. You cannot appreciate Ted Nelson until
you have read his book “Geeks Bearing Gifts” with a classic mugshot of a young
Bill Gates in Police custody on the cover. So the essence of ZigZag is we think
about things differently in homage to both Ted Nelson and Bert Fegg’s.
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