Posted 23:14 by Mark Federman permanent link
Shameless Propaganda

Propaganda noun
1. The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those people advocating such a doctrine or cause.
2. Material disseminated by the advocates of a doctrine or cause.

I just returned from seeing Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, propaganda. It is crafted to be manipulative, and to make you angry. Angry at the 2000 Presidential Election. Angry at the irresponsibility of the early days of the Administration. Angry at the incestuous business ties among the Bush family, the Saudis, the Taliban and the Binladen family. Angry at the charade in Afghanistan. Angry at the manipulation perpetrated by the Administration on the Congress, the media and the American public. Angry at how the poor, the indigent and the ignorant are coerced with strong-arm sales tactics to be sent as Bradley Armored Vehicle fodder for what the soldiers themselves see as a pointless adventure by George W Bush, "that fool" (a direct quote from the last letter written by a soldier to his parents.) And immensely sad as we watch a woman whose brothers, uncles, father and children have served in the U.S. military wail as she recalls the fateful phone call - "the Department of Defense regrets to inform you..."

This is an important film for anyone who believes in the democratic process. It is an important film for supporters of John Kerry's bid for the Presidency. It is particularly important for supporters of George W. Bush's reelection. The basis of democracy is an informed electorate. Even if you believe, as I expect that many Bush supporters would, that Moore's documentary is tantamount to negative propaganda, it is vitally important to probe and question the issues raised by Moore prior to casting a ballot next November. If you can confront Moore's evidence in a thoughtful fashion and be convinced that the Bush Administration has been both just and justified, then cast your ballot accordingly. If not...

Well, as President Bush says, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me... you aren't going to fool me again."

Update (1 July 2004): A transcript of the movie has been posted here, along with hundreds of comments that debate the issues.
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Posted 14:32 by Mark Federman permanent link
iPods Soon to be Illegal in the U.S.

Is it "unAmerican" or "unpatriotic" to build legislative roadblocks to innovation, so that the United States will be forced to assume a subordinate technological position in the world? Such seems to be the way in the ongoing Reversal of America perpetrated on a once-great country by its legislators.

As many readers already know, Senator Orin Hatch has just introduced the "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act" ("Induce Act") that intends to make anyone liable that

intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in the persons of friend Cindy Cohn and Jason Schultz, have generated a Prelude to a Fake Complaint under the proposed legislation, suitable for filing in District Court, against Apple, C|Net and Toshiba, for making and marketing, providing instructions for, and supplying the hard disks for, the iPod, respectively. Cindy and Jason write,

Scared yet? You should be. When the lawyers at EFF first sat down and asked "Whom could we sue under the Induce Act if we were an abusive copyright holder?" the answer was clear: pretty much everybody. Playing the devil's advocates, we knew we could draft a legal complaint against any number of the major computer or electronics manufacturers for selling everyday devices we all know and love—CD burners, MP3 players, cell phones—and that with that complaint, we could file a lawsuit that would survive any attempt to dismiss it before trial, costing the targeted company up to $1,000,000 per month in legal fees alone. The Induce Act is a nasty, brutish stick in the hands of the wrong plaintiff.

...

With it, the fact that a device or product has legal uses, even lots of them, is irrelevant. Filing a lawsuit under the Induce Act is like dropping a litigation bomb on any company that gives users products that have even the slightest potential to assist in copyright infringement. Technology companies will avoid being innovative, and investors will avoid supporting new technologies for fear of being sued out of existence based on the possible conduct of their customers. If this bill had been law in 1984, there would be no VCR. If this bill had been law in 1995, there would be no CD burners. If this bill had been law in 2000, there would be no iPod. If this bill becomes law in 2004, we may lose those devices and many more that we haven't even begun to imagine.

And therein lies the reversal. America's "competitive edge" and its current power in the world lies in its remarkable ability to innovate in the face of stiff competition. During the 1950s, and particularly in the 1960s, it was the competition with the Soviet Union in the Cold War "Space Race" that spurred tremendous innovation in electronics and materials. Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, it was commercial competition with "Japan, Inc." that fired entrepreneurial and inventive minds to innovate. Today, while businesses often lament their inability to innovate as they engage their domestic competitors in what amounts to pit-bull rumbles, legislators appear to serve corporate masters by eliminating the means to innovation by enshrining the status quo. That there are "substantial non-status-quo-inducing" usages of that legislation is entirely irrelevant: that is the content of the legislation. The message or effect of the legislation is to stifle that which accounts for America's economic engine through the latter half of the 20th century. It seems that Hatch and his colleagues would have America return to a simpler time, while the rest of the world embraces the future.
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Posted 13:14 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Road to Hell is Paved by the Internet

In today's Globe and Mail, technology columnist Jack Kapica has written this clueful column that answers recent critics of Internet technology providing unfettered access to - Heavens! - child pornography. Kapica notes

But we can't blame the Internet service providers for child porn, the same way we cannot blame phone companies for murders plotted over their lines. We can't blame privacy laws for shielding porn swappers, because we can't violate everyone's privacy just for the purpose of weeding out the pedophiles; likewise, encryption software is designed to protect our property and privacy, and should not be removed for the simple reason that pornographers might be able to use it. And finally, "thumb drives" [also called USB memory plugs or flash drives] are no guiltier of storing child porn than trouser pockets can be guilty of carrying illegal drugs. This kind of blame game arises when we mix our revulsion at child pornography with a fear of technology.

Kapica's column was spurred by reporter Jan Wong's irresponsible and sensationalist article that chronicled her "simple and scary" assignment: How long would it take a someone with zero expertise to find child pornography on the Internet -- the same kind of images Mr. [Michael] Briere [the convicted murderer of 10-year-old Holly Jones] said drove him to his crime? The answer: one hour and ten minutes. In other words, for a person of average intelligence, who admits she is "not technologically savvy," it took her a full hour and ten minutes, with the assistance of a research librarian to find this depraved material. It is not jumping off the screen, invading households. You have to go looking for it.

This is, of course, not surprising. Unlike most of the erotica that is available throughout our society - from magazine covers, billboards and television to pay-per-view on the Internet - this stuff is best kept under a rock for dubious enjoyment of creatures who tend to live in such places. In fact, most of the hard-core child pornography is privately traded among the sorts of people whose fetish induces behaviours that are unacceptable in our society. More than Kapica's admonition against blaming ISPs for providing access - as if it could be controlled without impinging on our freedom of speech in general - we should be thanking our lucky stars that the Internet exists as it does.

Multi-way communications means that the same roads that connect child pornographers to their clientele can lead police back to the child pornographers. People like "Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie of the Toronto police's sex crimes squad," quoted in the Jan Wong article, is either ingenuous or ignorant - I can't decide which - when he says, "I don't know why our service providers don't understand that they are facilitating access to these websites. They can block them, and they don't seem to have the will." He points to the U.K. where people apparently report "400 tips a week" of child pornography sites that are subsequently blocked by ISPs. Does anyone think that these sites merely shift domain names and become instantly unblocked in an ever-morphing, unwinnable shell game?

More important, Gillespie and his colleagues should be infiltrating these trading networks and tracing the connections around the world. Current laws are sufficiently strong to put depraved people in jail for long periods of time, and rescue exploited children. Fear of innovation has always been with us. At one time, horseless carriages were considered the work of the devil and besides, they scared the horses. Understanding all of the effects of the automobile (admittedly a little late) allows us to manage our innovations according to the way we want to create our world, and perhaps undo some of the damage caused in the earlier years. The Internet is no different in this respect. By understanding all of the connectivity effects and being just a little clever, we can work towards creating the type of world we want, and perhaps undo some of the early damage. For a change, let's really and appropriately think of the children.
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Posted 11:36 by Mark Federman permanent link
Doctorow to Microsoft: "Invent the Record Player!"

Cory Doctorow gave this fabulous talk to Microsoft's Research Group recently on copyright, technology and Digital Rights Management. If you want an insightful, complete and easy-to-understand tutorial which makes the case

1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

this is it. The key argument is one that should be obvious. Creating capabilities that prevent your customers from doing what they want to do with what they buy is not only bad business, it is counterproductive business that will inevitably kill your company. What's more, is that by attempting to put up walls, you only enable and encourage door-makers. Finally, throughout history, when someone has invented a new, albeit disruptive technology, that threatens status quo businesses, the status quo business objects, and then (if they're smart) learn how to open up that disruptive technology into a business that ultimately generates orders of magnitude more money. Such reasoning is a classic McLuhan reversal that, as regular readers know, leads the way to new innovations.
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Posted 17:47 by Mark Federman permanent link
Fixing Your (Copyrighted) Car

Much of the work we do here at the McLuhan Program involves reminding people, in one way or another, that it is the ground effects - those consequences that are not obvious - that are most potent in affecting our culture and society. The legislative proposals to reform the Copyright Act in Canada, about which we have been writing over the past few days, is a case in point. Those on the "rights" side of the debate are concerned about protecting "their" intellectual property (as if any intellectual endeavours are borne in isolation); those on the "open" side are concerned about appropriate balance. Thanks to a recent posting over at the EFF site, I'm concerned about where I'll be able to get my car fixed.

Car manufacturers have always kept their electronics closed and proprietary, but as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes, cars are increasingly digitized, and it may soon be impossible to fix a car without being able to "talk to the computer". If car manufacturers continue to keep their electronics locked up, independent garages around the country may be driven out of business.

See what I mean about unintended, ground effect consequences? The U.S. Congress is considering specific legislation that would allow the corner garage to stay in business. So why should our cars be any different than our printers, our DVD players, our computers, and our future information-sucking gadgetry? We predict the future by foretelling the present.


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Posted 07:50 by Mark Federman permanent link
Canadian Copyright Reform - Made in the U.S.A.

Michael Geist continues his call for a balanced approach in Canadian copyright reform in this Toronto Star column. The Parliamentary committee headed by Liberal "Sam" Bulte seems to have chosen a less than balanced approach, and one that seems to favour rights holders to the detriment of the public good. Little wonder. "According to Elections Canada, Bulte and her riding association have accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from rights holder groups and broadcasters." Welcome to Canada, U.S.A.

Geist has some recommendations for the committee:

First, the procedural aspects of copyright reform must be balanced. This requires that all three stakeholders be "at the table" during consultations and policy-making meetings. Unfortunately, the Bulte committee failed in this regard as the few user and public interest groups that participated were badly outnumbered by creator groups...

Further, copyright reform proceedings must also be perceived to be balanced... Parliamentarians involved in the copyright reform process should refuse all such contributions to ensure that the perception of absolute impartiality is preserved.

Second, the balance objective must help shape every policy decision. This path means rejecting the Bulte committee's approach of weighing opposing policy approaches and simply siding with one or the other...

Third, copyright reform analysis should incorporate empirical evidence and economic analysis. Too often during the Bulte committee hearings, witnesses voiced conclusions without supporting documentation...

Fourth, Canadian policy makers should not be afraid to be creative in formulating uniquely Canadian solutions. While the Bulte committee made no effort in this regard...

Fifth, Canada's policy makers should continue to exhibit patience by prioritizing a balanced approach ahead of a copyright reform quick-fix. While some in the copyright community, including the Bulte committee, have expressed frustration over the slow pace of Canadian copyright reform, we have benefited from our slower approach by identifying the unexpected and detrimental consequences experienced elsewhere.

The apparent "imperative" to adopt a fast, radicalized approach to copyright reform is clearly driven by the perception of a need to compete with other nations that are similarly driven. And which country is actually in the driver's seat, pushing peddle to the metal, as it were? The same country whose slogan takes on an interesting reversal irony - "The land of the free and the home of the brave."
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Posted 16:02 by Mark Federman permanent link
Plus ca change...

"When war and market merge, all money transactions begin to drip blood."
-- Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt, Take Today: The Executive as Dropout, p.211, 1972.
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Posted 16:49 by Mark Federman permanent link
Voices Without Votes Help Wanted: Editors and Correspondents for Voices Without Votes 2004

McLuhan Fellow Peter Deitz's project, Voices Without Votes 2004, is looking for a few good people to serve as editors and correspondents.

Online Editors will:
* Select highlights from the Voices '04 site to be featured alongside other compelling content;
* Draft weekly op-ed pieces that concern some aspect of the 2004 U.S. Presidential election;
* Assist in the preparation of our newsletter and other communications.

Online Correspondents will:
* Solicit Dear America and Dear World letters from their immediate location;
* Conduct exclusive interviews with interesting world citizens;
* Prepare reports about world opinion and U.S. politics to be featured on our blog.

If you're interested in helping out this important project, please send an introductory email and writing sample to Peter Deitz.
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Posted 10:11 by Mark Federman permanent link
R.I.P. Ray Charles, 1931-2004

I'm afraid he has hit the road, Jack, and won't be comin' back no more. And, sadly, the world is a more silent place. He once said, "I also know it's not a question of how long I live, but it's a question of how well I live." His soul helped us all live well. Rest in peace.
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Posted 12:09 by Mark Federman permanent link
Questioning the Value of Business School

During my talk to the alumni of the Rotman Business School last Friday, I challenged them with the following riff on innovation:

Innovation is a substantial, non-linear change in a situation that is observable by its effects. And more than non-linear, it is non-deterministic in nature. This means the outcome is not directly predictable from what has come before. And, the effects of the change that ensue from an innovation sustain and create substantial changes in the ground or context in which the innovation is situated. This has several major implications. You cannot plan innovation. You cannot manage innovation. Once you begin planning and managing, you create deterministic conditions that, by definition, stifle innovation. You see, innovation is an emergent property of the complex, chaotic system that is our business environment. It requires autonomous agents, proximity and interactivity - both feedback and feedforward. Innovation stands in stark opposition to all the good management principles you have been taught in this fine school. And, believe it or not, you have been specifically taught not to notice innovation when it occurs.

I see some incredulity in the audience - and especially among some of the professors in the audience. Let's take a little quiz to see what haven't you noticed lately about innovation. How many of you were taught to ignore your competitors? Oh, I know that sometimes your competitors will drive you to distraction, and it's the distraction that you must learn to ignore. We actually spoke about this a few moments ago in the context of GroceryGateway.com, and we saw how the awareness of what business you're really in enables you to figure out which competitors to ignore, and from which to learn.

Let's try another. How many of you learned not to listen to your customers? This lesson is the secret to the success of a little company in Silicon Valley… you may have heard of them… Adobe Systems. We'll come back to this one. How many of you were taught that to be successful, at least in the North American economy, you sell neither products nor services? Oh, come on… that one’s obvious. You mean to tell me you’ve never walked into a Second Cup or a Starbucks? Okay, here's the next question. How many of you were present in class the day you learned to give away your intellectual property as a competitive advantage? The example here is another one of these funny business model, Silicon Valley start-up things. This one is called Intel.

I then went on to describe how many of the most successful business innovations are derived via the reversal, or evolutionary quadrant of the Laws of Media tetrad. (Of course, lots more is covered in McLuhan for Managers: New Tools for New Thinking.)

Essentially, what I wanted to accomplish was to raise some critical awareness of the limits of the audience's business education. Well, in the May 20th edition of The Economist, there is a special report on business schools, including this artcle that questions whether business schools are teaching the right things.

A different complaint is that business schools fail to teach their students the right things. The strongest advocate of this view is Henry Mintzberg, a professor at Canada's McGill University. In "Managers Not MBAs," a new book, he argues that conventional MBA courses offer "specialised training in the functions of business, not general educating in the practice of management." Their students are often too young and inexperienced to learn skills that, in any case, are often easier to acquire in the workplace than sitting in a classroom. "Conventional MBA programmes train the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences," he complains. They ignore the extent to which management is a craft, requiring zest and intuition rather than merely an ability to analyse data and invent strategies.

Maybe that is why, as Mr Mintzberg gleefully points out, a list of America's most-admired business leaders (Warren Buffett, Herb Kelleher, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Jack Welch and Oprah Winfrey) contains not a single MBA. And that is in spite of the fact that a growing proportion of chief executives, at least in America, now has an MBA.

...

Roughly the reverse of Mr Mintzberg's complaint is the criticism advanced by Rakesh Khurana of Harvard Business School, who is writing a book on why management has failed to develop as a profession. He points out that other activities in which society prizes a sense of restraint, judgment and the pursuit of the common good, such as law, health care and religion, have evolved into professions. ... "At the heart of professionalism is the renunciation of certain things," claims Mr Khurana. American managers have not obviously been keen on renunciation in the past decade.

There is, of course, value derived from the instrumental education of conventional business schools. But real learning must transcend the conventional curriculum and, despite the valient efforts of Rotman's Dean, Roger Martin, with initiatives like the Integrative Thinking Institute and a new focus on incorporating design principles into business education, MBA graduates tend to know too much and learn too little.
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Posted 17:57 by Mark Federman permanent link
And Now For Something Completely Different

From my friend, Franke James of The James Gang, who brought you the wildly popular Office Politics and the whacky take on last year's mayoralty race in Toronto, Whack the Mayor...

Greetings! Thought you'd enjoy hearing that we've created a sequel to Whack the Mayor called Whack the PM. It roasts the leaders in the upcoming Canadian Federal Election. (Unlike the National TV broadcasters we did not ignore the Green Party!)

Visit "Whack the PM" polling game and strategic voting tool.

Notice the strategic voting advice on a riding-by-riding basis... It is based on an analysis of voter's desired outcomes, the predicted 2004 finishing positions in each riding, and the actual 2000 Federal Election results in each riding.

Love to hear your feedback!

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Posted 16:47 by Mark Federman permanent link
Meanwhile, Back at the Current Election...

I've been meaning to write about the imminent Canadian election, scheduled for June 28, because the message of the discourse has been bothering me tremendously of late. If the news media and polls are to be believed, Canadians are apparently a churlish lot, and are either incredibly selfish, or collectively suffering from mass Alzheimer's Disease.

Part of the democratic calculus of any election revolves around whether the incumbent party and leader "deserves" to have another term. The relative deservedness of office for any sitting Prime Minister should logically focus on the results of the prior mandate: Is the country better off, in general? Are we collectively farther up the economic scale compared to conditions of the last election? Are we healthier, caring for our disadvantaged better, setting a good example for the world, enriching our lives, creating a legacy of which to be proud? There is no government, past or future, that has ever been, or will ever be, able to claim complete and absolute success on any of these criteria. But what the electorate should be judging is the trend. This is the essence of deservedness.

But instead, we have two major issues dominated this consideration: The first is the "sponsorship scandal," in which some number of millions of dollars were syphoned off to advertising agencies in Quebec that support the Liberal Party - and the number of millions usually is inflated to include the money that actually went to the legitimately intended recipients to be sponsored. The second is the "fact" (and I use that word loosely) that the provincial Liberal Party government in the province of Ontario reneged on its election promise not to raise taxes in its first budget, despite the real fact that they inherited a fiscal house in a horrible mess, thanks to the creative accounting of the Mike Harris/Ernie Eves Progressive Conservative Party.

For those readers who are unfamiliar with the Canadian system, let me say that the provincial and federal parties are quite distinct and relatively independent of each other, especially when it comes to policy. The only commonality between Paul Martin's federal Liberals and Dalton McGuinty's provincial Liberals is the name, "Liberal."

Yet, the Canadian people are retrieving their parents' punishments and calling for a "time out" for the federal party because of these two sins. "Go sit in your room and think about what you, and your "brother" Dalton did. And when you're really sorry, you can come out... say in four to five years from now."

Besides the silliness of this logic - and the echoes of "in a democracy we get the government we deserve" ringing in my mind's ear - my fear is that Stephen Harper, the leader of the new Reform... err... Alliance... oops... Conservative Party, is probably telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - and so help us God!

The last time we had such a truth-telling, hyper-focused political leader in these parts, it was Mike Harris and his "Common Sense Revolution," that decimated health care, nearly destroyed the public school system by declaring war on teachers, caused several deaths of people on welfare (like the woman who died, literally roasted to death, while serving a house arrest sentence in her tiny house, simply because the reduced welfare payments didn't provide enough for her to survive) and left the province with a huge deficit, despite so-called balanced budget laws.

This time the stakes are higher. Not only is Harper a fiscal conservative from the Mike Harris school (although unlike golf pro Harris, Harper has an M.A. in economics), when it comes to social policy and the role of the judiciary, he is closer to a libertarian. And this aspect threatens the uniqueness of Canada, and its role in the world.

Harper would have us move closer to American doctrine vis-a-vis foreign policy. In this, Canada would follow countries like Australia, the UK and Italy, whose governments are at odds with the will of the people, and if Spain is any lesson, will soon pay the political price. However, the most devastating damage may be done to the independence of our judiciary, and in this we stand distinctly apart from our southern neighbours... well, I suppose they are more our neighbors.

In the United States, Supreme Court judges must undergo political scrutiny, with hearings before Congress prior to being called to the high court. In Canada, despite the appointments being nominally political, made by the Privy Council, nominees are actually vetted by judicial peers before the decision is made. Our Supreme Court has distinguished itself with the prominence of its justices and generally good law that it hands down. More important, the Supreme Court is a final check on the "tyranny of the majority" potential of a democracy, maintaining that the Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the supreme law of the land, overruling even Parliament itself.

By pledging to "reform" the process of appointing judges by subjecting them to political scrutiny, and by stating that he will not hesitate to invoke the "notwithstanding clause" (the constitutional mechanism that allows Parliament to overturn a Supreme Court ruling, essentially pulling the plug on the Charter for a specific instance) Harper threatens to remove what has made us a society truly distinct from the United States, especially over the past four years. Even worse, Harper is now reported as saying that he would only appoint "judges selected for their willingness to adhere to the legislated views of elected MPs." In other words, to be appointed as a Supreme Court justice, a judge would have to agree to limit the scope of their judicial perview beforehand. Rather than being an independent branch of government, the judiciary would become subsidiary to Parliament and the politics of the day - our highest court effectively reduced to the position of a backwater sheriff elected in a politically-charged process.

The Conservative leader is very good at "staying on message" and avoiding discussion of his social policy views - the Globe and Mail suggests that it is because they don't interest him as much as fiscal policy. But Harper has set the stage for any private members' bill to be brought forward from members of his party that would limit abortion rights, enshrine marriage to be only between a man and a woman, bring back capital punishment, move away from the current track to decriminalize marijuana and to make it available as a prescription medication. In other words, he may not be running on these issues, but we can be 100% certain that his party is.

What surprises me the most are the voters in Ontario. We have just suffered through eight years of so-called Common Sense that was anything but, and now we must pay the price for our electoral foolishness. Harper waves Harris-like tax cuts like "the juicy piece of meat carried by the burgler to distract the watchdog of the mind," and we are hypnotized to forget. Or, we are so bent on sending "Team Martin" for a time out (or, being Canadian, I suppose to the penalty box) that we will ignore the ground effects of Harper's message.

This line of discussion may sound like a resounding vote of support for the Liberal Party, and a repudiation of the Conservatives. That is not my intent. Instead, I am calling on Canadians to carefully consider the message - the effects - of all the parties' policies, both those that are stated and those that are easily noticed if we choose to carefully look.
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Posted 16:27 by Mark Federman permanent link
October Surprise

I saw this one on boingboing. October Surprise is running a poll, asking visitors to predict what sort of "surprise" will occur that will affect the upcoming U.S. election. The poll results, up to the minute are here, with the leading contender being the capture of Osama bin Laden, followed by a massive terrorist attack on U.S. soil. In a linked article, Maureen Farrell asks, "Will the 2004 Election Be Called Off? Why Three Out of Four Experts Predict a Terrorist Attack by November."

In Nov. 2003, you might recall, Gen. Tommy Franks told Cigar Aficionado magazine that a major terrorist attack (even one that occurred elsewhere in the Western world), would likely result in a suspension of the U.S. Constitution and the installation of a military form of government. "[A] terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world -- it may be in the United States of America -- [would cause] our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event," he said.

This is something I said a month before the good general, in an interview I gave to Voices Without Votes 2004, a site that invites the world to write a letter to America, expressing individuals' views on the critical November election. I stand by the comments I made then, and the conclusion I came to during the interview:

Traditionally, Americans approach the vote for president as a choice between two men, two parties. I think the choice this time around is different because of everything we have discussed. The choice now is fundamentally how the voters of the United States want to define the United States from now into some foreseeable future, not forever, but for some foreseeable future. How do the voters of the United States want the rest of the world to regard them?

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Posted 13:10 by Mark Federman permanent link
How to Determine What Business You're Really In

Every year the alumni of the Rotman School of Management here at the University of Toronto get together to re-experience "old times" and to accomplish the primary purpose of B-schools today - networking.

The conference is tomorrow, and this year's theme is "Business Design: The New Competitive Weapon," and I've been invited to give one of the four breakout sessions. As of today, over half the conference has signed up for my session on How to Determine the Business You're Really In, and Other Tales of McLuhan Thinking, Innovation and Integral Awareness. The abstract reads like this:

What haven't you noticed lately? Determining the business you're really in requires developing an awareness of the dynamics and effects that emerge from the business when considered as a McLuhan medium. McLuhan's Laws of Media are a particularly useful tool that provides non-judgemental clarity of perception into these effects. IBM's initial success, loss of industry dominance and subsequent recovery is a prime example of how the company's nominal business differs from "the business it’s really in" when viewed through the McLuhan lens, an insight that is applied as well to Microsoft, Amazon.com and GroceryGateway.com. Examples of how "creating an culture of innovation" requires one to use the media law of reversal to break through conventionally-trained business thinking are demonstrated among some of the most successful companies in computer software, food service and electronic component manufacturing. "To be able to perceive 21st century dynamics is to … change the tools with which we perceive the world and thereby restructure the way we think about our business."

The Rotman alumni have to wait until tomorrow to hear it, buy you can get an advanced look at the content of my talk here [pdf], naturally published under Creative Commons.
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