Posted 19:22 by Mark Federman permanent link
Hate Something, Change Something

Those folks at Honda (UK) produce some great stuff. They're in the process of launching a new model of Honda diesel produced by an engineer who hates - or rather, hated - diesel engines. The campaign for this new version of the Accord is surrealistic, funny and cute. As "all advertising advertises advertising," this one ranks right up there. (Make sure you click on the "see the film" link.)
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Posted 22:31 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Paradox that is AT& T

A friend of an acquaintance of a friend who is involved with *casting (* = pod, web, blog, etc.) at the Supernova conference on technology and business shares a tidbit of oddness with me. AT&T seems clueful enough to sponsor the "blogcasts" (handled with utmost capability by David Weinberger), yet won't allow anyone but a well-vetted PR flunkie to speak to "the media," including podcasters. There is a rumour, or so I hear, that they didn't even want their Labs honcho, Hossein Eslambolchi, to speak to Weinberger, since Eslambolchi argues against the end-to-end network that is the heart of Weinberger's (among others') Cluetrain philosophy.

So the networking* company doesn't understand the value of networking**. Sweet.
*=(data/IP); **=(social)

What's not so sweet is the tension created by entrenched interests with respect to the end-to-end conversation. Simply put, Eslambolchi has a network to run for business customers, and if there are any "real people" attached to the network, they are, directly or indirectly, business customers. Thus, move applications into the core of the network once they are innovated, and that way, we'll have an safe and efficient network for everyone. On the other hand, true revolutionary innovation arises from tinkering, and tinkering doesn't happen in a locked-down environment. Further, when the tinkering results in innovation that would threaten entrenched business interests (as opposed to the network itself), how many of you believe for a moment that it would be invited in to the protected core?

Eslambolchi's main argument is that without a "smart network," business applications cannot scale to their full potential because of the scourge of viruses, trojans, phishing and other nefarious activities. But that argument, while true, creates effects that restrict innovation to the large companies. One could equally argue that the ability for users to write their own applications creates the same Eslambolchi lack-of-scalability effect. Indeed, Microsoft makes that very argument with respect to their Trusted Computing initiative (meaning, any application you run on your PC will have to be vetted by Microsoft).

What's wrong with this picture? Let us not forget that sometime between ten and fifteen short years ago, AT&T didn't know an IP router from a toaster. Their main business today is entirely based on applications growth that would not be permitted under the scheme that Eslambolchi is suggesting. In other words, he is basing his business strategy on an approach that says, "we're in a good position, now freeze!" He is not alone in wanting to adopt this approach. It is the perennial strategy of the entertainment business, the steel business before global competition, the proprietary software business, the cattle business in the U.S., the softwood lumber business. It was IBM's strategy through the 1970s before being decimated in the 1980s.

Eslambolchi cannot see this, of course. He is a prisoner of his ground, his environment, and thus is McLuhan's specialist, the "one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy." Somebody get that man my book.
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Posted 08:33 by Mark Federman permanent link
Canada's New Copyright Bill - Industry 1, Canadians 0

Michael Geist provides a quick read and analysis of Canada's new proposed copyright legislation, introduced into the House yesterday. Not surprisingly, the big winners are members of the content industry:

There is simply no denying that the lobbying efforts of the copyright owners, particularly the music industry, have paid off as they are the big winners in this bill. The bill focuses almost exclusively on creating new rights for this select group including a new making available right, legal protection for technological protection measures, legal protection for rights management information, the ability to control the first distribution of material in tangible form, new moral rights for performances, a reproduction right for performers, and an adjustment in the term of protection for sound recordings. The bill also includes a statutory notice and notice system that will virtually compel Internet service providers to notify subscribers of alleged copyright infringements and to retain relevant personal information for 6 months.

While slightly more clueful than their American counterparts - Canadian lawmakers decided to focus on infringers rather than on infringing technologies - this legislation ironically means the beginning of the end for the likes of CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) members. It's called "eating your seed corn."

As Geist points out, under the new legislation, if passed, Canadians will be paying multiple times for the same content, delivered in various ways. "They may pay once for the CD, once for the digital download, and once through the private copying levy for the blank CD. Attempts to circumvent protections on the CD in order to make a personal copy (a copy already paid for via the levy) will now constitute infringement in Canada." In other words, the industry's business model is still firmly focused on the business of selling you the packaging - the aluminum disk coated in plastic, the data stream and whatnot - rather than the music, movie or text. However, the market has clearly demonstrated that people are indeed interested in the music, movie or text, and are willing to pay for it, with a minimum of packaging intervention - we are so ecological, aren't we? When there is a disparity between what people want to buy and what vendors want to sell, there will always be an opportunity for a clever person to create a business wedge that disrupts the vendor.

In this case, CRIA's members attempting to hold on to an archaic and obsolescent business model has already alienated the next generation of talent - the seed corn. Fewer and fewer new acts are signing CRIA-member contracts. Fewer and fewer new releases from the big companies. More and more independent artists, independent labels, artist consortia. More music, soon more movies, and increasingly, new business models that emphasize indirect revenues.

What do I mean by indirect revenues? Think of the band that builds its fan-base by providing its music for free download, then fills its concert venues with paying customers. Think of Open Courseware, where an institution provides its course notes freely, and recruits the best scholars to attend (for fee) for the experience of the classroom and the engagement with the authors of that Open Courseware. Think of Open Source software developers who "contribute" time and effort, and receive both a product far larger than their individual contribution, and an increase in their personal economic value. Think of me who offers up the text of my talks, and course materials under Creative Commons, and the insights of this blog, and... and... umm... well, let's just say that I'm hoping the theory holds, because Lord knows the U of T ain't paying me for what I do around here.

The proposed legislation isn't as bad as it could have been, but certainly does not recognize the realities of the world to which we are evolving. This is not at all surprising. Historically, the content industry has been notoriously bad at seeing the present, let alone predicting the future. Given their current state of somnambulance, it's only a matter of time before they become completely irrelevant. Let's hope there's some cultural varieties germinating in the wild that will be able provide our aesthetic sustenance by then.
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Posted 08:02 by Mark Federman permanent link
Reputation Trumps Market

As we make the transition from a Gutenberg era to the era of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity (and no, I don't believe we are yet fully through that transition), almost all the organizing forces of the previous society are facing reversals. While reversal aspects in areas such as education and governance/government are becoming clear, other institutions are a bit more murky, perhaps because their effects are buried deeper in the (prior) ground. Take market economics, for example.


eBay could be seen as the epitome of the open market - buyers and sellers coming together to transact business with a very low barrier to entry. Almost anyone can offer almost anything for sale with a minimum of third party intermediation. the auction format ensures that all commodities find their appropriate value - something is worth precisely what someone else is willing to pay. Nearly everything from the now-legendary, (and, as it turns out, apocryphal), Pez-dispensers to virtual boy/girlfriends, not to mention planes, trains and automobiles, is available on eBay.

Almost, but not quite. When "everything has its price" is accelerated beyond the limit of its potential, it reverses into a subversion of that market, namely, what has become MasterCard's tag-line - priceless! Such is the case with tickets to Bob Geldof's upcoming fundraising extravaganza, Live 8. Apparently certain contest winners, who received complimentary tickets to the event had posted them on eBay for sale, and the market began to do its thing, quickly setting the value between $600 and $1000. Given that Live 8 is intended to raise money for some of the world's most impoverished countries and citizens, there is something about the "free enterprise spirit" that seems incongruent here.

So, with Geldof calling eBay "an electronic pimp," cyber-vigilantes effectively
shut down the auction, and forced eBay to recant its initial position that "we are allowing the tickets because we live in a free market where people can make up their own minds about what they would like to buy and sell," read [a statement from eBay Canada]. "A ticket to the Live 8 concert is no different from a prize won in a raffle run by another charity and what the winner chooses to do with it is up to them."

Not entirely so. The reversal of market economics is (perhaps) reputation economics - and not, I believe, the so-called gift economy - and this realization has significant implications for the future of business. Combined with the notion of emergent transparency, it suggests that how an enterprise makes its money will become more substantially important than how much money it makes. Additionally, it suggests the obsolescence of commodity-based transactions, in which one receives money for the direct commodities produced, whether they are trinkets or one's own time. The extension of this reasoning is observable already, across many markets for both tangible and intangible goods and services that already exist. Just look for the disruption, turmoil and reversals.

As you might guess, this will become a topic of some serious contemplation and writing in these parts over the next few years.
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Posted 16:43 by Mark Federman permanent link
Fashion Cares? Not According to Some

Inspired by last week’s talk on fashion, and a recent event here in Toronto, Pam writes:

I thought this might be relevant since we were just at the fashion lecture yesterday. I was looking at the Toronto Star today [last weekend] and in the main section there is an article on the Fashion Cares event [, an annual fundraiser for Toronto AIDS committee, sponsored by the city’s fashion industry]. I think that over the last few years this event has lost its focus... The theme of this year's event was glitzy cowboy and “Bollywood chic.” Personally, I think there is very little connection to be made between Bollywood/India and cowboys; think about it: 'real' cowboys herd cows that are to be killed and eaten - a big problem for most east Indians.

And as is pointed out in the article one could retrieve a "Cowboys and Indians" theme of movies which basically misrepresented 'Native Indians' as the bad guys so by extension is Bollywood Indian the new bad guy substitute. Anyway the majority of the article is about how the event appropriated, misrepresented and exploited another culture. Is this perhaps some type of charity event 'neocolonization' of third world countries and their culture, eg. fashion?

Also, the event seems to have incorporated and abused religious symbols in a way that would never be tolerated in Bollywood. Where did they get the idea that abusing religion was part of Bollywood? Strict Hindus avoid any alcohol, depictions of nudity or smoking and, they would never have religious icons or images associated with these things. Usually it is the bad characters in Bollywood films, who are depicted smoking, drinking and taking advantage of women/children/underpriviliged. The article also mentions a designer that created shoes with the images of Hindu deities. How insensitive - a shoe made of leather - probably cow, with a Hindu God on it. This either displays ignorance, and if they were aware, then a lack of respect for other cultures. As usual the bottom dollar counts - if it makes money exploit it.

I think the fashion business is all about celebrity and money and very little art. Why should they be concerned about copyright and patent for fashions that incorporate ideas/symbols or designs appropriated from 'other' cultures/arts/crafts. This is comparable to the pharmaceutical companies patenting remedies/plants that have been used by 'other' cultures for years, the result being only the company can use these items and make money from them. In fact they would then have the right to ban the growth and use of the patented item by others. This includes the originating culture whom they can then charge for the use of the appropriated item even if they continue to grow and use it for traditional purposes.

In a nutshell, I agree. Although fashion designers have their pulse on the zeitgeist, as I said in my notes, they are a probe into society, and sometimes that probe ends up ugly/inappropriate/insensitive/ignorant. I think that by asking the question of "what ground is being revealed by this fashion probe?" we can indict not merely the fashion designer, but the larger society.

I'm left to question whether the temptation to appropriate "other" cultures (noting that I really don't know what "other" means any longer in Toronto of 2005) and wear them as satire is just too great for the dominant culture. Indeed, this subtly indicates a duality that exists and pervades the entire "tolerance" discourse. We nominally teach "tolerance" but not understanding and appreciation. The former emphasizes differences and buries prejudices deep below surface politeness; the latter creates a liveable society for all.

If not the fashion designers, the AIDS Committee of Toronto should REALLY be more sensitive.
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Posted 15:06 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Reversal of America and Menippean Satire - "Read, Repeat, Remember"

Articulatory Loop has this poster that was apparently seen on the commuter train between Washington D.C. and Baltimore. Whether the poster is official (unlikely) or a clever satire (more likely), it is a prime example of Menippean satire with respect to the USSA.
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Posted 00:30 by Mark Federman permanent link
ICT & Creativity

I just returned from a very quick trip to participate in a panel on ICT and Creativity, part of a WSIS Preparatory Conference that was recently held in Vienna. Unfortunately, my travel arrangements did not allow me to attend many of the sessions. However, most of the other participants were quite enthusiastic about the day-and-a-half of workshops aimed at developing a draft set of principles to promote and preserve creativity in the face of the advancement of Information and Communication Technologies around the world. Here is the text of my contribution

"Touching Culture"

What we are attempting to do today, and indeed over these two days, is to look ahead to the future of culture in the face of historic change, the likes of which our civilization has experienced only twice before. We are now literally in the midst of a transitional nexus, from an age dominated by visual literacy and all of its artefacts that began in the 15th century, to a culture in which audility and tactility will define the underlying ground for cultural and creative expression. At each of the previous transitions, from orality to literacy in ancient Greece, and from the manuscript culture to that of Gutenberg’s iconic, mechanized printing press, Western society took about three hundred years to effect the transition. You see, it takes about three hundred years for the dominant effects of the underlying and defining technology of the new era to completely receded into the ground so that society can take it for granted – so that there is no one alive who never did not know that technology, nor a world created almost exclusively by that technology. The dominant society inhabits a world in which the prior era’s artefacts were mere historical curiosities, or the stuff of myths, legends and religious beliefs.

Roughly three hundred years is what it has taken Western society in the past to make the complete technological transition, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that we are any different. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in year 161 of the three hundred year transition from the cultural era of the printing press to that of electric communication, marked from the invention and demonstration of the electric telegraph in 1844; we have just crossed the half-way point. What this means is that we should be able to detect some of the subtle changes that have already occurred that provide us with indications of what our society and culture will look like about 140 years hence, and for several centuries thereafter. What this also means is that we will be sorely tempted to believe that our transitional artefacts created using the new technology to implement the old metaphors are “the real thing.” Further, we will be tempted to believe that we must, at all costs, hold on to them, even as they are evaporating like the morning dew by midday.

The dominant technology of the previous era was the book and the printed word. Among the artefacts that came along with the book were the acceleration, intensification, and reinforcement of vernacular languages, and with that the distinct cultural separations that created “the other.” Along with the book came the development of the private mind that could not exist without silent reading, and with that, the whole concept of the individual and the public as distinct entities, the notion of privacy, secrecy, guilt and shame. Among the creative classes, the iconic book created the author (and authority), it created the artist and the composer – and it also created the audience, again as a distinct and separate entity. And with that dominant technology, it was always the case that the “text” – the words, the art, the music – could be removed from both its creator and its creative context.

If we can take any lessons from history – that is, in process, not in specific form or content – our best predictors of what we are transitioning toward can be obtained by observing the reversals of the dominant effects of the technologies and media that now are in the process of being obsolesced. And once we can anticipate the dominant ground of the future, we can effect the world of our choosing by acting in the present.

Already our technological capabilities have created a world in which ubiquitous connectivity is, or is becoming, a reality, even for emerging countries which, for example effect village to village connectivity to the Internet via a WiFi-enabled motorcycle that drives through the Cambodian countryside. With ubiquitous connectivity comes the effect of pervasive proximity. Our experience of reality – literally what we feel – inheres in the tactility resulting from pervasive proximity. We touch and are touched in ways that transcend the apparent visual barrier between the cyber and the physical. It is a only a conception, an artefact of a quickly obsolescent visual dominance, that the screen represents an interface that demarcates reality from non-reality that we often refer to as “virtual.” When measured against the test of the effects of our experience, it is clear that this interface is quickly vanishing. Experience effected through the processes of pervasive proximity means that what we feel online – those whom we touch and those who touch us – is quite real, despite its lack of physicality and materiality. What this means is that under conditions of pervasive proximity, experience transcends our traditional conception of media boundaries. And it is through transmedial experiences that we can begin to observe the emergence of a culture for the global village.

Marshall McLuhan observed that, “the artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present.” But remember that the artist, the creator, as a distinct entity from her or his audience or consumer, was an artefact that was created in the prior technological epoch. Today, we are no longer merely consumers of culture or cultural artefacts. We are instead – all of us – producers of our indicative cultural creations that exist for as long as we are experiencing them — and no longer. This goes beyond what we typically think of as “interactive media.” Where we once thought that we “interacted” with our various media by effecting some pre-programmed action – clicking on a computer screen, or causing tableaux to shift in a museum exhibit when we push a button – we now give way to a new perception. These all-too-common modes of consuming culture are essentially no different than the television remote control, turning us into mesmerized “culture potatoes,” and clearly demonstrate the obsolescence of consumption-oriented cultural artefacts – what I call “interpassivity.” True interactive media are those in whose creation we actively participate. From the emergence of these new cultural forms we experience involvement in depth.

A mass medium was once thought of as one in which a mass of people experienced the same thing at the same time from different locales. It was typified by broadcast – radio, television and the early incarnation of the Internet, whose first use as a new medium was the emulation of the old media. But now, we can further refine our understanding of mass media culture as it is emerging today – that which allows massive participation in the creation of cultural artefacts at different physical times, from different physical locales, with the individual perception of simultaneity and immediate proximity.

The hallmarks of creativity that we are only beginning to recognize include collaborative creation, transmediality, and the elimination of the interfaces – the stark demarcations – among the world that nature created, the physical world that humanity has created and continues to create, and the world that exists in non-tangible experiences. Such a conception almost evokes aspects of magic and mysticism as, I would suggest, our experience of the iconic and almost clichéd metaphor of the global village becomes something more akin to the global tribe, and the creations of a new global culture emerge from the image of the shaman of that tribe, the one who acts as a medium between the visible and invisible worlds, practicing forms of magic that exert control over what otherwise appear as natural events.

But what does the shaman traditionally do? Borrowing from McLuhan’s language, the shaman “puts on” the tribe and wears them as tribal masque, reflecting the totality of the tribal culture all at once, his utterings becoming the tribe’s “outerings.” In doing so, however, the shaman is the sham-man – the no-body – the man who is devoid of his own identity because he assumes the identity of the entire tribe all at once. But McLuhan observed that in the electric age, when we are “on the air,” we are all no-bodies. We are discarnate – our presence is felt, but our bodies are not. In this age of instantaneous communication and pervasive proximity we are all “sham-men” and “sham-women,” increasingly empty of individuality, putting on bits and pieces of the global village’s socio-cultural matrix to wear as our skin.

Thus, we are driven to create ephemeral artefacts that seamlessly connect physical and cyber spaces in ways that correspond to our perceptions and experiences of transcendent reality. We are the embodiment of those artefacts – simultaneously the actors and the audience, the performers and the performance, the spectators and the spectacle; We are the musicians, the instruments and the music itself. It is not the global village that we inhabit, but the global theatre on whose stage we play. Without our presence and intimate involvement at the moment, there is no culture in our time – only cultures of other times. Any latent or lagged expression of culture, as when an ephemeral artefact is captured or fixed in another form, becomes a shadow of the experience, projected onto a different time with a different sensual dominance – typically visual or acoustic. Digitization of an ephemeral artefact is not the artefact – nor even an accurate representation of the artefact – because in capturing it for a different time, the artefact is, of necessity, mediated and hence, changed. A future experience of the artefact, even if it can somehow be technologically reconstituted with complete fidelity, must of necessity be a different experience, and thus will subsequently yield a different ephemeral artefact, because the cultural ground that we embody as a tribe of no-bodies will have changed.

Although there are many consequences of such a leap into the future, I will leave you with one that transgresses the cultural and evokes the political. The future of culture for all of humankind depends on several aspects: the first is the preservation of transnational indigenous cultures – be they traditional, experimental, contemporary or popular. Simultaneously, its future depends on the combination of these indigenous cultures into collaboratively-engendered, emergent forms.

Thus, the ability for everyone to actively engage and participate in creation and reflexive consumption of culture, and cultural artefacts, is paramount. This, however, flies directly in the face of cultural cartels in whose interest it is to maintain a monopoly on production and distribution of cultural artefacts, and who therefore seek to control the means of creation, connection, and collaboration.

Therein lies the role of governments, conventions, treaties and summits: to actively resist partisan commercial interests, in order to protect and nurture the subtle beginnings of the next cultural epoch, the beginnings of which we are privileged not only to witness, but privileged as well to actively participate as its midwives. Since we are all creators, creativity – and the means to express and experience creativity – belongs to everyone, collectively as a public trust.
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Posted 11:02 by Mark Federman permanent link
Is Anyone Else Making the Connection...

...among this taping, that taping, and this news? Just thought I'd ask, since we've been talking about retrievals and going back in time...
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Posted 10:19 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Importance of Reversals

Although Marshall McLuhan himself always maintained that retrieval was the "dominant mode of the tetrad," I tend to find reversals the most helpful. Retrievals give us historical precedent - along the lines of, "how did we react as a society the last time we saw a medium with analogous effects?" (This draws on my idea of the principle of media equivalency, which, if you're teaching communications/media studies and don't know what this is, email me.) But to really get a look at the future, in my view (heh) reversals are where it's at. Reversals observe that, "any medium, when pushed beyond the limit of its (dominant) potential will reverse what were it's original characteristics," and ask, "into what does it reverse?" All great disruptive innovations rely on the process of reversal. Take music downloading, for example.

Forbes magazine reports that both legal and supposedly illegal music downloading has increased significantly over the last year, along with the boom in iPod, and other MP3 players. In fact, Apple Computers has just announced that it " has shipped nearly 12 million iPods in just the last three quarters, representing three consecutive quarters of growth of 500% or higher." Not too shabby. Sales at their iTunes music store has increased 52% year-over-year, while the (I suppose estimated) rate of illegal downloads has increased 25% year-over-year.

Cory Doctorow observes that there is likely a connection among unpaid downloading, paid downloading and iPod sales. Essentially, the availability and practice of unpaid music downloading may drive iPod (and other, similar device) sales, that in turn drives paid music downloading. Note the reversal that gives us the predicable outcome: So-called illegal downloading has as its extension/enhancement a reduction in music sales that, when pushed beyond the limit of its potential, reverses into an increase in music sales, via the growth of player sales.

All of this indicates the usefulness of tetrad analysis in business strategy that allows decision-makers to move away from dichotomous thinking (pro/con, upside/downside, advantage/disadvantage) and towards holistic, integral thinking that eliminates defending one's territory, and reduces adversarial dysfunction in the workplace. Over the summer, I'll be doing several in-house sessions for companies as more people are being to realize that McLuhan thinking for Managers is effective management. If your company could make use of "New Tools for New Thinking," let me know.
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