Posted 00:10 by Mark Federman permanent link
So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish

I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. As regular readers of this blog know, I have reported on my view of the world through a McLuhan lens, and have never (well, almost never) pulled my punches. I feel it is vitally important for each of us to observe our small part of the world with whatever clarity we can muster, in order to be fully cognizant of the effects that emerge.

Last week, a member of the McLuhan Program took great exception to the comments I made about the McLuhan Lecture on exhibits, despite the many emails I received congratulating me for calling that lecture as I saw it. In fact, a concern was raised that my summaries of the Lectures would be considered the "official" responses of the McLuhan Program, and this might be problematic for some.

Rather than compromise voice (not to mention academic and personal integrity) I decided that I would change blogging locations and move my voice over to New Digs at What is the (Next) Message? If you have enjoyed my commentary over the past few years, why don't you come on over to the new neighbourhood? The new RSS feed is here.

It's been an interesting exploration until now, and will only get more interesting as I have an opportunity to share more of my own research and work. I hope you'll join me at my new blogging home.
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Posted 07:29 by Mark Federman permanent link
Best Line in the Karl Rove Scandal

...comes from today's Globe and Mail: "For Bush to get rid of Rove would be like Charlie McCarthy firing Edgar Bergen."
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Posted 12:39 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Labour Tango

Toronto is not having a garbage strike, the same way that we did not have a transit strike a month ago. When the TTC workers set their Friday deadline, the good folks of this good burg did their good chicken little thing, clucking to the press about how awful a transit strike would be. The deadline passed, and a tentative settlement - later ratified by both the politicians and the union membership - was agreed to by the real deadline of the Sunday evening news.

When the outside workers set their Friday deadline last week, the good folks of this good burg once again did the chicken little dance, clucking to all and sundry about the last garbage strike that lasted 16 days, and oh, my, this coming week is going to be another heat wave! And once again, the deadline passed, and a tentative settlement was reached - a tad too hastily, in my view - since they were done by the noon news on Sunday.

Welcome to the Toronto School of Labour-Management Dance. By understanding the power of reversal in management - and particularly the reversals that are occurring throughout the corporate landscape - we can begin to understand the changed relationship among labour, management and the public at large, in which all parties participate to create the experience, or event, of labour negotiations.

Historically, in the model of "workers as machine components" that characterize the industrial-age, factory model of corporations that we are all used to, the worker's ultimate option with respect to perceived management intransigence was to effectively stop the machine, that is, withdraw their labour. The theory in this production-oriented model was that the company would lose production, and hence money, and therefore be pressured to settle with the workers. Although the workers would lose income, the union's reserve fund - the so-called strike warchest - would cover expenses. But times have changed, and so has the nature of money, business and technology.

Now, a business's sources of revenue are diverse and often indirect, so that workers' withdrawing of labour is not as effective as it once was in hampering a business's ability to do business. As well, technological efficiencies often allow fewer management personnel to temporarily replace larger number of workers. Finally, with arcane financial instruments, companies can effectively insure themselves against financial loss when labour unrest looms, lessening the impact of a work stoppage. But neither side completely reckoned with the effects of the reversal of consumers to producers.

This seems to be especially true in the case of municipal employees, as the Toronto example demonstrates. Both labour and management engage in a very well choreographed tango, designed to ultimately avert the strike, but with great drama. The reality of a municipal strike of any important services is that both sides lose. Politicians lose whenever the citizenry are unhappy, and nothing makes citizens unhappy like a kaput transit system or stinking garbage. Workers lose money during a strike, and that is never recoverable. And both sides lose if an arbitrator is brought in, since it is almost never the case that an arbitrated settlement gives either side what they want. Inevitably, an arbitrated settlement is never as good as what could be agreed-to through negotiations.

What is needed to complete the dance is the music provided by the hand-wringing and the lamentations of the citizens. Someone apart from the direct labour negotiations has to care in order for the complex choreography to work. That explains the delayed start to serious negotiations, the final Friday deadline, the over-the-weekend talks, the repeated calls for the mayor to intervene, and his well-scripted phone conversations with the labour leaders, while refusing to actually sit down at the table. It also explains the "real" deadline that is set for the Sunday news timetable. After all, people have to know that they're going to work on Monday.

This also explains how the NHL owners and players blew it big time. They overestimated the loyalty of their fans. Simply put, with no one really caring about the existence of professional hockey, the players and owners were left to their own devices, and both sides took adequate care of their fiscal houses. No public interest means no chorus means no dance means no resolution when the consumers become producers in a very interesting way. They are the ones who both pay the piper, and call the tune for the Labour Tango.

All of this is fodder for my latest research on the changing nature of the corporation that began with the changing nature of employee engagement and intrinsic motivation. "Role*" is a new way to look at what motivates us as individuals, and has proven to be tremendously effective in helping workers make sense of their work situations, and managers make sense of motivation issues in their teams. Interested in learning more? Just ask!
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Posted 10:30 by Mark Federman permanent link
The End of Innovation - For Now

New Scientist has an interesting article that suggests we are Entering a dark age of innovation.

According to a new analysis, far from being in technological nirvana, we are fast approaching a new dark age. That, at least, is the conclusion of Jonathan Huebner, a physicist working at the Pentagon's Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California. He says the rate of technological innovation reached a peak a century ago and has been declining ever since. And like the lookout on the Titanic who spotted the fateful iceberg, Huebner sees the end of innovation looming dead ahead. His study will be published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change.

Huebner plotted 7200 major technological and scientific innovations that were identified in a recently published book, The History of Science and Technology, as a function of human population. What Huebner found was that the rate of technological development per billion population is the same today as it was in 1600.

The article is worth reading, as it discusses various ways of measuring "rate of innovation." Innovations per population is one way of looking at an innovation rate among others, but it is an interesting one, since it seems to include the factor of interconnectivity and communication, which is the basis of the thinking of the Toronto School of Communication. As people who have heard me speak recently will know, I have been playing with the "300 year" meme, that is it has taken about 300 years for one of the major iconic accelerations of communications - phonetic alphabet, Gutenberg press - to become "ground" in society, that is, for them to be so pervasive in their effects that we think their effects are a law of nature, rather than an artefact of humanity. The most recent nexus point, the invention of the telegraph, is still working its way through society; as I see it, we still have about 140 years to go. Relative to Gutenberg's history-changing invention, circa 1450, the year 1600 looks a lot like 2005 in terms of technological, and cultural, epochal shifts.

While a compare and contrast exercise might be a bit simplistic to hang one's hat on, it certainly does bear noticing. It also suggests that in terms of disruptive change and adoption, we are at the peak in our epoch, and therefore should be looking ahead in an attempt to foresee what world we are creating for our great-great-great-grandchildren, a century or so from now.
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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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Posted 15:53 by Mark Federman permanent link
What the Fuck, Indeed

You don't have to hang around the McLuhan Program for too terribly long before being subjected to my rant on how time is running backwards. In effect, we are losing a decade every four or so years, and I suspect it began, albeit slowly, when the Berlin wall fell, and the United States of America began to experience hyper-acceleration, heading into reversal. I started to notice that the first of Bush-the-Younger's administrations was feeling very much like the 1970s, but running backward, as if the tape of the Vietnam era was playing in reverse. And now, we are in the 1960s, staring hard at the social values of the late 1950s, McCarthyism and all. But all of this is probably familiar in one form or another to those who have participated in the discourse around here. (BTW, if these trends continue, as Disco Stu says, Whoa! or was that, Ayyyyyyy!)

An interesting side effect (that, as McLuhan reminds us, is the real effect) is the neo-puritanism that is arising, particularly when it comes to the mass-media. The apoplexy that seized the US concerning Janice Jackson's physique (to the bemusement of the rest of the world) has led to calls by senators for even more stringent restrictions on what can and cannot be said, and shown, on the airwaves, and in public. Won't somebody think of the children.

Well, as it turns out, "right-thinking" people are. I noticed this item about a week ago in the Toronto Star about a young athlete from Toronto's famous all-girls school, Havergal College whose enthusiastic encouragement to a team-mate to, and I quote, "now run your fucking ass off!" resulted in the relay squad being disqualified from the match. And this morning, on CBC Toronto's morning radio show, Metro Morning, a panel comprised of host Andy Barrie, the Globe's Jan Wong, and CBC Newsworld's newest and presumably hippest commentator, George Stroumboulopoulos, discussed Barrie's use of the the word, "fuck" during a conversation on cocaine addiction last week. Think of the children? Wong reported that while she recoiled at the affable host's momentary fucking lack of affability (or is that lack of fucking affability, or perhaps lack of affable fuckab... never mind) her children went on eating their cereal, not even noticing a word that is so fucking common in the workplace, the home, school, in movies, on television, that it's fucking suprising that people are making a big fucking deal about anyone using the word, fuck.

I'm reminded of a famous Lenny Bruce routine in which he used the word, fuck, so fucking much, that he fucking took away its fucking power to fucking shock anyone. "When you curse someone, you shouldn't say, 'Fuck You!' but 'Unfuck you!'" Think about it.

There is a more important ground operating here, one that transcends the "won't somebody think of the children" issue of so-called proper language. Lenny Bruce said it himself, actually, "Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government." If you control speech, you control thought. If you control what is acceptable to say, to print, to show, you control the ability of people to form opinion, especially dissenting opinion. Among several surveys conducted in the Unites States over the past couple of years, between 30% and 49% of those surveyed thought that their Constitution granted too much freedom of speech. High school students are regularly seeing draconian restrictions on rights of free speech - not necessarily the right to say, fuck, but the right to be critical of the current President. Won't somebody think of the children? In fact, there are many somebodies in positions of power who are very much thinking of the children, and the type of compliant adults they will grow up to become, to cement what the United States of America appears to be evolving to.

A decade regressed every four years. And we're now in the 1950s, with all its attempted repression of speech and sexuality, and its intolerance and bigotry and blind nationalist jingoism.

Repeat after me: What the fuck.
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Posted 22:19 by Mark Federman permanent link
Building the Internet from the Ground Up: The Indonesian Experience

ASIAN INSTITUTE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
in association with Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia
present
Dr. Onno Purbo

Building the Internet from the Ground Up: The Indonesian Experience

Wednesday, June 1, 2005
12:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Munk Centre for International Studies
North House – Room 208N
1 Devonshire Place

A light lunch will be available

Please register by e-mail to ai.events@utoronto.ca or call (416) 946-8996

“Dr. Onno Purbo is a self-confessed tech rebel. He was educated in Canada but returned to Jakarta to set up a technology movement whose innovative technologies prey on the margins of legality. His open-source philosophy is designed to equip Indonesian kids to participate in the knowledge economy.” –Ken Wiwa, Globe and Mail

Dr. Onno Purbo received his Master’s from McMaster University and his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo. He is a former IDRC Fellow and the author of numerous articles and books about the Internet in Indonesia.
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Posted 09:42 by Mark Federman permanent link
Political Theatre

High drama this week in Ottawa. Belinda bolts for better berth. Harper horrified as House holds. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. (Okay, lots of people used that one.)

A couple of days ago, when the news of Belinda Stronach's defection hit, the U of T public affairs (no pun intended) office called me and asked if I had a comment from the anti-environment. My chat with Karen ended up in a humorous riff, comparing the drama in Bytown (the original name of Canada's capital city, Ottawa) with classic Greek or Shakespearean theatre. After our conversation, I quickly dashed off the riff to capture it for future reference, and sent it to Karen.

Well, the folks in the office there howled, and Karen shopped it around. The Star said they wanted to run it, but it was too late for the next morning's paper. They would run it the following day, they said.

The truth is, newspapers, in their obsolescence, simply cannot capture timing, and humour is all about timing. Thursday's paper came and went, and by that time, the focus had shifted. So, for the record, here's what my commentary looked like, within an hour after the Belinda news struck:

Belinda Stronach Crosses the Floor: Musings from the anti-environment

The current session of parliament plays out a classic dramatic tragedy – an ancient Greek archetype of destiny fulfilled (or not), or a Shakespearean tale of lust for power, blood on both hands and floor, and none left alive by the final curtain.

Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is a direct disciple of Pierre Trudeau, who usurped Paul Martin Sr.'s aspirations to become leader of the Liberal Party, and hence Prime Minister, in nearly four decades ago. History repeated with the classic battle between Chrétien and Martin Jr. – the current Prime Minister – as the latter's aspirations were put on hold for three parliamentary terms. Martin the younger conspires against his leader and perennial foe, and forces him from power, politically assassinating all of the former leader's supporters and allies.

But the evil that existed between Martin and Chrétien is first foretold by soothsayer (and Auditor-General) Sheila Fraser, and later called forth from the darkness below by the wizard Gomery, from whose cauldron emerges the most foul of brews. The ghost of Liberal's past returns to haunt Martin, even while wide awake in Question Period. "You there! Boy! What day is this?" "Sorry, sir. It's not Christmas yet!" What the dickens?!

Meanwhile, Martin's currently-in-exile rival Stephen Harper, in cahoots with the leader of a rebel tribe, Gilles Duceppe, plot Martin's downfall – Brutus and Cassius to Martin's Caesar. Or perhaps a greater tragedy applies – one whose very mention in theatres is considered taboo, lest misfortune befalls the House.

"Macbeth" Harper meets three pollster witches in a heath, who tell him, "All hail Harper! Hail to thee, Thane of Stornaway! All hail Harper! Hail to thee, Thane of Sussex! All hail Harper! Thou shalt be king hereafter!"

Sussex? King? Not a bad idea, muses Harper, now filled with lust… for power, for pow-er. (He's from Alberta – "Texas North" – after all!)

Did Harper misinterpret the three weird sisters? Did he think that "king" referred to the way he would intend to govern as Prime Minister? Or, were the weird fortune tellers merely referring to former Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King (who regularly consulted the spirits – including that of his dead dog). Regardless, witches' portents always end up going tragically wrong in Shakespearean tragedies.

Harper Macbeth:
Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? / Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. / Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? / I see thee yet, in form as palpable / As this which now I draw. / Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; / And such an instrument I was to use. / Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, / Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, / And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, / Which was not so before. There's no such thing: / It is the bloody business which informs / Thus to mine eyes.

And now, Lady Belinda Stronach Macbeth, crosses the floor. Does she see principled debate in decline? Does she question the values and agenda of her leader? What does she see?

Lady Belinda Stronach Macbeth:
Yet here's a spot. / Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why, / then, 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky!--Fie, my / lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we / fear who knows it, when none can call our power to / account?--Yet who would have thought the old man / to have had so much blood in him. / The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? / What, will these hands ne'er be clean?--No more o' / that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting.

And at the end of the scene, the Doctor says:
Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds / Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds / To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets: / More needs she the divine than the physician. / God, God forgive us all!

Indeed. God forgive us, everyone.

And what of Peter MacKay, once putative beau of the fair Stronach? Far from tragic, MacKay becomes Bottom of A Midsummer Night's Dream, with ass's head, attempting in vain to woo Titania, until she is reunited with Oberon, King of the Fairies. Enough said!

The importance of media studies in such a context is that it provides us the mechanisms with which we can construct an anti-environment to better understand the dynamics of otherwise complex situations. It is not understanding the mass-media's treatment of a situation that is necessarily interesting or important, but rather our ability to perceive the underlying dynamics of the situation itself that is crucial to an informed public – and electorate.

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