Posted 09:37 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Star Reviews McLuhan for Managers

A great review of McLuhan for Managers in today's Toronto Star by McLuhan biographer Philip Marchand. Marchand relates a typical McLuhan story: McLuhan "got a job at the University of Toronto, in 1945, and began exploring the effects of new media such as radio and television on our culture. Among other things, he discovered that the effect of watching television, regardless of the content, was radically different from the effect of reading print material, regardless of content. He said, "The medium is the message." And he still worried about money. When his friends, including not only [medievalist-turned-management-consultant Bernard J.] Muller-Thyme but a rising young theorist of management named Peter Drucker, invited him to address groups of business people, he accepted eagerly. In his talks, he made sweeping and visionary pronouncements about how new electronic means of communication were making corporate structures and hierarchies obsolete, transforming specialized jobs into multiple role-playing, over-turning linear thinking. Half of his audience gave up after five minutes of this. The other half agreed with the businessman who said, after one such talk in Montreal in the early 1960s, "If nothing else, it was good entertainment.""

Marchand apparently likes the approach Derrick and I took with McLuhan for Managers: "Unlike many McLuhan disciples, [Federman and de Kerckhove] do not try to ape the dizzying, aphoristic style of the master. They write in a lucid, straightforward manner — a rarity in literature by and about McLuhan — and do a good job of explaining key McLuhan perceptions about "media temperature" (hot media versus cool media) and the relationship between "figure" (a new or conspicuous feature of the environment) and "ground" (the familiar environment). But the main feature of the book is its promotion of "tetrads" as a thinking tool for managers. ... McLuhan, would be happy, no doubt, to think of managers coming up with "action steps" after getting their brains going with his tetrads. Heck, forget the action steps. He'd be happy just to think of all these lonely managers getting their brains going, action steps or no action steps. That's all he wanted to do, really, in his long career as a professor of English literature — to stimulate that part of the body that keeps our ears apart. If nothing else, it's good entertainment. "

And stimulating new thinking is indeed the main purpose of our book!
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Posted 00:27 by Mark Federman permanent link
Fighting the Death Sentence

Which organization, asks author Don Watson, now claims to have "a deep commitment to the customer" in its mission statement? No, it's not Walmart, McDonald's or Dell. It's the CIA. And that sort of cliché-laden newspeak throughout the public domain is skewered in Watson's new book, Death Sentence, The Decay of Public Language. Or how about this doozy from a university's mission statement: "To provide outcome-related research and consultancy services that address real-world issues [whose] approach to quality management is underpinned by a strong commitment to continuous improvement and a whole-of-organisation framework."

Watson decries the same sort of awareness-killing clichés that we talk about in McLuhan for Managers. Jargon-laden reports, memos and briefings regularly deplete insight and innovation in corporations and government departments alike. Worse, such language dehumanizes its users, turning what should be human interactions into factory-like business processes. Decisions that should be made by applying judgement and experience are based instead on analyses expressed in stock phrases devoid of content and meaning. We assume that we understand, and that the understanding is shared; all too late we realize that no one understood anything.

What's to be done? "Watson suggests, first, that people and organisations put a moratorium on certain words and phrases. He says this will force people to rediscover words that have fallen into disuse. Organisations can set targets for expunging words or rediscovering them. The best weapon, says Watson, is laughter. People should turn their backs, tap their pens, put their handkerchief on their heads when they hear it. He thinks it is not too late but "it is important to satirise it as quickly as possible"." In McLuhan for Managers, we call this sharpening the clichés into probes, and using them to achieve new insights into old problems. There are other tools as well, of course, but language comes first; language not only provides us the path from inner to "utter;" it puts us out of our mind, a great place to start when seeking an anti-environment!
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Posted 13:27 by Mark Federman permanent link
Bloglines Now Manages Email Subscriptions

I use Bloglines as my news aggregator that allows me to follow the 30 or so blogs I regularly follow. Thanks to the magic of Real Simple Syndication (RSS) I can read the headlines and part/all of blog postings. If they are particularly interesting, I head over to the website to read further or comment. RSS is proving to be a powerful way of syndicating content, making what we used to call "push technology" useful. However, a holdover from the early days of the Internet, listservs, don't have RSS feeds, and have to be managed as "subscriptions" among the spam. This has changed, as the clever folk at Bloglines have now introduced a way to manage email subscriptions. You create an email address at bloglines.com, and use it to subscribe. "You can create an unlimited number of special Bloglines email addresses that are tied to your Bloglines account. The email addresses show up as subscriptions in your My Blogs page, and email sent to those email addresses appears as new items. When you create a Bloglines email address, a subscription is added to your account. If you unsubscribe from that subscription, the email address becomes invalid and mail sent to it will bounce. Email subscriptions are great for announce-only or broadcast mailing lists that don't provide RSS feeds. They are also useful as temporary email addresses." Really! Simple! Syndication - even of email!
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Posted 12:48 by Mark Federman permanent link
Liberal Party Threatens to Sue Website Critical of PM

Boing Boing pointed us to this one. A law firm apparently representing the Liberal Party of Canada has sent a cease an desist notice, threatening to sue a website critical of pur new Prime Minister. using copyright infringement as an excuse. Here is a page from paulmartintime.ca that describes the exchange of emails, beginning with veiled threats from Paul Martin's own webmaster, and ending with the ever-watchful legal eagles becoming involved. In a way, it's heartening to know that our relations with the United States have improved under the new Prime Minister that we are adopting their litigious style in using out-of-date copyright laws to suppress satire, critical commentary and parody. And of course, we all know that by threatening a lawsuit, ten times as many people will find out about the otherwise unknown site that casts a critical eye on the PM and his new government. You just can't buy that type of publicity!
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Posted 10:11 by Mark Federman permanent link
Barlow in Blogland... and A Friend Writes from Baghdad...

How cool is this? John Perry Barlow has joined the blogosphere. And in true Barlow style, his first... well, to be completely technical about it, second... entry is entirely clueful. His friend Alissa Everett writes her Thoughts From Baghdad, giving a non-idealogue's-eye-view of the actual reaction of the people to the capture of Saddam Hussein, and how utterly meaningless it is compared to people simply attempting to live.

"Iraq is in chaos, ruled only by force and money. There are no telephone or mail systems, let alone governmental or judicial systems. No one obeys traffic laws, the police have no respect and criminals rule the streets. Civilians are armed to the tooth, though the military frequently manages to confiscate weapons from those who solely need them for protection, and people are afraid to leave their homes from 9pm to 7am. There is no reward for being an upstanding citizen, nor is there any punishment for not... there is no system at all. It is no wonder that Saddam's capture is anti-climatic in light of the current situation. This tyrant, this dictator, who murdered, tortured and devastated every Iraqi, captured at last; yet, the daily life of the average Iraqi citizen no better, if not worse than under his regime. Basic needs are unmet, people are unemployed and they see no future."

The capture of Saddam raises another interesting problem. Although I'm sure there are many Iraqis who would want him summarily executed, the rest of the world insists on a "fair trial," recognized by international authority. But a "fair" trial means a vigorous defense, and a vigorous defense means Saddam calling all those who could potentially set a context of justification for his heinous deeds. Will key people in the current administration - those with whom Saddam did his WMD business, those who closed their eyes to his sadistic madness until their own interests were threatened - be called as witnesses? What new information that has, until now, been classifed will emerge from the testimony? There may be jubilation in Washington now as George W. Bush's popularity enjoys a temporary, reactive uptick. But don't count on a speedy trial - the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is not something with which the current administration may be entirely comfortable.
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Posted 08:35 by Mark Federman permanent link
Blogging and Publicy

David Weinberger has this piece commenting on Rebecca Blood's article in The Guardian that is a mixed review of blogs and blogging. On one hand, Blood seems to be saying that bloggers who see themselves as some sort of pioneer are misguided and our enthusiasm is overblown. On the other, she says, "A weblog is something fundamentally new ... and those who try to define the phenomenon in terms of current institutions are completely missing the point." While she seems at a bit of a loss to put her finger on what makes blogs so unique in our experience, she closes with the observation that "weblogs have changed personal publishing so profoundly that the old rules no longer apply. We are at the beginning of a new age of online publishing - and I predict that this generation of online pamphleteers is just the first wave." Weinberger then takes issue with her use of the term pamphleteers. But perhaps the application of a little McLuhan can help clear up the problem.

Blogs are an instance of "publicy" - the McLuhan reversal of "privacy" - that occurs under the intense acceleration of instantaneous communications. Our notion of privacy was created as an artifact of literacy - silent reading lead to private interpretation of ideas that lead to private thoughts that lead to privacy. Blogging is an "outering" of the private mind in a public way (that in turn leads to the multi-way participation that is again characteristic of multi-way instanteous communictions.) Unlike normal conversation that is essentially private but interactive, and unlike broadcast that is inherently not interactive but public, blogging is interactive, public and, of course, networked - that is to say, interconnected.

There are many other aspects to, and instances of, publicy besides blogging, of course. But blogging is perhaps the most vivid example of publicy of mind that represents the outering of stream of consciousness or inner dialogue.

The retrieval of pamphleteers (not pamphlets themselves, but the people and the act of pamphleteering) is particularly interesting, as it was the pamphleteers all the way back to the 16th century who were agitators for societal change in everything from educational policy to government. Marshall McLuhan did his PhD dissertation themed on one such early pamphleteer in The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time. Nashe's pamphleteering focused on the controversy between public education as delivered by the Church, and the emergence of the new liberal arts.

Given the effects of bloggers that we have observed over the past couple of years (eg. blogs used to give a new dimension of participation in an expanded classroom, the fate of Sen. Lott, the Howard Dean Experience) the retrieval of pamphleteers strikes me as particularly apt.
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Posted 01:01 by Mark Federman permanent link
CA Magazine Reviews McLuhan for Managers


A nice review in CA Magazine. Mike Brassard writes, "McLuhan’s works by themselves are very difficult to interpret and apply. However, all is not lost. In eight short chapters, Mark Federman and Derrick de Kerckhove courageously interpret McLuhan and his perception for the businessperson. They introduce a way of thinking that businesspeople can apply to forecast and weigh the future, contextualize the potential significance of elements or ideas, and relate them to their present operations. Armed with this insight, applying McLuhan’s perception to a business challenge becomes possible. ... Becoming aware of new sometimes very obscure elements in familiar situations, identifying their context and effects in different situations to explore their potential, while not losing sight of that familiar situation is the key to understanding and exploiting McLuhan. Being able to looking at that element itself, not simply as that element, but as a potential new factor as spawning new situations with their own possibilities and effects is the leap that must be made in order to apply McLuhan’s perception process." Cool!
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Posted 20:09 by Mark Federman permanent link
Coasean Economics and the End of Political Parties

The Washington Post has a fascinating article by Everett Ehrlich in which he asks, "What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop?" He recalls the work of economist Ronald Coase (who won the Nobel prize in economics in 1991 for his work in explaining that the size of an organization is a function of its cost in managing information. This applies equally to political parties, says Ehrlich, and Howard Dean is demonstrating this as he is "using modern technology to achieve a takeover of the Democratic Party. ... He is creating his own party, his own lists, his own money, his own organization. What he wants is the Democratic brand name and legacy, its last remaining asset of value, as part of his marketing strategy. Perhaps that's why former vice president Al Gore's endorsement of Dean last week felt so strange -- less like the traditional benediction of a fellow member of the party "club" than a senior executive welcoming the successful leveraged buyout specialist. And if Dean can do it this time around, so can others in future campaigns."

McLuhan predicted the flattening of organizations in response to instantaneous communications. Even as corporations no longer need large hierarchies in order to manage the flow of information, and as a result, the dynamics of their business processes, so too political parties. In actuality, Ehrlich notes, "Size is now less of an advantage in organizations, and that means more competition in the global marketplace." It's been our observation that, if anything, size is becoming more of a liability in the global marketplace. Witness the repeated failures of mergers in recent years. Look at your own company and ask whether a larger organization would improve or hinder intra-company communications and business success. And now, watch as the Democratic party implodes, even as it seems increasingly likely to win the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
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Posted 14:03 by Mark Federman permanent link
WSIS and the End of Democracy

Perhaps the most telling comment I have heard about the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) meeting currently in progress in Geneva is "at least they’re talking," referring to the international delegations representing 130 countries. Perhaps that is the most we can expect from formal international bodies comprised of formal delegations from formal nations: talking. Perhaps, when it comes to making the wrong decisions for the world at large, the safest thing we can hope for is that the only thing formal countries would do is talk, since when they are moved to take action in their role of Corporate Nation, they tend, by and large, to put self-interest ahead of human interest.

Solana Larson’s insightful piece in openDemocracy this week describes this fear. "Civil society participants, who represent over 940 interest organisations, universities, think-tanks, and religious groups, were locked out of meetings on some of the most contentious issues. In frustration over the failure of government to come to terms, they have formed a body and created an alternative declaration. ... A clear plan is nowhere in sight. China won't hear any mention of human rights and wants governments to have full control over the internet. The United States and Europe have helped weaken proposals on open source software in favour of proprietary software (like Microsoft's). And many of the wealthiest countries would like all mention of financial support for the developing world erased from the declaration of principles. The reality is that WSIS is not just about bringing computers to the poor. It is also about making money from selling them equipment and software; privatisation of national communications industries; investment and infrastructure. And it is about seizing power over the internet as it spreads. Many governments want to rein it in and have more direct control."

See what I mean? The same pattern repeats in other world-level meetings in which governments, aided and abetted by global corporate interests, attempt to divvy up our world into a twisted game of Monopoly, with the Chance and Community Chest cards designed by Aldous Huxley. Lest you thing that I am about to devolve into an anti-globalization screed worthy of Naomi Klein, allow me to make the following observation: Nations, as we have known them for the past several centuries, are obsolete. Our conceptions of democracy - participatory, representative or otherwise - are in their final stages, even as the word "democracy" itself has become a parody of that noble concept in many countries of the world.

We are seeing instead a rise in reflexive, individual actions that result in powerful emergent forces erupting around the world. In a relatively small way, we saw it several years ago with the overthrow of Joseph Estrada in Philippines. We saw it with the election of South Korea's current President, Roh Moo-hyun. We saw it with the downfall of Senator Trent Lott, Senate Majority Leader in the United States, arguably the second most powerful politician in that country at the time. We saw it in simultaneous mass protests against the invasion of Iraq that occurred in every time zone and on every continent. We have seen it with parallel summits arising opposite formal global events like the WTO meetings, the World Economic Forum, and in alternate declarations being drafted by non-governmental participants at the current WSIS.

Politics is in the process of changing as fundamental aspects of traditional democracy are experiencing frighteningly similar reversals in countries as different as the United States and Zimbabwe, indicating the emergence of a new medium of governance. (And to those whose immediate reaction is, "You can't compare the United States to Zimbabwe," I suggest that revealing observations arise from the act of considering the comparison.) The 2004 presidential race in the U.S. warrants careful observation to glean some of the dynamics of a new, reflexive and responsive politics battling the old. It will be a fascinating race. Not only politics are changing - there are early indications that national governance is in the process of changing as well - slowly, but clearly - if the early news from the new Paul Martin government in Canada is any indication. There is most certainly resistance to the inexorable changes, but resistance to changing the governmental status quo is nearly as old as history itself.

Breakdown is breakthrough, as Marshall McLuhan frequently observed. Perhaps the most useful outcome of the WSIS session will be its ultimate breakdown, pointing to the breakthroughs being achieved in reflexive globalism.
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Posted 15:55 by Mark Federman permanent link
Requiescat in Pace - Marnie de Kerckhove

Today, the McLuhan Program family is one person smaller. Marnie de Kerckhove, wife of Program director Derrick de Kerckhove, passed away peacefully, after a year-long battle with liver cancer. Her will throughout the year was indomitable, her spirit continually strong, despite two series of chemo-therapy. In fact, whenever I saw her, I could not tell that she was ill - her voice remained strong, her smile never flagged, her wit and intelligence continued to shine through. Marnie died at midday, surrounded by her family. Our sincerest condolences and prayers for strength and healing go to Derrick, and to their children Charles and Dak, and all those who loved Marnie so much.

A famous verse from Proverbs comes to mind, one that is so wonderfully appropriate, and celebrates the life of Marnie de Kerckhove.

A woman of valor, who can find? Far beyond pearls is her value.
Her husband's heart trusts in her and he shall lack no fortune.
She repays his good, but never his harm, all the days of her life.
She seeks out wool and linen, and her hands work willingly,
She is like a merchant's ships; from afar she brings her sustenance.
She rises while it is still nighttime, and gives food to her household and a ration to her maids.
She considers a field and buys it; from the fruit of her handiwork she plants a vineyard.
She girds her loins with might and strengthens her arms.
She senses that her enterprise is good, so her lamp is not extinguished at night.
She puts her hand to the distaff, and her palms support the spindle.
She spreads out her palm to the poor and extends her hands to the destitute.
She fears not snow for her household, for her entire household is clothed with scarlet wool.
Bedspreads she makes herself; linen and purple wool are her clothing.
Well-known at the gates is her husband as he sits with the elders of the land.
Garments she makes and sells, and she delivers a belt to the peddler.
Strength and splendor are her clothing, and smilingly she awaits her last day.
She opens her mouth with Wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She anticipates the needs of her household, and the bread of idleness, she does not eat.
Her children rise and celebrate her; and her husband, he praises her:
"Many daughters have attained valor, but you have surpassed them all."
False is grace, and vain is beauty; a God-fearing woman, she should be praised.
Give her the fruit of her hands, and she will be praised at the gates by her very own deeds.

Proverbs 31:10-31


Update: The public memorial service for Marnie will be held on January 6, 2004 at 6:30 p.m. at St. Basil's Church, 50 St. Joseph Street, Toronto (at the corner of St. Joseph and Bay Streets).
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Posted 10:33 by Mark Federman permanent link
Virtual Reality

I'm now in Sweden at the Högskolan för Lärande och Kommunikation i Jönköping. I'm doing a short series of lectures and a couple of playshops for first year media and technology students - a greatly abridged version of the course we just completed in Kiel. Last night at dinner I commented that the great Swedish corporate icon, Ikea, is an instance of virtual reality: Last year, when I visited the opening of the new Ikea store at the local "A6 mall," I was transported instantly to Etobicoke, Ontario (west-end of Toronto) in which an identical store opened a couple of years ago. The store I physically entered had the same layout, the same design, the same funny words on the signs. All my senses told me I was in Toronto, yet I "knew" that I was still in Sweden. It was a very weird feeling - my "knowledge" of where I was conflicted significantly with my senses, and the senses won as far as my experience was concerned.

Last night at dinner, the professor who is my host here told me that the head office of Ikea is really in Copenhagen, and the current president is a Canadian. Much of the design is now done in Switzerland, and the production, of course, is done all over the world. The country with the most Ikea stores in the world is Germany. In fact, she went on, Volvo is now owned by Ford, Saab is no longer owned by the Swedes...

Yet all of these brands export Sweden, or at least the modern mythology of Sweden. They all help the rest of the world form an image of what Sweden "is," even though Sweden is far different from Kavli and Knäkerbröd (which I have probably misspelled.) What exists in the minds of most people in the world is the virtual reality of Sweden - Virtual Sweden - while physical Sweden is something else altogether. And in thinking about it, many, if not most, countries are not themselves in the day-to-day experience of the world, but their virtual representation, the alternate reality that the countries themselves initiated, but we collectively construct.

It gives a new meaning to that Microsoft cliché, "Where Do You Want to Go Today?" When countries are re-formed by their extended virtual existences, we are never quite sure where we are, where we've been, or where we're going.
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