(Download 40-47_Alan Moore)

The society and the economy of No Straight Lines

Naughton makes 4 keys points… [1] The first confrontation between the old order and a non-linear world, [2] The lying of political elites to electorates, [3] This is a wake up call  [4] The entropic decline of our political systems. He also says this,

Like most people, I’ve only read a fraction of what’s been published by WikiLeaks, but one thing that might explain the official hysteria about the revelations is the way they comprehensively expose the way political elites in Western democracies have been lying to their electorates.

And,

What WikiLeaks is exposing is the way our democratic system has been hollowed out. Governments and Western political elites have been shown to be incompetent (New Labour and Bush Jnr in not regulating the financial sector; all governments in the area of climate change), corrupt (Fianna Fail in Ireland, Berlusconi in Italy; all governments in relation to the arms trade) or recklessy militaristic (Bush Jnr in Iraq) and yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted in a really effective way, their reaction is to try to silence the messenger — as Noam Chomsky pointed out.

Why is it a battle for middle earth, or indeed all earth? Because I believe that we as a humanity are beginning, as I argue in my my forthcoming book No Straight Lines: making sense of a non linear world, to renegotiate the power relationships of how we work, trade, live, govern, educate ourselves. We are at the toxic tail-end of our industrial society, the literacy that accompanies the web, the ability to engage in the world in a different way means we, as a society, begin to ask bigger questions about that society.

For example Douglas Rushkoff points out that,

But like literacy, the open source ethos and process are hard if not impossible to control once they have been unleashed. Once people are invited to participate in say, the coding of a software programe, the begin to question just how much of the rest of our world is open for discussion, formerly esoteric subjects such as Urban Design or Monetary Policy become much more central as the public comes to recognise the power of these planning spcialities to establish rules through which society actually comes into existence… we become more conscious consequently, and more aware or how our day-to-day decisions can be better aligned with larger issues.

This leads to the idea that a Gestalt Switch has been triggered, in No Straight Lines, I write,

I wonder whether we are once again after a period of time taking matters into our own hands. I ask this question as John Keane in The Life and Death of Democracy refers to Charles Malik[1], who was renowned as someone who profoundly believed in the principles of human rights. How do we, asked Malik gain the rights of humanity on a global scale? Indeed, Malik believed that if humanity felt that the various institutions of governance failed us we would take matters into our own hands – and we did. Yet in many ways, that was still confined to regions and countries. Is it possible this time around that through communications connectivity the scope changes perspective? “This new galaxy of media has no historical precedent,” says Keane. It is: “a new world system of overlapping and interlinked media devices that integrate texts, sounds and images and enable communication to take place through multiple user points, in chosen time, either real or delayed, within modularized and ultimately global networks that are affordable and accessible to many hundreds of millions of people scattered across the globe”[2].

I sense the possibility of history in the making. In today’s world the powerful are often “feeling the ‘pinch’ of the powerless”. Politics as a consequence has become viral, even visceral, which implies that traditional frameworks of governance have become somewhat outdated, and consequently ineffectual. Therefore Keane concludes, in the age of networked communications, combined with organisations that are constantly monitoring the motives and actions of various powerful parties, “combine into something of a Gestalt switch” which makes us think differently about how we perceive power and who wields it.

As Frantz Fanon once famously said, “A people will only be free when the control their own communications”. I am not for a free-for-all anarchist existence – but I do think we are forcing a conversation about trust, power and control; who has it, and how it is wielded now and in the future.

[1] Keane, p.733

[2] Keane, p.738

Dave Evans

Who gets it and who doesn’t and why? (I say the biggest challenge companies have in adapting is more cultural than anything else.)

I believe that we all “get it” but that there is of course a caveat to this. We all “get” social media, for example, when we are shopping and want the best deal, when we want to know, in advance, that this thing we are about to buy really works for the purpose for which we intend to use it. We want to know where to look for the best jobs, and to be referred or introduced to the best contacts to improve our chances for getting those jobs. On the subject of advertising–being as it is the channel through which we might actually learn of these products and other opportunities–when we are relaxing at home we don’t want interruptions that take us away from the programs we enjoy watching. In this sense, we all “get it.”

However, this odd transformation takes place when we walk into our offices, when we don our “work hats.” Suddenly, we expect everyone to want to pay attention to us (and only us), to show an interest in what we make, and to go out and buy it: To see things our way, and to readily shift attention when our spot or print ad or dinner-time telemarketing call or highway billboard presents itself.

“But wait,” as we say in the business, “there’s more.” We also expect people–customers, employees, suppliers–to do what we say simply because we said it. How much justification, unbiased proof, or fact-based evidence can one really put into a 30 second spot or half page (mostly image) advertisement? As an example of just how little, consider the typical US pharmaceutical print ad: The primary ad components are amazingly free of actual data…but flip the page in the magazine and you’ll see 8.5 x 11 inches of fine print, which ironically contains the actual information needed to properly evaluate benefits conveyed by the smiling couple in the visual ad.

So, there is this whole notion of control–over attention, over the message, over the interpretation of the message, over employees and how they are incented to work–that in many ways, at a practical level, really shows who gets it and who doesn’t. And, it’s often the same people, just in a different context: A middle aged professional walks into an electronics store, wanting to see what’s new and innovative, and to be told, in straight terms, which of these devices makes sense given his stated needs and lifestyle. That same guy walks into the office on Monday and barks at his subordinates, expecting them to do his bidding because “that’s how we’ve always done it” and with little more actual authority than a passing reference to the “SVP” that follows his name on the office door: Same person, operating alternately between “getting it” and “not.”

Social technology disrupts authority, and it does so without regard for the particular subject. The question of “who gets it” and “who doesn’t,” when looked at this way, becomes more a question of “Is it convenient for me to “get it” right now?” This is of course the driver in the push for social technology, embedded in the fabric of the marketplace, of the workplace and in our social infrastructure: By making information available everywhere–regardless of who the actors are–then collaborative behaviors are reinforced across the full range of contexts. It’s difficult, for example, to hold a position–indefinitely and based on only authority–that contravenes the facts when the facts are known to all, and the fact that (we/they) all know this is itself known to everyone.

This is what “Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement” is all about: As a business leader–where my prior book was distinctly for marketers, I wrote this book for C-level and similar organizational leaders across all disciplines–your employees, partners, suppliers and customers have knowledge that can make your products and services better, that can create a stronger brand and add economic value to your organization. Social technology, applied at a business level, is about creating a strong organizational culture that thrives on collaboration, that listens to customers, and that builds for itself a long-term pathway to profits and growth. But, you have to be willing to operate collaboratively.

So, a personal heartfelt perspective.

My driving ideal remains: To see my son and his generation grow up in a world with less interruption, where the information needed to make a smart choice is available. This is, for me, what the web, and now the advent of social technology is all about. When I talk about “engagement” in terms of business, for example, I talk about it not in terms of “engaging with an ad by clicking it” but rather by “engaging with a business b becoming a part of it.” That is an entirely different proposition, and one that radically redefines the objectives of organizational leadership.

I think it brings people closer to your work?

In the end, we are all a part of this, and we all have a stake in it: Social technology is, in a sense, the infrastructure that will facilitate realization of the solutions needed by the next generation of thinkers, leaders and people everywhere. By connecting, friending, sharing…we can get to know each other, and learn to operate our markets in ways that raise value everywhere through appropriate transparency rather than seeking to exploit information (resources) for the benefit of a few.

If there is one book you should buy to understand what next generation business engagement looks like, using social media then, this is the book. You can follow Dave on twitter @evansdave. Digital Voodoo is Dave’s company

What has changed and what has not!

What has changed since 2007 when I wrote the first book (released in 2008) is that social technology has gone mainstream. As I was writing the first book, Twitter was in use by primarily among digital technology fans and those concerned with the intersection of society and technology: SXSW 2007 was one of the first really notable Twitter events that started to catch mainstream attention, still far in advance of the big uptick in member growth that happened in 2009. Similar story for Facebook: In mid-2007, with 50 million or so members globally, Facebook opened its API to developers, driving new social technology. In 2008 membership crossed 100 million and in 2010 it crossed 500 million.

I started writing the second book in early 2010 while working with 2020Media (Public Relations) in India. It became really clear that this next wave of social technology was truly global at a societal–and not just technology production–level. I saw people doing things with social technology in India, Asia and South America, where I work with video community startup Looppa, that were essentially identical to what was happening in Europe and North America. People were playing off of each other, sharing ideas and experiences to make more informed choices.

In this view, the big change is simply the “now mainstream” adoption of social technology, and as such the mainstream expectation that businesses are likewise participants on the social web, an expectation that is still only partly met in actual practice.

What inspires you and what leaves you feeling a bit glum?

What inspires me is the continued, frenzied growth in applications–across a very wide range is uses–that encourage the sharing of ideas, experiences, and information. In 1995, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, speaking at MIT for the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Dr. Vannevar Bush’s seminal Atlantic article “As We May Think,” remarked that the web should be “a sea of shared knowledge” wherein people could work together on the problems facing the world, and could do so in a context that encouraged “those who followed to accept, adopt or correct” these collaboratively developed solutions. Looking around today at the both the significant challenges and outright problems along with the incredible opportunities and boundless capabilities, the promise of social technology is truly inspiring.

That said, the majority of the social applications are still based on a fundamentally questionable assumption: If one amasses a sufficient audience whose attention can be systematically interrupted, those interruptions can be used to promote or sell goods and services. In other words, in the most cynical view of the social web it’s all about regaining control over the (global) “TV” audience for the purposes of advertising, a business model that is at the heart of the majority of social platforms and technology startups.

If you have a point of view why not leave a comment or question for Dave, or maybe tweet your question to Dave Evans @evansdave.

There is No ctrl + z

Not that you would believe it – the roll call of companies, and even industries that lined up to be deniers, defenders, accusers, litigators, jailors even, were emphatic. Yet the transformation (or the emergence of transformative cultures, enabled by communication technologies) of nearly society on this planet cannot now be ignored. I argue we are in a process of renegotiating what kind of world we want to live in. Something Richard Sennett believes is a return to the Enlightenment but on terms more appropriate to the world we live in today. The spectrum is extraordinary, those that embrace what this new non-linear world can bring and those that wish it dead, like a Parrot in a Monty Python Sketch. The end is inevitable for companies premised upon a linear world – that refuse to embrace a new world view. But how are they going to transition? How are they going to get stuff done?

Pragmatism in these times is always a worthy companion, and so I commend to you a book and project by Dave Evans called: Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement. (“The Next Generation of Business Engagement” shows you how to apply collaborative, social technology to business, shortening the innovation cycle and building stronger relationships with your customers, partners and suppliers.) I met Dave Evans two years ago in Austin Texas @sxsw, via Andy Hunter. Dave struck me from day 1 as a unique person, low key and modest but it was quite clear he had a clear perspective on the world. We connected and although approaching the world from different perspectives, I felt we had arrived a the same place.

Dave’s new book is a true ‘how to’ in a sea of hyperbole, it speaks of how to tack your organisational mainsail as the turbulent end of the 20th Century goes on around you. I asked Dave where he had come from and what has changed for him on the journey he has undertaken. Our conversation will be episodic.

I was thinking where you started with social media and hour an day to this next project.

“Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day” was a starting point for two ideas, important for both marketing–where I’ve spent about half of my career–and for business in general, which is where I’ve spent most of my time. It became clear to me (and of course a number of others) that the Internet, and the web in particular, had changed the context in which businesses operate and as such changed in a fundamental way the mechanics and many of the truisms of marketing. The leveling of the playing field between those with information (sellers) and those who needed it to make smart choices (buyers) for example underwent an upheaval as the web made the spread of information nearly frictionless. So, my first book focused on how a marketer might make sense of this–shifting thought patterns from “talking” to “listening” for example–and then, once that mindset was adopted, to how this new form of media may be incorporated into the existing planning models and measures that guide business marketing.

This necessarily led to the second book: “I’ve got my head around this, and I’m actively participating on the consumer-facing social web. Now what?” My second book, “Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement” tackles the “now what” and asserts that the same technologies that connected consumers in the marketplace can be used to connect entire businesses with their supply chains, with their influencers, with their employees and of course (in even stronger ways) to their customers.

The result is an holistic look at the relationship between businesses and their marketplaces, and a redefinition of the concept of engagement as it is used in a business and marketing context.

Gabriel Shalom is a young filmmaker who just completed a film called The Future of Money. It features interviews with young social entrepreneurs who are attempting to create networks like Flattr and Giftflow where social currency can replace the paper kind. Many participants were interviewed over Skype, sitting in their bedrooms, and the whole thing was thrown together with $6,000 raised from a large group of donors.

“There’s this whole parallel economy based on trust, transparency, and open data”–phenomena like couchsurfing, coworking, community gardens, and hackerspaces, says Shalom.

The Future of Money from KS12 on Vimeo.

Today our mutual interests are more aligned, as I have come to recognised, or did quite a while ago, that it seems that as we evolve into a world more joined and connected up, people and companies seemed like they are increasingly doubled parked in parallel universes. For me, I recognised this 6+ years ago, doing work for a whole list of bluechip clients who invited SMLXL in to innovate for them, yet they struggled or failed completely in the end to execute – because organisationally they could not cope with what we had designed for them – compelling and creative communications strategies, that were built around the principles of Engagement, and the brand as a transmedia story.

As I like to say, it is only when companies start to hemorrhage cash, that they start to pay attention. Although there is still a great deal of parallel parking going on, companies are also in what is described as transition trauma. Which means, they know there world is changing, but are now traumatised as to what to do about it.

Well you could start by reading Dr. Deisers new book Designing the Smart Organisation. Roland explores how large-scale corporations are using the power of dynamic corporate learning approaches to drive innovation, enhance cultural values, master post-merger integration, transform business models, enhance leadership culture, build technological expertise, foster strategic change processes, and ultimately increase bottom line results.

The blurb says, for any company that wants to compete in the 21^st century, Designing the Smart Organization offers inspiring perspectives for integrating corporate learning as a core business practice that will create sustainable strategic and organizational capabilities. I have read the book, and I am not doing this as a favour to Roland, I am suggesting that the case studies are so good, and the book so well written, anyone scratching their head about the organisational challenges they face right now would do far worse than spend some time ingesting what Roland has to say.

He writes,

The imperative to innovate and reinvent oneself in these changing contexts has become ubiquitous, and permanent. The capability to learn is not just nice to have; it has become a key factor for survival – not only for people, but for organisations, industries, and our global society.

and he makes this telling point,

Organisations need to learn to let go of operational control of non-strategic activities and learn to act successfully in networks. Giving up control is a major challenge, one that has little to do with teaching knowledge or skills but with developing the social and political skills to orchestrate a companies stakeholder universe.

The traditional leadership model of command and control works fine within the boundary of each organisation of the network, but hierarchical power does not work between the memners of a network that co-creates. The interplay between the players needs horizontal coordination and adjustment processes, and these follow the logic of leading without formal power.

Immutable Law #1—Value Over Culture
Immutable Law #2—The Law of the Ecosystem
Immutable Law #3—Mobility Empowers
Immutable Law #4—The Value of Time Zones
Immutable Law #5—Mobile-Specific Business Models Are Essential
Immutable Law #6—The Future Is Simplexity

I found this to be a very insightful read especially Law #6 – Simplexity. When a service or device becomes more powerful but simpler to use because of the increasing ‘intelligence’ of the hidden back-end. They point to the iPhone (though the engineering of the iPhone according to some does suck up bandwidth), and of course we can add, I suggest, the BBC iPlayer to that list as well, as businesses like, TxtEagle, Layar, GrowVC, Local Motors and Ushahidi, which all use the harnessing of data and distributed intelligence to play a critical role in the performance of those businesses and services, as well as being ‘easy to use’ powerful tools and services. That is my personal opinion. I also very enjoyed the point they make that value in mobile is what counts, not culture. As many like to dismiss Japans mobile culture as an aberration. I would urge anyone thinking about the business of mobile to buy this book, read it, study it, re-read it and understand its message. I was speaking and running workshops in Helsinki last week at the Nokia Siemens Networks Marketing Forum and it was interesting to see a more engaged international audience looking for solutions to seemingly intractable problems.

Lots of case studies and insight and the authors will tell you that Mobile Social Networking started in Japan.

The authors are Philip Sugai, Marco Koeder and Ludovico Ciferri. (more info here).

This is what its all about:

Are YOU willing to de-school in straight line thinking & re-school in the new literacy of commerce & communication? (And it’s not Social Media.) In our networked society, you either move beyond thinking about marketing, media & business as either digital or non-digital, to have the competitive advantage or hemorrhage the bottom line.

Our interactive networked world isn’t about vertical silos, traditional notions of product & service creation, mass media & marketing. It is about the massive flows of people, who are connecting, collaborating, organizing & creating in a manner that has nothing much to do with a linear approach.

Learn in an interactive Virtual MasterClass, premised upon No Straight Line principles:

-      How to transition into a “blended reality” business & marketing framework, creating meaningful customer experiences to power business success

-      How to harness the power of the networked society to “co-innovate” a customer-centered brand

-      How to align the untapped “hidden assets” in your company with Marketing & Communications to drive sales

You can register here

Also:

(1) Recording and slides are provided after MasterClass

(2) TWO attendees have the opportunity to be selected for HOTSEAT “No Straight Line” advice from me during the MasterClass. You are asked to submit a write-up of your “straight line” situation (less than 150 words) to support@authorsglobe.com by Friday, June 11, 5 pm EST.

My interest in his work, is that communication technologies are political and can be wielded with great power – Politics as a consequence has become viral, even visceral, which implies that traditional frameworks of governance have become somewhat outdated, and ineffectual. Therefore Keane concludes, in the age of networked communications, combined with organisations that are constantly monitoring the motives and actions of various powerful parties, ‘combine into something of a Gestalt switch’ which makes us think differently about how we perceive power and who wields it’. And what does that mean for Britain? Here are a few thoughts.

Here he introduces us to The Life and Death of Democracy.