First off less than 2% of Congress totaling 535 members, have professional backgrounds in science, whereas there are 222 lawyers.

When in 1987 the Federal Communications Commission removed the fairness doctrine of how difficult or controversial news was reported it open the door to more extreme punditry, take a bow Rush Limbaugh. And we have witnessed an increasing line of anti-science perspectives from Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, with the whip held by Newt Gringrich.

And Otto argues right now science is under threat by anti-climate change organisations – between 2009 and June 2010 the energy industry spent half a billion dollars fighting climate change legislation. He writes that 96 of the 100 newly elected Republican members of Congress deny outright that climate change is real or are voting against it in one form or another.

That said Otto argues there are complex forces that are shaping the debate on public perceptions towards science, ‘the moral ambiguity createdafter the dropping of the Atom bomb and living in a nuclear MAD world’, or some of the terrible excesses of toxic pollution that killed and maimed ordinary people – coupled with the culpability of government, the effects of postmodernism on the one hand and the rise of fundamentalist religion on the other smashing into each other. A deep distrust arouse around government and science.

This is the volatile cocktail that combines – commerce, science, truth and politics and results says Otto on an assault on American science that is unprecedented. Though the Barack Obama administration does not get away with it scott free

President Obama’s not much better. Running strong on climate change in 2008, he has since totally de-prioritized it, apparently marginalizing his scientist appointees like Chu, Holdren and Lubchenco, all of them outspoken on climate change, and now appears to be moving ahead with offshore oil drilling, lower air pollution standards, poor carbon standards, and the Keystone XL oil pipeline. In a time when the science has only advanced further and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences says anthropogenic global warming should be “regarded as settled facts” — a time when China’s leapfrogging ahead on clean energy investments in the next economy, that’s not going to take America where we need to go.

Finally Otto refers to ScienceDebate2012 as he describes it, ‘a grassroots campaign for a presidential debate on science, technology, health, medicine and the environment’. Which was born out of Science Debate 2008 which was the largest political initiative in the history of American science.

We are on a journey from a linear world to a non-linear one (click here for more information) and we need good science to come with us. To attempt to shout down science, diminishes us all and limits the possibilities of our world.

For more information on Otto’s perspective read New Scientist October 27th 2011 (subscription required) or the Huffington Post- The un-American war on Science.

Shawn Otto has written book called Fool Me Twice: fighting thee assault on science in America

No Straight Lines, argues that we have reached the nadir of the adaptive range of our industrialised world. Now faced with an unsustainable trilemma of social, organisational and economic complexity, we have entered an era in which the rules we have previously organised our lives around no longer apply. Leaving us with both a design problem and a design challenge which we must urgently solve. By describing an entirely new way for true social, economic and organisational innovation to happen, No Straight Lines presents a revolutionary logic and an inspiring plea for a more human-centric world.

In fact the question is: Is online piracy and ubiquitous free content killing our culture? I believe we must always be open to divergent and different perspectives of the world. We must be prepared to see the world from anothers’ perspective. I do think this is at times a good question to ask.

Morozov writes: Levine’s call to arms – “it’s time to ask, seriously, whether the culture business as we know it can survive the digital age”

But then one has to ask the question for example is Fox News culture? meaningful culture, worthwhile culture. Rupert Mordoch famously said he would make Sky News in the UK more like Fox if he had his way. Just have a read about the delightful Roger Ailes that runs Fox. The mainstream media that presents information as truth that plays a key and important role in shaping the debate about our world, has been found wanting. Is this system worth preserving?

But I persisted with the review – some good points raised. However,

In a chapter subtitled “How the internet could kill Mad Men”, Levine frets about the future of cable television, seemingly unaware of the fact that, back in the 1960s, American broadcast networks did their best to wipe out the nascent cable industry, which survived only thanks to a ruling by the US supreme court. Had the judges followed Levine’s conservative logic, a more fitting subtitle would be “How the networks aborted the parents of Mad Men”.

And how many times have incumbents fought bitterly and viciously to stop others. The telegraph versus the telephone for example. Morozov goes on…

Are new technologies really that much of a threat to the culture industry? Google TV – one of the projects Levine lists among the greatest threats to cable television – seems dead on arrival; at the moment, product returns outnumber sales. According to a recent survey by BookStats, in 2011 the publishing industry earned nearly 6% more revenue than in 2008, while selling 4% more books – in part, thanks to ebooks. The global march of streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify has made piracy less appealing.

None of this excites Levine, who complains that the internet has not encouraged innovation. “Like TV, the internet is only as good as what’s on,” he writes. Statements like this underscore the danger of setting internet policy based on the interests of the content industry alone. For those in this group, the internet is merely TV on steroids – its impact on the Arab spring, economic and human development and the future of learning be damned.

I arrived at the conclusion that Levine is representative of a certain form of market fundamentalism – and this fundamentalism is dangerous. Born out of not understanding, not wanting to understand. An arrogance about what is “culture” and who has the right to create it. He sees markets not as cultural but purely economic, he sees people only as consumers. Culture in his view, and people that he represents, see “culture” as a means to extract money from people. Simple. As the economist John Kay wrote,

“Capitalists are capitalism’s worst enemy, and particularly the market fundamentalist tendency which has been in the ascendant for the last 20 years”

For me, and Morozov saves it for last, is that in “Levines opinion James Murdoch was a saviour of Journalism.” The same James Murdoch who may have perjured himself, who along with his father owned a newspaper that in its quest for monetary gain, hacked into the voice mails of dead children, to get “the edge” on their rivals in the tabloid newspaper wars. If that is what Levine thinks is culture, then God help us all.

But the real frenzy isn’t the exposure of the scandal – it’s the scale of corruption, collusion and cover-up between News International, politicians and police that the scandal has revealed. As the cast of hacking victims, blaggers and blackmailers has lengthened, and the details of the incestuous payments and job-swapping between News International, government and Scotland Yard become more complex, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture that is now emerging.

If it were not for the uncovering of this cesspit, the Cameron government would be preparing to nod through the outright takeover of BSkyB by News International, taking its dominance of Britain’s media and political world into Silvio Berlusconi territory. But what has been exposed now goes well beyond the hacking of murder victims and dead soldiers’ families – or even the media itself. The scandal has lifted the lid on how power is really exercised in 21st-century Britain – in which the unreformed City and its bankers play a central part.

What concerns Milne is the moral lassitude that seems to pervade all parts of the systems that are supposed to be edifices of British Life. Read: Barclays Bank The Real Indoor Pirates, or The Problem with Murdoch’s Media.

Is it time to truly Reboot Britain, which is different to playing lip service to it? A far too many people and organisations have done and are doing.  A people will only be free when they can control their own communications. And that fact has been drawn into sharp focus.

Wikipedia writes

In this episode Curtis tracks the effects of Ayn Rand‘s ideas on American financial markets, particularly via the influence on Alan Greenspan. Ayn Rand was born in Russia and moved to America in 1928 and worked for Cecil B. DeMille, where she got some of the plot for what became The Fountainhead from this period. Later she moved to New York, and set up a reading group called The Collective where they considered her work. On advice from a friend, Greenspan (then a logical positivist) joined The Collective.

When published, although critically savaged, Rand’s Objectivist ideas were popular and came to heavily infiltrate California, particularly Silicon Valley. The computer utopian belief (Californian Ideology) that computer networks could measure, control and self-stabilise societies, without hierarchical political control, and that people could become ‘Randian heroes’, only working for their own happiness, became more widespread.

The programme concludes that, indeed the ideology has not led to people being Randian heroes but in fact trapped them into a rigid system of control from which they are unable to escape.

The presentation dealt with this idea: That mobile communications does not have to be a tactical endeavor, it can be a deep strategic one enabling companies to run leaner, to reach audiences in new and novel ways, to redefine a company organizationally, and create new markets with new revenues. In ‘creating assets and access in the intention economy’ I challenged our thinking in how mobile communications plays the key role in this rapidly evolving story.

Moving Brands/ Moving World from Moving Brands on Vimeo.

And the presentation of an evolving idea around what a brand for London might look like, inspiring.

Brian writes,

For several years now, it has been ‘the year of mobile’. And yet despite everyone’s best efforts, it hasn’t really happened yet, has it? Why might that be? There were several opinions expressed at MediaTel’s recent ‘Come on Mobile..Stand Up and Deliver’ event.

Potentially mobile offers commercial users a truly unique integrated channel.

First, mobile is personal; much more personal than any other channel. This is a benefit and a problem. A benefit in that if consumers are prepared to accept messages, and if they’re prepared to participate in a dialogue with a brand then the result is a truly engaged consumer. On the other hand if consumers just tolerate irrelevant messages from advertisers they care little about, then the result is…well, at best an irritated customer, and at worst a customer for whom hell will freeze over before he or she ever buys anything from your client ever again.

An illustration – a while ago I received a text from an insurance company asking me if I would be interested in a quote for business insurance. I don’t remember giving this company permission to contact me; and I don’t know who to be most irritated with – the company or Vodafone. Yes I run a small business, and yes I have business insurance. Does that make me a likely member of the target market? I would say no – because at no point did I knowingly give permission for anyone to contact me. I suspect my operator would say yes – I’m in the target market, as I opted in (or failed to opt out), even if unknowingly.
It seems to me that simply assuming that consumers are prepared to be contacted if they’ve opted in, or not opted out is incorrect. Certainly they may have consciously agreed to receive messages, but we all know that the opt-in process generally works passively, rather than actively. This is not right – and furthermore raises a huge question: who controls what is done with data about me? I think that when it comes to the most personal channel – my mobile phone – then I should. I want to be in control; I want to decide who I hear from.

Our mobile marketing channel Qustodian (www.qustodian.com) launching in the UK later this year following a successful launch in Spain puts consumers in control. They decide who they hear from; they control their data; they benefit (in cash) from the use to which their data is put; and they decide whether to stay with us, or cancel their involvement with us – something they can do at any time.

But Qustodian is a very small player compared to the major operators. For this medium to really take off it needs the big guys to start applying certain principles around active opt-in and active consumer participation, as opposed to believing that passively collected eyeballs, maybe modified by a broad discriminator such as a location in any way equals engaged consumers.

I believe that mobile can deliver engaged consumers. It can be used for messages in virtually any format – including film, text, static images. It can be used to guide consumers through multiple materials on multiple screens within one campaign. It can offer promotions. It can transact. It can measure effect. Every click is collected and can be used to measure the effect of any activity.

So why aren’t advertisers queuing up to use this new medium? Why aren’t the agencies recommending it? Is it, as one speaker at the MediaTel event suggested because everyone is still obsessed with TV (an odd remark coming from an organisation that itself spends tens of millions on television, presumably because it works for them)? Of course not.

Is it (as was also suggested) because the measurement is imperfect? But as we’ve seen, it’s potentially superior to anything from a 5,000 homes panel, or from an online system that doesn’t identify individuals. Can’t be.

Or is it because agencies can’t make money from mobile? But what about agencies’ vaunted ability to offer media neutral thinking? Surely not.

I think the real reason is that mobile isn’t really an advertising medium at all; it’s a complete marketing channel with everything that that implies. I’m not sure that we are yet able to think of mobile as anything other than an advertising vehicle. And, until we are, until we learn to think in a different way about communicating with customers, until we turn all the talk about integrated thinking into integrated action, mobile won’t fulfill its huge potential.

SMLXL posts on mobile commerce