jblyth.com/blog_images/images_07/soBwCdeuhm6wzxp3DewKRXCVo1_400.jpg
‘Nuff said,
‘cept someone once told me mediocrity is expensive
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
I find that in the networked and connected society this type of question can lead to some very short conversations
“;+)
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Another great presentation that I discovered on how local news becomes – well, local again.
So if you cannot truly give value back to your relevant community and stay relevant then you become irrelevant instead. Simples. The only thing I would say is where is mobile in all of this guys? And lets see some of that innovation this side of the pond! Question – really is anyone in the UK doing some good stuff on local news and journalism? As I would happily champion their cause.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23368962@N00/503069237
We came across the BBC2 Documentary about Detroit recently, and today I sat down and watched it again and made some notes.
There is a section in the film where we are told that at one point the Packard plant became the backdrop to some big rave parties, and one track is dedicated to that time and that place called ‘Packard’ by Architeq.
so have a listen.
My notes, the film is a cautionary tale for the industrialised world, a pioneers map into the future, where the big 3 car makers in Detroit siphoned off cash for for their own fiefdoms, this was not thinking in human terms. Add in a policy from the very start of apartheid, so Detroit was dealing with a very potent mix of trouble.
In 1929 it was all going great 5.6 million cars produced, but due the Depression by 1932 that figure had dropped to 1.4 million. The fight for the unionisation of the car plants led to mass riots and the gunning down of union protestors.
In the desire to connect people in Detroit to the suburbs entire communities were ripped up, and became dislocated – GM played a primary role in dismantling the street railway system to make way for the freeways that started in the very heart of Detroit.
When the Edsel Ford (I-94) Expressway was under construction during the early 1950's initial plans called for the construction of four stairways to be built from Woodward Ave., leading to the Ford Expressway below. These stairways were part of a rapid transit plan where passengers could board DSR buses from expressway level bus boarding stations. Unfortunately, the end result became a "Stairway to Nowhere!
Returning to white vs. black tensions in a city racially divided, one observer makes the point “The police was like a white occupying army”. Whilst the Klu Klux Clan, made there presence felt, with mass demonstrations, and shall we say intimidation.
Kicking out the Jams
MC5 are described as protopunk – A Detroit band, as Wikipedia describes them, While “Ramblin’ Rose” and “Motor City is Burning” open with inflammatory rhetoric, it was the opening line to the title track that stirred up the most controversy. Vocalist Rob Tyner shouted, “And right now… right now… right now it’s time to… KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!” A clip shown in the BBC film, a prelude to what came next.
Police watch as chaos spills into the intersection of 12th and Clairmount in Detroit following a predawn police raid on a blind pig – an illegal drinking establishment. It is Sunday, July 23, 1967. When the violence ended five days later, 43 people had died. The racial unrest became known as the nation's worst.
In 1967 it all kicked off, “here on the corner of 12th and Clairmount, this is where it happened”. It being, the explosion of violence and rioting that brought national guard troops and tanks into Detroit and its Freeways – almost ironic you could say – ‘tanks on the freeway’. On guy remembers his experience as a child, ” I saw the National Guard going down the streets, buildings were burning and I thought it was the end of the world”.
The result of that rioting saw a division made between city and suburbs, as great as that of the great wall of china. Blacks in the city, whites in the suburbs. One guy asks the question of where the real war is happening – you can see his point.
We watch Detroit fall apart, a city built for 2 million people now has 800,000 living in it. And witness the first person stories of people that were born and raised in Detroit, taking us on their own personal journeys of remembrance. Many remember the blowing up of the Hudson Department store, as a day which will forever live in their collective memories.
Is there hope for a city left abandoned? We are left with hope, one of the biggest movements in the US today says the BBC programme is called Urban Pioneers. Detroit in this link, (well worth reading the post) seems to inspire people to come and reinvent the city,
It’s not just farmers, intellectuals and artists of various types are drawn to Detroit, both to study it and pursue ideas about the remaking of the city:
Detroit has achieved something unique. It has become the test case for all sorts of theories on urban decay and all sorts of promising ideas about reviving shrinking cities.
Urban Farming in Detroit
And
the city offers a much greater attraction for artists than $100 houses. Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished. From Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project (think of a neighborhood covered in shoes and stuffed animals and you’re close) to Matthew Barney’s “Ancient Evenings” project (think Egyptian gods reincarnated as Ford Mustangs and you’re kind of close), local and international artists are already leveraging Detroit’s complex textures and landscapes to their own surreal ends.
In a way, a strange, new American dream can be found here, amid the crumbling, semi-majestic ruins of a half-century’s industrial decline. The good news is that, almost magically, dreamers are already showing up. Mitch and Gina have already been approached by some Germans who want to build a giant two-story-tall beehive. Mitch thinks he knows just the spot for it.
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Michel Bauwens of the P2P Society has put together with the help of Lily Fisher, a beautiful presentation on how various legal/creative/production/business tools and frameworks fit together. Thank you Robin Good for the hat tip
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...I stole the headline from an old economist advert, but just tweaked a little for context!
The crowd has the potential to be a larger funding source than anyone of us ever expected
Argues Paul Kedrosky in The Venture Capital Journal July 2010. The Journal tells the story of a start up called Diaspora, which seeking to raise $10k, produced a cheeky video on kickstarter that promoted their, “privacy-aware, personally controlled” social network that allows users to share data on their own terms. This is a key and growing area of debate – the data topic is indeed something I have a perspective on having sat on the board of a data analytics company for 3 years and co-authored a book on the subject.
When Facebook announced plans to change its policy on privacy – Diaspora, partly because it was connected up to the networked went vertical in its fundraising with equates to $200,000 from some 6,400 backer in a few weeks.
Beware the network for those that think only in Straight Lines is my advice. The Journal writes
For VCs and other professional investors who had previously dismissed crowd funding as a gimmick, Diaspora served as a wake-up call
And of course, the power is in the lowering of the barriers to participation – something that a Mr Obama recognised when he raised his mighty campaign war-chest not from the $2000 minimum that some candidates asked as the base price of admission, but the $5′s and the $10′s and the $20′s.
The article also mentions Profounder, which is a friends and family tight knit community funding business, founded by Jessica Jackley of Kiva. My interest was piqued by the presence of GrowVC – a company that I am personally involved with as an advisor, and was pleased to see has about 3,000 registered members who have committed more than $13 million to some 800 startups looking to raise between $10,000 and $1 million.
The power of the network means this, yesterday, an entrepreneur from Australia and a member of GrowVC reached out and I was happily advising his company to connect with others somewhere else in the world as I could see the benefit in the connection. I did not ask what is in it for me – I was just very happy to help.
And this is where we see the crisis of existing venture capital and funding. In the UK 6% of the UK population cannot access a bank account, as the banks will not touch these pariahs. Faisel Rahman who is not part of the crowdfunding story per se, but is in terms of grassroots,microfinancing has enabled through his company Fair Finance to Business 150 companies to get off the ground. I see a pattern, and as Jouko Ahvenainen argues that when you get poor deal flow, you stifle innovation, creativity and the opportunity for people to take control of their own lives.
Are people to be trusted?
It is a question that is explored in the article and this is where some see the wheels coming off – which ever way you look at this however, I have to ask the question, what exactly are we protecting? The biggest culprits of economic mis-mangement exist inside corporations, not on the pavement (sidewalk) asking for some spare change, or trying to make ends meet by doing 3 jobs, or having a dream that requires the type of funding some might leave as a ‘small tip’ at a swanky restaurant.
The rules of microfinancing, and the way in which people bond themselves to things through narrative is important here – what our mass consumer world did to people was to teach them, they were not accountable to each other, and therefore there was no reason to behave accordingly. Whereas, when we are part of creating the story of something, here the raising of a new barn for business, we put something of ourselves into that barn, and consequently we become accountable to each other. We write trust into the fabric of the contract, and with greater transparency via the nature of how networks operate, when that trust is transgressed it will be clear to all.
The rise of these companies once again places great pressure on the legal frameworks that have been painstakingly built over a long period of time. In the same way that Napster and the whole file sharing thing placed great pressure on the legal frameworks of copyright. Once you see legal frameworks creak, you know things have changed.
And in the same way that Rupert Murdoch now rails against the networked world like a character in a Shakespearean tragedy, we will see I am sure something similar in the banking and finance industries – pooh-poohing the ridiculous nature of crowdfounding. I pity them.
And a tip for any chancellor, want to save money? Empower people to take control of their lives – from the likes of GrowVC, Fair Finance to Business, Kiva and profounder there are real lessons to be had.
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...
I came across the work of Keith Peters in a Scientific American article. I was intrigued and went in search of the man and his work – which is jaw droppingly wonderful. He writes, I’m Keith Peters. I write code in a variety of languages. Sometimes when I’m just fooling around I make something that looks nice and put it up here. I call it “generative art”.
Generative art refers to art that has been generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...
John Underkoffler speaking about the way in which ui will change how we interface in the world
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7577137@N04/2923238790
The economist Herbert Simon, once wrote,
What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention… The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.
May I have your attention please? – Linda Stone – SIME 09 from Ayman van Bregt on Vimeo.
Someone comments on Linda’s presentation,
Technology sets me free and enslaves me. Look at us. You read this message and I get your partial attention. But don’t blame yourself. I wrote this message with partial attention too. My phone was ringing, the music was playing, my neighbor was commemorating a soccer game his team won. I guess. Another message. Tomorrow we have two meetings and some of my colleagues will be during the meeting answering mobile messages and emails. It is normal, and they don’t think it is disrespectful at all. Do you? I watch this video with my partial attention. A minute, a colleague is calling via MSN. Oh, shit, my mother is writing a blog and I can’t keep up with it. My friends are throwing a movie and food party next weekend. Another message. And my partial attention. That moment, our moment, and your partial attention. What is personal? What is private? What is intimate? When everything matters nothing matters anymore. Do you connect with me? Do I connect with you? Hey, you only add me and I add you back in a list of noise. We live in a really noisy world and we are trying to stay in the top of it, like a bunch of hyper-alert anxious multi-taskers who are constantly over stimulated. What is next? This noise is overwhelming. Can you keep up with it? Am I a better person? Are you?
What would be good she says, is “engaged attention”…
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5) Loading ...
Michael Shermer writes
In his 1776 work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith identified the cause in a single variable: “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” Today we call this free trade or market capitalism, and since the recession it has become de rigueur to dis the system as corrupt, rotten or deeply flawed.
If we pull back and take a long-horizon perspective, however, the free exchange between people of goods, services and especially ideas leads to trust between strangers and prosperity for more people. Think of it as ideas having sex. That is what zoologist and science writer Matt Ridley calls it in his book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. Ridley is optimistic that “the world will pull out of the current crisis because of the way that markets in goods, services and ideas allow human beings to exchange and specialize honestly for the betterment of all.”
Kind of reminds of the Dutch government, in cooperation with the Dutch research institute TNO, recently conducted a survey into the economic effects of file sharing on the music industry. The results are quite surprising as they concluded that illegally downloading music (which is allowed in Holland) has a positive effect on the music industry. If it would no longer be possible to download music, the sales of CD’s would further decrease. Quite the perspective change, or not? (Thou shall not share) (More smlxl on sharing).
And Matt Ridley also argues that trade does something even more important than enrich our lives. It makes people behave more fairly. Reminds also of the book the Evolution of Cooperation. The Zeitgeist today being the creation of a more fluid and flexible legal framework called Open Source and Creative Commons. Shermer finishes up,
the authors conclude, trust and cooperation with strangers lowers transaction costs and generates greater prosperity for all involved, and thus concepts of fair trade emerged as part of a larger process of social evolution to maintain mutually beneficial exchanges even when the participants were not bound by kinship, status or other social ties.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...
Subscribe to Alan Moore's SMLXL RSS feed.
Follow Alan Moore on Twitter.