Thinking about the idiot box

Its TV but not as we know it.

Fragmentation, convergence, cross-platform, curated consumption, primetime is no longer a time of day, its a state of mind, content delivered on-demand, non-linear and self-scheduled.

There must be life after the 60 second spot. Said Jim Stengel, In fact Jim Stengel Chief Marketing Officer for Proctor & Gamble says that he believes that interruptive TV advertising stopped working around 1987.

In 1965, 80 per cent of adults in the US could be reached with three 60 second TV spots. In 2002, it required 117 prime time commercials to produce the same result. In the early 1960s, typical day-after recall scores for 60 second prime time TV commercials were about 40 per cent and nearly half of this was elicited without any memory aid. Currently a typical day-after recall score for a 30 second spot is about 18- 20 per cent and virtually no one is able to provide any form of playback without some form of recall stimulate.

The number of brands and messages competing for consumer attention has exploded, and consumers have changed dramatically. They show an increasing lack of tolerance for marketing that is irrelevant to their lives, or that is completely unsolicited. Traditional marketing methods are diluted by a hurried lifestyle, overwhelmed by technology, and often deliberately ignored.

I was in the states recently and sat down with a family that had pre-recorded their must-see TV programme, Thief. All the ads, were zipped through. Just an observation
Peter Lauria writes,

Television is having its Sybil moment. Not unlike the title character played by Sally Field in the 1976 made-for-TV movie of the same name, television seems to be suffering from multiple personality disorder. Advances in visual experience, control, technology, display, and the quality and diversity of content have come in such swift succession that the divide between new forms of television and the mainstays seems to widen daily.

Consumers now live with broadcast television, cable television, video-on-demand, Internet TV, video iPods, time-shifted television via digital video recorders, and wireless video across an array of devices, just to mention a few of TV’s multiple identities.

The effect of this fragmentation is to render the word “television” all but meaningless. An unfortunate consequence of being all-encompassing is that it also implies a lack of uniqueness. Indeed, how do you define the soul of a medium that was never suspected of having one in the first place? Rewind to the 1970s and recall that the cantankerous Archie Bunker, icon of CBS’ long-running “All in the Family,” dubbed TV “the idiot box.”

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The Long Now

The Long Now Foundation says

The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

The Name
The term was coined by one of our founding board members, Brian Eno. When Brian first moved to New York City and found that in New York here and now meant this room and this five minutes, as opposed to the larger here and longer now that he was used to in England. We have since adopted the term as the title of our foundation as we are trying to stretch out what people consider as now.

The emminent Stewart Brand says

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where ‘long-term’ is measured at least in centuries

Though the Long Now Foundation is not neccessarily about Communities, it is certainly about what our world might become through a consilience of very different minds thinking about the future.

The Foundation has been running a number of seminars and these seminars can be download as podcasts.

Previous speakers have been: Chris Anderson Jimmy Wales ? Kevin Kelly ? Stephen Lansing ? Peter Schwartz ? Sam Harris ? Clay Shirky ? Esther Dyson ? Ray Kurzweil ? Robert W. Fuller ? Jared Diamond

If you are interested in seeing a wider horizon line, jump in or at least dip your big toe in, the water may not be quite as cold as you think.

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82ASK and Community-led Innovation in the Mobile & Wireless Sector

In a recent post I looked at some very relevant research around peer production and also the shift from push economic models to pull economic models.

My belief is that Pull platforms harness the passion, commitment and desire to learn of their participants, thereby enabling the formation and functioning of distributed communities that can rapidly improvise and innovate

Many believe that Communities of interest are now evolving into communities of creation and communities of economic production. And this is something that tradtional companies find very hard to emulate.

However, for new business it is pretty much a way of life, an approach that they feel comfortable with, because peer collaboration, inside and outside the organisation is something that is as natural as riding a bike.

Carlotta Perez says

The full deployment of the enormous wealth-creating potential brought forth by each technological revolution requires, each time, the establishment of an adequate socio-institutional framework. The exisiting framework, created to handle growth based on the previous set of technologies, is unsuited to the new one. Thus, in the first decades of installation of the new industries and infrasturctures, there is am increasing mis-match between techno-economic and soci-institutional spheres, as well as an internal decoupling of the economic system, between the old and new technologies.

Recently, I have been looking for a home grown case history that clearly demonstrates this theory. From push to pull, from an industrial model of front end, high capital expenditure, to a virtual, passion based, peer production model that can deliver the zen clap of the reallocation of human creativity, which incrementally can deliver exponenetial value. And I have found it in my home town of Cambridge.

The company in question is called 82Ask Below is a brief case history of how the company formed and how it has developed.

The story of 82Ask

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Cooperation Commons

Cooperation Commons

Howard Rheingold , has a truly inspiring speech on what cooperation between individuals and communities could create and deliver, in an interconnected world.

His belief is that nobody is as clever as everybody, by which he means collective intelligence created through sharing of information, even incrementally has huge beneficial potential for us all.

The collaborative effects of peer production and peer creation, far outweigh, the intellectual impact of the individual.

I have an image in my mind, which is of the Unimind in Toy Story and their hypnotic saying

We are one

Or as ali would have said

I is We

It is full of insight and optimism. He has drawn on biology, science, network theory (in particular Reeds Law ) sociology, technology, history, amongst other things.

It reminds me of Edward O. Wilson’s book entitled the Consilience of Knowledge Go and have a read at wikipedia

I strongly recommend that you take the time to listen to what Howard has to say.

also go and check out CooperationCommons

and finally as my co-author Tomi Ahonen likes to say

In a connected world, sharing information is power

Thank you Howard, that was truly inspirational.

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sxsw Surowiecki on the wisdom of crowds

sxsw surowiecki on the wisdom of crowds

James Surowiecki spoke at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas on Saturday 11th March 2006 about the ideas in his bestselling book The Wisdom Of Crowds. It’s relevance to Web 2.0 loomed large?

writes Deirdre Molloy

Its an extensive report on surowiecki’s views and theories from his book the wisdom of crowds

The bit that stuck out for me was Deidre’s summary

Someone raised the issue of the vast, untapped sources of collective intelligence that remain untapped in terms of the education system, and Surowiecki concurred that bureaucracies in general do a very poor job of tapping into their members intelligence

Something I would certainly agree with , and

James left us hanging with this tantalising paradox: we live in a moment where on the one hand we see the possibilities of collective, bottom-up emergent systems, and Web 2.0 is ? in a way ? a way to make that work. But countering that is the trend and desire for charismatic leadership and easy answers

My view is that communities will naturally find their leaders, who will achieve their status through collective group wisdom. This authority is earn’t and therefore the authority is respected.

I think that where I have got with my research is that we now have to dig deeper into what the future may truly look like for us, economically, socially, politically and institutionally.

Surowiecki is one of the many that map out our potential future.

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Mobile communities - how to do it right

Mobile communities - how to do it right

Mike Butcher mentions communities dominate brands in a post about mobile communities.

Mike says

Kenetworks is a fantastic little mobile development agency in Stockholm who excited me about the potential for mobile to drive communities, and therefore communities to drive brands . Meeting Gustav S?derstr?m in the bar of the Lydmar Hotel was great fun and he took me through, step by step, the service they have come up, which currently runs on Playahead , a huge youth community site in Sweden. There is a great Flash presentation which keeps it simple

Thanks Mike for the advocacy

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IP, communities, whose media is it anyway? And demand economics

I have been thinking about the issues surrounding commons based peer-to-peer flows of communication. Something that I blogged about last year within the context of JD Lasica’s book Darknet: Hollywoods war on the digital generation And more recently referencing Lawrence Lessig the leading thinker on IP, copyright and the implications of recent developments in the explosion of peer-to-peer communications in tensile friction with big media and big new media.

In the piece I have been reading recently when push comes to pull

David Bollier explains his view on PUSH

Briefly put, a “push economy” ? the familiar industry model of mass production ? is based on anticipating consumer demand and then making sure that needed resources are brought together at the right place, at the right time, for the right people. A company in the “push” model forecasts demand, specifies in advance the necessary inputs, regiments production procedures, and then pushes the final product into the marketplace and the culture, using standardized distribution channels and marketing.

and PULL

By contrast, a “pull economy” ? the kind that appears to be materializing in online environments ? is based on open, flexible production platforms that use networking technologies to orchestrate a broad range of resources. Instead of producing standardized products for mass markets, companies use pull techniques to assemble products in customized ways to serve local or specialized needs, usually in a rapid or on-the-fly process.

David Bollier writes

The surge of user-generated content is likely to continue, especially for low-cost genres of creativity such as music. Yet even expensive genres such as video and film, which have historically required expensive equipment, now are more accesible to commited amatuers and upstarts. Homemade videos are quickly moving from the style of “America’s Funniest home videos” to strikingly professsional, if more idisynchratic shorts and documentaries. Such videos, in fact, constitute a great deal of content on Al Gore’s new channel, “Currents”

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The erosion of trust in a post modern world

The economic survey is undertaking tracking research on trust via the World Economic Forum

Full Survey: Trust in Governments, Corporations and Global Institutions Continues to Decline

Since signaling the importance of trust in world affairs, the World Economic Forum has been monitoring public trust levels through a bi-annual global public opinion poll conducted by GlobeScan Incorporated. The latest findings from the poll show that trust in a range of institutions has dropped significantly since January 2004 to levels not seen since the months following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The poll also reveals that public trust in national governments and the United Nations has fallen the most over the past two years.

The same set of questions has been put to representative samples of citizens around the world since January 2001. The major findings from this year’s poll are:
*Public trust levels in national governments, the United Nations and global companies are now at their lowest since tracking began in January 2001.
* Since 2004, trust in government has declined by statistically significant margins in 12 of the 16 countries for which tracking is available. The Russian government is the only exception, enjoying continuously increasing trust from its citizens since 2001.
*The United Nations, while continuing to receive higher trust levels than other institutions, has experienced a significant decline in trust from 2004 levels in 12 of 17 tracking countries, suggesting an impact from the scandal over the Oil for Food Program.
* Public trust in companies has also eroded over the last two years. After recovering trust in 2004 to pre-Enron levels, trust has since declined for both large national companies and for global companies. Trust in global companies is now at its lowest level since tracking began.
* NGOs remain the leaders in trust, but they also have to contend with decline. In 10 of 17 countries for which data is available, trust in NGOs has fallen since 2004, in some cases sharply (e.g., Brazil, India and South Korea).

These findings are based on a global public opinion poll involving a total of 20,791 interviews with citizens across 20 countries (n = 1,000 in most countries), conducted between June and August 2005 by respected research institutes in each participating country under the leadership of GlobeScan. (Please see page 13 for a list of research institutes in each participating country.) Each country’s findings are considered accurate to within 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The survey asked respondents how much they trust each institution “to operate in the best interests of our society”. Identical questions were asked in most of the same countries in January 2004, August 2002 and January 2001.

This got me thinking that if we are trusting institutions less, then who can we trust?

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When push comes to pull. The new economy & culture of networking technology

I have been reading the Aspen Institutes latest ouvre, entitled When push comes to pull. The new economy & culture of networking technology

Which resonates deeply with Communities Dominate Brands.

David Bollier the author states

If the world seems a confusing place at this moment, part of the reason may be that we are living in an epochal period of transition bridging two very different economies and cultures

Bollier references Carlota Perez and her 2002 book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital read a review here

The full deployment of the enormous wealth-creating potential brought forth by each technological revolution requires, each time, the establishment of an adequate socio-institutional framework. The exisiting framework, created to handle growth based on the previous set of technologies, is unsuited to the new one. Thus, in the first decades of installation of the new industries and infrasturctures, there is am increasing mis-match between techno-economic and soci-institutional spheres, as well as an internal decoupling of the economic system, between the old and new technologies. The process of re-establishing a good match and creating conditions both for recoupling and full deployment of the new potential is complex, protracted and socially painful

Just listen to Lawrence Lessig describe the impact of this decoupling is having around the issues of copyright

The report looks at society, communication, the media, business and education. And discusses at great length the differences from living in a “Pull vs. Push economy”

The report also mentions a couple of favourite themes. Creative Destruction and also punctuated equilibrium and of course the power of the connected community

Thoughts that fell out for me from the piece is that technology as we argue enables us to connect, work and collaborate in ways previously thought impossible. And the industrial mindset of rigid institutions and architectures of revenue created as choke points can no longer work, when we are busy creating our own, content, our own media ecologies, our own brands and business models.

Its a bit like the Punk movement, but hypercharged.

The Long Tail gets a look in and so does a discussion around how one creates value in a world where production and businesses are being virtualised.

The benefits of living and working in a pull world? John Hagel believes

that pull is much more adept at promoting innovation, learning and capabiility building (read the world of warcraft piece ) on the part of the people. It assumes that you’re going to give people resources in very flexible ways so that you can experiment, imporovise, and tinker in ways that you cannot anticipate.

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Business, society and the nuturing of communities

I was speaking at the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit yesterday.

One of the topics discussed was “finding new ways to connect with consumers in a collaborative world.”

Unfortunately, there was not enough time to really get stuck into the topic.

Its interesting to me that the focus, was purely on “consumers and consumption,” as I believe that the changes we are witnessing at a societal level requires us to think about these issues in a wider context.

First and foremost, my view is that if we have migrated from a static mass (cold) media to a social (hot) media, where the revolution is in the explosion of peer-to-peer communications then that requires businesses/organisations by default to build into their behaviour a social dimension.

So its not marketing to extract value, its not education as a cheese factory, its not health care as we know it.

Especially if they/we want to succeed in this new marketplace/ecology.

Something that has occurred to me is this, in a super-connected world, valuable knowledge can be created by a more disparate and geographically dispersed group of people. And the value created through a commons-based peer production is not just economic, its personal and it has a uniquely social dimension.

I met up with Hilary Cottham of RED at the Design Council last night and continued my musings with her and Adrian Bailey, where essentially we discussed the idea of empowerment through collaborative approaches to business, organisational, political, and social challenges.

By taking a horizontal and collaborative approach, one has the opportunity to engage people into a community focused on solving a common goal. Its more contextual.

This is where industrial age marketing falls flat on its face. Because “we” can have no ownership, we know that broadcast style comms or factory style teaching is about control.

We know that our education system is not really about unlocking “my” true potential its about something far more unflexible. Though we do know that there are significant policy changes going on in this area

What in my mind is more powerful is a bigger idea about the role and purpose of a brand, an organisation and living that purpose. Inside and outside the organisation.

But this requires greater organisational fluidity and trust. But the benefits can far outweigh the growing pains.

John Seely Brown said

The collaborative peer production acheived througth pull platforms can be radically more efficient than classically structured corporations can acheive

Also, we cannot ignore the erosion of masculine and feminine approaches to life. In the agricultural and industrial ages, we were very male dominated. But, in a knowledge economy where value is created more by how we are connecting and collaborating. Communities and collaborative approaches instinctively feel more feminine - there is by default more nuture.

Its no bad thing in my book.

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