The Story of Stuff...

From the excellent Story of Stuff website:

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

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The Gospel of Cognitive Surplus...

Clay Shirky has just become a bit of a UK Blog Buzz after an article about him was published in the Guardian last Monday, one in the usual round of interviews when an author's latest book is published. He has been using the phrase 'Cognitive Surplus' for a while in his talks including drawing the analogy to the recovery from drowning sorrows in gin when trying to cope with the trauma of transformation from rural to urban life early in the last century.

In a 2008 talk he makes this point:

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before - free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

We have a positive way of making a difference, by not wasting more of the precious resource of time. It is clear how this applies to charities as well as businesses and particularly to the church. It is interesting to see that Mr Shirky is not so active online himself and along with David Keen's 'final' blog entry today issues a further challenge to be considered...

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Kofi Annan and Didier Drogba’s World Cup guide

A challenging perspective on the World Cup from the Africa Progress Panel (APP). Above is a section of the Stats Table, download the full guide here (11Mb) from the APP website.

h/t @theElders

The Apple of Discord

For many years our small (yet beautiful) company has encouraged our clients to steer away from using FLASH (Cue Queen: 'Ah Ah') on their websites on the basis it yields a 'form above function' solution. Websites built using Flash are usually extremely 'pretty', in fact, some of them do look sensational, however, customers that heeded our advice will now be rewarded bigtime.

By Friday 28th May all pre-orders for the Apple iPad will have been fulfilled and this long awaited and highly desirable gizmo becomes available in the UK. That's when every website developed with Flash will look like the iPhone screen capture above on the iPad (also affects the iPod Touch). As the iPad will probably become the bit of technology that every management and decision maker will acquire then a lot of work will need to be done to provide alternative versions soonest so the typical market sector viewer of these 'glamorous' websites is not lost! Our longer term hunches were realised completely last month when Apple's charismatic 'front man' Steve Jobs posted this open letter to Adobe about Flash.

(The example shown above is a genuine screen grab on the iPhone with the title and web address changed to protect our uninformed competitor!)

Thou shalt reduce thy Sins of consumption...

George Monbiot concludes his blog post on the guardian.co.uk website today with this paragraph:

Only the Green party has approached this issue honestly, by accepting upfront that economic growth is the problem and that current levels of consumption cannot be sustained. It's time we called out the other parties on their failure to acknowledge, let alone tackle, this contradiction. And it's time we all recognised that consumption is the big issue.

The title of the piece is: 'Carbon calculator reveals Labour and Tory policy as science fiction' and condemns the two 'old' parties unsurprising refusal to run the Guardian's National Carbon Calculator. Simon Hughes of the Lib Dems both ran the calculator and shared the results online. Sadly whilst addressing climate issues are in all the manifestos it is not as hip and newsworthy as the deficit (understandably) and immigration (inflammatory!). It is clear the main parties see economic growth as the solution to all ills whilst ignoring other burgeoning issues. One of the late Sir John Harvey-Jones' mantras was to 'always define the problem before suggesting a solution' and that is why the Greens are so very right.

So will I vote Green in a totally safe Tory constituency? Probably! Will I be wasting my vote? Some may consider so, however, my view could become part of a tangible statistic, the increase in vote for the Green Party in this election. Perhaps I should practice what I believe and vote with my conscience against the spiritual evil of rampant consumption?

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Against the Machine - Being Human

 

I read with interest as certain bloggers nobly ceased their proclamations during Lent this year and, indeed, some have decided to cease altogether. The fear that the time spent reading, composing and publishing blogs drags you away from more worthwhile pursuits is definitely something I can relate to....

Stephen Siegel, author of 'Against The Machine, Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob' was one of the 'Talking Heads' on the excellent BBC TV series 'The Virtual Revolution' broadcast early 2010. Having been so impressed by his relatively short contribution I purchased his book which turned out to be an excellent read, full of illuminating facts about the last 20 years of the virtual world and the contributory factors to the successful aspects of the web. Certainly he reinforces fears and concerns many feel and although in interview he comes over as pretty cynical and sarcastic, on the written page his arguments are measured and totally reasonable.

Intriguingly the back cover sports Marshall McLuhan's famous quote: 'The Medium is the Message' which turned out to be at the core of the next book I chose to read, more soon!

So, what makes this book so compelling is, as mentioned, the confirmation that behind so much of what we may consider to be the worthwhile aspects of the applications available are specifically geared to 'capturing' more information about you. Now that might not sound particularly original, Google searches and online shopping forays are obviously giving merchants detailed statistics and buying patterns that they can tap into to attempt upselling you alternative or similar products that other folk with similar stats have bought. It is more how Lee Siegel reveals the poiltical and financial drivers behind our movement to what we now term as 'Social Networking'.

Bearing in mind this book was written prior to the Twitter explosion, so the main analysis is based on Blogging, MySpace and Facebook. What he is saying is that we are trading our privacy for popularity. In earlier times we would come home and have dinner and chill out together... now we tend to go onto our computers and start revealing more 'private' information for the rest of the world to absorb, not just our family and close friends. Whilst we may be careful about our credit card numbers common sense seems to evaporate as we pour out deeply personal information via our keyboard, sacrificing our identity and withdrawing into a world of physical solitude.

He then moves on to the sense that we are drawn into this world to the extent that if we are not repeatedly checking our Facebook page (and now, Twitter, of course) we fear we might miss something really 'important'. So now we move from a bit of fun to compulsive behaviour which then escalates the more we share and absorb.

Added into this equation is the vast and ever expanding amount of false information out there. He quotes examples of where large corporates are tweaking their Wikipedia entries to cover up their blunders and, indeed, to be fraudulent to bump up their stock and impress their shareholders. Even in the last few days I noticed some blogs that had fallen for some 'jokes' and considered them to be real, one which is now accepted as just a prank, the other is still considered 'real'!

Siegel is particularly scathing of corporate America where the multinationals will rent so called Social Media gurus who will charge obscene amounts of money to portray the internet as a magical world under its own independent control and destiny! He also puts into perspective issues which people perceive the internet has cause and effect, such as the Obama presidential campaign.

Finally I must stress that he is not saying all web, blogging and social media is totally wrong and, in fact, he highlights examples of where excellence and philanthropy is clear. What he does do, though, is highlight the 'copy culture' where information with scant provenance, a blog post, for example, gets re-circulated numerous times and perpetuates total nonsense or effectively re-writes our history!

I found this a fascinating read, both confirming and re-assuring and very challenging all at once. It has reinforced changes in my on-line behaviour that I had started and may well have more impact still and I give it a hearty 5 star recommendation.

O for a shout of sacred joy

The last verse of Isaac Watts hymn: -

The British islands are the Lord’s,
There Abraham’s God is known;
While powers and princes, shields and swords,
Submit before His throne.

Take me higher... Lent 2

A wonderful short film from which so much can be drawn - especially for the church ;-)

h/t Sam Davidson

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Digital Economy Bill - Oxymoronic...

This little video (which has no sound, btw) brings to light more than one issue about the absurd Bill that Peter Mandelson is championing at the moment. First of all it is clearly impossible to police and, as has already been proven with some court cases, inconclusive as to who the actual culprit is.

In this country there is a huge amount of mistrust whilst in Canada, for example, even high profile folk do not have fences or hedges around their properties. Their WiFi connections are usually unprotected and therefore a subscriber could be open to abuse by a passer by, however, my impression was that Canadian people are simply more interested in being real world, i.e. outside and enjoying themselves!

However, in the UK it makes a lot of sense to protect your WiFi router as someone could piggy back and exceed your monthly allowance or, if you have an uncapped service, get it restricted. Now I think that to abuse an openness of an unprotected WiFi like that does amount to stealing, however, when it comes to the thorny matter of royalties from uploaded videos and other matters the Digital Economy Bill seeks to address it is a very different matter.

I very much take the view that has been eloquently explained on Steve Lawson's blog and the reference to Danny Barnes' blog here, we are living in a new era for music generation where the revenue is returning to performance rather than sales of media that has an enormous mark-up on it. Despite the plethora of seriously crap output and the promotion of 'celebrity' above talent there are many new ways to be heard and work within reasonable means to be an artist.

Ironically, for me, as a bit of a 'has been', my music is tied up by worldwide rights such that I cannot use the very wonderful Bandcamp to sell new recordings of my own 'legacy' material, the very pieces that former followers of After The Fire do want to buy. We are restricted to any brand new material that would have a limited market. However, there is no doubt that this is the way ahead for all but a tiny slither of folk trying to make their way in music. Alternatively trying to shoehorn the old music business ways into the new Digital economy is a complete non starter.

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Not on my watch... please?

Although I have commented on a couple of blogs I have been uncomfortable about many of the things that have been written this week concerning the devastating tragedy in Haiti. And, of course, it has been surprising to see the extent of the reaction to right wing evangelist Pat Robertson's insensitive statement concerning Haiti. As a result 'pat robertson' has overtaken the word 'haiti' to become the top 'trend' in Twitter.

Singer songwriter Martyn Joseph rebuked Mr Robertson's previous ludicrous 'political' suggestions in a witty ditty he performed at the Greenbelt Festival in 2006 (warning: expletives NOT deleted!). However, in the context of the extreme reactions to Robertson's claims about the Haitian people, Martyn's piece could now be seen as judgemental and, despite its pithy, prophetic brilliance, by posting it I fear I may be seen to be demeaning the seriousness of the Haiti situation.

From our distance we naturally respond with a mixture of horror and abject helplessness. Giving money and fundraising are tangible, it is certainly uplifting to hear how the donations are mounting up after fears of compassion fatigue. There is a small yet positive step we can all take that just might make a huge difference by signing the petition to drop the debt Haiti has with us of $890,000,000:

HELP HAITI - DROP THE DEBT

If the debt was dropped this would make a long term difference to the poverty in Haiti. Whilst the debt remains in place Haiti will always be kept at arm's length and effectively their people will be held in poverty by 'us'. This will mean the potential for suffering and a casualty toll on a massive scale all over again at a later date. Whatever faith or belief we have can we allow that to happen? We could try blaming God, Satan or someone else (again), but we are the ones with the keys to implement prevention rather than catastrophe...

Social media working...

Came across this in my research for a course I'm creating on another blog.

Scary?!

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Uncommon Sense

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One of my regular reads is former BT futurologist Peter Cochrane's Blog on the technology news website silicon.com. A recent posting of his provides food for thought on the current economic crisis, some sections I quote here:

Where do these times of monetary and market instability come from? There appears to be a limited number of fundamental mechanisms over and above human ignorance, greed and stupidity.

First, I would cite the fundamental tenets and assumptions of economic theory that are obviously wrong:

1) Infinite resources - Not true for the atoms on this finite planet.
2) Infinite markets - Not true for a finite population and ecosystem.
3) Linear channels - Nothing to do with markets is wholly linear.
4) Continuous growth - Was never, and never will be, possible
5) Known behaviours - People and markets are increasingly unpredictable.
6) Understandable - Probably beyond the grasp of humankind.

Second, I think we can identify a set of new and progressively growing factors of increasing influence:

1) Complexity - Managers and people no longer understand products.
2) Connectedness - Everything is now related and not isolated or standalone.
3) Scale - Everything is now huge and networked globally.
4) Machines - They perform more trades than people.
5) Fundamentally non-linear - Chaotic and probably beyond human control.
6) Short-termism - The focus is on the immediate and making money now.
7) Speed - ICT has improved speed and removed latency.

The first set of factors set the scene for beliefs and the illusion of understanding, while the second present ideal components for the occurrence of one economic crisis after another. Perhaps the most critical, given (5) and (6), is the reduction of latency (7) as a prime factor in a world of non-linearity, chaos and strange attractors.

Read the full article here: Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense