101 Culture

Watching digital technology change culture 
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March 8, 2010

Time to think about the Internet instead of just letting it happen

You must all read this. It's terribly important that you make the time.

DAVID GELERNTER is a professor of computer science at Yale and chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies (New Haven). His research centers on information management, parallel programming, and artificial intelligence.

And he's just published an essay entitled 'Time to think about the Internet instead of just letting it happen'.

There are so many good thoughts in there. And I'll examine lots of them over the coming weeks.

But the point of the essay is this: 
"The Internet is no topic like cellphones or videogame platforms or artificial intelligence; it's a topic like education. It's that big. Therefore beware: to become a teacher, master some topic you can teach; don't go to Education School and master nothing."

"No moment in technology history has ever been more exciting or dangerous than now. The Internet is like a new computer running a flashy, exciting demo. We have been entranced by this demo for fifteen years. But now it is time to get to work, and make the Internet do what we want it to."

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March 7, 2010

The democratisation of advertising

One of the main themes that I write about digital culture is democratisation.

Publishing is the obvious one. The web is gradually giving the whole world the ability to publish, for better or for worse. But the partner to publishing is advertising. And, as the ever insightful Jan Chipchase points out, Facebook is, through the simplicity of its platform, democratising online advertising.

Flyposting has long been the preserve of 'consumer' advertising. But Facebook's simple platform allows us all to create a campaign in minutes. And along with that comes targeting, segmentation, reach and effectiveness, usually phrases reserved for marketing departments.

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March 7, 2010

Skinput: your arm becomes a touchscreen

The iPhone has shown us the benefits and possibilities of touchscreen. And the iPad announcement showed just how excited the world gets about that. But what's next?

If Chris Harrison has his way, it'll be Skinput, where your arm becomes the touchscreen.

By detecting the waves sent through your flesh as you tap your arm and combining that with visuals projected on your arm, you have the whole world that the iPad offers, without the pad. Well almost.

As well of probably becoming useful and invisible tech for us at some point this is a great visualisation of what digital information and its networking is becoming: a layer of invisible information surrounding us at all times. Check the vid for ultimate nerdings... awesome stuff.

found via Core77

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March 4, 2010

Some nice little mirror robots

I want them. I want them to greet me when I get home.

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March 1, 2010

Social production and the economies of small

I've long been meaning to write a post inspired by Makers and earlier thoughts on production from 100k linked garages..

But John's deck on social production and BBH Labs' recent post on the economies of small do a much better job. So read them.

And BBH Labs:
A final point on size - we’re all used to hearing the number ‘150′ cited as the ‘optimum organizational size’. As the business strategist Tom Peters put it in 1994:
“Arguably, we got away with violating this limit during the age of mass production and hyperspecialization, when the traditional craftsmen’s imagination was subordinated to machine logic. Now, brains, imagination, craft, and whole jobs are once again the order of the day and 150 people, give or take, may again be the right group size.”
In a flat world, might 150 in fact be far too large? Might a network of multiple, much smaller, autonomous teams actually be more commercially successful than a conventional corporate body?

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February 19, 2010

Post-digital marketing and Digital Culture

It's nice to see the pickup that the phrase 'post-digital' is getting in the marketing world. I think Russell started it. And Faris has just posted a brilliant deck from Helge about it:

http://www.slideshare.net/helgetenno/post-digital-marketing-2009

The reason I started this blog was to look at how our behaviour had, is and will change as a result of 'digital technology'. I wanted to get away from worrying about tech and into behaviour. I called that new behavior 'digital culture'. Asi calls it 'social culture'. 'Post-digital' seems to encompass a lot of the same ideas.

It's a good thing to see. Spending to much time worrying about technology is a bit like riding a vacuum cleaner:

Ignoring digital should result in some cultural value from brands as they try and earn a foothold in culture rather than just buy awareness or jump on a tech trend, for instance.

How far into the change we are is impossible to tell. I don't think we're far at all. I'm interested in the generational changes. When you grow up with everything in your world networked, the network becomes invisible. That'll be properly new.

Have a nice weekend, all.

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February 19, 2010

Could SoundCloud be the next MySpace?

SoundCloud, a music-sharing site our of Berlin, is growing fast.

 And MySpace, once the default URL on gig flyers, seems to be in terminal decline.
Check the traffic story:

So what of SoundCloud? It's designed to share tracks you made, mixes you created. And your fans can follow your stream of tracks. And comment etc. It's a social utility for music, if you like jargon. In the words of its founders, it was a replacement for sharing music by email. Nice.

And MySpace? It was a general-purpose social network that is suffering at the hands of Facebook, which described itself as a 'social utility' and has reached a mainstream audience the world over.

The key point here? Make a useful tool for your audience. Facebook makes it easy to keep up with a broader frienship group. SoundCloud makes it easier for musicians and fans to share music.

I wouldn't be surprised to see those traffic lines cross next year sometime. It's ambitious. But SoundCloud have something truly useful here.

And a business model? Bah. If you're starting a web business, you're not allowed a revenue model. Especially if you live in Berlin.

More SoundCloud stuff:
SoundCloud reckon it's the best way to share music in blogs.
Richie Hawtin uses it to accept promo tracks:

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January 25, 2010

Guardian editor-in-chief hits out at Murdoch's paywalls

"It's not a 'digital trend'. It's a trend about how people are expressing themselves, about how societies will choose to organise themselves, about a new democracy of ideas and information, about changing notions of authority, about the releasing of individual creativity, about resisting the people who want to close down free speech.

"If we turn our back on all this and at the same time conclude that there is nothing to learn from it then, never mind business models, we could be sleepwalking into oblivion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/25/guardian-editor-paywalls

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January 18, 2010

Video of 3D printing in action

So awesome.

via MAKE and @webponce

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January 9, 2010

A decade of change in media production

This brilliant mashup of last year's pop says more about the changes we've seen in media production over the last decade than it does about pop music in 2009.

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