I haven’t finished Collapse yet but in this talk from TED, Diamond outlines the key principles of societal collapse.

Diamond’s observations & books have been extraordinarily influential to my thinking and writing.

Especially my work on 2thinknow nascent trend analysis, allowing for the prediction of trends & events.

I started reading Diamond several years ago with the Third Chimpanzee.

The 2thinknow View.

As we went through the inevitable phase change form industrial-to-information society; now we transition from information-to-creative society.

Diamond’s guide is invaluable for his cross-disciplinary thinking on phase change.

Read Guns, Germs and Steel to start with. It is an eye-opening work of superior thinking.

Diamond’s Books & DVD.

How do I know?

Well simply, the most popular ideas 2thinknow tested online in 2007 were also the most intelligent. Not more Paris or Britney.

Readers, I’m proud of your intelligent choices…

The 9 Most influential Ideas 2thinknow posted online in 2008 were:

9. Drugs are a Major Problem

They are everywhere. Especially UK & Australia. There is now no cut-off point and drug use causes mental health issues. Mental Health is a critical area of our health.

> Illegal Drugs Scourge of Australia & UK

8. The Creative Generation -

The Young ones are not just Gen Y, X — they are the Creative Generation, as termed by 2thinknow.

> Creative Generation, not X & Y

7. American-Australian Exchange

Massive Interest in Australian politics economics environmental leadership, and more mundanely just getting here. Reinforcing 2thinknow position that long haul flights are a disincentive to cultural exchange.

> Flying from USA to Australia – the Easy Way

6. Return of Figurative Art -

Innumerable posts on art attracted much attention. Postmodern Art and Figurative art alike were popular, but always the figurative attracted the most attention. (Proving that what we are told to like and do like are different.)

> Top 7 European Art Galleries You Must Visit

> 7 Paintings You Must See in Paris, France

> Understand Moder Art, Understand Innovation

5. Satire is news -

When you don’t have real news, just Cele-britney and propaganda; satire becomes a way of speaking truth to power.

Like John Stewart & the Daily Show, or Australia’s Chasers.

> Satire As News – Daily Show & Chasers

…or the fun new office battle sport of Corridor Running.

4. End of cheap goods.

The time has come to end disposable thinking and oil-based goods.

> Cheap Goods the End Is Near

> Easy Enough with Less Energy & Oil

3. Generation Change in Politics – Kevin Rudd’s Victory in Australia.

Intransigence and John Howard are out. Bush is next. Kyoto was ratified by Australia. And Bush turn off the lights.

> Kevin Rudd – Australia’s New PM

> More Rudd-related posts

2. Learn more than One Language or Culture.

Almost our single Most popular Idea, on the basis you can and should learn French as as an example. This article is still be read, and yes Francophiles, most readers are from the USA.

> Why You can & Should Learn French

1. Europe’s importance in Future Innovation

As outlined in the Global innovation Review 2007 (revised recently) and numerous online mentions, mass media and articles.

The Review analyzed and ranked globally innovation cities, and provided other indexes for ranking innovation. The world’s first authoritative publication to do so.

Despite our anti-Kosovo independence piece attracting controversy, always those pieces on Vienna and Paris (#1 and # 3 global innovation cities, in 2thinknow rankings) attracted a great deal of interest. As did our pieces on Boston.

> The Review can be ordered from 2thinknow here

Who Read Innovation Ideas ?

USA. As some surprise to those who think the USA media-readers only seek sensationalism.

We had readers from small towns and big cities in States like Texas, California, Illinois, Oregon, Michigan, the Carolinas, and of course New York. Almost all 50 states.

So, in my experience, intelligence doesn’t conform to media stereotypes.

But also Paris, Vienna, Brussels, Frankfurt, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Tallinn, Edinburgh, London, Bratislava, Turkey’s cities, Perth, Milan, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Oslo, Dublin, Auckland, Chennai, Singapore, and cities deep inside mainland China or Russia.

To be precise people from 2,638 cities/towns worldwide.

Although our readers average around people in 975 different cities/towns per month.

Most readers of tabloid journalism simply don’t read where we post online.

But intelligence does not conform to stereotypes. And that may be the most important lesson of all.

The media choose to show ‘rubbish content’. We don’t all choose to read or watch it.

So if you’re trying to get intelligent ideas started in 2008, take heart.

Bonne Année!

Christopher

Please be aware this content is proprietary. I hate seeing my writing or ideas rehashed under your name in major media. (You know who you are). I am happy to be quoted. So please behave responsibly, and do so. Or else.

Whilst I applaud many fine Print Journalists, the fact is that the bias inherent in many publications and TV, means that media is increasingly untrusted.

The average person knows on some level that the mass media exists to propagate a message that is not about enlightening debate.They know Rupert’s media on some level is about Rupert…

People know Fox News is biased, and has dragged all media to the Right.

Those people who vehemently support Fox are simply people on the Right.

But in subtle ways, the media has shifted to far too the Right.

The average person feels powerless, so they watch satire.

Whilst there are many fine stories the selection of stories predicates a bias towards certain topics.

It really is about maintaining a power-base of support for ideas an uber-rich autocracy, like the autocracy Murdoch and the far-Right’s Neo-Conservative cronies, support.

Of course, there are rival factions, and some the support for Bush is fickle (as he recently discovered), as the supporters fight amongst themselves for more power. Even Murdoch is fickle, it’s about power.

Cheap oil has made these people super-rich, and they want to keep it. Simple. In fact they cannot visualize the world any other way. Green? Would weaken their power-base.

Many justify that they are ‘acting in the people’s interest’, but confuse the people’s interest with their own personal interest. Some don’t bother with the confusion.

War in Iraq is about cheap oil and strategic independence.

Nuclear weapons in Iran debate is about Iran’s unique geographic position.

Abortion is a ‘conscience’ topic talked up to divide people.

Why are these the only topics we hear about in US media?

If you watch the Daily Show excerpts, you will see one Right-wing Presidential candidate talk about nuking Iran! Stewart lampoons him. Yes, the Iranians are somehow a threat to the most powerful country in the world. Right. Okey-dokey. Logic, where?

One of the most popular self-serving bits of rhetoric ideology is that the perfect economy is a market economy without any interference or regulation. How then to ensure a level playing field?

This is not debated, just regurgitated as popular wisdom. Private is better than public? Not always. The reality is, it is time for a moderate position of government intervention in the economy to ensure fairness.

Instead, of debate over big ideas: much of what is said in the most popular mass media is a carefully selected suite of distractions, inaccuracies, dichotomies, demagoguery and ideas.

So the people know it is merely opinion disguised as fact, and return to satire.

Why Satire not News?

If you think this is the first time in history, look back.

The satirical cartoons lampooning the British pre-dated the American War of Independence.

Satire is what people turn to when there is a shortage of real news.

Satire allows people to ’say what they think’ in an environment of oppressive thinking, and political correctness. Satire is in Ancient Rome, Shakespeare, and Ancient Greece.

Whenever power goes ‘off-the-rails’, satire rises.

Whenever people feel powerless to control their lives, satire arises. It is a safety valve.

Citizens are mostly moderate, it is some leaders who are extremist. Howard moved too far to the Right in Australia, and he was removed from power. FULL STOP. (Analysis here)

And media proprietors who keep pushing the media to extremism of the Right, or Left to increase their power. Murdoch has supported both the Far left (Australia 1970s) and Far Right (USA, 2000s) , his ideology is ‘Murdoch’.

Moderate, balanced news that is structured and logical is what most people want.

Not Info-tainment, as I explain here. (Thanks for those of you, like Jody and Chris, who sent me some enlightened comments.)

Not everyone can understand why they dislike a program, but the ratings should tell you that The Daily Show, Colbert Report and Chasers, which lack the resources of a news network are more popular.

Let me say that again: under-resourced programs are more implicitly truthful, and therefore rate well.

The truth is disguised as satire to reach a mass audience in today’s world.

In the Chasers case, an under-resourced ABC, hamstrung by government appointees, on a program made by less-serious journalists, in an inconvenient time-slot, is able to out-rate ’serious news’.

Not everyone wants to read large slabs of newspapers, journals and serious books by Al Gore and Al Greenspan. I think their ideas are important, so I do, but then, that’s me.

Most people like their truth in a pithy video form.

And satire TV, is giving them a drop of the water of truth in an oasis of ‘interest’.

And people take the drop of water over the oasis.

The people are smarter than you think Rupert.

Take care,

Christopher

Background for our global readers: Rudd is from the Left, although a moderate. Howard was from the Right, and part of a NSW branches of the Right that are increasingly moving far-Right, by Australian standards (although not yet Neo-Conservative).

And Australia generally prefers moderates and punishes radicalism.

The true significance of this win, has been lost on some commentators. Here’s why…

The significance of Rudd win

Australia politics are a barometer of sentiment in global developed English-speaking countries.

A government measured on economic scores of low unemployment, relatively low interest rates, budget surpluses and sustained growth was removed from power.

The Australian voters chose a government promising a plan of action. The exiting Howard & Treasurer Costello were generally still perceived as the better economic managers.

The PM Howard even lost his own seat (almost). It’s down to handful of postal ballots, which may favor him.

In politics there is a saying, oppositions don’t win, governments lose. Yet Howard lost whilst ‘lead indicators’ said people were ‘well-off’.

As we don’t have fixed terms in Australia, Howard had been in power for almost 12 years.

So the incumbent government were ‘kicked out’ whilst the economic party was going on, and the NSW Right were passing around the cocktail umbrellas. Howard should have taken more care in listening to the NSW Right.

Significance to innovation

Globally the significant issue was that the citizens prefer governments who try to deliver services. People expect some ‘care’ from the State.

This fashion for removing ‘all state intervention’ from the economy, and the persecution of Keynesians, has been significantly set-back.

The significance of this victory is a swing back to the State providing some services to the public. And that is significant in a world where the far-Right have ’stolen a march’.

We need more moderation, the market alone is not ‘perfect’, and the State is better at some things. That’s the Wisdom of Crowds, for you.

Conversely, Howard argued the government should only step-in in market failures, if then. Everything should be private.

Under Howard most health-care became private, with more expensive yet highly-decreased levels of service for most patients. Schools became increasingly private. Roads became increasingly toll-ways. Telecoms became private, but we still don’t have world-class broadband internet. Howard also outsourced most tax collection to business owners.

Peoples’ houses tripled in price, and they ‘never had it so good’. And jobs became easy to come by. So they borrowed more and more, paying more and more for the same house.

It seems silly, but if everyone says your house is worth 300% more in 4 years, then it is. And Australians see property as ‘easy-money’.

But significantly they had to work harder and harder. They may have been able to eat in fancy restaurants, but especially for the younger generation (under 30) who voted Howard out, they increasingly realized that it was getting harder every year to get education, home, marriage, kids – which is what most people of all backgrounds want.

3 in 4 young people polled were voting against Howard. Baby Boomers were mostly for him.

Now of course property prices are stagnant in most locations, except WA, where Howard still enjoyed strong support. So some of those battlers and baby boomers turned.

But the catch-22 for the wealth: under Howard everything was ‘user-pays’.

The electorate said, rather than economic indicators, we’re full now and we want to ‘feel better off’ and that means the State taking caring of some basic services.

They would rather have the State take care of healthcare, education and basic services in some instances and pay more taxes. They would like better roads. And there are instances in nation-building where government should foot the bill.

Broadband, world-class universities, some research, childcare assistance.

It’s like the West Wing episode about the man sending his child too college. “It’s should be hard, I like that… but not too hard.”

They told Howard that for those under 30, and some under 60, it was too hard !

Howard dolled out tax-cuts, but it actually worked against him. Polls showed it.

It’s about balance, and ‘ideology’ never fits with balance.

The lesson is ‘State Providing Services’ is back again

And balance between private and public. A moderate position.

Extreme: Under Howard food production in Australia has been partly outsourced to China. We are the foodbowl of Asia, and yet we outsource basic food to China. There have been numerous safety scandals here in food and goods and in the USA. The profits have not been passed onto consumers in lower prices. They have been retained by ever-larger companies. If anything basic good and food prices keep rising.

People know when they are getting a raw deal on basic goods. That is what people talk about at home. They know when quality decreases over time.

And Howard gutted John Button’s great manufacturing /export incentives.

Rudd won primarily on a few issues, but mostly he won on the perception he had a plan to give people services: other than tax cuts.

Howard made the mistake of most Right-wing economics true believers — he forgot how well off is about how people feel, and that people fear losses more than they appreciate gains.

You have been informed, this is a nascent 2% stage trend. Expect to hear more. Services are important to tax-payers.

Good bye Mr Howard, perhaps we can get some balance back and remove some of your extreme-economics.

And Mr Rudd, congratulations, and we hope you stay moderate.

PS> MORE POSTS ON RUDD HERE (including our accurate predictions of the victory)

Take care,

Christopher

Australia needs new ICT policies.

Why we don’t have an ICT Export industry!

According to the AIIA, domestic production of ICT is worth between 4 and 5% of GDP.

ICT exports were once around $7.8 billion per annum, in 2000, according to AIIA.

Now, under Howard, these have declined to $5.4 Billion according to Austrade.

There’s no reason we cannot more than double ICT exports in 5-10 years through government policy.

Canada is a country closes to Australia in size and population.

A single city in Canada, exports along $6.2 Billion Canadian (around 6.4 Billion in todays dollars), according to the Toronto City government.

1 city in Canada exports more IT than Australia!

Surely Australia with a population 450% greater than Toronto can double one city’s exports?!

Canada is also ahead of us in broadband and ICT infrastructure, despite our recent resources boom. Howard does nothing about ICT policy, and doesn’t even like IT.

I believe we can have a $13 Billion per annum ICT Export industry by 2015.

But it will need innovation. It will need ideas from overseas. it will need education.

It’s not that hard with the right leadership.

That is a huge opportunity, and a shelter against any forthcoming recession. A back-up plan to the resource boom. And ICT can be grown through utilization strategies without inflationary pressures on the economy, by government policy that aids global ICT exports.

It would be the start of making us part of an Education Nation, instead of a nation looking to the 1950s, under Howard.

This export of ICT market would position Australia positively overseas as a ‘clever country’ an oft-derided term.

But we can’t take this opportunity by looking inward and more of the same politics of paper-shuffling.

We don’t need the recidivist Howard government deciding ICT policy.

We should form closer partnerships with the USA, Germany and East Europe. In a global world an idea does not always recognize where it is born.

Australian governments should source the best ICT instead of massive roll-outs that damage the industry like the Customs disaster, designed by people who did not understand ICT.

What does the Howard government do? Besides mountains of paper and talk?

The Howard Government: Australian Technology Problem

We should look outwards. Do we?

We should look beyond hardware and ‘box’ thinking. Do we?

We’ve had 12 years of Howard: a supposedly pro-market government? Where’s our broadband? Now?!

The Good news

Australia is a global leader in Mining Software and other niches. Internet technologies have originated here. Software rollouts sometimes start here before going global.

But no thanks to the Howard Government.

Sure the US Free Trade Agreement on the whole is positive for ICT. Exchange of professionals, closer trade ties.

Austrade have done good work, but ICT is down the bottom of their website, 12th link, after many less relevant export industries. It’s symbolic, but…
And where’s the ICT initiatives?

If Rudd gets elected (as I predicted here) we will have decent broadband, according to the pre-election announcements. I have hope.

The Howard Government, is more interested in creating mountains of paper. This is seemingly backed up by our professional body the Australian Computer Society.

The ICT industry needs global innovation, not a bunch of aging professors and baby boomer consultants inflicting outdated curricula teaching outmoded computer ‘programming’ on kids, because that’s all they know.

The future is far more exciting than that.

Technology is so obviously a young person’s field!

If you ask ICT practitioners about what they do in their job, it will bear no resemblance to the actual curricula in most Australian universities.

At an ACS IT Symposium in August 2006 designed to ‘bridge the gap’ the very same professors ridiculed any idea that did not fit their ‘narrow’ view of the world.

I chaired a group of professors and they couldn’t agree amongst themselves on the ‘wording’ let alone any new ideas. Any new ideas were ‘revised out’.
ICT is one industry where age & history is a poor guide, unlike economics.

The Brain Drought in Australian ICT

Yet their is a dirth of people in ICT who understand emerging and even established technologies. Silicon Valley is far ahead. So is Toronto! There is a brain drought.

Instead we have policies driven and advised by ICT people out of touch with the market, a hallmark of Howard’s comfort with people in ICT his own age band.

Whether this is university professors who can’t understand modern ICT or baby boomer consultants who are intensely disliked by many of their younger members. Or aging Telstra executives.

It’s not good enough! Australia deserves better and can be a world ICT power!

Most of these organizations are full of people from the time when computers were a box in a room worked by scientists, and the concept of collaboration was having a meeting.

These people do not even efficiently use the technology they make policy decisions on.

Nor are they in touch with how to recruit Generation Y employees.

What we need is to understand technology, and use it

In a virtual world we need people who understand how to employ technologies like Web 2.0, citizen media, social bookmarking, online career management, agile computing, wikis, collaboration and even conversation in a digital age.

People who can foresee the future beyond a myopic backward-looking nostalgia for the past.

Notice I say employ or utilize, not ‘build’. The same people who harness these systems do not have to be the same people who ‘repair’ them. Do the technicians plan which models of car are released, or is that a broader decision taken in consultation, but with leadership?

An a recent Web 2.0 presentation the content was technical, inadequate and a sneering look down your nose at technology which the Americans are already utilizing.

The Americans (of all ages) say how can we utilize this technology?

Even when approached politely this arguing class is notoriously ‘dug-in’ in ICT. They say what can’t be done not how can we use this for the nation?

What Australia Needs under Rudd

It’s time they moved on and gave the younger (30-40) generation a chance at some real leadership. And innovation.

We need to become a global ICT industry, and we need government policy and policy advisers to reflect that.

We need vision, and leadership.

We don’t need ‘out-of-touch’ old professors and politicians who refuse to allow new talent into the echelons of government in ICT policy.

It’s time for generational change and a global world-view on ICT.

The world clock starts now…

Christopher

At the same time, on 3 occasions today I have seen ticket inspectors, and been asked for my ticket.

What may I ask are we paying for?

Unsafe, unclean and unreliable transport.

The woman behind me had the same idea. She told the ticket police, why did we have to have tickets, given the trams weren’t running this morning again?

Melbourne’s citizens are getting increasingly hostile to the transport inspectors, and the failling of another tram.

We the citizens of Melbourne, need a change. We need innovation in public policy.

Public Transport Innovation

Here’s some innovative ideas for public transport. These are for Melbourne, but can apply in most cities.

And unlike most consulting or advice I do, these ideas are for free.

Some of these are crazy. But from crazy as a starting point, come good ideas. They may not be as crazy as they look. We need a paradigm shift from bad service to winning service.

1. Make the trams a government enterprise again
2. Hold the government to account
3. Make all public transport FREE (it’s subsidised by taxes anyway)
4. Create a paid business class transport on major routes to subsidise improvements
   This works elsewhere, as in the new Paddington-Heathrow express.
5. Employ someone to clean the trams & trains (for real)
6. Make all ministers catch public transport in sitting weeks. No limos. FULL STOP.
7. Laptop points on public transport for charging
8. When buying new trams make sure they have seats not standing room only
9. Convert trains to double-decker, to fit more people (as Neville Wran did in NSW)
10. Create revenue opportunities by selling value added goods on or around public transport, through partnering with private companies
11. Standing only bulky baggage and bicycle carriages on trams & trains
12. Give artists materials to paint the trams and trains, and create beautiful art
13. Sack the head offices of all trains, and put them back on the stations
14. Replace ticket inspectors/police with conductors
15. Encourage performers on transport like in the Paris metro
16. Speed-dating or other special events, concerts on trams and trains?
17. Why not have vending machines for food and magazines?
18. Why not simply buy more trams and trains?
19. Go back to simplified tickets and dump all electronic ticketing. Where’s the need?
20. Sack Yarra and Connex Trams immediately.

This government needs to look at mass transport to and from work.

All governments need a paradigm shift from transport as burden, to transport as opportunity. That’s the point.

They need to be creative. They need to have ideas. They need to solve the problems.

Not Good Enough for Melbourne

Excuses are not good enough.

Inflicting increasingly third-world tranport on citizens is not good enough.

Paying for failing infrastructure twice, through taxes and tickets is not good enough.

The Brumby Victorian government’s ideas on mass transport are not good enough.

Transport can work, and the citizens of Melbourne have had enough.

Other cities have, can and do, globally.

Even jeans (I don’t know about you, but I’ll never fit into them again!)

When we are finished with goods we throw them out. Doesn’t have to be that way…

Some end up in charity shops. But most end up in landfill.

But there is a simple way to change all that.

eBay – a social innovation.

Most of us know eBay is a global online auction site. We’ll get to more on eBay in a moment.

A bit of background. My earlier post called for an end to cheap disposable goods. Over a 1000 of you had read that post…

Whilst I will agree with a few people who have said that there are limited instances where disposable goods are better environment, these cases are just that, limited.

But in a consumerist world, we all consume so much that there is bound to be left-over unwanted goods.

EBay allows you, me or anyone else with access to an internet connection to sell these unwanted goods to someone else.

I am not talking about junk.

I am talking about:

• watched DVDs/CDs/tapes
• finished books
• old toys
• hand-me-down clothes
• suits (or jeans) that you are now too big for (mea culpa!)
• shoes or clothes you never wear

“What is different about eBay? When should I use eBay?”

The advantage of eBay is that it is one instance of a mostly efficient market.

Whilst I may disagree with some aspects of prevailing economic theory, you don’t need to be an economist to see there is a common sense benefit to eBay.

If you live in one place, the appeal of your 1970s vintage flared jeans may be limited. Perhaps no-one wears them. They prefer straight-legs.

But in a global market your same jeans could be a collectors item or have broader appeal, leading to higher prices.

These jeans may fetch $5 at the local market, but $200 as a vintage item on eBay accessing a global market.

On the other hand, generic non-collectible goods may be better suited to a garage sale. For example common kitchen utensils, everyday clothes, TVs, basic electrical goods or anything with mass market appeal.

Also shipping is an issue, so eBay may not suit furniture (which may be better placed in localized trading ads, dealers or auctions to reach local buyers).

All of the above: eBay, garage sales, dealers, thrift shops and second-hand goods of all types help the environment.

How do second-hand goods help the environment?

Simple. Second-hand goods can help the environment by reducing production. not commerce or the economy. Just production.

For every good second hand sold, that is one less good produced. And we over-produce.

Commerce still happens. Production is less and less important.

In Western countries majority of business is not in the production of goods, but services and creative industries.

Think about it how many people do you know in service industries?

We are in a post-industrial age, but nobody has told industrialists yet…

eBay is an example of one of the great modern global businesses that create massive markets for goods that already exist. Your goods. My goods.

eBay on the most part does good in creating markets for goods that had limited markets. And in the process reducing over-production.

Why be an eBay Seller?

You’re unwanted goods can be someone else’s useful goods. (And more prosaically, think of the cupboard space!)

A sizable percentage of the unwanted goods you sell will replace purchase of new goods.

Let’s look at another pair of jeans…

A pair of 80s vintage jeans that might suit a student, who will feel they are cool, and at the same time will prevent them buying a sweatshop product of inferior quality, and probably with lower environmental standards…

Commerce still wins: eBay make money, the student saves money, you make money.

All of this money gets spent on more useful things than cheap jeans.

In a creative society commerce still goes on.

And if you are looking for ways to be thrifty and save money, why not buy second hand goods? Often goods made years ago are better made than the latest goods. And cheaper.

True there is shipping, but most transport uses excess space in existing vehicles, so the marginal impact of shipping one extra DVD is small, especially locally.

If you want to ensure a smaller impact using existing infrastructure such as the postal service, which will be operating regardless of your package.

But your local flea market or second hand dealer does the same.

Why be an eBay or second-hand buyer?

I have always liked wooden furniture, something very hard to find in good quality in Australia, so one approach is to purchase second hand furniture from licensed second hand dealers. Why chop down more trees for timber…

This is an important point.

Goods made 30 years ago are often better quality in English-speaking countries before we became totally disposable. So why not buy them?

Sometimes you have to or want to buy new clothes. Shirts are a good example. In this case, buy from the smaller merchant or local manufacturer. Support the quality goods produced locally.

When you stop buying disposable goods, and acting like a consumer, smart companies will have no option but to move into the new economy.

Companies go where the money is, and by not buying new rubbish you support change.

Think about it: How often do you go to the stores and walk away with nothing because there is nothing you really like?

Well why shop in the stores which are nothing more than garment racks for Chinese rubbish made for $2 and sold for $200?

Are you getting a good deal?

The French have the right idea. Trade barriers are not always a bad idea from quality of life viewpoint, even though that is currently economic heresy to say so.

And there is no argument that eBay and similar businesses provide commercial opportunities to business-owners.

So why keep producing rubbish goods en masse in Chinese factories?

Buying secondhand or local goods allows you to reduce your environmental impact and encourage change.

Make money and help the world on eBay

So why not sell your unwanted DVDs, CDs, clothes, electronics, toys and other things online? Many others are already doing this and making an income.

You will make some money (listing fees are only around 5-10% depending on price and payment methods).

And you will help in reducing production.

Take care

Christopher

If you want to understand the future of the internet, as a communication medium then read Berners-Lee’s book, “Weaving the Web”.

Here’s the Amazon bio on it. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web Get his book.

I have his book sit on my shelf, right on top of a swag of ebusiness books; but his book is the classic and the real deal.

Berners Lee’s Vision of a Web of Data talking to Data about Data

The same employer of Bern, CERN, where alongside Boston’s MIT and other US institutions including US ARPA, did a lot of foundation work on the World Wide Web.

Technology is allowing a lot of the prophetic visions in Berners-Lee thinking, and his 199 book, to come true. The book can be heavy going for non-technical or non-visionaries, but give it a try, it’s a great read.

Both here in this blog in my post on the Semantic Web (data talking about data and to data), and in my presentations since 1999 for clients of Simple (www.simple.net.au) and I’ve been long talking about this.

More than a few of you may remember this stuff from the first 45 minutes of my HTML or Adobe classes in 2000/2001…

Why is this SO important to the future?

The web is an enabling technology, not replacing what went before, but like phones enabling whole new types of commerce, art, media, communications, ideas.

Now technology is catching up to possibility. CERN more or less said so.

The Rise of the Interest Site

This is an effect. Global Aggregation of interest. One of those is the rise of interest in hobbies and entertainments like magic, poker, bridge and card games.

The massive online communities that enjoy these activities allow them to acquire new participants in the offline world.

My ventures online have shown me globally that much of the mainstream news media is out of touch with what really interests media consumers.

Poker took the mainstream media by storm, yet came out of left field.

Interest Groups according 2thinknow

There’s a whole list of predictions that could be made about emerging industries that will take off. It’s not coolhunting, which is basically looking for ‘fads’ not ‘trends’.

Fads don’t become the future. Trends are underlying forces that do.

But to get into these industries businesses have to turn around the ships of industry, which favors more the small nimble firm or nimble teams within big firms.

There’s a whole new paradigm developing here. Small business and flexible innovation.

And a lot of it derives from Sir (yes he was knighted) Tim Berners-Lee’s magnificent and magnanimous contribution. What I like most about Berners-Lee is his tireless dedication to outcomes and sharing technology so that all of us can use it.

Broadband Enabling Knowledge Sharing

Now it seems Berners-Lee vision is being enabled further by broadband. Which is why we need to fight for better broadband in Australia, as well as large areas of the USA and many European countries.

Broadband enables traditional keepers of knowledge, like universities to have new ways to share and collaborate globally.

Quoting from Vu-Net, a brief article:

The growth in high-speed internet access around the world has changed the way business and academics collaborate, and led to a “globalisation of innovation”, according to a department head at Cern.

David Foster, head of communications and networks at Cern, claimed that the scientific community is as much affected as business.

“What we are seeing is a globalisation of innovation,” he said. “From our own perspective, the availability of high-packet network broadband is causing major changes in business models. This is also true of science.”

“Communications now means that you can actually do global research without storing sections of your papers in one location,” he said.

So that says it.

It’s a brave new world. Rules will be changed, fortunes made and lost.

And Web 2.0 or the next name for the future of Berners-Lee vision will roll onwards.

Take care,

Christopher

Reading books is one of those few great things that no-one can take away. Ben Franklin used books to raise his intellect and become a great thought-leader and statesman of his day.

Ben Franklin was a lifelong avid reader, having being a tradesman-printer and never attended Harvard the university of the town of his birth.

Ben Franklin started the first lending library in the USA (or at least that is the popular wisdom). He also had a private scheme of a group of friends sharing books.

We have to remember books were far more expensive than they are now.

Why books?

We can read books anywhere. Any time. In wealth or poverty. In sickness or health. Anywhere in the (developed) world.

Libraries. Bookshops. Book fairs. Amazon. Second hand bookstores. Friends books. Families books. Need not cost you a cent.

Also now we have the internet, a plethora of content.

But still there is something about books.

By way of example, at current, I have been reading concurrently a few books:

an excellent book on John Maynard Keynes only available in Australia
(I have a somewhat strong interest in Keynesian economics)

Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason

A Robert Collins book of French grammar

Richard Vinen’s A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century

and just now, Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

Gore, Greenspan and Vinen are recommended reads. The links in this post takes you to Amazon with details of the books.

Starting with the Threads of History

Vinen’s book is especially interesting for someone taught basic classical modern English & French history.

Vinen focusses on the impact of the events on the lives of people in many countries across Europe. He uses many interesting statistics. Vinen challenges many assumptions, but also draws the reader to make many assumptions.

Some of his assumptions agreed with my experience of visiting French, British, Australian and German War history Museums. There are vastly different pictures of the events of the war in each museum.

De Gaulle and Vichy are viewed vastly differently through the prism of French & English history.

For all it’s strength in raising the unexpected, Vinen’s book is not the only book to read. Vinen slips in some ideological viewpoints neatly into the text as new assumptions.

The antidote to One Author’s View – reading Multiple books

I often read multiple books. I also often stop at the 1/3 or 2/3 point before finishing the book some time later, if at all.

Sometimes I will read a book from cover to cover in a store or library in around an hour. Especially books which have a good single theme but have been expanded to fill too many pages.

Overlapping themes become apparent when reading multiple works. Works in related texts reinforce each other. Themes across texts can be identified.

All of these books are excellent brain-food books.

Ideas Person Activity 1

This week, pick a topic that interest you.

And why not read around the topic instead of reading one book on a topic?

Bonus Points: Read divergent / opposite / contradictory views.

I am reading about Keynes, but in the past have also read other opposite or dissimilar economists. Just 2 hours ago, I read some others’ blog posts on the classical economics school

Suggested books.

Any of those books above.

If I had the time I would throw Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (Bantam Classics) into the mix as a suggested book for myself. (The French Grammar is a bit of a odd-one-out.)
Even if you are not a capitalist you should read Smith. Often Smith is misquoted repeatedly, so much so that much of what he wrote is actually against the type of the laissez-faire thinking he is associated with.

Smith is worthy of considered reflection, so will be left for when I have more time.

Ideas Person lesson:

Read widely and well. One of the first steps to being an Ideas person is to read multiple texts on related themes simultaneously, and get over the desire to finish those books or read anything fully except that which is worthy of considered reflection.

It’s an idea. Let me know your thoughts. I have opened up the comments so you can add comments (not spam which is bounced automatically) more freely.

Take care,

Christopher

Cell phones on trains.

Cell phones (or mobiles if you prefer) in restaurants.

Famously, I once heard a man chatting up a woman in a toilet cubicle with the door closed at a cinema. I first thought she was in there with him, then he came out holding a phone.

I wonder what she thought of the loud ‘flush’?

The Market Opportunity for Quiet

Expect a pendulum swing back to quiet and focus.

In the meantime expect a rise in products offering peace & quiet, tranquility and rest.

Expect added devices that give control over a person’s micro-environment ie. The space around them.

Expect ideas like quiet zones and others.

I noticed even the more peaceful European capitals now had noisy cell phone users. Recent surveys have shown Germans too are seeking peace & quiet.

A conversation with French people in Paris in August, turned to the stresses of modern life.

Peace & quiet will be a big opportunity. The value lies in identifying how solutions to that opportunity should be implemented in global and local markets.

The extrapolation into outcomes like new global manners and etiquette, also highlights important social trends.

Open plan offices are a practical example of a countervailing force against peace & quiet, depending on how they are implemented. They will be effected.

But mobiles and cell phones have been the ‘poster-child’ for the broader movement of individualism (look at me I am important), which is also part of numerous nascent countervailing trends.

A further analysis by 2thinknow would unearth numerous market and product opportunities in line with this nascent current to 8 year trend in various global markets.

Don’t mind the noise of a dozen others in a din?

So why is peace & quiet important to innovation?

Peace & Quiet needed for Inspiration

If you want to concentrate you need peace & quiet.

As I write this I am in a library. Been researching. The librarians are gossiping loudly. Nowhere is quiet these days.

Why can’t we get peace?

We underrate the need to concentrate. We need peace.

On trams and trains now public transport users loudly discuss their social lives.

Of course this is worse in some countries.

In my global experience, Australians from Sydney & Melbourne are the loudest, most rude mobile phone talkers in the world.

Cell Phone Abusers on Trains – no innovation here

Before I used to enjoy a quiet trip to read a book or magazine.

Now it is nigh-impossible as men, but more often women, recant their social lives loudly into a device.

Twenty years ago it would have been a sign of madness. Now judging by some of the conversations I overhear, it probably still is!

If you want any proof that mental illness is a new epidemic (as many politicians in Australia privately believe), listen to the mildly psychotic rantings of a few vocal public transport users who share too much.

Quite often I think people do it to show off their social lives, as if to say I am so very busy and therefore very attractive to others / very important.

Oh well, in Australia we like to head over the cliffs with the herd. Anything not to be lonely or ‘out of the herd’.

The new low point in Peace & Quiet

I often head on a plane, and write voluminous amounts of material.

Both on the plane and at the airport before.

The quiet and change of scenery allows me to shift focus & gain new insight.

Now according to numerous articles, but specifically Conde Nast Traveller magazine, in plane cell phone calls may be a reality.

The Europeans are testing the device.

Sure it is up to individual callers, but one of the great defenses of air travel has always been, ‘I can’t talk as I am Boarding the plane’ and the resultant time difference.

On long haul flights this can buy you an almost uninterrupted day.

Now if there’s no excuse for false urgency you can expect that professionals will need to become available during the previously relaxing flying time.

The last quite place is about to be taken away.

Oh well, I guess there is a market opportunity.

But I’d prefer peace & quiet now.

Take care

Christopher