You can be a painter, designer, critic or follower of art… or a student.

This is a list of interesting, different art and design blogs.

I am hoping to get over 1000 here, so I will be adding them to get us started,…

Just add yours in the comments, once approved, then it’s on the list! This will help your Technorati or other rankings, and in-bound links. Easy!

Add your own, or your friends on art & design. Be it on StumbleUpon, Wordpress, Typepad, BlogSpot or your own domain.

There is an RSS of all approved comments here and a feedburner feed of the blog here, if you’re suitably geeky, or just bookmark the list! Tell any artist friends.

(Anything off-topic will be dis-approved however, and spam canned …!)

If you want to link this post, or blog about it, please do so. We’d really appreciate any reciprocal links from art blogs.

I feel it’s really important to help create a list of interesting artists, so let’s do it!

How?

Easy. Just add your comment below. Be sure to include the URL of the main blog page, and a brief! description.

If it’s art & design related and not offensive we will approve it. We will delete any spam. And the comments are moderated, so may take a day to appear.

Let’s get this started…

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

The media has the wrong idea on what YOU and I want to read and watch.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.

News flash for the Media.

People are not obligated to read /watch your media.

Relevance will determine if they do.

An FAQ on the Current State of the Media

Media has lost the plot. Driven by dollars and eyeballs.

“Well I still watch CNN / read the paper.”

Me too. Sort of.

But how engaged are you?

Or is it background?

Do you fast forward, skip the ads?

“OK, I don’t pay full attention – but the Media is still powerful.”

Shocking news here! Only if they aggregate your eyeballs. ie. you pay attention. You control them.

It’s all 5,700 outlets with nothing on.

CNN is wall-to-wall Paris/Britney/Brangelina interspersed with Iraq, elections (that have not have started yet) and get-rich quick schemes.

The media corporations created that whole ‘phony’ campaign by reporting it.

Murdoch’s rags have some great journalists, but the content is commonly described as ‘opinions served as news’.

Fox News, The Daily Telegraph and the Australian newspaper are all often quoted examples given by media commentators.

In the US, there was the Wall Street Journal, but now Murdoch owns that…!

Even the venerable New York Times has had problems, and it’s part of the group containing the respected Boston Globe…!

Fairfax has the best traditional media structure in Australia.

“But if people are losing interest in Media, why are they still powerful?”

The Media is shaping societies interests, and trying to exert influence on what you, me and our children watch.

The more they lose viewers/readers, the more they grab at power, like addicts.

The power grabs are forced to become increasingly overt, in the face of declining engagement (ie. you reading / watching and noticing adverts.)

Think about it? Do you engage with adverts.

For a media corporation executives it’s how YOU watch the adverts that matter. (although this is not the case for most journalists).

“But wait? There’s no evidence of this. I don’t read blogs every day.”

No. Neither do I.

But fact is, change follows generations.

A change is only complete when a physical generation that was comfortable with it becomes older, and relinquishes power.

In other words, people under 30 are massively switching off traditional media.

Ever noticed they like reading off screens, and spend hours on the internet?

And if you think blogs are the final form of citizen media, well… there’s more to come. Blogs are an interim step in generational change.

Like from horse to automobile, we didn’t get to a Toyota Prius in 5 years.

“But this is all hype… media won’t change.”

They’ll have to. If you all switch off.

You know Massachusetts in the US, was once the center of a massive ice industry. They exported ice to India. Successfully. No trace now.

Bill Gates once run a tiny software company. Then came DOS PCs.

Just how profitable do you think newspapers will be once we have to raise the cost of paper to cover the environmental costs?

But you’re right the media moguls like Murdoch won’t let go.

Power wants to preserve power.

Media has been very settled for decades and decisions are increasingly centralized through soft-control and feedback loops.

“Huh?”

I hear you.

That means the media has such good statistics about what they think you read, that they think they know what you want, feel and think.

That’s why there are so many dumb ads that don’t ‘connect’ with me or you.

“Me?”

Well you in aggregate. Aggregated eyeballs.

You as a ’soccer mum’. A ‘dink’, a ‘breeder’ or a ‘pink’.

“Huh?”

All terms to describe you or someone else. As a group.

As a set of aggregated eyeballs. A slice of the demographic pie assigned a dollar value as a market segment.

“But I am person. I live, breathe, feel.”

Yes you are. But a person can’t be aggregated in a database as readership / viewers to sell adverts to.

To a corporation you are an aggregated eyeball neatly slotted in a category.

“But I want to be a person again…
I don’t like being aggregated …

it’s uncomfortable.”

Well writers think of you as a person. Other citizens think of you as a person. Many journalists think of you as a person.

So say hello to citizen media and web 2.0.

“Web 2.0? Isn’t that for techies?”

No. Web 2.0 is user-generated content and communities.

Citizen Media is a part of this. You may not write, but you get to decide what you want to read, and even what other’s read.

It’s your content.

And quite frankly, you don’t have to be aggregated.

“Well that’s a relief!
All that Aggregation was getting uncomfortable.”

I know. Even journalists aren’t keen on it.

take care

Christopher

PS. If you are in Melbourne or Sydney, attend my Web 2.0 seminars.

More globally to follow. www.simple.net.au

You’ll learn a lot. And I don’t waffle in tech-speak into my beard..

If you feel Web 2.0 is a buzzword. it is. But then again unlike most, this one is useful.

What is Web 2.0?

In short Web 2.0 is the new new printing press, wireless and TV Tube.

Specifically, Web 2.0 is user’s creating content and communities.

Content like blogs, wikis, citizen media, citizen journalism, niche weblogs, vertical portals, social bookmarking, bulletin boards, web communities, virtual groups, etc. Trans-national border-less country kind of content.

It’s not a place to dump marketing messages, as users have choices to view and vote or not.

It is Stumbleupon: – a social bookmarking service.

It is Wikipedia: – a useful encyclopedia

It is Wordpress: – a personal publishing system (ie. blog)

They are some of the useful ones, but like any new market you are spoilt for choice.

These sites are good places to start. They are useful.

Why care?

Well people are spending time here at work, at home, at uni.

Instead of the TV or newspaper.

It is Generation Y yes. but also retirees. And also families with children. it’s a broad group.

Web 2.0 is social networks, and social communities and user generated media.

It’s part of Tim Berners-Lee broader ideas such as the Semantic web.

Bottom Line:

In short more and more people are here. like this blog.

Readers in 975 cities as at October 2007. That’s pretty cool.

You could be reading this in Kiev, New York, Montreal, Tallinn, Sao Paolo, anywhere…

If you like comment or email me and let me know where you are.

And chances are you’ll see more of Web 2.0.

I am giving speeches and seminars on the topic of web 2.0 as part of 2thinknow ® research into trends and innovation.

Notice I didn’t say fads. Fads don’t last.

And the good news is you don’t need to be a geek to ‘get it’.

Web 2.0 is open to anyone of any age anywhere there is internet.

Take care

Christopher

I am going to drop the political commentary. Too much unwelcome ‘response’.

Culture, art, ideas, innovation

From now on we’ll be sticking to art, culture, ideas, food, wine, language and more positive things. Some environmental posts. Innovation through inspiration.

These have been the most popular and some of my favorite posts -

• Top 7 Art Galleries you must visit in europe
• Understanding Modern Art
• Generation X and Y is the Creative Generation
  
• End of Cheap Goods
• 7 Inspirations of the World

Many of these posts had 1000 plus readers, and still have many readers.
For politics: I’ll let the two Als’ — Republican Greenspan and Democrat Gore say it for me.

Read The Age of Turbulence and The Assault on Reason.

My recent Open letter to the President, will be the last openly political post I intend to post except where it relates to an analysis.

Take care

Christopher

An open letter to visiting President Bush.

Mr Bush is in Sydney Australia at current for the APEC summit, this was written just after his joint speech with Mr Howard today.

Dear Mr President,

You spoke at the APEC Summit with our Prime Minister, Mr Howard.

I agreed with your remarks Sir, about freedom and human rights being critical to the world’s future.

But the Oil War is not the way to spread freedom.

This war is deeply unpopular because the people ‘get’ it was not an honest war.

Another’s freedom is not won by burning your own.

The USA and Australia are Great & Loyal Friends

We as citizens both still believe in and honor our great military and brave soldiers.

All Australians as a majority support the strong US & Australian alliances, with Australia’s great friends and traditional ‘big brother’ the USA.

If you ask Australia to war, Australia will always join the US, not because it is right, but because you are a friend of the Australian people.

History Teaches us

Multi-nation international relations with world powers are far more important.

We are in the Middle East mainly for our dependency on cheap oil. Cheap oil in a future world of Peak Oil & oil shortage.

We need to reduce our reliance on Mid-East Oil, and the best way is to reduce consumption of energy.

There is an Alternative to a March to War

Moderating and scaling back wasteful consumption is far more useful alternative to oil over-consumption.

But can you imagine a world with less oil?

You may have to.

Even if your future, your friend’s and your families future is tied to oil.

The world economy can survive and thrive in a world with far less oil.

Humans are creatures of ideas

Automobiles were just an idea in a long ago age. Now motor cars are ubiquitous.

We humans are persistent with making our ideas real. We Americans are persistent with making our ideas real.

Oil is just a tool, used because we stopped looking for other ideas.

At the time we selected oil as a fuel, and plastic as a tool we did not know the consequences how large our dependence on oil would become.

The French Eurostar today made Paris to London possible in around 2 hours, with 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions of airplanes, on average.

Indeed we are people of ideas.

Our peoples are smart enough to use ideas to solve threats.

So you think your personal future is tied to Oil? Still?

Wars are uncertain events, and a war does not necessarily lead to power for those in the established order.

More likely a new order arises.

The government of France changed after World War II.

The German government changed after World War I and II.

In 1941 the rational business person in full possession of the facts believed Hitler had won, and would likely remain in power.

Instead all throughout the 1950s collaborators with the Hitler government were tried in France and other countries. The trials continued until 1959.

Others were tried by our loyal friends the Israelis.

Rational minds would have backed Petain & Vichy in France, not the great De Gaulle.

All De Gaulle had was ideas and persistence to be the voice of a Free France. At the beginning he was a lonely clear voice. That is how innovation happens.

War rarely leads to safety

Wars are the least predictable way to ensure security for any nation.

No matter how big or strong. In 1900 Britain ruled the World.

Britain believed it would be a quick war.

Millions dead and many more scarred for life, who in turn scarred their families as their mental wounds never healed.

If the US government start wars over Oil Supply then they may not be the dominant power in the world at the end of that war, and all the resulting wars.

The USA has more to lose than it has to gain by war. Unilateralism rarely lasts.

The world has already started re-arming after the USA got a case of itchy trigger finger.

Why War is a Tool of Last Resort

Again, wars are uncertain.

Wars generally are unresolved and lead to more wars.

Wars are infectious when used as a tool of diplomacy or State, even when our country is a unilateral super power on paper.

Russia and China might beg to differ on that point and deserve our respect.

Worst yet, sometimes wars lead to Balkan generational conflicts like those of the former Yugoslavia.

We should never be scared of war, but in the modern world wars are rarely limited.

Large wars should be a tool of defence, not of aggressive foreign policy.

Often small wars of aggression become total wars with lasting effects. Both World Wars started this way in part.

History doesn’t lie.

There’s an alternative to Oil Wars

How about instead of this we temper our consumption, initially?

Whom does it hurt? Change what we consume away from disposable goods.

You said, “we need to reduce our dependency on foreign oil.”

To do so, we need to hasten the movement towards the Creative Age.

We need to leave our modernist-manufacture-more-consume-more thinking behind.

We need to remember we are ideas people first in a digital age where all is possible.

That is the key choice.

Again, Wars are uncertain.

Chances are those in power at the beginning of a war will be so exhausted by the end they will no longer be in power.

Britain was the global power at 1900. A few decades later they were not.

USA was the global power at 2000. A few decades later they may not be.

And the world deserves the USA as a beacon on the hill.

The USA had the courage to work to end the scourge of communism in Europe, when Europe itself did not.

The Europeans I have spoke with, ordinary citizens from many countries in East & West Europe; are frustrated.

Europeans still like America, but they want America as a beacon on the hill again.

France bankrupted its own country fighting for a free America in the 1770s, and they have been our loyal allies in every war ever since.

Sometimes we need to listen to our friends.

America can again become the respected land of the free.

History rarely lies.

Wise counsel would advise to avoid making the mistake of the establishment, that of always assuming the war will favor those in power.

When instead wars favor the unknowns and stir up forces of various kinds that invariably leads to overthrows of the status quo.

Sometimes for good, and more often for bad.

Stalin came to power after the Bolshevik Revolution. The French Terror of the 1790s occurred after the 1789 revolution. Hitler assumed power as a result of the World War I reparations and global economic conditions.

The United States of America itself is a beacon of light on the hill in these dark times. Or it should be.

We dare not give up being a beacon of light for being a voice of fear.

We create the world

History may be unpredictable, but is often a monotonously accurate predictor of the future.

I hope this future that you have created does us no harm.

But I suspect that the war-march and global arms race that preceded previous global conflicts has started.

There is an alternative sir

People are bright. We need to trust the brightest of our own people.

We need the best and brightest of our young Americans to solve these problems.

But in a global world we need France, we need Russia, we need China, Germany and broader Europe, and of course, Australia.

We cannot afford to ignore ideas.

Ideas don’t create global warming but they can stop it.

Ideas don’t create wars but they can stop them.

Ideas create democracies, but mistakes can stop ideas.

Ideas can repair mistakes we all make.

Thank you for your time sir.

Respectfully yours,

Christopher Hire

Rather than reduce use of oil we go into a war using oil to fight for more oil supplies so we can have more plastic goods made from oil.

This itself increases global oil consumption further reducing oil supply.

Huh?

Does that Sound rational? Read it out aloud. No.

Economically it is not rational. Common sense tells you it is not rational.

Sounds like a panic because we might run out of oil to:

a) drive our big cars/SUVs/motor homes

b) manufacture more plastic cr*p we don’t need

c) drive to the mall in our SUV and buy plastic cr*p we don’t need

But there are other ways forward.

It doesn’t need to mean the end of the world. Even if your world is the mall…

The answer is about our choices.

One simple answer. Which company is doing better?

Who is doing better Toyota or GM?

Toyota. And their cars generally use less fuel than GM gas-guzzlers.

GM in the USA is just being stubborn. They do not want to change.

I’d like to think there was an alternative to a spiraling war being waged to secure future Oil Supplies. And there is.

So where IS the innovation here?

Use less energy and water.

That would mean consume less.

Turn off lights in big office towers

Plant lots of trees of the right sort to be a carbon-sink.
Anecdotally, each tree soaks up one-ton of emissions over its life.

Stop buying plastic cr*p

Stop purchasing Chinese made goods we do not need that travel huge distances to reach us

Walk to the shops don’t drive

Walk or bicycle where you can

Buy goods that last

Travel by public transport where it is efficient to do so

I am not saying to stop living our lives.

Start with the easy stuff.

Offices use a lot of electricity

There was a recent report suggesting a few key major uses of energy are:

a) Electric lights in Office Blocks (especially after hours).

b) Add to that desktop computers and monitors left on 24/7.

c) Then add the mobile phone and other chargers that have no phone attached

A device that is plugged in still draws power.

Turn them all off at the end of the day.

Computer. Monitor. Lights. Chargers.

Unplug or switch off  at the wall all electric appliances. Have the cleaners turn off all lights.

Simple. No impact on operations.

Massive reduction in energy consumption.

If you’re a manager, you can make this policy. Create a policy manual for your team.

It is the waste we should start with before the clever tricky means of energy reduction.

And Get personal with products:

And I am not saying to stop buying your favorite chocolate bar.

But think before you consume.

Reward companies that make responsible decisions.

Rewards companies that use local produce. Companies who reduce packaging.

Who allow you to supply your own containers rather than over-packaged disposables. 

Buy from local markets who support local producers. 

We can act. Today.

The time of waste for wastes sake is over.

Learn to live with less waste before supply-side constraints forces massive price rises.

Take care

Christopher 

But someone forgot to tell those 1950s-loving industrialist neo-cons.

The innovation zeitgeist is with the Creative Age.

Let’s look at where that innovation is for a moment.

So I don’t yet get it: what is innovation again?

It is not coolhunting — looking for the next plastic disposable item.

Innovation is ideas leading to positive change.

Positive change in business. And in society.

Right now our big-wigs in the White house and in Detroit are stuck in a big funk.

It’s a funk-up really. Iraq’s not going well.

We don’t need some modernist, oil and chemical-fueled economy for the next 50 years. We are smarter than that.

But we also don’t need to go around running around with starting fires and living in caves. We can solve this problem.

Here’s a starting point: Ideas don’t pollute.

And unlike the Neo-Cons I actually believe mankind is fundamentally creative.

We all hate what the Bush White-House has done

The withered stump of a shrivelled vision held up by the Neo-Conservatives is that mankind is too stupid to be trusted and brute force must be used to secure mankinds future by securing oil supplies.

That’s a vision not even fit for a postage stamp.

I don’t hate Bush himself, I hate the fact that he was foisted on us as a president.

Let me translate the Neo-Con vision:

“We’ll destroy the world, melt the ice-caps, but by-golly we’ll have a lot of plastic cr*p and a great-big car to drive around in. Pass the Pretzels…”

I’d rather be happy and have clean air and not make work the centre of my life.

And is playing office politics, selling more plastic cr*p or food-in-a-can really living?

European leadership – La Dolce Vita

In Europe, people know how to live.

And increasingly in managing the environment we must look to Europe, but also Silicon Valley, Boston, and all those places innovation lives and breathes.

Places where bright ideas get sowed as seeds that grow to trees.

And now we get to the point: the ultimate place.

The Internet. The Borderless Country.The Frontier!

Good things always happen on the Frontier.

Where even if you live in the smallest two-horse town, as long as you get an internet connection you can find like-minds.

Why is all this important? Why do we need innovation?

We as a people can solve problems.

We can be intelligent, and solve global warming, and other issues.

We can create positive social change.

In other words, we can innovate.

So this will be different to the Web 2.0 you’ve seen. We’re here (very soon).

Take care,

Christopher

This is because our modernist global economic system in English-speaking countries largely runs on the manufacture and mass consumption of cheap low-priced goods made from oil-based plastics.

Think about that for a second. What really happens?

The following chain of events was loosely based on media reports of the China pet food story, Fisher Price scandal, and recent other events.

Here is one average scenario:

A company in your city anywhere in the world gets an idea for a new product.

The company fly an award-winning designer over to design the product to be produced in a Chinese factory.

The Chinese factory signs a contract negotiated at the lowest possible cost. They have to, as the large company can always find a cheaper manufacturer.

To make or increase their profit, the factory owner in the distant Chinese factory substitutes paint or other ingredients to lower the cost.

The workers in the Chinese factory get small wages, and become sick from the toxic substances used (the human body does not like petroleum by-products, chemicals like formaldehyde or metals like lead.)

The designed goods are mass-produced and packaged in cardboard crates made by clear-felling forests and polluting pulp mills.

Via shipping containers on massive tankers, the goods finally arrive in the USA and western markets where they are shipped to their final destinations via road transport (because the governments won’t invest in railways).

The big company launches a huge marketing campaign with massive media-buys to market the new product to it’s core 15-19 y.o. female demographic at a price-point of USD $3.50 for which the factory gets 7c per unit.

In the local Walmart distracted ‘tween female consumers discuss whether the latest new betty-boo-thingamebob they do not need is worth $3.50 USD.

Walmart forces the company to initiate a promotional price-drop after they are not selling, to a new price of $1.99

The company re-negotiates its price even lower with the Chinese factory to around 4c per unit.

The factory increases the length of shifts and figures out new and unsafe production techniques to increase production.

At $1.99 the products walk off the shelves. And everybody congratulates themselves.

Postscript or how it ends:

The designer wins an award for innovative ‘tween design.

The big company executives vote themselves a bonus for ‘their’ product.

Walmart sets up a new store shutting down ‘main-street’ shops selling local products.

A few Chinese workers become sick. A father dies in an accident.

The Chinese factory owner buys a BMW.

More oil is imported by the Chinese to meet massive factory demand further driving up oil prices and forcing peak oil situation. (Plastics use oil)

The teenage consumer, taking the whole supply chain for granted throws away the product after the week.

After a few weeks betty-boo-thingamebob’s are broken everywhere.

By the end of the year 1 Million betty-boo-thingamebob’s are in landfill.
Being made of plastic they never decompose.

So that’s it. Depressing isn’t it?

Consider then this whole process happens every minute or more often. How many products are over-produced globally?

Too often we feel powerless. What can we do? You? Me?

Plenty.

Change the Rules… it has already started

Well global business is something humans designed. And we can change the rules.

Fact is Web 2.0 and the Creative Age are already changing the rules.

The Phone changed the rules. the Internet is changing the rules.

Steam powered industrial thinking changed the rules in 19th century England. Modernism changed the rules. But we are still stuck in modernism. or reacting against it (post-modernism).

The zeitgeist is with a creative age.

Here’s a starting point on how to join in, feel free to add your own ways.

First things first:

1. Stop buying plastic cr*p you do not need. Educate your children to do the same. Talk about it with your online and real world friends.

2. Go to local markets. Buy handmade goods of quality from local producers.

3. Don’t shop at Walmart, Coles, Woolworths, K-mart or Target for everything.

4. Do not buy bulk purchases of intensive production products such as meat, unless you actually eat them. Buy smaller portions. Buy from markets or butchers so you can know where the meat is from.

If you can’t see the cow then don’t eat it.

5. Food does not come in a packet. It grows in or on the ground. Food walks around.

6. Make sure your kids understand how much work goes into plastic cr*p and cheap clothing.

7. Don’t buy cheap clothing or other items because they are cheap. Buy something of quality that lasts.

This chain of events relies on US. Our Families.

The fact is companies manufacture cr*p we buy. They may use advertising to manipulate us to buy.

But you say, what about the economy?

I am not saying don’t buy or don’t shop. I am say Buy to Last!

But if you work as a cog in the chain of a big company manufacturing rubbish, and you are miserable, why not quit?

A number of friends and colleagues have done this. Not every one is cut out for a lifetime of politics, back-stabbing and crawling over broken bodies.

Earn less perhaps, spend less for sure. Coporate paypackets require expensive expenditure to maintain a lifestyle.

The new status symbol in the creative age will be the artist. So get a head start. Even corporates will want the corporate innovator. Corporates must co-opt innovation agents as they are vehicles for implementation, not inspiration. People create inspiration.

People have started already. It’s called downshifting or tree-changing and is part of a broader trend.

We as people are not the problem, it’s the systems people work in that are. but we have a small part to play in keeping an old system going.

We need to transition to a creative economy based less on manufacturing and consuming wasteful plastic cr*p.

So if you’re an innovator start out about designing a new system. You won’t be alone.

Second steps: be educated.

Read the book by David Bosshart “Cheap”.

Watch or read “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore.

Read “The Ethics of What We Eat”.

We don’t do something because we think we can’t.

We can. We do. We wrote the rules. We can change them.

Creative production and output in Western countries is ahead of industrial output.

Creative products don’t pollute the Earth as much as 1 million pieces of plastic cr*p.

Become part of the global innovation.

I hear there is still a market for a great buggy whip.

If you think not yet, remember the bell tolls for thee.

Take care,

Christopher

I asked this to a few people at WordCamp 2007 in San Francisco, and in a case of preaching to the converted, many felt blogs were already ‘established’.

But blogs & social networks have not gone mainstream yet in most markets.

(If one applies a model called the Innovation Diffusion curve, that is.)

PS. If you are reading this and twittering, you are probably not the ideal candidate for assessing when a product is mainstream!

Why Join social networks?

Simple. Networks online offer practical connections and information globally you can’t find. Many have basic features like access to others’ bookmarks.

Before you join any network actively you need to ask:

What will I get out of this in my life?

How is this network an improvement, an innovation, in my life?

If you are a veteran of myspace, digg, etal you may say the question is basic, but then how much time does each network you join soak up, and where is the benefit?

Here’s One Indispensable Network: StumbleUpon

Stumbleupon.com: Join this one. It’s all the bookmarks in one place. better yet you get to read human selected sites.

Here’s my profile: http://innovatorau.stumbleupon.com/

Please note I do not agree with all links I have found them worth reading for myself or others, that is all.

However, SU is the first place I post many of my favourite links or ideas for research.

Many others use it for humour or photographs. Some for topics of interest.

Stumbling random pages based on interests is also a great fun activity, and far easier than googling topics to find what you want, when you are browsing casually.

5 Wins for StumbleUpon

The real reasons why Stumbleupon is a great social networking site:

5. A really well-designed interface (especially the new version)

4. Ongoing interface improvement

3. Great selection of pages on almost every topic

2. It is a human-edited collection of sites
1. Stumblers are more passionate about their topic than directory editors

I think the last two are worthy of examination:

Humans editing with Passionate Engagement 

Algorithm Search cannot turn up as good a results as human editors, especially when those editors are passionately collecting sites on a topic.

Biggest Limitation

The biggest impediment on StumbleUpon is the capacity limits (especially # of friends).
Presumably there will be an option to remove these at a later date.

They also have progressive trust, which means that you appear to be more trusted the more accurate your stumbles and tags are. Incentives.

Of course one also has to be careful what links one includes in one’s profile, as all traffic is being recorded. I have erred on being inclusive, but stating clearly I do not agree with all links.

Anyway, StumbleUpon is experiencing huge growth in users and traffic, and is owned by eBay; much like the excellent product Skype.

eBay is building a great portfolio of brands.

Both Skype & StumbleUpon are potential market leaders in their category, like eBay itself.

So join if you haven’t install the toolbar. Stumbling is better than watching TV.

See you Stumbling.

Take care

Christopher