Why is this important? It shows direction in art. Away from post-modernist ‘I am a painter so why do I bother to paint?‘ thinking that typified the 90s. The 90s were however that kind of decade perhaps…!

Even moreso it shows a return to seeking meaning. It’s tiring looking at noir films, drinking black coffee and talk about meaninglessness.

Remember the artist is always the avant-garde on the Innovation curve…

The Zeitgeist is the human figure and here’s why…

The Figure is the Zeitgeist of Modern Art

Now the figure is returning to art. I was in Leipzig last year. (and I might add Leipzig was our “Most improved innovator” in the Global Innovation Hub City Rankings).

Neo Rauch and the Leipzig School have been marking a return to the figurative.

Viewing art is very much one of my interests, but I was there for research.

The so-called Leipzig School learnt to draw under communism, so weren’t subject to the same ‘non-instruction’ many modern artists get. Brilliant draftsmen, but without the leash of communism, now masters of narrative.

Some have said that one should be able to draw the human figure before deconstructing it, like Picasso. This is controversial in some art schools globally!

In a sense the new-new is a modernized reconstructed figure.

Further in sites like stumbleupon (SU), this is what gets voted for. SU contains a large artists sub-community; selectors of art like WasChabad (http://waschabad.stumbleupon.com/) and Clovia (http://clovia.stumbleupon.com/)

One of the strengths of Web 2.0 (’users creating content and communities’ the 2thinknow definition) is that communities decide what they like. It gives freedom to viewers and consumers, in this case, artists and art-lovers.

Artists can choose their taste rather than a limited pool of critics selecting who is shown. It allows once again artists to build followings and sell now internationally without such a long process or wait.

I also saw this figurative art in the West Coast USA, where it is a secondary art capital after New York. Wow! Some of the figurative artists in San Francisco. Undiscovered knock-outs.

Back to Web 2.0 — sites like DeviantArt.com are also forming international artist communities. Even myspace is ‘in’ on this.

I had written quite a lot in the limited distribution review on ‘cultural relativism’, but it now seems superfluous. The headspace I was at almost a year ago, artists have been capturing and creating works about in the major international Arts centres.

So I have decided to update some of that writing, and include it here.

The Roots of Figure in Art

This is not unusual as the human figure is a source of countless artworks in countless forms. In Paris, the powerful Raft of Medusa by Géricault or Manet’s works in the Musée d’Orsay; in Munich Rubens or Raphael; in Rome Rubens or most critically Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel; in Melbourne Tiepolo’s stand-out Banquet of Cleopatra.

Wander through the sculpture garden of any truly international art gallery in a major city, and it is to wander through a waltz of human forms.

Culture relativism, or equivalency of cultures, where no culture or artistic endeavour is considered any better than any other, is difficult to reconcile with this tide of human forms, often naked or mythically dressed in the finest Renaissance sense.

It is hard to defend cultural relativism once you have seen the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. Duchamps’ urinal becomes an amusing distraction. Fine for the time, but now somehow a forlorn museum piece for those on the avant-garde.

And the best art is on the edge, and the edge is now figurative. Notice I did not say literal. I did say figurative.

There is Other Art of Course…

The problem is just the ‘equivalency’ idea. Concepts of equivalency are fine, but if all pictorial representations were equal people would be queuing to see the covers of magazines in the newsagent, or soup can labels in the supermarket.

Some modernist artist will one day set-up a ’supermarket gallery’ — and auction real soup cans!

Our love of art is often based on ‘aha’ moments it creates. The Pompidou in Paris does that for me in modern terms, but no more than the Louvre.

And before we dismiss any modern art, it is important to see great art in great galleries. Melbourne just hosted a Guggenheim exhibition I wrote about here; as well as some great UBS works at the current time. Not all of this was figurative…

Most importantly, these ‘inspiration’ moments where something strikes one as ‘obvious and true’. Figurative art has something to say about our lives and our humanity…

But often judgment of artistic merit is an instinct, and it is important that culture and art elevate; and bring out the higher elements of our nature; art that demonstrates a single idea to the point of repetition is an art of the mundane, for the mundane.

The new, the memorable in art, is the figurative. Grids and dots are fine museum pieces, but their time has passed as avant-garde or the zeitgeist.

And it is not innovation to equate the ugly, desperate and forlorn mass-produced as equal to the beautiful and elevating objet d’art. We have accepted the points of pop-art and abstract expressionism, and the ‘American Century’ and a new one is dawning.

Even in in Architecture the figurative, the sculptural, the curved is returning.

In architectural terms no person can visit the Austrian National State library and say with a straight face that this is the cultural equivalent of the Melbourne Museum or Federation Square in Melbourne. But some modern works are trying to extract themsleves from modernism, gleaming steel and the tyranny of the straight line.

Want to Get involved in Figurative Art?

Join StumbleUpon.com and select arts or painting as your interest.

Stumble-Upon selects pages related to an interest you may have, as bookmarked and voted by other users. It works because SU has a good community…

Enjoy the figure in art. It’s time is with us again.

Take care,

Christopher

However, every single person, almost in that room was writing on a laptop.

The wireless internet crashed in the first 15 minutes. A few people were asked to turn off ‘Bit-torrent’ a heavy duty file downloader/sharer. Napster-ish.

We’ll contrast that later with an event in Australia last week.

And by the way, we’re talking ‘big-pipe’ US broadband here. I was never without broadband in 8 days in San Francisco and the Bay Area. That is itself a contrast.

People were blogging in real time about the event, and twittering, powncing and who knows what else. The audience were a mix of techies, new media types and a broad range of people who fit under the category of writers.

In the US, new media is happening.

Many of the attendees accounts of the event, formed part of the news coverage.

3 out of 5 people were using laptops. More had laptops with them, but didn’t have access to a powerpoint, although powerboards were strewn underneath the rows of chairs.
One woman next to me, a professionally trained writer, was writing notes on paper. She was very much the odd one out.

A contrast in Australia

Last week, one afternoon I was at a business function and there were around 500 business people.

By the by, I have a Fujitsu Lifebook tablet PC that had the sound off, with screen set to dim.

My neighbor was writing copious amounts of paper notes. With paper the notes have to be transcribed and carried. Which she will likely lose, and then never access again. My laptop notes are right here…

In any case, there was only one other laptop I could see in 500 people.

Not the real issue – paperless thinking

Paper-less office? Efficiency? Yes and no. There are instances where paper is more efficient. But look long-term, paper-less technology has opportunities for corporate efficiency gains.

Efficiency and strategic use of technology means profits, and where there are profits to be had, companies will follow. There are also instances where paper is better.

Eventually, a workflow of data stored in a network will be de rigeur for the networked organization.

Learning organizations don’t lose their notes! They share and collaborate. It’s started in the USA.

And since I stopped carrying all but the most necessary paper files, and switched back to a tablet PC, my bag is down around 3-4kg, which is much better than my old 8-15 Kg paper-laden bag.

For me a tablet PC is a tactical advantage in most instances. Occasionally strategic.

And wireless releases benefits and challenges for our organizations. Real-time commentary on events in a Web 2.0 environment raises challenges that we all have to deal with. It’s happening anyway.

The benefit of a technology is not the same for everyone, and the value as a technology has to be assessed relative to our personal or business strategy.

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

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

This is the first part of a regular series on how to speak the language of ideas in coming weeks. How to be an Ideas Person.

Ideas and an intellectual education are important no matter how old we are. Both help us make better decisions in terms of positive change in our societies.

How do we personally understand what is positive change and what is not?

We talk incessantly about success, about wanting positive change.

We talk about love, relationships, children, families, kids and a variety of other serious topics.

Also about negatives: why the trains are late, why language is in decline,why schools are poor, why traffic is bad, why the Earth is polluted… or more sanguinely why we look fat in the morning.

But where do our tools to understand our modern world come from?

Where do we get the ideas of what is a positive or negative change?

Modern media and texts

No matter where we live we have a variety of texts and tools to understand the modern world. But too often our society’s ideas come from flawed, incomplete, pedestrian text and opinionated media with all the intellectual power of a 10W lightbulb.

Innovation starts in the Good Ideas of Past

To be grounded in innovation and understanding which changes are likely to be positive, we need to stand on the shoulders of giants.

An Example from the Past

Today I was speaking to an older gentleman, Roger, 89 years old in fact, who is a member of a club I belong to. He reminded me of a different world.

Roger recounted how when he studied Arts/Philosophy at Melbourne University they spent a lot of time on the classics.

One Year on Plato in fact.

He also shared with me a poem by Milton from his high school days.

Roger was a spritely 89, and well-versed in the language of ideas.

The Classics, Languages (he used to be fluent German speaker), arts, culture were once important. Why no longer?

Culture relativism in English Speaking countries like Australia is the problem. The idea that all ideas are equal.

The Simpsons as text is as enlightening as Plato? No.

Desperate Housewives is equal to Macbeth? No.

Machiavellis and Sun Tzu’s advice on War would have seen the Iraq War planned far better, or perhaps not attempted at all.

And that advice is centuries old, but must be read as ideas, not literally.

Instead we took Bart Simpsons’ advice in Iraq, and we had a cow, man.

Most of Europe is ahead of America, and cannot understand America’s (and English-speaking countries) fascination with the puerile cr*p we call media.

The Internet Presents: NEW opportunities

Instead we should take our ideas form the great ideas of the past.

Plato, Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Freud, Jung, Smith, Hume, Locke, Mills, Franklin, Aristotle, Homer and we can argue over the list later.

And once you have Internet access it is all laid out before you.
Before we get to that let’s examine why media may assume we are less-interested in learning.

The problem: Why do we play Russian Roulette with Ideas?

This is simply because we as a society are less educated than we used to be.There are many reasons for our our disengagement with idea we could identify in a full analysis. But let’s take one.

Vocational Learning is limiting

We in English-speaking countries are focussed on vocational learning.

How to be an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor. But also how to be a PE teacher, a nurse, a horticulturalist, a hairdresser.

So we can get a job. And start paying off all the money we owe our big credit card debts, or our university loans.

We hardly have time to learn for knowledge’s sake, and our right-wing governments are often not investing in educating people any more. ‘User-pays’ forces us to choose vocational choices over educational choices.

The days of a long-term vision in the current elected Governments sometimes seem long gone.

One plaudit and round of applause though: Melbourne University have bravely decided to follow the Ivy league system of general degrees followed by specialization.

Learn to learn first, then learn your job.

But not everyone can go back to uni.

If you missed out on this in school and instead read limited media & texts like The Simpsons or He Died With a Felafel in his Hand you deserve better.

How to start though.

Start with the Language of Ideas

We in UK, Australia and USA are in most cities not focused on the language of ideas.

Because we are taught (at least in Australia) all ideas are equal. Everyone can be smart.

A theory observed in the breach.

The fact is is everyone can be smarter. Not equal, but all can improve. Any individual can be more educated and more enlightened.

There is an alternative for all of us.

But Plato is hard.

And therein lies the problem.

But the answer is with the great Ben Franklin, the first published self-made man of the Enlightenment. A man of intellect with no university degree. A printers apprentice.

Ben Franklin once said,that he suspected it was easier to learn Latin, the classical language of ideas, by Learning French, Spanish, Italian and other European langauges first.

The point is start with what you can. And that’s what I’ll be sharing with you now and in coming weeks.

I am learning French at current, but half our class is struggling as they do not know what a verb is.

They have stopped teaching grammar in Australian public schools, you see, in the last decade.

So how do you learn?

Start with what is accessible. 6 things right now:

1) Try a language class.

2) But also watch The West Wing. Listen to the dialogue. Understand it.

3) Read online intelligent sites like this one.

4) Read an intelligent broadsheet instead of the tabloid monster.

5) Buy a dictionary. A thick one. Learn a new random word once a day

6) Visit an art gallery. Try to understand what the artists is saying. Even if you think the work is cr*p try to understand what he /she is saying.

In the next part of the series, in a few days, I will be giving you some more concrete steps. And a program.

And best of all all the material is all on the internet.

It’s not difficult, but instead of accepting the media you can start to be as educated as those in power or those with ivy league degrees.

Even if you are you might find a cultural tour interesting. I hop at least.
We need to talk about the language of ideas.

take care,

Christopher

This can be as broad as current global themes of: environmental or climate change issues, food supply, public transport, air travel, activism, business, new technology, Web 2.0, library 2.0, social networks, Social ideas, creative ideas, art & cultural ideas.

In short, ideas & inspiration for the intellectually curious with a global mindset.

What you may not be aware is I bookmark all sorts of industry and general innovation resources in a place where they can be seen from any web-browser.

I tend to take a pluralistic viewpoint, that is I post an article that is intelligent and interesting, but that I may not personally or professionally agree with.

Innovation links:

There are a variety of topics with an innovation focus, both social & business.These are not all the links we review or read.

There are quite a few links I think might be interesting to others, including all our latest postings on the Global innovation Conversation.

The links are stored in the social bookmarking service StumbleUpon:

innovatorau.stumbleupon.com

You can use the tag-cloud of topics at right to find specific topics, or simply browse.

Let me know if you find them interesting.

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 

Personally, I think Giuliani, Gore, Clinton and McCain would all make good presidents at different times. Professionally I think Gore, Giuliani and Clinton may all lead to good outcomes for innovation.

The Left/Right divide is increasingly irrelevant, in any case. In a prior analysis from 2thinknow^TM I made the case that the real contest is between Engaged and Not Engaged. See: Election innovation: why Left & Right don’t matter.

How Bush happened:

The people who are ‘Not Engaged’ have voted for Bush twice. Those people elected someone who has basically destroyed all the freedoms you take for granted. I’m not talking about minority freedoms.

The only thing that has slowed Bush doing more to destroy the USA’s proud heritage of laws are the checks and balances made by men 230 years ago in the Constitution.

I’m specifically talking about the freedom not to be listened to by the State.

Fortunately the current bill has a 6-month expiry (thank you Congress) before we get too hysterical. But the worrying thing is the sum total of Bush’s actions in terms of the war on intellect, diversity, debate, rights and privacy.

But here is 5 reasons why this latest change, and all of the other Bush changes are worrying:

5 reasons to be concerned

5. It has been a well known ’secret’ that everything we say online is monitored to some extent. This capability to collect data is now enhanced.

4. Volume of data has always been a protective factor in reading individual messages. This is no longer the case due to massive storage capability and the data mining industry. So the capability to store & mine data is now enhanced.

3. The precedent of using confidential data for political purposes is now a regular occurence. Recall the outspoken Iraq critic whose CIA agent wife was ‘outed’ by a political operative. That was not a sole case.

2. Governments are now better resourced to understand the intelligence from data mining. Incompetence has played a part, but government is now catching up, especially the new agencies. Bush has spent a lot of funds on intelligence resourcing.

1. Citizens seem powerless. Everything is Partisan. Wedge politics is the order of the day. The real reason is concentration of media power into fewer hands. Hello Rupert!

Here’s an old (true) joke: Rupert Murdoch’s publications once in the 1970s supported Gough Whitlam, as leader of Australia. Gough would be kindly called a socialist, but realistically almost communist extreme-Left. Now his publications ostensibly support Bush/Cheney, an extreme-right White House.

Do Fox News viewers know that Murdoch was Left, and is now Right?

Rupert in my opinion just goes where he thinks the power is. But to be honest Rupert has ever increasing Power. According to Rupert’s numerous biographies a reasonable person could reasonably infer Rupert has a track record of interfering with editors and hiring editors who ‘fit’ the slant of the paper.

It is probable that Rupert’s Fox News have pushed all media to the Right or Left, not to the middle as news of record.

“‘Partisan’ means I will argue what I believe in by yelling loudly over top of the other guy, not because I am right, but because I am loud I shall win”.

– Christopher Hire, 2005. (ahem, me.)

Stop. You can do something however.

The 5 ways YOU can stop decline of ideas: using Digg and other sites

These steps are easy. Have a think about them. Even if you just do 2 steps, it all helps.

5. Book mark good intelligent analysis and news in digg. Vote for intelligent news.

4. Do not vote for Paris, Lindsey or other stories.

3. Keep all the stupid stuff on Myspace. Seriously. Segregate. Vote for the stupid stuff on Myspace or other sites.

2. Use StumbleUpon & De.licio.us regularly and submit any great news articles within your areas of interest: politics, art, business, environment.

1. Have all your friends do steps above.

Repeat as required, every time you fume with rage at the latest atrocity.

You know the Wall Street Journal was a minor business rag once.

Digg and others have a chance to be massive and global content sources.

By making intelligent analysis and news (from reputable sites) important by voting for it, you can counter the crushing of freedom, before the old folks like Rupert who run media catch-up on the controls.

Social media like Digg.com or stumbleupon.com or wordpress.com are on the innovation zeitgeist.

Now it’s your turn to make sure they have something important to say.

What will the archaelogists say when they unearth our old machines, turn them on a 100 years from now and read?

Will they say “What bright lively people?” Or will they say, “Who is Paris Britney Lohan anyway?”

It’s up to you folks, so Digg & Stumble wisely.

According to 2thinknow^TM innovation models and analysis Digg & StumbleUpon are big parts of a huge innovation shift within a 2-4 year time frame.

Take care,

Christopher

read more | digg story

For the Agenda of the Matt Mullenweg’s presentation: http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/state-of-the-word/

Innovation: Past and Future of WordPress, according to Matt

Mullenweg said flexibility was the most important element in the WordPress platform’s success to date, and the key to it’s hoped-for longevity.

Mullenweg outlined a vision for how WordPress has achieved exponential growth including 1,041,846 new blogs on WordPress in the past year, since the previous WordPress conference. In this time 1,628,046,157 page views of WordPress blogs had also been achieved.

According to Mullenweg, Wordpress is already used by major companies such as the NY Times newspaper and Lockheed-Martin.

Mullenweg attributed the overwhelming success of the platform to the extraordinary efforts of the developer, theme design and support community, who received very strong applause from all attendees.

Matt’s presentation spoke primarily about the future of WordPress has a “vision of being a small, fast, light platform and not bring in the kitchen sink”

Quick Statistics from the presentation

In the last year, since the previous conference according to Matt Mullenweg’s presentation:

• 2,849,349 downloads of the WordPress software plus all the host copy downloads
• 1,041,846 new blogs on WordPress
• 20,212,994 WordPress posts, plus all the categories, pages and multiplying.

The WordCamp 2007 Conference – 21 & 22 July 2007

The WordCamp 2007 Conference had 395 official attendees over 2 days in the Swedish American Hall, in San Francisco. For a list of attendees: 2007.wordcamp.org/attendees/

Another prominent presenter included Matt Cuts from Google (http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/search-engine-optimization/)

2thinknow^TM Analysis of WordCamp and WordPress

“WordPress is emerging as the leading personal content system for small numbers of users.” said Christopher Hire, Innovator-in-Chief of 2thinknow and author of the Global Innovation Conversation (http://www.2thinknow.com/innovation) and the Global Innovation Review 2007 (print).

Hire went on to say: “Whilst the format of the conference was ostensibly about blogging, blogging is just about delivering content to users.”

“WordPress is at current the emerging front-runner in user-driven participatory content, a big part of what’s called Web 2.0.”

Hire declared, “2thinknow^TM proprietary innovation models clearly predict that WordPress will be the leading provider in the personal content space, and will grow exponentially over the next 3 years.”

“An interesting growth aspect and opportunity will be penetration of WordPress into European countries, and distribution in non-English speaking versions.”

Broader Blogging Trends

“Even more exciting upside in the broader blogosphere is that user-generated content will move beyond blog opinion or life journals, and into serious ‘journalistic’ applications covered by declining print media like Business 2.0 and Forbes magazine.”

“The blogging medium will enable vast swathes of new types of content, and there are many other factors 2thinknow^TM predict will occur in the media-choice space for media-consumers.”

“Our innovation models predict broad-0based exponential growth in content as content tools like WordPress become less technical to utilize. Meaning Mums and Dads, Grandmas and Grandads can blog.”

For more information, paid advice or materials on 2thinknow^TM innovation models or research, contact us here.

Dvorak had two interesting points regarding innovation:

“Bloggers present themselves as bloggers”

“Citizen journalism”

Schedule: http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/blogs-vs-journalism/

Both these allude to the innovation zeitgeist as 2thinknow^TM define it.

The innovation zeitgesit in blogging is the upcoming professionalism and redesign of the presentation of user journalism as it transitions to mass-market in various defined markets.

Background to innovation

In marketing, as I said in my previous post, we typically talk about how marketing typically divides markets into stages on a curve.

I asked the presenters about international barriers to blogging becoming mainstream. OM Malik didn’t appear to really understand my question, hence his off-topic limited response about broadband penetration (and cricket)…

The idea that acceptance of a medium is driven strictly by broadband penetration fails to account for culture, which is an under-rated influence factor.

Technology is less important is some countries, and as people who spend all our time in the English-speaking West some of us assume everyone is like us.

The Marketing Curve

There’s an easy way many MBA students study marketing and new products.

It’s the marketing curve (originally it is called a Product Diffusion Curve); a recognized marketing model which has many variants. The marketing curve traces back to work of future Stanford Professor Everett Rogers, summarised in Diffusion of Innovations in 1962, which explains innovation stages along a bell-curve.

Here’s a copy of the diagram in a simplified form. It’s taught as a key distinction in various forms in marketing and MBA curricula, and is the source of the common term “early adopters”, which most people at WordCamp 2007 would be, of course!

It’s useful to map all products on this curve within their target market.

But if you’re an innovator or early-adopter, you may tend to assume a broader target market than actually exists. In broad-market terms blogs are in their early-adoption to early-majority (part of the mass-market) stages depending on the country/region.

Current State of play

Looking at the marketing curve, the US market is early stages of mass market adoption (early majority) stage, even more advanced near Silicon Valley.

In Eastern Europe it is in early-adoption stage (also sometimes called adolescence).

In Western Europe, awareness has not reached the mainstream, except vertical technical communities like educated and technical people.

When I was in France during Sarkozy’s election, the blogging product is quite advanced there, as is Germany and Italy, but awareness is only in certain communities.

When will blogs go mainstream?

Once bloggers deliver quality content in an efficient way/format that suits reader’s lifestyles and does not require technical skills, it will be mainstream.

Happened before – iPods suit people’s lifestyles along with iTunes.

How do we know blogging is not mainstream?

OK, for all you non-marketing people out there, here’s a way to look at the distinction:

Until bloggers are paid what journalists are (which they will be), and the market rewards them (which it will); then they won’t be a profession on equal par with traditional press (which they will be).

Figures bandied around were $140,000 per annum as a high level blogging income, and if you know much about salaries, that’s not much for high-end knowledge professionals.

The global blogging market is tiny at current compared to traditional media.

Look at a 2-7 year time frame on blogging to dramatically explode in size. It won’t be tiny for long.

Which gets back to Dvorak.

“Bloggers present themselves as bloggers”

Which in short gets to another aspect of the broader point.

Blogging is just a method of writing content, and Wordpress is a superior easy delivery platform (simple CMS) for this content, for a small number of users.

And each new medium always begets new approaches. Newspapers begot illustration and reading news daily.

But the underlying point in the not-to-new world, is that it may not look like blogging anymore.

Technical people sometimes mix up the platform with the outcome or content.

It kind of needs an XML division into data and meta data (including design/usability) formatting.

So get ready for the thrill-ride in media.

Christopher