For the fun side of( digital) life: "WhereIsItGoing is a tumblr blog by Media Futurist and author Gerd Leonhard, sharing his latest discoveries of digital aberrations i.e. funny, bizarre and odd things that are happening because of new technologies and the general digitization of our society and culture. Mostly images and very little text." ...
Life is indeed a multi-level chess game now, isn’t it?
Guest post by Brenda Cooper on TFA Associate Glen Hiemstra's Futurist.com blog: "
As long as I’ve been alive, humanity has obsessed over its demise – at its own hands. In second grade, stern teachers sent me crawling under desks to avoid nuclear war (talk about a culture of fear – today has nothing on the sixties). Now we are convinced that climate change will do us all in. Both, by the way, remain real threats. It’s important to guard against evil. Think of that as the yang of futuring, whether done over the dinner table, around the water cooler, or from the dais. But I think we’re missing the yin: we’re failing to notice the good all around us.
Back in the crawling under desks part of my life, people who lived in other countries were unreachable to me, and had I wanted to talk to one, it would have cost a lot of money. Today, I have a phone that’s also a camera and a link to a world of information and entertainment – and to people all over the globe. There’s a good chance I can avoid or find ... read on."
First post of the year on TFA Associate Neil Perkin's blog "Only Dead Fish": "New technology is usually viewed as both a driver and an enabler of change. But sometimes the reverse is true.
Big businesses feel comfortable making big decisions about big spends on big solutions. When technology is seen in companies as the solution to a business need, the answer can often look like a large, expensive, proprietary software system.
Because it is expensive, the system is complex enough to require a lengthy training course to understand how to use it and is accompanied by a thick user manual that few people ever read.
As it is complex, when people (being people) make errors it requires valuable management time to unpick them.
It is inflexible to changing requirements. It attempts to ... read on."
A nice surprise by Gerd Leonhard at the start of this new year: "I want to start 2011 in a renewed spirit of generosity and sharing, so here are the complete PDFs of my last 3 books, for free; provided under a Creative Commons,non-commercial, share-alike, attribution license (see below). If you still want to buy the dead-tree versions of these books (or donate something for the free PDFs - yes, that's an option, too;), you can visit my Lulu Store, or go to Amazon.com, or check out my 'Paying for Gerd' page. You can also return the favor by blogging or tweeting of Facebook-liking my stuff. Thanks, and enjoy, and have a great 2011. (post & links)
Download Friction is Fiction 6.8MB PDF
Download The End of Control Gerd 8MB PDF
And be sure to check out my free iPhone and Android apps
These free books by Gerd Leonhard are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on various works offered by Gerd Leonhard
From TFA Associate Glen Hiemstra's blog on Futurist.com:
It was my favorite keynote speech of the year. The event was FINOV 2010, an annual event of the SONAE company at which they honor individuals and teams for the innovations of the past year. This year the conference took place in a centuries old former monastery in Porto, Portugal, a spectacular setting.
Glen with CEO Paulo Azevedo on his right, Chairman Belmiro de Azevedo on his left, and Cathy O'Dowd, Mt. Everest climber and another speaker on the end.
The take-away for me was that Sonae is a company to pay attention to as a model of sustainability, and of building a culture of innovation. The full video of my speech is posted above. You can also find this speech along with many others on our Futurist Keynote Videos page and our Featured Videos page.
TFA Associate Brian Newman contemplates: "It’s that time of year when everyone makes their top ten lists, and I’ve done it before and am adding my 11 cents here now. I could just paste in last year’s list below, as all of them are still relevant, but that’s too easy...except for number 1, policy. Unfortunately, this one is much the same as last year, so to make up for this repeat, I’m giving eleven thoughts here. Most of these aren’t predictions, but are instead just a few things I’m thinking about as we head into the New Year.
1. Will the film industry start to take policy seriously? I doubt it. Policy turns people off, but if we don’t pay more attention and get active in these debates, the possible future for indie film might get turned off. It’s hard to imagine a world where the internet no longer works like it does now, but take one look at this graphic of what the industry wants and you quickly get a sense of what could become of the internet. This will be ... read on."
Photo: photo © 2009 Karola Riegler | more info (via: Wylio)
From Gerd Leonhard's Blog MediaFuturist.com:
It seems like every single day I read about how Internet and mobile companies are struggling to obtain the rights for what they want to do, whether it's about music, videos, TV shows, films, articles, text and images.
Here are some quick examples:
So here is the point I am trying to make: I don't think a purely free-market-driven and unregulated approach will work, in the future. Many large, incumbent media companies, publishers, record labels and other traditional intermediaries (i.e. the 'industry' as opposed to the actual creators) have every reason NOT to be flexible or even slightly forthcoming with their licensing terms and thereby support the deployment of new cloud-based, access-on-demand and flat-rated services. This is simply because their very existence may quickly and irreversibly change the entire playing-field, and may make it very hard for the incumbent rights-conglomerates to continue to effectively control distribution (and by extension, advertising prices) in the same way as before. These changes aren't for the better when you currently run the entire show, so why should you agree?
This is why Warner Music Group's Edgar Bronfman has said many times that he will not license any unlimited streaming-on-demand service, why Netflix - despite of (or because?) its vast growth - has been back and forth with the Hollywood studios on getting more content deals done, and why Hulu is losing steam because of the studios' concerns over future cable-TV revenue streams. Clearly, this is all about controlling and milking the market (i.e. the 'people formerly known as consumers') as long as possible. Yes, sure, just like the big telcos used to do before they had to let competition in. This is not about 'getting the artists / creators paid' or about fighting digital piracy - it's about maintaining a comfortable and lucrative monopoly position for the longest possible time. Which is OK, too - if it wasn't for the criminalizing effect it has on every single Internet user.
Most large, international media companies (disclosure: many of which are or have been my clients in some way or the other) and almost all major TV, film and music rightsholders are used to absolute control over the distribution of the works (and artists / producers) that they own or represent, and this simple fact used to result in getting much higher license fees - the other party had no choice but to take it or leave it; no license simply meant no (legal) business. This may sound somewhat reasonable in a mostly offline world (i.e. until just recently, when the mobile Internet started to take of), but on the Net, in a truly networked society, this kind of thinking plays out quite differently: refusal to license at a price that is affordable (and / or financially viable for a new, potentially huge but legally unprecedented player) simply encourages and produces piracy, because the desired content will become available anyway, legal or not, one way or the other. The reality is that there is no real control of distribution of digital content, any longer, and all models based on re-achieving that control will fail miserably. Witness the 100s of illegal movie sites that now stream pretty much any movie on-demand, or the many new IP-cloaking and re-routing services (commonly used to access locally restricted content services) that are currently flooding the market. Not licensing content to new players on actually survivable terms simply lets other, parasitic entities prosper by offering it without permission. Everyone loses.
My thesis is that - just like telecom deregulation - we urgently need new, open and public mechanisms that first significantly encourage and then possibly even enforce the licensing of copyrighted works for new services that require a new and more experimental approach, and that may end up serving the consumers much better than the traditional services. A 'use it or lose it' rule may be useful to that end; and as far as music is concerned I have been proposing a new, public digital music license for a long time.
In any case, I think that a system that continues to be based on deriving future benefits ONLY for the largest and most powerful rightsholders (again, by that I do not mean the actual creators, but the industries that represent them) is, in my view, simply unsustainable and socially indefensible in this dawning broadband-culture and in a connected, networked and interdependent society. We need better and more transparent EcoSystems and less EgoSystems; less empires and more Open Networks.
Let me have your feedback please!
From David Houle at MediaBizBloggers: "A couple of months ago, I was fortunate enough to be given a hard hat tour of Spaceport America. This is where the next stage of space travel will begin in the next 18 months. This is where the dream of private citizens flying into space will be realized. (image (c) Spaceport America Conceptual Images URS/Foster + Partners.)
Spaceport America is in New Mexico, near the White Sands Missile Range. This is where Virgin Galactic chose to place its global headquarters and lead the initiative to give private citizens the opportunity to realize the dream of space travel. Within the next two years, citizens will have the opportunity to embark on the ultimate flight. Granted, for the first few years, these flights will only be available to the wealthy, as the cost will be out of reach of the average citizen. That said, the opportunity for private space travel is about to begin, and as it progresses, costs will come down.
Spaceport America came about because both entrepreneurs and public officials in New Mexico saw the opportunity to create something futuristic that would bring both revenue and recognition to the state. It would also create a new high-tech hub of activity, innovation, adventure and dreams that is truly of the 21st century. What could be more ... read on."
A nice read from MediaBizBloggers' Uwe Hook:
"Dear Santa,
Only a few more days until you head back to the North Pole to get your well-deserved vacation of 11 months (Where can I apply for that job?). You've been with humankind for hundreds of years, transforming from a third-century boy bishop and miracle worker, to Christmas Eve sleigh-driving legend.
And, what have we done to you? We adjusted our vision of Santa to our culture: fanciful, exuberant, over-weight, and overly commercial. Your embodiment of human ideals like innocence, selfless giving, unfaltering love, justice and mercy are often overshadowed by the challenges our world is facing: greed, mindless materialism and selfishness.
I don't have to tell you what happened: Christmas music in October, Black Friday, mall madness Saturday – you've heard it all before. I've been working in advertising for the majority of my life and I know we ... read on."
