In case you missed it, Elon Musk’s SpaceX program successfully docked with the International Space Station, a first for a non-governmental vehicle, early this morning, and what a momentous occasion it was.

Think about it, up until the past few years, space travel in the United States was for NASA only. It’s only a matter of time before we’ll be able to take trips to space as a casual passenger. Sign me up, because it’s a lifelong dream of mine.

The opening of the hatch that connected the space station and the SpaceX Dragon is right up there with the first step on the moon, in my opinion. Watch the team get its first glimpse of the Dragon:

The hatch between the newly arrived SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and the Harmony module of the International Space Station was opened by NASA Astronaut Don Pettit at 5:53 am EDT as the station flew 253 miles above Auckland, New Zealand. The hatch opening begins four days of operations to upload more than 1,000 pounds of cargo from the first commercial spacecraft to visit the space station and reload it with experiments and cargo for a return trip to Earth. It is scheduled for splashdown several hundred miles west of California on May 31.

Wow.

Couple of tips:

• If you’re able to, watch it in 720p
• Once you’ve watched it once, watch it again keeping an eye on the bride-to-be’s expressions and reactions in the top right corner.

(Via Waxy.org / BoingBoing)

Internet connections in Lebanon are notoriously bad, so much so that the Middle Eastern country is ranked among the very worst worldwide as far as speeds are concerned. That hasn’t deterred a pair of Lebanese entrepreneurs from launching a first-of-its-kind music service in the Middle East – offering unlimited and offline music streaming to its users – that’s actually legal.

Anghami, the brainchild of Eddy Maroun and Elie Habib, is the answer to every Middle Eastern tweet, update, conversation and thought, in which many of us (myself included) have wished that a service like Spotify was available in the Middle East.

Spotify for the Middle East

When talking about Anghami, it’s hard to avoid the comparison to services like Spotify and Rdio, offering users a way to legally stream music on their computers and smartphones. That comparison doesn’t really matter since Anghami is catering to an entirely different audience.

Arabic music is freely available to listen to on Spotify, but that’s not much help to a user anywhere from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. That’s where Anghami comes in. The service will offer access to an impressive library of music, having signed deals with major labels in the Middle East including Rotana, Mazzika, and Melody.

In addition to the musical stylings of just about everything from Amr Diab and Elissa to Sabah and the late Warda, Anghami has also signed deals with international labels including Sony Music and EMI. There is also an agreement with Warner in the works, which will bring access to a vast range of diverse content, from Disney hits to Michael Jackson and David Guetta.

“We’re trying to provide all the music that a consumer in the Middle East would search for. Our aim is to satisfy 90% of the queries, and I think we’re almost there,” Eddy explains, adding, “We’ll be the first music service in the region that will cover Arabic and international music.”

While Anghami will be available as a service worldwide, the availability of music will be limited regionally. International music will only be available in the Middle East, while Arabic music can be listened to worldwide.

Going the mobile route

Anghami is on the verge of launching in private beta, and its first offering will come in the form of an iPhone app. Anghami recently changed gears, after initially intending to launch first as a Web-based service. “The Web interface is now a second priority for us,” Eddy tells The Next Web.

“We believe that it’s the age of mobile, more than Web, especially when it’s about music. You listen to music on your mobile more than on your computer. We thought it’s better for us to gain traction and to be in everybody’s handsets. We decided to go the Instagram way – launch mobile first, and then Web.”

Starting out with an iPhone app, Anghami will next be available on Android, finally coming to desktop computers through its Web interface.

“The idea is that everywhere you go, you’ll find your music. This is the concept of Anghami. If you have your own music experience – on your computer, a tablet, on your phone, everywhere you are – you can find all your playlists, your music, offline and online.”

Offline listening is one of the many ways in which Anghami sets itself apart from other music services in the region. “You can have the ultimate music experience. You’ll never have to search elsewhere, you’ll never have to buy any songs, you’ll never have to buy a CD. Your music library will be with you everywhere you go,” Eddy says.

The challenges of a Middle Eastern market

When they first started researching the idea, Eddy and Elie knew that they were faced with an interesting challenge as far as the region was concerned, particularly on the issue of content rights. “Of course this model is new, it’s not like downloading a song and getting a share out of each song.”

The contracts Anghami has under its belt is proof that many have faith in the model and the Middle Eastern market.

Launching the startup out of the region has, however, had other challenges. ”Being a startup in the Middle East – it’s not really easy, especially in order to get established, recruit the right team, raise funds,” Eddy explains. “It’s not that straightforward, but we’ve been really lucky. There are a lot of people who believe in our idea and are backing us one hundred percent. Hopefully to see a good startup becoming a mega-startup.”

Anghami was one of five startups which received backing from Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP) in March, while a Turkey-based VC has also invested in the company.

Anghami’s convenience, unlimited streaming, offline access, and huge music library should be enough to attract a significant user-base. But what of that pesky Internet problem that Lebanon, and many other Middle Eastern countries continue to face?

“We’re using state of the art technology in order to stream really quickly. Whenever you’re streaming from Anghami, it will feel like you’re playing a song from your hard disk.”

Anghami has teamed up with Dolby, taking advantage of its latest Dolby Pulse encoding. “It provides high-quality and low-size files. The files are compressed but the sound is the same as if you’re hearing a 256K MP3 or even CD quality,” Eddy says. Most importantly it also saves bandwidth, since the file size is small, so it won’t consume a lot of data. Coupled with offline listening, Anghami is every Middle Eastern music lover’s dream.

So if you’re based in the Middle East and are feeling thoroughly left out of the Spotify/Rdio experience, sign up for the Anghami beta to gain access to a library of the best Arabic and international music available in the region.

On the lookout for more something a little bit more Indie and less mainstream coming out of the Middle East? Be sure to check out Sawt and MidEast Tunes.

Amazon has big ambitions in the TV content business. At the MIPTV conference in Cannes, France recently, I sat through what was basically a half-hour sales pitch to the TV industry from Amazon VP Anthony Bay, extolling the virtues of Amazon Instant Video in the US and its LoveFilm service in Europe. While Bay said nothing particularly newsworthy, it was clear that Amazon was there for one reason – to do the deals it needs to expand its video offering.

We’re still at a very early stage of an intense period of transformation for the TV industry. There’s a rich seam of innovation just waiting to bring more choice and interactivity to our TV viewing. Right now, it’s all just potential though – cord-cutting is yet to take off, and the video content available on smart TVs and via games consoles and set-top boxes like those from Boxee and Roku still plays second fiddle to content available via a conventional TV aerial, satellite dish or cable box, for many.

Bringing the Kindle approach to a new market

So, why doesn’t Amazon launch its own set-top box and ‘do a Kindle’ on the TV industry? When the Kindle launched, ebooks were still a niche commodity. Through a mixture of smart marketing and savvy content deals, Amazon has got itself to a position where it dominates the ebook market and the word ‘Kindle’ is synonymous with dedicated e-reader devices.

Could Amazon do the same with TV? A low-cost set-top box that opens up a wealth of well-known, instantly streaming video content could be a real hit with the company’s brand and marketing power behind it. It’s a competitive market for sure, but I’d argue that there’s a significant pool of people without a games console or smart TV to access streaming video content. Although consumers can purchase a set-top box from the likes of Roku or Boxee, or even a Google TV box, the value proposition for all of these names has never quite clicked with a mainstream market.

When I floated this idea on Twitter earlier, the idea that Amazon could acquire a company like Roku or Boxee was brought up, purely as personal speculation, by Pearson’s SVP of Future Technologies and Partnerships, Juan Lopez-Valcarcel. The more I think about it, the more that Amazon repurposing an existing manufacturer’s hardware, offering it up cheap as a loss leader and making content subscriptions free to Amazon Prime subscribers makes perfect sense.

Roku feels like a good acquisition target too. Sales of its boxes haven’t been spectacular, but it’s mastered the art of a dirt-cheap, useful streaming box. Its 2 XD model can be picked up for just $69.99.

I’m not the first person to suggest this – a quick search reveals that converged media veteran Jeremy Toeman blogged about exactly this idea back in February, and the highly prescient MG Siegler offered up the possibility of an Amazon set-top box back in 2010.

It feels like the 2012 holiday season is the perfect time for Amazon to make its move, getting in with a simple but valuable offering before Apple inevitably comes along and disrupts the market with whatever it has up its sleeve in the TV space once it takes Apple TV out of ‘hobby’ mode, and before other competitors like Google TV really get their act together.

Even if it ends up waiting another six months or a year beyond this Christmas, the idea of Amazon expanding the reach of its video offering via dedicated hardware makes complete sense – but the company could define the market for a mainstream audience if it acts now.

Deciding what to wear can be a daunting task. The clothes that cover our naked bodies come in all shapes, colors and sizes and it’s tough to know what looks good when we look in the mirror. Thankfully, when no one is around to answer the question, “Does this look okay?” the Internet is at our service.

For the past 2 years, Fashism, one of New York City’s fashion startups, has built an online community of over 80,000 users who upload photos of their outfits in order to get realtime feedback, advice and opinions on their clothing and accessory choices. The site is simple to use. If you need feedback, sign up and upload a photo for others to see. Or you can browse through others’ outfits and help them by rating it “Love it” or “Leave it”. You can also leave comments like “Where is that shirt from?”

In November 2011, Fashism launched its first iPhone app, which has been downloaded over 100,000 times. The app showcases curated looks from the site’s most popular users as well as in-app activity notifications. It also gives users access to photo tools such as crop, contrast and filters. In March, Fashism was finally released its app for Android.

This past March was a very busy month for Fashism founders Brooke Moreland and Ashley Granata because it was the first time they introduced ecommerce to the site. Now, you can find dozens of hand-picked accessories to top off outfits, all under $30. Moreland says they noticed that thousands of comments on the site were recommendations to add certain kinds of accessories like jewelry or scarves. To introduce an additional revenue stream and help their users, it seemed only natural for Fashism to offer those items for purchase. While they won’t divulge early numbers, they say sales have been most excellent.

If you’re familiar with New York City’s fashion startups, then you’ve likely heard of Fashism’s #1 rival, Go Try it On, which launched one year after Brooke and Ashley announced their site. While similar in function, Go Try it On is currently wearing its “Pinterest outfit” with big boxed images and an endless scroll, following in the footsteps of countless copycat designers. One last app that lets you save and share your outfits is Cloth, which takes a less social approach and focuses more on outfit recall so you never have to ask yourself, “What did I wear this time last year?”

In 2012, Brooke and Ashley have been laser-focused on continuing to build their product for users both in the United States and abroad. 60% of Fashism’s users are located in the US including power user Lady Gaga. While outside of the U.S., Fashism is attracting fans in China, Japan, Russia and the UK. When I asked which city dresses the best, Ashley answered, “The Parisians are the best dressed. Their look is always chic and effortless.”

In 2010, Fashism raised $1 million from notable investors such as Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Ron Conway, Project Runway judge Nina Garcia and Rick Webb. Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley and fashion designer Steven Alan also serve as advisors to the company.

Founders Brooke Moreland and Ashley Granata

As marketers, your job is to be creative, creative, and more creative. Before a campaign is even launched, you’re already looking for ways to further the creativity and boost performance. Add to that those ideas that are churning around in your head about how phase 2 of said campaign can be even more creative, or the upcoming summer, or those year end goals, or, or…

No one ever said that being the marketer in the company was the easy job, and you’ve always got to be on the lookout for inspiration. Now besides the big ones; Christmas, national holidays, etc., when was the last time you looked to the calendar for inspiration?

Audiences respond well to creativity, especially when there’s a bit of factual information wrapped around it, so why not surprise and delight them with some offbeat holidays? Be it a social media item, an newsletter lead in, etc., put your creativity to use, and celebrate the oft less celebrated with your audience!

Coming up in June:

First Friday in June (June 1): National Doughnut Day

Yes, there is a national doughnut day, and no, Homer Simpson has nothing to do with it. Originally founded to recognize the Salvation Army “Lassies” who bravely took to the front lines to provide doughnuts and a morale boost to the troops.

If you’re in the food service industry, this should be a no brainer. If not, there are plenty of pop culture references to celebrate doughnuts. Alternatively, here’s a golden moment to bring a box of doughnuts to the team and feature a group photo on your social media channels. To boost fan interaction, toss out the, “What’s your favorite breakfast food?” question, or perhaps find out what their favorite Homer Simpson moment was. These questions might not have any specific relation to your product, but you never know what customer insight you might gain, and be able to use in the future.

June 5: World Environment Day

Supported by the United Nations, World Environment Day is used to spotlight important environmental issues. Each year, the organization takes on a different theme, with 2012 focusing on the Green Economy.

Did you miss Earth Day? Is your organization leading the charge on green technologies? A hot topic, and a dedicated day – this is your opportune time to focus on what your organization is doing to help the environment. Furthermore, this is a great time to point your community towards outside resources that support this theme.

June 6: Yo-Yo Day

Celebrating the birthday of the Duncan Toys Company founder Donald F. Duncan, Yo-Yo day spotlights, what else…the timeless classic Yo-Yo. Speculation places the Yo-Yo approximately at 3 to 4 thousand years old, with civilizations including the Greeks and Chinese spooling string and shooting the moon. And sorry Mr. Ma, but this day is not about you.

There are a number of ways you could go with this one. If you’re a solutions provider, the “Ups and downs” of everyday business life could be a focus. Likewise, an, “At the end of your rope?” theme can draw customers in. If you’re in the entertainment biz, perhaps talking about one of the oldest amusements on the planet might be the way to go.

June 9: Donald Duck Day

An internationally beloved cartoon character, June 9 celebrates Mr. Duck’s first appearance in “The Wise Hen,” June 9, 1934.

Be careful with this one, as Mr. Disney and his organization aren’t exactly keen on copyright infringement, but there’s no stopping you from celebrating! As kids (and grownups) who doesn’t love a good animated cartoon? Use this date as a chance to celebrate your inner child and what keeps you motivated, innovating, exploring, etc.

Little known fact: Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy. Who in your organization has the most unique middle name?

June 10: National Iced Tea Day

In 1904 tea plantation owner Richard Blechynden was set to sell his wares at the St. Louis World Fair. Unfortunately, it was an extremely hot day, and fair goers were in the mood for something a bit cooler than a cuppa. Blechynden took a risk, poured his hot tea over some ice, and thus – Iced Tea was born.

Iced Tea makes us think of the lazy, hazy days of summer. And although summer hasn’t officially started yet (see below), National Iced Tea day can be a great time to kick off your summer campaigns, or start reinforcing previously stated messages. Food industry marketers can seize this moment and offer deals to patrons, “C’mon in for a free Iced Tea on National Iced Tea Day,” etc. As the invention of Iced Tea arrived under adverse circumstances, you can always play the “necessity is the mother of all invention” card as well. If you’re particularly brazen, you can go out on a limb and bridge the gap between a century old beverage and semi-centarian musician Ice T.

June 13: Sewing Machine Day

The first records of a functional sewing machine date back to 1830, when Barthelemy Thimonnier created a machine that used a thread and a hooked needle to create the same chain stitched used in embroidery.

Now I realize that bridging the gap between your brand and a sewing machine might be a bit of a stretch, but only if you make it. Sewing Machine Day is a perfect time to delve into the world of rapid advancements in technology, and how your organization has contributed to making the world a better place. Perhaps something along the lines of, “Stitching it altogether,” can highlight your organizations’ services or products?

A sidenote: Thimonnier’s factory was burned to the ground by a mob of French tailors who feared job security as a result of this new invention.

World Juggler’s Day: Saturday closest to June 17

Just as the name suggests, World Juggler’s Day is set to recognize the skill and talent of those that keep multiple objects spinning, rotating, and otherwise defying gravity.

While the holiday is meant to celebrate those that can keep balls, pins, flaming batons, etc. in the air, there’s a very clear tie in here to celebrate just about anyone who works for a living. We’re all juggling multiple projects, tasks, appointments, people – let your community know about it, and better yet, what or how your products can better help them manage this balancing act.

Summer Solstice: June 20

Sometimes referred to as Midsummer (as in A … Night’s Dream), the Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year, and is the official meteorological beginning of the summer season.

Chances are you’ve already begun your summer campaigns, but June 20th is a great time to reinforce these messages. Perhaps a midsummer promotion is more to your liking? Celebrate the summer with fans with a, “20% off all purchases on Midsummer with the promo code Puck” and see who catches your literary reference. Leading up to the day, if your product or organization has something to do with the outdoors, you can always remind your audience that after this day, the days start getting shorter again, and which of your products they need to get the very best out of the summer.

Take your dog to work day: June 22

Established in 1999 by Pet Sitters International, Take Your Dog To Work Day is aimed at highlighting the fact that canines make for great companions, and encouraging their adoption from humane societies, animal shelters, and breed rescue clubs.

All memes aside, who doesn’t love a cute pooch? Take your dog to work day can be another great opportunity to highlight staff members, and their canine friends of course. Do you sell a physical product? Could a staff member’s dog have a good time with it, react to it, roll it around the office? Capture these moments and share them with your fans. You never know, you might end of with a new company mascot. But don’t take my word for it, have a view of Beast’s page and let the creativity fly!

Camera Day: June 29

While there’s no official record of who started Camera Day, June 29th can serve as good a date as any to celebrate the camera.

If your industry is in any way related to photographic images, this is an absolute do-not-miss. If you’re not related to a camera in any way, does your organization have an app? If so, there’s a camera sitting right next to your app. Likewise, chances are your social media channels have a number of images, either of your product, consumers, office team, etc. Camera Day can be a great way to encourage your customers to share their stories and include a picture (or 20). Action sports video camera maker GoPro capitalizes on the power of imagery every single day with their “Photo/Video of the Day” series – do the same here and encourage your fans to contribute with the content, perhaps even offering a prize to the top shutterbugs.

I’m sure one or more of these offbeat holidays have touched a nerve in your creative center, and now it’s only up to you to put this spark of inspiration to good use. Be they social media items, blog content pieces, a lead in to a newsletter, etc., surprising your community, and providing them with a bit of factual information, all the while driving your message home is a win/win situation for both parties!

Chris leachman via shutterstock

It’s the distracted generation, the ADD generation, and the target of countless articles by The New York Times bemoaning its loss of attention and focus; yes, it’s the millennial generation.

But these detractors miss the constructive nature of twenty-somethings: our strive to build new things, to run with ideas, and to create action that fosters tangible results. While this creation is valuable, the The New York Times does get one thing right: we need to focus more. We need to reclaim time from our mediocre ideas that consume mental cycles. We need to stop working on our reinterpretation of Catcher in the Rye (the twist is that it’s based in Missouri!) and spend more time on our startup, or nonprofit, or whatever the central focus of our life is. What we need is to stop padding our to-do lists and add a new list to our repertoire: our to-don’t list.

A to-don’t list is comprised of the things you will not do: Those ideas that are percolating in your head that you secretly know are not a good use of your time, yet you’re reluctant to stop thinking about. There are three simple rules for handling items on your to-don’t list:

1. You will not work on these ideas!
2. You will not think about these ideas!
3. You will not talk about these ideas!

How about that idea for the food truck you’ve always had, but have no time to start? By adding it to your to-don’t list, you free up mental cycles for other purposes. It’s an example of “real talk” with yourself.

By not talking about the idea, you free that part of your identity that you wrapped up with this potential project. By not thinking about it, your bring clarity to yourself so you can focus on the projects that matter. And by not actively working on your to-don’t list items, you free your time to be more productive.

How to Make a To Don’t List

Making a to-don’t list is simple. First, create a list of every project you’re working on or thinking of working on (Yes, your Catcher in the Rye adaptation is included). For example, your day job is considered a project. Sitting on the board of a local nonprofit is a project. The list goes on. I like to create my list in a spreadsheet. I then add three additional columns.

1. Does it make me happy?
2. Is is essential and/or helpful to my career?
3. Is it efficient?

Go through each project and put an X in the corresponding cell if the statement applies.

Now comes the hard part. If a project does not have at least two Xs, add it to the to-don’t list.

This means don’t do it! Don’t work on it! Don’t think about it! Don’t talk about it! It will be painful. Yes, it might hurt to add your screenplay to the list. But you have to follow the system. It doesn’t matter how much it hurts. You need to follow through if you want to have an effective to-don’t list. The list serves as a mental block from you thinking, acting, or working on these items.

Liberation from Mental Excess

A to-don’t list is a quick way to bring order to your life. Stop wasting time with a million projects all at once. Give yourself a chance to examine how you spend your time and store stuff away. The more things you actively block yourself from working on, the more time you will have to focus.

There is something odd about focus. It often feels unnecessary (why not multi-task!?), but in the long term it gives you the perspective and context to see the nuance of what you’re working on, allowing you to do a better job while stressing-out less.

The to-don’t list gives you the power to focus. It’s spring cleaning for the mind. It allows you to focus on what’s useful; what you care about at your core. We spend so much time adding and organizing things to our to-do lists, but we are already doing enough. It’s time to do less, not more.

Alexander Trinitatov via shutterstock

In part six of our video series following three startups taking part in the Springboard accelerator at Google Campus in London, we find out how they’ve been coping with this key part of accelerator life.

The Tears, Tantrums & Tech video series is produced by HAUS Pictures. Many thanks to Springboard and Google for allowing us this regular glimpse into what life inside an accelerator is like. Look out for episode 7 next week.

You can find all the episodes in the series so far here.

Andrew Keen. The writer and broadcaster who managed to irritate a large group of people on the Web with his last book, “The Cult of the Amateur”, was in London to talk about his latest work.

Keen is often drawn out by the media as a counterpoint to tech utopians, someone to pooh-pooh the optimism of the Web. Indeed, his Twitter bio dubs him “The Anti-Christ of Silicon Valley”.

It’s simple to cast a devil in opposition to current theories but this is not always helpful when it comes to discussing the realities of human activity on the Internet.

Keen’s latest book, “Digital Vertigo”, proves that he is a more subtle and thoughtful writer and shows off more of his skill as a historical author looking at our technological progress. It’s probably not going to be a text that people look to for a dose of ire.

We meet at a hotel in London and the author is chipper after a trip to the gym and keen to get into his schedule of interviews with media outlets. Not at all the grumpy luddite that he is often mistakenly cast as.

TNW: So what is this new book about?

It’s a book that tries to describe and expose the truth about our infatuation with social networking with websites like Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

It’s not a positive review of those services but it’s not an entirely negative one either. It suggests that we’ve fallen in love with social networking, but that love affair may end badly.

TNW: That’s a bit of a stark warning, but it would be reactionary to cancel accounts and leave social media en masse. What are the reasons for falling out with these platforms?

I gave up Facebook and it cheered me up enormously. More and more people say to me that they don’t like Facebook and they wish they weren’t on it, so there’s no reason why you can’t give it up.

I’m not a Luddite though, I’m not suggesting we should give up all these networks, I’m suggesting though that we need to use them a little more carefully because at the moment, many of us are doing it in such a way as to reveal everything about ourselves, to turn ourselves inside out and lose something about what it is that makes us human.

TNW: Should we be looking to the past in order to create a better future online?

The book suggests that history is repeating itself. At the beginning of the industrial revolution we had a similar infatuation with the social, with radical visibility, with transparency and one of the men who articulated this love of transparency was the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who invented the Panopticon. This building where we could be watched all the time.

Bentham argued that it would make us more virtuous, more hard-working and essentially happier. Bentham’s philosophy, utilitarianism, is also one of maximising our happiness. I remind the reader that this happened in the industrial revolution, did not have a happy ending and what we’re going through now, with this idea that we should always be visible, always online, watched and watching everyone else is leading us in a similarly dark direction.

I have three fears, about being watched. The first is of course government, the old 1984 argument and governments both in the democratic West and in totalitarian or authoritarian cultures like Iran or China, are using the social web to spy on their own citizens.

I’m also concerned that commercial companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter are aggregating our personal data and one way or another passing that on to advertisers, because it maximises their value. It’s not because they’re evil, but because they’re commercial companies that want to maximise their revenue.

The third group that concerns me is all of us. To paraphrase Walter Kirn, the American novelist, ‘we’ve all become little brothers, spying on ourselves’. So in many ways in the twenty-first century I’m less worried about Orwell’s big brother, and more concerned with all of us, watching each other; a culture of ‘little brothers’.

TNW: How does Jeremy Bentham translate into today’s social media landscape?

The contemporary Jeremy Benthams are American social and media theorists like Jeff Jarvis and David Weinberger. Weinberger is a very decent man, but he believes that transparency will make us more generous. Jarvis thinks that transparency will break down taboos like social unacceptance of homosexuality.

I don’t think that this transparency does make us more generous, it doesn’t break down taboos.

In our culture which tends to be not very generous and tends to be very snarky and often worse than snarky, social media, this perpetual personal broadcast platform is actually in many respects bringing out the worst in all of us.

When you go on Twitter you see lots of examples of homophobia, racism or hatred against a political group or cultural group. I’m not saying that technology makes us bad. Technology is a mirror, but in today’s world the social web is a mirror of who we are as a species and when we stare at it, we’re not looking at something that is generally is very generous, forgiving or attractive.

TNW: Do we not have the personal choice not only to leave social media platforms but also to monitor or adapt the things we do and say there?

I’m not arguing that this is Orwellian, I’m not suggesting that we are literally forced to be on these networks and to give away all of our most intimate details. The truth is that sociologists and cultural anthropologists are finding that people are revealing more and more about themselves and that privacy is increasingly being jeopardised, if not dying.

People say you don’t have to be on these networks if you don’t want to. In some ways that’s right, but in another way these social networks are becoming the de facto platforms, the front doors of the Internet – and everyone needs to be on the Internet.

So Facebook’s attempt, the reason why it’s become a hundred-billion dollar company, the reason why it’s so valued and critical is that we have the shift from what people call the economy of links (which was a Google-centric Internet) to an economy of ‘likes’ (which is a Facebook-centric Internet).

So, to enter this world, to go on more and more of these networks, whether it’s the gaming platform of Zynga or social location services like Highlight or Glancee, you have to be on Facebook.

So, not being on Facebook is a kind of sacrifice. I’m not on it and it’s easy for me to not be on it because I’m making a statement. But for most people it is a sacrifice.

I would argue that there are very few people who can afford not to be on Facebook, either the extremely rich or the extremely poor, but for most of us, Facebook is becoming an essential platform to build our brands, to build our identities and to network; both professionally and personally.

TNW: What are the connections between the discussion you set out in the book and Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo?

The book works off the central metaphor in Hitchcock’s movie, Vertigo, which is a warning about falling in love with the beautiful blonde who doesn’t really exist. It works off the metaphors of falling in love with a corpse and indeed making love to a corpse, which is what Vertigo is about.

The reason I make Vertigo so central in the book is firstly because it’s set in the Bay Area and it provided me with a series of narrative opportunities to integrate the movie with real life. It allowed me to describe how the Bay Area and Silicon Valley has changed so dramatically in the last 50 years.

But the real truth is I’m a huge Hitchcock fan and whilst I’m a writer about technology, I find straight books about technology very dull. So I wanted to integrate Hitchcock’s Vertigo into my book to make it more interesting, to make it more compelling and to get people to think beyond websites. I think after a while those books get very dull.

TNW: Is there an association between vertigo as a phobia and how you perceive social media?

I’m less interested in the heights phobia of vertigo and more in its dizzying quality. The consequence of having vertigo is that you feel dizzy, the world revolves quicker and quicker around you.

When you’re on Twitter, particularly on real-time media, when you’re watching those millions of tweets flicker across your screen, it does give you a very dizzying sense of the nature of the world. I like the idea of social media making us dizzy.

Somehow separating us from the concrete, from what we traditionally called reality.

TNW: Can creativity survive in a digital social world?

Creativity is critical, not just from an artistic point of view. It’s the key thing in our society, it’s the thing that generates innovation.

The really creative people are the Steve Jobs’s, the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Larry Pages. So the real challenge in an enterprise sense is whether social media is going to trigger the kind of innovation in business that most people would like.

I don’t think that’s the case. I think that companies need to be very careful about how they leverage social media technologies within their enterprise. When employees are watched all the time and everyone’s continually discussing things, when you have endless real time, online meeting through networks like Yammer and Chatter, I think real creativity could be a casualty of all that.

TNW: Is history doomed to keep repeating itself? If this tech revolution echoes the industrial one before it, why can’t we do something to change and avoid past mistakes?

I think some cultures are more sympathetic than others to understanding that history repeats itself. I’m half-English, half-American so perhaps janus-faced in the sense that America is forward-looking and Britain tends to be more backward-looking. The book hopefully is janus-faced in the sense that it’s historical but also futuristic.

I think we need to learn from the past, but at the same time I would argue – and I don’t think that the book suggests that today’s challenges are the exact repetition of the industrial one. Big brother is different to little brothers. The industrial revolution is not identical to the digital revolution. The nation-state of the industrial world is being replaced by the global village of the digital world.

But it does help to understand what’s happened in the past. One of the things that concerns me is that there are some digital utopians who always say the same things. ‘This is the first time this has ever happened in history’, ‘We’re in uncharted territory’, ‘Now we can finally realise ourselves as human beings’…. And the point in my book is that this has been said before, it was said two hundred years ago and it ended in many ways, tragically. We need to learn from history and we need to understand that nothing is ever really new.

TNW: Who is the audience for this book and why are some of the people featured by their Twitter handle while others are not?

Hopefully that added to the entertainment in the narrative. One of the people who is represented by their Twitter symbol is Reid Hoffman who is one of the most powerful, articulate, successful and I think brilliant figures in Silicon Valley. On Twitter he’s @quixotic, so it’s hard to resist using that perhaps slightly ironic title.

The book is designed as a broad introduction to social media. It’s not really for Silicon Valley insiders. It’s written for an audience that enjoys cultural criticism, that wants to understand the Internet and social media in a broader social, cultural context. It’s written for people who like movies and most of all it’s written for people who like a good read. My focus was on writing a narrative that was entertaining and engaging.

TNW: How do you manage a critique of a system that you are part of yourself?

My first book was an attack on amateurism, that was defiantly amateurish. This book is a critique of connectivity, which is intricately connected.

My first book I wrote a book against blogs and my editor said, ‘Oh, you’ve got to have a blog’. So I had a blog and of course it was rather silly because you really shouldn’t write a book against blogs and have a blog of your own. I never enjoyed blogging, I don’t like the idea of giving away my content for free.

This book is more complicated. The narrative is actually partly developed around my own ambivalence to Twitter. The first chapter in particular is about both the temptation to use Twitter, my need as a writer to use Twitter, but also the fact that I’m rather awkward and that it makes me very uncomfortable to be continually on Twitter.

I’m on Twitter but I’m not on Facebook and I made a conscious effort to become a Facebook resister partly because I think that’s consistent with the message in the book and I can avoid those kinds of questions in interviews but also because it just annoyed me.

This book isn’t simply an attack on social media. Though there is an element of that, I do argue that social media is caused by our narcissism and it’s ugly and inane and I’m in some ways as guilty of that as anyone. But it’s not simply that conservative critique.

It’s not just because we are narcissistic, it’s bound up with deeper structural shifts in the nature of our economy and society.

TNW: So what does all this mean for the future of social media?

I think we are going to hit a wall. The issue of how much social media can speed up, how much more data we can consume and reveal to the world is not infinite. We don’t work under Moore’s Law. Humans aren’t chips, our brains are not able to keep up with that kind of technological development.

I think the most interesting thing on the horizon is the increasing relevance of artificial intelligence. I think the next big thing will be thinking machines. Machines that are harder and harder to distinguish from human beings.

That’s the solution to Moore’s law not applying to the human brain. But from a human point of view I’m not convinced that that would be a good thing for human beings when we are dependent on robots to look after us. I’m not convinced that that’s a world I would want to live in.

You can see a summary interview about Keen’s new book recorded at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam earlier this year, below.

Digital Vertigo is not like most technology books. The presentation of information follows Keen on a journey through his thoughts and research on the current state of social media in the light of historical events. The spinning narrative that also entwines the storyline of Hitchcock’s film can make the book a vertiginous read in itself.

One thing is for certain, this book is nothing like the fiery polemic that was the Cult of the Amateur, and so instead of annoying the hashtags off every Web-loving digital utopian, it should provide some room for thought and a deeper consideration of what we all think we’re doing here in this virtual place.

Last month, Facebook introduced a feature called “trending articles” that stuck a slideshow into your news feed of popular news articles via your friends that you might have missed.

It looks like videos are now getting the same treatment, as some users have just noticed “trending videos” in their news feed as well.

Based on what your friends are watching, using apps that are connected to Facebook’s Open Graph of course, you’ll be shown the this slideshow of videos to check out:

This is obviously Facebook’s way of re-surfacing content that you might have missed due to the real-time nature of the news feed.

Some folks were pretty annoyed with trending articles, so it’ll be interesting to see how well this does. It’s great news for apps like Viddy and Socialcam, since its content will be shown more than ever before.

I have no idea what Airtime is, but perhaps Sean Parker will get some mileage out of this feature, too.

It’s safe to say that most of the popular Open Graph actions will get this same treatment, especially music. It’s like trending topics on Twitter…but with actual content.