tantramar

Chosing A Model

2009-07-16T08:40:22+01:00

Disclaimer: 90% of this post came of of a dream last night which involved models, Sony, free and sharing.

Being a teenager in the 90s meant I was at the right age to witness and appreciate the supermodel explosion. I thought (then) that supermodels were great. All beautiful and all slightly different. Whatever your preference (although I'm not sure teenage boys worry that much about preference) there was a style / look of girl to tick your appropriate box. More models = good. See where I'm going? Stay with me, this is where it gets weirder.

In my dream I was at some big awards ceremony about social hardware; social product innovation in particular, introducing a category and had prepared nothing. There was a thumb sized device with 4 cables attached to it that Sony was promoting and the tag line on the card said:

it's not what you listen to,

it's what you share.

This captivated me and I gave a speech about freedom of expression, sharing, the nature of the self and why the current social music models are broken (probably another post in that one). I also talked about the new models of consumption and how great it is that we now had physical products as well as digital services that catered to all these new ways of thinking and acting.

Then some models came onto the stage wearing only data (don't ask) and there was some neon saying it's not what you wear, it's what you share. Yeah I know, sorry.

So the thing that grabbed me and got me writing this at 6:02 this morning was the idea that all these new business models (created by digital) are not only creating new revenue streams for business (I'm reading Free currently) but also encouraging new ways of acting. So (in my dream) multiple new behaviours were being fostered and encouraged through physical products and product lines. Having music devices that didn't play music for example because some people wanted to express themselves with music but not through playing it.

In digital this is happening left right and centre. People are going crazy trying to find new ways to approach a subject. We normally only see this kind of mass innovation during wartime. Intriguing that greed via capitalism could be actually giving us something interesting and new due to such low barriers to entry (cost of creation).

I though that was a pretty interesting idea and of course social hardware.

thanks to Helena Christensen, Chris Anderson, Kevin Kelly, Lloyd Davis and mature Cheddar cheese, who all contributed to this post.

A Is For Awesome... Obviously

2009-07-13T10:37:12+01:00

Paul Thurlby is a great illustrator. He's been doing his own little alphabet which I've been watching grow over the past few weeks. It's been quite pleasurable seeing which ones he's done each week. I'm kinda sad it's (nearly) over. See them here.
Enjoy.

The Big Share

2009-07-09T07:56:24+01:00

Back when this social web, social media sharing-circus started, I got quite excited - it was all a bit brave new worldly. I was writing a weekly digital music newsletter read by thousands, sticking it to the mainstream media and their pedestrian treatment of the future (present). All seems a bit silly now.

Anyway, over time and working on lots of digital social applications and systems my viewpoint has shifted and I'm not so inspired by purely digital anymore. Digital should be part of the system, not the system. Part of the function if you like, not the form.

But now I'm starting to get excited by sharing again but for a different reason than before. Everyone was sharing content back then almost for the sake of it. We did it because we could, it was all a bit 'how many sweets can I hold in one hand' but really it didn't do much good or offer that much value, certainly nothing past the short term.

But now I feel we're on the edge of sharing, doing quite a lot of good. You know, digital systems facilitating real world actions and benefits. Free-cycle and The School of Everything are great examples of this. Russell calls this post digital, which is quite nice.

I know several other people (with funding) who are developing more ideas like this so clearly it's not just me that's excited about this. But yes, excited is the right word.

Everyone has so many things they could share (mental and physical) or skills they could teach. In the case of skills and knowledge it's worse than the cognitive surplus because that implies that people could learn things with their spare capacity. I'm saying people already have the skills (knowledge) and assets and they're wasting them. Matt Webb had a nice idea about wasteful time and talents, called 100 hours that he talked about at reboot which has inspired me into action somewhat.

I feel the tide is turning from utopian to useful. I guess we'll have to wait and see the score at half time to see if it's happening for real.

In a country like England where we can't afford to make much anymore, we need to get a lot better at managing waste and surplus or in a few years we'll be in big trouble.