From Fast.co: this really made me think while having a good laugh at the same time;
"Transparency Grenade: A Weapon For Leaking Information from Private MeetingsLots of shady things goes on in meetings behind closed doors. To combat that, try throwing this incendiary listening device, designed to bring secrets into the light. For the artist and engineer Julian Oliver, all the recent talk about transparency in government hasn’t amounted to much. “Many feel more in the dark than ever before; subjects, rather than partners, of their government and its agendas,” he says.
To help correct--or at least draw attention to--what he sees as a worrying increase in corporate and governmental opacity, Oliver designed a new kind of weapon: TheTransparency Grenade, a one-of-a-kind gadget that makes “leaking information from closed meetings as easy as pulling a pin...."
This is the complete video of my presentation at MIDEM 2012 (Midem Academy), courtesy of http://www.midem.com/ and http://blog.midem.com/ touching on topics such as the future of music in a digital, social and networked society, the need for a public music license, why mobile is first, using social media to promote yourself, branding 2.0, the principles of inter-connected ecosystem of music, and much more. You can download the 20 MB PDF with my slides here.
The video is provided under license from Midem. Slides are provided under creative commons attribution non-commercial license by me (Gerd Leonhard)
“Throughout the 20th century, we created wealth through vertically integrated corporations. Now, we create wealth through networks. We are at a turning point in human history, where the industrial age has finally run out of gas.” – Don Tapscott, Author of Macro-Wikinomics
A poll contradicts what we thought we knew about income and happiness - a poll via the Economist
"Two conclusions emerge. Large, fast-growing emerging markets do not share rich industrialised countries’ pessimism. The already large “very happy” cohort rose 16 points in Turkey, ten points in Mexico and five points in India. Even rich-country pessimism is uneven. The share of “very happy” people rose six points in—of all places—Japan, defying tsunami and nuclear accidents. But growth amid global misery does not explain everything: the biggest falls in happiness also occurred in large emerging markets, in Indonesia, Brazil and—a perennial miseryguts—Russia.The second conclusion challenges the received notions of mankind’s moods. A tenet of political science is that happiness levels rise with wealth and then plateau, usually when a country’s national income per head reaches around $25,000 a year. “The richer a country gets,” argued Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in “The Spirit Level”, an influential book of 2009, “the less getting still richer adds to the population’s happiness.” Many on the left have concluded that pursuing further economic growth is pointless. Even right-wing politicians such as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, have set up projects to study “gross national happiness”..."
Likeonomics describes personal relationships, individual opinions, powerful storytelling, and social capital that help brands and their products or services become more believable. Believable brands inspire word of mouth and create experiences that people can’t help but share with others.
This nice video just went up on my Youtube channel: my entire keynote speech (67 minutes) from the Future with High Speed Broadband Conference in Auckland, New Zealand on February 23, 2012. Topics: Transformational Technologies and Creating new demand for ICT services - The Future of Broadband and ICT -, in detail: the coming telemedia convergence, the future of content in a hyper-connected society, social networks are cable TV without the cable, why open standards are crucial, why and how data is the new oil, how Control is being replaced by engagement and involvement, why sustainability becomes even more important, the shift from egosystems versus ecosystems, the new drivers of Innovation. The slides are embedded below, as well.
"We now live in a digital society, networked, mobile, social and always-on. In this super-noisy, decentralised world of constant self-broadcasting, liking, sharing and networking, how will an artist, a manager, a label or publisher, or any other business get attention, and reach their audiences? If interaction comes before transaction, what does marketing look like in the next few years? How does one build a strong brand in this world..."
‘Sustainable Capitalism’ is a term dreamed up by enlightened and benign members of the 1%: an admonition by the members of the elite to the elite, saying in effect that they should to play more fairly. But it’s not broadly based enough for the 99%, who demand a system rooted in justice, not just a suggestion that the overloads agree to crush us a bit less. What we need is ‘slow capitalism’. A system that rewards all for their work and investments, but which is founded on the full accounting of costs in the world. Businesses cannot be allowed to make a huge profit by moving operations to an unregulated corner of the world where there are no environmental regulations, and spewing poisons into the air and ocean. Investors cannot be allowed to make money on pointless financial transactions that add no value, but simply bleed money from a broken system. And the time horizon of our considerations must be reckoned in decades, not in quarters or microseconds.
Like slow food — which is not really about having leisurely meals, but is all about our obligate connection to the food chain and the earth that sustains it — we need slow capitalism: a world order based on our obligate connections to each other, based on the premise that economic forces should not be used to do harm, but to benefit us all.
Many of you may have heard about the ticket troubles for this year's Burning Man: their new lottery system means that many veteran fans can no longer attend - what a mess. The Guardian has a good post on this; personally I think it's quite unfair towards those that have gone to Burning Man for a long time - after all, it is these people that created most of the 'content' there. Punish your most loyal followers for the sake of a lofty principle?
In any case, maybe this still fictitious lego set could offer some temporary reprieve :)
This is a crucial meme for the next 3-5 years, and one I have written about many times (influenced, among many others, by the great Kevin Kelly - just watch this video), see:
This short interview on my last trip to Auckland was fun - check it out. The interviewer is Kathryn Ryan (and she really knows her stuff!). Thanks for having me, Kathryn.
Gerd Leonhard has been dubbed "one of the leading Media Futurists in the World" by The Wall Street Journal. He is the co-author of the 'The Future of Music Music2.0' and 'The End of Control'. He is the keynote speaker at the Commerce Commission conference The Future with High Speed Broadband: Opportunities for New Zealand. Play (Windows) Play (Other)
When observing the explosive growth of the mobile Internet, the ubiquitous availability of ever more powerful digital devices as well as the global boom in social networking, it becomes patently clear that there is a common economic force behind these trends, and that force is data.
In this hyper-networked society, everyone seems to want to know what we think, all the time, what we like, where we are and who we are connected to. Data (and metadata, i.e. data about data) is quickly becoming a primary force in our digital society, and since successful advertising is forever based on having good data on who is on the other end, the consumer is becoming more powerful than ever before – if he/she opts out of providing data it’s game-over. Never before did consumers wield this much power over marketers; never before could we trade our data for free goods and services in this way (eg Gmail, Skype, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook). The quest for data has made us powerful but it has made us dependent on its benefits as well. The Faustian bargain is in full swing.
Some pundits even argue that the only reason advertising in its ‘traditional’ form (a global business worth approx. $550 billion per year) ever existed was simply because we were not yet truly connected, and had no real way to ignore it. Interruption was the game, and the loudest yelling was the best way to sell. Now, with digital technologies in the hand of billions of consumers, we are indeed ignoring what we have no use for, and from our media we expect a lot more than meaningless noise and interruptions. If we provide our cherished data we will expect perfect matches, i.e. a sprinkler system of truly good stuff not a fire-hose of noise.
Because we can now wield data as our currency, we will no longer tolerate interruptions, meaningless pitches, disruptive pop-ups or junk email. Very soon we will be open only for truly personalized offers, real meaning, solid relevance, timeliness, word-of-mouth, and yes, real transparency and truthfulness. It’s all about merit and values that are geared 100% towards us, not to everybody else, or someone else. Our data has become our weapon, and we will barter hard with it. Trillions of dollars of marketing, advertising and public relations budgets are at stake.
Clearly, going forward, if brands and their marketers, the media, and the ads and messages we see do not provide real value we will quickly lock them out of our lives. Useful, data-rich and properly permitted advertising is indeed becoming content itself, and the-people-formerly-known-as-consumers are getting better and better at creating meta-content as well. The power has shifted from the middle to the edges ie to the users, and to the creators (and this is, by the ay, why we have so much upheaval in the content business).
Of course, the key question for marketers still is the same but has just become much more Darwinian: how can you cut the noise, how can you be relevant, be truly wanted (and possibly even loved, like Apple), make a better match, and benefit from meaningful connections? How can you turn the intent of selling into content, into engagement, into mutual appreciation? Is that even possible in the age of digital empowerment? Yelling is dead, and engagement needs permission - a tough but extremely rewarding challenge.
This is where we must consider the enormous value of data, and what it will mean to this new playing field.
Data is now generated at an exponential rate, every day, by billions of users forwarding a link, rating a site, commenting on a blog, tweeting, sharing bookmarks, allowing cookies on their devices, sharing their location, logging into websites, liking something on Facebook. Everywhere we go, everything we do, every move we make around the Net (and soon, elsewhere, as well) creates click-trails, leaves digital breadcrumbs, produces data exhaust, and creates what I like to call meta-content, ie content around content.
In our immediate future are faster mobile Internet access at a much lower cost and much cheaper, yet more powerful and smart, mobile devices, connected devices that are not phones or computers but things, objects and products; computing shifting from tethered computers and mouse clicking to tablets, touch-screens and finger-sweeping; and from downloading to cloud-tapping, which without a doubt will generate seriously more data than ever before, and at an increasing faster rate.
The mind boggles (or, as some would say, it recoils) over the possibilities as well as the challenges. data is the new oil and just like we fought over oil we will fight over data – however these fights will be visible to everyone, and will be fought in public.
Whoever gets to sift through this data, slice and dice it, move it around, make it useful, define its legal and fair use, and somehow make sense of it all, is probably going to be more powerful than Big Oil has ever been. Google, Facebook and yes, Twitter, come to mind immediately.
Something that we must certainly come to grips with is that privacy will almost certainly become something that we must act on to get back, rather than something we attain or retain by mere default. In a way, as Jeff Jarvis likes to put it 'Publicy' is now the default, and privacy is merely an option (and an action item!). Scary thought or huge opportunity? Either way, those powerful new tools of sharing and self-publishing will require that we learn to realize, accept and handle new responsibilities, as well – now that all of us can easily and constantly connect, we also need to learn new limits, new do's and don'ts – and the purveyors of this new power need to help us rather than merely seduce us.
The data that all of us are increasingly generating and constantly spreading as most of us are switching to an always-on mode, will be at the core of all future success in marketing, branding and advertising – and for that alone it's roughly worth $1 trillion already (counting advertising spend, marketing and communication budgets, data- mining etc).
If the future TV does not know who we are, where we are, what we have watched, for how long, who we have shared shows with, what we have commented on, how we rate things, then the marketers' job will become a lot harder, if not impossible. Matches can't be made, relationships can't be forced, brands can't be followed, connections are interrupted.
Getting too little or bad data – or not understanding it – will literally mean running out of gas in the middle of the desert. Therefore, the mission is to keep it all fuelled up. And just like oil, there will be a myriad of issues (hopefully, not wars) that will arise with the responsible and fair practices of drilling, pumping, shipping, refining and dispensing of data. But without a doubt these issues will be solved in due course because this Data-Oil is very potent and because the responsible use of it will light up so many households that a sufficient incentive for problem-solving exists. Telecom companies and mobile operators will want in on this game, as well – afterall, it's their networks that make this all work (for now).
My prediction is that we will see a huge influx of companies dealing with the various aspects of data drilling, shipping, refining and remixing, and that the next Exxon or Mobil may well be a data-slicing company. Hopefully, they will be more ecology minded and sustainable, though. Agencies, marketers and brands need to embrace the challenges and stake out their roles in this new Data-Oil ecosystem.
Check out the videos Neil is mentioning below; all 4 of them are a must-watch if you are interested in the future of copyright.System Failure - Only Dead Fish
“Our system of law doesn’t acknowledge the derivative nature of creativity. Instead, ideas are regarded as property, as unique and original lots with distinct boundaries. But ideas aren’t so tidy. They’re layered, they’re interwoven, they’re tangled. And when the system conflicts with the reality… the system starts to fail.”
The fourth and final installment of Kirby Ferguson’s excellent ‘Everything Is A Remix’ series eloquently deals with the inadequacies of the modern intellectual property and copyright system. The nonsense, for example, of a system that encourages patent trolling and exploitation of its weaknesses in the form of lawsuits which are associated with an average of $80 billion per year of lost wealth to defendants, with very little of this lost wealth being transferred to investors. A system that increasingly seems to be akin to a sandcastle on a beach being washed over by the oncoming tide. It’s well worth a watch. If you haven’t seen them, it’s also worth taking a look at Part One, Part Two, and Part Three in the series. http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/
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