Announcing my new Kindle book "The Future of Content"

Today is a very big day for me. My new Kindle book "The Future of Content" just went online at Amazon, and is already gaining a lot of traction. You can view a very short video greeting about the book on my GerdTube channel (Youtube:) 

Of course I would be very happy if you would consider buying the book for yourself (only $3.90, Kindle-only) but beyond that it would be really great if you could help me spread the word via rating and / or 'liking' the book on the Amazon.com page, tweeting about it or just forwarding this mail to some friends that may be interested.

As you probably know, I have published my last 3 books as free pdfs (which are quite popular) but really wanted to try something new with this book; after all reading on the Kindle is a much better experience than reading a PDF, and thus is, to quote Kevin Kelly, one of those "New Generatives" :)

"The future of content" will also be available in dead-tree-versions aka print, via my Lulu store, soon - please stay tuned.    Happy reading!

Gerd Leonhard
(Media Futurist and CEO of The Futures Agency),
Basel /  Switzerland
http://twitter.com/#!/gleonhard
My public Amazon / Kindle profile
(sharing all my book highlights there)

 

Update October 25 2011: this nice review may be helpful:

Increases brain power for content creators, October 25, 2011

By 

Suzanna Stinnett

This review is from: The Future of Content (Kindle Edition)

"I challenge you to expand your brain and read this book. What Gerd Leonhard is always doing is informing the global brain (or the collective brain) in ways that help us all get where we're trying to go. He builds the buildings in front of us.

This collection points toward several compelling answers for content creators. As a writer who is already swimming in the changing currents of "content," I found it intensely informative.  Leonhard shores up my courage to continue embracing a digital world without DRM, and ebook prices "for the masses." He makes the all-important concept of curation crystal clear. If you are providing any kind of content in print or on the web, it's relevant. If you want to stay on the front edge of content creation and publishing, it's basic. I'm making this book mandatory reading for my epublishing circles"

Amazon Kindle German Store
Amazon Kindle French Store
Amazon Kindle UK Store

ABOUT "THE FUTURE OF CONTENT"
Futurist Gerd Leonhard has been writing about the future of content i.e. music, film, TV, books, newspapers, games etc, since 1998. He has published 4 books on this topic, 2 of them on music (The Future of Music, with David Kusek, and Music 2.0). For the past 10 years Leonhard has been deeply involved with many clients in various sectors of the content industry, in something like 17 countries, and it’s been a great experience, he says. “I have learned a lot, I have listened a lot, I have talked even more (most likely:) and I think I have grown to really understand the issues that face the content industries - and the creators, themselves - in the switch from physical to digital media.”

This Kindle book is a highly curated collection of the most important essays and blog posts Leonhard has written on this topic, and even though some of it was written as far back as 2007 - “I believe it still holds water years later. I have tried to only include the pieces that have real teeth. Please note that the original date of each piece is shown here in order to allow for contextual orientation.” Leonhard’s intent to publish this via the amazing Amazon Kindle platform, exclusively, and at a very low price, is to make these ideas and concepts as widely available as possible while still trying to be an example of what digital, paperless distribution can look like, going forward.

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Great video by Tiffany Shlain: connected Creativity (MIPTV)

Can't wait to see her new movie. "Honoured by Newsweek as one of the "Women Shaping the 21st Century," Tiffany Shlain is an award-winning filmmaker, founder of The Webby Awards and co-founded the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences. Her award-winning new feature documentary " Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology" premiered at Sundance 2011.  Tiffany Shlain's keynote will be followed by a screening of "Connected: An autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology" (Official Selection 2011, Sundance Film Festival)"

New video: "Friction is Fiction" explained

This video summarizes the key messages of my 2009 book "Friction is fiction" (free PDF). The bottom line is that in a networked and digital society we can no longer merely rely on FRICTION i.e. planned hurdles and carefully placed obstactles to enforce payments or otherwise get paid for something. Most traditional  friction points - whether in media / content, communications / marketing or business and commerce - can now be easily bypassed (see free music streaming vs itunes, Youtube / Netflix vs cable-tv, whatsapp vs sms etc), and this trend will only accelerate. IMHO I think it will suit us better to get used to it now, i.e. we may want to lessen our dependence on friction and increase our efforts to monetize based on radical user empowerment. Think Zappos not Barnes & Noble. Be sure to watch this related video recorded at TedXWarwick on the same topic.

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The Wikileads debate: Jaron Lanier's TheAtlantic piece (and some responses)

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about what my position on Wikileaks i.e. Cablegate should be. Some of the best - and also most  thought-provoking - insights have come from a recent, hotly contested piece on TheAtlantic.com, written by computer scientist, virtual reality pioneer and musician Jaron Lanier (who I have met once or twice in the past).

I am not sure I agree with everything that Jaron says (in fact, I don't -  I hope to publish my own take on these issues soon) but he makes some very valid points about openness and the future of the Internet that I think really merit our consideration and made me think, so I figured I should share them with you (all snippets are quotes from his piece, highlights are mine):

• "The Internet can and must be redesigned to reflect a more moderate and realistically human-centered philosophy...openness in itself, as the prime driver of events, doesn't lead to achievement or creativity.
• A sufficiently copious flood of data creates an illusion of omniscience, and that illusion can make you stupid. Another way to put this is that a lot of information made available over the internet encourages players to think as if they had a God's eye view, looking down on the whole system.
• To me, both right wing extremist leaks and Wikileaks are for the most part resurrections of old-fashioned vigilantism...vigilantism has always eroded trust and civility, but what's new online is the sterile imprimatur of a digital ideology that claims to offer automatic betterment. But if there's one lesson of history, it is that seeking power doesn't change the world. You need to change yourself along with the world. Civil disobedience is a spiritual discipline as much as anything else.
• You need to have a private sphere to be a person, or for that matter for anything creative to happen in any domain. This is the principle I described as "encapsulation" in You Are Not a Gadget.
• Imagine openness extrapolated to an extreme. What if we come to be able to read each other's thoughts? Then there would be no thoughts. Your head has to be different from mine if you are to be a person with something to say to me.
• I used to think that an open world would favor the honest and the true, and disfavor the schemers and the scammers. In moderation this idea has some value, but if privacy were to be vanquished, people would initially become dull, then incompetent, and then cease to exist. Hidden in the idea of radical openness is an allegiance to machines instead of people.
• I bring this up to say that asking whether secrets in the abstract are good or bad is ridiculous. A huge flow of data that one doesn't know how to interpret in context is either useless or worse than useless, if you let it impress you too much. A contextualized flow of data that answers a question you know how to ask can be invaluable. If we want to understand all the sides of an argument, we have to do more than copy files.
• Random leaking is no substitute for focused digging. The "everything must be free and open" ideal has nearly bankrupted the overseas news bureaus.
• Anarchy and dictatorship are entwined in eternal resonance. One never exists for long without turning to the other, and then back again. The only way out is structure, also known as democracy.
• We sanction secretive spheres in order to have our civilian sphere. We furthermore structure democracy so that the secretive spheres are contained and accountable to the civilian sphere, though that's not easy.
• There is certainly an ever-present danger of betrayal. Too much power can accrue to those we have sanctioned to hold confidences, and thus we find that keeping a democracy alive is hard, imperfect, and infuriating work. The flip side of responsibly held secrets, however, is trust.
• A perfectly open world, without secrets, would be a world without the need for trust, and therefore a world without trust. What a sad sterile place that would be: A perfect world for machines"

As an interesting antidote to Jaron, here is a response by Zeynep Tufekci (see her tweets here and her bio here) also via TheAtlantic.com, and my favorite quotes from that piece:

• "Lanier thus conflates the right to privacy of persons with the privilege of non-disclosure that states may sometimes exercise. Raising personhood in this context is irrelevant and dangerous.
• "I give you private information about corporations for free," SNL's Assange quipped, "And I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's the Man of the Year."
• In my talk about Wikileaks at the Personal Democracy Forum recently, I emphasized that we should not see information by itself as a change agent and that a glut of information, especially without context and political leverage, may not result in meaningful change. That, however, is not an argument for less information.
• During these past weeks, rather than a nerd takeover, I saw the crumbling of the facade of a flat, equal, open Internet and the revelation of an Internet which has corporate power occupying its key crossroads, ever-so-sensitive to any whiff of displeasure by the state. I saw an Internet in danger of becoming merely an interactive version of the television in terms of effective freedom of speech. Remember, the Internet did not create freedom of speech; in theory, we always had freedom of speech--it's just that it often went along with the freedom to be ignored. People had no access to the infrastructure to be heard. Until the Internet, the right to be heard was in most cases reserved to the governments, deep pockets, and corporate media. Before the Internet, trees fell in lonely forests.
• The real cause for concern is the emergence of an Internet in which arbitrary Terms-of-Service can be selectively employed by large corporations to boot content they dislike. What is worrisome is an Internet in which it is very easy to marginalize and choke information.
• What the Wikileaks furor shows us is that a dissent tax is emerging on the Internet.
• We don't have sufficiently-developed laws protecting us as our commons have moved to privately-owned spaces on the Internet. Lanier misses the fact that this is an issue of design, motive and choice.
• I reiterate that one does not need to be a fan of Wikileaks to reject the notion that rather than demand increased transparency and disclosure from institutions with power, we should trust them because trust is a human value. Going back to my starting point, it appears that Lanier is once again conflating human-to-human relations and human-institution relations and suggesting that the same principles should apply to them. A world in which humans don't trust each other is indeed cold and inhumane. A world in which we trust powerful institutions merely on principle is one where we abdicate our responsibilities as citizens and human beings..."

So what do you think?  Please comment below.

Update: check out this video: journalist John Pilger in conversation with Julian Assange

 

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My recent contribution to the INMA Ideas magazine: "The future of content in a connected economy"

In July, I was invited to do the cover story for the International NewsMedia Marketing Association (INMA) and the latest edition of their Idea Magazine (available to subscribers, here), on the topic of how to monetize content in a digital, networked and mobile world.  The magazine has now been published and INMA allowed me to publish my story on this blog, as well so.... here it is, as a PDF:  Download Gerd Leonhard INMA future of content. Enjoy and spread the word.

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Jeff Jarvis on New Business Models for News (video)

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The Future of Media: Presentation at Estacio de Sa / Telezoom event in Rio de Janeiro

Wow - this was a marathon presentation on The Future of Media, in Rio de Janeiro, today (pictures  of me at Corcovado to follow ;); 2 hours + on pretty much any topic related to the Future of Media: access versus ownership, egosystem to ecosystem, control vs trust, content flat rates, advertising 2.0, privacy, data is the new oil... and much more. There is a lot of good stuff in here, if I may say so myself;) Hopefully you'll agree. We will probably have a video available soon, as well, so... stay tuned.  If you are interested in what else I have been doing in Brazil, more talks and videos are here (in particular the Roda Viva video). You can download the PDF via slideshare, below, or just use this low-res PDF version: Download Future of Media Estacio Rio Public LOW

The Future of Media: Lecture at Estacio de Sa in Rio de Janeiro June 26 2010

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New Video Interview from the INMA World Congress in NY: the Future of Content & News: ECOsystem not Egosystems

Just found this - some good soundbites of my favorite memes - well worth the 3 mins 50 secs;) . The slideshow from my keynote at the International News Media Marketing event, itself, is here.

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Complete video and audio from my appearance on Roda Viva / TV Cultura (Brazil), April 2010

This is the complete, 75-minute video of my appearance on Brazil's most popular talk show on Public TV, called Roda Viva (on the TV Cultura channel). I was delighted to be invited to the show, and really enjoyed being 'grilled' by the super-smart journalists and Brazilian media experts in the studio. We could have talked forever! The show was originally broadcast on April 26 (on Brazilian TV as well as online, see the Twitter buzz here) but unfortunately the webcast did not work very well so this is the first time I have seen the video, myself, and thanks to Roda Viva / TV Cultura I am delighted to be able to share this recording with you, as well.

More information about the show is here. Duda Groisman made some great photos during the recording of this show, embedded below. Related activities on this trip include: my presentation for NBS Brazil "The Future of Communications and Business", and my presentation at Fundacao  Dom Cabral (one of Brazil's best business schools) on "The Open Network Economy". Please note: the video is half Portuguese (the questions) and half English (my replies)

Here is a 9-minute version via Youtube (their 10-minute limit really bugs me!) Audio:

Gerd Leonhard Roda Viva TVCultura Brazil

Gerd Leonhard Roda Viva No Intro

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Friction is Fiction: the Future of Media & Business (my presentation at Next10 Berlin)

Next10 was  nice event; lot's of good conversations there. In the morning (May 11, 2010), I gave a presentation on the topic of my last book, "Friction is Fiction". You can download the book's PDF via Lulu (for $3.99) or buy the newly updated black & white dead tree version for a smashing $19.99), and if you really are adverse to spending anything you can ask me for a free, low-res version of the book (via Twitter is best). Friction is Fiction explains how before the Internet (and mobile) it was possible to generate revenues by essentially forcing the users to pay, i.e. via scarcity, distribution hurdles, dominance. This no longer works (at least, in most cases) - Liquidity is what is needed, Trust replaces Control and the winners are lubricating the digital economy.  Check out this slideshow - and please share it widely!

Friction is Fiction: The Future of Business & Media (Next10)

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The Future of News: a new relationship with the public (Jeff Jarvis at INMA 2010), 'Not sell the words' (my take)

Check out this short Jeff Jarvis video, below, and then peruse my slide-show on "The Future of News" Update: here is my interview, as well

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Good Nieman-Journalism Lab summary: ASNE conference, iPad’s ‘walled garden’

This is a good read if you want to catch up on the Future of News (as I am preparing for my INMA World Congress speech next week, in NYC, I will be focusing on this for most of this week). The snippet below is particularly revealing, I think: while all the buzz is around the 'pay walls' debate, most of the work actually happens on discovering or co-creating new revenue sources. 

"While some editors are looking at putting up paywalls online as that new revenue source, the nation’s news execs aren’t exactly overwhelmed at that prospect: 10 percent are actively working on building paywalls, and 32 percent are considering it. Much higher percentages of execs are working on online advertising, non-news products, local search and niche products as revenue sources..."

via www.niemanlab.org

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The best 90 secs from my presentation at the Guardian Media Summit (video): Trust vs Control = Content 2.0

This is a short, 90 second clipping from my talk at the Guardian Changing Media Summit 2010, in London, on "Immediate Media Futures"

The key messages:

• In this 'new' era of digital, ubiquitous and mobile / social content, enforcing control when trust is needed is a very bad idea, indeed - and it is likely to sooner or later eliminate your audience
• In the connected economy, I think that forcing to pay is like forcing to love. A much better way to look at this is to "ATTRACT and ENGAGE" followers (those people fka consumers) to buy.  

More from this event is available at the Guardian's site; and I hope to have the entire 15 minutes of my talk up on my Gerd-Tube channels soon, as well. You can watch the same video (and other short ones) on my Flickr page.

Immediate Media Futures (Presentation at Guardian Changing Media Summit 3/18 2010)

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Immediate Media Futures: my preso at the Guardian CMS: data is the new oil; forcing to buy is like... forcing to love

I really enjoyed being at the Guardian's Changing Media Summit in London, last week. Not only is the Guardian one of my favorite online news-sources but I also got a chance to talk to Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, during the event, and I met tons of great and inspiring people - London is always a goldmine for that.  So, as promised, below is the slideshare version of my presentation as well as the direct link to the low-resolution PDF download; feel free to download and re-use as you like (under the usual creative commons, attribution / non-commercial license).

Some of the bottom lines from my presentation:  1) in content and media, we are rapidly moving from just selling 'stuff' i.e. copies of content, to selling services and experiences 2) EGOsystems are rapidly becoming ECOsystems; i.e. because we are all (well, most;) connected now we must create and implement mutually beneficial business models that are based on market-making and revenue sharing 3) Trying to enforce control when trust is crucial is a very bad idea, i.e. the quickest path to failure in this new content economy 4) In the content industries, the concept of mostly 'selling copies' is becoming 'toast' - "New Generatives" based on access must urgently be created and delivered 5) The future is in selling -and bundling - access, not (just) copies, and the ecology of selling access is totally different - we must get used to it! 6) The content 2.0 economy will work only in conjunction with a new approach to what telecom companies, ISPs and mobile  operators will and can do, going forward. The creation of a new telemedia ecosystem is needed to really solve the key issues that the Internet has made even more urgent to solve 7) All content is shifting to the cloud, and Media As A Service (MaaS) will become a standard, very soon 8) therefore, as I have said many times before, data is the new oil (!!) 9) Value, Reason, Price, Ease of Payment and Packaging are the main success factors in selling content online 10) Most business models in the content industry will be based on a constantly changing mix of 'I pay, you pay, they pay' 11) A message to Murdoch et al: Forcing to Buy is like Forcing to Love!

Download Future of Media Guardian CMS Public Gerd Leonhard Low Res blog (3.8MB PDF)

Immediate Media Futures (Presentation at Guardian Changing Media Summit 3/18 2010)

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Really funny video (via The Onion): How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

If newspapers stop printing every day, what will those loons do that collect and hoard newspapers?  Tough question. Should the loon way of life be preserved?  Watch the video. For more serious take on the Future of News join me for my presentation at the INMA 2010 World Congress in NY, April 27/28 ;)

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