greenman's blog
FutureFear (tm)
We have a rather obvious global crisis. War in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya. Terror in London, New York, Madrid. Riots in Paris. And thats just what I saw in the news in the last few days. There is no way to deny that our civilization has issues.
Look at the future. Look a few years ahead. Do you see anything but fear ? Do you see more war, more anti-terrorist laws, rising oceans and energy crises? Do you see anything good, do you have any hope ? I don't know many who do. We are all afraid of tomorrow.
We avoid the issues in the world around us by just working harder and focusing on the priorities of consumerism. Or, if we live on the other side, we see nothing but this encroaching capitalist monster destroying culture after culture. Either way it's hopeless. When you have no hope, when you live on nothing but fear - you will do whatever it takes.
What's in a name ?
We are looking to set up a new Drupal services company, and as usual, there is the endless circling around finding a good name that is avaliable as a .com. We are all over the place, playing with words in every way we can. So far.....zilch.
Robert Castello from CortextCommunications did have a pretty good bit of advice though...
The client's website is CRITICAL to their business, and all they can see is some cryptic error message when they visit the site - the manager turns to the assistant and says "give <- name-> a call, tell them we need this back up urgently!"
Other People's Bedrooms
At university I lived in a house with only bedrooms. It was cheap. Where there had been a lounge, now there was just a bigger bedroom that was rented out for a little more. It was great. But there was something missing.
I have always felt a bit odd visiting other people's bedrooms. (There are some times when this is a very good thing, but I am not talking about those times.) When you are in my bedroom, you are in my space. I define the rules, I can kick you out. Private spaces are not democratic spaces.
Most of our social networking tools are about private spaces (my spaces and your spaces), very few, if any deal with Our Spaces. Some builitien boards are public spaces, some community sites are public spaces, but most are not. Most are simply controlled open spaces, not unlike a restuarant or a mall. You may sit here, you may talk, but you are not allowed to bring your own food or play a musical instrument.
What makes a publc space ? How do we find the commons in a socail network ? Where do we build the villiage green that is free for citizens to use for all kinds of temporary purposes ?
We probably need to look for the origins of communinal living. What caused villiages to start in the first place, and how did they evolve to cope with more and more citizens. How were villiage greens used and managed ? With a little bit of work, we may be able to recreate those spaces in online communities.
Public spaces allow people to explore. They facilitate collaborative and competitive games. They bring together the population for festivities, they are used as markets and meeting places.
Phase Change
In Jan 2006, for the first time, a computer managed to simulate phase change in a fluid. (http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2384) This transformation is so complex that it has simply not been possible to achieve this previously. We have computers to simulate weather patterns, atomic bombs and map the human genome - but modelling the change from a liquid to a gas is even bigger!
There is a massive amount of energy involved in the transition from one phase/state to another - in any environment. I believe that this applied equally well to organizations and economics. The energy lost at the edge, when energy is transferred from outside the organization to within it, and vise-versa, is immense.
Peer Rights
I've started buying people subscriptions to last.fm for their birthdays now. I'm slowly getting my friends to become my music recommenders, and I am enjoying exploring music more than I have in years.
Last.fm builds you your own private radio station based on the music you listen to in winamp or iTunes. It suggests new music based on the music profiles of those listen to similar music.
I keep finding myself thinking, "How will this effect the big publishers?". How will this effect radio stations? If we all begin to recieve custom media, will the big content producers still manage to maintain their control? How will a producer manage to engineer a song's popularity if most people get music tailored to what those around them are listening to?
The speed of change will increase, until we choose to stop.
This is my assumption: Things will only get faster. Within our economic and organizational envioronment, we will not cease in our race to become more effective, more efficient and more agile. This need will be driven by commercial factors, businesses less able to adapt to changing environments will be replaced. There is no option to stop or slow down. (Not as organisations, but as inidividuals, we can choose the slow way .)
This push to move faster will favour collaboration. Yes, it is competition that powers the system, but it is through co-operation that the victors will emerge. This evolution is obvious in the online world. The whole emergence of Web 2.0 is all about collaboration( but then, the very word "Inter-net" should have given that away a long time ago). The ideologies so obvious in the online world must now seep back into the old, offline world.
The New Metaphor
Every aspect of modern business is wasteful. Energy and resources of every kind are left to ferment, thrown away unused. Resources have been in abundance, there was little need to worry about the inefficiencies of the system. We are however entering a period when resources are becoming scarce once more, and the overarching metaphors of our culture are changing.
In times of scarcity, it is not raw power that counts, but efficiency and effectiveness. Burning up all your fuel, squandering all your venture capital, leaping up the corporate ladder at the expense of all else, these will no longer win out over careful, efficient harnessing of resources. Speed is still important, but that speed must be sustained.
Art is the ultimate business
A commercially successfull artist creates wealth out of imagination. All they need to do is think, explore and express their ideas. Once they are "big" enough, everything they create has great value. The fact that the creation is an echo of the artist's thoughts is enough.
How can we recreate this value source? How can we create artists, and how can an organisation become an artist in it's own right. In an online world where the only constant is change, where any innivation can be duplicated in the blink of an eye, the only way to stay ahead is constant creativity.
The key to future commercial success is the combination business and art.
