What luck for rulers, that men do not think. – Adolph Hitler

The Internet is a copy machine.  At a fundamental distribution level, but also at the human content level. Copying what we see and like, or realise gets results, is one of the keys to how humans have been such a successful species. What is unusual about it is that we will do so at the cost of common sense or logic. Unlikely as it would seem, it is a success strategy. Thinking is biologically expensive, and with 20% of our nutrients and oxygen going to the brain, the more efficient we can make that, the better. Humans are natural born hackers. We spot one of our tribe doing something that yields results and we try out the behaviour ourselves, even if we have no idea of the mechanics or conditionst that led to it. If it works it stays. And others copy us. If we don’t understand why it worked in the first instance, it needn’t be a reason not to use it. So are born a myriad of useful hacks that keep us safe, allow us to build on each others creativity and engineering. So too, rituals and traditions, and beliefs that have long ago shed the essence of the logic or context that made them work – mostly harmless but some of these thinking hacks with sufficient uptake or legacy are mistaken for Truth and can go rogue. Believing is easier than thinking.

The Internet only cranks up the volume, it doesn’t lead to shoddy thinking, it’s merely the best damn distribution system since bacteria hacked airborne transport. We’ve been brain hacking for millenia, there’s no stopping us now. What is critical is that we keep the ratio of thinking to believing and copying in lively balance.

Being close to the source as possible counts because it works like a Chinese telephone game. Like any signal down a line, eventually it erodes into unintelligible fuzz. None of the activating intelligence is left. Sometimes the shell still keeps doing the rounds anyway because its packaged so prettily.

For all the disdain that rains upon bloggers for mindlessness, the critics often fail to recognise that as newspapers burgeoned and the rush to be first, or to stuff content to marry off to advertising grew over the past decades – so too did the quick hack of regurgitating press releases, copying wire feeds and churning empty caloried opinion on their pages. Why slog and blaze the synaptic fires if someone else is willing to do it for you? The behaviour around journalism was hacked a long time ago. Newspapers of record like the New York Times, rich, reliable mags like New Scientist pay their writers to think and interrogate the truth. And then we cut.paste, RT, blog, email, whatever your flavour, to pass on what we believe in. Or reinforces our reality.

Our job is not to make up anybody’s mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of the decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking. – Fred Friendly

The few on the thinking side have to work harder and burn more cognitive juice. They are the context providers not merely content providers. Their job is not to comfortably reinforce our thinking by mouthing cliches. They’re also least likely to be voted most popular because of that expensive thinking problem. Few of us enjoy the recalibration of our beliefs that thinking often effects, it’s unsteadying; give us emotion yes, intrigue surely, but deep analysis that doesn’t offer a safe answer, eh. It’s like eating broccoli for most of us. Why would you choose veggies when takeaways are tastier, cheaper and quicker?

Like eating fresh food and exercising it takes more time, costs more and often hurts while you’re doing it, but there’s nothing like it for avoiding the fate of a flabby homogenous consumer. Smart is sexy.

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RECOMMENDED :

PS. if you haven’t, you do want to read Kevin Kelly’s piece on Better than Free: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php

AND also do hunt down Farhad Manjoo’s True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society or watch this clip from Fora.tv at the very least:

Click here to view the embedded video.

—————————————EVENT UPDATE————————————————

One of the best places to get into a cerebral spin-class is The Daily Maverick, almost a year old now, and beloved by thinkers for not choosing the takeaway-in-pretty-packaging route. In celebration of their brave move from wholly print to wholly online at the beginning of November 2009, they’ll be gathering some of the smartest (also least-likely-to-mouth-cliches) people and some of their ferociously bright, opinionated readers into a room and let them loose on each other for the day.
The Gathering. Brainy bootcamp baby.

It’s not cheap (now up to R3000), it’s a whole day (4th Nov 2010, no work for you) and it’ll be a workout. But I am so looking forward to it!
The synaptic fritzing power of the DM team* is enough to short-circuit most people and send them scurrying to a gossip mag to recover.
But in accompaniment the speakers roll looks like this:

• Zwelinzima Vavi, general-secretary of Cosatu
• Michael Jordaan, CEO of First National Bank
• Lauren Beukes, author of Zoo City and Moxyland
• Khaya Dlanga, prolific blogger and troublemaker
• Richard Mulholland, professional speaker most likely to be confused with a rockstar
• Nic Dawes, editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian
• Jovan Regasek, CEO of ITWeb
• Yvonne Johnston, brain-mother to Brand SA and marketer-at-large
• Ivo Vegter, columnist and analyst
• Ray Hartley, Sunday Times editor
• Yusuf Abramjee, head of news and corporate affairs, Primedia
• Terry Annecke, operations director of BlackStone Tek
• Victor Dlamini, chairman of Chillibush
• Stephen Grootes, Eyewitness News reporter
• Mike Ratcliffe, Wine master, Warwick wines
• Toby Shapshak, editor of Stuff magazine.

(and knowing them, there’s likely to be a surprise or two for those who believe).
If you have the fortitude for mental marathons through unfamiliar lands, with a side of good humour -wit a DM signature and is never far away from even the darkest scenario. warning: those dry and serious of demeanour may be startled. It’s going to a riot of the best sort.

Read here and here for more if you need convincing (actually I don’t know if there are still tickets but mail ‘em anyway. If you’re in South Africa on the 4th of Nov, why miss out?)  A little throng of us Capetonians are flying up for it, including Jacques Rousseau, Allan Kent and Dave Duarte. [If you're coming too, please let me know].

* Branko Brkic (editor), Phillip de Wet (deputy), and Kevin Bloom, as well as Stephen Grootes, Sipho Hlongwane, Brooks Spector, Theresa Mallinson and Mandy de Waal. Commit these names to memory for the name tag scan ..and give them that knowing nod. They’re doing their damnedest everyday fending off those fuzzy copies to keep us from floating off into the sea of irrelevance.

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Disclaimer: not only am I a fan, but count members of this brave & bright Daily Maverick clan as friends. I’m not a paid shill. My dharma is to cheer genius when I see it. So be it.
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Marlon was introducing the Reconstructed Living project (RLabs), using that most loved-by-teens|vilified-by-teachers/parents mobile platform, MXit. MXit maven Rafiq Phillips (and one of Marlon’s past students) had shown us that it could be more than just a cheap chat channel, but what ensued from this project astounded everyone.
Lives were saved. Literally not figuratively. Gangsters, drug-dealers, addicts, the suicidal, the abused yanked back from dangling over the abyss by a deceptively simple mobile IM chat platform and some blogging.

Clinton Liederman’s story (From Gangster to Twitter) is just one to share, but gives you a good idea what this is about:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It worked because it used the principles of getting the context right, being in the natural playspace of those who needed it, without interrupting, using the language that is familiar/authentic to that playspace. And more importantly this wasn’t a well-meaning set of social workers on the other end of the IM, the stories were real and rugged and hopeful because they were ex-gangsters, -addicts, -dealers, -abused and had visceral experience of being in a desperate situation – and knew exactly what it takes to get out. The steps not much different from any guidelines NGO’s or government programs may define, but it was infused with life and intelligence because the person delivering the message was the real deal, a makeover, someone who had reconstructed their own lives out of dire/shameful/deadly circumstances. It rang true. and it worked.

Who among us is immune to the charm of the makeover? The before and after pics, the journey through shame and determination, we humans are suckers for these kinds of stories. The thrill of turnaround numbers on a failing business, a doomed economy revitalised into a roaring success by a few tweaks – none can resist the strength of the makeover as social currency, it converts to all markets and lifestyles.

The means of telling those stories changed radically over these last decade. At its core, social media is just a new means of production and distribution. From highly skilled expensive people and equipment and expensive, proprietary distribution, the cost and skills associated to both have dropped to close to zero by comparison.

What is brought on was a great flood of amateurs overrunning the banks of media channels and scared the hell out of the bastions of the Media. It has us all awash in useless, unsubstantiated, surprising, unverified, brilliant, illegal, mashedup, beautiful, horrifying, profound, unstoppable content coursing in from every corner of the world [adds own blog to the flood].

It’s also spawned an egosystem around the “Internet-famous” absorbed in feeding from the bubble of its own coolness. But for all the mockery that it may draw, there are those who have used it to change their fortunes where nothing else could have worked.
The Reconstructed did just that and grabbed the chance to put a surprising twist in to break the expected plot of their lives.

If you live in South Africa, try playing word associations and listen what comes up when you proffer “Cape Flats”. If gangsters, drugs and violence don’t feature, you’re standing before an anomaly, someone who hasn’t seen a TV, read a newspaper or any other traditional media source for perhaps decades. If you come from the Cape Flats (where you’d find RLabs) you have an instant set of archetypes that accompany your journey, a set of prejudices that you probably have to work that much harder to overcome.
We all have our own special set of holographic set that activates when we say what we do, where we’re from, but some are in more intense technicolour than others.

Archetypes and prejudice is a brain evolution that’s helped us become the dominant species on this grand blue ball. We can’t pay attention to everything so we chunk info for efficiency, if we can determine rules for what is good and what is dangerous and tell each other stories to illustrate it rather than each of us discovering afresh that tigers aren’t just big lovable lolcats. If we had to go through a day without our assumptions about how the world (mostly) works, we’d burn throughour brain’s available oxygen and glucose for the day in 13 minutes and pass out from sheer overwhelm. We need shortcodes to make sense of it all.

In more elegant illustration, Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie did a talk at TED that goes right to the heart of how dangerous it is to have one defining story about a place or people ..a special dedication to those who lapse into referring to Africa as a country

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s easier for media to tell the sensational stories, the once-offs, and many still follow “if it bleeds it leads” so they aren’t hot on the trail of the feel-good fluffy ones. Social media is more of a tribal thing, and we want to know the backstory and follow-up and whose connected and why. It offers a place to get your own story heard. How you want to tell it, on your terms and on demand, not with the print run, January issue or particular flighting time.

Telling an amazing makeover story, with friends who have done the same, on video, blogs, mobile platforms, forums, in talks, demo’s, social networks, podcasts, radio, print, games is a surefire way to start interrupting a persistent archetype. [Fighting the urge to say transmedia storytelling in here, but that's for another day]. RLabs is starting to make a dent in the story of their community. Using only mediated traditional media it wouldn’t have happened. For them social media isn’t a vanity sport.

It also isn’t about charity. True to form, RLabs takes an unusual position on stepping away from traditional NGO on intravenous funding. Charity isn’t sexy. It numbs creativity and determination. Doing good and doing good business is enlivening. They’ve started a social media strategy unit (oh stop with the groaning, I know) called the Social Media Factory. But if you think it’ll be like any other social media consultancy, you haven’t been paying attention to this story. These are people who have tasted death, who know the power of social media in the way that few of us do, who come bearing character and can help those who need to get a grip on being truthful, strong and connect to their community in more than words. It’ll be anything but anodyne – guaranteed. [no, I don't need a disclaimer, I haven't taken shares].

PS. my favourite new podcast is one I’ve been recommending wildly, the delicious Kitchen Sisters have a new series on NPR called the Hidden World of Girls (7-10 min stories from all over the world that will do your head in, go check it out).

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I had the honour of doing a training session for the hero corps at RLabs last week and recommend it highly! If you have strengths to share to help them circumvent the tiger-as-kitty traps with tricks, tips, equipment, tools, skills to accelarate the reconstruction of more lives through social media, offer here (Rene Parker is the digital dame to get you in, say Max sent ya).

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Or maybe that’s just a convenient hangover myth from the Industrial Age that we’ve continued to believe even as the world changes around us?

What if doing good business, a roaring trade no less, isn’t about aptitude or “something you’re just born with” but something learnable. A language. A game with a particular set of rules that we just need to be shown so we can get in and play along, rather than feeling unfairly relegated to sideline spectator?

This is the ongoing premise of a 4 year long wager that UCT’s Graduate School of Business Exec.Ed unit director Elaine Rumboll chose to bet on. She believed that artists with the right tools in their hands COULD excel in business. Business Acumen for Artists is about to launch into its 4th year because of that belief.

Learning the rules of the game

The first business school programme of its kind for artists, it’s always oversubscribed because it answers a very pressing need. More of us want to escape the confines of corporate soulsuck, but watched friends step out into the freedom of freelancing or creative entrepreneurship and fall down a chasm, eventually claw their way back to the numbing safety of a grey job, worse off than when they left. The unexpected truth of their fall, is that despite having worked for a big business, they may know nothing about running their own.

For artists ..and recently-escaped company execs too

This holds true not just for creatives. Many are they who come swaggering into a startup with their big swinging CVs and crashland their jetsized egos on the undulating ground of entrepreurship. Business in the buffered realms of a big company and running your own, share enough genetic markers on paper to be alike; but in the realworld, it’s like you and a sightless sea-urchin.

To my utter despair I’ve also watched as people of genius hand the business-end over to experts (read: recently escaped swaggering execs) so that they don’t have to be muddied by marketing, sales, admin and money. Which seems perfectly logical, but almost always ends in tears. We need to be involved in our enterprise on all levels (or at least understand how to check the reports) if it’s to be a success. It’s essential to bring in specialists to do things like our taxes, but to hand over the engine to someone else to remote control isn’t amongst the finest strategic move ascribed in biographies of the greats. But despite eons of creative geniuses handing down their stories, we still fall into the same sticky tarpit generation after generation.

Business can be terrifying, disheartening, overwhelming as a solo venture. But to do it with the fundamentals in place when it all starts shaking, the right people on speed-dial and having built-in back-up plans are all best practises that winning creative entrepreneurs have learned.

Who’s this program a best-fit for?

Business Acumen for Artists goes a long way to getting those elementals in place for:

• those planning an escape
• those bravely out there plying their creative trade but frustrated that they’re not doing as well as they should.
• ..and also as a refresher masterclass for those already successful artists wanting to get a better idea of what opportunities they could be grabbing to strengthen their marketing [Dave Duarte will be leading 2 sessions on marketing with todays new tools! if nothing else, this is makes it worth it] or stretch into a global market [should you go PayPal? use an agent?].

The Essential Details:

• It’s R 4995 for the 13 week programme, including personal mentorship (priceless)
• You also need to be geographically right for this one: you need to be in Cape Town from the 30th Aug – 29th Nov 2010 (Monday eves from 6pm til 9pm – built in for those still with dayjob).
• It’s held at UCT Graduate School of Business (right by the V&A Waterfront) with plenty of safe parking
• The group can only work if the numbers are kept tight [which means that you will be held accountable for your development and working through your OWN business outcome to share at the final wrap celebration]. It’s for the quick and decisive. If you KNOW you need it, grab the opportunity.

If this sounds just right for you, or someone you know who’s a perfect match (and you’re in South Africa) text ART & your email address to 31497 or book online: www.gsb.uct.ac.za/artists. If you prefer human contact give Mario a buzz on 021 406.1268 or mail him: mario.pearce@gsb.uct.ac.za to find out more or grab your place on the journey.

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Habari Media organised what looked to be another big.company.meets.small.country gathering. The gist of the gig: Facebook now offers SA more options on ad placement on the site through a chosen country representative with established relationships, enter: Habari Media. thrilling stuff. In preparation I took an aisle seat by the stairs for the discreet duck when frosty aircon and conference-grade coffee wore off.
Curiously, the show was fairly compelling and I’ll tell you why.

Three things tweaked my perception of Facebook’s global sprawl.
1. the heft and speed of Facebook is hastening the entropy or evolution of media’s relationship with advertising.
2. the company is undertaking an inspired globalization strategy.
3. as you suspected, Mark Zuckerberg (or Google to be sure) has your number.

AD JUICE

The announcement hasn’t been met with general joy at some of our bigger media houses who see ever more leakage of ad revenues on their web publications. Cracks in the wake of Google Ads lumbering through, meant nourishing ad-spend was leaving the local market, and Facebook will do nothing to stem the flow. Elan Lohmann, Digital GM at Avusa murmured colonisation.

There’s a rumour batting about Twitter, that once enough of us suckers who depend on the site for our daily social nibbling are in, they’ll close the doors and charge admission. It was dealt with swiftly: read my lips, Facebook will never charge for membership (Blake Chandlee be lashed if he’s doing a Bush). The model is run solely on ads at the moment, and they’ve barely begun to get interesting.

“Branding is in its infancy online. Anyone who says that brands have embraced the internet is lying” – VP of Emerging Markets EMEA, Blake Chandlee

CROWDSOURCED GLOBALIZATION

From the heady days of the world’s first multinational, the Dutch East India Company to this moment, the opportunity to do business in grand scale has been guaranteed to disrupt. From hilarious product-naming gaffes, tragic resource-plundering, to very costly beliefs that successes are formulaic across borders (a Discovery even some local companies have bitten down on). We bungle in each other’s backyards. Patriotism and protectionism don’t hold back the eventual forces of globalization (North Korea exempt).
We don’t want to be left out, but we don’t want to give up the farm.

Facebook’s approach is one to watch though. Drawing on a Wikipedia-style model of crowdsourcing to get polyglot members to translate the site with head-bending speed, Facebook wins by coming in at the language level first (70 languages served to date). Developers around the world contribute applications that make sense within their context and culture. For free. Genius. It fits because it isn’t a solution retrofitted to a new market, the market crafts what it wants FB to do. No team deployed to set up an office abroad, grab the native intelligence and get it to plug in. That’s the magic.

Facebook is actually a global UTILITY company. As with electricity, we choose to use it, how to use it, and billions of pluggable appliances have been spawned in the wake of being able to tap power into our homes. Without the appliances the electricity is as good as useless. The appliances are developed independently of the supplying energy company. In the same way, we make Facebook useful. [BTW if you haven't read Nicholas Carr's "The Big Switch", it's worth it for the fresh look from history at cloud computing and the next ubiquitous utility layer]

Unlike electricity or fuel, HOW you use it is tracked, monitored and mined for its gems.

THEY’VE GOT YOUR NUMBER

Know this: with a motherlode of data and elegant predictive modeling, the geeks have you decoded. Given a few days worth of initial interactions, your behaviour on the site can be extrapolated for the next six months. It’s all in the algorithms buddy.
If that doesn’t freak you out, your tranquilisers are a little too strong.
Enter left, the conundrum of our time: would you prefer to be known and understood, so that the right products/services shimmer in at just the right time like Jeeves – discreet but omniscient. Or are we happy to bumble along serendipitously, missing out on being a thin-sliced data set, examined at by those who can afford to buy access to your behavioural quirks.

We understand the tacit contract when we engage with trackable modernity, we register for RICA, we upload our photos online, email sensitive correspondence. We secretly know that if it could turn nasty if it went awry; but as our species is prone to, we choose to engage, to trade, to trust because the downside of being left out is infinitely more scary and less profitable.

Hopscotch lightly over the existential traps that await if you think too hard about the fact that baby-faced Marc Elliot Zuckerberg could know you better than a shrink could ever hope to, without ever meeting you. With more colour than the desiccated analysis of an actuary. The patterns that emerge from the flow of your attentions are tradable. Which means a new kind of economy can be shaped.

Okay, okay, enough with the philosophy, what does this mean practically?

For local business, it means you can do more interesting things to draw Facebookers attention your way than the sidebar ads you can buy on your credit card. Now that we’re official m’dear, it just means our status updates, picture tagging, zombie bashing and invitations from those old school friends, have paid off.. we too get to sup at the big table.. if you’re a big player and have the money for big campaigns that is (and bless you for keeping the doors open for us with your money).

Other than that, well nothing much has changed. Go back to your desk, all is well or you’d know it because someone would have posted it on Facebook.

er..

Unless this happens >> (thanks Adrian Hewlett & Comedy Central for this slice of internetlessness)

“Astronomers, like burglars and jazz musicians, operate best at night.“— Miles Kington

 
In the last few days of the International Year of Astronomy: a little homage to the heavens that arc above us all ..and a little nudge for those of you who’ve ever been tickled by the idea of amateur astronomy.
 

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON

The International Year of Astronomy closes out with a blue moon on the 31st December – the 2nd full moon in a month – and the blue moon will also be eclipsed! The eclipse will be very subtle though, with only the tip of the Moon turning pinkish as the Moon skims the Earth’s shadow. The best time to start watching out for it is 21h20 on New Year’s Eve.
 
A nod to the IYA’09 with a Once in a Blue Moon theme for your New Year’s Eve party maybe? Though for the hardcore star-hunter (paparazzi alert: you’ll be setting yourself up for disappointment), may I suggest doing as amateur star-gazers have been doing since King George III started the fad back in the 1700′s.. hit the star party circuit (check with local observatories – SA Astronomical Observatory on Facebook – or Astronomers Without Borders)
 

STAR-STUDDED PARTIES

You’re thinking nerd-fest with everyone packing ‘scopes and planispheres?
Think again, as smart becomes the new sexy these pyjama parties with a brain have become seriously hip.
[Exhibit A: the Obamas hosted one on the South Lawn of the White House. check the vid.]

Click here to view the embedded video.

THE COOLEST GREEN TOOL for STAR.SPOTTERS

Contributing nothing to the Copenhagen Climate Talk tussles; there’s a very cool green gizmo that WILL elicit gasps of geeky delight (as verified at Geek Retreat ’09). Enter, the green laser.
Naked eye observation is certainly feasible – there were great astronomers before Galileo gifted humanity with the telescope in 1609 – but inevitably astronomy = gadgets. And the green laser pointer is one such covetable gadget. You can’t use it for anything else – ditch the idea of presentation pointer or home laser surgery. This is solely for making the sky your planetarium as it slices through kilometers of night sky with a crisp green blade of light. No fuzzy, squinty haphazard heaven.scouring explanations of what you want to show. All eyes are commanded to exactly the coordinates you want. Ah the power. (Please note that there is etiquette regarding its judicious use at star parties, borne of green-eyed envy I have no doubt).
 
Of course, you could sensibly use it as an educational tool (should you need to justify the expense; who dares fight the education rebuff).
 
Shop around, and stay within the legal parameters, it’s not a good Christmas gift for anyone with a sadistic bent! Check the NightSky Observer or if you have Stoic restraint, the ThinkGeek store.
 
If you live in Johannesburg, you could grab yours from the Telescope Shop where our little after-dinner surpriser hails from.
 
Warning: Green lasers are very powerful. Beaming your light sabre at aircraft could land you in deep deep trouble with the law. Blindness guarantee if you retinal zap an eye. With great power comes great responsibility.
 

WATCH THIS SPACE

If you’ve been toying with the idea of hooking up some lifelong learning, astronomy is a wonderfully easy place to start to reactivate your synapses. Get the passion sparked by getting some of the right stuff on your screen as a gentle 1st step. Some of my favourite movies or doci’s to get all spaced.out >>
 

COSMOS – the Carl Sagan classic! still awesome. promise.

18 minute downloads from the addictive TED conferences >>

“Astronomy’s much more fun when you’re not an astronomer” – - Sir Brian May *

 
Very few of us are cut out for the meticulous patience that being a working astronomer requires. Most of your life spent boggling over mathematical data or finding new ways to capture more data for other astronomers to boggle over. Many a brilliant mind has turned back at the prospect (as The Daily Maverick‘s editor did. Happily for me).
 
As amateur astronomers we can pluck the palatable fruits of their labours, and enjoy the good stuff without the myopia.producing maths! The joy!
 
From the comfort of our computers there are no shortage of ways to get involved, from offering up processing time to SETI or dive into the IYA’09 site (South Africans, check out our local node) and find where fellow stargazers are gathering online and realworld.

“Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.” – Fred Hoyle

If you really want to go large, there’s always the option of becoming one of Virgin Galactic‘s space tourists, where even the price of your ticket will be astronomical.
 
It all scales happily to what you can afford in time and money and brain capacity. Speaking of scaling ..
 

As my final inducement, just a little more space eyecandy:

2 pics** that take you on little whirl in the total perspective vortex (kids dig ‘em, in grown.ups it may induce existential vertigo, but it’ll soon pass, our brains have time and space limiters beyond which we cannot go, you’ll be safe):

Every so often, I like to stick my head out the window, look up, and smile for a satellite picture. – Steven Wright

 
 
* Yup, THAT Brian May – in case you didn’t know 39th of Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, is a respected astrophysicist (specialising in space dust), also Chancellor of Liverpool University and has an asteroid named in his honour – Asteroid 52665 Brianmay. Lest we stereotype rockstars or astrophysicists.