Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.
I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.
Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.
I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.
I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.
Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.
I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.
I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.
What TechnologyWants is written by Kevin Kelly. If anyone deserves the term digerati its Kevin Kelly. Kelly worked on the Whole Earth Catalog, a hippy guide to useful stuff, he was involved in The WELL and was a founder of Wired magazine.
What Technology Wants follows on from previous works that Kelly had written. Out of Control looked at how software created a parallel infrastructure to the real world. At the time ‘software agents’ were a thing and artificial intelligence was here but unevenly distributed. Out of Control was written in 1992, yet forecast ideas like ‘digital twins’ – software simulations that are currently in vogue.
His book New Rules for the New Economy looked at the economic principles that technology and and web directly impacted. This seemed to build on work done to also write the Encyclopedia of the New Economy, which was published as a three part series in Wired magazine, the same year.
So it seems appropriate that Kelly took a long term viewpoint and wrote What Technology Wants as a historical, economic and philosophical analysis of technological progress.
Kelly puts forth the case that technological momentum, what he calls the technium has a momentum of its own and that it is inevitable. The idea that every innovation has its time. This is why innovation can seem lumpy and why innovations like television and the light bulb can claim to have dozens of inventors.
The technium seems to build momentum with each key development put in place across fields science, technology and information theory.
Short of societal collapse, it is not something that can be fought or turned back but can be managed to get the best from it. It also isn’t the kind of starry-eyed futurism that the likes of George Gilder had turned out in his book Telecosm. Kelly appreciates the double edged sword that technology represents.
This then poses questions around a number of areas from economics to ecology. I would expect this book to be dinner party fodder as a kind of thinking man’s Malcolm Gladwell. More book reviews here.
Let me pirate that for you – whatever will they think of next? A metasearch engine to piracy. Whilst it could be of help to media owners trying to get a handle on how far their content has spread I think it will soon be taken down by the RIAA | MPAA
Zero History is an ideal book If you enjoyed William Gibson’s previous two works Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. Like the previous two books it dwells in the now, which is appropriate given Gibson’s oft quoted koan:
‘The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed’.
I have written the review in terms of general themes so that I don’t put in any plot spoilers.
It brings many of the major protagonists from the previous books in the Pattern Recognition series back and ties the plot together quite neatly. There are two ways to look at Zero History, in terms of chronology it arrives at the end of a logical order of Pattern Recognition and Spook Country; but in terms of its themes Zero History sits between Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. Like Pattern Recognition it questions the nature of brands, design and art. It borrows elements of locative art from Spook Country and throws private military companies and the military industrial complex into the mix.
Marketing is portrayed as amoral, understanding the price of everything, yet having the value of nothing outside its grasp. The discussion of brands in Zero History is less about a well-designed logo and more about the brand authenticity – the way it matches the product – how much truth from it is designed into the product.
There is also a sense that the quality of manufactured goods is in decline and creatives are trying to recapture this quality by going vintage and re-manufacturing old products. This creative effort is then concealed from marketers who would despoil it. Gibson forces the reader to think about how they relate to the brands they like and the marketing that they see around them, he also uses the story to address the rise of the corporation as a military entity a la AEGIS, Xe or Halliburton. More book reviews can be found here.
Weekend Essay by Jonah Lehrer: How Power Affects Us – WSJ.com – “… the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude. In some cases, these new habits can help a leader be more decisive and single-minded, or more likely to make choices that will be profitable regardless of their popularity. One recent study found that overconfident CEOs were more likely to pursue innovation and take their companies in new technological directions. Unchecked, however, these instincts can lead to a big fall.” – in this reading essay about power, I was reminded about Roman history and the role of Auriga. The Auriga was a slave who drove the two horse chariots and stood behind Ceasar holding his laurel crown above his head during triumphal parades called ‘Roman Triumphs’. The Roman Triumphs celebrated and sanctified Roman victories and were demonstrations of power. But the Auriga would be continually whispering in the leaders ear ‘momento more’ remember you are mortal. Where are the Aurigas for our leaders across the seats of power in the government, business and the media?
The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets – WSJ.com – I have said for a while, but I think society needs to work out what is acceptable practice online from both individuals and corporates. Stories like this whilst nothing new in terms of content make me feel that that reckoning is coming closer
Nokia Declines to Go All In on Chips – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com – interesting misunderstanding about Apple’s approach on silicon. I don’t disagree with Tirri’s point on the pendulum between specialist and general purpose silicon. Where I disagree is in terms of it all being about power, rather than space and power consumption. Apple optimises existing chip designs rather doing its own
The new Chevrolet Corvette marketing campaign has had a lot of positive vibes out in adland so I thought I would share it with you along with some thoughts.
The video
The idea
The two-and-a-half minute video is designed to promote a Corvette experience: for an extra 5,800 USD you can help build the power-plant which is fitted into your new Corvette.
Here is in Europe a number of sports car companies used to allow to to visit the factory (it was part of the experience of buying a TVR for instance) and in the case of continental companies drive it back home. This way you could see the craftsmanship that went into your vehicle and meet some of the people responsible for it. In the same way that the lord of the manor may meet some of the landscape gardeners who were remodeling the maze or the alpine rockery.
Being able to participate in building the engine, struck me as something different. If you think about the ‘golden days of the 1960s and 70s’ real men were renaissance creatures regardless of their profession they could also throw themselves into DIY and major mechanical work on the car. It was supposed to be a major bonding opportunity between father and son, working on the car together like Yoda and Luke Skywalker.
My Dad has a garage full of tools that he accumulated over time, some of them handed on to him by friends or given to keep at the end of a job. I used to help him working on our car, though not much of it made sense to me. I haven’t inherited his practical gene, but it did give me a good worth ethic.
It was also a time of family breakdown as divorce and womens long-deserved independence finally came into its own.
It used to be that clocks and sewing machines were the only non-user serviceable items on a household; but as time moved on globalisation and technology meant that cars like most household appliances and consumer electronics needed an expert. Not just the handyman with a garage and a service pit around the corner, but the correct software to understand the different diagnostic outputs on the car.
Manufacturers have taken advantage of this development to shore up their total lifetime revenue funneling these customers into dealer service centres, requiring special fitting tools and clamping down on third-party parts in a similar way to HP’s chipped toner and inkjet cartridges.
Instead real men are now likely to be slightly buffoon-ish a la Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May in Top Gear.
So is the building the engine experience less about demonstrating the handmade craftsmanship of your sports car and more about selling you the mythical father-son bonding experience that the car’s owner may not have had as a child?
The soundtrack
So I was thinking about this Corvette ‘auto-worker as father-figure’ concept when I thought about the soundtrack to the video. According the video titling the Corvette is all about the roar, yet there is no engine noises in the soundtrack at all. Don’t get me wrong I quite like the soundtrack, it’s the kind of sound you’d expect if the Chemical Brothers drafted in Keith LeBlanc, Skip McDonald and Doug Wimbish from Tack>>Head as collaborators to come up with an appropriate soundtrack. It would fit right in with the first Matrix film soundtrack – again planting this very firmly in generation-x territory.
But there is no engine noise, making the statement that its the roar seem dubious. Have a look at the Audi R8 microsite whilst it has brooding electronica pretending to be a Wagnerian mood music, the engine noise does feature in the video clips as you explore the site. The new Lexus LFA website makes no bones about the cars sound even allowing you to download it as a ring-tone (though I imagine that it would grate on the nerves after a bit).
So I don’t think that its about the Corvette ‘roar’ at all, instead I think its about a mythical father-figure | son experience – a blue-collar bromance: it is the Brokeback Mountain of car adverts.
It’s a smart offering and campaign which I imagine was probably based on some sort of clever consumer insights programme. And it breaks away from the usual ‘our car is an incrementally better phallic compensator than X, Y or Z’ personified by recent Nissan Z-series marketing efforts. More marketing related content can be found here.