Fast Company: Brand Obama

I suppose it is a compliment for a publication like Fast Company to do a cover story calling Democratic party presidential nominee frontrunner Barack Obama a “brand.” The article smushes the language of politics into business speak.

It’s primarily point is to underline the ways in which Obama’s “adaptive-leadership” technique has won with a millennial generation's embedded ethos of social Internet and shared knowledge committees.

The Web 2.0 homilies abound.

From the article: “Yet giving up control online, in the right way, unleashes its own power.

"The campaign's secret weapon, Chris Hughes...brought with him a mastery of the human side of social networking.”

“They've also taken advantage of messages created by others. The 'Yes We Can' mashup by the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am, starring a handful of his famous friends, cost the campaign nothing and became a viral hit.”

The article does nothing for Obama (he did not participate in the article), and it sounds like canned news for Fast Company. "Yes, we canned," I suppose…Nice cover shot though. Makes me feel sorry for poor ole Al Gore.

Three events March 14: Weizenbaum, Virtual World AI, Second Life shift

Three events reported March 14, 2008

News of the death of Joseph Weizenbaum, the computer scientist who invented the ELIZA program, is broadcast around the world.

Eddie , an AI living ins Second Life of “child-like” intelligence (developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) is announced.

Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, the virtual world, steps down as CEO.

….disparate events, but it’s feeling like a changing of the guard in mediated communication. One cycle of is innovation over and now we invent the next.

Joseph Weizenbaum RIP

24/7 DIY the super hero panel II: Benkler, Seeley-Brown, Mimi Ito

The social life of media objects

Second installment of plenary notes from the exceptional 24/7 DIY video conference.

The plenary session: Yochai Benkler, John Seeley Brown, Joi Ito, Henry Jenkins, and moderator Howard Rheingold. With additional comments from conference organizer Mimi Ito. Go here for first post.

John Seely Brown: The social life around objects. As we look at this movement, we look at Youtube clips think of it as an object. What makes it gain significance is it’s social life. The things we create have a rich social life. Understand the consequences of this. Everyone here recognizes it should bet do-it-with-others [not “do it yourself,” DIY]. These are collaborative frameworks. What are the social goods that can be produced? This may turn out to be a phenomenal platform to facilitate much richer cross-cultural expression. We do not understand each other well enough or enough about videos about our culture done collectively. Where the action is around WoW [World of Warcraft] is the edge––the social life around guilds. The notion of how to bring that social life to the fore is the literacy of change. Agency is enabled through institutions. What kind of institutional models? I need to innovate a new kind of institution. The current video movement started where we had a multiplicity of distribution. The architecture for that network was built in an era when the power was scare. Supposed my cell phone has a terabyte of memory. What about trickle-powering information into the cell phone, the architecture of the networks would be built very differently.

Yochai Benkler: My roll is rinse and repeat [laughter]. You asked us about best-case scenario, utopianisms. In best-case scenario, I see a deep change in two things. A sense of personal efficacy––the way people understand themselves capable of doing in a world alone or in loose association with others instead of railing against the world. The past 200 years we have seen the rationalization of structuring and harnessing of human action in into well designed and collectively effective outcomes. Fordism, AT&T, rise of administrative state in benign and malign versions mid-century. The practice of being able to speak was remote and expert, for example the encyclopedia. You, me, the vast majority of people were disabled from participating in it. Together with new practices of loose collaboration people can come to believe that it is possible to achieve something. Move from the periphery counter-cultural movement to the center. Small-dog owners meet up and create dog runs. The Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan organize to counter media images between Taliban and Muhjadeen. We teach textural literary without the expectation that people become Tolstoy or Hemmingway, and we don’t have anything like this in media. We need this in combination with the other layers of social practice. I don’t need union, party, etc. to pull together a particular collective of people. That is the utopian view. The blockages between here and there are enormous. Partly they are about belief and skepticism, strong historical technical architectures, business, degrees of ability. It is a challenging task to build openness in technical systems, standards of accreditation, to make systems more efficient not just generative.

Mimi Ito: This is what is at stake: the fate of our common culture. We’ve always done it [DIY production], its just never circulated in the same world as professional media. I don’t think it has to be adversarial. What we’re deciding now is what we will be living with for a hell of a long time. Binaries are being disrupted, and what will determine common culture is being established. A lot of different voices are at stake in the space. My perspective is to find a respectful relationship between professional and amateur. All of these things are being renegotiated. A tremendous amount of time is being spent on the legal aspect. What do we think is right? How do we start developing best practice?

Online marketing

Online marketing is definitely a prospering industry today. A few years ago, web advertisement is still in its enfancy. Nowadays once you log on internet, you can hardly ignore its existence. It could be a blatant banner on your homepage or a celebrity's blog, delivering to you the message unconsciouly, like "which shampoo is your thing?" What's more, compared to traditional marketing campaign, online marketing are efficient, cheap and easy to measure. But if we take a close look at what kinds of products are engaged with doing online marketing? We see that most of them are products of food and clothes, those Fast Moving Consumer Goods.

I just joined a company doing online marketing campaign. I am now doing a project for the car brand Octavia. I tried to search on-line for projects of those big brands like BMW, Benz, and to see how they do their on-line campaigns. But I almost found nothing. I learned later that those big brands would still cling to off-line events. For example, they will organize a golf clud, or invite all their customer to a party at a travel resort.

As I mentioned in the last blog, internet is a venue for young people, those who are still in the process of growing in the society. To put it direct, young people do not have as much money as their seniors. One of the main reason why internet appeals to young people is its low cost of communication. Internet also cater to young people's needs, interest and style of life.

Then, could I make such a conclusion: internet is a place for both young people and people with low income of a society?
By Shen Wei

Loving Phun

check out this cute 2d physics engine routed to me via marc schiller's blog.
Phun. it comes from Umea. I've been to Umea, funny.