Archive for June, 2012

Monday, June 25th, 2012

Story of Evolution

Theory of evolution….

Could it be that stories were the catalyst for humankind’s rise?

Think about it. What really separates us from the rest of the animal world?

Thumbs? Overrated.

Cognitive thinking? We’ve all seen other mammals and even other species display reasoning skills, and we’ve seen the movies where just a little push puts them on top and us on the bottom…Planet of the Apes – in all its iterations for one.

We certainly kill our own and foul our nests…so it can’t be that….

Stories, I’m convinced, were the primal force. The stimulus. The spark.

Our earliest ancestors were huddled together in some dark place…deep in the night…fearful…when one of them started telling a story…the others listened…up until now language had been about immediate survival…warnings….calls for help…coordination for hunting. This was new. Different. Maybe the story was about the stars…perhaps the Great Bear…maybe it was about the fire they had seen burst from a tree struck by lightning…or, maybe it was a story about where they came from.

That first story changed them. As their clan grew and broke apart the story went with them, and as time passed it changed and continued to change. But no matter how it changed – they owned it. The story was theirs and no other animals had that. It made them different. Stronger.

Stories united them. It helped chase away the night terrors. It gave them reason to go on and it gave them reason to share and grow. Stories made and make us human.

I mention the stars and the Great Bear because diverse cultures and people have traditions and stories tied to the notion of the stars as celestial beings.

There was of course the story of the Gilgamesh – perhaps the oldest recorded story ever – originally written on the then newest technological innovation – the clay tablet – in that latest of software code – cuneiforms. A story that reverberated through other cultures and religions over time – changing; adapting; reforming to meet the needs of place and time.

Storytelling is as old as we are and will last longer than any mere technology used to enhance it – as we evolved from simple word of mouth (actually we haven’t…still the most powerful) to cave walls to clay tablets and papyrus to paper to film to digital to whatever….

In fact, I’d argue that when you get down to it, stories drive technological advancement. The Romans built the best roads the world has ever seen (certainly true today…) to share the “stories” (read news) from their far-flung empire. Post roads and riders were just that – sharing the stories of people. Explorers went out into the unknown to learn new stories and the telegraph and telephone were about sharing stories. Even commercial aviation began as a means of sharing stories (mail) and the Internet exploded because of shared stories and the need to share more.

That is why I have had such a good week here (where I am writing from) at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity…because just about every speaker and every media company and every thought leader spoke about stories and storytelling.

Bottom line – we have finally left that place where technology was seen as the communication – the medium is the message if you will – and have come back to our human space where the message is the message and technology enhances it – helps us share it more efficiently and effectively – add value and sizzle to it – but at its heart; in its core – it’s the story that resonates; that is powerful; that drives the connection and the sharing.

Listen:

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”  Muriel Rukeyser

So I recommend that you look at some of the best stories being told today – follow the link to the Festival website and enjoy – some you will like; some you will hate; some you might scratch your head and wonder about – but these stories are what makes us human…

Most importantly remember:

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”  Sue Monk Kidd

Remember who you are and why we are here – tell stories…

What do you think?

Posted by David on 06/25 at 05:42 PM
Monday, June 18th, 2012

Skout

Skout.

Have you heard about it?

It’s a flirting site – a new twist in social networking that even uses GPS to show others where you are.

Three child rapes have been credited to Skout. That is, three children have been raped by predators who used Skout to scout….

Truth is, Skout began as an adult service but the founders quickly realized that teens were attracted to it as well. And it does have a staff that monitors the active community for bad behavior.  They even have technology—the “creepinator”—that does the same. Yet stuff does get through the technology and the human review didn’t seem able to stop the rapes.

Now, let’s be fair – I am not blaming Skout – in fact, reports indicate that many more cases like these were social-network or otherwise digitally enabled. More so, Skout has – to their credit – accepted a strong degree of accountability and are looking at new technology and procedures to limit the risk to minors (and others, I imagine).

So who do you blame?

Some would say digital channels and apps – and from some religious and conservative and religious-conservative corners, there is a growing chorus wanting to limit Internet access and development and to further regulate its usage.

Not to bash those more right of center – there is no doubt some wisdom in their position, and clearly we do need to make sure that we have adequate controls or maybe, better stated, adequate consequences for those who abuse the system.

Seems to me the issue is not the technology or even its broad access – in a sense that would be like blaming the printing press…all printing presses—for hurtful activities that occurred because someone read something printed.

What we need is education, parental control, peer pressure, clear societal mores with corresponding consequences.

At the end of the day, we all need to take accountability – we might live in the digital age but the outcomes still affect us as the humans we still are.

Bottom line – we make the mistakes, not the apps or the cloud or the devices – it’s us – and us alone.  Yet we still seem to think that we can shift the problem – the blame – the accountability…listen:

“To err is human–and to blame it on a computer is even more so. “
Robert Orben

Time to stand up. Apps don’t rape nor do devices – and while Skout is to be commended for trying to find a solution – I’d recommend that they ask themselves, if it was their children at risk, what would they do?

So while screwing up is human – so is passing the blame – and passing it to technology just doesn’t cut it.

What do you think?

Posted by David on 06/18 at 05:08 PM
Monday, June 11th, 2012

Digital Natives

Digital Natives.

No doubt you have heard the term.

I kind of imagine pixelated caricatures dressed in feathers and palm fronds – who were downloaded rather than born and who were recharged rather than nursed.

Or worse, the Natives, as seen in Gangs of New York, and we know what they did to the immigrants….

Seems, though, that many Digital Natives take themselves very seriously—very, very seriously indeed. In their minds nothing existed before digital – meaning themselves. In fact, I had one such denizen recently tell me that music in any other form really isn’t music…so it goes.  Tell it to Beethoven or the Beatles or any YouTube band trying to be a phenomena group, not to mention the savvy Digital Natives who crave vinyl records – not for the Luddite factor – but rather because the music sounds more authentic, real, warm.

Here is what I find astounding and ridiculous in the whole notion of Digital Natives – worse, here is what I fear and loath – not to mention what I believe is antithetical to the entire age we live in:

To begin with, there is more than a hint of Lord of the Flies here – and the ignorance that often attaches itself to those who believe themselves “natives” – of anything – frankly frightens me.

Far from this being a world of Digital Natives, we live in a world where age compression on one end and longevity on the other have created – for the first time that I know – a continuum of purpose and value between the oldest and the youngest. Both my two-year-old grandson and my 85-year-old father-in-law have iPads, both are proficient in its use and frankly, both use it the same way – if not for the same things.

We live in a time defined not by Digital Natives and Immigrants but by Generation World. A universe where age, borders and demographics mean less than shared values. An epoch where traditional segmentation means little as communities and interest groups form and coalesce in a multi-hued tapestry never before seen – generation gaps are being eliminated in social movements and culture – unlike the 1960s when being over 30 was considered traitorous and there was little if no age or other heterogeneity in anything.

We share, we shop, we read, we watch, we listen – sometimes digitally but almost always with some digital enhancement that links our flesh-and-blood world to the digital enablement we now have – Digital Exponential – our ability to bridge all our worlds: to shop in an Apple Store in person or buy online 24/7, to go to a movie theater or download or stream our favorite shows or movies. Buy the book, cover and all, or just buy its content; go to the concert live or watch it online (well, that really predates the Natives…see The Last Waltz for one).

And we still go to new restaurants – proliferating by the way – and use Pinterest to share our favorite dishes, we crowd the aisles of UNIQLO, and help sell out concert after concert around the world.

I have written much about the Waldorf Schools, but one thought stuck in my mind when one of the Digital Elite said that his kid would learn to use a computer in minutes. (“It’s supereasy. It’s like learning to use toothpaste. At Google and all these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There’s no reason why kids can’t figure it out when they get older,” says Alan Eagle, an executive at Google.)

We have made it that simple (catch this experiment as detailed in Wired‘s print edition: Researchers from Tufts University and the MIT Media Lab this Spring dropped off a few solar-powered tablets to kids in a small Ethiopian village, where there is no electricity and essentially zero literacy. With no instruction, the twenty children ages 4 to 12 began using the devices within 18 minutes. After the first week, the kids were using 47 apps.) – but that he needed to learn to think and reason.  Being a Digital Native doesn’t make that a slam dunk…not even close.

So rather than basking in the pride of being born into a digital age that was, by the way, created by immigrants (sound familiar?), Digital Natives should be leading the way in taking the best of what we know and turning it into the best of what the next generation will need to develop the next big thing.

And then, my dear Digital Natives, you will be mere immigrants as well…unless….

Windows emulates MAC, Amazon emulates the old Sears Catalog, Facebook emulates our DNA- driven behavior, You Tube and whatever else emulates TV, Pandora and Spotify emulate radio, all try to emulate (old-fashioned LOL) advertising in order to exist and we should all try to emulate Steve Jobs…listen:

“A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have. “
Steve Jobs

Don’t get me wrong – before all the emails come pouring in – I love Digital Natives – my children, my grandchildren, and in truth all the people I learn from….

But I want to learn from people who are not unidimensional – who define themselves by today’s technology – I want to learn from people who can teach me about today’s technology but who can also share and teach me about values…and who themselves want broad and diverse experiences so that they can – in fact – create the next big thing.

What do you think?

 

Also appeared on The Huffington Post

Posted by David on 06/11 at 05:05 PM
  • From Wikipedia (extract): "A digital native is a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technologia and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts. Alternatively, this term can describe people born during or after the latter 1960s, as the Digital Age began at that time; but ...
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    Posted by Jessica Wawoe on 2012-06-13 20:15:34
  • We’re gonna getcha. We are going to get you where you may not even know when, where and how we gotcha. We get you when you’re driving (radio ads and billboards). We get you when you’re watching tv. We get you when you’re on your laptop, tablet or smartphone. And if you try to avoid us by switching us off ...
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    Posted by Shah on 2012-06-13 18:17:11
  • This isn't about age, it's about acceptance (indeed, embracing) things that are new AND USEFUL. I'm in my seventh decade, and I think of myself as a digital native. I was building intranets and web sites when you had to learn to code in HTML and Java to do so, because there weren't any tools. I download movies and TV ...
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    Posted by Richard Tooker on 2012-06-13 17:33:24