Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

Monday, August 20th, 2012

Admit It!!!

ADMIT IT!!!

I did already and will again….

I was addicted to the London Olympics…in fact, so was my whole family.

So don’t be embarrassed that you watched some of it…no matter how cheesy you think it was…

Don’t feel bad…truth is you are only one of close to 5 billion people who, at one time or another during the event, tuned in and viewed the games and all the resultant hoopla.

How about this – if you live in the UK you were part of the 90% of the country who watched the games and its bookended ceremonies – a way higher percentage than watched the Queen’s Jubilee or the recent royal wedding. The biggest TV event ever.

And if you live in the US and were an Olympic fan, you participated in the most watched television event in history. And, although globally the numbers by country were not as high as the biggest ever, some 220 countries broadcast the games and audience viewership was strong.

Semantics….

I have used the words “watch” and “television” on purpose. Because that is what our intimate group of 5 billion fellow Olympic fans did – and by the way, the two biggest sources were those old-fashioned networks (dare I say platforms?) BBC in the UK and NBC in the US.

However, as my loyal readers know – there is no contradiction here – digital is everything – but not everything is digital. Ergo – of course the broadcasts were digital and of course they were “streamed” across more digital channels and outlets than you could imagine – but at the end of the pipe – wherever it was, there was a viewer or more likely multiple viewers who were engaging (listen to the word…) with what? THE CONTENT – THE EMOTION – THE EXCITEMENT –and frankly paid not one second’s worth of thought as to whether or not they were supposed to be digitally interactive with it…get the point?

Now – having said that – here is what makes it even more exciting…

Four years ago – Beijing Olympics – Facebook…100 million followers – London? Close to a billion – in only four years, the number of Olympic posts and comments are too numerous to even count.

I’d be ready to bet (those who wonder about the ad power of Facebook take note) that shared excitement drove viewership – in fact, of course it did – what the hell drives anything more than sharing between people – Facebook gets it.

“Sports events are inherently social…we’re never fans alone. We root together, celebrate together and sometimes commiserate together,” says Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s director of platform partnerships and operations.

The joke is that analysts and others with their own agenda still don’t get this and dismiss the inherent power of the events themselves.

Twitter had a great run – with over 150 million tweets (some really bad…) and the highlight being some 80,000 tweets a minute after Bolt won gold in the 200.

However, to me the most exciting news from the digital domain was in the US where one in five viewers used some sort of a device…computer, tablet, smartphone…to share/interact (social – LOL) with the content they were watching on bigger HD screens – often in groups – and live streaming of the Olympics led many Americans to try things they never had before – 3/4 of people who streamed the Olympics on their tablets never played videos on those devices before. 83% never did it on smartphones.

And, by the way – when you stream online, not only don’t you erode the so-called TV audience – it actually grows.

“What ESPN and other networks have found is that, when you broadcast things live online, it doesn’t erode the broadcast at all…In fact, it draws a lot of people to want to see it on their hi-def TVs in their living rooms,” says John Ourand, Sports Business Daily media reporter. Bottom line?

TV isn’t dead – not nearly. Social is what we do and Facebook makes our Primal Urge that much more efficient and powerful, and content is what drives the emotion that triggers the desire/need to share. And even when we know the outcome – we still watch because the drama is what sucks us in and involves/engages us…not someone’s digital engagement strategy.

“When you go to a production of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ you know they’re going to be dead at the end. But you go because you want to watch the process. The storylines draw you in,” states Robert J. Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.

So here is the thing…listen:

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” Oscar Wilde

Seems to me that the one thing that holds us back; that limits our development; that slows down our ability to really make use of the great technologies that we have at hand is that we pontificate about them and what we think they should do…let life be – and by the way – Facebook’s stock will rise…

What do you think?

Posted by David on 08/20 at 06:29 PM
  • So true... the greater the content the greater the talk-ability it generates which is fuel for social net works. The two are not mutually exclusive then, a social network thus needs good content to drive it. I liken it to a dynamo that draws its energy from the previous action. Pity how many expect a social network to drive their ...
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    Posted by Kabelo Binns on 2012-08-21 12:08:06
Monday, August 13th, 2012

Are You Into Retro?

Are you into retro?

Retro anything…

Fashion, food tastes, furnishings – you name it.

Retro seems always to be in style – in fact, it’s often haute couture – the highest.

Yet some retro is viewed as merely old, tired and worn out, and we slavishly pursue the new in denial of what was. In fact some retro isn’t even retro….

Technology has clearly gone that route as analysts pretend that Amazon isn’t a store and that Facebook has created a new human trait called “sharing.”

Point being, it’s not retro thinking to understand what is and what isn’t actually worn out and old – it’s just plain old smart.

Steve Jobs always understood that better than anyone – while others sold “High Tech” and its inherent complications, he launched the revolution by addressing the human consumer in all of us and then sold colors and design.  When others obsessed over the technical features of what would be called smartphones and made them complicated small clones of computers, he launched that revolution by simply saying Hello…and as others layered tools upon tools – stylus to pad for one – Jobs said, “So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with – born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers.”

I was reminded of this as I read about the resurgence of propeller planes in commercial travel. Turboprops to be exact.

More – orders for turboprop commercial planes are helping hurting manufacturers, creating jobs and otherwise helping the economy.

And even more – it will give new opportunity for local and regional travel – bringing with it all the added economic benefits that come along with travelers.

Read some of the analysis here:

TIME Magazine

Environmental Graffiti

The critical story, of course, is that jet travel proved to be untenable. Expensive, uncomfortable for what it was, inefficient – you get the picture. The beauty is that instead of being locked into one version of a story and hence, one solution, the smart planners looked elsewhere, improved on the old without trashing it, and there you have it.

Kind of reminds me of Amazon and Google looking at brick and mortar retail outlets and the proliferation of food carts and live concerts.

The smartest folks look back, look forward, and look up and down.

They don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater or automatically assume that all that preceded them was old, used up and bad.

Reminds me of what one of my favorite sources once wrote:

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Mark Twain

It’s amazing how much we all learn in seven years. As much as things change and as much new as there is – somehow there is always room to learn from what was – and it seems to me that the smartest money always does.

So the next time you wear “retro” clothing or “retro” glasses, eat “retro” food or carry a “retro” bag – take a moment….

What do you think?

Posted by David on 08/13 at 04:52 PM
Monday, August 6th, 2012

Run Amok

Here we go again.

Computers run amok.

No personal accountability, only finger pointing – maybe they confused digits with digital.

No doubt you have seen the news and followed the story – the vaunted, automated trading system of Knight Capital Group seemed to have had a “nervous breakdown” and the company, responsible for some 10% of all United States Equity Trade Volume, booked hundreds of millions of dollars of faulty trades.

The company has declined to comment….

A chilling first glance might invite parallels to Stanley Kubrick’s legendary movie 2001: A Space Odyssey – based on Arthur C. Clarke’s short story The Sentinel. If you haven’t seen it – you must, it’s a classic – and for those who need a brief reminder, the villain in the movie is a central computer system named HAL – that in single-minded pursuit of its programmed mission kills anyone it deems to be in its way.

And to give you a taste of what makes it so spooky (and I might add, what draws incredibly scary parallels to Knight) listen to these three clips – in order please…

Human Error

Disconnect

Important mission

See…or should I say hear…what I mean?

However, what is truly troubling in the Knight case, with shades of HAL thrown in for good measure, is that there is supposed to be – allegedly is – an off switch – a simple button, lever, plug to be pushed or moved or pulled that would have – should have – shut the system down. A kill switch in the vernacular.

And what makes it worse is that employees noticed within minutes that the system was haywire, but it took them 45 minutes – an eternity plus another eternity at the speeds at which the system traded – to take action – and damage piled upon damage.

And now the regulators will step in. But before they start pontificating, perhaps they should start with Asimov’s Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Frankly it also reminds me of the nuclear disaster in Japan during/after the tsunami, when human error and indecision caused more damage than the failure of technology.

And therein maybe lies the hope.

The problem is not the systems – it’s us.

Computers give us immense opportunities, enhance our ability to perform and achieve, enable outcomes previously considered impossible and ultimately, as tools, allow us to excel in being human.

However, when we outsource our own brains and abdicate common sense to HAL and Knight and whomever – we are squandering the true positive power inherent in what we have created, unleashing the monster that can destroy.

I always find it ironic that since H. G. Wells and maybe before, the apocalyptic vision of the future is technology out of control – where our pursuit of High Tech is for everything but peace, health and feeding the needy.

Let’s not blame the technology – let’s not regulate ourselves out of the ability to progress – rather let us be aware that we are the limiting factor, and the more we blindly rely on technology without any sense of human need and limitation the more it will run amok.

Listen:

“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel…” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

The analysts who gave Knight a ludicrous market cap, the managers who didn’t have the guts to pull the plug, the regulators who will now all weigh in…a message for you….

What do you think?

 

Posted by David on 08/06 at 04:30 PM
  • Apparently abdication has won. This Huffpost headline kind of sums it up: "Knight Capital Rescuers Totally Fine Handing Over Market To Insane Robots" And by the way, Hal has always scared the beejeezus out of me. As it's more and more difficult to interface with human beings, I am terrified of those times I do not fit ...
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    Posted by Melissa Lammers on 2012-08-06 22:03:52
  • great thought -- make people accountable -- but give them authority too.
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    Posted by david sable on 2012-08-06 21:56:19
  • Interesting thought about it's not the system, it's us. But I'm wondering if we, more from an individual level will ever on average have the courage to flip the kill switch. Let's think about it from an organizational perspective, most people who work for a company (rather than starting their own company) are in some form or fashion cowardly. I'm ...
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    Posted by Mark Rukman on 2012-08-06 20:04:26