You know more than me, we know more than you, and wherever this all going, we're going there together.
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So as I read this I thought I’d post it to point to a contrarian point of view (excerpt below).
And while I am at it, a quick reality check.
Isolated, me ? … Nope
Lonely, me ? … Nope
Alienated, me ? … Sometimes, but given the state of things today, unapologetic about my stance.
As I read the full article, I began to chuckle.
109 minutes long.
.. found in the comments section of a blog I was browsing.
American politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.
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I have been reticent about promoting a site on which I worked hundreds of hours last year by the name of Constellation W - Towards A Knowledge-Based Society For The 21st Century .. mainly because I have not yet finished translating all of the concept maps from French into English (I’m about halfway there, and will be putting on a push to complete the translation over the next week or so).
Concept mapping is a methodology and technique for representing large or complex concepts in a clear picture or diagram, so that people can grasp more easily the core idea being explored, usually in an accompanying piece of text.
I have the good fortune and honour to be a collaborator and co-author with Michel Cartier, one of the gurus of information visulaization in the francophone world.
I noticed this item on David Terrar’s Business Two Zero blog, a friend and Qumana user I met in London about a year ago.
He references the Media 2.0 WorkGroup …
The Media 2.0 Workgroup says that they are a group of industry commentators, agitators and innovators who believe that the phenomena of democratic participation will change the face of media creation, distribution and consumption. They ask you to join the conversation.
.. and states that they are ‘competition’ for the Enterprise Irregulars.
… from sometime in 2002.
By prototypical I mean that they were just teasers. Real, meaty chapters with examples and everything were to be developed had I the energy, willpower and backing to engage in trying to write a book
I’m posting this to try to catalyze myself to bring these chapterettes up to date.
I’ll appreciate any feedback as to how they can be made better, more comprehensive, deeper, more accurate … all the things they need to be if they ever become real chapters.
It’s been a while … I was captivated by the issues four or five years ago, and so spent a lot more time writing and editing.
Clearly things have moved along since then. My hard drive tells me that this was written in February 2002. I think I was just learning about blogs around about then.
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CHAPTER ONE
As hierarchies evolve, “wirearchies” emerge
Wirearchy, posited as an organizing principle for the interconnected, networked Knowledge Age, is aimed at understanding and shaping a new organizational dynamic for the benefit of individuals, organizations and the societies in which we work and live. It’s giving a name to a new organizing principle that reflects more realistically and accurately what’s going on out there, and we believe that this principle should be used to create work structures and cultures that respond authentically – with speed, flexibility, integration and innovation – to customer needs.
“Wirearchy” – a dynamic flow of power and authority based on connections and conversations – is emerging as a social dynamic in both business and society. Wirearchy suggests a fundamental change in the dynamics of human interaction in – and with – organizations of all sizes, shapes and purposes. It is an evolution of hierarchy as an organizing principle and dynamic.
Wirearchy does not render obsolete the need for direction and control; rather, it changes the meaning of those terms and how they are used and experienced. Wirearchy is a structure of governance, strategy, decision-making and control based on trust, meaning and credibility – things get done through connections and conversation. Wirearchy is generated by an open architecture of information, knowledge and focus, enabled by connected and converging technologies.
Work will keep changing faster and become more uncertain, more focused on delivering results. Work will become an ever-flowing combination of the necessary results delivered by people using their unique combinations of skills, personalities and motivations – the mass customization of work. This changing nature of work has been brought about by the ongoing penetration and spread of computers and ever-smarter software into virtually all areas of human activity, notably work activities. Where control of information, knowledge and thus power used to reside in the hierarchical structures built to manage work in the Industrial Age, the changes to work that we are experiencing demand that knowledge, power and control are shared, diffused and distributed. Thus, the new organizing principle – Wirearchy – is required.
New models and new ways of doing things are clearly necessary – and emerging. Symptoms of this need are cropping up all around us – from new approaches to leadership and the recognition that issues like Emotional Intelligence and team work are fundamental to effectiveness in any organized, organizational endeavour, to 24/7 work and life, artificial intelligence in the form of chips and software built into almost everything humans do, and global markets and global competitiveness. The established forms of governance, leadership, management and citizenship are under attack from all sides, and new forms of addressing these critical issues are appearing in the current affairs and business news every day.
Much has already been written – and more will follow – about networks, partnerships, and strategic alliances. The average lifespan of newly appointed CEO’s grows shorter and shorter each year, and managers everywhere are searching for tools and techniques that will allow for continued effectiveness in the face of swirling change.
As this unrelenting change, and the spread of interconnected distributed knowledge, continues to grow, the structure and shape of organizations and work also continues to evolve. More and more work takes shape in time-and-results defined projects, and the presence of teams and teamwork is ubiquitous. Out–sourcing and contracting, as organizational responses to carrying out critical work and tasks while limiting the impact on the core operational aspects of an organization, are widespread. The flattening of hierarchies has also been a common response – and yet the legacy mindset and dynamics of hierarchical command-and-control are still dominant – even though at the height of the dot-com boom it seemed that the dynamics of the “geek revolution” might forever replace traditional power structures.
A unifying, organizing principle will help greatly in coalescing meaning and sense out of this swirling morass – and we suggest that defining, exploring and explaining Wirearchy will be an essential first step in moving forward.
CHAPTER TWO
The scope of these new interactions: from business to entertainment
The turbulent volatility of the building of a new infrastructure for communication, interaction and collaboration that has occurred during the past five years speaks clearly to the scope and reach of this issue. We are beginning to notice the appearance of the wirearchical structure and dynamic in most, if not all, of the major areas of human endeavour – business, government, education, entertainment, health care, and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s).
In the business arena, we have entered an era in which the application of information technology, and the embedding of a foundation of pertinent knowledge to many business processes and business models by innovative upstarts and industry/market leaders, has caused significant upheaval. The evidence is clear – so much so that there has been a seemingly endless current debate about whether or not there is a “new cconomy.” Prominent thinkers and writers such as Peter Drucker (Beyond the Information Revolution, The Economist’s Next Society) and Alvin and Heidi Toffler (The New Economy? You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet) have outlined provocative and hard-nosed syntheses that state succinctly that we are in the early throes of a profound and unsettling re-writing of the hierarchical power structures that have governed the business arena for the last century.
First world governments everywhere are rushing to put many, if not all, governmental services on-line in ways that will improve the services to citizens and streamline the costs of providing these services. Following the 2000 U.S. federal election fiasco, on-line voting is sure to make an appearance in subsequent major elections. Cyber-surveillance will no doubt flourish and expand in the new post-September 11 hyper-vigilance of North America and Europe.
The educational paradigm is being overthrown and turned upside down as on-line learning and eLearning take root in grade schools, high schools, universities, continuing education and corporate universities. “Learning a living” has become a common mantra as everyone, everywhere realizes that change is so rapid and continuous that it is essential and non-negotiable. In order to have even half-a-chance to progress and prosper, one must engage in continued and continuous learning activities. Technology -and its interconnectedness and smartware - are the enablers that will allow this to happen.
In the entertainment domain, video games, streaming video, pay-per-view, graphic animation that is so realistic that full-length feature movies have only the voices of real actors (everything else is digital animation) are regular releases from the Hollywood machine. New forms of delivery, such as Napster and a plethora of Web sites promising much greater distribution possibilities for independent artists and creators, are appearing monthly. All of which means that - the quaking foundations of the existing entertainment industry are real.
The same issues are apparent and real in every form of organized human activity – and this phenomenon will only spread and penetrate deeper as more and more people get connected, as software gets smarter and easier to use, and as younger generations move more fully into organized adult life. They will demand these capabilities and dynamics simply because they have grown up with them. They understand these capabilities as part of their collective consciousness.
Moving electrons is rapidly becoming the new dominant human activity, and information is the raw material. Too much money and energy have gone into inventing and developing the infrastructure and the mechanisms for the full-time, real-time, forever-more sharing, trading and swapping of information and interaction. This will not stop; it will only get faster, more interconnected and more woven into the warp and woof of daily human life.
This issue has been at the heart of what is known as the “New Economy”. Software is being developed to address virtually every aspect of human behavior and expression. A quick series of surfing trips on the Internet will reveal that there isn’t much left that hasn’t been touched by applying code to basic patterns of behavior and interaction. It seems clear that virtually every area of human endeavour will become codified into some form of software – and the internet will be both the delivery mechanism and the infrastructure that facilitates the interaction.
Most employees use computers and software all day long. The keyboard and screen have long since replaced paper and pencils as primary working tools. Communications between people – the swapping of structured and unstructured information and knowledge – is the basic medium of work in the 21st Century. When employees are not completing documentation, punching in data, researching, or composing pieces of information into a “chunk” of knowledge, they are talking on phones and in meetings. That’s what work is for most of us now.
The Internet and its myriad of applications, is rapidly becoming the infrastructure that supports all of this work. How it gets used, and the dynamics that this generates, will continue to reshape human interaction in profound ways.
The ways people interact while working will come to reflect the fact that so much of the work involves sharing information and knowledge and simultaneously acting. Coupling this with the unassailable fact that due to the Internet the playing field is now more level, makes it clear that the nature of direction and control will inexorably continue to shift.
The ways people used to interact and get work done involved stability, orderly progression, predictability and incremental improvement. The people in charge – the top levels of companies, the elected and anointed representatives of authority, the heads of our institutions – gathered and used knowledge and made decisions for others – about what to do, why to do it and how.
The rules of the game are changing. Notwithstanding tech meltdowns and globally coordinated initiatives against terrorism, the infrastructure and the means for a continually-moving free-flow of information and knowledge are with us, and are beginning to shape more and more the ways we carry out our lives.
Now, its about speed, flexibility, innovation and integration. If we don’t do it, someone else will. If we don’t keep doing it better, faster and cheaper, someone else will. The next innovation, for example, will integrate two capabilities that were previously separate and distinct, and will make it obvious that it makes more sense to do it this new way.
As this keeps happening, we begin to notice that the old ways of doing things had interconnections and patterns of their own, and had come to fit our habits and culture. We notice that there was comfort in the structures and dynamics with which we were familiar – the roles were clearer, we knew what to expect, and we knew who to credit or blame.
Now, we’re increasingly left to fend for ourselves, and discover the opportunities for triumph and disaster that goes along with a level playing field. We’re empowered by the software and the Internet: can create whatever we want to and demand information and knowledge.
No one is setting the rules, and so we find the awesome truth that we must decide for ourselves, and find ways to participate in a networked world without counting on anyone else.
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.. and the accompanying socio-cultural, economic and technological evolution.
I have been lax in making work in which I have engaged available online. Much of my work over the past three years has been focused on digital capabilities , digital culture and growth in the awareness of social and cognitive behaviours (including but not limited to social networks).
Here’s the introduction to a report to Canadian Culture Online that I and my colleagues Michel Dumais and René Barsalo pulled together. I think it’s fair to say that I did the bulk of the research and writing, and they provided the mission-critical editing and filling in of the gaps.
As always, if anyone is interested you probably know how to contact me … I will share with you a copy of the report.
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The report was constructed in such a way as to identify the major trends associated with:
· Access and availability
· Capability
· Uptake by users
· Areas being developed by producers of digital content
· Disruptive impacts on business logic, business models and established structures and practices
· Quantitative analyses of trends in the development of infrastructure
· Probable / likely impacts and forecasts
Taken together, the elements outlined above represent a “whole system” or an infrastructure that offers both producers and consumers a new interconnected and interlinked environment for creating products and service that can be offered and distributed to markets, both large and small.
There is mounting evidence that this new environment is creating new economic conditions that demand new logic and new models. There is also clear evidence that the major manufacturers of hardware and the decentralized and widely distributed creators of software and Web services recognize that there is underway an ongoing integration and convergence of functionality and capabilities.
This digital convergence … the digitization and democratization of information, whether based on text, images, sounds or combinations thereof … has been predicted for approximately a decade, but it is only over the last year that the patterns have become clearer for a wider audience of interested parties.
The elements outlined above, when considered together, also represent an undeniable movement towards integration and convergence.
But … this transition towards a digital era will not be accomplished without pain and difficulty, especially on the part of established industries. Many of them will suffer in one way or another during the process of change and adaptation from an economy based on material objects to one in which work and production is dematerialized. With convergence will be created new products, new markets and new segments within those new markets. And in addition, this phenomenon will modify (in certain cases) the actual structure of existing industries, which will in turn transform the balance of power and alter the principles upon which current perspectives about competition are based.
So, to understand well this world in the process of transformation, it’s useful to look at the ways the generations of consumers are adapting .. or not. Who are the young people, the *digital natives*, who seem to have grown up with these new technologies under their skins ? And, above all, how do the rest of us understand and interact with them ?
They are between 10 and 20 years old, and they have been born into a world that was being transformed into a sense-surround digital environment. They resonate more than they reason, they are fickle consumers who who focus on brands … they multi-task (see Homo Zappiens in the Report “The Time Is Now”), and above all they are not shy about questioning several major foundations of established society, which has the effect of knotting up well-established industries such as the mainstream industry of cultural entertainment: they are the “Digital Kids” or “Digital Natives”.
Ever since birth, these children of the digital era have bathed in screen-based images, in digital sound, and in digital video, and have been using remote controls and computer mice. Their universe is based on immersion in information technology, of one sort or another. It’s an interactive universe consisting of more and more consumer electronic products such as game consoles like the Xbox 360 or the Playstation, computers, portable phones, and listening-and-viewing devices like the iPod. Their world is one with a network-based interactive culture based on sharing and building common knowledge.
In his study titled “The death of command and control”, the researcher Marc Prensky helps us learn that these young people have experienced an accumulated 10 000 hours of video-game playing, have sent and received more than 200 000 emails or text messages of all sorts, have spent more than 10 000 hours speaking to their friends on portable phones, have more than 20 000 hours of watching television under their belts whilst having been exposed to more than 500 000 advertising messages. On the other hand, these digital natives have spent less than 5 000 hours reading what we call “real” books.
But let’s be careful … and not jump too quickly to incomplete conclusions. These numbers are far from stating conclusively that these young people do not read at all. On the contrary, this simply signifies that their sources of information are other than the traditional ones printed on certain sizes and types of paper in conventional formats.
In summary … in the past, the transition from oral distribution of information (speech) to text and writing, and then to the widespread use of printing followed long, slow cycles of adaptation over many generations. However, never since the beginning of human civilization have we traveled through such and intense period of rupture between the meaning-making tools, processes and capabilities of different generations. Over the past century, each generation has had its own new mode (medium) of communication: telegraph, cinema, radio, television, computer, and today the Internet and all things digital. And each of these periods changes not only our uses of language and thus the shaping of our culture but, perhaps more fundamentally, these forces help change the way(s) we use our imagination and no doubt the fluidity and plasticity of our individual brains.
The ways we are adapting and will adapt to these changes will not occur in the same rhythm or time frames for everyone. It’s likely we will have to wait several decades before we all live in a society that has been stitched back together, in a cultural sense. For the immigrants to a digital world, this will mean that they will have to face up to a continual re-organization and re-shaping of their existing habits.
This will depend much on the individual and the extent to which she or he is willing and able to experiment and learn. Happily, doing so is likely to get easier and easier from a usability-of-products perspective, as well as being helped by the growing ubiquity of services which require some adaptation (look at how many older people use online banking, or paying bills, or using email to stay in touch with distant relatives or friends). While for digital natives (the new generation who will soon increasingly inhabit positions of influence, power and decision-making), their habits and practices will be built around and by the possibilities that have been and are being offered to them.
Tags: SAT, ThermoSAT, digital natives, homo zappiens, Marc Prensky, Wim Veen, Heritage canada, canadian Culture Online, CCO, command and control, wirearchy
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I have mentioned Valdis Krebs more than once over the years.
Jeneane Sessum offers us her inimitable stylings in search of "social drama" as it occurs on the hyperlinked Web, and explores what she means by that.
An excerpt from a Globe and Mail article about Quebec’s crime investigation in cyberspace.
A piece in the Guardian Unlimited compares and contrasts Bush (USA president) and Ahmadinejad (Iranian president) and finds them to be similar personalities facing similar problems with their constituents and stakeholders.
We think of Bush as being the more unpopular of the two. His approval ratings are at the level of Nixon’s just before he left the White House. After an unconvincing performance in the State of the Union Address, his plans for the troop surge in Iraq were rejected by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and may now be voted down by the entire Senate. Senior Republican senators such as Chuck Hagel and John Warner are furious that sensible suggestions contained in the Iraq Study Group Report have been ignored. Although the President looked receptive when the report was delivered to him by James Baker, there has been no progress in policy, no evidence of any kind of deeper thinking in the White House. Nothing except that familiar foggy, narrow-eyed truculence of Bush Junior in a tight spot.
This would be a depressing but for similar difficulties experienced by Ahmadinejad over the last few weeks. Just as the senior Republican elders have turned on Bush, so Iran’s religious leaders are moving to restrain their President. They criticise his bellicose foreign policy and the exceptionally poor record on promised reforms at home. There is a sense of embarrassment among sophisticated Iranians about their President’s pronouncements, which surely rings a bell with Americans.The most important sign-off disenchantment came in Jomhouri Islami, the newspaper owned by Iran’s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which said in an editorial: ‘Turning the nuclear issue into a propaganda issue gives the impression that to cover up the flaws in government you are exaggerating its importance.’
The paper also suggested that the President should speak about the nuclear issue less, stop provoking aggressive powers like the United States and concentrate on the daily needs of the people - ‘those who voted for you on your promises’. Two weeks ago, 150 legislators sent a letter to Ahmadinejad openly attacking him for missing his budget deadline and blaming him for inflation and rising unemployment.
A loss of confidence in both men at home is important because it offers us a brief opportunity to assert diplomacy over the habits of rhetoric and escalation. Although UN nuclear experts suggest the Iranians are at least five years from developing a bomb and delivery system, the Iranians are due to open a large uranium enrichment plant within a matter of weeks. If this goes ahead, a peaceful solution will be much harder to find; to decommission this new facility will require a loss of face for Ahmadinejad.
So the hawks in the West will begin the slow drumbeat for a first strike. Indeed, it has already started.
For some weeks, the Daily Telegraph has been running a series of what, in my opinion, are extremely dubious stories all attributed to mysterious ‘European defence officials’ and ’senior Western military sources’. A front-page story last week suggested that North Korea has offered to help Iran with a nuclear test within the year. Apart from these shadowy spokesmen, it could offer no evidence, which is why the story was only seriously picked up in Israel.
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I am soo reminded of a joke I once heard.
Video-game programmer #1 to video-game programmer #2 …
"Dude, you should stand up and walk through the front door into the back yard.
The blog Firedoglake is a political blog, mainly focused now on the Scooter Libby trial but having had foci such as the Lieberman - Lamont tussle in Connecticut and the possibility of Karl Rove’s complicity in the Plame leak. The several main bloggers are all knowledgeable and good writers, and the community of commenters is large, engaged and over time has become networked into various other circles of online (and offline) activist circles.
Just to remind some people of who we are and what we do. . . we’re a progressive movement site, an activist community, an organizing hub, a new media entity and a place for kickass, smart, fun and funny political and pop cultural conversation. Many of you are just getting to know us through our coverage of the Scooter Libby trial, in which Dick Cheney takes a starring (so far offstage) role. You may not know, however, that we’ve been doing much, much more. We even raised more than half a million dollars for great, grassroots progressive candidates last election cycle, many of whom are primed to help change the world in the new congress.
We’re principally fronted by some wonderfully passionate, intelligent women, backed up by a stable of other fantastic regular and guest feature writers offering wit and wisdom on matters like gay issues, latino issues and immigration, the African American perspective, labor, economics, civil rights, foreign policy, the environment and much, much more. Take a look at the subject tags on the right sidebar of this page.
Our continuing focus will be to hold our media and our government accountable, to get progressives elected and to promote further coalition and bridge building across all parts of the new progressive movement in America, everywhere in the country. Our writing comes, not from any single issue perspective, but from the firm conviction that we can create a progressive, just and prosperous America if we all but stick together.
We’re not funded by any outsiders, and advertising revenue does not consistently cover our site maintenance costs. I don’t mean to get all NPR about this, but we could really use your help on a consistent basis, if you believe in what we do. What is it worth to you to support a community like this that can help change the world we live in?
The following quote form their Libby Trial live-blogging initiative is a good example of the blurring of the line between blogging and journalism, and reflective of the lazy peremptoriness (in my opinion) of many journalists with respect to blogging.
Sure there’s lots (and lots) of crap on blogs everywhere .. but the blog world has been really good, time and again, at showing us how much crap there is in mainstream journalism as well. A good case in point is the recent blog-comment swarming of Jay Carney, Time’s Washington Burea Chief, over his inane and inaccurate blog post at Time’s Swampland blog, and his subsequent publishing of an even more inane (and just plain stupid and arrogant) rebuttal to the blog horde.
And now it seems that this professional blog seems to be showing more journalists who come into contact with it what the dynamics of good, serious and principled activists in combination with an engaged community can deliver.
There’s lots to learn from this, and I expect that it will or can become a great case study about purposeful blogging.
Here’s that excerpt from Firedoglake about their reporting and interpretation of the Libby Trial.
One of the things that has been most interesting is to see the shifting perspectives of the media about this blog in particular as we’ve been at the courthouse. A number of the reporters told me they had already been reading here — for the legal analysis and the media dissection that Jane and I have been doing on this case…well, since this blog got started, really.
But a lot more of them had not, and they had no concept of why we were really there or how we would be acting in terms of coverage, because they had no context for us. Pach started things off on a very professional footing from the get go the first week, and we have now evolved into a sort of “one of the media crew” feeling with them, mainly because of the depth of knowledge that all of us had about varying aspects of the case. They realized, I think, that this isn’t some sort of play acting at being reporters, but that we have a genuine interest in the details and the analysis on this, and that we do it as well as we can.
So there is a grudging level of respect, for the most part. And the most amusing thing was that by the end of the week, I became a sort of legal resource for a lot of folks in terms of what the motions were and the bench arguments were about and the implications of various rulings over the long term court process, etc. — and it was pissing Barbara Comstock off royally as she sat in the bench in front of me every day that people were asking me in stead of her (at least, that’s how it seemed, because I wasn’t spinning them, I was just telling them the law flat out and leaving them to consider whatever political implications there might be on their own).
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A new essay by Joe Bageant in which he explores some of the importance sources of why we behave as we do.
Upon first read, it struck me as a draft screenplay for the movie Idiocracy.
…
Your mama may have been a drunk and your daddy may have been pawing over your cheerleading squad, true, but people have been boozing and leching for a long, long time.
On the other hand, if you have absorbed directly into your little sugar charged neuro-system the bread and circus offerings of the Empire, some 100,000 shootings, stabbings, stranglings, abductions, robberies, murders, car wrecks, stalkings, war footage and combat scenes, not to mention high pressure sales for video games of war and mayhem, well, mama back there in the bedroom sleeping off a fifth of Jack Daniels may not be the worst problem you had as a developing child. Only a fool would argue that American television makes does not make its viewers, particularly children, more aggressive, fearful of the world around them and less sensitive to pain and suffering of others — especially these days of swarthy Middle Eastern peoples and for a while there, even the hapless French. Even so, there are plenty of Americans who still say television has no effect. We might ask: “Then why the hell do corporations spend billions on television advertising so they can reach you?" And that’s just the TV side of the violent culture problem.
Throw in politicized fundamentalist religion, with its unwarranted persecution complex (We cain’t let Stacy Sue git that abortion, that feetus might be another Billy Graham or at least a Trent Lott, fer heaven sake!) religion with a vengeful, repressive Calvinist bent, and corporate media sucking up to the government for campaign adds, government issued bandwidth and corporate concessions, and you have a perfect cultural storm, where resentment turning to hatred becomes the national identity.
It seems doubtful that logic or reason will ever provide the answer to this, our people’s dilemma.
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The Venice Project (the much ballyhoo’ed new web television initiative by the founders of Skype) has changed its name to Joost .. and it looks like it is getting ready to have what will undoubtedly be an army of beta testers give Joost a twirl.
Joost™ is a new way of watching TV on the internet, which uses new and established technologies to provide the best of both the internet and TV worlds.
We’re in the process of making it as TV-like as we can, with programmes, channels and adverts.
You can also see some things that we think will enhance the TV experience: searching for programmes and channels, for example, as well as social features like chat. There are many more new features to come!
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Liz Gannes, a blogger on the GigaOm site, offers up this peek at the tentative early steps of yet-another-social-software-situation facing organizations.
Twitter Goes Corporate
Liz GannesYour phone buzzes, and you learn your pal Suzie is out at lunch. It buzzes again, and you find out your web calendar going through an outage. The wonders of invasive-by-choice technology!
What are we talking about? The observation that an increasing number of companies are experimenting with the free status broadcast tool Twitter. Twitter started as a casual SMS social updater from the folks at Obvious (nee Odeo), but for some, it’s getting a bit more serious. Today, the folks at calendaring startup 30 Boxes joined Technorati, Ma.gnolia, and other companies use the service to send out development and downtime updates to subscribers over SMS and IM.
30 Boxes co-founder Narendra Rocherolle previously noted in this pages his love for Twitter, calling it a tool for “capturing moods and moments during the day and sharing them with a circle of friends — a bloggy chat to go!” Today, Rocherolle cites three justifications for using Twitter as a corporate tool:
1) for some users there is no such thing as TMI,
2) Twitter is offsite, so it won’t go down when his servers do, and
3) users can message him and his team directly.
Hmm .. it may be a bit of a stretch to extrapolate from use at the three or four start-ups cited to "going corporate".
Also, I don’t know what TMI means so I can’t comment on #1, I agree with #2 and given the challenges in most organizations regarding time, concentration and the purposes I associate with Twitter (and the near-ubiquitous presence of Blackberry’s for sending too many messages already), I am not too sure #3 is all that important to many managers and teams.
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…
A delicious discovery whilst browsing this morning …
From Evelyn Rodriguez’ bio on her blog Crossroads Dispatches:
If one could honestly assess the root cause of many business problems - it’d be these intimately related concepts: being open is dangerous and being guided by the echoing fear in our heads is safe.
- Evelyn Rodriguez
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I’ve just discovered, through the never-ending synchronicity blogging can afford, the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam Media Research Centre).
The Institute of Network Cultures (INC), set up in June 2004, caters to research, meetings and (online) initiatives in the area of Internet and new media. The INC functions as a framework within which a variety of studies, publications and meetings can be realised.
As indicated by its name, the INC is also active in setting up and maintaining networks. Not only does it facilitate, but also initiate and produce its projects.
Its goal is to create an open organisational form with a strong focus on content, within which ideas (emanating from both individuals and institutions) can be given an institutional context at an early stage.
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.. in this case anyway.
Ever since I first ran across Mike Golby’s blog Y Blog Za, I have been mesmerized. So much so that I only visit it a couple of times a month, because what he puts up is so good that it is debilitating to me. I get overwhelmed, and almost always sad. Thank goodness Mike carries so much sad=ness for me .. for all of us, I guess.
I marvel at how he joins loosely his small pieces, and creates thought collages, ideas pastiche, and reminds us always (usually through song lyrics) of how frail and unshakeably human we are while pretending to be more than human (or is it less than human ?)
I know that I often think that I could do what he does … after all, I often have many similar thoughts, and flashes of similar insight when I hear some lyrics, or read something engrossing, and I even once thought "hmmm .. if I could only learn enough html. But nah … he’s got a gift, one that involves stitching ideas, words, pictures and meaning into nuggets of core human truth.
Here he is (below) on blogging, leaning ever so slightly on another great heart and mind, Tom Matrullo and the ongoing work of Geert Lovink (Dark Fiber I, II, and soon III).
I offer these excerpts and links as a counterpoint to the post directly below.
Without information technology and the globe-spanning infrastructure of hyperlinks, there would be only one way I would ever become acquainted with this brilliant heart and mind .. and that if he wrote a book, or some articles, and I happened probably by coincidence to stumble upon said book or articles.
In this case, technology giveth … thank you, Mike.
Geert (Lovink) tosses off explanations for the energy of blogging with ease. And balances the gain with the loss; the individual, the mass, the massified individual, the solipsistic mass.
Can we talk of a "fear of media freedom"? It is too easy to say that there is freedom of speech and that blogs materialize this right. The aim of radical freedom, one could argue, is to create autonomy and overcome the dominance of media corporations and state control and to no longer be bothered by "their" channels. Most blogs show an opposite tendency. The obsession with news factoids borders to the extreme. Instead of selective appropriation, there is over-identification and straight-out addiction, in particular to the speed of real-time reporting.
………………………………..
Blogging is wind perforated by arid air. Some day it could be more. It could be poker. It could be real estate. It could count.
Tom Matrullo | Build Your Ruin
…entropy gradient reversals are entirely feasible
I was thinkin’ ’bout Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep from crying | When she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the line | I’m wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be | I been looking for her even clear through Tennessee
If it doesn’t count, Tom, it does matter and it is more… to some.
I tired of information cascades a long while back and couldn’t face poker, real estate, or New Jersey. For too many — and we’re part of it whether we like it or not — life is an endless mishmash of bucks and babble, cash and codswallop. Paying lip service to unknown gods, failing to see that life is all they have, and gorging themselves on facsimiles of that which is out there to appreciate within, most are emotionally obese, mentally flatulent, and / or psychologically malnourished.
They regurgitate rather than cogitate. Many of us do it some of the time and most do it all of the time. We see it in ourselves and in those about us. Filling others precludes us nourishing ourselves.
These vile habits reflect on the blogs, but why shouldn’t or wouldn’t they? Happily, if ignored, they appear to dissipate like clouds and the Web continues to soak in the sun of its endless summer. Unhappily, appearances are deceptive. I’ve a feeling that, much like the neocon world order of George W. Bush, factoid addiction has insinuated itself so deeply into the fabric of the Web it is now a part of its structure.
Just as Bush is winning his war while appearing to lose it, we bloggers who believe "things might have been different" are in danger of drowning in the "white noise" of those obsessed with the mundane, indifferent, and banal. Cash, codswallop, and sacred cows rule the yard.
But so what? After five years, I’m still putting up stuff on the Web. Why? I guess it’s a question of choice. David once observed that the hyperlink forms the geography of the Web. I hold to that and link only to those making sense to me; brooking no babble and doing to bovine buddhas whatever I wish. These pursuits might not count, but they do matter. To me, anyway.
Let’s just see how it goes…
But I digress: Let us return to the information cascade:
What does today’s media system mean for the notion of an informed public cherished by democratic theory? Quite literally, it means that virtually everything the average person sees or hears outside of her own personal communications, is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the country’s share price.
More insidiously, this small group of elites determine (sic) what ordinary people do not see or hear. In-depth coverage of anything, let alone the problems real people face day to day, is as scarce as sex, violence, and voyeurism are pervasive.
Democracy Now | Bill Moyers
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We all know and understand that some people see technology as a godsend, or as a yet-emerging new route to revitalizing or creating democracy, or (finally) yielding to the paperless office and life. I have been accused of being one, an accusation with which I would disagree.
We also all know and understand what I love calling the "renunciate curmudgeons" … bah-humbuggish cynics who will adamantly state that the Internet and Web have changed nothing and will not change anything.
As with so very many things, the truth or whatever we call what comes to be our experience, is very likely to be somewhere between those two poles.
Here’s a link to a story in the Globe and Mail reporting on
The source for this is Watts Wacker’s FirstMatter, a future-oriented consultancy.
Via Bill Ives of the FastForward blog ..
As an introduction to his item, let me add that I used to work for one of Watson Wyatt’s main competitors, and have a number of friends and colleagues from that past career … most of whom thought I was nuts when back in 2003 and 2004 I kept saying that wikis, blogs and what we are coming to know as "social media" would eventually penetrate organizations, and lead to a real need to understand the processes and dynamics attached thereto (responses to which I call eOD).
Big Consulting Firms Turning to Social Media (aka) Enterprise 2.0?
by Bill IvesHere is a post from Gautum Ghash on how the consulting firm, Watson Wyatt is starting a social media practice. He refers to an article by Michael Rudnick, national intranet and portal leader, Watson Wyatt. Published in Strategic HR Review, Volume 6, Issue 2. Rudnick provides some success factors for employers to succeed in social media that all seem reasonable but not novel. Basically he says that you need to embrace the new wave that he labels social media. It is what others call web 2.0 and/or enterprise 2.0 as Michael discusses user generated content as the core. He writes that you should not try to control it but rather make collaboration easy. There is more.
The article reports that “Watson Wyatt’s research found that during the last three years there’s been a 400% increase in social media behavior.” This does seem plausible but I wonder how they measure it? The article also reports, “According to research by Watson Wyatt, nearly 50% of the employee population will soon prefer – and expect – collaborative and interactive methods of communication with their employers.” In other words they will likely want Enterprise 2.0.
The article is for paid subscribers but Gautum provides a summery at, Watson Wyatt evangelises blogging and social media. He wonders how long before the other large consulting firms get into the act. Perhaps some have already but the post by Jim McGee on this blog, Can Enterprise 2.0 evolve from Enterprise1.0?, indicates that some are still looking to provide more traditional and more expensive solutions.
Tags: FastForward, Bill Ives, Enterprise 2.0, Watson Wyatt, consulting prescriptions, eOD, wirearchy
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On ZDNet …
HD-DVD copy protection in tatters by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes reports on the hacks being carried out on HD-DVDs that enable them to be copied, uploaded and downloaded.
If this continues, and it’s highly likely it will, I imagine this can only cement the HD-DVD format into place for many people who download movies and television shows.
Either way, a third of all currently available HD-DVD titles have had their title keys compromised and HD-DVD movies are appearing on torrents daily in .evo format ready for playback at full 1080p resolution using software players such as PowerDVD. Some of the movies currently available include Serenity, Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick, and Batman Begins. All the extras on these discs remain intact, such as subtitles and special features.
The only throttle I see on people downloading these files is size - at between 20 and 25GB a go, they represent a massive download commitment for movies already available in DVD format.
Now all is not lost for the recording studios. AACS allows them to take a number of steps.
[Snip ...]
Like it or not, the truth is that AACS is now well and truly broken, and before it has really become mainstream. Tweaks to AACS are likely to hinder the hackers, but I can’t seriously see anything stopping them.
Tags: HD-DVD, Blu-ray, Home entertainment, IPTV
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With that imprecise play on Bush’s words "You’re either with us or agin’ us", this letter from an American citizen to their Congressional representative says it all.
The Democrats have their opportunity (lordy, have they not had more than enough ?) to stand up and draw a big, bold, line in the sand …. not a maybe-line, not the idea of a line, not a line cast by a projector .. but a real, final, line in the sand for the people whom they (and all politicians) were elected to serve, the people the pay their salaries and pensions, the people in "of the people, for the people and by the people".
January 13, 2007
This is copy of a letter sent to Rep. Peter Welch:
Checks and balances demand you act. The Constitution is being made invalid by this executive. You’re either for it or him.
If you protect him and do not impeach, as he leaves office in ‘09 you will have gone down before him in ‘08, so I vow. So be a hero and a leader and break from the leadership by insisting on impeachment hearings. The state of Vermont will hail your adherence to the principle of the rule of law that no man is above justice, and our support will overcome any flack you will get from your party. You will never fear from public disapprobation, the only thing you need fear is if you do not act.
For the sake of the world, we need to get this thing on its way.
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A fascinating little story about how events in meatspace can get addressed and worked through with the help of hyperlinks, blogs and virtual do-gooder energy.
Via the blog of Douglas Rushkoff, who ran across the story on Streetsblog (a site dedicated to easing traffic, making more room for pedestrians and cyclists, and other bottom-up street-related activism).
Can the Internet ever be controlled as governments might wish it to be ?
Blogging grows in China, despite obstacles.
From Discourse.net
Posters are reminded of this blog’s comment policy:
Participants in the comments are kindly requested to be civil, and at least vaguely on-topic.
I will delete (or disemvowel) comments that are duplicative, commercial, needlessly foul or mean or otherwise inappropriately offensive.
My decisions are final. I’m happy to discuss them by email.
I’ll amend this policy as I gain experience.
In the long run, it remains to be seen if comments is a workable commons or not.
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How long will the more traditional, security-focused IT departments keep avoiding some of the key issues ?
One of the key points buried in the article is that Google has an army of people paying attention to security issues, and that it may be a red herring, or a crutch for IT departments who do not want to lose (or change the shape of) their influence.
Via The Economist …
The service, part of a bundle called “Google Apps for Your Domain” that also includes instant messaging (IM) and a web-based calendar, has not even been officially launched yet. It began running in a test (or “beta”) form in August. But Dave Girouard, the boss of Google’s small but growing enterprise division, says that “tens of thousands” of organisations have already signed up to use Google’s web-based tools in place of traditional in-house e-mail systems and other software.
Using Google’s services has several advantages for companies. Most employees already know how to use web-based software, and thus do not need training. They can access the services through any web browser, regardless of what kind of computer (or telephone) they use. Like the consumer service, the corporate product is free. (Mr Sannier pays for support—“less than $10,000”—but most organisations do not.) And in-house IT staff need do absolutely nothing, since the data and software reside on Google’s server computers.
For Mr Sannier, however, a bigger reason than money for switching from traditional software to web-based alternatives has to do with the pace and trajectory of technological change. Using the new Google service, for instance, students can share calendars, which they could not easily do before. Soon Google will integrate its online word processor and spreadsheet software into the service, so that students and teachers can share coursework. Eventually, Google may add blogs and wikis—it has bought firms with these technologies.
Mr Sannier says it is “absolutely inconceivable” that he and his staff could roll out improvements at this speed in the traditional way—by buying software and installing it on the university’s own computers.
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… that changes (or will change) the game.
This new development from Apple highlights a very important evolutionary step .. the integration of phone communications, music and video, and the basic computing capability most people need and use, all tied together with great usability and great industrial design.
Somy’s probably saying something like "coulda, woulda, shoulda" with respect to the possibilities for a next version (or perhaps more accurately a differently-purposed version) of the Portable Playstation (Bluetooth-enabled, for example, to have made it into a wireless phone)
I love it. I have been a diehard non-user of cell phones. That will change as soon as I can get hold of one of these. I have to assume that Apple will do the right thing and be intelligent about openness to a range of service providers ?
Via Salon …
The cause of Apple’s identity swap is a palm-size wonder called the iPhone. It’s like no other phone you’ve ever seen. Mostly, it’s just a flat screen. Everything you do with it is driven by software, through a remarkable pointing device — your fingers. According to Jobs, the iPhone can do all that a phone can do, plus all that an iPod can do, and apparently very nearly all that a Mac can do, too.
(snip)
It features a vertical screen that morphs into a horizontal one. When you flip the phone sideways, it plays your movies, TV shows and photos on a very wide, sharp 3.5-inch screen. Much of the rest of your business is done vertically, but because the phone runs a version of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop operating system, you can do many things in parallel. In his demo, Jobs flipped the phone in a natural, intuitive manner, while performing multiple tasks at once. He’d start off playing music or a video, then answer a phone call, then switch to the Web browser to look something up, then scan through his pictures, then send a photo via e-mail to the person he was talking to. (Probably not a good idea to do all this while driving.)
(second snip)
There are probably only a few of us who really need to have a cellphone, an iPod, a Web browser, a text chat system, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi all in one device wherever we go — maybe if you’re an E.R. doctor or a FEMA official. (Maybe not a FEMA official.) For most of us, all this will be as necessary as a Hummer in Riverside. The real point is how the iPhone looks and what it says about the people who own it. And it looks marvelous. It’s is 4.5 inches high, 2.5 inches wide, and less than half an inch thick. From the back it resembles an iPod, but in front the iPhone is like the winner of a design contest to make the iPod even flashier — all blackened glass framed by a thin strand of silver.
Tags: Apple, iPhone, integration, usability, interoperability
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… or is it "There’s a sucker born every minute" ?
I get so confused.
Check out Keith Olbermann’s commentary about tonight’s Bush’s Bragging Rights Broadcast on CrooksandLiars.com
Olbermann: A Look Backward at the Commander’s Credibility
Keith: We would be greeted as liberators, with flowers. As they stood up – we would stand down, we would stay the course, we were never ’stay the course’, The enemy was al Qaeda, was foreigners, terrorists, Baathists. The war would pay for itself, it would cost 1-point-7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion dollars.
And after all of that, today it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Republicans, Democrats, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.
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Via the UK’s Guardian …
I remain gobsmacked ( a term I learned whilst living in the UK) that more people do not see that killing more and more Muslims is not the way to address the serious issue of global terrorism.
I won’t get into the issue of accountability for the crime of illegal invasion, etc.
So now we know what the much-vaunted new Bush strategy for Iraq amounts to: throw more gasoline on the fire. It’s conceivable that Bush is, in fact, planning an eventual withdrawal, but hoping that one last push will give him something he can call victory as a finale.
Psychologists spot similar behaviour in compulsive gamblers who, when in trouble, increase their bets, hoping for a win that will allow them to leave the table with dignity. They have a word for such thinking: delusional.
And where do we Britons fit into this downward slide from purgatory into hell? Tony Blair is still on the old script. In an essay in the current edition of Foreign Affairs, he says we are not winning the war on terror "because we are not being bold enough … in fighting for the values we believe in". Elsewhere, though, optimists see signs that we are gradually inching away from the calamity: they note Gordon Brown, our presumptive next prime minister, condemning the execution of Saddam Hussein as "deplorable." Perhaps that was a pointer to better things to come.
But there is something lame about the current convention which allows our politicians to criticise discrete aspects of this war - the 2003 disbandment of the Iraqi army, the reconstruction effort, the conduct and filming of Saddam’s death (though not the punishment itself) - while requiring them to stay silent on the crime of the invasion itself.
I know, I know, what else could Brown say, given that he voted for the war and sat next to Blair through it all rather than resigning in protest?
But once he’s in No 10 he will have to do better than stating the obvious about the barbarism of life in today’s Baghdad. He will have to make a clean break from this most terrible chapter in British and American foreign policy and set out a new, radical strategy for the war against jihadism, one that understands that you don’t catch the terrorist fish by machine-gunning them from the sky, but by draining the sea of grievance in which they swim. That work will be long and slow and require enormous political brainpower. And it is the polar opposite of everything George Bush stands for
UPDATE:
via the Globe and Mail:
IBM launches e-commerce push in virtual world
Associated PressSAN FRANCISCO — IBM Corp. didn’t throw a lavish casino party or set up an over-the-top booth to mark its return to the International Consumer Electronics Show for the first time in a decade.
Rather, the company reserved its most ambitious consumer initiative for the virtual world.
On Monday, IBM announced plans to build virtual stores for Sears Holdings Corp. and Circuit City Stores Inc. in the popular online world “Second Life.”
The partnerships could help IBM expand its consulting services to corporate clients interested in the growing number of people who belong to immersive online environments, also called the “3-D Internet.”
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It’s been a while since I stopped by Terry Heaton’s blog (and I found that he had moved).
At his new place, I found him examining the probable evolution of the notion of social networks in a thoughtful manner, which had been my experience in the past when reading what he had to say.
As some of you may know, I have written fairly regularly on the different ways of digital natives and homo zappiens.
The thing about social networks
[Snip ...]
Steve Rubel gets it wrong when he suggests that this statistic shows teens aren’t “being social.” They’re being very social; they just don’t want outsiders shoving messages — or worse — in their faces (there’s a name for that, and it’s called e-mail). Parents may lament this, but if parents aren’t allowed in, it says volumes more about the parents than it does the teens.
Those of us who work in media must burn into our minds the message from the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, “The Web is more a social creation than a technical one.” I’ve learned this not only by paying attention but also by experience, and instead of looking for the bogeyman all the time, we’d do well to study what’s really taking place behind the walls of the millions of these closed networks of teens. Far from the evil we suspect, life is the thing about social networks — young people supporting each other, sharing their lives with each other, and growing together.
This is textbook postmodernism: people crafting their own “tribes” and turning to each other instead of trusting institutions. And if they do this as teens and young adults, those habits will become lifetime habits, and what does that say about our culture?
Volumes, methinks.
Tags: Terry Heaton, Marc Prensky, Wim Veen, digital natives, homo zappiens, wirearchy
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We humans are carrying on as if we are only half-baked, so to speak.
We seem to be confronting more and more frequently a long and growing list of more-rather-than-less intractable problems .. economic, environmental, political, social.
I noticed this phenomenon last year when I spent several weeks in Istanbul.
It was strikingly obvious whilst walking about that there was a significantly larger proportion of young people (let’s say approximately under 30) walking around in Istanbul (and elsewhere in Turkey as well).
As always, some will say that everything about the Intertubes’ potential is just so much more marketing fodder, and others will argue eagerly for the changes we just know are there somewhere.
Anyway, Shel Israel of Naked Conversations fame is working on a new book called Global Neighborhoods. What caught my eye immediately was the tag line under the title …
"How Social Media are moving power from institutions to people"
… because this statement is essentially the same as the suggested revision recently offered to me by J. Alva Scruggs when I asked him his opinion about how to improve the piece whilst updating the article I wrote several years ago (May 2002 is a long time ago .. much water under many bridges) titled From Hierarchy To Wirearchy for The Futurist, the magazine of the World Future Society (WFS). In fact, the advice verbatim from J. Alva was:
"I would recommend changing the summary to put more of an emphasis on devolution of power — a liberalizing of the workplace. The rest of the piece supports that and it would have more grab."
I think my WFS article’s summary is more like an academic paper’s abstract .. must correct that:
SUMMARY: As the Internet has moved through the dot.com boom and bust, and integrated software encases most organizational activities, the dynamics of hierarchy have begun to morph into a new dynamic called wirearchy. Wirearchy is a dynamic flow of power and authority, based on information, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected technology and people.
Here’s an excerpt from Shel’s work … people work best and do things with people they trust, and the Internet is helping people connect, get to know each other and develop trust .. just like in a neighborhood.
Brings to mind another conversation 2 or 3 years ago about something very similar with Stuart Henshall (tho’ we were using the metaphor of a pond and its ecosystem). Memory serves well … it was way back in February 2004 and afterwards Stuart titled a blog post "Down By The Blog Pond".
UPDATE: I disagree with Shel’s last sentence in the second paragraph of his Overview … huge communities are not forming at all the social media sites he mentioned. Yes, large numbers of accounts and people are massing at those sites, and I think that there are many dynamic and often pliable groups forming within the large masses (as indeed he clarifies shortly after making the statement), but I am pretty sure that there are actually very very few huge, or even large, communities that have formed on the Web.
Saying that large numbers of registration and activity on such sites constitute huge communities is like saying New York or San Francisco or London is a huge community. Such cities also agglomerate large numbers of people and accommodate much human activity, but it’s a bit of a stretch to call any of those cities a community.
Global Neighborhoods: Overview 3.0
–How Social Media are moving power from institutions to people
Human nature has remained pretty much the same since we were hanging out in caves. What keeps changing are the tools we use to explore and communicate. It has been a long, strange trip from the ox cart to the rocket ship, but in fact, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Now. internet technology is allowing people in modern and developing nations to form new neighborhoods, defined not by physical boundaries, but by common interests. Huge communities are forming at MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Second Life, Flickr, FaceBook, Skype, and in the blogosphere.
These online communities, in themselves, are as overwhelming, complex and perhaps as dangerous as any large city. If it were tangible, YouTube would have five time more daily visitors than Sao Paolo, the world’s largest. But visitors don’t dwell in chaos withy the 100 million other visitors. Instead they find and are discovered by people with whom they share common interests. In fact, inside YouTube, you’ll find lovers of unknown rock groups. They never notice that elsewhere in the community may be film clips intended to recruit young terrorists.
Essential to the overwhelming success of these online communities is that people find neighborhoods that appeal to them and ignore the ones that don’t—just like in the tangible world. They share spaces in each community with others who share their passion for anything from bird watching to bomb making. These are neighborhoods where geography is becoming irrelevant.
It is very much like in the real world, where the neighborhood on one side of the street is very different than one across the other. Most people are comfortable in their own neighborhoods, because they know the rules, culture and language local jargon and innuendos. We know the best shortcuts and what areas to avoid. When we need a recommendation, we ask a neighbor. We trust local experts.
This behavior is now moving to the internet, where people do not have to be physically present to live in a community, or for that matter, be recognized as a leader in it. Each of us can now live in several neighborhoods, simultaneously, where our neighbors are people from anywhere, with whom we share that particular interest.
These are global neighborhoods. They may not be tangible, but they are far from virtual.
Real people separated by miles, oceans and political borders are connecting with others of like mind. They are conducting a great deal of business, making decisions based on the influence of peers rather than marketing campaigns. In a few cases, friendships are being formed between people whose governments are waging hostilities. Even the profound barrier of diverse language is being lowered by the universal communications abilities of music and pictures.
Tags: Shel Israel, Global Neighborhoods, blogging, connections, trust, credibility, wirearchy
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… lifted from Joe Bageant’s recent Dispatch from the Chinese Landfill … (thanks to Bruce at The River for the pointage)
Call it consumer conditioned numbness, which it is. But it is safe to say most Americans give not a happy damn about the rest of humanity, starving infants, the homeless and whatnot, so long as the unhygienic swarms stay the hell out of our yards and don’t bring up that tired commie stuff about our lifestyle being based upon armed global theft and sweatshop misery. In that way, we all test positive for the Devil’s hickey.
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Brilliant sy