BigMother.dk

Yet another story about how happy Danes have become with surveillance. It’s the second story about ‘the tendency’ in few months in DK. I’ve been called by two different journalists within 12 hours for a comment (both of which I transferred to my good friend Anders who actually appears in the article). Now suddenly everybody agrees that surveillance is good and creates comfort and security. If we disregard the journalist urge simply to say SOMETHING different (I guess that’s why my BigMother perspective is popular in the Danish media) and often make up the ‘news’ themselves (as it might be in this case), I wish to use the chance to rehearse one basic observation that sparked BigMother. NOT that surveillance is good per se. But how most public debate is swamped cliché inertia. Just as the Big Brother notion have had disproportionate cultural power by offering a handy and shared image of the consequences of surveillance gone bad (actually: coupled with fascism), don’t be surprised is everybody starts saying that surveillance is for the common good, heightened general ethics, greater awareness of others or what have you. Bottom line: don’t trust you visceral reactions to ‘controversial’ issues. Chances are that they depend on a single experience you have come to generalize or simply that your opinion is THE opinion in your segment. It’s quite banal; but just realize it next time you discuss politics

I’ve been assisting an exiting Danish biotech company called Hypo-Safe for some time and have come out as freelance consultant under the Bigmother moniker. I support Hypo-Safe in several ways, from R&D design, press contact and communication and innovation potentials reports and other companies with challenges at the intersection of research, technology and business are welcome as to contact me.

I’m still full time at Actics, so my Bigmother Consulting venture is a spare time project.

I’d wished to put some LastFM stuff on Bigmother for some time to flash all the überhip music I listen to all the time. The result is the somewhat MySpace-ugly display at right. The reason is that LastFM hasn’t worked properly for me (no, Keith Jarrett and Bob Dylan are NOT my overall top artists) and I haven’t used it fully either. Besides, my loved Powerbook has almost died (I’m still trying to recover the music library) and left me with my wife’s old G3 incapable of wasting resources to music listening and LastFM streams. The result is highly misleading top artists and tracks, no radio and no recent tracks at all. So until I get my LastFM mojo working or find other musical bling for my blog, you’re left with the display.

But as a service, let me manually recommend the latest albums from: Battles, The Field, People Press Play, Cinematic Orchestra, Björk, Yeah yeah yeahs, Jacob Bro, Deadbeat

And as always, the coming material from WhoMadeWho and Samurai.fm

I’ve just been announced professor at Århus University, simply by giving an interview on Bigmother, Careware and cognitive enhancements for Danish Radio. A surprising change of status and occupation. Look at the fact box right.

I did notify DR on the mistake but they seem so convinced of my merits that they have kept the title.

Here’s a beautiful real life example of why the herd doesn’t need a shepard. An edifying ethical allegory on the beauty of secularized humanism. Or perhaps a political statement on socialism.

Or…

… simply, don’t mess with buffalos.

Watch the entire footage – it’s worth every 8 minutes.

A new much talked about service allows public posting of rumors (with social filtering, ‘hot lists’ and all). It’s called Truemors. But look how it’s used: Marketing for small bands, new sites or products.

Off course!

A ‘brand promise’ is a kind of rumor anyway isn’t it? And brand management the proper kind of ‘rumor control’ (think about viral marketing). To start a buzz about your brand is the dream on any viral marketer. Look how Apple manages to do make the web go into orbit with their secretive style (and how rumors backlashes when e.g. Engadget ‘reveals‘ a several months delay of the iPhone). If you can make people themselves start disseminating a positive public understanding or simply some kind of buzz of your brand, that have to be the best right?

Interesting, but so obvious Truemors probably doesn’t cause much stir. Or it might suffocate in ‘clever’ viral marketing schemes. Truemors, a rumor exchange soon to be clocked in viral campaigns or the new viral platform to supplement YouTube?

One great thing about the whole green wave is the flooding of biomimetic resources and hubs such as Greenhugger and Worldchanging to collect most of it. Here’s a talk by Ms. Biomimicry, Janine Benyus, the closest we get to a key figure for this new field, given at TED this year. Much recommended (Benyus is actually much better here than I remember her book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature).

Via Treehugger

Yesterday, two mails popped in notifying me of a couple of (quite) different articles of mine gone into print. The oldest is called ‘Agents without Agency’ and argues for a process understanding of agency (cognitively and ontologically) and the consequences for AI and robotics of such an approach (find it here here). I had great fun writing the paper together with Prof. Tom Ziemke and but I’m not sure it’s an equal blast to read. The topic was tangential to my PhD research and submitted back in 2003 when I was still a fullblood academic (in terms of self-understanding . The paper is part of the inaugural issue of the new Cognitive Semiotics journal (website underway).

The second was created recently together with Nicolai Peitersen; it’s in Danish and less abstarct. It’s titled ‘CSR 2.0′ and about the way Internet technologies and new social and economical models is reshaping Corporate Social Responsibility and how to deal with it for companies in the front line. Basically, it’s one long salespitch for Actics as any other consultancy report. Actics. It’s being published in the quarterly handbook ‘Social ansvarlighed‘ (Social responsibility) for CSR officers. I’m currently working on an extended version in English for publication later this year. Check out the Actics blog for more on this.

I caught this in the airport yesterday. Nice to know in case you misguided ever doubted this basic fact with global warming and the alienating effect of consumerism we’ve been told about.

Gore might actually save our planet a little different than he believes. The cure to global warming could be the physical presence of Gore himself. According to a new expression – ‘the Gore effect’ – by simply showing up in a new place to preach his message on global warming, temperatures drop significantly. From the Urban Dictionary:

The phenomenon that leads to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming. Hence, the Gore Effect.

- Australia, November 2006: Al Gore is visiting two weeks before summer begins. The Gore Effect strikes: “Ski resort operators gazed at the snow in amazement. Parents took children out of school and headed for the mountains. Cricketers scurried amid bullets of hail as Melburnians traded lunchtime tales of the incredible cold.” (The Age)

- New York, March 2004: “Gore chose January 15, 2004, one of the coldest days in New York City’s history, to rail against the Bush administration and global warming skeptics… Global warming, Gore told a startled audience, is causing record cold temperatures.” (NY Environment News)

If we just clone and distribute equally a lot of agitating environmentalist Gores, we need not worry about the new Air conditioner, our two day business trip to New York or promiscuous use of gadgets.