BigMother.dk

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.

Sometimes it’s interesting to meet different perspectives - sometimes it’s not.

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.

Check out this very nice movie explaining the powerful and important idea from McDonough and Braungart presented in their must read book Cradle To Cradle from 2002. McDonough and Braungart urge us to implement the cyclic processes of growth and decay so basic to nature in industrial production. In nature, the concept of ‘waste’ is non-existent and every ‘product’ serves as nutrition for growth. An idea that is so contrary to capitalist industry, but probably the only viable long-term perspective for us.

Since Banksy is so interesting, funny and darn good, because he’s often commenting on surveillance in a quite funny way, AND giving away his pictures for free at the site, there’s simply no reason why I shouldn’t let him decor BigMother. So I will (for a while least).

Well, it seems impossible to offer the Apple iPhone any justice with a follow up post on BigMother. I don’t even want to include a photo of this ‘instant icon’. But since I did join the chorus of hopeful yet semi-mocking (too good to be true) bloggers last year I probably need to offer a brief comment. And it’s this:

If Apple delivers most of what they are promising without burning hardware, serial crashing, bad coverage or any other illness from the mobile technology family, they might very well be entering a new state as a company (only treatened by their own arrogance and insensitivity to the new rules of the web - see here). Beating every imaginative speculation on it’s features and design that have been flooding the web the last couple of years AND anchoring all the beauty, power and usability with ‘product-ability’ is the sign of true innovation power. I would seriously be feeling like an ass if I were the head of R&D in Motorola, Nokia or SonyEricsson.

I’m waiting impatiently and hope that European carriers can hit a meaningful deal with Apple fast. I can hardly think of a price that would keep me from getting one (unless I find out it’s made from uranium, mined with drills of blood diamonds carried by children slaves in mines owned weapon dealers by and powered by electricity created from burning only endangered trees from botanical gardens).

Watch the demo and join the pathetic crowd of powerless disciple.

Update: The ethical barometer is only visible when at the ‘mother page’ (not the page of this post).

You probably already noticed the small red counter thingy at right. It’s an Actics plugin. It’s a small widget to integrate into your preferred web-presence, be it your blog, website or community profile page, to get feedback from your proxies on your success in honoring your own ethical ideals. Press it and tell me what you think of my ability to live my values. Think of it as a way to realize (ethical) New Years resolutions with a little help from your friends. Or as a way for companies to turn their ethics into action and – less idealistically - values into value creation together with customers, partners and suppliers.

We’re testing how bloggers, NGO’s and corporate users find the plugin relevant to achieve their respective objectives (personal realization, public perception management etc.). So expect to see it on more progressive sites in the coming months.

Play around with the plugin and tell me what you think. Comments, mail and telex appreciated. What you miss, what you don’t get, persons/companies/NGO’s you know that would be interested, bugs found (yes, you’ll sometimes have to reload it in Safari, and close it with ‘apple’ + ‘w’ in Firefox on mac) and all the other relevant feedback. Meanwhile we’ll continue to work on usability and communication on the plugin workshop (to be actics.com) for you to get your own free plugin soon.