October 2009: Media Shift Tipping Point?

Music has become one of the important indicators of cultural shift – In the last week I’ve come across several events which, whilst interesting separately, coincidentally suggests a fundamental shift is underway in media.

October 13^th Rihanna first tweet announces album release date

October 25^th 2009 U2 stream a live concert on Youtube

October 30^th Britney Spears announces new video via twitter

October 30^th The Foo Fighters stream a live performance on Facebook with chat and twitter

Much music activity is still of the traditional create and consume push model albeit mediated in various ways these days. The Foo fighters stream was particularly interesting as it presented an “intimate” and interactive studio based setting to millions of people who could interact via facebook and twitter with each other and to a limited extend with the band as well.

The next step as I see it is a more dynamic “mash” of media – performing out to a live audience and the Net with increasing opportunities to pull in from the audience and the Net.

I’m imagining how artists could use Augmented reality to overlay new dimensions to their performances – While performing in the studio The Foos could overlay a concert venue or other action scenes – indeed they could augment a performance anywhere. I’m imagining how artists could augment other performers and performances in their shows for example when doing a cover track.

With audience smart camera phones I’m imagining how you could view a performance from various points of view.

I’m wondering whether, like in original Shakespeare plays, members of the audience could say “I can do that part better”, get up on the “stage” and play the part. Consider Youtube performances and their video responses for example Steve Vai Tender Surrender and some of the amazing responses.

Welcome To The 21st Century: Business – Go Softly

Technology, culture and society are intricately connected and in the 20^th century these relationships constructed a period of cheap, disposable, large scale mass production and consumption. The early business:cultural construct is symbolised by the 1908 Ford Model T car, its production methods and the famous phrase “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black”.  Business:culture refined this industrial production:consumption model over the century to what might be regarded as peek saturation in the early noughties and culminating in serious environmental, resource and social pressures and parodied in the Little Britain “computer says no” comedy sketches. For 20^th century business:culture there is a “line on the horizon” – an event horizon of environmental and social stress from which there may be no escape.

Through the 20^th century business:culture organised itself in the image of its creations and industrial production processes: hard, machine efficient, cheap (costs driven) and disposable (short term) often resulting in effective but dehumanised, rationalist, machine-like, fixed, tightly integrated, command and control organisations on iterative cycles of ever diminishing returns. Perceiving the spirit in the machine as “evil” inefficiency 20^th century business:culture exorcised spirits in the machine with a litany of pseudo-scientific, “rationalist” management techniques that externalises people’s motivation resulting in lifeless zombie organisations with forms of organisational learned helplessness  . Organisations became increasingly efficient, industrial and machine like – driving out variation through ever tighter process and quality control systems. “Machine organisations” produce standardised products as efficiently as possible on a large scale and like machines they are dedicated to purpose. “Machine organisations” like machines are dedicated to purpose and designed for equilibrium around a purpose and direction – process and quality systems work as buffers providing negative feedback loops to maintain equilibrium, direction and purpose.

20^th century business:culture was highly effective.

What changed?

The environment changed.

Communications technologies accelerated cultural change – from the Model T and car travel in the early 20^th century through air travel, radio, TV, telephones through to the Internet and to the web 2.0 revolution. 20^th century business:culture connected into these communications revolutions to spin production:consumption at an ever increasing speed – centrifugal forces have started to stress and separate many organisations as they try to meet the problem of producing greater diversity at faster speeds.

The 21^st century environment is becoming faster, more diverse and complex – people want greater choice, customisation and speed. 20^th century “Machine organisation” is not suited to fast, flexible and complex responses and cannot thrive in an environment of speed, choice and customisation. “Machine organisation” cannot easily cope with complex environments that change ever faster.

While technology, culture and social changes have stressed 20th century “machine organisation” they have at the same time provided the models and tools that can save them.  Just as 20^th century organisations used tools and techniques from their environments to create environmentally adapted “machine organisations” then 21^st century organisations need to use the tools and techniques of their environments to create environmentally adapted systems.

21^st century culture:technology is information-communications rich, symbolised by the Internet and most potently by web 2.0 and the emerging real world, real time, exponential change ideas of web squared. This culture:technology is distributed, decentralised, networked, interactive and collaborative. Organisations operating within information-communications rich environments need become environmentally adapted and become information-communications rich – they need to use web 2.0 type tools and ideas to become loosely coupled, distributed, decentralised, networked, interactive and collaborative. I would describe these organisations as live “organic organisations” – connected to; interactive with, and part of their environment. Their boundaries are soft and “porous”, the separations between employees, customers and competitors are increasingly blurred.  Rather than exorcising human spirit “organic organisations” call back life and spirit by recognising people rather than suppliers, customers and “human resources”.

The ultimate organic organisation we know of is the human brain. Constructed from small and simple parts, intelligence and consciousness emerge from its complex and highly networked organisation. Not only should organisations allow people to use their brains they should also consider organising themselves like brains. A major feature of brains are their plasticity – the ability to re-organise. Plasticity allows the brain to change, learn and be resilient and “according to the theory of neuroplasticity, thinking, learning, and acting actually change both the brain’s physical structure (anatomy) and functional organization (physiology) from top to bottom.”  The idea is that through the exercise of rich interconnections an organisation learns, changes and adapts to its environment by networked feedback from itself and its environment.

“Organic organisations” are complex, variable and non-deterministic – this gives them the agility to cope with a similarly complex, variable and non-deterministic environment but at the same time this makes them so different to the “machine organisations”  we have grown up with and within that the change needed is just too scary. However, change is a journey and not a destination and the first step on the journey from “machine organisation” to “organic organisation” starts with the brain – think soft and richly networked.

Welcome the 21st Century: Think Softly

Life is becoming increasingly faster and more complex – the scale, scope and inter-connectedness of things in unprecedented Although IT hardware and software provide both causes and solutions the most important factor to life in the 21^st century is within ourselves –  “wetware” or the way we think.

I’ve identified 2 “dimensions” of thinking which I think are important, one dimension is Hard Vs Soft thinking while the other dimension is Reductionist Vs Holistic thinking.

Hard thinking

You could almost call this concrete thinking – it’s a bounded, engineering style characterised by the application of existing definable, quantifiable, specific concepts and processes. In a nutshell it is thinking “inside the box” and applying known rules and procedures.

Soft Thinking

You could almost call this abstract thinking – it’s an unbounded, integrative and creative style characterised by insight and judgement. In a nutshell it’s “Wicked” thinking “outside the box”.

Reductionist thinking

This is characterised the use of analysis to simplify, predict and control. It’s a mechanistic approach and application of rules and procedures. In a nutshell it is thinking about the details.

Holistic thinking

This is characterised by the use of intuition and interpretation to see patterns, connections and relationships. In a nutshell in is thinking about the big picture.

People are naturally more comfortable with different styles of thinking and can apply different styles or mix of styles in different contexts. Different contexts and problems are better suited to different styles of thinking – use the right one and things can fit into place – use the wrong one and things seem like hard going and can result in stress, anxiety and dysfunction at both personal and organisational level.

The current UK MPs expenses news could be used to illustrate styles of thinking. Administration of expenses claims should have used hard reductionist thinking – analysis and application of procedures without creativity. The MPs in question seemed to be applying soft reductionist thinking – creative “accounting” and application of procedures to claim they did nothing wrong and it was all within the rules. It’s not easy to find hard holistic thinking but you could argue that those like Ed Milliband who argue parliamentary reform in terms of changing procedures are using hard holistic thinking. Those who argue for more radical political changes from proportional representation through to Government 2.0 ideas in the Us Now film would seem to be thinking in a soft holistic way.

As events, organisations and individuals become ever more interconnected (networked) then hard, reductionist ways of thinking become increasingly out of tune, inappropriate, unable to cope and even dysfunctional and damaging. Most often hard reductionist thinking just doesn’t see the rich bigger picture, opportunities and emergent properties of new systems until they are run over by them or left stranded.

Soft thinking is essential to cope with life in the 21^st century with its increasingly Unthinkable , interconnected, fast, complex, chaotic, emergent, and unpredictable behaviour.

Soft thinking is essential to thrive in the 21^st century – soft reductionist thinking is essential for innovation (to find the application of existing things in new ways) and soft holistic thinking is essential for invention (to create entirely new things).

Later in this series I hope to explore “soft” in education, technology and business.

Welcome To The 21st Century: The Beginning

The noughties are a new decade, century and millennium – the changes happening with technology and their impact on identity, culture and society really are this momentous.

One way to see these changes is with a straight historical contrast and you can see my rough work on twitter here.

The 20^th century can be seen as the peek of traditional ways of doing things that really do stretch back to the dawn of humanity – familiar things extrapolated to the extreme with mechanisation and automation and with extreme consequences to the environment we have now come to understand. I covered much of this in 20th Century Industrial Processes: Culture, Identity and Information

I characterise the past era as one of “concrete” thinking” – thinking and activity that is rooted in and characterised by a predominance of physical objects and events. Thinking that books are literature, newspapers are journalism and CDs are music. Thinking that schools and colleges are education. Thinking that the office is the workplace.

“Concrete” thinking goes deeper though – I also describe the past era as the era of “pyramids” – the design and construction of hierarchical, elitist and stable structures – the standard organisational model often manifest and symbolised by top floor executive offices.

I characterise the 20^th century as an era of super large scale manufactured production and personal consumption – the extreme end of the application of tools from the stone axe to the modern production line.

I characterise the 20^th century as an era of mediation, privacy, secrecy and obfuscation – a consequence of the elitist pyramid model to maintain stability and equilibrium and a Marxian interpretation of culture.

Technology developments are for the first time I think providing the opportunity to transcend traditional “concrete” ways of thinking and acting – my main focus is on Information technology but radical developments are taking place in all the sciences, leading new applications of technology and “unthinkable” effects and opportunities for humanity, culture identity and society.

I characterise the 21^st century as an era of “networks”, indeed the internet symbolises and facilitates “network thinking”. It’s an era of flat, integrated, dynamic, and emergent structures. The 21^st century is already and will be increasingly fast, complex, chaotic, uncertain and “organic”.

The 21^st century will be increasingly open, public and participatory – it will be an era of personal production where large organisations may consume the output of individuals but there will be increasing disintermediation and scope with individuals transacting directly.

In a nutshell I see the 21^st century as an era of software.

This blog is intended as the basis of a series exploring associated ideas, technology, cultural, educational themes etc.

Please add your comments.