Technology with Intention: Understanding Wisdom Technologies
Technologies are simply building blocks, however the intentions of the people who create them can lead to unintentional as well as intentional biases towards supporting certain approaches and strategies. It is technology without intention that makes technology appear for so many to be more of a problem than a solution. However technologies are simply tools for human evolution or more pessimistically devolution. How we use technologies relates to the how we think about ourselves and the world around us. If we develop a way to use technology with wisdom then we can truly develop technologies that offer practical solutions to social problems and needs, while offering new opportunities for humanity to evolve and experience life not only on this planet but within the larger universe of which we are a part.
As we enter into the information age, increasingly technology has taken a cut and paste feel. We are more able to take information and reconfigure it for our needs. These trends in technological development are very important to understand, because of their potential to disrupt existing predictable economic patterns. Disruptive technologies are those which disrupt the business status quo. What has been missing has been a way to concretize and interweave these innovations into a vast network; a social tapestry that could form a cohesive whole in terms of powering an economic alternative to the prevailing socioeconomic system to create a thriving bottom up economy.
C.K. Prahalad, one of the world’s leading strategists, has a new book called The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits.
Human scale "wisdom" technologies have the potential to precipitate a shift away from larger and larger economies of scale—away from ever larger levels of national and now centralization and concentration of power. We now have the technologies, the building blocks to determine our own reality, rather than relying on those in established power structures to rule in what they claim to be our best interests. What is missing is the inspiration and the strategy from which to effectively implement these technologies at the grass roots.
Ultimately though it is up to us to organize effectively to meet the challenges of the world today. The financial analyst Robert Loest says that your worldview is like the hull of a ship in a vast sea of information. If we do not develop a process of organizing the information that flows in every greater quantities into our lives, we become overwhelmed. So an important aspect of any effective movement towards social change must involve a filtering process by which we selectively cut and paste information into a informational mosaic that suits our aspirations in life.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Sunday, July 11, 2004
A formative experience for me was the several year tour of duty at Arcosanti. This was an opportunity to participate in a unique experiment that sees itself as an alternative to the American dream centered around materialism, suburban sprawl and conspicious consumerism. While there I met many interesting people and events. One such event was the 3rd conference in the ongoing Paraodox conference series. It that took place in september of 2001.
The Paradox conferences sprang from Paolo Soleri's thesis: The Six Paradoxes of the Computer Revolution. Ron Anastasia and Michael Gosney-both involved in the west coast cybernetic culture, worked with Paolo to develop the conferences, as a way to promote Soleri's ideas about Arcology to the dot.com crowd. Soleri in his Paradox diabribes warns of the potential dilemmas of ICT to create what he calls the "Global Hermitage."
Michael has developed a "evolutionary Arcology approach" that is focused on three main components: a continuation of the Paradox series of conferences, the development of the Green Community Network and finally the creation of a prototype Arcology themed project in the Bay Area named Califia that is still in the concept state of development. The unifying umbrella for this "evolution of Solerian thought" is the Green Century Institute which will ultimately serve as not only a think tank but an "action tank" to mobilize and organize what Paul Ray refers to as cultural creatives. An ongoing monthly series the Green Century Salon is an attempt to build community in the Bay Area around the themes of sustainability creativity and critical thinking.
Ron has continued to research alternative communities such as Auroville which is located in south India and Damanhur in northern Italy. In constrast to Arcosanti both are spiritual communities and have also been able to develop significantly larger populations. Ron recently did a presentation of his experiences at a Green Century Salon that I attended a few months back. He did not sugarcoat his experiences as he mentioned the pros and cons of each place. He did seem to think that Auroville was the most advanced in terms of offering a real sustainable model for humanity.
According to Michael Gosney the themes of the conferences are:
Libby Hubbard (aka Doctress Neutopia) spent over a year working on the Paradox Program at Arcosanti. Her work has been important in developing a critical perspective of Arcosanti and Arcology which I believe is necessary for the continued evolution of Arcology into an viable alternative to existing development models. Neutopia helped to craft the writing below which is an except of a larger document that we submitted to Communities Magazine in relation to their featured topic which during that issue was education (Daniel Greenberg of Sirius Community was the guest editor). Although our submission was not accepted it was a good exercise in exploring some of the Paradoxes of not only technology and modern civilization but Arcosanti and Arcology.
The Global Hermitage is a phrase Soleri uses to express a concern about the misuse of computer technologies and the Internet. Soleri feels that as people become more attached to virtual life they are separating from real life. There is a compelling rationale for making community values and locally based culture obsolete. The lifestyles that revolve around locally based cultures tend to discourage conspicious consumption and materialism while disregarding the relentless need to increase productivity by any means necessary. The desire of many within the counterculture and the voluntary simplicity movement to move beyond conventional mainstream assumptions about success and progress and simplify their lives is very tied together with the desire towards localization and increased local autonomy as an alternative to the current corporatist model of economic social and political centralization. Within the modern reality, the idea of a lifelong commitment to community is neither sustained nor supported by the prevailing systems of the mainstream society.
The function of Paradox is not just to express the concern that people are using technology to isolate themselves rather than to build community but to actually start discussing the possibility of balancing technology with indigenous culture.
While suburbanization is presently thriving and has been a major driver in the upward propulsion of the markets over the last 20 or so years such development is rapidly reaching its apex. The public though is still oblivious to the fact that existing development practices are socially or environmentally sustainable and that radical and fundamental change is necessary. An alternative has to emerge, since the world cannot sustain the present development paradigm as espoused by the American corporate establishment.
The existing suburban regions of urban America are going to have to be redesigned and redeveloped because quite simply they are not suitable or even for that matter constructed for long-term human habitation.
Those who are able to develop the vision as well as the know-how to do construct more sustainable human habitats, rapidly and efficiently redesign these environmentally destructive and socially dysfunctional systems, will be in high demand in the coming years. As demand for more socially and environmentally responsible planning design and construction increases those emerging businesses will allow a significant amount of wealth to be shifted from existing businesses that live off of dysfunctional psycho-social interactions in the conventional economy to more effective and socially and ecologically conscious investments in the alternative community. Encouraging the creation of densely populated human habitats, where consumerism and the auto are discouraged, and where creativity, spirituality, political participation and intellectual discourse is central to reversing social, economic and environmental trends that undermine the integrity of human and natural systems.
The purpose of Paradox is to create a balance between real life and virtual reality. As post-modern civilization becomes increasingly complex, we need to discover new models to manage this complexity, keeping human beings relevant and creative within this emerging global network.
The key to understanding this concept of the Global Hermitage is the realization that the community values that previously sustained our identity within the culture of the pre-modern world, have been made obsolete. Within the modern reality, the idea of a lifelong or long term commitment to community is neither sustained nor supported by the prevailing systems of the mainstream society. It is important for us as educators and teachers of a more sustainable and holistic world view, to develop community based ways of overcoming the social dysfunction that materializes from the present hyper-consumerist system. Larry Kaplowitz for the Lost Valley Educational Center writes, "The biggest lesson we've learned over the last few years is that sustainable community must have at its foundation sustainable relationships--relationships that give us more than they take from us; that are a continual source of energy; and which support us in becoming fully ourselves ("Living Naka-ima at Lost Valley" Communities Magazine Fall 99 P.22)."
Technology although necessary to modernization and further human development, is creating structures of complexity that are distancing people from each other, while at the same time, it creates the illusion that we are closer together. We have in the process of modernization, built an architecture where we exist in isolation of each other, so it is hardly surprising that we live increasingly fragmented lives. The reality that we are inter-connected and interdependent flows from the essence of existence, however, embedded within the dysfunctional political geography of our rapidly globalizing commercial culture, is the need to increase the distance within the human to human and human to planet relationships. Not only do we need to think in terms of local community, but we have evolved into needing a planetary consciousness which goes beyond the inhuman, technologically driven society with its relentless need to increase productivity and weapons by any means necessary. Cyberspace can potentially enable us to more clearly envision and articulate the dismal architecture of the present system, while also seeking to visualize and implement the lean alternative, a grand architecture (Arcosanti is just one idea among many alternatives to the present system) that is encapsulated within the ecological/sustainable economics.
The Paradox conferences sprang from Paolo Soleri's thesis: The Six Paradoxes of the Computer Revolution. Ron Anastasia and Michael Gosney-both involved in the west coast cybernetic culture, worked with Paolo to develop the conferences, as a way to promote Soleri's ideas about Arcology to the dot.com crowd. Soleri in his Paradox diabribes warns of the potential dilemmas of ICT to create what he calls the "Global Hermitage."
Michael has developed a "evolutionary Arcology approach" that is focused on three main components: a continuation of the Paradox series of conferences, the development of the Green Community Network and finally the creation of a prototype Arcology themed project in the Bay Area named Califia that is still in the concept state of development. The unifying umbrella for this "evolution of Solerian thought" is the Green Century Institute which will ultimately serve as not only a think tank but an "action tank" to mobilize and organize what Paul Ray refers to as cultural creatives. An ongoing monthly series the Green Century Salon is an attempt to build community in the Bay Area around the themes of sustainability creativity and critical thinking.
Ron has continued to research alternative communities such as Auroville which is located in south India and Damanhur in northern Italy. In constrast to Arcosanti both are spiritual communities and have also been able to develop significantly larger populations. Ron recently did a presentation of his experiences at a Green Century Salon that I attended a few months back. He did not sugarcoat his experiences as he mentioned the pros and cons of each place. He did seem to think that Auroville was the most advanced in terms of offering a real sustainable model for humanity.
According to Michael Gosney the themes of the conferences are:
* Paradox Project - neomonastic internship program at Arcosanti - starts in 1998
* Cross-disciplinary Philosophical Discourse vs. the Corporate Cyber-elite
* Cyberspace/Cityspace
* Morphogenetic origins of digital media
* Carbon and Silicon - evolutionary symbiosis?
* Electronic Media (the basic plumbing), Cyberspace (the design of the human metamind), and the Noosphere (the emergent "cosmic" holon)
* Hypermedia-enabled Education
Proposition:
Understanding our relationship to the planetary organism - on magnetic, ecological, biological/ chemical, and noetic levels - would seem to be essential for the fully conscious and conscientious development of a human/Gaian "metamind." The intelligent design of the cyberspace interface/ network would ideally incorporate the proven systems and techniques of the natural world, such as:
* miniaturization for increased complexity/richness
* distributed processing
* fractal memory
* fuzzy logic
* pattern recognition
* holonomic networks
* redundancy, redundancy, redundancy
The full realization of the elegant underpinnings of the metamind might not be best left solely in the hands of the existing cyber-elite - the digerati (the powerhouses of the industry and culture) and the cybernauts (the hands-on builders and early inhabitants of cyberspace). A broader vision, more encompassing dialogue and cross-disciplinary cooperation for this great evolutionary work is needed.
Libby Hubbard (aka Doctress Neutopia) spent over a year working on the Paradox Program at Arcosanti. Her work has been important in developing a critical perspective of Arcosanti and Arcology which I believe is necessary for the continued evolution of Arcology into an viable alternative to existing development models. Neutopia helped to craft the writing below which is an except of a larger document that we submitted to Communities Magazine in relation to their featured topic which during that issue was education (Daniel Greenberg of Sirius Community was the guest editor). Although our submission was not accepted it was a good exercise in exploring some of the Paradoxes of not only technology and modern civilization but Arcosanti and Arcology.
The Global Hermitage is a phrase Soleri uses to express a concern about the misuse of computer technologies and the Internet. Soleri feels that as people become more attached to virtual life they are separating from real life. There is a compelling rationale for making community values and locally based culture obsolete. The lifestyles that revolve around locally based cultures tend to discourage conspicious consumption and materialism while disregarding the relentless need to increase productivity by any means necessary. The desire of many within the counterculture and the voluntary simplicity movement to move beyond conventional mainstream assumptions about success and progress and simplify their lives is very tied together with the desire towards localization and increased local autonomy as an alternative to the current corporatist model of economic social and political centralization. Within the modern reality, the idea of a lifelong commitment to community is neither sustained nor supported by the prevailing systems of the mainstream society.
The function of Paradox is not just to express the concern that people are using technology to isolate themselves rather than to build community but to actually start discussing the possibility of balancing technology with indigenous culture.
While suburbanization is presently thriving and has been a major driver in the upward propulsion of the markets over the last 20 or so years such development is rapidly reaching its apex. The public though is still oblivious to the fact that existing development practices are socially or environmentally sustainable and that radical and fundamental change is necessary. An alternative has to emerge, since the world cannot sustain the present development paradigm as espoused by the American corporate establishment.
The existing suburban regions of urban America are going to have to be redesigned and redeveloped because quite simply they are not suitable or even for that matter constructed for long-term human habitation.
Those who are able to develop the vision as well as the know-how to do construct more sustainable human habitats, rapidly and efficiently redesign these environmentally destructive and socially dysfunctional systems, will be in high demand in the coming years. As demand for more socially and environmentally responsible planning design and construction increases those emerging businesses will allow a significant amount of wealth to be shifted from existing businesses that live off of dysfunctional psycho-social interactions in the conventional economy to more effective and socially and ecologically conscious investments in the alternative community. Encouraging the creation of densely populated human habitats, where consumerism and the auto are discouraged, and where creativity, spirituality, political participation and intellectual discourse is central to reversing social, economic and environmental trends that undermine the integrity of human and natural systems.
The purpose of Paradox is to create a balance between real life and virtual reality. As post-modern civilization becomes increasingly complex, we need to discover new models to manage this complexity, keeping human beings relevant and creative within this emerging global network.
The key to understanding this concept of the Global Hermitage is the realization that the community values that previously sustained our identity within the culture of the pre-modern world, have been made obsolete. Within the modern reality, the idea of a lifelong or long term commitment to community is neither sustained nor supported by the prevailing systems of the mainstream society. It is important for us as educators and teachers of a more sustainable and holistic world view, to develop community based ways of overcoming the social dysfunction that materializes from the present hyper-consumerist system. Larry Kaplowitz for the Lost Valley Educational Center writes, "The biggest lesson we've learned over the last few years is that sustainable community must have at its foundation sustainable relationships--relationships that give us more than they take from us; that are a continual source of energy; and which support us in becoming fully ourselves ("Living Naka-ima at Lost Valley" Communities Magazine Fall 99 P.22)."
Technology although necessary to modernization and further human development, is creating structures of complexity that are distancing people from each other, while at the same time, it creates the illusion that we are closer together. We have in the process of modernization, built an architecture where we exist in isolation of each other, so it is hardly surprising that we live increasingly fragmented lives. The reality that we are inter-connected and interdependent flows from the essence of existence, however, embedded within the dysfunctional political geography of our rapidly globalizing commercial culture, is the need to increase the distance within the human to human and human to planet relationships. Not only do we need to think in terms of local community, but we have evolved into needing a planetary consciousness which goes beyond the inhuman, technologically driven society with its relentless need to increase productivity and weapons by any means necessary. Cyberspace can potentially enable us to more clearly envision and articulate the dismal architecture of the present system, while also seeking to visualize and implement the lean alternative, a grand architecture (Arcosanti is just one idea among many alternatives to the present system) that is encapsulated within the ecological/sustainable economics.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Many progressives have a firm belief that the current capitalist system of capitalism is sucking the planet dry. True enough, yet the roots of this system go way deeper than capitalism or corporations. The core of the problem revolved around the excessive human ego and the patriarchal mentality of nearly all the world's civilizations.
Capitalism works because it encourages people to produce more and to innovate, creating jobs and economic prosperity. Without these things it is difficult for us at this time to imagine how we could have social stablity. So there is an understandable obsession towards more and more growth. Capitalism however as it is currently constructed is not sustainable in any sense of the word as it functions in an exploiative and unsustainable way encouraging people that consuming more and more stuff is key to success and well being in life.
The question is whether capitalism is essentially exploiatative as Noam Chomsky and
company say--the old guard left--or whether a new transitional (such as what Paul Hawken talks about in his book Natural Capitalism) form of capitalism can emerge to help us to realize this vision of a sustainable and socially just society?
After participating in the 2003 planetwork conference I come across Chris Dent's Glacial Erratics Blog. He describes the Planetwork people as a "soft money crowd..." I assume because many of the participants are rich in ideas but have no money to implement them. This is the case with most progressive gatherings. It is important to understand the dynamic here and why it may be ineffective and dysfunctional.
What is lacking in the progressive community is a level of financial critical mass that is inclusive rather exclusive. Too many people want to do good, but cannot seem to put the pieces together so that they feel like they are a part of a larger globally linked human infrastructure for effective social change. But critical mass is not simply about money, it is about how we can develop the empowerment and to empower others through effective social networking systems. The creation of small, decentralized but highly networked human scale models of sustainable development should complement better use of information technologies.
Ahh, and where "capitalism is mistrusted and conservatives are considered an appalling subspecies...." the traditional ideological terms conservatism or liberalism have limited meaning in our world today. Francis Ford Coppola came to Arcosanti (www.arcosanti.org) and spoke at Paolo Soleri's weekly school of thought about this briefly. He said simply killing them off (those "appalling conservatives" who control our socioeconomic systems) is simply too messy (it is also not compatable with the idea of tolerance and respect for diverse perspectives and the people who express them).
We need to help those who are mired in the mainstream, (which i believe is basically conservative in that it is resistent to signficant and evolutionary social change based on deeply held fears) view of the world to see that their way of seeing the world is detrimental to their future and humanity's future. Creaively and innovatively communicate with those who defend the status quo with all their energy.
But it is not really about conservative or liberal or capitalist or anti-capitalist. The people who obsess about these things are reactionaries and they come in all the ideological colors of the spectrum. These people spend so much time talking about how evil the other side is that they have no time to think about sustainable, human scale solutions to massive global problems.
We need to better communicate with ourselves those who are supposedly on the same page. and i think that is what the people who came to Planetwork are attempting to do.
Capitalism works because it encourages people to produce more and to innovate, creating jobs and economic prosperity. Without these things it is difficult for us at this time to imagine how we could have social stablity. So there is an understandable obsession towards more and more growth. Capitalism however as it is currently constructed is not sustainable in any sense of the word as it functions in an exploiative and unsustainable way encouraging people that consuming more and more stuff is key to success and well being in life.
The question is whether capitalism is essentially exploiatative as Noam Chomsky and
company say--the old guard left--or whether a new transitional (such as what Paul Hawken talks about in his book Natural Capitalism) form of capitalism can emerge to help us to realize this vision of a sustainable and socially just society?
After participating in the 2003 planetwork conference I come across Chris Dent's Glacial Erratics Blog. He describes the Planetwork people as a "soft money crowd..." I assume because many of the participants are rich in ideas but have no money to implement them. This is the case with most progressive gatherings. It is important to understand the dynamic here and why it may be ineffective and dysfunctional.
What is lacking in the progressive community is a level of financial critical mass that is inclusive rather exclusive. Too many people want to do good, but cannot seem to put the pieces together so that they feel like they are a part of a larger globally linked human infrastructure for effective social change. But critical mass is not simply about money, it is about how we can develop the empowerment and to empower others through effective social networking systems. The creation of small, decentralized but highly networked human scale models of sustainable development should complement better use of information technologies.
Ahh, and where "capitalism is mistrusted and conservatives are considered an appalling subspecies...." the traditional ideological terms conservatism or liberalism have limited meaning in our world today. Francis Ford Coppola came to Arcosanti (www.arcosanti.org) and spoke at Paolo Soleri's weekly school of thought about this briefly. He said simply killing them off (those "appalling conservatives" who control our socioeconomic systems) is simply too messy (it is also not compatable with the idea of tolerance and respect for diverse perspectives and the people who express them).
We need to help those who are mired in the mainstream, (which i believe is basically conservative in that it is resistent to signficant and evolutionary social change based on deeply held fears) view of the world to see that their way of seeing the world is detrimental to their future and humanity's future. Creaively and innovatively communicate with those who defend the status quo with all their energy.
But it is not really about conservative or liberal or capitalist or anti-capitalist. The people who obsess about these things are reactionaries and they come in all the ideological colors of the spectrum. These people spend so much time talking about how evil the other side is that they have no time to think about sustainable, human scale solutions to massive global problems.
We need to better communicate with ourselves those who are supposedly on the same page. and i think that is what the people who came to Planetwork are attempting to do.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
What is Silicon Valley?
Court Skinner a former executive with National Semicondutor who hangs out at South Bay Solari meetings in Palo Alto (http://www.solari.com/) says that most corporate “organizations exist independently of the place where they are and they obligated only to the limited stakeholders of the company, which the bigger the company the more rarely includes the citizens of their place.”
He says that if we expanded the notion of profit “to mean that the place where the company (or any other organization) “lives” becomes better (financially, or by any other metric) then they might have a positive impact (a positive contribution to the ROI of the place) rather than the current negative contribution. The notion of “profit” would therefore be motivated by producing “benefits to the place rather than to the management of the company and the distant shareholders.
This would mean providing:
• Interesting jobs to local residents
• Providing education that leads to rewarding work
• Designing and constructing a well thought out built environment that is both ecologically sustainable and socially and culturally nourishing.
Skinner says that if “corporations are going to pretend to be people, then they must be a part of some community. If they behave as if they are “good citizens” of that place then they too have obligations to that community just as real people do. So in terms of asking what is Silicon Valley: we have to reconsider the idea of corporate culture, corporate communities that revolve around those cultures and how they interact with real communities. This relates to the work of innovative socially conscious business pioneer Frank Dixon who spoke at the Febuary Green Century Salon about his work and his company Innovest. Dixon is working on a methodology to develop more sophisticated and rigorous screening processes for socially conscious businesses. The goal is to:
• Demonstrate that a commitment to making businesses more sustainable is a key sign of well thought business plans based on an ethical decision-making process.
• Reform the underlying structures of society that reinforce dysfunctional behaviors and interactions in the society. Systemic change is important as it is case that today the system that firms work under compels them to be unsustainable.
• Promote a global perspective as compared with the narrow perspective that now dominates. Globalization is not sustainable without a global perspective that includes considering the long term ecological and social impacts of the corporate community on the world.
Court Skinner a former executive with National Semicondutor who hangs out at South Bay Solari meetings in Palo Alto (http://www.solari.com/) says that most corporate “organizations exist independently of the place where they are and they obligated only to the limited stakeholders of the company, which the bigger the company the more rarely includes the citizens of their place.”
He says that if we expanded the notion of profit “to mean that the place where the company (or any other organization) “lives” becomes better (financially, or by any other metric) then they might have a positive impact (a positive contribution to the ROI of the place) rather than the current negative contribution. The notion of “profit” would therefore be motivated by producing “benefits to the place rather than to the management of the company and the distant shareholders.
This would mean providing:
• Interesting jobs to local residents
• Providing education that leads to rewarding work
• Designing and constructing a well thought out built environment that is both ecologically sustainable and socially and culturally nourishing.
Skinner says that if “corporations are going to pretend to be people, then they must be a part of some community. If they behave as if they are “good citizens” of that place then they too have obligations to that community just as real people do. So in terms of asking what is Silicon Valley: we have to reconsider the idea of corporate culture, corporate communities that revolve around those cultures and how they interact with real communities. This relates to the work of innovative socially conscious business pioneer Frank Dixon who spoke at the Febuary Green Century Salon about his work and his company Innovest. Dixon is working on a methodology to develop more sophisticated and rigorous screening processes for socially conscious businesses. The goal is to:
• Demonstrate that a commitment to making businesses more sustainable is a key sign of well thought business plans based on an ethical decision-making process.
• Reform the underlying structures of society that reinforce dysfunctional behaviors and interactions in the society. Systemic change is important as it is case that today the system that firms work under compels them to be unsustainable.
• Promote a global perspective as compared with the narrow perspective that now dominates. Globalization is not sustainable without a global perspective that includes considering the long term ecological and social impacts of the corporate community on the world.
Outsourcing
1 out of ten US tech jobs will be exported abroad by the end of the year. The answer to this problem, said T.J. Rodgers, CEO of San Jose-based Cypress Semiconductor, isn't to require U.S. companies to stop taking advantage of offshoring to low-cost countries. Rather, he said U.S. companies and Silicon Valley engineers have to keep innovating ahead of rivals, and the United States has to invest more in education so it can produce the qualified workforce companies need. Rodgers noted that Cypress has an excellent team of chip designers in Bangalore, India, and that India is making gains because it graduates 290,000 engineers a year, vs. only 65,000 in the United States (4/1/04 Business Section of SJ Mercury News). Rodgers says however that, “Silicon Valley is the capital of the technology world and I don't see that changing. It's getting expensive and hard to do business here, and that is pushing jobs out of the valley. If Silicon Valley is to recover, we have to move up to the next step and do what others can't do.''
Rodgers noted that he once tried to fight the offshoring trend by keeping a chip test and assembly facility in the United States in the 1990s. He said that the move put Cypress Semiconductor at risk and he eventually had to lay off all the U.S. workers at the facility. Cypress now has 2,000 workers in the United States and 2,000 overseas. With test and assembly in the Philippines and two chip wafer fabrication factories in the United States, Cypress is a much more stable company, Rodgers said. “Productivity gains are important, right and moral,'' Rodgers said. “CEOs have an obligation'' to take advantage of productivity improvements, even if it includes hiring foreign workers.
1 out of ten US tech jobs will be exported abroad by the end of the year. The answer to this problem, said T.J. Rodgers, CEO of San Jose-based Cypress Semiconductor, isn't to require U.S. companies to stop taking advantage of offshoring to low-cost countries. Rather, he said U.S. companies and Silicon Valley engineers have to keep innovating ahead of rivals, and the United States has to invest more in education so it can produce the qualified workforce companies need. Rodgers noted that Cypress has an excellent team of chip designers in Bangalore, India, and that India is making gains because it graduates 290,000 engineers a year, vs. only 65,000 in the United States (4/1/04 Business Section of SJ Mercury News). Rodgers says however that, “Silicon Valley is the capital of the technology world and I don't see that changing. It's getting expensive and hard to do business here, and that is pushing jobs out of the valley. If Silicon Valley is to recover, we have to move up to the next step and do what others can't do.''
Rodgers noted that he once tried to fight the offshoring trend by keeping a chip test and assembly facility in the United States in the 1990s. He said that the move put Cypress Semiconductor at risk and he eventually had to lay off all the U.S. workers at the facility. Cypress now has 2,000 workers in the United States and 2,000 overseas. With test and assembly in the Philippines and two chip wafer fabrication factories in the United States, Cypress is a much more stable company, Rodgers said. “Productivity gains are important, right and moral,'' Rodgers said. “CEOs have an obligation'' to take advantage of productivity improvements, even if it includes hiring foreign workers.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Planetwork Update
We (the oneVillage team) attended the PlaNetwork conference last weekend and the PlaNetwork's wiki pages (150+ ) work continued to expand from the massive melding of minds. The June 5th PlaNetwork Interactive conference focused on using innovative social networking tools networking to create positive social change. One component of this was the testing of an innovative method of developing ideas. Conference goers were allowed to define the agenda before the conference using innovative social network tools like Neosociety. Tomorrow Makers' Gail Taylor and Christina Carpenter helped ensure the interactive sessions ran smoothly at PlaNetwork.
Identity Commons
The PlaNetwork working group headed by Eugene Kim of Blue Oxen and Associates has developed a single user ID platform as part of their identity commons system, which is designed to empower people to control the release of their information on the net.
Online Networking and Integration Tools
The PlaNetwork Development Team has come up with other integration tools, which we feel are potentially useful towards the construction of our portals. Living Directory developed Sergio Lub and Victor Grey enables people to link people of similar interests together on the web. Another tool allows people within Planetwork interactive to see people who are developing similar ideas in their posts on the PlaNetwork Interactive site.
EcoResearch.net
DR. Arno Scharl has recently written a book on online organization for sustainable development and has developed a complementary website ecoresearch.net. He gave a lecture on web-based research for environmentalists. With the rapidly changing dynamics of the information economy there is a rising need for data about emerging market trends and public opinion. this includes, understanding success factors for communication of ideas and information on the web in terms of promoting environmental awareness and sustainable development. What are the relationships between environmental and social problems and the various organizations that work to resolve them? Environmental science is rapidly leading to an awareness of the need to redesign the built enviornment and the means of production in the modern world. However the message is not getting through to the mainstream public. It is on this level that there is a need to represent data in enviornmental ontologies that more clearly defines trends and how we can proactively respond to them.
• Promote open and public access to environmental data relevant to grassroots sustainable economic development
• Expand environmental education and introduce new teaching concepts relevant to the changing nature of knowledge
• Online advocacy
• Data sharing
• Distributed internet computing
• Geographically referenced data
Corporate sustainability and socially conscious business is being driven not by the corporations themselves but by socially responsible consumers who through effective environmental reporting are becoming more aware that there is a need to look carefully at what we consume. Green investments are a logical outcome of this trend. However socially conscious investors are only beginning to awaken to the idea that socially conscious investing is and must be a global phenomenon. Such a movement relies on the emergence of globally networked virtual communities that build trust and credibility among the stakeholders and members promoting effective knowledge management and online collaboration such as what we are trying to develop through the oneVillage Foundation.
Brainstorming Tools
One presenter suggested that highly efficient groups write things down rather than speak them and they know when ideas do not fit together allocating time effectuvely on those that do and are relevant to their work. The key concept here is focus and direction. It is the process of evolving from the brainstorming phase to the implementation phase. One tool was discussed to help develop ideas into the coherent pattern languages that are relevant to the particular network or group.
Idea Tree is a knowledge map. This system is different than visualization tools, it is brainstorming tool. An interesting aspect of Idea Tree is that you can make comments on the relationships between nodes. It would be interesting to compare and contrast this system with the Brain software. While it may be that virtual communication is more effective than traditional forms of communication in many respects, human interaction is crucial and these tools help to maximize productivity when people do decide to meet by helping to collect and organize relevant information for meetings.
We conclude that there is not so much a need to develop new technologies, but to effectively collect innovative ideas through an open source platform that efficiently and effectively transmits information helping people to empower themselves in their lives so that they are spending more time doing what they want to do in life and less time "workin for the man."
It is not simply the software itself that is significant but the very way in which information is organized. An important aspect to social change is to focus on relationship building changing the emphasis of knowledge development away from objects and towards relationships and understanding how various component systems relate to one another and why.
Aikido Activism in 25 Words or less
At the monthly Planetwork meeting I met up with Reed Burkhart who is doing pioneering working in using satellites to video-conference. He spoke of Aikido Activism as a way to proactively rather than reactively address social problems.
Reed Burkhart also has a plan for inexpensive satellite communication, and spent many years in that industry, part of what he calls the forth paradigm in communications evolution.
While talking to Reed I met Rolf von Behrens of the Australian National Sustainability Initiative. While in SF Rolf sought to bring together Australians in the Bay Area and mobilize them toward the effective use of ICT to promote sustainability at a meeting he organized after the conference. Innovative tools for networking and bringing people together seemed to be a priority for Rolf and his organization.
Also at PlaNetwork we met Juan Maldonado, who grew up in Columbia and other Latin American countries, lives in Seattle, works in IT, and has an uncle who publishes a leading Spanish-language medical journal. Juan was asked to help create a distance learning system (continuing education) for rural doctors in Columbia.
Bridging Digital Divide Conference
Professor Raoul Weiler and Rolando Burger spoke at the conference about the Club of Rome/UNESCO sponsored Bridging Digital Divide Conference. Issues include the role of information technologies (ICT) in enhancing education, promoting sustainability and bridging the income divide. The Bridging Digital Divide Conference will take place in Spring of 2005 in Europe as a follow up event to WSIS 2004 and a precursor event to the World Summit on Information society (WSIS) November 2005 meeting at Tunis.
The Strong Angel Connection
Joy connected with John Graham who is involved with Strong Angel -- bringing military and civilian technology together for effective internet tools for difficult environments, and rigorously testing them in Hawaii very soon. John also created GeoFusion space image mapping and display technology.
We (the oneVillage team) attended the PlaNetwork conference last weekend and the PlaNetwork's wiki pages (150+ ) work continued to expand from the massive melding of minds. The June 5th PlaNetwork Interactive conference focused on using innovative social networking tools networking to create positive social change. One component of this was the testing of an innovative method of developing ideas. Conference goers were allowed to define the agenda before the conference using innovative social network tools like Neosociety. Tomorrow Makers' Gail Taylor and Christina Carpenter helped ensure the interactive sessions ran smoothly at PlaNetwork.
Identity Commons
The PlaNetwork working group headed by Eugene Kim of Blue Oxen and Associates has developed a single user ID platform as part of their identity commons system, which is designed to empower people to control the release of their information on the net.
Online Networking and Integration Tools
The PlaNetwork Development Team has come up with other integration tools, which we feel are potentially useful towards the construction of our portals. Living Directory developed Sergio Lub and Victor Grey enables people to link people of similar interests together on the web. Another tool allows people within Planetwork interactive to see people who are developing similar ideas in their posts on the PlaNetwork Interactive site.
EcoResearch.net
DR. Arno Scharl has recently written a book on online organization for sustainable development and has developed a complementary website ecoresearch.net. He gave a lecture on web-based research for environmentalists. With the rapidly changing dynamics of the information economy there is a rising need for data about emerging market trends and public opinion. this includes, understanding success factors for communication of ideas and information on the web in terms of promoting environmental awareness and sustainable development. What are the relationships between environmental and social problems and the various organizations that work to resolve them? Environmental science is rapidly leading to an awareness of the need to redesign the built enviornment and the means of production in the modern world. However the message is not getting through to the mainstream public. It is on this level that there is a need to represent data in enviornmental ontologies that more clearly defines trends and how we can proactively respond to them.
• Promote open and public access to environmental data relevant to grassroots sustainable economic development
• Expand environmental education and introduce new teaching concepts relevant to the changing nature of knowledge
• Online advocacy
• Data sharing
• Distributed internet computing
• Geographically referenced data
Corporate sustainability and socially conscious business is being driven not by the corporations themselves but by socially responsible consumers who through effective environmental reporting are becoming more aware that there is a need to look carefully at what we consume. Green investments are a logical outcome of this trend. However socially conscious investors are only beginning to awaken to the idea that socially conscious investing is and must be a global phenomenon. Such a movement relies on the emergence of globally networked virtual communities that build trust and credibility among the stakeholders and members promoting effective knowledge management and online collaboration such as what we are trying to develop through the oneVillage Foundation.
Brainstorming Tools
One presenter suggested that highly efficient groups write things down rather than speak them and they know when ideas do not fit together allocating time effectuvely on those that do and are relevant to their work. The key concept here is focus and direction. It is the process of evolving from the brainstorming phase to the implementation phase. One tool was discussed to help develop ideas into the coherent pattern languages that are relevant to the particular network or group.
Idea Tree is a knowledge map. This system is different than visualization tools, it is brainstorming tool. An interesting aspect of Idea Tree is that you can make comments on the relationships between nodes. It would be interesting to compare and contrast this system with the Brain software. While it may be that virtual communication is more effective than traditional forms of communication in many respects, human interaction is crucial and these tools help to maximize productivity when people do decide to meet by helping to collect and organize relevant information for meetings.
We conclude that there is not so much a need to develop new technologies, but to effectively collect innovative ideas through an open source platform that efficiently and effectively transmits information helping people to empower themselves in their lives so that they are spending more time doing what they want to do in life and less time "workin for the man."
It is not simply the software itself that is significant but the very way in which information is organized. An important aspect to social change is to focus on relationship building changing the emphasis of knowledge development away from objects and towards relationships and understanding how various component systems relate to one another and why.
Aikido Activism in 25 Words or less
At the monthly Planetwork meeting I met up with Reed Burkhart who is doing pioneering working in using satellites to video-conference. He spoke of Aikido Activism as a way to proactively rather than reactively address social problems.
"Aikido Activism is the promotion of global community over self-promotion, using the Aikido principal of engaging an enemy's power to turn that enemy towards progress." I think the two parts of the sentence are important, 1) what the objective is, and 2) how it will be done. It's all very simple and obvious.
"The hard part -- as with anything simple and obvious that could change the world -- is revealing and gradually overcoming the traditions that oppose the advancement (which is why writing and sharing those ideas in the essay Aikido Activism is so important)."
Reed Burkhart also has a plan for inexpensive satellite communication, and spent many years in that industry, part of what he calls the forth paradigm in communications evolution.
While talking to Reed I met Rolf von Behrens of the Australian National Sustainability Initiative. While in SF Rolf sought to bring together Australians in the Bay Area and mobilize them toward the effective use of ICT to promote sustainability at a meeting he organized after the conference. Innovative tools for networking and bringing people together seemed to be a priority for Rolf and his organization.
Also at PlaNetwork we met Juan Maldonado, who grew up in Columbia and other Latin American countries, lives in Seattle, works in IT, and has an uncle who publishes a leading Spanish-language medical journal. Juan was asked to help create a distance learning system (continuing education) for rural doctors in Columbia.
Bridging Digital Divide Conference
Professor Raoul Weiler and Rolando Burger spoke at the conference about the Club of Rome/UNESCO sponsored Bridging Digital Divide Conference. Issues include the role of information technologies (ICT) in enhancing education, promoting sustainability and bridging the income divide. The Bridging Digital Divide Conference will take place in Spring of 2005 in Europe as a follow up event to WSIS 2004 and a precursor event to the World Summit on Information society (WSIS) November 2005 meeting at Tunis.
The Strong Angel Connection
Joy connected with John Graham who is involved with Strong Angel -- bringing military and civilian technology together for effective internet tools for difficult environments, and rigorously testing them in Hawaii very soon. John also created GeoFusion space image mapping and display technology.
Tuesday, July 03, 2001
There is a gap between American and English media personalities. Mark Lawson says that "The level of metal detectors and security guards to be negotiated before admission to his presence was almost presidential in scale." American anchors and top journalists are wisked away in limousines and taken to special, high security VIP airport facilities as they await their private jets. In America there appears to be something exclusive in having high security, VIP existence which makes the new elite more separated from the lives of the common people any elite has ever been in history (Mark Lawson Loss of Innocence Guardian Weekly 5/9/99 22).
While in aristocratic Britain, famous people are seen amongst the masses riding the Underground and frequenting neighborhood supermarkets, American celebrities and other well known, powerful people seem to go to quite a distance separating themselves from the masses. A lot of this may be out of necessity since the American civic orientation seemed to really encourage over the years a number of events include a predisposition towards celebrity obsession and worship and the corespondingly of whole new media and entertainment industries. Much of this led to obsessional tendencies on the part of die hard fans and/or sociopaths. The results of this in terms of privacy intrusion and security were quite frightening to many notable personalities.
However it is hard to isolate whether the rich and famous live their security obsessed celebrity class, lives separated from the lives and experiences of the common people for this reason totally. Since it is that the American experience has for quite some time fostered the notion of us verses them, but this has been if not as much, then more apparent in England. England is a much more spatially tight society, that has not seen the same the demographic and cultural changes take place. For one thing there is less space to move at a level that most Americans have grown accustomed to. British society is still centered in London a city of seven million people, the scale is much smaller and in many respects. England is much more tightly knit society than the U.S. The social fabric for the common people may be more satisfying than that what many see as the soulless culture in America. The common people in the U.K. not been completely rendered into mindless consuming masses to the extent that they have in the U.S.
However there are signs that this is changing, as their have been an increasing occurrence of trajedies involving famous people. More people are living their lives through famous people that idolize to an extent which many psychologists might see as mentally unhealthy. When one lives their life vicariously through someone else, there is a element of meaninglessness and worthlessness in their own lives, so they put all their energy into the worship of the all powerful and supremely distant other. Thus a cult of personality "ring "is configured much like a religious cult, and all religions begin as cults. This may explain why they so deviate from the original truth of the prophet. It is for this reason that almost all organized religions are little more charismatic, "personality" games that are defined by idol worship, "ass kissing," back stabbing and a heavy dose of hedonism.
With the death of Princess Diana there was a Kennedyesqe show of sorrow. The obsessive compulsive behavior among a large cross section of society that manifested illuminates the magnitude by which people have lost a sense of themselves and then seek to recapture it among the people who "matter" in the world. It demonstrates the gross distance between the haves and the have nots that goes beyond simple economic statistics. England has been seen as less affected by celebrity, but this little more than a quaint platitude that is useful to remind Brits as to their superiority over the Americans. However there are signs that England is becoming more Americanized. That it is not immune to the statistical inevitability of tragedy as the celebrity obsessed cultures of the world cultivate mentally unstable people who target the stars. Jill Dando was a television presenter (anchor) that was recently killed by a stalker outside of her terraced house in London. Ironically she had just sold her house and planned on moving to more private and exclusive surroundings. Her killing has shaken the British from their ivory tower that was perched way above the Americans. Soon after Dando's killing in 1999, the BBC tightened security so that uncredentialed, unauthorized people could not so easily access on the premises of the most prestigious media entity. George Harrison was nearly killed when somebody entered his house and stabbed in the chest several times.
The leadership classes have always resented living in close quarters with the common people. A core driver of success in our society is the exclusivity of being well-known and wealthy. On a deeper level, our need to become important relates to the sense of ordinariness within the common professions and social circles of the vast majority of our huge national population. To be seen as just one among a national population of 270 million and a global population of over six billion is just too much for many. So they either become ambitious and use their talents to competitively position themselves, so as to reflect their needs, ambitions and aspirations or they grow increasing frustrated and resentful as to the perceived status of their ordinariness.
The Atlantic Monthly is a media entity that has a special niche in the media universe. It is a literary magazine who marketing base group is similar to Harper's--a small, but vocal and well place intellectual elite. Now that Mortimer Zuckerman a New York real estate baron has given up on making the Atlantic Monthly a solidly profitable entity, he decided to sell it to another blueblood compatriot, David Bradley. Bradley first got going by starting a "for profit think tank"--The Advisory Board--in 1979 in his mother's Watergate apartment, selling information to powerful economic and political interests.
Bradley by taking his company public, netted 148 million dollars, and thus was proclaimed by the establishment punditry to have achieved the covet status of media mogul. It is a status he wittily disputes by comparing himself to Henry Luce, who ran Time. Bradley says Luce got his empire started much earlier than he did, and therefore represents the true model for a media mogul. Luce was a pivotal figure in the construction of the mainstream media as it manifests today.
The essence of Bradley's success is his self-effacing leadership style where he speaks "in tones so dulcet he sounds more like a sympathetic psychotherapist"...rather than "the ferocious new media mogul on the block." Mr.
Bradley is a smooth operator whose old fashioned innocence still is quite effective in swaying people towards his side. When he arrived at the Atlantic Monthly's headquarters Bradley artfully soothed an emotional staff, reassuring them that he has no intentions to change the editorial direction of the magazine and impressing the managing editor--Cullen Murphy to a significant degree (Robyn Meredith "Atlantic Monthly Staff Sizes Up New Owner" The New York Times 10/29/99 C1).
His task is daunting, since the world of modern mass media depends on advertising for most of its revenue. Advertising is an industry that Robin Meredith says is "known for its love of that mysterious blend of public relations and cocktail party chatter." You need some form of buzz says Alan Jurmain, a operative of Lowe and Partner/SMS, something that is authentic and is able to create a breezy alluring package that entices people to their "terrific product." Excitement is what they are looking for and a certain kind of excitement one which is non-critical to those who run the establishment. Celebrity based sensationalism is the only way to create sales in a society whose leadership structure has through the years encouraged a superficially orientated civic orientation. The other is by way of muckraking investigative reporting and powerful inspiring and illuminative commentary, which Harper's, The Nation and the Atlantic Monthly are on occasion known to do. However the reason that they only do this on occasion is related to the fact that they do rely on advertising income, and have a liberal constitiency, that you can only go so far with. Bradley himself says quite well that the Atlantic monthly is about "literature and and about journalism that aspires to the level of literature. It is abut serious untrendy, unbuzz driven discussion of ideas..." Thus there is appears to be an unbridgeable reality between the excitement of discussing provocative information that relates to our social conscience and our integrity, and the need to make money. This is the reason that magazines with an liberal, intellectual bent are having difficulty making ends meet. However what passes for the provocative in this marginal niche market is little more than curious contrivances designed to titillate its readers, who as liberals cannot be expected to make a clear break from mainstream thinking for their positional status in society would not allow it. Rather than speak of the need for serious socioeconomic change these magazines really speak for the high class, hedonistic aspirations of the Burgeoise, which congregate around the notion of high literature and art.
Building a Superficial Civic Orientation
However where the money is at in celebrity iconification which centers on the need to create some sort of buzz any buzz around one self, so as to make up for what is missing within the soul. Those who can somehow manipulate their reality to achieve this are worshipped as celebrities and important people while the rest of who have not abilities and the motives to master this art of human manipulation are seen as ordinary and plain.
The Medium is the Message: The Rising Sensation of Skins on the Internet
Skins are interfaces that cover the plain aesthetic of the computer's programs with a personalized flair. "People love the skins because they seem to have a personal relationship with them that can change depending on the person's mood or the type of music, says Rob Glazier chairmen and CEO of RealNetworks Inc. Neo Planet has developed a series of skins for its browser software. Drew Cohen who is CEO of Neo Planet sees it as increasing personalization of the Internet and dubs it the of Internet fashion. These skins are seen as another subconsious way to trigger emotional attachment to corporate icons. Thus many professional web designers are feel that this is just another clever plan to "get more corporate branding on our desktops." John Boyden a creative director for www.pets.com adds that the web "is starved for well-designed content, so let's put our energy into that, not slapping layers of goop onto perfectly clear tools like browsers." Robert Lord works for Winamp an online music software company owned by American Online. He feels that the popularity of skins reflects the need of the Internet users to take part in the development of the medium. He notes that there are now a growing assortment of skin discussion groups and Web "rings," which link sites with similar themes (Kara Swisher All Over the Internet, a Rash of Skins. The Wall Street Journal 10/29/99 B1).
The Need to Cash in on Celebrity Star Power
Renting star power is known as borrowed interest. "If Amos and Andy could make Americans brush with Pepsodent toothpaste and Ozzie and Harriet made them snap picture with Kodak film, why can't Sophia Loren make shopping at www.giftcertificates.com chic and Dr. Joyce Brothers make buying computers at www.cozone.com seem like a no brainer." Joseph Park CEO of www.kozmo.com--a company specializing in, "urban delivery systems," says that consumers are inundated with a lot of hype in relation to the Internet. "One of the challenges is to bring credibility." Carl Rosendorf who is senior V.P. of www.Barnesandnoble.com adds that what critical thinkers already know--that "A celebrity subconsciously brings credibility and legitimacy to whatever claims are being made,"--except that here it is coming out of the "horses mouth." A celebrity subconsciously bring credibility (Stuart Elliott Cyberspace Filling Up With Stars. The Arizona Republic 11/26/99 E1)."
If we advance the idea that celebrities get used too much in advertising as CFO Edward Booches of Mullen Advertising says, and that this whole celebrity phenonomena of the unconcsious really has nothing to do with the actual qualities of the product, then how can economists say that the economy functions in a rational way?
While in aristocratic Britain, famous people are seen amongst the masses riding the Underground and frequenting neighborhood supermarkets, American celebrities and other well known, powerful people seem to go to quite a distance separating themselves from the masses. A lot of this may be out of necessity since the American civic orientation seemed to really encourage over the years a number of events include a predisposition towards celebrity obsession and worship and the corespondingly of whole new media and entertainment industries. Much of this led to obsessional tendencies on the part of die hard fans and/or sociopaths. The results of this in terms of privacy intrusion and security were quite frightening to many notable personalities.
However it is hard to isolate whether the rich and famous live their security obsessed celebrity class, lives separated from the lives and experiences of the common people for this reason totally. Since it is that the American experience has for quite some time fostered the notion of us verses them, but this has been if not as much, then more apparent in England. England is a much more spatially tight society, that has not seen the same the demographic and cultural changes take place. For one thing there is less space to move at a level that most Americans have grown accustomed to. British society is still centered in London a city of seven million people, the scale is much smaller and in many respects. England is much more tightly knit society than the U.S. The social fabric for the common people may be more satisfying than that what many see as the soulless culture in America. The common people in the U.K. not been completely rendered into mindless consuming masses to the extent that they have in the U.S.
However there are signs that this is changing, as their have been an increasing occurrence of trajedies involving famous people. More people are living their lives through famous people that idolize to an extent which many psychologists might see as mentally unhealthy. When one lives their life vicariously through someone else, there is a element of meaninglessness and worthlessness in their own lives, so they put all their energy into the worship of the all powerful and supremely distant other. Thus a cult of personality "ring "is configured much like a religious cult, and all religions begin as cults. This may explain why they so deviate from the original truth of the prophet. It is for this reason that almost all organized religions are little more charismatic, "personality" games that are defined by idol worship, "ass kissing," back stabbing and a heavy dose of hedonism.
With the death of Princess Diana there was a Kennedyesqe show of sorrow. The obsessive compulsive behavior among a large cross section of society that manifested illuminates the magnitude by which people have lost a sense of themselves and then seek to recapture it among the people who "matter" in the world. It demonstrates the gross distance between the haves and the have nots that goes beyond simple economic statistics. England has been seen as less affected by celebrity, but this little more than a quaint platitude that is useful to remind Brits as to their superiority over the Americans. However there are signs that England is becoming more Americanized. That it is not immune to the statistical inevitability of tragedy as the celebrity obsessed cultures of the world cultivate mentally unstable people who target the stars. Jill Dando was a television presenter (anchor) that was recently killed by a stalker outside of her terraced house in London. Ironically she had just sold her house and planned on moving to more private and exclusive surroundings. Her killing has shaken the British from their ivory tower that was perched way above the Americans. Soon after Dando's killing in 1999, the BBC tightened security so that uncredentialed, unauthorized people could not so easily access on the premises of the most prestigious media entity. George Harrison was nearly killed when somebody entered his house and stabbed in the chest several times.
The leadership classes have always resented living in close quarters with the common people. A core driver of success in our society is the exclusivity of being well-known and wealthy. On a deeper level, our need to become important relates to the sense of ordinariness within the common professions and social circles of the vast majority of our huge national population. To be seen as just one among a national population of 270 million and a global population of over six billion is just too much for many. So they either become ambitious and use their talents to competitively position themselves, so as to reflect their needs, ambitions and aspirations or they grow increasing frustrated and resentful as to the perceived status of their ordinariness.
The Atlantic Monthly is a media entity that has a special niche in the media universe. It is a literary magazine who marketing base group is similar to Harper's--a small, but vocal and well place intellectual elite. Now that Mortimer Zuckerman a New York real estate baron has given up on making the Atlantic Monthly a solidly profitable entity, he decided to sell it to another blueblood compatriot, David Bradley. Bradley first got going by starting a "for profit think tank"--The Advisory Board--in 1979 in his mother's Watergate apartment, selling information to powerful economic and political interests.
Bradley by taking his company public, netted 148 million dollars, and thus was proclaimed by the establishment punditry to have achieved the covet status of media mogul. It is a status he wittily disputes by comparing himself to Henry Luce, who ran Time. Bradley says Luce got his empire started much earlier than he did, and therefore represents the true model for a media mogul. Luce was a pivotal figure in the construction of the mainstream media as it manifests today.
The essence of Bradley's success is his self-effacing leadership style where he speaks "in tones so dulcet he sounds more like a sympathetic psychotherapist"...rather than "the ferocious new media mogul on the block." Mr.
Bradley is a smooth operator whose old fashioned innocence still is quite effective in swaying people towards his side. When he arrived at the Atlantic Monthly's headquarters Bradley artfully soothed an emotional staff, reassuring them that he has no intentions to change the editorial direction of the magazine and impressing the managing editor--Cullen Murphy to a significant degree (Robyn Meredith "Atlantic Monthly Staff Sizes Up New Owner" The New York Times 10/29/99 C1).
His task is daunting, since the world of modern mass media depends on advertising for most of its revenue. Advertising is an industry that Robin Meredith says is "known for its love of that mysterious blend of public relations and cocktail party chatter." You need some form of buzz says Alan Jurmain, a operative of Lowe and Partner/SMS, something that is authentic and is able to create a breezy alluring package that entices people to their "terrific product." Excitement is what they are looking for and a certain kind of excitement one which is non-critical to those who run the establishment. Celebrity based sensationalism is the only way to create sales in a society whose leadership structure has through the years encouraged a superficially orientated civic orientation. The other is by way of muckraking investigative reporting and powerful inspiring and illuminative commentary, which Harper's, The Nation and the Atlantic Monthly are on occasion known to do. However the reason that they only do this on occasion is related to the fact that they do rely on advertising income, and have a liberal constitiency, that you can only go so far with. Bradley himself says quite well that the Atlantic monthly is about "literature and and about journalism that aspires to the level of literature. It is abut serious untrendy, unbuzz driven discussion of ideas..." Thus there is appears to be an unbridgeable reality between the excitement of discussing provocative information that relates to our social conscience and our integrity, and the need to make money. This is the reason that magazines with an liberal, intellectual bent are having difficulty making ends meet. However what passes for the provocative in this marginal niche market is little more than curious contrivances designed to titillate its readers, who as liberals cannot be expected to make a clear break from mainstream thinking for their positional status in society would not allow it. Rather than speak of the need for serious socioeconomic change these magazines really speak for the high class, hedonistic aspirations of the Burgeoise, which congregate around the notion of high literature and art.
Building a Superficial Civic Orientation
However where the money is at in celebrity iconification which centers on the need to create some sort of buzz any buzz around one self, so as to make up for what is missing within the soul. Those who can somehow manipulate their reality to achieve this are worshipped as celebrities and important people while the rest of who have not abilities and the motives to master this art of human manipulation are seen as ordinary and plain.
The Medium is the Message: The Rising Sensation of Skins on the Internet
Skins are interfaces that cover the plain aesthetic of the computer's programs with a personalized flair. "People love the skins because they seem to have a personal relationship with them that can change depending on the person's mood or the type of music, says Rob Glazier chairmen and CEO of RealNetworks Inc. Neo Planet has developed a series of skins for its browser software. Drew Cohen who is CEO of Neo Planet sees it as increasing personalization of the Internet and dubs it the of Internet fashion. These skins are seen as another subconsious way to trigger emotional attachment to corporate icons. Thus many professional web designers are feel that this is just another clever plan to "get more corporate branding on our desktops." John Boyden a creative director for www.pets.com adds that the web "is starved for well-designed content, so let's put our energy into that, not slapping layers of goop onto perfectly clear tools like browsers." Robert Lord works for Winamp an online music software company owned by American Online. He feels that the popularity of skins reflects the need of the Internet users to take part in the development of the medium. He notes that there are now a growing assortment of skin discussion groups and Web "rings," which link sites with similar themes (Kara Swisher All Over the Internet, a Rash of Skins. The Wall Street Journal 10/29/99 B1).
The Need to Cash in on Celebrity Star Power
Renting star power is known as borrowed interest. "If Amos and Andy could make Americans brush with Pepsodent toothpaste and Ozzie and Harriet made them snap picture with Kodak film, why can't Sophia Loren make shopping at www.giftcertificates.com chic and Dr. Joyce Brothers make buying computers at www.cozone.com seem like a no brainer." Joseph Park CEO of www.kozmo.com--a company specializing in, "urban delivery systems," says that consumers are inundated with a lot of hype in relation to the Internet. "One of the challenges is to bring credibility." Carl Rosendorf who is senior V.P. of www.Barnesandnoble.com adds that what critical thinkers already know--that "A celebrity subconsciously brings credibility and legitimacy to whatever claims are being made,"--except that here it is coming out of the "horses mouth." A celebrity subconsciously bring credibility (Stuart Elliott Cyberspace Filling Up With Stars. The Arizona Republic 11/26/99 E1)."
If we advance the idea that celebrities get used too much in advertising as CFO Edward Booches of Mullen Advertising says, and that this whole celebrity phenonomena of the unconcsious really has nothing to do with the actual qualities of the product, then how can economists say that the economy functions in a rational way?
Wednesday, November 03, 1999
Celebrity Values and Aspirations Drive the Mass Media and Society
The Atlantic Monthly is a media entity that has a special niche in the media universe. It is a literary magazine who marketing base group is similar to Harper's--a small, but vocal and well place intellectual elite. Now that Mortimer Zuckerman a New York real estate baron has given up on making the Atlantic Monthly a solidly profitable entity, he decided to sell it to another blueblood compatriot, David Bradley. Bradley first got going by starting a "for profit think tank"--The Advisory Board--in 1979 in his mother's Watergate apartment, selling information to powerful economic and political interests.
Bradley by taking his company public, netted 148 million dollars, and thus was proclaimed by the establishment punditry to have achieved the covet status of media mogul. It is a status he wittily disputes by comparing himself to Henry Luce, who ran Time. Bradley says Luce got his empire started much earlier than he did, and therefore represents the true model for a media mogul. Luce was a pivotal figure in the construction of the mainstream media as it manifests today.
The essence of Bradley's success is his self-effacing leadership style where he speaks "in tones so dulcet he sounds more like a sympathetic psychotherapist"...rather than "the ferocious new media mogul on the block." Mr. Bradley is a smooth operator whose old fashioned innocence still is quite effective in swaying people towards his side. When he arrived at the Atlantic Monthly's headquarters Bradley artfully soothed an emotional staff, reassuring them that he has no intentions to change the editorial direction of the magazine and impressing the managing editor--Cullen Murphy to a significant degree (Robyn Meredith "Atlantic Monthly Staff Sizes Up New Owner" The New York Times 10/29/99 C1) .
However his task is daunting, since the world of modern mass media depends on advertising for most of its revenue. Advertising is an industry that Robin Meredith says is "known for its love of that mysterious blend of public relations and cocktail party chatter." You need some form of buzz says Alan Jurmain, a operative of Lowe and Partner/SMS, something that is authentic and is able to create a breezy alluring package that entices people to their "terrific product." Excitement is what they are looking for and a certain kind of excitement one which is non-critical to those who run the establishment.
Celebrity based sensationalism is the only way to create sales in a society whose leadership structure has through the years encouraged a superficially orientated civic orientation. The other is by way of muckraking investigative reporting and powerful inspiring and illuminative commentary, which Harper's, The Nation and the Atlantic Monthly are on occasion known to do. However the reason that they only do this on occasion is related to the fact that they do rely on advertising income, and have a liberal constitiency, that you can only go so far with.
Bradley himself says quite well that the Atlantic monthly is about "literature and and about journalism that aspires to the level of literature. It is abut serious untrendy, unbuzz driven discussion of ideas..." Thus there is appears to be an unbridgeable reality between the excitement of discussing provocative information that relates to our social conscience and our integrity, and the need to make money. This is the reason that magazines with an liberal, intellectual bent are having difficulty making ends meet. However what passes for the provocative in this marginal niche market is little more than curious contrivances designed to titillate its readers, who as liberals cannot be expected to make a clear break from mainstream thinking for their positional status in society would not allow it. Rather than speak of the need for serious socioeconomic change these magazines really speak for the high class, hedonistic aspirations of the Burgeoise, which congregate around the notion of high literature and art.
The Atlantic Monthly is a media entity that has a special niche in the media universe. It is a literary magazine who marketing base group is similar to Harper's--a small, but vocal and well place intellectual elite. Now that Mortimer Zuckerman a New York real estate baron has given up on making the Atlantic Monthly a solidly profitable entity, he decided to sell it to another blueblood compatriot, David Bradley. Bradley first got going by starting a "for profit think tank"--The Advisory Board--in 1979 in his mother's Watergate apartment, selling information to powerful economic and political interests.
Bradley by taking his company public, netted 148 million dollars, and thus was proclaimed by the establishment punditry to have achieved the covet status of media mogul. It is a status he wittily disputes by comparing himself to Henry Luce, who ran Time. Bradley says Luce got his empire started much earlier than he did, and therefore represents the true model for a media mogul. Luce was a pivotal figure in the construction of the mainstream media as it manifests today.
The essence of Bradley's success is his self-effacing leadership style where he speaks "in tones so dulcet he sounds more like a sympathetic psychotherapist"...rather than "the ferocious new media mogul on the block." Mr. Bradley is a smooth operator whose old fashioned innocence still is quite effective in swaying people towards his side. When he arrived at the Atlantic Monthly's headquarters Bradley artfully soothed an emotional staff, reassuring them that he has no intentions to change the editorial direction of the magazine and impressing the managing editor--Cullen Murphy to a significant degree (Robyn Meredith "Atlantic Monthly Staff Sizes Up New Owner" The New York Times 10/29/99 C1) .
However his task is daunting, since the world of modern mass media depends on advertising for most of its revenue. Advertising is an industry that Robin Meredith says is "known for its love of that mysterious blend of public relations and cocktail party chatter." You need some form of buzz says Alan Jurmain, a operative of Lowe and Partner/SMS, something that is authentic and is able to create a breezy alluring package that entices people to their "terrific product." Excitement is what they are looking for and a certain kind of excitement one which is non-critical to those who run the establishment.
Celebrity based sensationalism is the only way to create sales in a society whose leadership structure has through the years encouraged a superficially orientated civic orientation. The other is by way of muckraking investigative reporting and powerful inspiring and illuminative commentary, which Harper's, The Nation and the Atlantic Monthly are on occasion known to do. However the reason that they only do this on occasion is related to the fact that they do rely on advertising income, and have a liberal constitiency, that you can only go so far with.
Bradley himself says quite well that the Atlantic monthly is about "literature and and about journalism that aspires to the level of literature. It is abut serious untrendy, unbuzz driven discussion of ideas..." Thus there is appears to be an unbridgeable reality between the excitement of discussing provocative information that relates to our social conscience and our integrity, and the need to make money. This is the reason that magazines with an liberal, intellectual bent are having difficulty making ends meet. However what passes for the provocative in this marginal niche market is little more than curious contrivances designed to titillate its readers, who as liberals cannot be expected to make a clear break from mainstream thinking for their positional status in society would not allow it. Rather than speak of the need for serious socioeconomic change these magazines really speak for the high class, hedonistic aspirations of the Burgeoise, which congregate around the notion of high literature and art.
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