A brilliant and accomplished editor, one who I respect greatly, used to tell his staff that they should write for the fourth floor, where the sales and marketing teams sat. The idea was that journalists should write for the dull and dim comprehension of the business world.
As a perennial inhabitant of that floor, I resented the implication. For me, business has always been a lively intellectual endeavor where ideas are more than dreams; they are tested in the marketplace.
So, in a certain sense, this blog is a retort to my old friend. Alas, since I moved away, he no longer comes over to drink whiskey and certainly won’t send me any presents. Therefore, as in past years, I’m celebrating Digital Tonto’s birthday with a list of my favorite posts. They weren’t necessarily the most popular, but they’re the ones I like.
Cinderella was an amazing performer. In one night she made it to the ball, found her prince and lived happily ever after.
Amazingly, she did so by her natural grace, charm and wit. Having no experience with princes or balls, she became the star of the show, with no prior coaching, preparation or experience. She simply believed it could be true and it was.
Alas, Cinderella, much like many stories of great accomplishment, is a fairy tale. We love hearing about the moment of triumph; the shot at the buzzer, the photo finish and the medals at the podium. The truth is boring – endless hours, repeated frustration and constant exhaustion. Here are 5 principles that determine whether it’s all worth it.
They say that those who don’t learn their history are condemned to repeat it, but isn’t the opposite also true? If the past is prologue, can we really move forward without looking backward?
Futuristic buzzwords like the social web, strong AI, and the web of things have become fashionable to talk about as hot new trends, but our digital future will most likely be far stranger and more wonderful than anything we can imagine today.
The truth is that new paradigms arise from novel solutions to old problems. Those solutions in turn have consequences that are both unforeseen and unintended. Much of today’s technology began as investigations into obscure curiosities in first-order logic, radio communication and the like. The seeds of the next wave will be just as improbable.
On November 4, 2010, Microsoft launched Kinect, a motion-sensing device for their Xbox video game console. It quickly became the best selling electronic device in history, moving 8 million units in less than two months.
Then hackers started fooling around with the device using it to do things Microsoft never intended. This kind of transgression would usually elicit in nasty “cease and desist” letters and hefty lawyers fees, but this time Microsoft did something different.
They released a software development kit (SDK) to help outsiders modify their product and created an accelerator that offered seed money, office space and training to promising young innovators. Clearly, something important has changed. Brands are no longer mere corporate assets, but have become open platforms for collaboration and creativity.
This past June, US Congressman Allen West declared that approximately 80 Democratic members of Congress are Communists. More recently, another House member, Michele Bachmann and five of her colleagues accused others in the government of being Islamic radicals.
Very few people seemed to take them or their allegations seriously. Some called it a return to McCarthyism, others used the term “witch hunt.” John McCain called the charges “unwarranted and unfounded.”
As for me, the real issue isn’t subversives in the government, but the ones that are underground, quietly meeting and plotting to overthrow the order of things. History has shown that these types of groups have enormous power to disrupt and can alter the status quo beyond recognition. Present society doesn’t really have a chance.
There’s something endearing about revolutions. The fall of the Berlin Wall and its aftermath, the Color Revolutions and the Arab Spring all captured our imaginations and changed history.
Years later, what we remember is not so much the details, but the memes. Think of any great moment, etched in the fabric of posterity and it’s probably something not central to the story, but rather an idea or image that took hold, for whatever reason.
In 2004, I was in Kiev, Ukraine during the Orange Revolution. A lot of what I remember is probably very similar to what outsiders saw – vast seas of people waving orange, Yulia Timoshenko and her braids in better times and so on. Yet there were some other, lesser known, memes that can teach us a lot about how ideas and innovations spread.
Love him or hate him, Malcolm Gladwell has unquestionably become a cultural force. His books are instant bestsellers. His columns in the New Yorker have been known to go viral and his Ted Talks are riveting.
Yet his detractors say he plays fast and loose, glossing over facts, oversimplifying complex issues and sometimes just getting it wildly, wildly wrong. The thing is, they’re right. For anyone who wants to take shots at Gladwell, he certainly gives them plenty of ammunition.
However, it’s only fair to point out that Gladwell is not a researcher, but a journalist and a popularizer. He takes ideas from the cutting edge and brings them into the popular zeitgeist. For that, he should be commended. However, those who read him should do so with caution, there’s usually more to the story than he lets on. Here’s a rundown.
Ever since social media came on the scene, a lot of people have been talking about brands initiating meaningful conversations with consumers.
Detractors caution that consumers have other people they like to talk to, like friends, family and attractive members of the opposite sex. In their view brands that waste time and money trying “create conversations” risk annoying consumers instead of selling to them. They have a point.
Just because you need to buy socks or bathroom cleaner, doesn’t mean you want to build an entire relationship around your purchase. However, I also think that the skeptics are missing the larger issue. Every good business needs to pay close attention to market signals and digital technology is enabling us to both listen and respond exciting new ways.
What’s the big deal about the information economy anyway? Surely, information has played a role in commerce since ancient times. What’s changed?
One reason for the confusion is that we’re not used to making the distinction between information and knowledge. Go to Istanbul’s ancient Grand Bazaar and you’ll instantly grasp that the traders know a lot, but not much that they can easily share even if they want to. That, it turns out, makes all the difference.
The emergence of information as a storable, fungible entity is transforming our economy and our society in ways that we scarcely realize. It’s making us richer, smarter and even healthier. What’s more, its impact is accelerating, so we’ll see a lot more change in the coming decades than we have in the past. In fact, we’re just getting started.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crash people were saying that magazines were doomed. The story was that social media would allow amateurs to compete with professional journalists and that “big media” would die a death of a thousand cuts.
I argued at the time that the downturn looked very much like previous cycles and that there was no reason to believe that this time was any different. As the economy improved, the magazine business would too. (It did). So I’m certainly more optimistic about magazines than most.
However, both circulations and ad revenues are falling again and this time it is indeed different. The decline has nothing to do with cycles and everything to do with tablets, which are becoming central to the new media value chain. Although the challenges are not insurmountable, every publisher must adapt to survive. Here’s what’s important.
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