September's Raw Nerves

I've just watched the video below and suggest you do too. Put some time aside. It's an hour and 30 minutes. It will challenge you perceptions (I hope). And, who knows, you might be moved to ask questions. Watch it with an open mind. Open minds are better than closed ones. This is the most persuasive example of web 2.0 and Generation C at work that I have seen.

My work promotes creativity and the growth of a creative economy for New Zealand. It is crucial to our future survival in the world. But we have a number of difficulties that have to be overcome.

We are remote from the world.
Some people think that's a good thing, but it's not. The tyranny of distance from markets and stimulation makes fungible goods, on which our export economy is dependant, impractical. It also means we will always have a net outflow of youth and talent who have the Dick Whittington Syndrome.

We are small.
The world hardly registers our presence. Though, because of our well developed media infrastructure, that's not the story we hear about ourselves.

If we are going to participate on a global stage there needs to be an open, free market for ideas. The paranoid, post 911 world doesn't bode well.

Who doesn't get an inkling of a partisan, if not bigoted world. The whole 'Terror' concept is terrifying. And that is the intention. The Nazis used the technique to galvanise the frightened German population after WW1 and hate memes the likes the world has never seen before are being deployed.

Read UnSpeak.

Watch the video below. And be grateful for the web.

But most of all:
Think
Don't allow us all to descend back into the dark ages.

Comments

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse...

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St...

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si...

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