Green sandbox

Xmas reprise

2010-01-04T09:10:00.000-08:00

This is nice. Improv everywhere again.

Self interest

2009-12-22T07:44:00.000-08:00

Collage

2009-11-22T19:51:00.000-08:00

Second chance

2009-11-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

Arriving late at the Jeanne Robinson Benefit in September, I missed Jeanne's dance.
No longer. From the Stardance Movie Blog

Expanding our moral imagination

2009-11-01T07:50:00.000-08:00

So much about better solutions and better governance is covered here by author Robert Wright

Community Open Space

2009-09-13T20:46:00.001-07:00

Chris Corrigan led us through a Community Open Space on Bowen today. Some very very encouraging results. We all have skin in the game. But Wes' point holds.

Cartoon by Hugh @gapingvoid.com

Coming to Bowen Island Aug 30

2009-08-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

Anila is an incredibly kind Tibetan nun; it's a privilege hosting her here.
The event is open to everyone, Sunday, Aug 30

Dreaming for Jeanne

2009-08-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

A dear friend of ours, Jeanne Robinson, is not well. There's a fundraiser/ benefit coming up in her support. All the best Jeanne

Since 1971

2009-08-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

Social scientist Herbert Simon wrote in 1971

IN AN information rich world, the wealth of information means the death of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence the wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

- quote pulled from Chris Anderson's latest book, Free.

Back to the perfection of wisdom.

Help with work

2009-07-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

Olive, the ferret, is our newest addition. Not very handy with the keyboard yet. But a very nice animal just the same.

Coming true

2009-07-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

Three years ago, deep in the late Bush era, Tom and I came up with this cartoon. The idea was to sell it to a men's magazine. Well, we didn't get there. But it's nice to see the cartoon coming true.

I bought my oldest daughter an electric version as a grad present, and it has been a joy for all of us. It's waiting, plugged in outside as I type this.

Unbundling is cool

2009-06-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

One of the many memorable bits from Obama’s stump speeches was a promise to make politics cool again. A new citizenship aesthetic; the rebirth of cool.

IMO, cool politics comes from scraping away old notions of what is not ours, and recovering our sovereignty in the process. At the same time it is about giving. Just ask the jazz greats.

The Vancouver Changecamp is over. It was cool. Lots of enthusiasm, and a new commitment to engagement.

The slidedeck from my piece on ungovernance is below. Click on the title for slideshare tools to enlarge etc.

Unbundling Governance

View more OpenOffice presentations from mtbaldyred.

Government - the problem is in the language

2009-06-10T08:26:00.000-07:00

Jeff Jarvis, in his new book, What Would Google Do, and on his blog, demonstrates that there is an inverse relationship between control and trust.

This is an issue for governments: the more control I have of the ship... the less citizens trust it...the more disenfranchised citizens feel...the less they get involved (tax avoidance, declining volunteerism, poor voter turnout)... now the government tries to "get more involvement" from the citizens so that the government has more legitmacy, more clout. Or, in some cases, the government happily goes about what it wants to do anyway, while people are looking the other way.

The problem is in the language. A government governs. That is, Government drives.

You can't say that a government that is elected with 60% of the vote, in a 25-40% voter turnout has a mandate. Imagine instead government as something that we all do. That the seat of government is distributed. City Hall is there to help people govern themselves. Better outcomes.

Vanchangecamp unconference is coming to Vancouver.

Giving to get

2009-06-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

The problem with 'social media' is that it largely isn't.

'I do this for you in order for you to do that for me' describes a relationship that has mutual utility; it's a pale imitation of a caring relationship, and may describe the subtext of traditional business relationship.

We get surplus vitality from giving. Is giving to get social? What does this attitude do to social capital?

Godwin 2.0

2009-05-26T15:07:00.001-07:00

At Queen's University I studied some political theory, and spent a term thinking about William Godwin. He was married to feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, and their daughter was Frankenstein author Mary Shelly. Overachiever.

At school, I was enthralled by his notion that "government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind" - a thought that would have Godwin characterized as an early anarchist. He was writing at a time when the paint hadn't dried on representative democracy, and was full of ideas about forms that encourage truth and beauty. That old rub.

Govt 2.0 includes a web enabled surge of expectations, and the ability to concretely participate more effectively in our government. We are seeing decentralized governance in the deconstructed, modern workplace; the reformation of government can't be far behind.

As we begin to get more access to, and take responsibility for, our politics, cynicism is dealt a blow because government no longer has to be seen as something outside of us. This is a big change: the way we govern ourselves in private and in our neighbourhoods can, with tools for distributed governance, dovetail into broader involvement in political governance.

Government becomes less to do with influence peddling and more about empowered individuals: lots of them. I make friends with my neighbours; my conduct enables the cohesion or lack of cohesion of a self-forming neighbourhood group; we come agree on some fundamental issues (e.g. need a better way of removing snow on our steep hill), and we participate in the bigger community on this same issues using meetings and the open web; we see where our thoughts can fit into the reformation of the Official Community plan.

Because govt 2.0 isn't inherently oppositional, there is no antipathy to government - there is no anarchy. It's stable, and trustworthy...interesting to see that the people involved in the BOWEGOV project on Bowen Island are split, left and right leaning. The ooutcome is a tighter fabric, and more affordable one, because work, responsibility and reward are more evenly distributed.

John Godwin, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, John Locke, - all those writers had a zeal for human potential, and political forms that would encourage an examined life. They were humanists. In much of the Govt 2.0 thinking there is a similar sensibility; it could be that web enablement has rekindled a kind of useful idealism. The culture of openness, fail safe, & distributed intelligence is changing the workplace. It may also be providing us with a base to realize the same root of compassion that gave 17th and 18th century political theory so much resonance.

- photo via Wikipedia.

Talking to Michael Cayley

2009-05-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

Since publishing my ChangeThis manifesto, I've had the chance to speak to some great folks - including a call and follow up repartee with Toronto thought leader ( Social Value Capital Add and memetic brand) Michael Cayley.

Michael has characterized the new mediascape as IAM – "Individual as Medium", where shared perception is shifting from channel-based to social-network-infrastructure-based.

Today, messaging that tries to sublimate the target with the might of the message and its image quickly becomes obnoxious to us. Branding of this type, which I will call conventional branding, runs counter to the new sense of freedom that user controlled media delivers on. In short, this won't work. The power of the symbolic brand must make room for the power of the brand's actual social capital.

The symbolic brand will stay on as an important signifier on the supermarket aisle: we’ll continue to reach for reliable brands on the market shelf, and reject ones that we think deliver less value.

The message that lies as the heart of my paper, 'Built to Fade' is this: possibly the most egregious application of conventional branding is on supposedly “green” products. If green has to do with attention to the environment, the displacement of actual engagement with the spin of the me-brand embrace is a major disjoin; the resulting sanctimoniousness that comes with being a green “buyer” is a disjoin too. When conventional symbolic branding is applied to green products the result in the market is cynicism, and a tarnished brand. Green companies are better off exploring a different tack; those that manage the transition in messaging will blaze a successful trail.

It's natural to reach for all kinds of sedatives to sublimate our unease. Distributed networks can be this drug, as much as television, with their own promise of pseudo belonging. Companies that capitalize on our wish to live unexamined lives will do so, but this capitalization is not the same as the earned, long term trust that reliable brands will earn.

Michael notes in SCVA, that “Human capital is the primary source of competitive intangible earnings for today’s corporations.” It could be said that Social Capital Value Add has to do with the accumulation of social merit.

The brands that we reach for or are willing to pay more now have to be authentically aligned with social values, as opposed to arbitrary values dreamed up by some marketer. In the context of the environmental crisis that we face, "zero is the new black" will have, in the words of Michael Cayley, incredible memetic qualities. Looking for comapanies to explore this new aesthetic with. Michael is too.

House for rent on Bowen Island, BC

2009-04-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

We're visiting my parents, and renting out our house, July 3-10.

5 minutes to the beach. Looking for a good holiday renter.

Imagine no belonging

2009-04-21T09:02:00.000-07:00

I had a provocative conversation with the COO of a large PR company here in Vancouver. He read the Biodegredable Branding manifesto. He asked, what about the need for belonging?

Beat.

The answer is that belonging has to be more deeply realized as an expediency. We belong to little league, then we don't. We are a Lulu Lemon user, then we aren't. The big brands, from the Catholic Church, to Uncle Sam, to GM, have always been pecking at us with messaging that has taken a piece of us. They can't do this now, going forward, if they want to succeed.

Ephemeralization, in a sped up world, has cracked fundamental belonging. No-one born today will be a lifelong Mason, or Democrat, or anything else, come to think of it.

The excitement of social media can boil down to the excitement of re-living how to be a child again. We don't; can't belong in a concrete sense. Belonging, even the notion of belonging to a particular community, is temporary, an expediency. Ultimately, there is no community or state to belong to, and a sped up world rips the covers off of cocoon of belonging at increasingly regular intervals.

The critical path is managing temporary but meaningful association without excessive attachment. Crack this, and a deeper sense of belonging unfolds.

If we try, we can imagine unbelonging. And practicing this, and practicing this in the branding profession, is a next, difficult step.

Shine and fade

2009-04-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

It's not a very complex idea, but probably needs explanation. We want to shine and twinkle, we want our projects to shine and twinkle, but forget that what gives the twinkle its twinkle is not just the shining: it is the fading and the shining, then bursting through the obscuration of light.

Shine that persists is glitz.
Shine that persists is glitz.

Glitz is on the TV, in the magazine, in the everlasting smile on Tony the Tiger's face. In reality, persistence isn't possible, of course; our life is cyclic, and uninterrupted shine that endures usually involves some toxic residue.

Suggesting that the persistent branding approach doesn't work for green products and services; it may be that it's well into the cusp of failing globally for conventional products as well.

It's an end to class as we know it, and I feel fine.

2009-04-07T21:41:00.000-07:00

Open infrastructures mean an end to class as we know it.

Take photographers. There used to be a stereotype, maybe perpetrated by Antonioni and others, that equated photographer = the guy with the scarves and the bags under his eyes. The David Hemmings character in Blow Up was, if you like, a class archetype. The photographer class had its own brand identity, and various scarcities that helped keep people in this class in a bubble.

The photographers' bubble has recently burst, of course. The positioning of self as “photographer” was probably always a reductionist piece of foolishness, but now more than ever this kind of positioning is stripped bare. Specialized, private know-how is open to anyone with access to a browser. Camera technology is also available to most people, and, though the significance of artistry and experience still hold, amateurs and aspirants can always concentrate, and often catch a wave; anyone can take great pictures, sometimes.

If you make a living doing something, people will still say, “S/hes a [insert career brand here]” But no amount of scarves and attitude and equipment will help someone who wants to be classified as a photographer if that person doesn’t make a living at it – any more than a someone who doesn’t create or build a restaurant can be considered a restauranteur. To call someone who doesn’t make a living at it "a photographer" means he could, by the same token, be called a dishwasher if s/he washes a few dishes.

In more open systems, class barriers break down. An author was once considered truly an author when s/he was published. Now anyone can publish. The author class, now stripped of barriers, is gone. If Bob makes $4,000 a year writing, is he in the writer class? I guess, but he is, put more accurately, a "bunch of things."

Similarly, as political systems become more open, the walls of the “legislator” class fall down, and what is left is just people who contribute to legislation. Some get paid to do it, and we often call them "legislators" when they do, but in fact that is a kind of shorthand that doesn't tell the whole truth. They do other things too. The legislator class, in a world of open access, is disappearing.

We are, depending on how you look at it, getting rid of the wankers, or gaining a population sized load of them.

What the change means is not the end of the professions, but the end of the professional class. This doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with a decline of quality, but it is, arguably, pointing to the end of self-as-career stereotyping and the end of many other types of spurious protectionism.

Bluetrain

2009-03-27T09:27:00.001-07:00

Things are going well at MonkeyMedia and in our local self governance, vanchangecamp initiative. Great folks.
Today my Bluetrain print (76 of 85) arrived.
Good times.

Go epic

2009-03-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

Pic from Ariel Waldman. Slide from ShaderLab

Thinking about Jefferson

2009-03-19T16:06:00.000-07:00

Bowen Island Ourselves is up. Will see what people do with it.

Really interesting review of a really interesting looking book - Jefferson's Moose. The book is " is a conversation with Jefferson’s ideas about building representative, republican government and the implications of those ideas for cyberspace."

Not the kind of sustainabiity I had in mind.

2009-03-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

Second comic in the new series.

The best of times

2009-03-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

“You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ...’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”

Thomas L Friedman, "The Inflection Is Near?" in today's New York Times.

When bigger and better are thwarted, you reach a difficult point; we're there.