MINIFESTO – Easter note to myself

Posted on April 8, 2012 by

I am not the tool – technology will be of service or I will not use it

I am more than the sum of my data – It is my data and I decide who sees and shares it

I will maintain a healthy scepticism towards the ‘next new thing’

I am responsible for my reputation – trust and respect is earned by sharing

I am living virtually in the real world – feet on the ground, mind in the cloud

I will be a life-long co-learner  - networks and collaborations are to be vigorously embraced

I will take time to disconnect from the Net and reconnect with myself, family, and friends

Posted in culture, Digital Activism, Digital Identity | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT: IT’S CALLED YOU!

Posted on April 1, 2012 by

Not too many people can own homes these days, but they can have fairly inexpensive access to their digital house in cyberspace, via mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc. And then begins the work of keeping up with the Jones’. It’s no surprise that “the next new thing” is all the rage. That’s to be expected with any new technological shift. And it’s no surprise that everything is beginning to look the same… ticky tacky apps, ticky tacky platforms, ticky tacky thinking.

What we are seeing is the homogenization of us as the next ‘cash crop‘ – the livestock in the stacks, as Bruce Sterling called it at his wrap up to this year’s SXSW Interactive. The stacks – Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google – are the walled gardens to which we all provide the content and information that allow them to sell us and our data to advertizers and marketers. The good news – they all crumble eventually (remember Netscape, AOL, My Space?). The bad news – not before turning the Baskin Robbins multiple-flavors, multiple-toppings potential of the Net into a bland vanilla-only offering; and us along with it!

That’s the herd mentality of marketing – get them in line, wanting the same thing, and serve ‘em up. “Would you like that in white or black?” Make no mistake, advertising and marketing are the biggest drivers of tech and our futures. And we need to resist it the same way we resisted TV and magazine ads.  We are becoming the product and tech is just dressing us up to all look and think the same.

As Jaron Lanier says, in You Are Not a Gadget, “Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.”

I saw a good quote the other day that puts it into perspective…”Sometimes I pretend to be normal. But it gets boring, so I go back to being me.”

 

 

 

Posted in culture, Digital Identity, WWW | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

YOUR AUDIENCE SHOULD BE YOURSELF

Posted on December 19, 2011 by

With the mad rush to Social Media, personal branding and all the other non-essential madness taking place, be sure YOU don’t get left behind. Unless you’ve got a Paris Hilton complex, your audience should be yourself.

Critical and reflective thinking only take place when you are the audience; without respect to what anyone else thinks and with no other end in sight but your own personal development. That’s getting lost in the rush to Social and Mobile. Sure it’s fun to be part of the crowd, share pictures and videos, and stay current with old friends while making new ones. But, don’t get lost in the shuffle of it all. Besides the time suck, it can be a complete misdirection of what you should be doing. If you are carrying a Smart Phone it is an even bigger suck.

Do yourself a favor this holiday season, turn it all off for a day and catch up with yourself. You may find you’ve forgotten who you are.

Posted in culture, Digital Identity, WWW | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Personal Branding: How Not to Become a Box of Soap

Posted on November 21, 2011 by

There are two big shifts happening in culture as we transition to digital – the move from individualism to being viewed as an individual, marketable data point, and the move to becoming a collaborative society.

Beyond Tocqueville’s Telescope: The Personalized Brand and the Branded Self, in the Fall 2011 issue of Hedgehog Review (article not available online) got me to thinking about another dynamic occurring as people establish their online identities. Marketing has effectively taken over the data behind the scenes in Social Media with every permission and access given. Now it is moving to the front and center of the stage as people begin branding themselves – using all the techniques of marketing to push and shape their digital identities for maximum exposure and connectivity, higher Klout scores, and improved social reputation.

The authors, Arlie Hochschild and Sarah B. Garrett, point out this reflects a major shift in our culture – from a society that prizes individualism to one that prizes marketing of the individual. Media has been utilized to bombard us with advertising. It used to be a 20th century survival skill to be able to ignore TV and radio ads – you could change the channel, turn down the volume or just shut it off. In the 21st century, marketing permeates everything. As more of our attention shifts to screens, it is far more difficult to turn off. We are tracked every time we open a page, grant a permission to a new app, click on a link. It is pervasive in the shift to digital. The first rule of marketing is “own the data”, and we give ours away all day long.

Now the shift is subtly moving to the other side of the equation. It is no longer just marketing targeting each one of us, we are beginning to treat our identities as simply one more piece of data to be marketed. Personal branding is the new big thing – just google it. Vanity sites, profiles, avatars and icons, posts, tweets, shares, +1′s, favorites, likes, etc. all serve to promote and define our identities. Klout, PeerIndex, and new metrics serve to measure how you are doing compared to other folks, areas of influence, trust and authority indexes; of course YOU are just a data point. You might as well be a box of soap, and the sooner you see yourself as such, the sooner your scores will increase.

It is what it is. I’m not sounding the alarm, only pointing out what we are up against as we homestead on the digital frontier. We need to take care as we define and represent ourselves. As human beings we are marked by growth and the multiple facets of our personalities and how we wish to present and represent them – we change and evolve, we are more than a new and improved box of soap to be re-branded or marketed.

Along side all of this another big shift is occurring all over the world -we are becoming collaborators. It is no longer knowledge that is king and all the “me against them” thinking that goes with it. It is who you know, your networks, who you collaborate with – and how you are known among them. It is one big US with a shift of consciousness to follow.

Be more than a box of soap!

Posted in culture, Digital Identity | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

DIGITAL IDENTITY – NATURE, NURTURE AND NETWORKS

Posted on October 8, 2011 by
Symbol for templates, similar to Image:Symbol ...

Image via Wikipedia

Digital Identity Mapping is going to be one of the next big tools in our online skill set and there are a lot of issues and questions involved. As we extend ourselves and our identities onto the  the Web, the networks we create and participate in essentially work to define and shape who we are and how we are known and perceived. It’s a much bigger sandbox we play in now and much of the neighborhood is unknown territory to the average user. Algorithms, feedback loops, and filter bubbles immediately come into play as our identity is aggregated and re-aggregated in the simple acts of posting, liking, favoriting, +1′ing, etc.  If you aren’t managing your identity it is being managed for you and that is going to have increasingly far reaching consequences for your future success and happiness. Employers now regularly vet an applicant’s social media pages, Google their names, and gather all the online data they can to make a digitally informed decision regarding potential employment. Insurance companies do the same – what does your online behavior say about your lifestyle and categories of risk? And on and on. Marketers have you coming and going; they know your buying behaviors, media tastes, income level… and target you accordingly.

As the identity map above indicates, we are more than the sum of our parts – but what a lot of parts we have to consider when tripping the digital light fantastic! Big issues here – first of all, privacy and control: who owns and manages your identity – you or Facebook, Google+, Twitter and iTunes? Right now they own us and allow us to play in their walled gardens and parks while we are a target for marketers. Privacy settings and control require an almost superhuman effort in order to maintain an image you wish to project rather than the aggregation of behaviors they reinforce in their algorithms. Buy an iPad – you are limited to the iTunes garden; jailbreak it and you go to digital hell. Buy a Kindle Fire – you are limited to the Amazon garden, a big one yes, but still you’re limited where you can play and targeted immediately.

Social capital, reputation, and branding are the next big issues. You are what you post, and you are what your audience  likes, favorites, retweets, shares, and +1′s. Your social identity is shaped by the tools used by the site you use. You are limited by that and reinforced by that. It’s a computer program after all, it has its limitations and by its very design defines us and dictates how we can be known; nuance and individuation is not a big ticket item here. These things aggregate and we are merely data points. Fair warning and heads up when playing in these parks.

We have to be our own advocates, manage our own identities, own our own words and take responsibility for our reputations. If we don’t, we are going to become just another brick in the walls of their gardens.

OCCUPY THE WEB!

Posted in culture, filters and tools, WWW | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

OCCUPY WALL STREET: THE EVOLUTION OF SMART MOB REVOLUTION

Posted on October 6, 2011 by
The corner of Wall Street and Broadway, showin...

Image via Wikipedia

The Arab Spring may well morph into the Winter of America’s discontent; welcome to Smart Mobs. What’s currently confusing to the establishment is the lack of a well-stated agenda for the Occupy Wall Street movement. That’s due to the fact that this is a distributed network and platform for digital conversation – a meshwork.  The media is quickly finding out that you can’t put a label of left, anarchist, hippie, idle trouble makers,or anything else on this and make it go away, because the network is capable of embracing everyone with a voice.  Due to its leaderless structure the movement will not be hijacked by some group’s particular agenda, as was so typical in the 60′s.

The establishment has no idea what they are fighting because it is amorphous. Still in it’s infancy, it remains to be seen what will come of it all. But a few points are worth making. As a platform and network, Occupy Wall Street will provide a national conversation outside of Wall Street and Washington. The American people will be able to talk among themselves rather than having to petition or respond to those in power within the strictures of their agenda. That is fundamentally new and the “powers” will be baffled for some time to come as to how to respond, as well as how to shut it down. Already there are more than 30 cities around the country organizing local ‘Occupy’s', each with its own unique structure.

And, if you haven’t noticed, they are Smart….digitally savvy, well-versed in protest dynamics, and passionately committed. Woe be to the reporter who puts a camera in front of any of these folks, as Fox News Network found out this week.This is going to provide a flash-point for all the discontent and dissatisfaction that every poll reveals concerning the systemic disruption of our economic system, political system and just about every other societal structure caught up in the global transition to a New Age.  Whether you are Left, Center, Right, Conservative, Moderate or Progressive there will be a place for you to voice your questions, concerns, solutions or just vent your emotions.

Like A Field of Dreams, if you build it they will come. The uniqueness of our digital age is that you can build it in a ‘Flash’ and they will come in a nanosecond. Not to worry, our country was built on this kind of protest, we’ll survive and be better for it.

Look out America, here comes the Americans!

Posted in culture, Digital Activism | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

CAUSE AND EFFECTS – THE BIGGER PICTURE OF THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION

Posted on October 1, 2011 by
Black Background image showing Moore's Law

Image via Wikipedia

Let’s take a look at what’s cookin’ in the digital kitchen these days.

There are 3 big causes and 2 big effects that impact everything, before we even start a meal: Moore’s Law, Metcalf’s Law, Reed’s Law, the Network Effect and, newly arrived, the Lanier Effect.

Now, let’s spice things up with Dunbar’s Number, Systems Disruption, Cognitive Overload and Meshworks. Sauce it all up with your Personal Learning Network and InfoTools and serve warm.

And that’s pretty much what’s on all our plates. I’ll let you decide how to set your table.

Posted in culture, filters and tools, WWW | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments