The Venice Sessions

Sounds like I should go back and write..

Let’s start with the Venice Sessions.. It is a yearly Innovation event, held in Venice (really?? How weird…), sponsored and run by Telecom Italia, the Italian incumbent telecom operator (again.. redundant explanantion!?!?! )… I am now listening to Ahmad Humeid, a Jordan entrepreneur and blogger (http://www.360east.com/)

It is most interesting to notice that the Internet would be one of the preferred channel to improve and foster freedom and innovation, and the work to be done is huge when considering that, for instance, the Arabic version of Wikipedia is still far too small to cater for the needs of more than 600 million Arabic speaker..

Apart from the fact that I thought Arabic speakers were slightly more, but the call for more contents and critical knowledge in the Arabic perimeter is highly interesting…. I have cases to mention in which the attempt to foster innovation in the Arabic world goes via a far to aggressive digestion of “westernised” contents and practices…

Creative Commons, Al Jazeera, Twitter, content production, UGC…all at your disposal to understand and open up your mind..

Nice to be back!! and apologies for having written just few, very trivial words, but heck, before the marathon I have to prepare for the 10 Km and the Half..!!

I love my books, despite e-books

Since quite a long time, I have been debating about technology usage, and stressed the fact that, quite often, users can be divided into:

§

§Systematic Users. Those who will immediately dig into the new features, swapping massively from legacy technology / social interactions.

§Critical Users. Those who will approach new features as a potential alternative to fit into a consolidated pattern of legacy technology / social interaction.

Now, that actually applies to books, as it seems from this survey. It is sometimes incredible how fundamental aspects of a consumer experience, intangibles, social history and current demographic evolutions are skimmed over by tech marketeers.. a book is not only a repository of information, it is not only a waste of a piece of a rainforest (albeit it is somewhat an usage of an otherwise scarce commodity such as, yep, a forest tree..)(ok, some editors may recycle, appreciate that..), a book is a personal, full-bodied, complex experience that, nevermind what, can be rendered by the most advanced of eText book reader…

You enjoy stepping into a bookstore, browse the shelves, look at covers and wander what’s inside, you weight the colors, loose yourself in that maelstrom of printed words and weird characters..then, later, your listening to the crisp noise of the turning of the first page is something close to meditation, and the smell…

It is not just digesting information, is a tactile, multisensorial experience about someone else’s dreams. Then, clearly, I may accomodate some tech into my personal library, but alongside, very purposely, targeted, whatever.. BUT, nevermind the eBooks, do not touch my collection of worn-down paperbacks and hard covers!! Could kill..

Notes and unstructured thoughts on 2.0… Homo 2.0???

I have to admit, this blog is also very useful to have all your notes in one place, some sort of repository of (hopefully) fairly intelligent thinking…

So, since I will have to work pretty heavily on the entire spectrum of the 2.0 saga, I have to jot down some notes… ah, yep, I will be part of the discussion tables at the closing event of the IDC Innovation Forum that will be held in Milan next March (here is the info and whereabouts of the Forum), with the likes of Don Tapscott, Derrick De Kerckhove and a stack of Web pundits, artists and creatives, it will be a blast, believe me!!

Right, so… notes… the evolutionary path is, quite nicely indeed, a sort of step back to the village-like, tribal relationships of the societies pre-industrial revolution. There is a reprise, this time thanks to technology and with no Luddites in sight, of the necessity to exchange human relationship with the “piazza” of my liking.

It is even more important aspects of this evolution. Globally, you may have noticed, there is a massive outburst of social-related activities, themes, actions, whatever… green campaigns, humanitarian efforts, sustainable economies, cultural crossovers, it is a huge mixing, bridging, communicating, helping.. it seems like there is a real, planetary conscience that is guiding some acts of a large number of people.

I happened to discuss this with some Web experts at the recent Enteprise 2.0 conference and with a couple of university professors in the past couple of weeks, and we were all very interested of the implications. The question was whether it is the Web-network evolution that have ignited the process or it is rather a genetic attitude of mankind to seek for the community that has enabled the Web to become the social network we know today. The more techy amongst us actually feel like the hype and the “media” coverage upon Internet since the early 2000s is the real engine of this renewed planetary surge of the masses, whilst there has been a flimsy quoting the Band Aid in1984 as potentially the first massive conscience raising that have triggered the necessity to a better and more tight communication amongst actors in the social canvass… nice altogether.. guess we can really state that all the most innovative or evolutionary tech advances stem from a “communication” need, that is for sure..

What is more interesting it the actual disintegration of some capitalistic logics thanks to the Web and the social implication deriving from an hyper-connected World. The shift of power from producers to users is a substantial change in the orthodoxy and liturgy of the economy rite. What is indeed scarcely perceived and increasingly kept under the radar by who-knows-who is the actual revolutionary power of the Web as it is structured nowdays. It would be possible to reorganise and determine social canvasses, political agendas, country foreign political position by the power of referral, by free-flowing information, by scarcely controllable exchange of view points by geographically dispersed groups of people.. you know what I intend, being “discussant” is ever more powerful than simply being “listener”.. yet, this is kept under control by painting the entire “thing” as a youngish, sort of head-in-the-clouds stuff, the social Web is about SecondLife, some music sharing quite often via illegal platforms, photos, videos and rubbish like that.. you know, young stuff has never been very dangerous.. whilst the reality is about a massive net of brains working in well determined and shared directions.

I am personally stressing the concept of “brain-sourcing” as the highest effect of the “crowdsourcing” phenomena or the entire social evolution of the Web.. more so, why not using “GridBraining”????

So, it is a new specimen of human being that is born before our eyes or it is simply a permutation of the actual?? Is the Web something we use, we live, or is a prosthetic of our selves??? There is something like an “Homo 2.0″??? Video of my presentation at the Turin School of Business (audio in italian, for the slides let me know,  it is IDC stuff and copyrighted..) … More to come…

2008: escape from Facebook…

… call me Snake…

And with that you thought you could master your way out of Facebook reach!?!?!? Wrong!!

The NYT reported a sort of nightmarish ordeal to have your data removed from Facebook servers once and for all… it actually reminds me of some lines I read some time ago about the spectacular attitude people have got recently in giving out large chunks of owns identities, despite all the fuss about privacy and personal data protection.. we are all cache-ing quite happily our beloved information, much more interested into adding friends to the already almost-useless pile of horrid nicks, without even considering than all those stored infos may be used against our desires, or as it seems will reside forever somewhere in the Net.. is it a new form  of eternity we are all seeking?? Becoming a long string of 0 and 1 is the ultimate in cloning??!?!?

On the serious side, there were already some concerns about the type-happy attitude we have all got, particularly since the idea of sharing infos amongst sites to speed up logging in procedures and such is increasingly under scrutiny..

I believe there was a “dissertation” here (text in Italian) about our online attitude towards sharing-socialising-posting… as said

we are what we browse

we are what we message

we are what we chat

we are what we mail

we are every information we produce, access or transform

and every change we make in the matrix is and always will be us!

Just a thought, mind you…

IMF estimates, the economy and that stuff..politics…

The new IMF estimates about the economic condition on a global scale are telling a story where the word “recession” may not be explicitly mentioned, but “subprime crisis” makes the headlines.

Overall, there is a contraction of 0.3%, from a former 4.4% growth rate to the actual 4.1% (and a 4.9% in 2007…), given the impact of the crisis from the “Gekko” dashboard to the real economy. The US economy, unsurprisingly enough, bears the premium of a further reduction, -0.4% over the latest forecast, to a mere 1.5% of, say, organic growth, which will be coupled with some “spill-over” from 2007 to rise the US economy by2.2%.

Europe will be massively hit by the crisis, considering a reduction from Autumn’s forecast by 0.5 percentage points, an overall 1.6%, and a sliding off path more marked during the last quarter (same thing apply to the US, for consistency purposes!!). China and all emerging markets will slow down a bit, the Dragon will slip back from an initial 11.4% to a current 10%, allowing some overheating pressure over the economy to ease, but more notably the African countries will augment their positive impact on a global scale, posting a nice 7% growth, one percentage point above 2007 results. We saw that coming, supported also by Far East investments and “petro-dollars”. However, the IMF notes that

the deteriorating economic conditions could exacerbate pressures on major financial institutions that have already suffered big losses from the subprime crisis.

A nice warning, but quite off-timing I dare say… we are all wandering what actually is the work done to align risk management practices to the Basel 2 requirements..

Still.. if we apply what happened in the US, and the potential spillover of the subprime crisis to the credit environment (potential??? The Amex results yesterday – 10% decline in net income and some “$438m set aside to cover bad loans” stated the Financial Times) are chanting that story for a supposed above-par marketplace, nevermind the rest…) is it possible that another financial black hole may open up in East Europe??

Quite interestingly, the current Italian political turmoil, according to the IMF, should not affect the overall performance, set over a “healthy” path and stressing that all political conditions are “a worry” but all forecast are made on a pure economic evaluation… as if the two aspect, in a modern ans systemic socio-economic ecosystem, are totally separated and with no area of cross-over and influence!!!

It is so incredibly short-sighted not to consider the “system” as the real ruler of all human interactions and the main pillar for a viable and “effective” future… we may need to see a shift in global power and importance towards the East and the South of the World before realising we have missed a chance..

OK, stepping into far too complicated realms to be addressed in a short blog post, yet if anybody is at all interested I am more than happy to take it to an higher level!!!!

Davos 2008 opening day…

Today is the opening day of the annual Davos Economic Forum, and the scenario is hard to forget: first of all, a magnificent and perfectly winterly landscape, a tad spoiled by a significant global financial shake off, a ever so complicated balance between the East and the West of the World, a tactical shift of business confidence from developed markets actors to the rampant ones, notably India, China, Russia, Mexico.. also I would add there is the awaiting of Bush’s closing act and the stabilisation of the Persian area, the growing interest in ripping out part of Sub-Saharan Africa from famine and foster a new markeplace (with Chinese and Arabic money, perhaps?!?), the role Europe will take over the global chessboard, given its internal extreme differences, both in economic and political terms and an invisible parallel divides North and South as never before, I would argue..

Climate changes, financial turmoil, political unrest, the ingredients are ready to build up a spectacular first course.. or the perfect storm, this depending on the intelligence and social responsibility level all the top guns in Davos will show…

Let’s hope for the best…

How social are you?? Fast enough??

I have started my blogging experience a little short of a year ago, and I have to admit it has been rewarding and challenging, fun and worrisome, but most of all it has been like a long, unplanned backpacking trip along the roads of social evolution and global changes! And, should you be so nice to have read me all along this time, it is a bless for a curious being the like of myself..

I have started this personal journey when MySpace was one of the coolest place to be in, SecondLife was supposed to position as the next big thing for human interaction and business ventures, one year ago there were articles about how cool is blogging about, the entire 2.0 was an humongous affair encompassing and including the whole of mankind and any aspect derived from it (almost, say…).

Then, I went on holiday in Tanzania, Zanzibar to be precise, and spent a whole week without even thinking about wearing shoes, my feet gorging on white and warm sand and more white and warm sand, my skin crackling into the African sun..let alone considering the World stressed about whether being 1.0 or 2.0 or x.0 at all…

I stepped into a plane, packed full with over-talkative holiday village goers, and slowly but surely I hit the -2° in Milan… a night sleep, on it was the PC the morning after and here it is…

MySpace has been dubbed as “uncool”, nevermind the overall results (incidentally, this drop in page views I saw it first mentioned here, dating back Sept. 11th.. ouch…), SecondLife seems to have trouble in mocking the real world as someone was hoping it would have done (silly, silly, silly!!!), recently the most “real” stuff, money, has been quite regulated and there is no longer that “be there, be rich” sort of approach (something along the lines of the first appearance of the Web in our daily existence back in, say, ‘95), and most of all there is no longer such ranting about “2.0″….

More importantly, CES in Las Vegas has finally completed the transition to a “business-determined” social ecosystem to a “consumer-driven” fabric… I read endless analysis concentrating on how the corporate environment has to mimic the private users dynamics, how important is to accomodate users’ needs, also in technology terms, as to foster a superior working environment, tailored and geared to make the most of each individual working style and “social graph”….

Now, this is the next one you will be pestered about in the coming months: SOCIAL GRAPH.

Six degree of separation, networks, nodes and hubs, this is all making the news, together with complexity theory and chaos.. finally someone have made the point: interconnecting more than a billion people is not as simple as plugging a PC into the socket.. it is a matter of re-defining the social canvass, it is a matter of managing a life of endless information streaming across the planet, it is about one, large, living organism… quite a long time ago I posted about what I called LITO, Living Information Technology Organism.. we may all want to go back and study evolutionary theories instead that SecondLife for Dummies…

Welcome back, I hope a marvellous 2008 for all of you!!! It will be a nice ride, stay tuned!!

Death penalty moratorium at UN and nobody cares????

I am slightly concerned… yesterday the UN assembly voted a moratorium on death penalty, 104 nations wanted it to stop, 54 are still believing in death sentence as a deterrent or a solution… seemingly, the Italian diplomacy played a significant role in aggregating consensus, for once it actually did something valuable..

Problem is: I have found no mention of the event (’cause it is an event…) in the Web sites of international newspapers around the globe… from Australia to USA, travelling with the Sun, I have not encountered one mention of it…

Now, I trust that things like “what’s wrong with Hillary’s wardrobe” may be utterly interesting, a massive robbery at Cartier it is also a hit, Amy Winehouse being released will finally let me have a decent night’ sleep, and forth, but I personally believe that communicating a decision like starting to stop killing people by law, on a global basis, is sort of relevant to mankind…

Unless, and this is the scary thought, it is all a fad by the Italian press and politicians, given the present gloomy atmosphere around the political enclave inhabiting Rome it could well be a childish attempt to reinvigorate the national love for the ruling caste!!  (Obviously joking… obviously..)

Could you please help me out on this, and drag me out of embarrassment?? Any news??? Something I have missed???

Ah, yep, merry Xmas…..

Google..MyStuff, RE<C, maps… the Fantastic Duo wants to save our lives!?!?!

In Mountain View it seems that saving the World is currently taking a whole new meaning and a boost.. Google declares its intention to launch a “green” initiative, called RE<C or “Renewable Energies cheaper than Coal”, which should be supported by spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” to hire engineers and experts to study the issue and find a likely solution, first and foremost to cut down the company internal energy bill and, how kind, to distribute the amassed knowledge to the rest of the “common people”..

Furthermore, it is today’s news that the company is planning to launch a service called My Stuff (courtesy of Corriere della Sera and Wall Street Journal), which basically is a remote archiving capability, pretty much like the Yahoo service, but with easier access dynamics and, arguably, a significant amount of free space. Access to My Stuff should be allowed to any user terminal, from desktop to mobile phones and PDA, provided there is an Internet connection at hand, whether this will be supported by Wi Fi, cellular 3G networks (UMTS or HSDPA) is not further specified. Clearly, the service itself is a nice add, there may be issues on how to handle data privacy and compliance to different country regulations, also the Web connectivity is a plus and a drawback (poor coverage in some areas, connection that may go down, no connection at all – e.g. on airplanes – but I trust those issues have been or will be tackled accordingly. Personally, if I want to have infos always with me, I may want to use a multi gigabyte pen-drive, or a SD card, again it depends on the planned usage of the data…

Are those Google chaps going a bit too far, or really we may end up having a small, real small bunch of ICT players, a sort of super power-houses to serve us all???

I still have a Moleskine in my drawer with the most sensitive infos…

Please, would you Kindle drop down that book??

Technology is, clearly, a never-ending race or, as someone put it nicely, “Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born” (yep, Alan Kay, to be precise..), so it seems unavoidable that someone will try (again) to invent, re-invent or envision a bit-and-byte device to substitute all those heavy, environmental unfriendly, space-wasting and, heck, dust collectors called books!!!!! When that innovation-evolution-revolution comes from the very company that made the book itself one of the most rewarding business items on the Planet, an appropriate and bias-free thought is due. Bezos and his Amazon announces the creation and launch of Kindle, the ultimate reading machine..

First, a reading on Newsweek for the “Bezos’ pensiero“, aka his philosophy and the fundamentals behind this tech launch.. I let you go over the detail and the tech specification of the object (notably a sleek, whitish piece of tech… anyone??!?!?), whilst I would like to focus on a couple of remarks.

It has been made a comparison between the digitisation of other media, such as music and video, and for argument’ sake I may question that music went from a vinyl-based experience, enhanced through the years via superior playing and sound amplification capability, to a CD-based reproduction and lately to the full digital mp3 (and Bros..). Vinyl and CD has got roughly the same “playing liturgy”, whilst the mp3 family goes back to replicate and enhance the “walkman” style (a walkable substitute of vinyl via cassettes..), gaining in music storage space / handling and output quality. Bottom line: the acts, the experience of the user was similar to the ol’ days, gains were mainly in space, music library “management”, and quality of output. Then, if in a rainy and cold day you put on a vinyl of Nina Simone or the digitalised version of it, pretty much the same (someone would argue vinyls were more “alive” than the perfection of CDs..). Video goes pretty much along the same lines, better picture, easy storage and management, and the rest.. experience is again fairly similar in its inner procedures, the actual liturgy!

Now, the book… could we say it is an entirely different matter??? You do your thinking, but I believe there are more “senses” involved to make the experience invaluable, the liturgy about reading a book and using an eBook is to me entirely different. One point to the book to this one.

On the other hand, as posted in other occasions, it is not a matter of being a “systematic” user of the new Kindle, but rather finding the own critical way of putting it into our personal technology mix. Do you love to read your Chatwin novels but simply browse and use business books??? Is it great for you to have all those quantum mechanics reference texts in the backpack but you are not the size of a Canadian lumberjack?? There you go.. Kindle does the trick!!

Let me put it in a different way… today Milan has got a wintery set up, sky is grey and kind of rainy, it is cold.. I would love to sit in a comfy armchair, a superb cup of coffee to sip and a nice BOOK to read… now, incidentally I am at work, I have to prepare a presentation to deliver with my speech at the School of Business Administration in Turin, it is about Digital Ecosystems and Professional Networks, I may want to read a few things and would love to go and SEARCH on my Kindle about, say, “metaverse” and “business”… I can browse and access to knowledge, I could potentially link together the power of Internet (reference, information..) with the batch-approach to info-digestion a “kindle” would provide: I find, buy and read when needed, off-line.. cool..

Experience is something complex and multifaceted, we live multi-experience lifestyles, and it would be utterly restrictive to believe there won’t be differences anymore in one’s daily activities… there will be a time for a book, there will be also a time for Kindle, for some those will converge and melt into something new, for others there will always be two separate and rewarding experience nonetheless.

Difference and divergence still make the difference, after all, every innovation stems out from someone diverging from status quo…

UPDATE: you may want to browse through this “live performance”… and do not forget to click and jump to the Amazon site, there is the new born baby in all its glory!!!!

China hottest IPO??? Nope, World’s largest IPO!!

China got its financial champion!!! It is largest than Exxon and General Electric, the two biggest companies in the World and symbols of a certain economic and corporate power, it grew 160+% on its first trading day, to reach the stunning level of £1,000bn, you put down all the necessary “zeros” .. PetroChina blasted the financial community!

So, the Celestial Empire has got its necessary muscles, there should be plenty of cash (the IPO raised $9bn, another record..) to foster and support further “deals” across the World, and we should expect some subtle geopolitical imbalances.. China, as already mentioned, represents for part of the World a substantial threat, a problem, an economic conundrum to some, a natural hazard, a menace.. mainly, it is rather a physical formula that makes China something to watch out for, kinetic energy

OK, the physicists amongst you will immediately surge in disgust for my using this formula in such an improper context, but bear with me, the idea is about a great mass taking up unprecedented speed… it will be difficult to stop, as it will be to direct it to a spectacular and sustainable growth path. There are some structural variables of the Chinese phenomena which are not yet displaying their full potential (either supportive or destructive, it depends) but, considering the size, those variables will play a massive role in setting the pace and the faith of the Asian giant and furthermore the destiny of the geopolitical balance of the area (if not considering it could be a global influence we are talking here..). Wealth imbalances, working conditions, energy supply, environmental hazards, financial stability, coherence with social standard at global level, and above and beyond civil rights and freedom, those are aspects that the Chinese bridge commanders have or will have to analyse pretty thoroughly.. and sort out properly.

According to Friedman’s theory of the Golden Arches

No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s

China and US should be going along if not nicely, at least in a bearable fashion, but as already pointed out there is an issue here about the notion of war… economic, cyber, political, social… are all new forms or permutation of the old mankind sin????

My argument is about the viral destructive power wealth unbalances may have in an unprepared social system, particularly when supported by an increase in communication and permeability to “inputs” on “how it should be” (aka knowledge).. to sustain growth a system has to increase the level of preparedness and thus approach the “capitalist” factors (including productivity, innovation, financial strength) and leverage on those.. but the more you dig into being a capital fortress, the more you older system values crumble down to be replaced by the newest.. if transition is not perfectly driven by the “governors”, an uneven social fabric may be the breeding ground for system instability. This seems to be the case of China, as of today.

From a Western standpoint, the PetroChina IPO is a stunning event, from a geopolitical observation, this is a potential new nail into some unspecified coffin… but the slamming of the hammerhead is quite distinct. And it is unclear who’s working it.

China goes safari… hunting banks..

I believe that most people have noticed that there is a massive economic and geopolitical struggle going on in Asia since quite a long time.. to cut that short (any drill down most than welcome and I would like to discuss it with any of you..), China is today the most powerful threat to USA on Earth, US are building up (or trying to..) a “wall” of cross alliances to limit the energy of the Chinese steamtrain (a revamped friendship with Japan, an attempt to equalize troubles in Korea, missed out badly with Russia..and more..UPDATE: sorry, forgot India in the count!!!!!), and attempting to choke the country in a”war” to control oil pricing (which China is sort of dodging with agreements in Nigeria, Angola, Congo, and South America, plus I believe some rejuvenated interest in nuclear.. want to see that one..) and block some markets …

In an nice turnaround, China is strengthening its presence into the potentially massive African marketplace, via (also…) acquisitions in the financial services sector. ICBC buys into South Africa’s banks enclave… what could be better for China to let some of its cash out to troubled Africa for, say, some rights over the immense wealth the “savannah” actually holds?? Would be possible for China to lead African development and artificially foster the creation or explosion of an easily manageable marketplace, perfect for its less-costly industrial production?? Should check it more carefully, certainly, but nothing happens without a reason, and even more so when considering geopolitical moves…

Thoughts welcome..

Italy, Italians and a country free fall..

I am back from my usual week end off.. Milan is welcoming me with a saddish clouded sky, the Southern wind usually does that, it brings clouds and humidity, it turns everything so sticky, and it seems that the sand in the air, coming from the South Eastern deserts, drives you nuts, everybody is so nervous, tense, on the verge…

That is a perfect condition for what has been broiling for some time here in the Bel Paese.. firstly it was very much Italian.. always discussing, always scorning, always complaining about politics, politicians, the country, the laws, the taxes and everything else you could ever complain about.. it made the conversation at bars and dehors, it added some critical sparkle to otherwise marvellous cobbled stone hallways full of cheers.. and this is the way we would like to consider Italy: a stunning country populated by nice people, with some witty tongues and a ever-present critical attitude towards “the establishment”. It all made such a superb holiday brochure..

Then the truth..

A country that, in a decade of history, has been steadily falling to pieces, sliding down in every possible ranking apart from those regarding the less appealing features of a country: pollution, criminality, scandals, financial debts and a bunch of others, including a poor research and development investment, appalling country infrastructure, a low level Internet distribution and knowledge, somewhat primitive use of IT (regardless what someone may claim, we are talking “country” here…), let alone a ridiculous education system… in a few words, a Janus-like country… blessed by Nature, offended by its own people.

The past years have been peppered by scandals (political, social, economic ones..) that until recently made mostly those glossy pages on magazines, something we used to laugh and dismiss as “usual”… scandals became more and more significant, massive amounts of money paid to bribe politicians, stolen from the healthcare system,vaporized in unpaid taxes, allocated to elitist privileges…nothing new?? Maybe, but the old Italian way got into a virulent metastasis process and started to permeate and pollute every single aspect of Italian life. The entire system got into Defcon 1, at light speed, since its survival has been put in danger.

The fundamental are above and beyond worry: ageing population, low productivity, poor renewal rate in the working population, cumbersome legal canvass, a stellar public debt, and most importantly a totally inexistent awareness of the importance of “excellence”. if you combine this with the fact that, as a stand-up comedian stated, the sentence written in every court “Everybody’s equal under the law” turns out to be a question with “NO” as an answer, the scenario is pretty depressing.

On the Times on Line there was an article regarding the proposed law to tax (and thus control) everything ever produced on the Web, including blogs… Now, despite the fact that seemingly blogs are “out of the scope of the present law” as stated by some deranged, asinine and seriously daft politician (how on Earth you may come out with this sort of absurd law in the first place, this is beyond my understanding.. almost..), the saddest thing is about making the press for those sort of occurrences..

This is the first time I have actually felt … no, I may be wrong.. I was 11 when an Italian politician was killed by some terrorists.. in May Italy is so beautiful, and yet the day Aldo Moro was killed I felt fear in the streets, I heard the silence of otherwise buzzy streets, I almost remember people walking like immediately before a curfew..and I did not like the feeling at all.. these days I feel a louder, more evident fear, but the smell is the same, fear.

Fear that what was once some silly attitude to laugh about is now a gangrene that start to rotten with a foul stench, fear that all the words you hear from TV-interposed politicians are more like those from a sci-fi B-movie, fear that all the movements, people in the “piazza” and those blogging heavily are just the neural reaction of a dead body… people are scared and try to mask with endless queuing for a plasma TV or a tiny stretch of beach, nevermind being strangled by debt, rising housing prices and low salaries ( as stated by an Eurispes study) with a massive social contribution and (incidentally) poor services..

Read the comments to the above Times article.. 70+ comments and lots of them asking for help.. to give Italy some hope, to freed Italy from a strangling class of new Thugs, to distribute some sort of decent future for the younger generations.. someone, quite ironically I love to think, pledged for the UN to send the Blue Helmets… what a saddness.. we need to be conquered to be able to keep going… as it has always been at least for the past 500 years…

There is a nice and quite wise saying, I thought it was Italian but I am beginning to question it, stating “Aiutati che Dio t’aiuta (Help yourself and God will help you)”… I wander when people will stop moaning for the sake of it and begin to take action, but first and foremost how long will take people to understand that life is at stake here, and you cannot leave your life in someone else’s hands..

Virtual worlds and the gold rush..

Long time ago, my mum bought for an unknown reason a book titled The Sword of Shannara. Admittingly, I had not read any fantasy before that one (no, not even the Lord of the Rings..), but I quite fell for the plot, the adventure, the…everything.. and I thought what an amazing movie that would be, or what a smashing game it could become..

I sometimes believe that quite a lot of our inventions, creations, and to some extent evolutionary endeavors come from the way we grew with our dreams, what we wanted to do and what we liked when we were free to play.. thus I like to think that the current hype and the explosion of the virtual world frenzy could also stem out of other than business opportunities.. it is like traveling in spaces and realms made by our imagination, and more interestingly composed by the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people like us..

The child in us is constantly in charge..

Then, incidentally, dreams are valued for what they are, the food for anyone’s soul, and thus monetise that is quite an easy and most interesting task.. in the recent times the VW environment has gained traction and a wealth of venture capitalists have decided to inject fresh capital into the dream theatre, according to Virtual Worlds Management that amounted to an hefty $1billion.. more on that here..

Given that there is no philanthropy involved, I have to assume the entire operation yields some sort of return (apart from cashing the venture capital by the VW owner..) .. ads??? No way, we have already discussed about the potential fallout of extensive ads campaign into originally-free worlds..eBiz? Perhaps, but not in the immediate future, again for the very reason the VW existed in the first place, connection amongst dreamers, and thus very little inclination in spending frenzy here..(maybe at a later stage..). So, where’s the beef? Lateral return? As in brand equity, standing, fit or anything intangible?? That would actually make some sort of sense, since you may operate in an “intangible” world…

Discussion open, in the meanwhile dream on!!!

UPDATE: and, to put it straight, investments in VW should also leverage something like this Metaverse Market Index, due to be launched at the San Jose convention, October 10th … gosh…

Radiohead’s new work … and it is up to you!!

Today is such a fine morning in Milan, I headed into work quite lighthearted, God knows why, and I was deeply buried into listening Virgin Radio (since my mp3 is just 1Gb and I need all the music I have for this eve’s training session..), and there it was, Karma Police, Radiohead… nice intro to the morning news the band from Oxford is launching a brand new album, due out October 10th…

Nice, but where’s the beef? Quite simply, their new work is absolutely free!! Sort of… actually, Radiohead have decided to leave up to the fans to decide what to pay for the dowload, from nothing to whatever they want!!

Apart from some obvious considerations about the current business model of the music industry, what really strikes me is the lesson the band is giving: music is community, and in a community each member helps the others. Someone is playing music, the others reward him for doing so..

I know, it is not that simple, however I find it socially important, it is a significant shift of paradigm, the value is upon those who enjoy art, and not set beforehand. It actually assumes that people have some sort of social responsibility, a high level of education and respect.

But, most of all, it would be a lesson against restrictions and impositions, and it would be great to know, at the end of it all, how much people have valued (that’ is the trick…value.. very much “social internet”, isn’t it??) the new Radiohead work.. could all end up with a massive blow to DRM theorists and such (by the way, RHead said “no, thanks” to Apple..)???

Dreaming is free, after all…why not..

Italian eGovernment.. that’s virtualisation of Nothing!!!!

During the past few weeks….during the past few months… ok, fine, during the past few years Italy has been struggling in building up a decent Government infrastructure.. we’ve had it all, thieves, convicted ministries, leaders acting like stand-up comedians at international meetings, singing prime ministers, the whole lot of absurdities.. This was coupled by an appalling public finance management, the disappearance of billions of Euros into someone’s pocket and so forth.. it is impossible to follow it, let alone report it in a post so follow my advice, should you have a burning desire to know this circus and if you are really fitted with strong guts, and go for books such as “La Casta”….

However, in this sort of third world (please, no offense to the third world countries, utmost respect!) mess, Italian rulers have been so barefaced as to foster eGovernment initiatives.. needless to say you should have a Government as such before even remotely trying to apply any sort of virtualisation to it, but nevermind..

Another Italian miracle was accomplished swiftly, since the latest Cap Gemini report states Italy is at around mid-ranking in the eGov evaluation score, and is above par (82% vs. an average of 75%) in overall quality of the services available. (Note: this is not a miracle at all, but, hey, that’s all we have got on the menu these days…)

That is something the entire nation was actually waiting to know (as if…), now it seems Italians would also like to understand whether this immense wealth of technology and cyber-functionalities are able to find something like 98 billion Euros missing (vanished, evaporated really..) from the taxation of gaming machines (aka video pokers and so forth…) across the country… that is a nice amount of money, considering that the latest “Legge Finanziaria” (the sort of yearly set of financial and fiscal measures and activities…) wasn’t remotely close to half of that amount and it made the entire nation shivers in terror for starvation and missing holidays….. the 2008 “Finanziaria” is about 12 billion, as it has been reported, that makes 1/8 (rounded..) of the due amount… you find the money, Italy would happil y trail around for, say, the next five years??? An entire legislature??? wow…

We were such a grand country…damn..

The role of IT… an alchemic question..

I am back from the Forum IT held in San Gimignano, right in the middle of Tuscany (home, for a change!!!) and in a wonderful location.. why this sort of “touristic incipit”?? One reason, mainly, a small tiny winy detail: that quiet and lush environment stirred the most stunning flow of conversation, quite a lot of business considerations and an amazing array of personal chats and, quite a rare occurrence these days, of the utmost intelligence and elegance.. I must say a soothing experience and quite refreshing indeed..

The business issues were all related to the current role of Information Technology and its company champion, the CIO, in the present evolutionary scenario.. the debate went on a couple of divergent directions: a sort of initial mainstream idea was pointing out to the IT being a mandatory and, as of today, commodity function within the organisation, the other standpoint, later on in the day, headed towards the strategic role of IT as enabler of a new sort of sentient organisation, therefore forcing the CIO role to a connection, a hub of utmost technology competence coupled with (at least) a thorough business understanding..

That may sounds like “so what..” kind of a stuff, however I have been posed since 1995 with two  questions: the importance of the SMEs market in Italy and how to rise the IT to strategic level within any company’s board… I believe today there are plenty of research and data that pinpoint the alive-and-kicking dichotomy between technology and business, the role of the CIO as a guardian of an almost forgotten druidic knowledge of IT and as the paramount driving force of a new business capability… as per the importance of SMEs in Italy, that is still lingering about..

Around 60% of companies has stated, in a fairly recent survey I happened to read (details upon request…), that the utmost company priority is about cost reduction, and immediately after that 25% quoted “development of new product/services” as a top priority, whilst the main trouble areas for an IT management are about keeping the internal IT skill set alive (39%)  and how to integrate heterogeneous systems into a coherent technology fabric (34%), it is no wander that CIOs complaint about the scarcity of resources to develop new initiatives… and yet, the discussion is always about the strategic role of IT as if all business functions and evolutionary capability would not set their roots into a rather firm IT ground. Most of the IT crowd I generally meet points out that the more pressing need today is about finding the right language pack to discuss with business folks.

As pointed out with some friends at the Forum, the business declinations of information technology today are the pillars of Hercules between success and failure, IT is the detonator for superior strategic acumen…

Ops, there we are again, it is all down to brains and management ability, I guess…. quite an hard call sometimes..

Broaden your horizon..

Every now and then I like to share with you some feelings, ideas, simple thoughts about anything that sort of moves me somewhat.

As most of you, I like the idea of being part of a larger World than my immediate surroundings, I love the fact that lots of my friends are scattered allover the World and yet we keep in touch, we share bits of our lives and, ultimately, we grow together. Since I began travelling, I couldn’t stop longing for being on the move, by plane, car, boat, bike, feet, all but staying still.

Which, unfortunately, is something I have to do most of my time, workwise now, and because of a much greener age, some times ago. Damn.

To overcome the issue, and then long before working age, I started reading. Anything, really. I travelled first class to Asia with Salgari, and from that onward I went allover the place. Then I got into knowing things, and then again I read about anything I was remotely supposing could have been of any interest.

Today, Internet is grand!

Again, I do not say something new to anyone of you, you do exactly the same thing, possibly to a much higher extent, still I read every single day ePapers, news and sites from any place on Earth, I browse, explore, listen, watch, write, collate. I try and extend myself beyond physical boundaries, cultural traps and everyday’s boredom.

Today, the New York Times has opened up its wealth of knowledge and thinking to anyone interested. You may be readers already, or you did, so this is sort of pathetic, but to me that is another open door over something.. cannot wait to explore…

Then, I may find a good tip on where to head for my next trip (December holidays are coming soon…better book it..), and then there we are, reality and eReality come together nicely!!!!

A broader horizon is always a great gift.

SL and virtual memorials…. anyone else outside US????

I truly believe that any kind of prevarication upon any Man on Earth is disgusting per se and stupid in essence (we need everyone, and as evolutionary theory proves we need differences to go further…), as I believe that keeping alive the memory of our beloved is fundamental not to linger in the past but to keep the best of what it was in our trip ahead..

So, SecondLife, being today a subsection of our lives nonetheless, is hosting memorials dedicated to those who lost their lives in some of the most tragic and unbelievably atrocious events in modern history, such as the World Trade Center attack and the Vietnam war. Fine.

But, since SL and all the other virtual worlds are, by definition, worlds and not a replica of USA, wouldn’t be fair and, for once, a demonstration of superior intelligence of normal human beings compared to that of politicians, to consider also the immense death toll suffered by populations in Iraq and in Vietnam?? The world is larger than we think, and unfortunately suffering is quite a commodity nowadays, if we really are building up places that should be fairer than real life, have a thought. It is necessary to give out an example, use the possibility offered by tech to say something meaningful..which is something I may do not, but hey, it’s just me, an aristocratic buffoon…

Emerging Technology… why not…

The World is no longer the place it used to be!! This is a nice one I heard few days ago at a meeting, and beside the obvious silliness of the remark (if you have read “Siddhartha” you know already that you cannot bath twice in the same river…), it is interesting to keep track of changes and what technology may represent as evolutionary driver.. not solely to try and guess the future (nice quote here … Niels Bohr..) but to enjoy the possibility of multiple future waiting for us ahead..

A nice factor to consider is the actual social cost and planetary distribution of tech advances, and whether these shows may actually make the press in a six-months-time as they move from talking to doing.. which is what we need most to be on this Planet (and possibly on the surface..) when one of those future may come true. More to come, I believe..

Conversational marketing.. or you rather shut up????

The advent of that “social networking” stuff lead us to believe that interactions would have been the next hard currency, it makes everyone believe that opening up to the “others” would have been beneficial to whatever-I-am-supposed-to-do in my life, personal space or, yep, business…

Now, that would actually be sort of true IF interactions, and thus all the wording, commenting, talking, sharing would not turn into a sour soup of scorning, disdaining, despising, loathing and such niceties… that’s the trick…

So what??? Companies start thinking about “conversational marketing” as a potential way (tool, idea, unconscious thinking…??) to interact, interlude and flirt with potential customers and maximise the so-called (by someone..) “relationship economy”… personally I believe we are talking about a “referral economy”, if we really have to put a tag on it, therefore it is not the link that matters, but what is the message content flowing amongst links (people, mind you).

That is a risky business… artificially augmenting the information flow or number of forced links amongst users may, yep, increase positive brand perceptions and spread the word, but also a massive blunder may resonate like a screaming child in a small car.. pretty disturbing, I believe..

And, most of all, the above will gain speed proportional to the “mass” involved… the more, the better/worse..

The argument here is about effectiveness: if I ask for information, ideas, perceptions, whatever, am I able to act upon it, when I do receive a massive flow of data, directly from the very heart of the market? Would a company be able and fit to react to whatever direct market response it may receive??? Otherwise, that two-way (clearly is two-way…) conversation is pretty much like the one you generally see in politics: someone protest, the others change, change, change and change to change nothing at all in the end.

Now, you may actually not throw a full political system down the drain (you can’t??? Really??? That’s a pity…), but clearly you can shift your spending power, disposable income, cash, MONEY, somewhere else..

Since, the most important currency today is not “interaction”, we have aplenty, is “attention”. And that is scarce, when you may have nothing interesting to say or, worse, you are not able to listen…

Get it right, mate…

Silence please…

Quiet…

Black, blue and now yellow gold!?!? Not only food for thoughts..

Since I am back from my traveling around, there is one issue that keep popping, or better cropping out, on Business Week, on the UK Guardian and today on the Italian La Repubblica: the ongoing interest on biofuels is actually hindering the food production and stocks around the World, particularly if considering the mid term future.

There is a massive array of numbers, more or less accurate and more or less scary, you enjoy browsing through the details, the thing is we, on Planet Earth, have found another gold: corn, maiz, grano, whatever you want to call it. As it seems, an hefty double digit figure of the overall maiz/corn production is currently dedicated to biofuel production, this aiming (seemingly) to reduce Western dependency on oil and to control greenhouse gas emissions. More importantly, there is a stack of money to be made, since it has been stated

Since biodiesel and ethanol are close petroleum substitutes, their prices track that of crude oil.

So, results are an increased pressure on food prices, since the alimentary chain has deep roots into the “corn” fields (directly – bread and derivatives – or indirectly – cattle food), all too scary should we consider that there is an increase in World population, that the alimentary habits may change whilst countries are shifting towards a more “Westernised” lifestyle, that water is becoming maybe not scarce but not aplenty either, and given that we are planned quite carefully, as smart inhabitants, to bake our planet nicely..

So, we have thus a list of “golds” to look for: black gold (oil), blue gold (water), yellow gold (??) (corn). The first of the aforementioned alternatives has already made a huge mess and quite a slaughter, do we have to expect the second and the third one to follow suit???

What is even more incredible, for the sake of argument clearly, is the actual fact that nobody is contemplating the idea that using 1.5 ton of steel to move around 75kg of meat is the stupidest waste of energy ever seen (maybe only surpassed by the fruitless attempt of a friend of mine to learn snowboarding), and it would not be so preposterous to foster the usage of alternative transportation… guess this is an already well debated issue, but I feel embarrassed as human being when a journalist states that we may end up deciding whether we may want a loaf of bread or a full tank in our car.. please.. there is no irony in this…

Personally, I sold since quite a long time my car, a nice convertible, as it was stupid to use it to go from home to work, fight in the rush hour, fight for parking and get stressed in biblically long cues. Now I get the bus to work (15′), read a nice book or listen to music without worrying about other mad drivers, I move down to Tuscany by train, there I have got a bike to pedal around or, admittingly, for longer travels I got my motorbike, still my carbon footprint is pretty low and my stress level is down quite nicely.

Bottom line: again, instead of attacking a problem’s causes, we want to reduce the effects. It is again about geopolitics, money, power. No further comments.

We are all back… and where are the leaders?????

Back… “finally” is kind of a far too positive word to depict my status,  still, there we are…

I read through some newspapers since back, pretty much the same stuff as I read one month ago, same story for a few publications, all boring discussions about nothing. So headed over the Web…fair, few more interesting bits around, still have to make my mind over the real importance of what I read about.. connectivity, iPhone again, the uttermost importance of WiMax in our lives, the raging China and how desperate the US housewives actually really are given the crumbling of the housing market…

So, it seems we are all back at full swing (what????) and there are troubles ahead… which actually calls for carefully planned actions, against a clear strategy, implemented by well motivated forces run my enlightened leaders… ops.. leaders?????

Scarce commodity as it seems in a recent BusinessWeek article… the concept of leadership, the perfect commander, that sort of human being capable of extracting the best and more than that from every single individual he meets/command/manage, actually rests on the laurels of intangibles, on natural born stardom status, on admiration for a way of being above and beyond petty normality… unfortunately, as well pointed out, leadership is often mistaken with a superior accounting skill, and that is a huge blunder that will come back as an hefty bill to pay when the matter get worse..

We have been discussing, reading, talking and debating about evolutions, about new geopolitic balances, about a new layer of society based on technology, we have witnessed the rise and fall of economic wealth across nations, we have seen countries emerging to new powerhouse status and yet, in all this, we have not seen the very idea of leadership growing the same speed, nor we have seen real leaders arousing from the masses. Just aggressive and ego-bloated accountants, allover the place.. numbers are not diamonds to bright up someone’s performance, numbers are not made to hide behind..

That is scary… a battle with no commanders is lost before fighting…  we should start this working season a bit better than this, shouldn’t we?

The Web is us.. damn!!!!

This was nice to read.. For once, there is a massive attack to the social aspect of the Web 2.0, dubbing the whole phenomenon and the new actors as a cyberswamp, which is despite the meaning a tremendous image of the current Internet!!!! ….writers…

However, the whole debate seems to head to the unprofessional status of most Web contributors, bloggers et alia, and Andrew Keen claims

the intellectual quality of what the crowd produces is very low.

I may concede this could also be true… on the other hand, media as a whole (considering that Keen reasoning is about Internet as a “Whole”) are quite arguably producing high value inputs and analysis, cultural advances and critical agoras. I have to stress the proliferation of TV shows for “peepers” such as Big Brother and sons, talk shows the highest point of which is whether someone’s big boobs are a fake or whether someone’s neighbor did such an baaaad thing to sleep with the gardener, I hear every single day politicians demolishing every possible rule of grammar and common sense, newspapers are quite often guided by the nearest interest (political turnaround), critics do critic about something they have never ever experienced (SecondLife is an example a friend is pinpointing here).

So, let’s not trail on that, the official holders of knowledge, the Druids of XXI Century are not really the “professional” I dare say… and “Amateurs”, as he seems to like calling most of Web 2.0 contributors, may actually be exactly that, simple people interested in a subject and willing to write down opinions, BUT:

• you are not obliged to read that stuff;
• if you do and you don’t like it you may want to say something, to the author and to your community (“beware of b@&&@cks…”), thus limiting the news viral spreading;
• you may want also to respond with your immense knowledge and scorn the poor chap;
• if you read it, and it is all utter rubbish, and “since it is on the Web it must be true” is your first thought, then you need serious help and lots of tender loving care (try “rehab from Web pollution” kind of therapy!!)

In a few words, people are left with a brain and some critical attitude as well, we deserve what we get and we may want to trust and believe what is more comfortable with our current train of life events and the environment we live in, however we are always free to challenge, refuse and debate.

And, who knows, should you being not totally “naif” yourself, you may put together so called “experts” vision and the “amateurs” one and come up with your own conclusions… it may be nice, have a go… and we may also want to pay for contents, but who says those very contents are worthwhile? As of today, most often the community, your peers, your trusted acquaintances… the main asset of Web 2.0 is the “power of referral”… have a thought on that.. what is “true” is no longer what someone unknown and lost in a far, far away editorial unit says it is, but what the people I believe in say it may be..

Thus, what is intrinsically interesting about the Web itself and the “social” aspect of Web 2.0 is the potential to gather “another person’s version of the truth” (a selected one, mind you!!! Selected by you, incidentally..) as Keen said, simply to challenge ours, and see whether we are comfortable where we are or else…fair enough, we cannot consider every whiff the forerunner of a massive hurricane.. but to keep steady in your belief you may want to challenge them every now and then, and who knows, maybe there is someone out there able to put us against ourselves…

Despite all wishes and desires, nobody’s got the Holy Grail in his hands, questioning about all aspects in life actually drove evolution and, as it seems, if we have always believed what the establishment told us, we could still trust the Sun was circling the Earth.. it doesn’t, does it?????

Catch me if you can, Redmond!!!!

They said that it nicely uses “context data” from my hard drive to pester me with ad hoc advertising…. huh??? what???? Have you come down stuck in a bad trip????

This is, seemingly, the new patent filed by Microsoft to basically create a powerful ad-machine that deeply interacts (intrudes??) with your PC to collate infos and deliver relevant ads.. so, if I download a chess game and I am quite awful at it, I will nicely receive a communication about chess classes in my area???? And, since I am trying to organise my trip over to Japan (if there is still Japan in a fortnight…) I would be “tsunamied” by ads over sushi bar in Tokyo, fake cheap flight offers, geishas in Kyoto (that may come handy, tough…) and loooots of Hello Kitty gatgets???? Wow.. that’s life…

The app would inspect (quote)

user document files, user e-mail files, user music files, downloaded podcasts, computer settings, computer status messages (e.g., a low memory status or low printer ink)…

So… it will be nice to know that every single step of your online life is closely monitored, “bigbrothered” for the sake of selling you stuff… I trust that there is very little consideration for privacy, freedom of choice, boundaries et alia… also, I am actually wandering, ad to spouse the closing line of the article, how this could possibly become a reality, and if so, how long will it take for customers to find and pay a tech geek to hack the pc, disembowel it all and get rid of that “alien” thing inside…

And, above and beyond that, it seems to me that the present success of the entire “internet” and technology thing comes also from the (false???) idea that if not in real life you could be kind of free in cyberspace (ok, little or no difference between the two, as a brand new friend of mine actually pointed out in this thread) and now what? Are we really sure that “information overload” is not an issue? Ads overload is not an issue?? Buy, buy, buy, buy.. someone may get bored after all.. I haven’t bought a single item at Summer sales, since thanks Whatever God I do not need things, I do not get interested in useless things (useless to me, at least), and most of all I feel urged to run the race to sales, you “have” to go for it…. do come along, folks!!!!!!!!!

Are we really thinking about Matrix like scenarios? My needs are, strangely enough, mine, and I trust I want to deal with those when I feel the need to, without someone (someone??? something….) else suggestions…

Is it really so necessary to have everything, immediately, at your doorstep, as to save time (do you remember that thing about the fridge connected to the Web and ordering for you..) … save time… time is the new luxury item, just control your own and use it as you like, also to run down to the nearest pc shop to buy cartridges for your printer, if you really must, and have a chat with the people there… there is a life outside silicium, you know… And it’s mine to play with!

Life is about a long (longish…) journey, the unexpected is its salt, the icing on the cake, and how you deal with it may contribute to determine how good a human being you are, you cannot control everything’s happening and, more so, you should not allow anyone else to do it for you.. ok, getting over weird territories here, still… CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE: speaking of ads, guess you should be aware of this.. you never know, sometimes ads may get in the way, results to advertisers could not be the expected ones…….

(text in Italian, but images are worth thousands of words, aren’t they??)

Alexandria lives in wires..

Some of you already know about the meaning of “88days”.. and thus you know how significant is the entire idea of “library” in my life..

The inception of the Open Library project (demo here) quite clearly opens up a storm of debates, ideas, opinions… Someone is already concerned that this will add to information complexity (links, links, more links???) as it sort of duplicates other efforts, such as GoogleBooks (oh, please…) or Project Gutenberg, others are pointing out the ambition of the Open Library, that is to collate all books and publications in the World (put it in simplistic terms..) plus user generated infos/data.. Users will also be able to download eCopies of books, find bookstores to buy the physical copy, compare pricing and so forth..

Metadata will be handled via futurelib standard (interested?? Here!! you geeks…) and wiki structures will be also used to “manipulate” them..

OK.. it is all a huge tech environment, a massive cooperative work, a super-wiki effort, but you know what?? I love the idea to have the entire (if ever..) production of human intellect (genius and not-so-exceptional..) in a place, is just tremendous..

Now, if you could ever “mashup” that with a metaverse platform, that would be an amazing experience, Alexandria back to life (fine, above and beyond the real one.. ah, joke, that’s Google amazing algorithm playing tricks..get over here…).. or we rather stick to SL virtual topless bar????

You are better than this, aren’t you?????

China…bloated, blasted or booming?? Or controlled…??

In a recent BusinessWeek article, China has been finger pointed as …what, indeed? A bloated economy, a blasted opportunity already or, yet, a booming system?

I believe it is about a mix of all three, for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, you may teach me that “economy” is not a one-man band show, but it is a systemic condition and a set of actions, distributed evenly across the social system and the resources portfolio, to foster balanced and sustainable growth and wealth. Now, as it seems, the fast forward mode the Chinese economy has taken since a few years has completely forgot about the above, leaving behind significant parts of the system, both physical (e.g. the inner mainland, the quality control system, the financial canvass….) and cultural (aka laws and regulations, some sort of ethics.. as Westerners could say something about it, but nevermind..) to make the growth a systemic condition, thus a de facto and furthermore sustainable overtime.

What you see is not what you get, in case of China, it is rather what you believe you see is what you always wanted to get…

Secondly, it is important to notice that the surge of such an economic powerhouse, or whatever it is considering the above statements, has a massive impact over the geopolitical balances of the influenced area. Now this is interesting, since that bit of Far East has always been one of the most interesting counterparts of the US global power display, leveraging masses of people, a rather effective cultural approach to any given challenge, pretty much able to respond to the Calvinist US approach to life in general, since the respect and worship of a “higher” something (emperor, the party, the hierarchy, the company…) moved masses of energy and people in one coordinated direction. Now, that power is somewhat challenged by “modernity”, and I believe that Internet (May the Google be with you!!!! No, thanks anyway…) is playing a massive role as a “propaganda” machine that undermines the oneness of such societies, thus minimising their inertia. US may somewhat rejoice???? Open to arguments, here.

Loosing inertia, loosing momentum does favor a weaker geopolitical influence and strategy effectiveness, since the other leverage, economy, is linked to the above, and war is (thanks Whatever God) no longer a viable option (at least not in such a format that can impact the entire Far East area…).

Still, China may have been overrated or badly analysed in a systemic fashion not to preclude the “new kid on the block” kind of effect, and it may have not entirely exploited its geopolitical role (yet), but it definitely remains a factor and an opportunity. A factor because its very existence causes an interesting turmoil on a plethora of different subjects, from energy global strategy (what will keep the Chinese engine work? Middle East oil?? Boff, although Iraqis may need some cash to exploit their seemingly spectacular oil fields, but what about the Marines???…African and other bad-boys countries one??? Maybe so…Gas from the Asian plains?? Not considering the infrastructure plans apt to move gas from east westward.. Nuclear??? What to see that at UN council…Coal??? What about the entire planet getting pissed off???) to financial equilibrium (Chinese cash is still financing a good quarter of the US debt, isn’t it??? And Western financial institutions are buying shares of Chinese banks, right?) to cultural standpoints for the next millennium (that 1.6-whatever billion people may have a saying on culture, poetry, literature, science or not????).

I am thus curious to see the evolution of all this, and although we kept it to a small-scale bar (pub, for some of the AngloSaxons amongst you) chat, thus inaccurate in its details, yet there is a lethal weapon the “rest of the world” may use to hinder and guide the evolution into a giant with feet of clay: well distributed amount of power and a dollar rain in the right pockets.

That will stop every evolution.

Fullstop.

UPDATE. About the opportunity thing,  guess it is all down to the fact that, to be part of a club, you need the most appropriate outfit and gear… that the club itself does produce… you make the math and get over the details….

Green is the next black????

Ok, we saw Al making movies, we heard nice music for 24hrs in a row, from all over the planet, we start thinking about all those plastic bottles in our waste, we care.

These guys, and lots others, are actually using the Power of Web 2.0 and social networking to raise the point, or the bar, whatever they want to raise…

As usual, I tend to be slightly argumentative: I haven’t read anything about how do they make the site eco-friendly, how “green” is the IT behind the show, whether they thought about it or not, whether this all brand new net-world we are all creating, travelling, surfing we believe comes for free or, rather, has got a price in IT polluting potential and we know it… just consider all facets, before trumpeting around pointlessly, simply washing up consciences here and there ..

Ah, btw, welcome back to work.. 38° outside..

Nanotech will free us!!

At least nanotech may actually free us from that plethora of overpaid, illiterate and always-complaining-and-moaning human beings called “football players”, in the name of which we commit the most atrocious and quite often hilarious silliness.

At Georgia Tech campus the first World Tournament of NanoSoccer (or whatever you may call it..), played by “footballers” six times smaller than an amoeba. For those of you that have never mastered a science class ’till the end of high school, an amoeba is tiny, real small, above and beyond midgets, a living fraction!!!!! The Tournament clarified that, after Alinghi in the America’s Cup and Federer at Wimbledon, this is the Swiss time (ehehehehe, time, swiss… ok, stupid joke..). There is a nice video here, and for the very interested and highly numerate amongst us, here some details!!

Beside the obvious jokes, of which I will not give you any hints, here we have a massive breathrough in terms of possibility and applications in manufacturing industry and biotech.. which incidentally seems to be the industry of the future to look at. A little twitch in this idyllic scenario is the Doctor Strangelove attitude of some human beings that make me think we may actually not go at all to the realm of the “creation” or anything as such… however, should the human being behave properly, this is a tremendous opportunity to solve few issues:

1. someone said nanotech would make an ally over curing some distruptive diseases (almost like you manipulate an army at your will to destroy “bad cells” and “enemies” most horrid);
2. secondly, we may have a decent TV programming on a Sunday evening since all those stupid football commenters should not be able to utter a word about nanotech..

Above and beyond that, this all amazes me, mankind is such an interesting bunch of creativity and genius is a shame it should all end up thanks to a self inflicted 6° Earth overheating ….