iPhone with x-ray vision???

There we are again… I promise (not that you were dying for this..) that I will try and keep this blog space kind of alive from the darkness again!!

So, to start with something interesting, here we are… as you all know, Japan is potentially the most interesting country in terms of mobile usage. I am talking about the actual mobile lifestyle that is alive and kicking in the streets of, say, Tokyo, and the amount of attention the mobile world absorb.

Since the early days of DoCoMo and its venture into the territory of the revenue sharing models, Japan has witnessed a plethora of interesting, useful and appealing services flourishing and landing over the mobile handsets Japanese provide not to have farthest than a meter from their hands… mobile in Japan is not simply technology, but a prosthesis..

Having said all of the above, a company called Tonchidot (team of six…) has created what they called Sekai Camera. A “camera” function that, geotagging your location whilst you literally walk around, provides your iPhone with information about the object/item/monument/whatever you are bashing into it at a given moment…

Fine.. at TechCrunch 50 the audience went off the roof, seemingly..

What sounds slightly complex is the geotagging capability, GPS based, into a supermarket.. still, impressive how six people, highly focused and with a vision, are able to stirr attention this way!!
Lovely, back to the garage?!??!???!

There is always hope…

Asus eee PC… GOT IT!!!! First impression..

It was Saturday.. outside the city wasn’t as busy as usual, yet.. I opened up my fatty 15.4″ laptop and thought.. why not have the little one a go!??!?! My girlfriend saw it some days ago on a magazine, I saw one at the Enterprise 2.0 conference…what the heck, it is just €299, it won’t be all that bad if the thingy is just a blunder… so, I went and hunt for the Asus eee PC!!!!

First, find a place where it was still in stock or sold, as a matter of fact, since hard-to-find tech gadgets make the object itself some sort of an icon straight from day one.. provided the tech-thing is worth the while..

So, I found an Asus Point the other side of town, I jumped into a pair of combats and my boots, girlfriend was fast enough to get the car key in a matter of seconds, shoot out, jump into the Mini and set the GPS up!!

Milan was sort of waking up in a decent sunshine.. spring is almost here, so what’s nicest that have a little, smart, light and fun PC to go out and hunt for WiFi spots??? To be on a beach with nothing to do but sunbathing, I guess, but since we are in town..

Shop was where it was supposed to be, too many people for my liking, but thanks heaven I called before hitting the street, and THE LAST ASUS eee was already booked in my name!!! I could then sit back and relax, waiting for my turn in the cue…

Some ten minutes after, we were outside the shop, holding a smallish box, something like the size of a weekly magazine and a palm thick… the little guy was there, lurking at us from a plastic foil protecting its pale white complexion… back home I let Antonella get the baby out and start playing with it, but after a few hours charge, since the battery was absolutely flat!!

After having spent this waiting in weekly shopping trips, finally the eee went “live”… no more than 30″ and the screen was popping with a start up screen, a matter of seconds to type in name, date, time, the usual stuff and there it was!!!

A nice, tabbed screen with some magic words such as work, entertainment, web, stuff like that!!! So, where to begin???

First.. the overall feeling is of a sturdy little pc, the size of a decent paperback, light as light can be (less than a kilogram..), keyboard is clearly on the small side, and yet is fin to type in, I have to say that I am not really a giant, and my hands are quite small, still, the baby is not made for creating your next trilogy the likes of the lord of the rings, so…

All applications are nicely grouped under “tabs”, the same you have in any decent Web browser… it is all there, ready for you to use! The entire office suite is the Linux version (yep, the entire machine is running on Linux, should you do not know that already!) of OpenOffice, thus dead easy to use, pretty compatible with most of your documents, will do for some work whilst you are out!

Connectivity… the usual Ethernet modem connection which, damn, forces me to wait and try the baby on the web, got a tragic USB modem but, wait… WiFi!!!!! There is a little icon on the bottom left of the tab-screen, why not having a go.. mind you, I still haven’ t got WiFi at home (lazy, waiting to buy an Airport Extreme…), but, eventually, there were some six or seven around.. of which two open, and nicely ranked with an “intensity percentage”… got an87% and bam, there it was, into the Web. Just like that, no configuration of any sort, no hassle, nothing, just hit “connect” after having selected the access point, and wait a few secs..

Firefox was up and running (yep, no configuration, installation, nothing, it is all done for you beforehand!!), fair enough the screen (7″) is not exactly massive, yet it does the job quite nicely.. access speed, downloading and the rest of the web experience were in the norm, so quite fast, not an hiccup, nothing at all.. several kind of web sites, with different graphical layout and “intensity” have been downloaded and rendered without problems.

I wrote some stuff, responded to a few mails, Antonella checked for a new couch on the IKEA site, all in the norm! The baby was there, ready to answer our performance calls!!!

Photo upload was hassle-free… put in your SD loaded with your favourite pictures, click on the “Open” and there you are..

Haven’t tried Skype (pre-loaded…) yet, nor the webcam, but the beginning of the eee era in my flat are pretty fine!!!!

Most interesting feature.. do not know, really, it is the ease of the experience that is stunning, something that could remind me of some tales about the Apple MacBooks and such… the start up time is great, very very fast, battery lasted one day and half of pretty intense usage…

Should you buy it??? As a second PC, something seemingly reliable, packed full with all-you-need-applications, easy to use, WiFi enabled, yes, it is a definite yes!!! As your only machine I would actually think twice about the choice, keyboard too small and some work to do with external storage may hinder the fun!!!

If you bash into it, get the card out and get one!!!!! Your lifestyle as modern, city like chaps will have a boost and, seriously, you won’t pass unnoticed!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE: when I went about the “one day and half” battery life, clearly I didn’t mean that the eee was actually ON for all that time, it meant I used it half of Saturday and the whole of Sunday on and off, doing things for tens of minutes each go.. you know the going..

nvohk… crowdsourcing in management, or a nice try?!?!?

Browsing around, I bashed into a strange sort of a project.. nvohk, of which you find the banner down my sidebar, is a nice attempt to build up a community that will contribute to run (partially) an eco-friendly clothing company..

For a rather smallish annual fee, you are entitled to participate to such decisions as logo design, advertising strategy, marketing et alia… some of the “perks” of being part of this experiment are, I believe, rather intangible, as per the satisfaction to be “in the process” whilst the idea of having about 35% of profit shared with the members in form of “buying certificates” for nvohk products is kind of nice…

Yet, it won’t change the world, it will definitely pump some fresh air into my wardrobe (eventually..), will have me as part of a social-conscious community, and I may say “been there” should the thing really boom up!! Most of all, it is a nice experiment, someone called “socialism 2.0″.. nobody did??? OK, let’s do it from here, then!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life is truly amazing…

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…

Mobile and smart, this is the future ahead!!

We have since long heralded these were times of changes, deep and systematic changes, basically an evolutionary step was taken before our eyes.

Yesterday the Barcelona Mobile World Congress slammed the doors open on a brand new future: definitely mobile and incredibly smart!!! All the major handset manufacturers have launched either brand new hyper-powerful phones or revamped massively some ol’darlings.

New specimens that are making all the technofans drooling are popping up about anywhere… SonyEricsson Xperia X1 is one heck of a smartphone, and please notice the nice add of HSUPA connectivity on top of the now-basic HSDPA.. users may start (where available..) enjoying uploading auto-generated contents at a decent speed and thus augmenting the mSocial experience level.. and somewhere there is a S-video connectivity…

Yep, there are the much awaited Gphone prototypes on the catwalk, they cracks open the very concept of “smart” and “phone” suggesting the future may have a simil-mobile-smart-phone form factor to add/substitute the laptop environment… particularly when considering that most of those smarties are yielding a smashing Wi-Fi capability to top connectivity up..

Also check a bunch of Samsung’s.. SGH-G810, a top of the range, feature-full smartphone, its sort of younger brother i200, topping the whole bunch up with the ever-so-gorgeous Soul, and Nokia N78, N96, and the list goes on (why not including the nice and crisp Garmin NuviPhone??)… (btw, thanks to Telefonino.net for the infos…)

You enjoy browsing around..

Bottom line, the platform for a significant change in lifestyle is on, pretty much available to the everyday man, albeit an above-average, well off technofan for the time being, services are all converging into the mobile device to enhance and top up the users’ experience… it is still a matter of understanding where are the systematic users that will immediately shift communication paradigm to embrace the new tech (the posers are not interesting in the long term mobile services uptake..), and how these may eventually relate to the slower tribes/clusters… again, it is a matter of crossing the technology chasm..

One hurdle will be tariffing and data packages.. the easy answer is an all-inclusive monthly fee, plus an ecosystem of pay-per-use third party services, but the basics such as calls, Web navigation (down and upload) and a basic GPS navigation should be easily available and hassle-free… we will see…

Still, on top of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and lots of other such things, we are forced to include a Mobile 2.0?? Already done?? Dunno, but you got the overall idea…

Being “social” will pass through the mobile device in an empowered way, and as we said back in the early UMTS days, the mobile may actually become a super-hub of anyone’s digital lifestyle, able to connect and re-distribute contents and activities to the more bulky, less mobile items of our XXI century experience.. and yep, that includes our beloved laptop!!!

Apple is on Air, really!!!!!!!!!!

That time of the year has come, pretty much like xMas, my birthday, the first MotoGP race or the very first swim before summer season starts: MacWorld!!! (One out of the zillion links you may already have…)

The 2008 edition will be remembered possibly for the flashy side of computing, the unbearable lightness of being Apple, the MacBook Air. A thin jewel of hardly 3/4 of an inch max, a featherlight computer… basically a MacBook on diet like, say, comparing Jessica Alba with Kate Moss, without illegal boost, mind you…

I won’t spend more time on it, it is gorgeous, stylish, the ultimate tech fashion statement, nothing all that new when considering Apple, isn’t it???

It is rather interesting the attack Steve Jobs is setting up at the movie industry or, better, how consumer actually USE the movie industry.

iTunes Movie Rentals is going to revolutionise the movie experience.

Rent any movie for 24 hours, choosing from a large collection from majors portfolios such as 20th Century Fox, Universal, Sony, Warner and the rest of the pack, watch it on any device you may like, with obvious preference for Apple hardware (Macs, iPod, iPhone, haven’t read about iTouch…), pay $2.99 or $3.99 and there you go… a thousand titles by the end of February, more to come, and add to the pack some TV shows, concerts, video podcast and some more goodies..

From your couch directly to the smashing flat screen you just bought on sales, your digilife is going to get pampered, boosted, enhanced, whatever!! Isn’t that nice????

This move was somewhat expected, and yet it is quite likely that this will change massively the entire industry approach to entertainment. Also, more significant, it redefines the concept of “ownership” compared to “timely experience”: it is not necessary to own, it is rather more important to experience something. I do not need to “have” everything, to hold it in my safe, I could and possibly will be much more selective, and the entire idea of value could be reorganised.

Clearly, we are talking about movies, really not a cornerstone, but heck, life is a glittery game nonetheless!! See whether Steve Jobs is able to make another miracle, at least for himself and Apple’s shareholders!!!!!!!!!!!!

By the way, nevermind what, in my wardrobe there are no black turtlenecks…

Call me six feet under!!!! Milan tube network cellular coverage is starting, just in time for the Expo 2015??

Mobile comms are such a great stuff, ever-changing, sooooo cooooool.. you can be connected with the rest of the World, either yours or the outer one, anytime, anywhere… hang on a sec… up until today, there was a place where you could have been safe from being pestered, a place that was able to act as the perfect excuse for all your pressing people and their calls: the tube!!! Six feet under got a new, beautiful meaning, an oasis of peace and tranquility..

Today, busy-bee Milan town centre boasts the first cellular coverage of its tube network, albeit between two fairly trafficked station, but a nice starting point for the coverage of the entire system, just in time to boast that achievement as a “must have” looking forward to the Expo 2015 candidature (Smirne won’t have it, I bet!!!!!!!!!!!).

As stated, today it is possible to call, text message and browse the Web using up to UMTS connectivity, whilst HSDPA should be available by the end of December at 1.8Mbps to rise up to 3.6Mbps within the first few months of 2008.

Pretty nice, huh????!??! Now I believe there should be some public courses on “using your mobile in the Tube” etiquette… by the way, in Tokyo it is clearly marked not to bother other passengers with your silly calls..so, most Japanese tube commuters go for mobile Internet at full blast!!! Or, in case of pretty impolite fellow travelers, you may want to use a portable cell jammer (sample here!!!!!)…

You never know..

Creative Zen: an usage update!!

It seems that the Creative topics yield a certain interest to some of you, thus here we are, after something like a month or so intensive usage…

First and foremost, I bought the screen protection, since the player goes into my messenger bag, coat pockets, on the beach and whilst doing my gym sessions… pretty cool stuff, it looks a bit “foggy” when inactive, whilst the screen performs perfectly well when browsing around the menu or watching a movie.

Movies… I had “This is England” (pretty cool movie, by the way..) on the player, and was forced to watch it in three instances… the visual experience is better than expected, albeit the screen has got some “pixel shading” problem, but heck, you do not want to use the Creative to have a superior movie machine but to waste some time in a more than decent way!! Job done, then. Easy to manage thanks to an “in application” menu (top right button), you may want to stretch the image to “full screen” to enjoy the entire width of the LCD..bit of image distortion, but I guess it is function to the original format the movie was encoded. Sound is perfect, I have changed the original Creative earphones with a Sennheiser OMX 50 VC, due to an useful (whilst gym training) ear clip, but the sound quality was full and rewarding with the Creative set as well, partially due to the customisable equalisation.

The movie upload was straightforward, and codec conversion was handled by the player: open the Media Explorer, fetch the movie, the player communicates it needs to be converted, you click and go minding your business, in a not-too-short while the movie is ready to be uploaded. Done. Enjoy.

Easier than this is the actual songs and playlist management. Not a worry, not a problem, apart from building up the playlist when uploading different songs of the same author from a downloaded collection: you may want to “playlist” the entire collection as to have it played as a whole, which would not be if left into the normal storage of songs: by author, album, genre and so forth.

Playback is perfect, there is an automatic album cover function that will display the cover next to title, author, time left (also supported by a nice progress bar underneath) should you have the embedded info into the download. Whilst listening to mp3 you are able to switch back into other menus without loosing the actual track, something you cannot do whilst listening to the FM radio. With the top-right menu button you play with the song, see artist details, set the track into a playlist, delete if it is absolutely abysmal..  Switching through menus and functions is as fast as a blink, really, nevermind the player is packed full with stuff or almost empty.

The FM is a straightforward affair. The Creative has got some  32 preset stations, which you can clearly change at your liking: press firmly the right part of the central button and the player will go into a granular airways selection, find your favourite FM, top right menu and set it as preference, choose the station number and there you are! Signal clearness is a touch better than the old Creative Zen V Plus I have got.

Whilst listening to your favourite tunes, either in FM or mp3, you may want to browse or slideshow your photos, which you have downloaded in the usual, dead easy way: browse via Media Explorer, choose your “victims” and there you go, upload into the Creative.

Since I have used the 4Gb almost in full, I will play a bit with an SD card to see how the entire thing actually work, but given the icon “Memory Card” into the main menu, I trust the ease of use will be respected!!! Also, if you plan to upload songs and similar from other than the PC you installed the Creative first, you better take care of creating a partition of the flash memory to be used as external drive memory.. otherwise any PC will see the Creative, but won’t be able to use it at all.. this is as far as I went, some amongst you may have further infos or a totally different indication, most welcome to add to the post!!!

By the way, you may want to customise the appearance of your Creative… “System” icon, customise the display.. I personally have chosen the black skin, which comes with a nice orange progress bar and a little purple line at the top… your call anyway!!

Battery life is pretty good. After a full charge, I managed to listen to music and play FM radio for, say, four days of pretty decent usage, four or five hours.. I still have not reached the 25 hours exhaustion (I charged the player before it shut down) as stated into Creative’s website, but admittingly you do not have to worry much when playing music. Same thing apply when watching a movie.. no problem with a full charge.. I started to watch the movie I had with, say, half of battery life displayed and the movie (1h35′ roughly..) missed the last 5′ (bummer!!!)..

Altogether, despite not being able to head-on compare the Creative with an iPod Nano or similar, I must say the experience is rewarding, the ease of use is really one strong plus (I am a fairly skilled tech user, not real geek but not all that dork either… ), it impresses me the fact that the Creative slides immediately into your lifestyle as if you have ever had it.

A nice companion, which I will stick to for a while, I believe!! Recommended?? Most definitely, and the 4Gb is a steal for the retail price tag it has!!

Twitter, low expectations and “being critical”!!

Again.  Another social phenomena. Twitter is making the press in a more pressing manner than before.

Which I do not mind, but it all seems like adding to that disease I once called “cyber-inadequacy”. You’re not twittering???!?!? How sad could your life be??? Small circle of friends??? No friends whatsoever??? Meanwhile, I am enjoying my lifetime  three friends hanging around the Mediterranean with the newly bought 39-feet Azimuth one of the above decided to get to reward himself, nevermind someone with a weird nick lost somewhere…

Still, it is interesting to notice that someone pointed out as, for this new born communication arena, you may have a sort of a batch approach, a lower expectation level, an on-off style. Something like  I AM NOT ALWAYS CONNECTED!!!!!!!!!!! TO YOU AT LEAST!!!! Which I believe is pretty much a revolutionary and almost blasphemous thought. Nonetheless, I love it!!!

This is the first hint, the initial sparkle, the subtle rise of the “power of disconnection” we spoke in an earlier post, it is about being a “critical” user of technology..

Nice one, we get back some room  for ourselves, not to be shared necessarily with the rest of the Planet, and most interestingly we should not feel guilty about!!!!!

iPhone, then GooglePhone, now what? The iSkyphone???

Nevertheless, here is another contender!!! Skype wireless phone is going to be launched “by late October” in Europe.. considering that most EU citizens, and most of all Italians are “mobile based” rather than PC-based, I guess this could be a “see-what-happen” kind of situation. The phone will be equipped with a “Skype” button (something along this line..) which should trigger a proprietary application, developed by iSkoot (sounds very much like a viking word, which is all the best for a mobile company..), that will magically connect the little thing with the immense Skype friends’ community everyone’s got these days..

The fact that will be under the “3″ umbrella, as already cited into the BizWeek article, should actually lead to a rather complicated tariffing scheme, like you have to call your favourite number in New Caledonia more than once a day to get a 15% rebate on each and every SMS you send to people more that 250Km away that, ultimately, will build up against your free calls to… ….. ….

Still, it is a nice option, as if we didn’t have aplenty already, into the “mobile experience” slaughter arena…

More to come (I am afraid!!!!)

Wii rules!! Nintendo got up on blue chip ranking!!

Some posts ago, we discussed over the impact of the different gaming experience Wii was bringing in the marketplace.. now that experience translated in a shower of dollar (yen..) for Nintendo. The company, as presented, surpassed the 10 trillion yen mark (how many “zeros” in a trillion!?!?!?!), thus becoming the third in market capitalisation at the Japanese stock exchange, joining the Toyota-Mitsubishi UFJ couple in a elitist club of the “amazingly large companies”…

Now, and considering that those numbers are 80% above Sony’s, as stated, we should appreciate that attention economy, users’ tribes and experience are somewhat fairly fundamental keywords for effective World domination… that provided you are able to discount the “innovation” factor and have build up a nice and smooth self-reinforcing product upgrade strategy.. than, there is something else that comes into play, called “retaliation strategy” which is a factor few managers I have met are able to factor into their cunning plans..

Christmas is approaching, more to come I believe!!!

Apple iTouch, Creative Zen or Samsung P2???

I spend, roughly, around 2.5hrs/daily with my MP3 player on… public transports to go back and forth from home to work, gym three times a week, couple of hours, office God knows… 1Gb is currently not up to the task, I end up listening to the same stuff simply too often, and I am lazy, do not want to change the entire music collection every couple of days..

So, let’s change the baby, and whilst at it why not some video playback options???

Now, the basics are: min of 4Gb, FM radio as well, a min of 2.5 inch screen, openness to do whatever I want with whatever format (audio/video)..ah, yep, do not want to spend a zillion for something that will be surpassed in six months time..

Apple iTouch, Creative Zen and Samsung P2 are all sort of fitting the bill… what do you reckon???? iTouch has got some flashy features, plus web navigation… Creative has got all in it, plus SD expansion slot and apparently a strong codec conversion software, Samsung is sleek, and has got Bluetooth for file sharing….

Asking to my elite community to give out a vote, pinpoint your favourite, drag me out of uncertainty!!!

Waiting for your inputs, most welcome really!!

UPDATE: Got the Creative!!! And here is an usage update…

Wi Fi in the Park, and Milan goes on air..

You all know that I am not staggeringly in love with Milan, which I believe is somewhat living and pretending way above its current status of second-tier European city, however, “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” and there we are.. there is, for the not-in-the-know, a lovely park in the middle of the city, Parco Sempione, which should actually be considered as the local version of NY Central Park or London’s Hyde Park (sort of..), and it is packed full with the usual fauna of joggers, mums with going-to-be-famous babies, some execs and other city parks’ paraphernalia. The whole community will enjoy the beauty of Wi Fi connection across the park!! Well, most of the park…

There is a “strategically positioned” antenna over the Torre Branca, sort of in the middle of the park, and some smaller antennas in four other location. The tricky part is the access, which is actually going via a “card” that the WiFi surfer should collect in dedicated “outlets” nearby the antennas (as the Corriere della Sera points out), and the card will guarantee access for three hours to be spent throughout the day. The card is free, seemingly for now…. Ah, forgot, to get the card you have to leave your full name, no nicknames allowed , and an identity document number.

Now, that is particularly ludicrous, even for an over-rated city like Milan. Could you actually think about how to complicate something that should be “free” in the first place a tad more???? Why do I have to give out all those info??? To protect who from what?? Do come along….

The nice thing is that the local “assessore” (someone in charge something, at municipality level) for the urban layout stated “the parks are our top priority” when considering the Wi Fi implementation, and the very chap claims “so that we will allure a larger number of people to go about the park to study and work” as if I rather be stuck in the office if I had not my boss checking for my whereabouts.. rubbish, utter rubbish and sounds very much like “parrot talking”…

And yet the entire plan, which entails the coverage of the urban territory by 2009, via more than 4,000 access points, is a nice step forward to the fuellest coverage to be available by 2015 for the “Expo” to be held in Milan. It is interesting, it is a nice way of pushing forward a city that may have lots to offer to residents and tourists alike, but the feeling is, again, that Milan is playing like it were a much larger and much more important city. And it is playing way too bad!!!

It has already been mentioned a “feasibility study” to be prepared in collaboration with the local Polytechnic, which I trust would lead to proving the project will have massive returns for the parties involved.. when, not too long ago, the city of San Francisco (!!!!) had some trouble justifying its project of Wi Fi cabling… SF, at the very heart of the tech evolution!!!

Guess if that rings any bell ….

In the meanwhile, it has already been stated that the wireless coverage of the city will not be free for surfers, and furthermore there will be a public tender to award the project… that would allow an immediate cash back into some pockets, with very little creative effort.. so, nevermind people would eventually pay for some contents, nevermind the fact that the municipality could use the widespread capability of being in touch with a range of potential “customers” via laptop or, increasingly, mobile devices to push for entertainment offers (info, tickets, discounts, coupons…) that may create a flow of activity and opportunities for a plethora of commercial actors (which would pay, say, for advertising… isn’t that the model of all the top flying Web companies today???)… and you could go a long way along these lines… why on Earth hindering the overall uptake of such a nice opportunity just to make money the easy (potentially) way??? That’s silly… (for the project itself, not for the pockets that may benefit from sheer stupidity..)

So, the overall idea of “virtual streets” in Milan along the old, real ones comes to a price.. for the users to pay… guess most of the people will keep on browsing the nice cafes and shops in the Triangolo della Moda and will be oblivious of Wi Fi.. apart from the typical Milanese posers, but that is another story..

PS By the way, if the municipality wanted to measure the citizens’ satisfaction for such a service, first should have not bother everyone with that data collection via crucis, and secondly, should have potentially launched the project not at the very doorstep of the autumn rainy season and winter cold… talking about stupidity…

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..

Web TV.. damn, just got that satellite thing..

Now… we knew IPTV was kind of hot on someone’s agenda, and as it seems, it still is! MySpace (wasn’t that place where you used to mingle and meet…) is going to launch miniseries on its portal..

I will keep it short: what about the autogenerated contents??? Or, admittingly, this post was true at the end???? As soon as the mass is there, ready to digest the next rubbish, there you go, it’s on its way.. so much for creative freedom..

At least, as soon as one is down, somewhere in cyberspace there is always another place for the pure ones!!

But, as it stands, now I have got a satellite connection, three WebTVs, two DVD readers, plus a PlayStation and three laptops, a couple of MP3 readers and a portable media player.. would I ever see the sunshine again?? Would I ever see this planet the way I remember it last time I went out???

Again, think about “attention”.. beware…

iPod revolution on its way??

Or the event that Apple will held in San Francisco next Sept. 5th is just a “keep the pressure steady” on the market after the earlier launch of the alluminum-look iMac???

Still, every single time Stevie goes on stage, people start trembling, either in excitement or in terror..

Few things in the rumors are quite interesting, though… first, the possibility to have an iPod with full-screen features, then to have it packed with Apple OS, furthermore to have that injection of intelligence into more traditional, click-wheel based models, and last but not least the possibility to see a new iPhone, the iPhone Nano, whatever that means…

Most interesting of all is an alleged  declaration Steve Jobs did in an earlier company meeting (mind you, if the declaration is out in the press, that was not exactly a company meeting.. nevermind..), pointing at the possibility to auto-cannibalise product revenues with other product lines revs, than having that done by competitors..

Now, that seems to me, with all respect for such a genius, something like common sense … so expect the expected and, as someone says in the linked  articles, also the WOW…

Apple strategy is all about excitement, and as the most adventurous amongst you may know, adrenaline wears off pretty quickly, so it is a matter of keeping that up, and transform it in awe!!

Life is great, isn’t it..?

Internet killed the video stars?!?!?!?!? Not yet… unfortunately..

Milan is still warmish but the sky is clouded, yesterday was kind of raining, and today guess it will follow suit pretty easily… this is the perfect time to either going into the wild and search for early Autumn mushrooms or snuggle on the sofa with a cup of green tea (got some wonderful ones in Japan!! ) and some TV…  but, which TV???!??!

As it seems, IP television is coming on a screen near you, quite abruptly eventually, and we are all going to deal with it, should the scenario Vint Cerf is depicting at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival come to reality.. quite agree that some of the newest productions or most interesting contents are floating somewhere in cyberspace, fine again on the fact that IP TV is on the agenda of old fashioned broadcasters and newly born moguls (see Joost and its peers), and it is true that in Japan you may download one hour worth of TV programs in 16″… it is also true that in Japan the “mobile” internet seems to be a reality, that broadband connections are available for free everywhere, also in the cheapest ryokan (B&B…) you may encounter in a small city, as it is quite true that, say, in Italy we still have 56K connections, a poor command of the English language (at least at the level of proficiency required to follow a video show or a movie), as it is quite a factor that a sharp move to IP TV will definitely put in jeopardy some audience control mechanism, given the (supposed) larger degree of freedom the Web should allow… OK, this would be positive, I guess..

This is without considering the advertising strategy revamp that would be needed, a severe customer analysis, and a superior ability to meet the audience expectations and try and build up some kind of lock in (it means management capability, and you all know I strongly believe that is in very short supply) … satellite and cable, when and where they have been free to compete fairly, have actually shown how life could be hard in a truly, competitive, open TV marketplace..

However, the ability of the IP TV to implement some “high tech”features, such as sort of hyperlinks in shows, will demolish the consolidated idea of a TV “whatever”cast, that is to sit and watch… merging too deeply the incredible digging power of the Web with the TV format it may be nice on paper but may not encounter a burst of enthusiasm… TV is TV, the Web is the Web, a news site is not substituting a newspaper, as ebooks are not substituting a nice paper book… cultural shifts are hard to sell and digest, it may happen but has to be a great, truly wonderful idea (such as the ease of choice and portability of an mp3??? my mum got in love with Pink Floyd since that was what my brother put in her mp3 player for her to listen whilst painting… nice works, mind you..)

TV will end up coming from Mars, as Cerf says, and will be fun to watch (kind of…), some of us are interested in exploring programs for further news and in-depth knowledge, some of us will watch shows in three languages, but there is a huge amount of people, today, watching every single day EastEnders, Beautiful, the Big Brother and some silly quiz show(we have that horrible “Affari Tuoi” here in Italy that is polluting my dinners..), and all the rest of those questionable programming.. and guess what, someone may actually say that the money flows there and not around the National Geographic series…

Too sad!

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??)

SecondLife, the awakening?

I will go back and drag out some older posts (such as this, and this, also) … there is a weird little elf wandering around the world, and particularly in the IT and “innovation” (bleah….) environments, called Hype.

Hype is seldom nice, more often is quite annoying, since it goes jumping around and playing with unwary people, teasing them, luring them, to end up twirling away in a laugh, leaving behind a bunch of bewildered spectators.

Hype played quite recently and hard with a streetcar called SecondLife, convincing the entire world that SL was the Arcadia, a newly born Atlantis, the Mountains of the Moon and the Kublai Kahn palace all in one go… and party-goers, adventurers, smart (ahahaha!!!) business men and a plethora of curious and most diverse people embarked in a long journey to the new holy land of endless possibilities..

The “endless” quickly became “numerous”, to mutate into “quite a lot” and shift over the “some” realm … and Hype was already laughing…

Then, as it seems, it came the dawn of all this. Lights over the shadow, clearness over the murky fog Hype casted all over the place.. SL is not the next world, it is not the place to be to make your business flowing with money, it is a great idea that made some people filthy rich and others quite sleepy ’cause of “white” nights spent in sorting out how to fly or what to wear or how big “that” should have been…

To cut it short, an Italian online magazine is quoting the Los Angeles Times (of which I am not a subscribers, therefore no data…) in saying that SecondLife is loosing business appeal, some ventures are selling their empty virtual spaces (a new specimen of “Void” seems to have found SL a nice place to inhabit) and going back to “business as usual”.. lindendollars exchanged are dropping a bit, users or “residents” are not as much as thought or boasted and, most of all, it seems that the awareness of SecondLife being a huge fairground is back into full swing!! Data or further links will possibly follow..

Rightly said, SL is a fantasy world, and users/resident want to mainly do fantasy things.. which is fair, since the very first definition of all this was belonging to the Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG… what the heck…cannot even say that, nevermind playing it..) kingdom!! And, incidentally, it seems that there are a plethora of new places to be (almost like those happy hours bars in Milan..) such as There, Entropia Universe, and even a spectacular (who said that???) Barbie Girls!! Plus guests…

It is also fair to assume that, given the work and good job Hype did nonetheless, the business environment but even more the social space and interaction may have a boost from the First SecondLife (are we going mad here??) and transform some experiences into an even more interesting mashup of things (e.g. Google Earth and the possibility to mash it up with SL features so to dive into a place/city/museum/park/whatever and enjoy it..) and thus end users experience.

But, please, leave our wallets to rest in peace and let us fly over the Grand Canyon, much appreciated, thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE. Incidentally, this came with the mail.. Time is not liking SL at all.. pathetic seems harsh, as the final comments about “CEO trying too hard to be hip..” but guess it may be kind of true.. no names…

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..

iPhone Uncovered…

This is the iPhone Uncovered…

Mossberg from Wall Street Journal had the thingy for a couple of weeks..

Now, I want to have UMTS on it or, better still, HSDPA connectivity, and a all-inclusive flat tariff from whomever is going to lock in a long term contract with Apple.. after all, the iPhone has got everything in it, can do everything, why putting the hassle of thinking about the amount of money you spend whilst browsing, interacting, blogging and doing all the other silly stuff you can do with over 100 grams of plastic, aluminum and silicon put together quite nicely indeed?!?!?!?!

Web 2.0, eBeings overload and a big burst??

The current appearance of Web 2.0 developments is the most “friendly” way to disseminate a much powerful social interaction disruptive advance. From a bit-based interactivity (machine to machine, with humans – including intangibles such as feelings – in the background), the virtual worlds (metaverse) are re-positioning a “simulacra” (avatar) of humanity as the main mean of interaction.

Web forms are transformed into living eBeings.

The main driver, once again, is social interaction. All today top-flyers Web sites are about social interactions, the growth of technology supports (broadband, mobility et alia) is underpinned by the need of more effective social interactions. Virtual worlds represent these trends at their best.

However, as in all technology advance with a significant social impact, there are, and always will be, different layers of adoptions (at the very least for the next decade). Users will be broadly segmented into Systematic Users, who will immediately dig into the new features, swapping massively from legacy technology / social interactions and Critical Users, those who will approach new features as a potential alternative to fit into a consolidated pattern of legacy technology / social interaction.

Today, at least for the “First World” (in Web terms), basic computing technology is embedded into the society as any other “utility”, since it is considered normal to switch on a PC and be able to browse the Internet almost as much as we expect “light” when turning on a switch.

The evolutionary step is about leveraging users’ capability to segment the Web into subnetworks, by interest / community / language or any other user defined filter. This actually causes an uncontrolled (almost) surge of communal conscience, opinions, actions, which are all composed by several, shared and accepted “single” views.

Therefore, today’s Internet champions are those companies and corporations able to create a “working table” for users, and those that are exploiting the “communal conscience” to create or recreate the users’ experience up to their will and desires.

There is a sharp shift in the concept of “value”, “interaction”, and as it seems Internet velocity is a factor to determine evolution of society.

Or is it like someone is arguing about, this is all but a faster way to a “disevolution” of the social canvass, since we are heading towards connection overload, scarce quality and utmost lack of attention???

Guess what? Either way this is all going to change.. which is fun nonetheless!!

First day of summer: new engagements and a bunch of nice ideas..

There we are, again!!!! Finally!!!!

IT IS THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which, incidentally, it is also my favorite season.. the beach, warm waters to swim and dive in, long eves, perfumes allover the place, and lots of other nice perks…!!!

Won’t go long on this, yet is about time to plan for a stack of new, nice things to do and plan for, so:

• my motorbike, the little Honda, is sorted out, ready to roll in full swing!
• bought a new wet suit, new diving gears and I am ready to try and dive next week end in Tuscany!
• I have trained a bit on running, I may want to dig into the trail running experience, which will be done in a fortnight!
• Booked my holidays!!!!!!!!!!! We are talking about a nice three weeks in Japan, travelling around and experiencing the country, the people, the combination of history and technology advances, in a word: great!!!

From the work side, I have been appointed over a new engagement, which will be about competitive environment in the Energy sector, whole of Europe. I am now on the learning stage, reading about the energy market, issues and jargons.. nice to know there is lots of attention over alternative energy production, Kyoto protocols (I will be in Kyoto, eheheheh!!! ) and country results: incidentally Italy is appalling in meeting the objectives, some 100 million tons short over Kyoto Objectives (UK is already below the allowance), and we are in good company with our Spanish cousins..

Yet, there will be a heck of things to talk about in the near future, and will make sure the Japan journey is fully recorded… kind of Bruce Chatwin stuff, will buy some black moleskine notepads to go around.. ah, and a new UMTS cell phone, otherwise I will be stranded in the Rising Sun country …!! Nice!!!

A cyber passport to travel … in metaverses!! What’s next??

Somewhere, in all these posts, I actually suggested that someone will have eventually thought about the idea to search for avatars, instead of people (spock.com) or information (google and friends…)… Now that could become reality pretty soon, since IBM suggested to transport avatars from metaverse to metaverse, using a sort of virtual passport.

Nice idea, despite the fact that your online privacy would be shattered to pieces: do you really want someone to track you even in your jumping over cyber hyperspace??? do you really want someone to track you in real world and in virtual as well??

Yet, this “passport thing” may be an interesting idea as you could virtually put together and migrate experiences from different worlds, populate metaverse with creations and ideas, cross fertilise the cyber universe but.. who’s going to provide the standards? Who’s going to accept intrusions? Who’s going to be defeated in a sort of cyber supremacy??? Or will ever mankind be able to accept this new level of complexity (given the exponential growth of interactions level amongst networks and people)?

And, most of all, do we really need this???

Do something, in the meanwhile…

By the way, we better start seriously thinking about the SecondLife, the first one seems heading in a bog…

Why not fixing this issue first, and then start jumping all over the place for the billions of zillions of dollars that Web 2.0 guarantees to everyone involved?? Laughable assessment..

Free time!!!!

Finally…

We are not machines, we are not programmable, thus we work when our brains have boost, creativity, energy, whatever.. free time, the end result is what counts, not the hours at the desk…

“Corriere della Sera”, an Italian newspaper, states that in USA has been …noticed that most of the long hours at the desk are spent in “presidiating the position”… there is a marvellous book, “Il Deserto dei Tartari”, that should be read as a management text … for the ones in the know, no further comments!!!!

So, bottom line is “work smarter not longer”.. gosh, what a trite thought.. what an obvious statement in a “knowledge society”!!!!

However, nice idea, it would imply a superior management capability, able to plan for results, social interaction amongst employees, mesh and fusion of pieces of work in an unicum highly efficient, and believe me, those kind of managers are not commodity, scarce, rare as a white tiger. It would signify that you trust your people, that your power is no longer anchored to meeting where the manager often distribute pills of wisdom as pigeons their droppings on monuments, it would signify “thinking” and “be managers”.

It is far too hard a call, for the typical manager, trust me… we are still a country in which remote working is not common practice for the HR need to see you at the desk, nevermind understanding the quality of what you do in a shorter time than the usual 8 hours shift…. Nice ideas are often linked to massive cultural changes, so please, don’t try to fool me with these blunders!!!

at least…

… someone’s trying to re-position “Culture” as an interesting product.. (Milan, today). Mind you, I had some spare time one eve, fiancee in standard delay mode, and “waisted” my hours browsing the Kandinsky exhibition at Palazzo Reale, in Milan.. wonderful way to detach from the (sometimes) ugliness of daily routine.. good luck you guys, in your endeavor  during the Big Brother Age!

Let’s put it this way (part Three)

You cannot be a parent simply because you gave birth, as you are not a priest simply because you got the call, you are not someone simply because you exist and you are not human simply because you belong to humanity. I am afraid the ongoing revolution, the new Hercules’ Pillars, Tom’s Mississippi, at the end is just about this: be a Human Being. A Man. And today you have to be that as you cannot hide behind you pledged ignorance, behind the lack of spare time, behind all those silly excuses but ever so useful as a flea market jumper.

The society as it is going to be defined is a call to action, it is a “We want you!”, a bit to everyone, according to possibility and conscience. This is about the one-almost-two billion of connected people, for the rest..let’s hope Tom Sawyer win.

So far, so good, then, got the message out.

And what about the reaction of the current System? It minimises. Quite often pretty much like Louis XVI did on July 14^th 1789, as it seems he wrote on his diary that very day: “No news today”.

It jokes, laughs or write in capital letters (hype) about those part of the revolution that are less painful, less disrupting to its being a system and “people believe that it is undoubtedly true” as Borges said.

Why making quotes? Because is connection of thoughts, of intellects, of ideas which are still in embryo and in needs of growing and being pushed out, since knowing the different will make a new One. Because, today, to reach the heart of a moltitude’s thoughts, the distilled thinking of hundreds of millions life experiences is as complex as switching on a PC and launching a browser. Here is the new borderline of the unknown.

This is utterly dangerous for the current architecture, the present social structure.

Since most of what has been said could not be true altogether, since there is not just one God, since it is possible to live without the superfluous, since in Iraq women were working as IT engineers, since it is not true that the Argentinean bonds were such a great chance, since it is true that cars can use hydrogen and clean energy, since it is true that a chap somewhere built a solar panel that is ever so light and tenfold less expensive than current ones, since it is true when imagination gets the power the World can change. Because when imagination gets the power the Speed of Light grows.

Quite as clear, a complex system does defend its status with a series of antibodies. Unarguably, the future society(ies) will not have (or could not have) any need at all of a large array of intermediaries, lackeys, pretended experts, that population of lazybones that bureaucratise the planet.

We could find money to finance ideas without hitting a bank, we could find homes without going into those blood-sucking agencies, we could find goods, services, opinions, ideas, movements and all that I may want, directly at the source. We could almost be back to an humongous form of barter, in which also the intellect is a good to share.

Mind you, the French revolution, that completely turned upside down the destiny and the concept of democracy, was stirred by some thousands of half illiterate French peasants, whilst the current movement is made by few hundreds of million of decently educated people, the impact could be above devastating.

There is a little problem nonetheless, a tiny winy triviality, a dog in a church, a dropping in Arcadia: the human nature.

Should the people have better knowledge of others, they would learn how hate them.

said Flaiano, again a quote and I am quite afraid to say I do believe it.

 

Evolution and revolutions have always happened, at any latitude, in times of great inspiration and during the darkest ages of mankind, when culture was the ruler and when ignorance was the queen, from the East to the West, through Time. Great revolutions have always happened.

And, to be fair, things have changed deeply, sometimes radically, yet the unchanged is the human nature, the human being.

Still a “bastard inside”, despite the evidence, constantly gripping his own personal good and satisfaction against the well-being of the many, material and yet with a foot into transcendence, religious and petty, Merchant of Venice and Leonardo Da Vinci.

Perhaps, at the end of it all, the New is only a permutation of what has always been.

So long human beings are alive there will be differences, inequalities and oppositions. Because, as it seems, connectivity amongst differences makes life possible.

Let’s put it this way (part Two)

What the heck, yes, we are somewhat all Tom Sawyer or, at least, we should be more like that.

That is, third statement: diversity and curiosity are strengths, or at the very least do determine the future.

It comes to my mind that unity does not give out any strength, but it builds up a monolith. Useless memento of the past. A burden.

Nevermind that, I do remember that Tom was some one of a kind, he had qualities that in the “pre-sawyer” era were not even recognised as that: a dreamer, creative, rebellious, brave, unusual and ardent, idealistic, morally integer at the end, open and fond of the unknown. He is witty, of the kind of a motley fool, he is convincing. During Middle Age some have been burned to death, of Tom Sawyers. Long time ago one has been crucified, and today are all considered loonies. Some of them may escape from the asylum and become Steve Jobs, but this is another story.

However, there is no Tom Sawyer without a quest, and there is no Tom Sawyer myth without Huck Finn, without the raft on the river, jumps over fences, eyes wide open with marvel.

The society that is germinating is made by Tom Sawyers, but the same Tom is a composite, as Twain himself states in the preface of his… to his… of his parable:

….Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual — he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture.

Elegy of Diversity, unity of diversity to create a new specimen. But it all comes to life if there is some awareness, consciousness, or at least freedom to be conscious.

As of today, consciousness of the creation of a new human being specimen, a “half human and half machine” hybrid, is rather poor, simply because the Speed of Darkness overtakes the Speed of Light quite often. Or, to put it in a different way, fear makes you retreat your hand under the blanket. For most people.

So, we still are at that point of interconnection, collision of diversity in which we do see all aspects, quite real indeed (a sort of an Internet Tao???!?!), pertaining to the negative side, the frightening one, the utterly unacceptable. You see all deviances, and stigmatise behaviours, and we all crucify the new monsters. And, during this Circo Massimo display, we may tend to lose perspective over the fact that all is rapidly changing.

New human tribes are built, and they meet and clash at the edge of a wood that exists only in an AnotherWhen (as Tiziano Sclavi said in a dreamy DylanDog comics), they know each other and exchange information on the best path to take, where are the fundamental on-line goods to sustain existence, and create new frontier outposts of such improbable names that would have made Sergio Leone and John Ford cringe: Google, Flickr, YouTube and others scattered who knows where.

In short, we work at the edge of chaos, that hyper-creative space with loose but present rules nonetheless (otherwise we would have chaos which is paralysis of creation because of a casual hyper-kinetic status), in which several small worlds emerge, and bridges amongst worlds are defined, and in which you wait. With your eyes set to the horizon.

It is almost like clouds clashing into each other in a clear sky, apparently in a casual order and yet following a well define canvass, a weave of hidden energies, manifest winds and invisible streams that allows the single pieces of vapour to form shapes, compositions, watery theories ready to release wander, fear, darkness and burst of lights. Always and everywhere following the idea of an Atto Unico. A solo. Identifiable in its orchestrations and notes, but still unknown in its conclusive melody.

And all of this is called Speed of Light, if the little human being is a Tom Sawyer, or Speed of Darkness if he is a “quaquaraquà” (for definition check for Leonardo Sciascia English translation of “Il giorno della civetta”..)

Mankind, and we fill our mouth saying that beautiful word made by the wind, I divide it into five categories: men, half men, wimps, and (with respect) buggers and then the quaquaraquà….very few men, few half men, and I would happily stop here as far as mankind is about… But no, you go deeper down, to the wimps, which are like toddlers believing they are grownups, monkeys imitating the adults… and even deeper down: the buggers, who are becoming an army….and at the end of it all the quaquaraquà: they should live like ducks in a puddle, since their life has no more meaning and expressivity of that one of ducks… You, who probably are going to frame me on this papers like a Christ, you are a man… You too, said the captain, with a whiff of emotion…

Let’s put it this way (part One)

Let’s put it this way: I am not really convinced that unity is strength…. Quite often unity magnifies the negative that is embedded into the single components…Right, this is quite true if we put “unity” and “strength” under an umbrella of positive expectations.

The Anglo-Saxons would now use that powerful lexical picklock, “so what”, that could really be so aggressive, so hostile, so ultimate..

So what you mean? So what this all has to do with us?

It has to do with us a lot, indeed. Because we are so deeply convinced that all is happening these days, during the last say couple of years, within the global social structure in “good”, intrinsically powerful, ineluctably revolutionary.

We are all interconnected. We are building up a super-conscience (superior, to be precise) upon which structure, found, fuse, mould the future of mankind. Which, whoops, is made by..men.

Let’s start with saying that, should a Light Speed exist, it also exist a Darkness Speed. And quite often the latter is much faster within human conscience, despite any physics law.

So, here we have a couple of interesting items: unity is not always strength (the Positive one, something like Star Wars force..) and also that Light Speed in somewhat overtaken by Darkness Speed, nevermind Alfie Einstein.

Then, what is happening is what? A revolution? An evolution? An ineluctability? A mankind lack of style? All of the above. But there is further, slightly more important stuff to consider.

The cultural approach, the mediatic masterplan, the cultural reduction of the Internet phenomena and electronic society as of today stems, perhaps, from an approach and analytical angle totally askew: it is not about praising interconnectivity to unite in a superior Whole, but should be an Elegy of Diversity!

To face a different reality, fight the unknown, redefine old boundaries or cross and forget the old ones is one of the most frightening occurrences for any given human being, social group or organised living structure.

Today, the billion and half (and growing) human beings connected to the Net are actually doing exactly that, every given day whichever God puts on Earth: exasperate the concept of “boundaries”.

A faceless mass trails Westwards, curious and terrorised at the very same time, pushed forward by that force, that pulse that makes you peek through half open doors, that makes you turn the dark corner, that very pulse that pushed me when I was a toddler to put my hand out from the secure harbour of a blanket and down into the dark chasm between the bed frame and the wall, dwelling and hideaway of obscure presences or golden rewards. Nothing like that, nothing to be found but a little piece of myself, recovered and polished.

Curious we are, we enlarge boundaries, ready to retreat, to trench on when the discovery is potentially not the materialisation of the expected. And the union of a billion of searches provokes nonetheless, by chance, pure luck or collision, a new picture of reality, of the social structure, of the very future ahead of us. And this happens because not all sailors, not all internauts, not all Argonauts and above and beyond all this not all the Tom Sawyer’s of our time are retreating like wet nestlings under the protective wings of the Past.