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…

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!!

IMF crucifies IT, the source of all evil!!

So much for the evolution of society towards a tech-aware, 2.0, whatever eSociety.. the IMF, in its World Economic Outlook 2007, stated that Information Technology and its ecosystem are the fundamental cause of World’s inequality (here an excerpt..).

There is here an interesting (!!!) theory about globalisation, free trade, financial flows (Foreign Direct Investments) and technology. In short, but you may want to go into deeper details here, PDF version) it is stated that globalisation is, overall, reducing inequality due to a diverse effect combination of free trade (which is a positive impulse to evolution) and a rather not-so-positive FDI (which eliminate some diversities albeit augmenting some turbulence in the countries originating the FDI flows). The reduction in inequality should be better translated into an income rise amongst the (once??!?!? please..) poorer part of the World population, whereas inequality is, whoops, actually rising due to … technology!!

Lots of articles and commentaries have addressed the issue, from Financial Times to The Register, and yet I believe nobody has ultimately pointed out a major factor: technology divide may be a more likely suspect, a better one than tech itself.

FDI flows go to countries that, for a number of reasons, are more attractive than others to investors, and unfortunately this fact cannot fully exploit a real, global organisation of production, wealth, innovation, evolution. China and India are attracting a severely different level of FDI, both in terms of origin (around 60% of Chinese FDI comes from what has being called its “diaspora”, and investments are capital intensive and with – relative – low tech level, 70% of Indian FDI measure comes from Western countries and includes a strong level of technology transfer – courtesy of S. Majumber on The Hindu Business Line on IFM data) and, again, usage: Chinese production vs. Indian services. First point: is the country economic and social development plan that drives inequality within the country, not really the FDI or the technology.

Tech is a first and foremost a fabric, a neural system upon which building up, is an energy source enabling further advances. If this energy is “held in hostage” by a small fraction of any given country, it is not a tech “genetic” fault, isn’t it? Extend this at macro-geographic level and it may still apply.

The actual chasm between deployment and usage of tech resources determines the inadequacy of a given country system to compete in a given “scenario”. What it should be important to notice is the fact that there are multiple scenarios to fit in, and the combination of all scenarios are making up the “global wealth”. Therefore, as far as providing “living energy” for the Planet (since we are talking about globalisation..) is the main task, we all need a China (with less pollution maybe??) and we need an India. We need tech and we need plough. Question is about how to rightly value both.

Capital flows are not actually designed to improve a country systemic wealth, or a macro-geography systemic advance, but generally serve the purpose of few “actors”, and capital moves around to foster any potential mid term return. To ignite technology in a system is the easiest way to foster a mid term return, it is like a steroid cure for the weakest, that seldom conduct to long term gains if the cure is not supported by a targeted and systemic distribution of the new “booster”. Again, it is about the divide and not the tech itself.

Someone, guess it is the FT columnist, argues that on a global scale inequality is certainly shrinking, I am questioning whether this is a statistical statement, which clearly encompass a massive rise of rich limited portions of a country population and a significantly larger grouping still feeding the former with brute manpower….

And on we could go… bottom line is there still are three, if not four “planet Earth” on the same celestial object we all inhabit and whether there are rich or poor nations and people it is not because of technology, which ultimately the human race has developed and still control, but it is about the stronger against the weaker, it is about profit and power, not about bytes and IT services.

Plauto, a latin author of III century B.C, gave us “homo homini lupus”, which Hobbes transformed in a castle of thinking, and Shakespeare, in his Julius Caesar, made Cassius pronouncing “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

Have a thought.

Second Life wired to your real brain…

.. or, at least, what is left of it after having played for such a long time with all the VWs, MMPORG, videogames and Co’s since you were a toddler.

Still, this is what some Japanese researchers of the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory are currently perfecting. The entire idea is to “connect” the brain waves produced by the very thought of, say, moving around SL, to a BCI (Brain to Computer Interface) which will make the most of your EEG and will have you fly and hover around sims.

As usual, most of these “strange” applications are designed to allow people with some sort of disabilities to interact with a wider range of possibilities and to, partially, overcome some hurdles they may experience. Yet, this opens up some nice “futurology” exercises to accomplish…

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…

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..

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.

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!

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?????

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?????

SecondLife: now that’s silly…

My latest post was about SL being slightly trashed by media since its tech structure is no longer an experience but a pain, that the entire thing is loosing business momentum and so forth..

Now this is .. what?? Silly?!?!?!?!?! Your immense virtual world shrinking the size of a say 3-inches screen (or about..)?? To do what??? A mobile SL experience???

Mind you, if this is pretty much along the line of something I read some time ago, pointing out that metaverses, including SL, are avatar-based substitutes of email and instant messaging, now that would make a lot of sense… maybe “a lot” is rather strong, it makes some sense..

So, the entire thing would somewhat turn from being the future of us all into a massive, glittery communication platform, quite interactive indeed?? An immense client base???

That’s a thought..

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..

The Instanbul Declaration: measuring progress..

This is really interesting..

In Instanbul the OECD and a number of international organisation have gathered and came out with some directions on how to foster and support the progress of societies leveraging data and information..

Broadly speaking, the Declaration should improve amongst countries the data sharing of a range of indicators, from wealth to healthcare to climate changes, as to improve knowledge and cater for better and more efficient policy making procedures. Also, some ideas and suggestions point into the usage of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis as to improve and enlarge citizens participation into the whole process.

So, the actual digital divide is the issue to tackle now, otherwise the above scenario is a nice bunch of lovely ideas.. OK, for once I do not want to play the devil’s advocate, so kudos to the above initiative, pretty cool if some “information ivory towers” come tumbling down…

Let’s see.. an ancient rule is about rich being richer and poor poorer overtime, but who knows, things may change…

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 ….

A game is a game…

You do remember the hype generated by the announcement regarding the launch of the new PlayStation 3??

The sleek, ultra powerful gaming machine attracted everyone’s attention, tons of lines of blogging and ePress were spent in chanting the praise of the Japanese miracle drug for gamers. It could do everything, and someone said even Starbucks was kind of worried PS3 could have prepared a better Frappuccino (which, to an Italian, is a nonsense..frappuccino…what the heck…). (This is a Joke, btw….) (Just in case you were wandering how did happen you missed the news about “starbucks and the PS3″..).

On a day in early July 2007, in a far far away galaxy, Sony decided to cut down its hefty PS3 starting price by a nice 17% (which, again to an Italian, is not such a lucky number to choose, thus we expect a worse turnaround of Sony’s gaming consolle fate…), for anything else but a competitive move to counterattack the Nintendo Wii.

Now, this is a HUGE lesson to learn.

Nintendo Wii, you all know, is not the most powerful, the fastest, the anything -est in the gaming consolle market, is just simple, almost basic graphics compared to PS3 and Xbox, but utterly simple fun to enjoy!!

Simple, fun. Not powerful, fast. Simple, fun. That’s it.

Wii also boasts that sort of harrypotterish magic wand to play tricks with, so you can master whatever game without being a Indu goddess with eight arms and hands and an incredible number of fingers… you don’t have to master lots of different controls, you just play, and possibly enjoy. End. Period.

Now, that sounds to me very much like the answer of the marketplace to a “gaming overload”. Lesson to be learned: bigger is not always better, nor it is an automatic market success. Translate that into the Web 2.0 kingdom, and you may find yourself with some nice answers to questions that were puzzling you ever since you first heard “secondlife” or “myspace”… (where you really all that puzzled?? Sad, too sad mate, get out, sun is shining!!!). Being a Critical User (as in an older posting of mine) means to be able to make informed choices, and most of all it means you will not be carried away by hypes..

It is not all set, people are smarter than 2.0 gurus, and life is still made by emotions, people, fun and laughter, not by bytes only!!! Beware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE: reading through the article, and still they don’t get it.. it is not a matter of pricing, the guy playing Wii IS NOT the guy playing PS3, those are two different user experiences!!

Walls are tumbling down.. and someone doesn’t like it!!!

We all know that the innovation, no, better still, the evolution of the Web environment (innovation is boring..) towards the 2.0 ecosystem is basically referring to the “socialisation” of the Web and the enabling of content/info creation/sharing and distribution by users. Also, lots and lots of the power clustering that currently make up the economy canvass may actually be challenged by the empowerment of individuals.. that is simplistically put, but there we are..

Enterprise are also scared, as it seems in this article, by the loss of power centrality the 2.0 ecosystem may actually causes. That would have been normal should the comment refers to, say, less Web-developed countries, but not the US!! Still, it allows for some after-thoughts, first of all that we all live surrounded by an old oligarchic system that is desperately trying to put back all the stones coming down from tumbling walls. Question is: are we going to allow them to exhaust in the effort and thus simply disappear or are we helping them out instead???

I rather go for the second option, since the first may take quite a longer time (survival instinct may do a great deal, here..), that meaning that the unstoppable growth of a different ecosystem should be also supported by a much higher awareness level of the inappropriateness of walled gardens and closed circuit efforts, in favor of a more “communal” approach to market growth and best practice sharing.

It is rather common knowledge the fact that the usual markets are kind of stressed out, and we are all in dire needs of new territories to explore.. and in these New Worlds the 2.0 concepts are more easily accepted (green field approach), thus setting the entry pace: either you accept it or you are out. Since there are options, since there is no such a thing as a monopoly offering, since the World is unarguably ONE. Market, place to live, place to share. Take it or leave it.

From eSociety to meSociety and the new 2.0 emotional disturbs

So, at the end of the game, it is all about a huge amount of Me mixing together.. there is not such a thing as an eSociety but a rather large club of Me, lots of Me, a plethora of identities sticking together, quite randomly in fact.

And the weirdest thing is the arousing of a new set of emotional troubles, of personal inadequacies, of virtual pathologies. I have already met someone that was complaining he/she (let’s keep it a flat assumption for now..) was not able to “compete” (exact word, pure verbatim) with some other “virtual” egos. That is freaky.

It is the absolute contrary of what I have been expecting from this evolution (ahahahahah, nice one, then…), as the absolute freedom and anonymity of the virtual ecosystem would have allowed anyone to interact regardless what we thought was a limit: sex, age, random colors, level of body fat or absence of it, anything that was helpful until that very moment to create barriers.. ah, yes, let’s be up to date, also religion.

But we missed the entire point here: it is not physical, is damn virtual!!! And human beings are confrontational by nature… so now you are “digitally inadequate”!!! You do not blog, you don’t buy on eBay, never been on SecondLife, you do not have avatars, efriends, flickr accounts and the sort? You Looser!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can’t survive with 15.659 friends on mySpace, how dare you not to have that amount of useless connections under your belt?? Just a bunch of real friends in the proximity?? Bleah…..

In the meanwhile, whilst writing that, I am chatting away with my dear friend George, who is in this very moment in New Orleans….

You can be choosy also in cyberspace, you can be fully yourself here in virtual world and out, into that scary place called life. The first one, mind. We are all grand, regardless the models that someone or a lot of someones together try and force in our lives. Do whatever you like, and first and foremost enjoy it, and nevermind you avatar!!!

More to come.

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!!

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..

The Web, the people and a bearable place to live in…

The Web is a “global knowledge web” nowadays and “is taken for granted”, thus it seems that the world survival depends on it, since on a global scale the elision of Internet would imply to step back massively in mankind evolution and systemic economy. Then, each and every individual may or may not adopt this radical evolution in his daily “routine”. The above ecosystem thus evolves around some pillars: network and connectivity, human interaction and contents, information. The Web as of today is about sharing information, structured or else, amongst actors at the faster possible speed.
This approach could be reinforced if considering the market value of those top level companies that are controlling the main components of the ecosystem, this excluding the “human factor”: TLC (telecommunication) companies, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) manufacturers and content – media companies.
The top five corporations of each sector, considering the market value on New York stock exchange, are weighted around 21-24 months worth of revenues for the TLC and ICT champions, and a staggering 85 months for content – media companies (Source, ITU Internet report).
The above suggest that some technology layers, albeit fundamentals, are increasingly perceived as “commodities” and no longer as competitive differentiators, contents make the “digital blood” of this new global, complex organism, which is unarguably made by individuals making the most out of available technology.
The environment (or the organism) could be further defined as a combination of an open social layer, in which users share and freely communicate “cached” part of their being humans and a digital marketplace to look and cater for goods and services.

IDC defines the digital marketplace as comprising any commerce that takes place on the Internet. In it, more than 1.9 trillion dollars changed hands for goods and services in 2006, equivalent to more than 14% of the United States’ gross domestic product (Source: IDC, ICMM 2007).

The arise of a digital marketplace and the consolidation of a number of factors from a transient influencer position into a systemic conglomerate have strengthen the idea that, along the digital highways, users are linked by “networks” and no longer by sequential relationships. The impact of networks dynamics over interactions is massive.
During the XX century the possibility of the World (mankind, actually) to shrink and thus to augment the level of interconnection between constituencies, parts, units has grown exponentially due to a number of factors, all somewhat related to the ability of people to “get in touch” and “share knowledge”. To some extent and as a controversial assumption, also the two major conflicts have risen attention over countries, communities, cultures never approached or considered before. After the end of fighting, the world has been all connected by the necessity to recreate a bearable environment where to live, together.

Did we accomplish the task?

Smarter, dumber, or just faster?

Let’s start from a common ground.. IT.. evolution… and the first hints around of some critical thinking about the Web itself and whether is “all good” or else, at the end…

In particular, the huge availability of information, the ease of access may paradoxically cause an epidemic of dubness , and the Master of Information Google itself is under probing..

That, quite likely, opens up a rather large debate.. my question is not really whether the “knowledge fast-food” that Internet is actually lobotomise people, but whether “countless options” that is the other concept associated (could be) to the Web is provoking a relaxation of some connectivity tissues, in other words limits the stamina, the effort, the will to succeed, the quest for optimum.

With some friends we have been questioning about the “culture of the other option”. There is always an escape route, an alternative, there is always “another”, somewhere. Seems to some of us that there is a tendency to a fast opt-in / opt out, and the society as a whole is accustomed, or better still is becoming accustomed to use partial attention, partial energy, partial efforts, thus avoiding or reorganising the “motivation” scale that has moved mankind across its evolutionary path.

You don’t like it (whatever it is)? No worries, alternatives aplenty!

You don’t understand it? Nevermind, search for other explanations!

Sometimes it seems like a far too large freedom and access to anything may hinder that feeling for the quest, that taste for another step forward, or simply put the necessary effort that every human being has to put into anything valuable.. it is simply too easy to look elsewhere for some pre-cooked solution..  we may get slightly dumber, at the end of it all.. ??

The network effect… stand up and walk??? (excerpt)

This is a small excerpt from a recent paper I wrote:

The arise of a digital marketplace and the consolidation of a number of factors from a transient influencer position into a systemic conglomerate have strengthen the idea that, along the digital highways, users are linked by “networks” and no longer by “straight lines”. The impact of networks dynamics over interactions is massive.

During the XX century the possibility of the World (mankind, actually) to shrink and thus augmenting the level of interconnection between constituencies, parts, units has grown exponentially due to a number of factors, all somewhat related to the ability of people to “get in touch” and “share knowledge”. To some extent and as a controversial assumption, also the two major conflicts have risen attention over countries, communities, cultures never approached or considered before. After the end of fighting, the world has been all connected by the necessity to recreate a bearable environment where to live, together.

Interestingly enough, all actions that governments, research institutions and scientists made to increase, in the second half of the century, the capability of controlling others’ communications (for strategic purposes), ended up in creating a widely distributed, albeit rough network of connections and information flows. This was ultimately finalized with the creation of Arpanet, the “archaic” version of the modern Internet.

This ecosystem led to a wealth of studies and papers over the “mathematics of networks” and theories designed to explain the inner workings of such a complex, highly mutable and influenceable environment. Without going into details, one of the most interesting aspects of it all is about the degree of interconnection and so called “separation” amongst the parts of the network. Actually the degree of separation adds up to six steps. Six passages will ideally link each of us to anyone on Earth. Despite the potential extremes of the theory and its full acceptance, the main message here is the fact that relationships amongst parts are no longer linear, but assume a mesh format, a net, a neural scheme of dots (us), nodes (junctions amongst dots), hubs (aggregators of nodes) and gateways amongst hubs and the “small worlds” (defined by connections and interests) inhabiting the Web-Planet. 

Interestingly enough, some people agreed on the “resurrection” function of communities and networks (whichever format they took over time) from a status of disruption, crisis, war or any other mankind hindering conditions.

What about today, then?????

What about using this @#§*$& tech…

It cannot be possible, given the ecosystem outside, given the cultural shift, given the tech expenditure, the workflows, the software, the organisation, given all of the above and all you may think of, that you have always to meet people for a fifteen minute meeting. It happened, guess it was last year, that I had a client in Rome, slightly apprehensive about the engagement we had put together. He called me to organise a meeting at their premises, flew over to Rome, just to hear he couldn’t attend because of some unplanned occurrences. Fine, it happens, no worries, and I love Rome at Springtime, but that hiccup was expensive, time consuming and, most of all, absolutely fruitless.

We could have used a strong videoconf facility.

And, as it seems, it saves a lot of money and pollution. I have to admit I enjoy meeting clients, discussing issues, sorting out problems together in an advertising-like sessions, and at the same time I hate wasting my time, someone’s money and attention to the God of Stupidity. Where’s the point, business-wise, to always meet, meet, discuss, meet again, discuss even further, when some issues may be tackled effectively over alternative communication highways?

Also, for a corporation such as BT, it accounted for a £238 million saving… every little helps…

I leave to you all comments and thoughts about the communication needs of people, the necessity to have multi sensorial interactions, the ability to spot body language signals that necessitate of face to face interaction.. as far as I am concerned, if we have a better way to do things and to have things done than expensively transporting ourselves across the Planet, fine, let’s use ‘em!!!

And the time we may gain, let’s spend it with whom we truly like!

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…

One Mother and one Father

On the other hand, it is nice and soothing to know (albeit we knew already) that we have all one Mother and one Father, since some stronger-than-other genetic information made it through the “n” permutations possible and are common to all human beings … and to the happiness of the stupidest people on Earth, those infos came from the very heart of Africa!!!

I love, I truly adore the way stupidity of a certain part of mankind is always put on display.

We all share a planet, most of our culture is permeated and riddled by ever so many different and yet common inputs, and furthermore we really are all brothers and sisters….

Soppy statement for a Monday morning and with an hectic week ahead? Nevermind, it is a nice feeling nonetheless.. and a good reminder for all those bloated buggers around…

I leave it up to you to drill down into the news..do it!