City development, key to economic prosperity

jacobs.html

But even better are the less read The Economy of Cities (1970) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), twin volumes which do nothing less than demolish and rebuild macroeconomics. Economics went wrong, she explains, with the work her titles allude to, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Nations aren’t the proper unit of macroeconomic analysis; cities are.

Jacobs arrives at this conclusion by considering the stagflation of the 1970s– simultaneous high unemployment and high inflation, something that was not supposed to be possible under either left-wing (Keynesian) or right-wing (monetarist) economics. They were supposed to trade off. She points out that this condition– high prices and not enough work– is normal for backward regions; Western economists mistook the fitful but constant economic boom from Smith’s time on as a permanent condition.

March 28, 2009 · Filed Under Analysis, Business, Culture, Interesting tidbits, Society

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Triumph of the idiots

Abstract Generator Factory: Triumph of the Idiots

Intelligent people get squeezed out of organisations, given time. For some reason the combination of intelligence and ladder-climbing almost never co-exists. Senior executives of large companies often get described as being intelligent, but this is just mistaking outward signs of achievement with intelligence. Anyone can make money in a rising market, it’s only those who seem to make a company grow when the odds are against them (e.g. Steve Jobs’ return to Apple) are worthy of praise; the rest were just fortunate to be sitting on a boat in the rising tide.

Evidence of this can be seen in the competition between any large companies, this phenomenon explains why Microsoft can never quite do what Google does. It explained why IBM could never quite catch up with Microsoft. Etc. It’s not that they became too large, or too complacent, it’s because they became too stupid. They are collectively idiots. It’ll happen to Google too, given time.

July 23, 2008 · Filed Under Analysis, Business, Culture, Interesting tidbits, Internet, Psychology, Society

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Media changing landscape is not the result of a fad

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody

Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won’t have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan’s Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

April 30, 2008 · Filed Under Business, Culture, Internet, Society, Technology

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Erotica or Pornography?

Brian HaddonThe recent discussion in the Human Rights Council concerning non-consensual sex and child marriage in particular, estimated that within the next 10 years more that 100 million girls are likely to be married before the age of 18. Much progress needs to be made in countries where such practice is common. In countries in which child marriage is rare we need to address other practices which permit, encourage or condone non-consensual sex. Pornography is such a practice.In the 1960’s there was much talk about Ban the Bomb and War. There was also much talk about Free Love. Since then the common assumption is that this “permissive” age led to today’s acceptance of pornography, increased Sexually Transmitted Disease and high teenage pregnancy. A lot of people do not know that Eroticism and Pornography are very different.

Men and women have erogenous zones. They like to be touched; it gives them pleasure and is pre-requisite to consensual sex. Since human beings developed imagination feelings can be roused without being touched. These physiological and psychological processes are normal. Culture affects these matters according to the attitude of those who lead.

In my book, Let the Debates Begin, I suggest that early tribal leaders, like the animals they were, concerned themselves with survival. Sex, Food, Hunting and Warfare were the necessary issues to be controlled by competitive means. Leadership gave rights alongside responsibilities. Later, as knowledge began to be accumulated, religion was invented to protect those who pursued knowledge from the violence which was, and is, still part of the human process.

It was further suggested that politics is supposed to be the way of dealing with the conflicting dynamics of knowledge and animal instincts. The book suggests that political and religious leaders succumbed to preservation of their own power over and above leading people to a better society. A society where knowledge would increasingly determine events rather than the baser processes. Political and Religious leaders learned that they could manipulate people’s emotions by denying them access to unprejudiced knowledge. This denial is still regularly debated by those who have sufficient knowledge to identify it.

It should be noted that many religious books, especially the Old Testament of the Bible give prominence to the control of sexual processes whilst seeming to condone sexual abduction, forced marriage and the killing of innocent men, women and children as well as the annexation of other people’s land.

Erotic art forms of all kind do rouse sexual emotions. As these emotions are natural there would seem to be no real problem with erotica. It does not seek to harm or corrupt.

Pornography seeks to rouse all kind of emotions, especially those sexual and violent. It pursues this end without regard to whether it will cause harm or corrupt people. It does not differentiate between adult consent to the sex that it portrays or violent invasive sex. It does not care about the anti social effect that it’s violence may encourage. It’s values and activities are obscene in that it does not care if it crosses the line marking normal standards of decency; in fact it seems to deliberately do so in it’s pursuit of the extreme.

From the beginnings of religion and politics, it has been known that knowledge is power. By seeking to monopolise knowledge those leaders corrupted other people’s development. In the matter of pornography the need for control was vigorously broadcast by Mary Whitehouse, in her reaction to the “permissive society” of the 1960’s. One of the more sensible things that she said was that there should be research into the effects of pornography. The religious leaders from whom she sought support, continued to include all erotic material in discussing pornography.

Academics know that good research will set out to prove the negative and will only seriously look at an assertion which has been tested in this way. The negative may not have been proven but the balance of probability gives credence. When pornography began to grow it was reasonably suggested that it might have damaging effects to society, particularly the young. Those promoting pornography argued that there was no evidence that pornography had any bad effects. At this stage the political legislators could have differentiated between erotica and pornography and insisted that those issuing pornographic material should have to prove that the material did not tend to damage those who experienced it.

The pornographers cleverly posed the question of control as a human rights issue; a curtailment of free speech. Because erotica was included in the process the academics and supporters of the arts were up in arms against any curtailment of “free speech”. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was described as pornographic in court. The judgement against the prosecution was correct as the book was erotic, not pornographic in as much as it described consensual sex. However the expensive loss made any prosecution of pornographers prohibitive. Regrettably the judgement proved to be a green light not for erotica but the whole sordid world of pornography.

Pornography should be thought of in terms of violence as well as sex. Violence is obscene like non-consensual sex. In it’s relationship with erotica pornography should be defined as obscene erotica. As obscene, it should be controlled by some process or another as should all obscene activities. By definition they have gone further than decency should allow. Erotica may stimulate sexual emotions but the healthy sex act is a private sensitive affair. Sex in public is not erotic it is pornography. Participants in pornography are debased by it. They are being humiliated and treated without respect as commodities to be sold to insensitive people, men in the main, who seek gratuitous stimulation without any responsibility.

Erotica is a celebration of the joys of private consensual sex. Erotica is perverted by commercial considerations into pornography, which is licensed by politicians. Religious leaders argue against people enjoying sex in it’s own right and seek to shackle it in any way they can by calling all sexual activities pornographic unless it conforms to their own interpretations.

The description of sexual acts in words, film, art in all it’s forms is erotica and should be permitted except when it is describing non-consensual sex. This is pornographic and should not be allowed to be displayed. The display of gratuitous violence is also pornographic and should not be allowed.

August 2, 2007 · Filed Under Culture, Society

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The media revolution and the future

June 17, 2007 · Filed Under Business, Culture, E-business, Future, Interesting tidbits, Society

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Interesting facts and statistics about “the newcomers”

There are threebillion people under twenty five on this planet…
This is what they are doing…

June 11, 2007 · Filed Under Analysis, Business, Culture, Future, Interesting tidbits, Internet, Marketing, Recommended, Society

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How long before copyright laws change to adapt to the times?

jm_small_55.jpg“”may make it more attractive to advertisers than conventional TV, because viewers can’t risk leaving their screens to make a cup of tea during every commercial break.”"

That’s old and wishful thinking, in my view. Most consumers of video on the internet are early adopters, familiar with technology. As soon as one particular system gets mainstream (e.g msoft products, gmail, skype) it will be hacked, or tweaked by users, to see and do with it exactly what they want…and the information on how to do this, will be spread overnight and access facilitated to “newbies” through graphic interfaces that don’t take much technical knowledge -or none at all- to be mastered. (e.g. serials2000)

The shift in consumptions of media patterns is even more profound than most people think.

I am not sure what’s the next way for publishers, musicians, writers, to make money, I am deciphering that as we go along, but I have the strong impression that from now on, anything that is digital, will be free.

Of course this is a strong assumption and I have no proof today of this. But look at what happened with Pirate Bay, what happened to the HDVD key on digg…the younger generations, that are the ones fueling these trends, don’t want to pay anymore, are resouceful, and have tools of mass distribution of knowledge that make any kind of locked system totally irrelevant in hours (e.g. Vista OS). It only takes one decoder getting around it, posting it on Digg or similar clone, and that’s it.

The magnitude of this change, for its speed and span, is leaving us in awe. Certainly many thousands of people will be out of work. Certainly many TV stations will go broke. Certainly wages in the content producer industry may well go down for everyone…the social change in developed countries will be phenomenal. Copyrights laws will have to change, since you can’t effectively protect your content around the world, prosecuting every single uploader when next day that content is back up online be it in YouTube, Pirate Bay or Emule.

However, all this doesn’t mean that it’ll be the end of content, as some argue. Writers love their craft, and they won’t stop. So do musicians and other artists. They won’t stop producing content overnight. Real artists will keep on producing even if nobody pays them for it. Some even if they have to pay for it. Producing art and communicating are basic human needs that have been with us for millions of years and won’t dissapear just like that, no matter what big corporations say to scare the populace and protect their content.

However, getting rich out of that content alone will be much more difficult, if not impossible, in the future.
If we don’t give our content free, someone else will do (e.g. hotornot, linux…) somehow, somewhere. And that will be available to us all at the click of a button.

Now the interesting thing is, where will jobs be created to allow the producers of content to keep on producing for free in their spare time?

That’s the question of our times, not if things will be free.

If it can be uploaded, it can somehow be copied. If it can be copied, it will be copied. If it is copied, it’ll be free.

Good news: we’ll have a whole world of knowledge and entertainment as we’ve never seen it before, anywhere in the world, no matter how much money we have, when we turn on our network connecting device.

Bad news: we may not have the money to buy or switch on that device in the first place.

In any case, business leaders should already be trying to adapt, instead of trying to resist the inevitable.

Regards,

Javier Marti

May 15, 2007 · Filed Under Analysis, Business, Culture, E-business, Future

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Blogs becoming mainstream sources of news

“Most Web surfers don’t even realize they are reading blogs,” said David Sifry of Technorati . “The distinction between blogs and mainstream media is blurring rapidly.”
In fact, according to the “State of the Live Web” report from Technorati, some of the most visited sites on the Web are now blogs.

May 3, 2007 · Filed Under Analysis, Business, Culture, Interesting tidbits, Writing

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Enough! The Briton who is challenging the web’s endless cacophony

Michelangelo & God My response to the “Titled” article published in the UK Guardian:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2068107,00.html

Perhaps we’ll all end up being professional bloggers, podcasters, YouTube producers etc. simply because that may well be the next natural stage in the evolution of human kind on Earth 2.0(the internet). Does this sound far fetched because it’s never been that way?

Surely, that thought must scare the crap out of elitist Luddites and parochial thinking intellectuals not used to sharing, or those who would just love to keep the conventional status quo in place forever.

So what if 499 million blogs are meaningless!..At least they have a chance of ubiquitous expression and web users have access to diversity in terms of perspectives, albeit amateur perspectives. I mean, why would the internet as a new form of democratization be more dis-concerting to luddites, than the miserable plight of 3 to 4 billion poverty stricken individuals living here on earth 1.0.

A fair juxtaposition in terms of numbers, considering we’ve had at least 2000 years to develop an equitable balance in the nature and order of things. Furthermore, so much for equitable egalitarianism and academic excellence over the last 500 years since the discovery of the printing press…bravo!

Problem is, our achievements up until the introduction of web 1.0 were just not far reaching enough.

Just think for a moment, if there ever was a divine creator, he’d be ambivalent at best at what intellectual luddites celebrate as great human achievements over the last few century’s and want to radically change the eco-system.

This time however, perhaps the divine creator may want to breath life into millions of Freud’s, Michelangelo’s, Einstein’s, eminent writers, journalists and so on all at the same time, because his new system allows it.

The only difference is this time, they will have to debate or display their ideas and thoughts no matter how provocative or narcissist…publicly! In fact, there will be more room for criticism this time round, as social networking and business networking gradually improves and evolves to put everything in check.

Initially, most participants will be amateurs but ultimately hone their skills to communicate just like professionals as we have them in today’s conventional media space.

In this new online eco-system, it may well be, that the divine creator has long term goals to gradually evolve Davids and eventually eliminate all Goliaths… hence a fairer Earth 2.0!robert_timmi_55.jpg

May 1, 2007 · Filed Under Analysis, Culture, Society

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