Every year, my favorite part of SXSW is Bruce Sterling’s closing rant. Sterling is a science-fiction writer, futurist, and self-described “Design Critic for things not yet made.” Every year, I hear newbies describe his performance as “disjointed.” Well, yeah: so is the reality he’s describing. Every year, he lifts the veil of exuberant long boom techno-puppy optimism to remind us, not without kindness, of current dystopic reality and warn us about what to keep an eye on as we all skip happily down the road toward tommorrowland.
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Monthly Archives: March 2012
The Rant: Bruce Sterling #SXSW
We Are Legion premiers at SXSW
Premiering to a packed house of more than 9000, (ok, a packed house of 600, but if you get that joke, see this film) “We are Legion: the story of the Hacktivists” rocked the socks off of SXSW last night. Ovations throughout. Masked spokespersons nailing their thoughts to the door. Courage, crazy creativity, and rock hard principle thrown in a blender with anarchic, apolitical Loki worship.
I loved this film. I loved everything about this film. I wanted to tattoo this film on my chest. See it. And help answer the challenge posed by Mercedes Haefer, implicated in committing an online sit-in at the gates of Pay Pal and Master Card: “This is the point in history that you choose if protest is allowed online.”
Fact: the average sentence for computer “crime” in the US is years longer than the average sentence for a pedophile. This is the story of the 99% versus the 1% tracked all the way back to the MIT roots of prankster hijinks to Steve Jobs’ phone phreaking to 4Chan and LULZ to the roots of Occupy.
Do. Not. Miss. This. Film.
Filed under Activism, Net Culture
Cyborg Anthropology
Amber Case is the original Cyborg Anthropologist. These are my somewhat disjointed notes from a great talk.
Ambient location and the future of the interface.
The future of the interface is that it will disappear — reducing our unnatural actions #AmberCase #sxlb #sxswi
@Swankins
Nicola Swankie
Filed under Creativity, Digital Culture, Net Culture, Uncategorized
Patterns, moustaches, games
SXSW began with a disappointment. My all-time favorite SXSW presenter, Kathy Sierra, was ill and unable to present on “Gamification and the battle for the user’s soul,” which I dearly would have loved to have seen. Kathy was influential in making me think deeply how Greenpeace could move from an engagement offer of “Join us because we rock” to “Join us because we’ll make YOU rock,” and is profoundly wise about things ranging from user interface design to hacking the reptilian brain’s attention centres to Icelandic horses.
The day got better, though, with three rocking good sessions.
“Brands as patterns” tackled the question of how to transition from the “Mad Men” days of advertising and PR in which a brand was established with a rigid handbook of rules about what it stood for and the key to establishing it in the public mind was simple repetition in as many broadcast media as possible. In the era of Social Media, the suggestion went, a brand isn’t owned by a corporation, it’s an interaction, an interface, a series of transactions — in short, a pattern. Implication: corporations no longer own their brands, they create them through that interaction, by what they do, not by what they say. Which, of course, goes a long way to explaining why a contradiction between those things, exposed, becomes a terminal velocity Social Media Meltdown. It also explains the leverage that activist groups now have against corporate ill-behaviour: their reputations have been democratized.
“reptition in context in digital world makes, brands unresponsive and out of step with the audience”, Marc Shillum #patterns
@Shearmans
Sarah Shearman
Why patterns? Unique moments and patterns drive brands forward & define our identity. #patterns #ATSXSW
@bekahlockner
Bekah Lockner
Yes! #patterns #SXSW familiar patterns are easily recognized even with variations (like misspelled words)
@sazzollini
Sandy Azzollini
RT @brianfit: In the social era, a brand is a relationship and interface, an interaction: not repeated, controlled consistency. #patterns
@SuziDafnis
SuziDafnis
“Can growing a Moustache Change the World” was a “hugely popular in a tiny room” session, in which Movember founder Adam spoke about how an idea for a fun social event — growing a mustaches in November and shaving it off December 1st — transitioned to a cause (raising money and awareness around prostate cancer) with 450 dudes in Australia to the world’s biggest cancer fundraising event bringing in 117 million last year. Significantly, the idea was born in a pub. It was run by marketers and businessmen, not policy wonks. In fact, the biggest cancer charity in Australia turned them down when they pitched the concept — whoops. This was a wide-ranging, intimate (we were crushed) conversation which hit lots of buttons. Some big takeaways below.
Love it. The idea of Movember came to be over beers in Australia. Beer fuels creativity! #sxswmovember
@nikki_little
Nikki Little
Movemebr was started by four friends. Proof that small things can make a huge impact. #sxswmovember #health #causes
@createthegood
Create The Good
Prostate cancer kills as many as breast cancer, but there is far less conversation about it. Movember started that awareness. #sxswmovember
@caseymars20
Casey Hushon
Majority of donors raising money for Movemebr the first year were women. #sxswmovember
@createthegood
Create The Good
Movember raised $117 million and is the largest prostate cancer supporter. But it’s really about the awareness it’s raised. #sxswmovember
@caseymars20
Casey Hushon
“Even more important than the money we raised were the conversations we started.” #sxswmovember
@MovemberAustin
Movember Austin
Brilliant. In Canada 300 of the NHL pro players grew ‘taches for #Movember — and every male in Canada watches hockey. #sxswmovember
@brianfit
Brian Fitzgerald
“how do you tell the difference between a Mo Bro and a hipster?” “December 1″ heard at #SXSWMovember #SXSWMO
@Movember
Movember
bkgd of the movember staff is not non-profit, but things like business, marketing, tech. gives them an edge/diff perspective #sxswmovember
@adr512
april
“We want to be known as the organization that changed the world & cured prostate cancer”-@adamgarone #sxswmovember
@knowinsky
Kelli Nowinsky
“Superbetter” brought Jane McGonigal back to the stage with a strong reposte to the Colbert line “Am I really going to lie on my death bed regretting that I didn’t play more video games.” See my blog of a previous Jane Keynote for her original premise, which was roughly that gaming is statistically demonstrated to have so many benefits, we should be encouraging and our kids to do more, not less of them. (Up to a point, that is — there is an addiction threshold where benefits collapse). For today’s talk, she took the five most common regrets that researchers have identified as consistently expressed by the terminally ill, and systematically made the case that the right kind of games address every one of them: I wish I hadn’t worked so hard; I wish I’d spent more time with family; I wish I’d kept up with old friends; I wish I’d been who I wanted and not someone’s expectation.We then all played her game, Superbetter, which is designed to create micro tasks which will improve four key performance areas of your life. By Jane’s calculation, I will live 7 minutes longer for having spent that hour in her seminar. I think I just blew my extra time making a video of the queue at sxsw.
“we are moving from the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of the pursuit” #SXSWi #superbetter
@mosejames
Mose James IV
The opposite of the word virtual is not real. It means essence, possibility. Its opposite is “actualized.” #superbetter #sxswi
@brianfit
Brian Fitzgerald
#superbetter part of a new trend in games that @avantgame calls “actualizing games”- games that help us actualize our potential
@RCCNinc
Raccoon
RT @MattaMediaGirl: A visual interpretation of Jane McGonigal’s talk about gaming & app #Superbetter #sxsw http://t.co/eKDO7Dzn
@nattergraeme
natalie graeme
Jane McGonigal’s brave cat mnemonic for what we need to unlock potential. #sxswi #superbetter http://t.co/4Ad6Dl0U
@brianfit
Brian Fitzgerald
Filed under Digital Culture, Net Culture, Uncategorized
SXSW: Digital Gummy Bears, Zotz, and Jolly Ranchers
It’s the best candy store you can imagine, if you have a sweet tooth for big ideas, new apps, the subversive nature of technology, and the human and social implications of the Digiscene Era. It’s SXSW in Austin, Texas.
I’ll be doing my best to consume as much of the intellectual energy here as I can, and capture it in random snags. Here’s some of the software that’s helping me.
Apps I can’t do without at #SXSWi: Blackbird Pie plugin for WordPress: make tweets pretty when you blog ‘em. http://t.co/k6hLlgxM
@brianfit
Brian Fitzgerald
Boxcar! Essential. Pings my phone when any number of triggered events I set up happen involving any of my social media. I asked it to give me a nudge if I get a new follower on Twitter, or a message on Facebook, which I can configure to be as attention grabbing or quiet and retiring as I like.
Now, ADD the power of IFTTT (If This then That) to Boxcar and you can create your own information robot which scans the horizon and tugs at your sleeve when something important happens. IFTTT allows you to put together recipes, bit like Yahoo Pipes for Social Media but simpler. IF someone posts a mention of the word “Greenpeace” on Reddit, that turns up in my MetaReddit RSS feed. IFTTT monitors that feed, and whenever a new item appears, sends a notice to me via BoxCar. It can also monitor for mentions of the “Zombie Apocalypse” and I also use it to archive my tweets to Evernote (searchable!!!), ping me when anyone comments here on my blog, and email me Gizmodo’s iPad app of the week.
Hashable lets me keep track of who I meet by simply entering their twitter handle on my phone. Once in, I have a geotagged reference of where we met, we can exchange vCards, and tweet the meet to the rest of our networks. Supergreat.
And I’m trialing a whole heap of new stuff which looks good including three apps that do a possibly creepy, but cool thing of alerting you to the common interests of people in your geographic vicinity, or who have checked in to the same venue with Foursquare. Who’s in Starbucks now? Sonar will tell me, AND will tell me how I’m connected to the people there by analyzing my Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter networks. Highlight will do the same thing, but only if someone else has the Highlight app. Glancee is a variation on that theme, but is prettier and a bit spooky in how deep it mines your social graph to find common interests. It reports, for instance, that I might want to have a chat with X here in the conference centre because he likes Vonnegut and I like Pynchon, we both use HootSuite, and we’ve both listened to songs by Regina Spektor recently. Well, it’ll certainly break the ice.
I got better results from Sonar than Highlight on the way over simply because it’s tied to FourSquare and doesn’t require building a critical mass of audience that have a new app. Highlight told me it would let me know when anyone interesting came by, but stayed quiet in my pocket while Sonar and Glancee let me know that other people in the airport lounge also followed Mashable, liked the New Yorker magazine, lived in Amsterdam, and had been to my local Bagel & Beans.
Localmind also looks good: allows you to ask questions about local conditions from local experts or people present in a place when you ask. I used it to query the condition of the badge line at the convention centre last night, but it’s more geared toward “Where’s the best sandwich in this neighborhood” kind of persistent information. Nice interface, great mapping of your vicinity and the conversations that are going on about it.
One or more of these is going to go BOOM the same way Twitter did in 2006 — but the SXSW crowd is uniquely suited to this kind of vicinity software. It’s a hive mind of early adopters who share a lot of interests.
So much to see and say. I’m experimenting with Storify’s AUTOMAGIC blogging of SXSW, which will be capturing stuff I put out via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc and doing that Storify thing of making it all Timeliney and pretty. First installment is here, we’ll see how it works.
Filed under Digital Culture, Net Culture
Rockin the Mob Squad Skillshare
I’m still hungover from the Greenpeace Digital Mobilisation Skillshare: and I’m not just talkin about the after party after-effects (Pirates, Ninjas, iPad band, say no more…); I’m talking about the profound kind of headache you get from imbibing so much heady and thought-provoking information that you come home reeling. As Michael Baillie(@mikebailllie) put it, the whole thing was “SupercalifragilisticexpedaliAWESOME.”
Filed under Activism, Creativity, Environmental Issues, Greenpeace
