Jay Electronica

Lucky enough to see the fantastic Jay Electronica at his first ever London concert on 17th February at The Jazz Cafe.

Absolute quality.

Digital Strangelove

Great presentation attached below – from a chap called David Gillespie – entitled Digital Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet).

Some lovely, insightful thinking on Intention Planning, the nature of societal change, and the shift within advertising and marketing from a controlled silo-specific ‘all-for-one’ mentality, to a truly open-source ‘one-for-all’ philosophy that is based on the core principles of “data + meaning”.

Latest social networking stats

Quick snapshot of current trends based on daily reach percentage – twitter is about to overtake myspace for the first time, while Facebook has passed YouTube and continues its inexorable march towards world domination…..

Knowledge in the digital age

We all know, as Thomas Friedman so rightly put it, that the world is getting flatter. As technology develops, and knowledge/skills become readily available from Bangalore to Burnley to Baha, the traditional models of corporate control and nepotistic elitism are becoming utterly obsolete.

Now there is a new and, frankly, fantastic service that utilises the flattening power of the internet to give people an even greater opportunity to learn, develop and improve than ever before. The might of iTunes & YouTube have created, in tendem with some of the best Universities around the world, a couple of platforms through which anyone and everyone can access the thoughts of the greatest minds on the planet.

Apple have brought us iTunes U, and Google have created YouTube EDU.

These two sites have reams and reams of lectures that are available free, as podcasts or streamed videos, on any subject from nano-technology to string theory to Darwinism to China’s role in a globalised economy. There are thousands upon thousands of talks and debates from Universities such as Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and many, many more.

The availability of this level of specialised knowledge, which has up to now only been available to the privileged elite, is a new dawn in the life of the internet from a ‘knowledge flattening’ perspective. Of course it is not a tangible revolution in how the internet is used (as consumer-generated content was, and location-based GPS-enabled intelligent content will be), but it is a demonstration of how the bigger internet brands are utilising their platforms for the greater good.

Check them out – absolutely brilliant.

The pace of change is frightening

Fantastic little video here from The Economist that highlights just how quickly society is changing around us… check it out.

Bacardi create one of the most misguided campaigns in history

Somehow, through the various approval processes and corporate checks necessary to get a campaign off the ground, this obscene and insulting idea got through everyone at McCann’s & Bacardi.

Some bright sparks obviously thought the way to build brand affinity and increase sales of the increasingly unpopular Bacardi Breezer was to demonstrate how much hotter women would look if they found an ugly mate to hang out with… quite extraordinary.

Not entirely sure what insights these fools unearthed that led them to this creative powerhouse of an idea, or what blinding flash of inspiration led them to think it would be anything other than a total PR disaster.

In an age of social media, this local campaign from Israel has spread across the globe like wildfire, leading to a Bacardi boycott the world over. We all know that people can be cruel, and that we live in a society that places an overly large emphasis on aesthetic superficiality, but when a brand plays on those insecurities it is simply unacceptable.

Whatever the thinking, it was hugely misguided. The repercussions from this campaign will impact both the mother brand, Bacardi, and it’s ugly duckling sister, Bacardi Breezer, the world over, and it will probably take quite some time before the brand can recover.

I have no doubt that heads will roll as a result of the campaign, but the damage is done, and this just demonstrates how much power even the smallest, most insignificant agencies on a clients roster can have if not kept in check.

India’s torch continues to shine brightly

Having elected Manmohan Singh, in May, as the Prime Minister of the Congress party for a second consecutive term in office, this time with a clear majority, India is on the verge of a new golden era.

For the first time since 1984, the last time Congress won a clear majority, the Government is in a position of unilateral strength. In the interim, being part of a divisive coalition has weakened successive Governments.

Manmohan Singh and his Congress party now have the ability to push through the micro and macro reforms that will spur the economy on to even greater expansion and, most importantly, redistribute wealth throughout the poorer strata of society.

It is as a result of weak and corrupt governance over the past two decades that one quarter of the world’s malnourished still live in India, despite the recent exponential economic growth. The convoluted administrative structures that have been built on corrupt and dynastic foundations need to be torn down to ensure that systems are put in place to reduce the poverty gap significantly.

And it is to Mr Singh’s credit that these are the reforms that he plans to push through as quickly as possible, now that his hands have been freed from the shackles of a coalition. It is also very much to the credit of the Indian people that they have looked beyond the politicking of potential ministers who based their candidacy on the grounds of religion, caste, and regional issues.

Mr Singh has been given the chance to rule with a free hand because the Indian people believe in the reforms he has promised, and respect the economic miracle that he and Congress have presided over.

The election of Congress is not the only reason for India’s 1 billion strong population to be positive. The economy continues to thwart recessionary pressures, having just recorded two consecutive quarters of 5.8% growth.

Indeed, in India there is only talk of a slowdown, rather than a fully blown recession. Although growth rates have steadily receded from their peak of 9% in 2007, and 7.3% in 2008, the country continues to expand rapidly.

The key to India’s continued growth is the fact that, in direct contrast to China’s export-led model, the economy is fuelled by domestic demand. And that domestic demand is actually set to grow exponentially once the antiquated models of public governance are torn down, and a more equitable distribution of wealth can be achieved.

“There will be much greater prosperity in India now than ever before,” explained R. Balakrishnan, Chairman of Lowe India, an advertising agency. “The wealth disparity had become so, so huge in India during the boom, and the slowdown is actually bridging that gap. It is correcting the imbalances within the economy, and is a hugely positive force for Indian society.”

“The boom period only affected the cream of Indian society. The top 10% of financiers and property developers got very rich,” Balakrishnan concluded. “Now, the other 90% of consumers are seeing prices drop, and for the growing middle classes in India, suddenly property and cars are becoming much more affordable.”

Colvyn Harris, CEO of JWT India, another advertising agency, said: “Certain sectors are seeing growth of 20-30% year-on-year. Ordinary Indian people are seeing their disposable incomes increase in real terms as the economy corrects. India is like a pyramid, with the size and scale at the bottom, and that is what you are seeing kicking in right now. The real India is now emerging.”

It is this thriving, burgeoning, buoyant middle class that is the driving force behind India’s continuing economic success. The boom times may have seen unparalleled growth for India, but the rewards went into the pockets of a small minority. There is a huge swathe of completely untapped demand, just waiting for the moment when it can rise to the surface. And that moment is now.

On top of the existing middle classes, who are now finding themselves in the position of having increased real disposable incomes, it is the sheer scale and depth of the lower classes in India that ensures that domestically fuelled growth will exist for many years.

The entrepreneurial spirit that courses through every sinew of Indian society, allied to the reforms of Mr Singh and his Congress Government, will bring relative wealth to many, many millions more people, who have thus far been excluded from the benefits of a decade of exponential growth.

While most of the rest of the world spirals into a spinning maelstrom of recessionary gloom, India’s golden era is just beginning.

China – thoughts

As the Western world wallows in recession, there are many commentators who are looking to China (and India) to be the growth engines that will kick-start the global economy back into life. However, the assumptions that are made about China’s ability to drag the rest of the world back into growth are, in my opinion, hopelessly optimistic. 

The reality is that, even as China experiences continued growth during the recession, the nature of their export-led economy is causing severe mass unemployment within the manufacturing sector, and is actually perpetuating the widening wealth gap between rich and poor.

Many manufacturers in China have zero channel distribution mechanisms within their own country, and were totally reliant on exports, predominantly to the USA, so their businesses have simply crumbled, even though domestic demand is on the increase. This is leading to unemployment for millions of blue-collar and migrant workers (young and old), forcing them to return to rural areas from the major urban centres.

And we’re talking about big numbers here – estimates put the number of migrant workers in China at 200m people, so this is a significant shift of labour away from the indutrialised heartlands.

The point about the decimation of China’s export economy is that there is incredible pressure on the Government to provide jobs for the people, even though the country has moved towards a laissez-faire model. There is expectation on the part of the population that the Government will invest in infrastructure,  invest in urbanisation programmes, and invest in the service economy, in order to create jobs both for University graduates and migrant workers, and to counteract the invisible hand of the global downturn.

Importantly, the key here is that the focus for the Chinese Government is to provide jobs for Chinese workers, and to develop mechanisms to increase domestic demand for domestically produced goods and services. There is no focus within China on increasing imports, or on driving up foreign investment, as part of this plan, meaning that the short-term impact on the economies of the West will be negligible.

In the medium- and long-term, of course increased domestic demand in China will benefit the rest of the world, simply due to sheer weight of numbers (almost one-quarter of the world’s population is Chinese). But China is not going to be the country that holds out a helping hand to everyone else right now, at the hour of need. The internal pressures on the Government to create jobs, stimulate demand and provide a certain standard of welfare are simply too great.

And this pressure brings me to the heart of the matter regarding China. The country is experiencing some genuinely difficult teething troubles as it moves from being a Communist state-run country to a free market. This downturn has highlighted some of the tensions that still exist between these disparate ideologies, both in terms of economic structure and social harmony.

As I’ve detailed above, there is expectation on the Government to provide from an economic perspective, and the Government have responded to that call with increased investment in infrastructure and services. However, the tensions at a social level as China reforms from a state-run model are arguably more tense, particularly in the area of freedom of speech.

China has, over the last 12-24 months, seen an exponential explosion in the area of social media. Chinese people of all ages have adopted the internet as their own, a space through which they can share news, content and information, and connect with friends, without state supervision. This lightning-fast adoption of social platforms as a main pillar of information gathering and sharing is largely as a result of the history of information-repression that has existed in China for many, many decades.

And here, more than anywhere else, is where we see the tensions between the ideologies of Communism and Capitalism come into play. In the weeks surrounding the 20th anniversary of The Tiananmen Square massacre, on June 4th 2009, there are numerous examples of the Chinese Government undertaking a concerted effort to repress any information about the events of 20 years ago.

Blogging portals were down, including this one – WordPress – which now explains why I couldn’t access it while I was in China. Flickr was down. Hotmail was down. Facebook was down, and I had to trick the computer by putting .m. in front of the Facebook URL to get to the mobile site. Twitter users found a way to circulate information around the censorship blocks but soon found that they were down too. People received copies of The Economist and The Financial Times with the pages relating to Tiananmen ripped out. Foreign journalists at the actual event were kept out by police.

These examples demonstrate a disgraceful repression of information that have absolutely no place in the modern world, where social networking sites and the internet have changed the way in which we all consume news and process/share knowledge.

But more than that, they represent the extreme tensions that exist within the country. The Government wants to be a leader in the modern world, and China undoubtedly will be a super-power, but yet they continue to try and suppress information that is perceived to be anti-Chinese in some way, or that paints their country in a bad light. These are not the actions of an enlightened leadership.

It is these tensions between Communism and Capitalism, plus the inevitability of a reformulated world order with China (and the other BRIC countries) gaining in relative importance versus the waning super-powers of America and Europe, that makes the country such a fascinating, intriguing place to be at the moment.

We may not agree with some of the actions of the Chinese Government, in terms of protectionism or social repression, but it is a unique country that is evolving and adapting to the pressures of the modern era in a very different way to any other country.

China will be at the forefront of the next phase of globalisation throughout  the 21st Century, but the nature in which they will lead is still in the balance. The global economy may not get too much help over the next 2-3 years, but the choices that the Government makes in that period, in resolving the economic and social tensions inherent within China right now, will be critical to everyone for decades to come.

Stieg Larsson

Have just read the first two books in the brilliant trilogy written by Stieg Larsson, who very unfortunately passed away almost immediately after completing the novels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He was a journalist by trade, and the novels reflect his interest in the darker aspects of human society: white supremacy, people trafficking, political corruption, violence and abuse.

The first part of the trilogy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, was actually called “Män som hatar kvinnor” in Swedish, which directly translated means “Men who hate women”. The novel is certainly both powerful and disturbing in its content matter, and Larsson’s writing forces you to question the morality of modern society.

He does this subtly though, interweaving complex plotlines and memorable characters with the dark subject matter that he uses as the canvas upon which to paint.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Definitely worth reading.

I can’t wait for the final installment….

http://www.stieglarsson.com/

#worldview_shanghai

Here’s a short video of some of the fantastic sights and sounds that Shanghai has to offer. Unsurprisingly, there are no shots of my infernal box room, as the view wasn’t so great…..

The track is pretty interesting – it’s called Dragon Tiger Panacea, and is by a Chinese band called New Pants.

Hope you enjoy the film.