Elevated reality.

I have an idea for a realtime utility/application/brand/service.

Instead of augmented reality, it offers something that I call elevated reality. It enables any place, relationship, or experience to become an opportunity to learn. To be truer to your real self.

Instead of offering mere information, it offers inspiration. But not any kind of inspiration. Not generic self-improvement stuff that you can find at Waterstones or on Amazon. It offers inspiration that will be uniquely motivating TO YOU.

In other words, as you let this service get to know you, it personalizes what it does for you. Take some people I know, for example. For Mark, it might mean helping him make purchasing decisions that are in synch with his personal values. For Chris, it might involve some nudging to take a particular photograph in a way he hadn't considered before. For Roberta it might mean tasting a strange new dish that's just been concocted around the corner. For Claudie it might mean exploring new (or ancient) forms of sacred movement. For Matthew it might involve time-shifting his own brilliance so he can experience it the way others do, for Kate it's steady encouragement, for Sam it's pointing to new sources of challenge, for Eivor it might involve connecting with someone who misunderstands an author she loves. And so on.

Imagine if the continual school that is life were enhanced by realtime connections to ideas, things, places, people -- just when we would most benefit from that connection. It's not a friend-finder or an interesting-experiences guide -- it's more like a coach, a teacher, an agent-companion that makes your journey more personally and emotionally productive. It makes your real life a school. In realtime.

This is what elevated reality would be.

Anyone interested?

5 Good Fights

One of the things I have come to appreciate about living in London is that here, more than anywhere else I've ever been or lived, the past and the future are in constant debate with one another. They wrestle, sometimes constrain each another, and the tension between the two can be exasperating. Because it's a fight between well-matched opponents. And the result is an environment and a citizenry that's dynamically open, stubbornly opinionated, brash and gently polite all at once.

So I've been thinking about the value of the "good fight." And I've come up with 5 well-matched opponents that particularly interest me.

Transformation and Tradition

Intuition and Evidence

Transience and Permanence

Humanity and Technology

Individuality and Community

Interesting stuff lies in the ambivalent spaces between these pairs of seeming opposites. Opportunity emerges from the creative abrasion that happens when you force them into the boxing ring together. I'm not talking harmonious yin and yang here. I'm talking about messy arguments, heated challenge, a fight to the finish that may or may not end in a tie.

I wonder what other good fights we might instigate. Any thoughts?

Slipping in Realtime

I just had lunch at one of my favorite places for comfort food in London. It wasn't as good as it always was. And funnily enough, I was at its sister restaurant for dinner last night which also wasn't quite as good as it was last time. Has the recession taken its toll on the kitchen, the servers, and the overall experience? Is corporate management cutting the wrong costs?

Or was it just a coincidence?

I thought about posting something in realtime. To Yelp, to Tweet my disappointment. But then I wondered: is there any margin for error anymore? In realtime, must business be absolutely perfect, all of the time? Would the right people read my post? If management were monitoring the stream, my opinion might create an opportunity for improvement. But other customers might turn away, and the downward spiral of quality deterioration could continue.

In realtime, what's the right thing to do?

Metail

So it's a horrible-sounding term. But it's coming.

Metail is the hybrid of media and retail -- personalized just for you. Retail, after all, is media. It's a channel through which content is delivered. Branded content, entertaining content, useful content.

And as the digital and physical realms mashup into one continuous live experience, a live experience that's increasingly personalized, retailers must morph into metailers.

What do metailers do? They think and behave like media channels AND point-of-sale providers simultaneously. They program ever-changing, sometimes serialized, time-relevant content and context into their physical space. They consistently integrate this programming into online channels and screens, from the desktop to the mobile. Time-relevant programming could include niche-shopping nights (girls night out at Victoria's Secret, gay night at AussieBum) rush hour benefits (instant-pickup pre-bagged groceries, office-to-dinner quick makeover) or sports event shopping (discount for 5 minutes after your team scores) and the like. It also includes personalized, life-moment programming. The High School Graduation, Learning To Drive, and Just Got Engaged life moments suggest any number of personalized promotions and services that could drive sales. Tie ups with movies, games and television properties could make these life-moment programs even more compelling.

Because shopping is as much about entertainment as it is about utility, co-branded in-store experiences provide opportunities for new revenue streams for the metailer. Events, branded content partnerships, and the sale of media space itself are integrated into the economics of the metail business model, as are the data analytics of shopper behavior.

As long as I get a cut of the action, I don't mind if data about my behavior patterns convert into revenue. Metailers must earn the permission to track our behavior in the store by providing extra benefits to us for doing so. Benefits like secret discounts, early-access to promotions and sales, limited edition products, etc. So that over time, metail provides a customized, realtime experience -- and highly engaging reasons to consider and buy -- for each and every one of us.

To the Serpentine, go!

I'll keep this brief. The Jeff Koons show at the Serpentine Gallery is disturbing, silly and brilliantly smart all at once. He was the reason I decided to become an artist years ago, and the Popeye Series has me wondering why I ever stopped. Just outside the gallery, this year's Pavilion is a masterclass in What Architecture Is (and Is Not.) It reminds you that you're in a physical body, yet have senses and perceptions that can extend beyond your physical self. It's playful and functional and it has the realtime characteristics of simultaneously existing as a virtual experience and a solid object. (In a way, the Koons show does the same thing.)

All in all, a visit is a really good way to spend some precious realtime. In the middle of one of the world's great urban parks, no less. Food for the brain, soul and Flickr photostream.

Anniversary

I'm listening to the BBC radio reports this morning, commemorating the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and I'm thinking about the irrepressible human urge to self-express. I'm thinking about students and courage, and I'm thinking about how, in Beijing today, it's a day like any other. I've walked through Tiananmen in the early morning, seen the flag being raised. It was odd, superimposing my understanding, my mental "augmented reality data" across the screen of my vision. I wondered how many other people -- tourists, Chinese citizens -- were doing the same.

Can such a memory really be eliminated? Can realtime events be wiped off the global cranium after the fact anymore? Here in my London living room, I'm listening to the recorded protest singing of those students, time-shifted through the years and the radio. It's like it's happening right now.

But what good is it for me to hear and remember? Perhaps we are the story-holders, the memory-protectors, of other countries and systems that are prevented from owning their own narrative. Is it our right to do so, or our duty?

Dead or alive?

Blogging is dead, it's become chic to say. I don't know what that means. Certainly, blogging as we understand it today has a sell-by date. What doesn't? In a sense, everything tech is dead on arrival.

I don't blog as often as I feel I should. Partly because I feel like I'm lobbing ideas into the void -- I haven't done the work required to build an audience for these ramblings. Meanwhile, I also wonder if it's irresponsible to put more bytes into the world's datastream. After all, bytes are supported by plastic boxes and copper wires and electricity. Is silence more green?

Then again, the more ideas we share, the more we learn from one another, and that's got to be a good thing.

And sharing ideas, in whatever form, is very much alive. Unstoppably alive.

Losing it

I've just returned from a few days in Stockholm -- my first trip out of the UK with my iPhone. What a learning experience.

Data roaming abroad can be scary expensive, so I kept it turned off. Free wifi was thin on the ground, and for the few minutes that I was able to connect to a local wifi service in the office, many of the internet functions of my iPhone still didn't work. Firewall issues, perhaps?

And so, my miracle handset was reduced to being a truly mediocre mobile phone. I should note that when I worked with Nokia, I spent months trying to justify the idea that the company's multimedia Nseries devices were not, in fact, phones -- they're computers, and that we should always refer to them as such. (I still believe this.) The answer from those in the company who were dubious was: "But even Apple calls their handset a phone." 

Indeed they do, because if they didn't, no one would. It sucks as a phone. (Whereas Nokia devices are fantastic phones.) The truth is, the iPhone has never gotten high praise as a phone or even as an SMS device -- so when you strip out the really good stuff, the computer stuff, what's left is shockingly bad. Whether its 02 or Apple or the local operator who's at fault isn't the point, nor am I going to waste time ranting. It's not the point of this post.

Suffice it to say that I felt a profound sense of loss.

Because, here in the UK, I've had a taste of the realtime future. Location-aware services. A spectrum of ways to communicate with friends, clients, business partners. Useful navigation through unknown streets. Walking directions. Fresh apps on demand. Stuff that I need, the moment I need it.

A classic trick in marketing is to examine a brand's "negative space." To imagine removing (and sometimes to actually remove)  a product, a service, a brand from the user's life - and then to investigate what the impact of its absence is. This is where the famous "got milk" insight came from. Take milk away and cookies lose much of their cookieness, cereal is tasteless, etc etc. We don't drink milk because its healthy. We drink it because it the ONLY thing to accompany certain comfort foods.

Life without unlimited data is worse than cookies without milk. Take my datastreams away and not only is my iPhone a lemon, but my world is utterly diminished. I'm cut off. I'm out of touch with people and things and experiences I love. I'm at the mercy of hotel concierges and street signage. I have to scribble things down on scraps of paper and carry them in my pocket. I have to think about where I can connect, plan for it. Spontaneity and serendipity go out the window.

To be fair, I did have a lovely walk through the snowy gaslit streets of Stockholm's Old City, and when I got lost, I had to look carefully at street signs and address numbers. I found my way without Google to guide me. But when I wanted to tweet about the time-travel sensation, and to upload a picture of candles flickering in a 300-year-old window in a fairytale medieval square -- to enhance the moment by sharing it with my friends -- I couldn't. It was not only frustrating. In no small way, the lack of connectivity diminished my time.

In a way, being disconnected from others made the physical experience feel less real, more like a movie I was watching or a dream I was experiencing solo, because I couldn't instantly have the satisfaction of including others in the moment.

This is profoundly shocking to me. I would like to think of myself as someone who knows when to turn off and just be in the moment. Perhaps you think there is something wrong with me.

But just as we now take electrical lighting, central heating, and fresh fruit and vegetables any time of year for granted (do these comforts detract from our essence?) so too do I expect a level of connection to the people, places and information that matter to me. 

This is not inhuman -- quite the opposite. It is deeply human.

Becoming British

Tomorrow I become a UK citizen. I will put my hand on the Bible I was given as an infant on the day of my baptism (into the Church of England as it happens) and swear my allegiance to the nation, its monarch and her heirs. 

I have immense admiration for the Queen. (It takes one to love one.) But it's slightly odd to think about HRH's William and Harry in this oath-making context. I just feel like I know a little too much about their nights at Boujis and Mahiki to take them seriously as living symbols of the nation.

So even as I recite the words of my oath, I will simultaneously envision another set of people -- people whose faces and stories I encountered yesterday at the Imperial War Museum. People who endured the Blitz, who fought in the trenches, planted victory gardens, lived on rations, who upheld the values and principles that indeed make Britain great. What they endured is almost unbelievable. It sure puts today's tribulations in context. It is to them, more than anyone, that I feel I owe my pledge. 

London's Imperial War Museum is an astonishing place. It's pointless to blog about it -- just go experience it for yourself. It doesn't matter how much you feel you know or don't want to know about war and life in wartime. It's life-affirming to come face-to-face with the facts, artifacts, and voices of our forebears. It's also overwhelming and moving and I left with a headache.

I feel stirred and humbled that I am to be welcomed as a participating member of this amazing project: the United Kingdom. I hope I can live up to the courage and honour and pluck and ingenuity of those who came before us.

Spring

We seriously didn't think this would happen.

It started innocently enough: let's get an open-source conversation going about the implications of a world of ubiquitous interconnectivity, a world in which people, place and need are linked up to data, information, and to everyone else. A world in which the digital and the physical fuse into a new kind of substance and space. A world of "augmented reality" and intelligent services that almost work like a 6th sense, monitoring our patterns and adapting to our needs.

It seemed to us that a new epoch was about to begin, and we gave it a name: Real Time. And we were pretty sure of one thing: we wanted to launch an Idea, not an Entity.

Weeks in to our conversation, something has emerged from it. A new kind of company. A company the likes of which the world has never seen, and consequently, a company that no one is qualified to start.

As this new kind of company emerges from our project, it's happening in realtime. We aren't doing it in secret -- it's all out in the open. Even our office at Hub Culture Pavilion in central London is one that we share with other entrepreneurs. It is, in effect, public (though for politeness' sake we keep our voices low, even when we get into heated debate or have an energizing breakthrough.) We are bouncing ideas off of a group of friends and colleagues who we trust to give us painfully honest feedback. We are probably making fools of ourselves. We know no other way.

Someone recently asked me if I was having fun.

Yes and no. On one hand, it's a joy to invent, re-imagine, and create. On the other hand, it's amazing how quickly one's to-do list fills up with phone calls, emails, administrative details, meetings, and the like. As I frequently say, we created something, and then it hired us. And I wasn't even looking for a job.

The day I woke up and thought "shit, I'm late for work" I knew something had changed.

The company is an experiment, like the Real Time Project itself. We figure, so much of the world of business is in retrenchment mode, or just plain broken, that there's nothing stopping us from innovating not only the company itself, but the way in which the company forms itself.

Just as the original stock market emerged from a London coffee shop centuries ago, we are convinced that a new kind of business ecosystem -- perhaps one as culturally and economically significant -- will emerge just a neighborhood away, here in the overcaffeinated heart of the West End. Thus, our company begins with a community, a shared vision, a crackling debate. Technology connectivity means that everyone and anything is just a hyperlink or tweet away, and social networking enables us to collaborate with people around the world. Right now, we don't need capital. Just people and ideas. There are a lot of both, freed from the confines of traditional work, right now. This is the fertile environment in which the next great thing begins.

Many do not understand what we are doing. They want us to "be concrete." They are not sure what Real Time or Realtime (I'm leaning toward one word -- think weekend, homework, fairground) really is, or how it could drive a new kind of business.

I find this comforting. It means we've got some lead time. (oops, that's two words.) Because to be honest, I'm paranoid that someone else will come along, seize the language, claim the thinking, and then -- the worst part -- not make the most of it.

There is no doubt in our minds that something new is about to happen, involving the convergence of people, ideas, data, context, and physical place. An explosive change that will seem to have, once it happens, snuck up on us. A moment when everything, everyone and everywhere truly all connect. This moment will be dangerous -- for the politically oppressed, for personal privacy, for advertising agencies to name but a few constituencies. It will also herald a new realm of possibility for everyone. Depending upon what we do with the next wave of communications capability.

Realtime has not, as some have suggested to us, happened yet. Indeed, aspects of it are in place. The web. One billion mobile devices. Global financial networks. RFID chips. GPS systems. Aspects are about to be in place: Multisensory devices. Artificial intelligence. Wearable computing. Ubiquitous computing. Linked data. But what isn't in place is potentially worrying: a new bill of rights. New rules of engagement. Cultural sensitivity. Business organizational structure. Governmental organizational structure.

But the opportunities are huge, and for optimists like us, they far outweigh the scary aspects of realtime. New ways to spread learning far and wide. Eliminating latency in the service supply chain. Entertainment that's engaging, physical, social. Business innovation opportunities that are resource efficient and thus truly sustainable. A renaissance of human creative development. Aid distribution that really works. And so on. 

It will take more than Big Thinking to make such things happen. It will take, among other things, leadership. Action. A movement. And new kinds of companies.

We'll model that new kind of company, we'll do our best to practice what we preach, to be it rather than say it. 

And that's why we were caught off guard by our own realization. Our realization that, in these perplexing days of change, these months of "wintry inactivity" as I recently heard said, that we have an obligation to give birth not only to ideas, but to an entity that can activate them.

Winter eventually becomes spring, after all.

what's in a twitter tag?

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hyper and meta

There's a new term flying about newsmedia companies: "hyperlocal." The idea here is that in order for news organizations to maintain their value, they need to generate news that's intimately relevant -- to you, your street, your neighborhood, or your circle of friends and co-horts.

It's an interesting term. I rather like it. Particularly the "hyper" part.

But I have another bit of trendy jargon to offer: why not "metalocal?"

In the words of @IanSohn, "With technology, Is Chicago-London really any further apart than Kensington-Notting Hill?" The answer, Ian, is deceptively simple. It depends upon who you know and where they are.

Distance is mutable. Althrough Ian is in Chicago and I am in London, I feel closer to Ian because his tweets present a meandering narrative of his daily life, thoughts, and experiences. Meanwhile, his long form blog offers opportunities to delve deeper into his ideas and perceptions. It helps that Ian is a very active participant in emergent, real time media.

It matters not that he's in Chicago; I have more of a sense of his world than I do of the neighbor down the street. Metalocal.

And yet. The other night I was at a charity committee meeting. I'm a new member of this committee. Committees are fun. You meet people you wouldn't otherwise. In my case, I met a neighbor. And actual, live-a-few-doors-down-from-me neighbor. And I was delighted. We are similarly proud of the quality of our local Indian restaurant. We share a similar opinion of the greengrocers across from my flat (they need to upgrade their offering.) He's been here longer and was able to point out aspects of the neighborhood about which I didn't know. Bits of gossip, really. Hyperlocal.

I would suggest that proximity is a mind-and-body thing.

Metalocal is mind-oriented. The issues that matter to me and my cohorts, in real time. Is Andy's (Crouch End) wife in labor yet? Is Ian (Chicago) still on Dad duty? What's going down with Prop 8 in San Francisco?

Hyperlocal is more body-oriented. What's the weather going to be like after lunch? Why were they starting construction at 7 in the morning? What happened to the boy who my neighbors and I watched the paramedics cut out of his car after the auto accident the day before yesterday?

When I first relocated to London, I found it hard to maintain a feeling of closeness with my friends back in San Francisco, LA, and New York. I couldn't see the finer grain of their lives, their commutes, their dinners, their Sunday walks. But that was before Facebook, Flickr, et al. The cliche "out of sight, out of mind" comes to mind. It's not that they were totally out of my thoughts -- I was acutely aware of missing them -- it's that I didn't feel connected. The importance of physical proximity was clear to me then.

It's different now. Certainly, physical space matters, we live in physical bodies after all, at least for now and the near future.

But considering that the interface between ourselves and the world our bodies inhabit is sensorial, it seems obvious to predict that as communication technology itself becomes more multisensorial, in real time, the feeling of proximity with those who are far away will continue to increase. Those Flickr pics and YouTube videos and "let's make a random album cover on Facebook" virals and real-time thoughts zipping around the planet really are bringing us all closer together.

What does this mean for freaked-out news agencies? It means that more news will matter to more people than ever before. Meaningful news. Some big stories, some very granular bits of in-the-moment info. How this news gets generated and distibuted is another story altogether. But the need for both hyperlocal and metalocal news has never been greater.

out of body

As I recent purchaser of an iPhone, I've noticed something slightly disturbing about it, and me.

It takes me out of my body, out of the moment, and pulls me into a seductive and slippery otherworld.

The smooth shiny touchscreen is like Alice's looking glass. A simple stroke pulls me into a set of surreal experiences that have nothing to do with my material, physical presence.

It's hard to stay present, in my body, in the moment, when right there in the palm of my hand is a portal into a shiny world of friends and tweets and, perhaps most addictive of all, Bejeweled, which is the crack of all mobile games.

I will need to cultivate some self discipline. Perhaps shorter battery life is not a bad thing.

Guardian of Real Time

From today's Guardian, an article about the dangers of Facebook, Bebo, Twitter et al...

"Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution, has led members of the government to admit their work on internet regulation has not extended to broader issues, such as the psychological impact on children.

She said she feared 'real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction.' "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/24/social-networking-site-changing-childrens-brains

where are you?

I'm trying to put together a simple little event. A salon, if you will. It used to be so easy. You chose a venue, and then you sent invitations.

Now it's way more complicated. Do I tweet you? SMS you? Get your attention on LinkedIn? Facebook? Your work email? Your personal email? Snailmail? Do I even know where you live anymore? Where are you?

Many of the current social platforms, although nominally "free," have a hitch: if someone you want to invite or contact isn't on the same platform, you can't use it to reach them. And everyone seems to be on a different platform. Which means you need to use all of them: Facebook, Gmail, SMS, Twitter, etcetera.

Meanwhile, if I use a broad platform event-planning technology, like Evite in the old days, well, I run the risk that I'm not using the trendy app, and you'll ignore me.

It's time for aggregation. Someone's gotta be funding this. So that all I do is choose YOU -- your name, something identifiable about you -- and my communication will reach you in the way you most want to be reached.

The current dis-integration is not only frustrating, it's wasteful. Of time, intention, resource, attention, and of privacy too. It creates an illusion of intimacy or safety. When really, it's just a hassle. All the data is still out there, still public.

Arghhh.

cheap inspiration

This much I know: it's hard to get inspired when I'm feeling down. And feeling down is contagious. There's a lot of down going around, and it's getting in my way.

What to do?

Taking a walk is always a good cure-all. A wander is even better. Nearly any wander will do, even around your own back garden/yard. It's best if its not a goal-oriented wander but rather, a looking/experiencing walk. Yesterday my partner Mark and I wandered from our home in W10 to Shepherd's Bush Market.

Shepherds Bush Market is moments away from the shiny new Westfield mall. These two marketplaces have some things in common. Each has their own tube stations -- each has two, in fact. The Westfield is full of brands like Habitat, Tiffany, and Apple, while Shepherds Bush Market is full of brands more familiar to people from Jamaica, India, Peru, or Nigeria. You can buy Nike trainers at both. Both have several options for lunch. I'm not even going to make the "you can get apples at both" pun. Sorry.

The Westfield is a wonder, in its own monstrous way. Depending upon your mood, it offers the seeker of inspiration a range of gratifying emotions: from a depression-be-damned haze of gleaming escapism to a full-on hit of post-consumerist cynicism.

However, the miracle of Shepherds Bush Market is that, although physically a neighbor to this monument to brand-fueled capitalism, its a lifetime away from the Westfield in form and content. A ten minute stroll from Next, Gucci, and Niketown, past the betting shops and coffee shops of Shepherds Bush Green, and you enter another continent. Several other continents, in fact.

Typo-ridden Obama teeshirts vie with African printed cloth for the attentions of your digital camera. You discover types of mung beans you didn't know existed. It's a pungent mash-up of souk, medina, and car boot sale. Whole halal lambs, gigantic sacks of cassava flour, enormous yams that could alone feed an entire family, alarm clocks, wheelie bags, multiple brands of Thai fish sauce, fluorescent garlands of fake flowers, Nike Air trainers encrusted with Swarovski crystals. I wouldn't call it a pretty place, but Shepherd's Bush Market is exhilarating, if you're open to it.

I get most inspired when I step out of my own world into THE world. When I'm forced to bump up against alternative points of view, uncomfortable truths. It's exhilarating to have the mind and body challenged by new stimuli. This is why some people climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. I, instead, order the tripe. Or meander through communities of which I am not a part.

Actually, to be honest, I let Mark lead the way, and thus improve the odds we end up discovering boundless inspiration. Left to my own devices I probably would have made a beeline to the Apple Store.

the twitter tipping point

I'm late to the Twitter party, but if the past timings of my adoption of a particular social media platform are any guide, I'm arriving at the Twitter tipping point.

Which means, everyone I went to high school with is about to tweet.

I actually signed up ages ago, but never got all that interested. It seemed like a feature, not a channel. Why tweet when you've got a status update to play with on Facebook?

I was wrong. It's a very different medium than any I've played with before. Formally, sure, it's familiar: that haiku-meets-pithiness of SMS, that click-and-go spontaneity of email, that addictively social time-suck of Facebook. But functionally, and outcome-wise, it's a different bird altogether. Partly because it just FEELS different.

It's been less than a week, and already I'm fascinated by how different people use Twitter so differently. There's a segmentation scheme worth writing up here. The archetypes are easy to spot. The every-minute-detail-of-my-life broadcaster. The haiku poet. The show-offy microblogger. The New York Times -- which simply serves up snack-size portions of itself. Brands broadcasting on Twitter seem sort of silly, but individuals can come off as even sillier. Boris Johnson, London's silliest mayor ever, is a brilliant Twitterer. I'm even starting to like him. (Beleaguered brands and celebrities take note.)

So I firmly believe that Twitter is a valid and rather important new medium. Sure, I've been yammering on about microblogs for over a year. But now, I'm even more convinced that it's an Important Internet Platform. I can imagine whole new forms of Twitter-ish fluency developing. Serialized narratives. Games. New kinds of news distribution. Shopping opportunities. You can already turn a tweet into a tshirt. The challenge is choosing which one to print.

The real time possibilities are alluring. Make it location-aware, enable more fluid filtering, allow intuitive on/off capabilities, and we'd have a medium thats both personally and socially empowering. And fun. And exactly the right size to fit in your hand, your pocket.

Without these modifications, Twitter will devolve into a cacaphonic spew of TMI. (Too Much Information.) But I'm optimistic.

Anyway, right now, I like it. It has a Wild West quality, like the early days of Second Life. And it has an addictive pull, like Facebook once did for me. I'm told the honeymoon period wears off. We'll see.

The difference

There’s a difference between strength and aggression, a wise man recently said to me.

Have you ever been in a situation that required you to consider the shades of difference between the two?

In real time, personality and behaviour are more effective than message and position. In other words, we are understood and known by what we do, how we act – not what we say or how we position ourselves. This is as true for organizations and brands as it is for individuals.

It’s often tempting to be aggressive. Particularly when our buttons are pushed. When we’re angry. When things aren’t going our way.

And look at our world. The news is full of shrill headlines, real time button-pushers – executive compensation, bailouts, job eliminations, climate change, religious tensions – things certainly don’t seem to be going the way I’d hoped.

An aggressive response would be so emotionally satisfying. Proclaiming the wrongness of it all, boldly redefining how things should be, lashing out, laying blame, starting a movement, even. Let’s do it all over beers, down at the pub! Then take it to the streets! It was certainly effective in Munich in 1923. Disastrously so.

I’m aware that my point is a bit dramatic. But then, so are the headlines, and the conversations I find myself in these days.

This is why the line between strength and aggression is interesting to consider.

What would it mean to instead behave with strength? What does the strong person, the strong company, the strong leader do? Look up the word for some inspiration.

Some definitions for the word “strength” that I find useful:

The power to resist attack; impregnability.
The power to resist strain or stress; durability.
The ability to maintain a moral or intellectual position firmly.
Capacity or potential for effective action.

When I survey the brandscape, the business ecosystem, and the high street, this isn’t quite what I’m seeing. Instead, I’m witnessing retrenchment. Brands are self-weakening. Or in hiding, waiting for an upturn.

It’s so disappointing.

In real time, there’s an opportunity for the strong brand, the strong company, the strong leader to stand out. Those that acknowledge the global mood but remain steadfast and unruffled. By not giving in. Staying the course. Reassuring constituents. Being proactive as well as responsive. Smiling instead of grimacing.

Brands that model the solution rather than contribute the demise will thrive in this environment. It’s going to be interesting to see who rises to the challenge.

Please slow down

I don't like the current economic mood. I prefer optimism, and it's in short supply these days. I'm seriously worried that a downward spiral of negativity, amplified by doom and gloom stories in the media, is about to wreak real havoc on our way of life -- and not necessarily to the benefit of the planet. Negativity becomes carelessness, which can in turn generate some very ugly and dangerous outcomes.

I also have this nagging hunch that people want a long-term downturn. Whispers of depression are getting louder, they almost sound like nostalgia for the 1930s. It's as if, collectively, the consensus is that humanity is ready to take a duvet day.

Individually, of course, everyone wants economic stability, growth, and for their dreams to come true. But the mob psychology, fueled by the onslaught of newsfeeds and constant negative innuendo, is something different. Any student of economics knows that all this stuff is ultimately psychological.

A friend of mine works very closely with the most inner machinations of global business and finance, and I always look to him as a litmus test for how things will be going for the rest of us in the near future. Two things he said to me yesterday caught my ear.

First, he referenced Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Her landmark work on the Stages of Grief. He believes that the captains of industry and finance have reached the "acceptance" stage. I asked him what they are grieving. What died? His answer: "Capitalism." A pause. "At least for awhile," he added.

The second thing: he reminded me that it's useless to look at the Dow (or FTSE or any of them) every day, that it tells us nothing. My father used to say this to me. My accountants say it. But in real time, of course, I look at that number hourly like it's some kind of oracle, a harbinger of the state of the world. Not because I'm obsessed, but because that number is simply there, on my screen, nearly all the time. My own mood can rise and fall in synch with it.

There's a Buddhist slogan that's used for meditative mind-training: "Of the two witnesses, hold the principle one." The metaphor suggests that if you are trying to solve a crime or understand a circumstance and you can only hold one witness, you're going to want to hang on to the person who is closest to the circumstance, who experienced it firsthand. Police Detective 101.

In our own lives, the principle witness is always ourselves. Not the Dow, the columnist, the pundit, the President, the web 2.0 mob, but you. You know your life best. I know my life best.

Of course, this assumes that we've cultivated some healthy self-awareness. Something I work hard to do, daily.

So, my principle witness believes that the current mood is horrendous and even dangerous because it is moving us backwards. I can't deny some worrying fundamentals: job losses, bank nationalizations, budget cuts, the rapid shrinkage of my parent's retirement funds. It's bad stuff, and it's real.

Mere optimism can't change those things. Or can it?

I wonder whether happiness might be a more useful feeling than optimism. It's easier to be happy in the moment, happy with what we have right now, than optimistic about a future that's utterly uncertain.

My principle witness isn't entirely optimistic, but he's happy. My own mood is far better than the collective mood. Even my parents, for whom the timing of this whole thing could be devastating, are happy in the moment, and that keeps them going, if a bit slower than before.

Happily slowing down is different than receding or being depressed. It can be good, and healthy, and an opportunity for innovation and growth. Like driving carefully and slowly home down a dark icy road, it's how we're going to get ourselves through this thing.

Real time mean girls

I was having lunch with my friend Shauna this week, who was visiting London from California, and we got talking about real time - my current obsession. Shauna is not only a technological sophisticate, she's a mom, specifically, the mom of my god-daughter.

Her daughter came home recently with a story about a girl who was being bullied at school. Bullying certainly and sadly isn't new, but the tools that tweens now deploy are changing the game. Mobile cameraphone plus MySpace plus Mean Girls plus awkward naked lockerroom photo... you do the math. Nasty. Not only for the victim, but for everyone. Which of course is why my god-daughter came home and talked about it. She was horrified.

Shauna went on to describe other bullying "use cases." For example, bully uses the anonymity of digital media to generate fake 3rd party admission of true love ("jose has a crush on u") thus eliciting a confession from the supposed crush-ee ("omg jose is so hot") which then gets published schoolwide, and the victim of the crush scam is subsequently bombarded with SMS ridicule, all of which ends up costing her not only her dignity, but clogs her mobile account. And, if her misunderstanding parents monitor her mobile and scan her texts, there's yet more shame to be had at home.

Ouch. Makes me glad to be forty.

I can't stop thinking about the ambiguous and broad implications of hyperconnected, location-aware, personal mobile technology. Kids in developed countries are already utterly fluent in using it. They've integrated it into the most basic adolescent rituals: the first crush, gossiping, friendship, discovering music, popularity contests, ostracizing, forming cliques, and as above, bullying.

And it seems to me that these base human instincts become somehow amplified through real-time technology. Bullying is more intense, easier to inflict, more humiliating. Do teachers have any idea this is happening? Less tech-savvy parents? Do they have the skills, tools, and real-time mindset to understand, intervene, mitigate, or help?

Some people suggest that technology convergence is a good thing for us all. I am an optimist by nature, but I can't ignore the dark side of the phenomenon, especially given that the evolution of technology outpaces the evolution of our instincts.

I also think it's enlightening to pay attention to how the kids are using it. It's a glimpse of the future. Not only because it's ubiquitous in their lives, but because their experience of convergence - both positive and negative - is shaping them as people.

Melt

London was a magical place yesterday. All the winter wonderland cliches were true -- and especially apt in this sprawling conglomeration of Victorian ornament, wrought iron details, parks and lawns, palaces and shopfronts. The thick frosting of snow did that thing that snow does: makes you see it all anew. Reframes it all. Especially the soundtrack. Muffled, softened. It was so enchanting to walk around and take it all in, to re-experience my adopted hometown.

Today, I have that kid-like sadness as it all begins to melt under a bright February sun. Weather reports predict freezing rain, everyone's favorite gift from the sky. But thanks to Flickr, a simple search enables me to explore yesterday's dreamscape again. It's nice to take a break from the onslaught of bad economics news and negative media and wander through something real, and totally free: a great city sparkling in white tie and diamonds.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1016510@N21/

Obama's Acceptance Speech: REFRESH!

I was, at first, disappointed in Obama's inaugural address. Not very moving. No clear call-to-action. After months of his trademark "soaring oratory" it felt like a letdown. But two things subsequently happened. As I was watching the speech on the Beeb, I was simultaneously facebooking, and someone updated their status with a comment about the new White House web site. As Obama spoke, it launched. REFRESH! And that's when the goosebumps happened. It's all in the details. The elegant redesign. The articulate agenda. Take a look. http://www.whitehouse.gov/. Contemporary. Thrilling. It's not about the speech. It's about real time governance.

The second thing that happened: an article in the New York Times that pointed out what I wished I'd been smart enough to notice: it's all in the details of the speech itself. In real time, it's not about the memorable Kennedyesque phrase. It's about the transcript, which is instantly live, accessible, Wikipediable, Googleable. It's about every word.

http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/two-little-huge-things-obama-said/