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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