• Beyond the web…

    What makes the evolution of the web more interesting is that in whatever small ways, we all are drivers of the changes that are happening. Seth Godin wrote a thought provoking post sometime back on the evolution of a medium, in which he points out the end result of banality.

    On Twitter recently, Surekha, Karthik and I had a good discussion on attribution and payment models, triggered by Karthik’s post.  again got me thinking on digital collectivism. I’ve always wondered about the conflicts of digital collectivism and mediocrity, and recently read a good post in the WSJ, that not only made a case of the former working against innovation, but also the need for a better system for intellectual property rights.

    Digital collectivism, content creation, Intellectual Property Rights are all issues that would have to be simultaneously grappled with. Right now, separate industries are battling it out in their own turf, what would happen when individuals like you and me are faced with these? Systems are evolving faster than standards can. With more people, including celebrities getting on board Twitter, and the web in general, there is going to be more content abundance and the need for trust based networks. I, for one, believe that proper standards of attribution would have to be a part of the trust based economy.

    Meanwhile, because of the subjective/personal nature of the social web and the relative ease in creating content/products/services, it is safe to expect that niche models and economies would happen. We would perhaps move beyond what we call social media now, as it becomes a standard, because as Rex Hammock correctly states, the web is bigger than social media.

    But then I had a strange notion. As habits change, new consumption patterns emerge and technology evolves to such an extent that geographical constraints become even more irrelevant, will we see a different kind/system of human aggregation? Will we see virtual gated communities with different protocols, that will tie back into reality and help build sustainable economies different from what we can fathom now? Going back to that WSJ article I linked to earlier, has the net already accumulated baggage, in terms of the way things work? What if the web has already evolved to such an extent that these new systems would find operating within it, a constraint?

    Would we then see the emergence of a new medium? Think about it, the timeframe between emergence of new media  are getting crunched. And there were days when nobody thought there would be something that would make newspapers almost redundant. Does that mean the net will? Perhaps not, but it just won’t be the super hero it is now.

    until next time, internext

    Good Read in context:  “In Networks we trust, but privacy is another matter“

  • Shift + Alt + Holmes

    I’m quite a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes. If you remember, schools had this process in which one student was asked to read from the textbook, and another had to start from where he left off. Though most teachers went along a row, some smart ones picked random students. In Class 8 when ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ was part of the syllabus,  I was once so engrossed in reading ahead that i got a ‘Get out of the class’. No, the teacher wasn’t really evil, I think i might have irritated her by pronouncing it as ‘hoond’ and then, when corrected, asking whether i could say “Howston, we have a problem.”  So yes, though M in ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ happens to be Moriarty, Holmes’ arch enemy, and it might be played by Brad Pitt soon, I am a huge fan.

    And so i was quite disappointed not to be able to catch ‘Sherlock Holmes’ in the cinema hall in the first week because we were shifting homes. But fate had a mystery in store for me. The curious incident of the dogmatic nozzle in the night time. I can explain, and will. 😀

    We managed to bring a semblance of order to the place quite late. The toilet attached to the main bedroom had not been explored much, until then. And when we did, we discovered this strange arrangement.

    leftistWhat do you mean what’s wrong. Its leftist. Doesn’t it strike you that the damn nozzle is on the wrong side? Not a good thing to discover when one is erm, pooped. Since the nearest tap was relatively far, we didn’t have lota options.  I have to add – the limited length of the nozzle pipe meant that  if you did try using it, i guess the twists and turns required would  make you feel a bit like the sari donned Draupadi in the Mahabharata!! Actually in the end, you’d feel like Dushasana – edge of the seat stuff, but you have a headache and still cut a sorry figure. After several minutes of discussions with D, that’s the wife not Dushasana, we realised that we had our backs against the wall, figuratively and otherwise, since the engineer wouldn’t help us out that late in the night. And that’s when I remembered Holmes’ famous admonition – “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”

    And that’s how I told D that if she wanted to use this loo now, she would need a paradigm shift. I suggested an option that looks like the one on the top in the image below, facing the wall.

    toilet

    She said “What crap. Sometimes you really go potty ” 😐

    Ha. Toilet humour, the last resort. I wonder if I should say that for the post too? And that would once again make me the butt of the joke. 😐

    until next time, alimentary tracks, my dear Watson? 🙂

  • People, Organisations, Media

    Shashi Tharoor. Sachin Tendulkar. The connection is not just the initials, but also VISA. Get it? 😀 So, anyway, Tharoor’s tweets (again) created a minor ‘controversy’ and I observed a few interesting tangential stories.

    Tharoor’s boss commented that such issues ” should be sorted out within the four walls of the two ministries”. So there was a good debate online and offline on how, as an elected representative, his responsibility was to the public, and whether the government, like many private organisations, might have some sort of non-disclosure norms. Tharoor, while having to go by official policy, had a view on his own and was expressing it. It reminded me of communication policies in organisation and a post recently on gaping void titled “If your boss tells you ‘our brand must speak with one voice’, quit.” The point to note is that SM Krishna is not a stranger to Twitter, but his usage of it was as a platform during the elections. A bit like an organisation using social media as a broadcast platform with least strategic intent. Tharoor, on the other hand, uses it in a completely different manner, and uses it well, IMO.

    I doubt that this is the last ‘Twitroversy’ that Tharoor will find himself in, because I sense his larger agenda in this – forcing transparency on a system which clearly lacks it. (Generalising) In some ways, the similarity (of the government’s functioning) with organisations is quite evident. So, you could say that Tharoor is a pioneer in India’s version of government 2.0. But the internet with rife with stories, usually with bad endings, of employees talking about their employer. Facebook and Twitter have contributed largely to  this too. No, that’s not a warning of any sorts, I think this trend will only increase, and the endings will have to change. Employees would have contractual obligations, but as organisations move towards social business design, the nature of these also would have to change. In India, where the net is yet to achieve (mass) maturity, a member of the government working towards transparency in what can be called ‘THE system’ is bound to have an effect on culture. The other effect of transparency I am looking forward to is accountability. As Seth Godin says ‘Put a name to it’. I think accountability will have a huge role to play in Social Business Design, and the faster organisations adopt it, as opposed to seeing employees as army ants following a diktat, the better it will be for all concerned.

    I also saw a debate on Times Now, which, to me,  exposed the difference in the way bureaucrats and even old journalists see Twitter, as opposed to the users of the service, in this case represented ably by Prem Panicker. Someone commented on Twitter that the media creates these controversies around Tharoor because he has moved a layer between the government and public. I’d agree to a certain extent, because though India’s internet penetration is still in single digits, even media houses realise its the future. The media, print or television has seen itself as the ‘middle man’ and services like Twitter are just ripping away that fabric. Meanwhile, Vir Sanghvi (on Twitter) commented that “If Shashi Tharoor said same things to journos he would be hailed as frank. When he tweets he is called irresponsible” To me, this is another manifestation of the same sentiment.

    Ironically, Tharoor, a few minutes before the controversy started had tweeted about the future of journalism – about the influence of stringers and bloggers, but the need for educated and knowledgeable editors as well. I read recently about the rise of TMZ, and the new form of reportage. The way I see it, along with transparency and accountability, there will be a variable trust factor in the reader’s mind for every source. The source might be an individual, a group, an organisation, a company, the trust factor and context will dictate the relationship. Even as individuals like Tharoor become ‘media’ in themselves thanks to (in this case) Twitter, newspapers and organisations will have to work out very quickly on how to adapt to this change in status quo.

    until next time, mediators 🙂

    PS. Shorter posts and an announcement – next week 🙂

    PPS: True to style, Jyoti Basu virtually ‘died’ yesterday, on Twitter.

  • Test

    This is a restructuring exercise. brants has now moved to www.manuprasad.com/blog