I’d like to continue on the theme of mass connectivity from my previous post, Connectivity equals productivity, a powerful reminder. I also want to pick up on some points Tim Flannery raised about our increasingly global civilisation in his recent keynote address, Innovation in a Changing Climate.

Firstly, let me summarise and paraphrase some of Flannery’s thinking. Flannery maintains that around ten thousand years ago, the first human beings came to settle in a village. At that time, humans lived as clans or families in eternal conflict with each other. Over time we have built larger and larger political and social units. Every step of the way we have been giving away a little more of our earlier autonomy; until today, where we have given birth to a civilisation at the heart of which lies many enormous cities.

Flannery asserts that this process has produced a species in which our interdependence is so great that hardly any of us can now live outside “the great hive”. Flannery points out that if we were cast out of our civilisation today, the great majority of us would perish within weeks. We would be like domestic rabbits in the wild.

Internet map image from The Opte Project

In that sense, we have forged a “power in common”, at the expense of us as individuals. He asserts that this sense of us as a group, as a global civilisation, has become the most precious thing in the world to us. In this way, we have changed ourselves. The only possible future we have is in common, at some level.

And what about that collective future? Flannery asserts that we have run most of the marathon already and the finishing line is now just a few steps ahead of us. The finishing line will consist of the creation of a global human civilisation. We are on the brink of that now. He asks, “do we have it within us to take the few extra steps?”. On a side note, for all you conspiracy theorists out there, no, that doesn’t mean a one world government, but rather some sort of collective global consciousness.

Of course, he is talking about this global civilisation in relation to collectively acting on climate change, which he says is a major roadblock in our way. He maintains that unless we address the issue of climate change this decade, it’s likely we will lose the opportunity to forge that global civilisation. He says that incompetent political systems may well have such an impact on us that we will be unable to proceed, and there will be increasing conflict over diminishing resources.

Connectivity and an emerging global civilisation.

Flannery didn’t mention connectivity, or the internet in this particular talk, but while listening to his words I couldn’t help thinking about this concept of the great human hive in relation to the mass connectivity that has been growing around the world. As well as the big trend towards urbanisation, we also have this trend towards worldwide connectivity. Recently that trend has been increasingly towards wireless connectivity.

Sure, we most certainly have a large digital divide, a gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology, and those with very limited or no access at all. However, the fact remains that we are more able to communicate with each other on a global scale than ever before.

So, the question is: are we on the brink of achieving a truly global civilisation, a sort of global consciousness aided by mass connectivity?

It seemed only fitting that I turned to “the crowd” for an answer. I posed some questions on Twitter and Facebook. Mostly, the answer was a resounding No. Only a couple of people said yes. Interestingly, they were both young people.

“The voices on the net say no.”

“Absolutely not, that’s impossible”

“It is further away than ever”

“Don’t mistake global communications with consciousness”

“The ‘civil’ part of the q. that has a problem. I don’t see a lot of civility going on. Connectivity cuts both ways”

“Religion, greed, and egotism. Those are things what will never go away or be put into a level of control that would allow global civilisation”

“No! Any travel to a two-thirds-of-world country exposes how many billions not on grid and completely ignored by global ‘thought’.”

“no – the same people who are excluded/voiceless locally are now excluded globally. It is a conversation between the rich.”

“Global Civilisation- possibly. Global Conscience – definitly not, people/countries are unique indentities and think differently”

“Sadly, absolutely not. The more info the more divisive are positions. look at the US. but still have hope for next generations”

“Global civilization yes, because for the first time ever we are growing a Gen Y that is connected across the  World.”

“I say YES YES YES! (but maybe cause I’m 24?)”

I think there are some good points there, especially the one about mistaking mass connectivity with consciousness, and taking into account the lack of connectivity in most of the world.

I don’t like to be pessimistic, so I’m going to end with my belief that, global civilisation and global consciousness or not, we can solve some of the humanity’s major problems, including climate change.

By the way, I say it’s humanity’s problem because the Earth will recover eventually from the excessive greenhouse gases we are pumping into the atmosphere, even if humans aren’t around when it does. We would take (and are already taking) a lot of other species with us too, and perhaps new ones would emerge later.

What are your thoughts on this global civilisation question? I’m interested to find out.

Technorati Tags: climate change, connectivity, digital divide, environment, globalisation, Tim Flannery, urbanizatiion

A comprehensive new report released today by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the Australian entertainment and media industry will grow by 28 percent over the next five years, at a predicted compound annual growth rate of 5.1 percent. This means that the industry is forecast to increase its revenue to $36.2 billion by 2014.

Newspapers and the changing media landscape

Unsurprisingly, magazines, newspapers and radio aren’t expected to lead the way in terms of growth. In fact, in 2009 the Australian newspaper market shrank by 11.4 percent. However, the PwC report expects that a compound annual growth rate of 1.8 percent will be sustained through to 2014. This includes revenues from newspaper websites of course.

However you look at it, the future for traditional newspapers doesn’t look particularly great. Clearly, major changes are taking place in the media landscape and media organisations running newspapers are (somewhat desperately) attempting to figure out how to continue to remain viable into the future. Everywhere you look people are taking about what’s going to happen. Just yesterday I was reading an interesting blog post by Malcolm Turnbull on the subject:  Twitter, Newspapers, New Media – Some Observations.

Increasing national broadband speeds and access?

David Wiadrowski, head of technology, information, communications and entertainment at PwC, states that, “With machines in homes becoming smarter, people sharing information through social networks and data being stored in clouds the appetite for content and speed strengthens. High-speed broadband connectivity is an opportunity to satisfy consumers’ growing appetites”.

I have no argument with this, however, given that the federal Opposition’s policy going into the imminent federal election is to call a halt to the building of the new National Broadband Network if elected, it remains to be seen whether broadband speeds in Australian will actually get the boost that is required. We’ll have to wait and see on that one. Personally, I’d like to see the new network built as soon as possible.

In any case, the report expects the local internet industry to grow from $7 billion in 2009 to $10.6 billion in 2014. Wireless broadband is the fastest growing kind of internet access.

Online social networking is also making a large contribution to growth in Australia. As I pointed out recently, Australians spend the most time social networking in the world. When I mentioned this on Twitter, a couple of people (only half jokingly) pointed out that “it’s because our TV is so crap”.

High growth in interactive gaming

The report observes that interactive gaming was the strongest performer of the industry sectors during 2009, and bucked the global financial crisis to grow by 7.7 percent. The prediction here is that gaming will continue to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 9.4 percent, to reach $2.5 billion in 2014. Growth from both online and mobile games is expected to account for the highest growth. Annual compound growth rates for online games and mobile games are expected to rise by 20.4 percent and 15.7 percent respectively.

Digital downloading expected to go ballistic

While filmed entertainment in general bucked the local economic slowdown to grow by 7.1 percent during 2009, in-home digital downloading is forecast to grow by a huge 117.8 percent per year to reach $126 million in 2014. Obviously, this only counts paid-for downloads. $126 million is surely only the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential future revenue from digital downloads.

Demand for DVDs is still expected to be strong for a few years until we see significant improvements in internet speeds and data download limits. Again, we’ll have to wait and see what happens with the roll out of the National Broadband Network. There will be a lot of people in the industry hoping this goes ahead as soon as possible, and that when it does, prices are not steep.

Are these predictions in line with your expectations of the next few years on the Australian media and entertainment scene? Let me know your thoughts.

Technorati Tags: Australia, broadband, business, digital downloading, digital media, election, Malcolm Turnbull, mobile, mobile games, National Broadband Network, NBN, newspapers, online games, PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, technology

As you can see from the screenshot of the tweet from the Wikileaks Twitter profile below, recent rumors regarding the demise of Wikileaks appear to be false.

In case you are unaware, Wikileaks is an international organisation that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive files from governments and other organisations. Amongst many other files, the whistleblower organisation was recently responsible for releasing the following shocking classified US military video footage showing the killing of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded. This video has now been seen by millions.

Technorati Tags: leaks, rumors, Twitter, video, Wikileaks

Frankly, in light of the ongoing Gulf oil spill, I’m surprised there aren’t even more negative comments like this appearing on BP station venues on Foursquare. Maybe there are in the US, especially around the Gulf Coast?

And as you’d expect, there are a LOT on Twitter. “Oil Spill” has been in and out of (mostly in)  Trending Topics for over a month. This is what happens in social media when The Gulf Between Greenwashed Image and Reality becomes blatantly obvious.

Technorati Tags: BP, Foursquare, Gulf Coast, LBS, location, location-based, oil spill

Image by Sister72

In the context of talking about the importance of education and Thomas Jefferson’s recognition that people must attempt to stay informed to make democracy work effectively, Obama has asserted that information is becoming a diversion and a form or entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment and emancipation.

On the state of the current information rich digital environment, Obama said:

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,”

“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.

Obama complained that “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.

“All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.” Obama said.

I think Obama is correct in saying the fact that we are bombarded with all kinds of content is putting more pressure on us, and that it can be a distraction, but only if we let it. The flows of information have certainly increased, especially for those of use who use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, read blogs and use other forms of social media regularly.

Having said that, I now read fewer newspapers and magazines and watch less tv. My tv viewing has become much more selective, and I’m starting to be able to find the video content I want to watch on the web, rather than it being selected for me by tv stations. See my recent post 3 places to find inspiring and intelligent online video.

I am certainly not convinced that the increased flow of information puts pressure on our democracy. What is not stated, at least in this recent statement, and what is the really dramatic change in relation to democracy and the media, is that information is now flowing in multiple directions. It’s not just coming from big media organisations, it’s coming from citizens as well. This may put pressure on us in terms of managing and filtering the information, but surely this is healthy for democracy!

Like Obama, my childhood years were spent in a world without the internet, where information in the media generally flowed in one direction only, principally from large media organisations. Now we have the web and social media. Sure, this has increased the volume of information, and much of the information and arguments leave a lot to be desired, but surely this in NOT a bad thing for democracy?

There is now a plethora of opinions and information on any given subject (including the one I’m writing about now), flowing in multiple directions at any given time. Nobody said democracy was going to be easy, or tidy, did they? Surely those who learn to thrive in these new information rich environments will prosper, both financially and in terms of knowledge, education and empowerment. The digital divide between rich and poor is something that may become more and more apparent in this regard, as time goes by. This is certainly something that needs addressing by people such as Obama.

It is true that there are a lot of diversions on the web to distract our focus, but it’s up to us to filter the information available and do what we want with it. We now have the option to create our own as well.

I must say that one big downside that I can see in all this is the fact that there are now millions and millions of these new devices being produced quarterly around world. Electronic waste is a real and growing problem. The question of how we are going to live sustainably in a world with nine billion people is integral to the aims of education and empowerment that Obama speaks of. Does increased information flow have to mean increased, unsustainable consumption too? But perhaps that’s another post for another day.

Technorati Tags: iPad, iPhone, Obama

There seems no doubt that there’s going to be a large amount of social media content in relation to the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill. If the impact of the ongoing spill turns out to be as bad as many are suggesting, there is sure to be a continuing deluge of images, video clips, blog posts and status updates hitting the social web.

The aftermath of the spill could go on for weeks or months and have a devastating impact on the Gulf Coast. In addition to mainstream media coverage, something tells me that as the oil spill reaches the coast, citizen journalism is going to go into overdrive. With all the clean-up volunteers and people living in the area, no doubt people will tell their own stories with cameras, blogs and via Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Unsurprisingly, right from the outset blogs often categorised as “green” such as Grist (a Technorati Top 100 blog) have been covering the spill. However, soon after it became a lead news story pretty much everywhere, I noticed “Gulf” trending on Twitter as people expressed themselves and passed around links to news updates, images and blog posts.

A couple of days ago NASA released the embedded satellite images of the spill, which very popular blogs such as Mashable and The Huffington Post helped to distribute far and wide on the web. The Huffington Post now has a page dedicated to ongoing coverage of the spill, with well over a thousand comments from readers.

ReadWriteWeb reported that a multimedia website has now been set up by British Petroleum, Transocean, (the oil rig owners), the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Department. The site has a Social Media section which links to a Facebook Page, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

After the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina relief effort, the White House seems keen to communicate via all media that it will do “whatever it takes for as long as it takes to address this crisis”.  Here are a couple of messages that have appeared on Twitter and YouTube in response to the crisis:

This video posted on YouTube was linked from Obama’s Twitter account with the message “From day one, we have launched & coordinated a relentless response to the Gulf Crisis.”

Let’s hope the Obama administration and the companies involved follow through with on their promises to put maximum effort into the clean up. Whatever the case, this is not going to be good.

Technorati Tags: Grist, Gulf Coast, Huffington Post, Mashable, Obama, oil spill, white house

Tens of millions of people watch and share YouTube videos regularly, but there are other places to search for good online video. Here are 3 of my current favs.

TED is also pretty well known. TED lives up to its own claims of hosting “riveting talks by remarkable people” and for finding “ideas worth spreading”. Almost every time I watch a TED Talk I come away feeling inspired, and sometimes just blown away by what people are thinking and doing around the world.

The embedded video is just one that I found in my inbox this week, from the regular email updates I receive from TED. It’s brilliant, and only 3 minutes long: How to start a movement, by Derek Sivers.

Lesser known is FORA.tv, which contains longer, more in depth talks, lectures and interviews on issues related to economics, environment, politics, science, technology and culture. So often these days we only seem to have time for very short, shallow and trivial video content online. This site certainly offers something different and impressive.

On a local level (to me), we have SlowTV, in association with The Monthly magazine here in Australia. @stuarthorrex on Twitter recently reminded me of this content, and after watching James Hansen’s Looking for real solutions after Copenhagen video over the Easter break, I’ve been ranting about it on Twitter ever since. It’s a must watch if you’ve ever wanted to know more about the science of climate change.

So many people seem to have an opinion without actually knowing what top scientists are saying right now. James Hansen is known as the ‘grandfather of climate change’ and is perhaps the world’s leading authority on the science of climate change. This video contains his latest thoughts and findings.

I don’t know about you, but I find that I NEED to make time to find and watch intelligent online video on a regular basis. Funny YouTube video only satisfies a certain part of my mind.

Do you know of any other places to find great online video? Please do share.

It was an intriguing experience attending the Media140 Sydney conference, listening to professional journalists from predominantly large media organisations speak about how social media is changing how they work day-to-day.

Not surprisingly, the general consensus seemed to be that social media is profoundly changing the media landscape. There was a lot of discussion about how it’s changing and how journalists and media organisations are (or in some cases aren’t) attempting to deal with the changes.

I wasn’t in attendance for all of the sessions, but following are a few of my own highlights from what I did see.

Malcolm Turnbull (@turnbullmalcolm), the current Leader of the Opposition here in Australia (not a journalist of course), discussed how he uses different types of media, and how he currently uses Twitter. He thinks there is too much emphasis on the medium and people are forgetting it’s the message that is important, no matter what the medium.

I tend to agree with this, as I get quite bored of people talking endlessly in social media about social media itself. Having said that, it must also be said that I’ve talked a LOT about Twitter on Twitter myself. It’s all still relatively new, so day-to-day developments can still be engaging and surprising at times. No doubt the continual self-analysis will go on for some time to come.

Turnbull explained how he uses Twitter mainly as a broadcast medium for political messages, and hardly at all for everyday personal messages and conversation. This is mostly because politicians don’t have a lot of privacy and he likes to preserve the privacy he does still have.

When asked if he actually writes all his tweets himself, Turnbull said that he doesn’t and that he has an assistant tweet for him much of the time. I noticed that just a couple of hours after his talk, he posted this tweet from his BlackBerry relating to this:

“OK, to be clear: if a tweet is not written or specifically okayed by me, the assistant twitterer will initial it – eg “TT for MT”

Julian Morrow from The Chaser mentioned how during The Chaser’s controversial Make a Wish sketch, he watched the reaction to it on Twitter as it went live to air on tv, and got a pretty fair idea of how the next few days were going to go. The show was suspended from air for two weeks following the incident. Morrow also said he attempted to do some Twitter search mining into the reaction later on but found that very difficult. The development of more refined and in-depth social media search is surely going to be an area that will be developed in the future.

There was also and interesting panel (well more a string of speakers and a quick q and a) about social media lessons from the Iran election uprising. Riyaad Minty (@riy), Head of Social Media for Al Jazeera spoke refreshingly about that network’s use of Twitter, especially its monitoring during the post-election uprising. He spoke about how news organisations need to make sure they are part of the conversation during such events. They need to be doing such things as using existing hashtags on Twitter. They also need to filter and verify information from sources such as Twitter. It they don’t do such things, people will quickly go elsewhere for their news. He said news organisations need to embrace the real-time web, not ignore or fear it.

Stilgherrian (@stilgherrian) irreverently questioned what journalists actually do. When it came to the Sydney dust storm for instance, did many journalists simply repackage what had already been said on the real-time web for a good half an hour before the “industrial age” media machine started to crank up?

My experience of the morning of the dust storm was close to that. I woke up, looked out the window and saw the eerie orange glow. It was pretty early, around 6am. The first thing I did to find out more was to pick up my iPhone and search Twitter for conversation about it. There was already plenty. The first images I saw were from fellow Twitter users who were beginning to head outside in many different parts of the city. It was a while before I got any new information from more traditional news sources.

I’m glad I went to the conference. Although I felt like I’d heard much of it before, and discussed many of the issues quite a bit already, it was still good hear how various journalists are approaching the profound changes in their profession. It’s going to be an interesting next few years on the web.

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joc67/ / CC BY 2.0

On Tuesday the US President announced the biggest upgrade of the US power grid in history. The plan will help build a smart energy grid and will be funded to the tune of  $3.4-billion. It’s hoped that the plan will spark a new era of clean energy generation, delivery and consumption.

“This grid… still runs on century-old technology. It wastes too much energy and costs us too much money and it’s too susceptible to outages and blackouts.” Obama said.

The fund will be drawn from Obama’s $787-billion economic stimulus plan. Administration officials said the project will create tens of thousands of jobs and create a platform for a new clean energy infrastructure.

Officials also said the investment in the new smart grid will allow companies to better draw electricity generated by solar power in the western US and wind power from midwestern states. In addition, the plan will fund the installation of millions of smart meters in homes and businesses.

via AFP

]]> http://www.jjprojects.com/2009/10/28/hows-this-for-a-clean-energy-project-obamas-new-smart-power-grid/feed/ 0 http://www.jjprojects.com/2009/08/06/pulse-of-the-planet-twitter-flatlines-due-to-dos-attack/ http://www.jjprojects.com/2009/08/06/pulse-of-the-planet-twitter-flatlines-due-to-dos-attack/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:05:24 +0000 John Johnston http://www.jjprojects.com/?p=986

Late last night I was having flashbacks to 2007 when Twitter was down a lot and the Fail Whale was sighted all too often. Except this time Twitter was down for a long period and no fail whale was to be seen. It turns out it was not an internal problem.

Apparently Twitter experienced a DOS attack of substantial proportions. According to Mashable, attacks were also carried out against Facebook, LiveJournal, YouTube and other social media networks, although Twitter was hit the hardest. Although not confirmed, it seems the attack may have had something to do with the ongoing conflict between Georgia and Russia.

I hope attacks like this don’t become a growing trend, it’s really annoying for users, especially as more and more people are coming to rely on Twitter for their communications. It’s going to be difficult for Twitter to become “the pulse of the planet” if the pulse flatlines on an ongoing basis.

UPDATE: It seems the attack was targeted at one pro-Georgian user of Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogger (via Bronwen).

Technorati Tags: cyber attack, Twitter