Filed under: beta, Brand, Community, content communities, creativity, Digital culture, Emergent media, FMCG innovation, Future of Media, geek, Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, neophiliac, new product, Nice Design, Social, Social media, Thinking, Work Futures | Tags: beta, Beta-culture, Facebook, Forrester Consumer Forum, Google, Innovation, MySpace, Radiohead, social networking, trends, Twitter
The idea of being in beta has become a broad cultural phenomenon. Many new products never make it beyond trial stage, and the trial and error beta-approach that helps Google and other alpha innovators to out-fail and thereby out-innovate the competition, is as much an attribute of successful organizations as it is a sign of our time.
But it’s not only analysts and conference organizers who are switching instantly from micro to macro, picking up nascent trends and elevating them to a must-deal-with core competence that transcends the current fad (just see all the Facebook conferences that are mushrooming right now). What I find even more interesting is how the media and blogosphere deal with it. If everything’s in beta, the public doesn’t have the patience anymore to wait for the alpha. As the media are increasingly forced to immediately widen the scope and view every innovation in a larger context as it occurs, the boundaries between reporters and commentators, bloggers and industry analysts are fading.
Some examples: Not too long ago, Twitter was all the rage, and it was stunning to see that just shortly after the initial coverage during SXSW in March, reporters were already elaborating on the concept of micro-blogging, wondering what the new “radical transparency” meant for business. Nowadays, there is a great chance that you will stumble upon a Facebook story when you open just about any publication: It’s Facebook vs. MySpace, the implications of social networking on the borders between work and personal life, reflections on the “Facebook economy,” Facebook vs. iTunes, and maybe a philosophical piece on Facebook “as a post-modern book” or the future of social networking, which, for TIME, equals the future of the Internet. It is only a small step from MySpace to the “MySpace generation,” and from Facebook to the “Facebook generation” and then to the “Fakebook generation.” Similarly, the recent buzz around Radiohead’s “pay what you want” online release has instantly led to the coining of a “Radiohead Generation” and praise for the band “as a pioneer of the digital revolution.” And there are hundreds of articles discussing if Radiohead’s decision ushers in the definite end of the record industry. The stories about the radical distribution model appear to eclipse the actual music on the album–in this case, too, the reviews are in before the story is told.
Evidently, the media need to cope with the current while also putting forward a vision for the up and coming. The time between observation and conclusion, between description and prediction, however, has shrunk to almost zero. There are no more lapses between news, analysis, background story, industry trend story, and intellectual dissection; they have become one and the same, at the same time. Not only is beta the new alpha–beta has gone meta.
Call me a neophiliac but I love to be the first to try something new and this site is mecca for people that love a good beta. Instead of surfing aimlessly round the web looking for new startups launching betas or waiting patiently to be invited to join the first band of trial users, InviteShare let’s you invite yourself to the party.
The site has covers a bunch of startups in beta mode and lists the invitations available. It lets those sites post the number of invitations available and minions like me request an invite to participate.
Remember the guy with glasses in the back row who never quite got it? Who never kicked the football far enough or could scull enough beer fast enough to enter the kingdom of coolness? The guy who nobody wanted to be, that is, until technology became cool and suddenly everyone got online, was talking html, pretending they understood the significance of metaverses and online gaming and suddenly the future’s cool again.
Now we see the rise of fancy marketing phrases like ‘participatory journalism’ and ‘we-media’, every tom, dick and barry has a blog and what’d you know? geek is back.
And it’s not just technology, we’ve got people geeking out over the future of the planet, organic macro wholefoods grown on environmentally sustainable farms, grassroots activism, economically sustainable social justice ventures.The cloud of coolness surrounding apathy has well and truly lifted and now it’s cool to be into something. These days it’s not just “what do you do?”, the million dollar question has become, ‘what are you into?’.
So whether you’re geeking out over greenhouse gas or gluten, stand up and be counted, because life isn’t a spectator sport and geek is well and truly in.
Filed under: australia, Digital culture, Innovative retail, neophiliac, Second Life, Street art, unbusiness
Hi folks
Just thought I would let you know that I’m just in the middle of putting up a new exhibition of street art photographs I took in Newtown, Sydney Australia.
I’ve got some ripper stencils of the cultural terrorist, the usual anti-Govt and anti-war stuff and some beautifully designed stickers. Anyway, the walls are almost finished so if you’re in-world drop by the gallery & check it out.
Filed under: Digital culture, Emergent media, neophiliac, Second Life, Street art, Trends stuff, unbusiness
What is Second Life exactly?
Second Life is what’s known as a MMORG which stands for Massive Multiple Online Role Playing Game. This basically means that it is an online game to which thousands of users around the world interact in different roles (or characters) simultaneously. It’s also often called a ‘metaverse’ a phrase coined by Neal Stephenson’s science fiction novel SnowCrash (1992). Stephenson’s definition of metaverse refers to a high definition 3D digital virtual world where users, represented by their avatars (game characters) can meet and interact just like they do in the physical world.
Instead of building websites like in today’s Internet, Metaverse developers build fully 3D virtual spaces (scapes) which can closely mimic the physical world, or be as different from the “real world” as the imagination of the developers permits. For example, in the Metaverse you can visit an accurate replica of a real city, a future imaginary space settlement on Mars, a micro-scale world where you can see individual molecules and cells, etc.’ (Quote source :: uvvy.com)
Second Life was founded by Philip Rosedale of Linden Lab in San Francisco California in 1999. Version 1.0 was launched on the 23rd June 2003 and is continually updated as Linden Lab re-release new versions to support the evolution in-world. In 2004 SL had 14,000 residents, in 2005 it had 59,000 and now in 2006 Second Life consists of 216 km sq of virtual land that hosts over 514,000 residents who hold over 500 events a day and spend upwards of USD6.8M a year on resident-to-resident goods and services.
Still think it’s insignificant and only for nerd losers?
I’ll post some more but in the meantime; check it out :: whilst it’s still in what marketing people would call “the early adopter” phase, as broadband penetration increases and drives prices down (especially in Australia) and as more corporates move in world and the game gets more press, we’ll find that parts of the game become more mainstream.
The only way to get a real sense of it is to check it out for yourself.
If you do, drop by my art gallery and say hello :: Kitty Kabuki’s Street Art Gallery
Filed under: Digital culture, Machinima, neophiliac, Second Life, Street art, unbusiness
Inside the Machinima
Machinima is the creation of film or movie content inside a video game. For those of you not playing second life until 5am in the morning, let me explain…
You can create sets inside a virtual world game which feature houses, landscapes, movie theatres or any kind of background you could imagine in real life. You can dress the avatars (characters inside the video game), have them speak in-game via a microphone and even have them act out a pre-prepared script just as you would in real life. In fact, professional machinima is more similar to real life than you might think.
You can shoot from any angle inside most games (if you have the right equipment), you can then edit & create effects in post product just as you would for normal movie content. Where multiple actors are employed, teams emply different real life individuals to play their avatars and follow the director’s script.
In fact, one machinima workshop we went to, a team showed us how they had built a series of cars & machines inside a virtual reality game :: when we looked at the sets we realised that even in-game they had only built two dimensional objects because they only needed to shoot them from one side!
Whilst machinima is gaining popularity amongst avid gamers it won’t be long before mainstream cottons on thanks to the likes of Gofish.com and Youtube.com distributing the content to a wider audience.
Imagine if you created a whole TVC in-world . . No talent fees, cheaper location & post-production . . Not to mention a greater variety of distribution channels.
Sound crazy? I bet a mainstream brand will jump this puppy in no time.
Check out this video of a real virtual machinima studio.
Japanese designer Nigo started his BAPE clothing label out of Tokyo 10 years ago . What was once a fiercely hard-to-get designer fashion range has now become a million dollar empire. Far from exclusive now, Nigo has expanded his BAPE empire to include BAPY for girls, a new
brand Baby Milo, BAPE café & there’s even a spin-off hair studio BAPE cuts. He achieved credibility & fashionista status through his collaborations & carefully planned exclusivity, then he took over the world. This is one clever monkey.
tokyo, japan
