Newspapers and social currency

Published by Jeremy Setzer on August 5, 2008 in Attention Economics and Social Media. 2 Comments

A brilliant article on Slate recently caught my attention. Jack Shafer writes how newspapers gave their readers information to use socially. Kind of like, ‘hey, I know something you don’t'… A sort of social currency.

This role has now been taken over by social media and he points to how social media has allowed more people access to information and to connectivity, thereby alleviating the need for newspapers.

The demise of newspapers it might be, but it reminds me of a great quote…

“The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.”
Warren Buffett

Now just how smart is the mob?

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Pause…

Published by Jeremy Setzer on August 4, 2008 in Attention Economics. 0 Comments

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Serious Gaming

Published by Talya Goldberg on August 4, 2008 in Online Education, Open Education, Social Media and eLearning tools. 2 Comments

The term “Serious Gaming”, refers to games that are used not only for entertainment purposes but are also used for “training, advertising, simulation, or education”, and allow the user to learn new skills as well as developing and honing ones they already have. They “can be of any genre, use any game technology, and be developed for any platform”

The Game Impact theory states that there are 5 main reasons that are driving the adoption of game technologies in recent times, they are;

  • Cost advantage of hardware platforms,
  • Sophistication of software applications,
  • Social acceptance of game tools,
  • Successes in other industries, and
  • Innovative experiments in the adopting industry.

    • This concept is not only aimed at primary and secondary education level, but also can be an incredible tool for businesses that are willing to try new and “adventurous” routes to improve their staff’s skills. It is “intended to provide an engaging, self-reinforcing context in which to motivate and educate the players”. By playing around in the simulation, people can learn how to make better decisions in the real world. This allows people to start  talking about different issues whilst allowing them to increases their capabilities in a very short space of time.

    Serious Gaming also allows for mental stimulation through “Novelty, Variety, Challenge, Practice” and “Brain Fitness” and if used regularly, they can and will improve attention, memory, thinking, and stress management.

    In the past games were not seen as “serious” tools, and for this reason businesses shied away from using them, as well as the fact that until recently the technology was simply not as advanced or developed, and could only be used on a very basic level, and therefore it was not able to lead to much change or growth. Games however have become part of the modern lifestyle and are much more widely accepted than ever before, this is also due to the invention of multi-player games as it has allowed “games” to become much more interactive. Due to this we shall soon be seeing a new and flourishing market of games aimed specifically at education or “edutainment”

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    Does old media still work?

    Published by Jeremy Setzer on July 31, 2008 in Social Media. 0 Comments

    There have been many articles written about how traditional media (such as newspapers) are on their way out. To be honest I have always thought there will be a place for newspapers. I often enjoy sitting down with one and having a good browse, however, I have always doubted the viability of the two media co-existing well.

    Recently I had an interesting experience with a newspaper… My girlfriend has a blog, The Wren Design and an online shop on Etsy and she recently had an interview she gave published in Die Burger (A South African Daily). We never expected anything much to come of it but were happy all the same.

    Then, the morning of the publication, she noticed she had more readers than usual… In short her blog numbers more than doubled for that day and she made a few sales off of the publicity. It seems that people do mix well between the two mediums and just maybe old media isn’t so dead after all…

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    Newsflash

    Published by Shane Smith on July 30, 2008 in Attention Economics, Events and Social Media. 0 Comments

    Netcom, PCCW networks are go for Olympics bandwidth

    The secret Games

    For those pondering about the Games, I have two see-saw contrasting articles for you. The Chinese are throwing large sums of money at infrastructure and propaganda, for which doesn’t seem to fully permeate to the public.

    Is this a marketing error or just a softened trend of an apathetic crowd? By strict definition, I guess it is in fact a marketing error (as they failed to follow trend and adjust accordingly?).

    No matter - my point lies elsewhere. Once again, excuse my crass nature and jaded outlook. From reading up on the intricacies of the Olympics, I was reminded of something much closer to home - which is of course the whole soccer saga. We all have an idea of how much money is being thrown at the event to make it happen, for which many speculate that it’s going to be major flop. We already have the ever-dull-and-humour-lacking Panarrotis adverts (with other food joints too), shoe companies, radios and good ol’ Coke fetching the idea already…it’s much like Christmas advertisements creeping onto our tubes in September, but on a far more extreme level. I think the marketers are to blame for raping the event by catching the wave too early; lack of tact has never been so vulgar.

    Hype.
    Who defines hype? What is its key input function? Where are the parameters for’t and how large is its domain? If advertisers aren’t asking themselves these questions every time they dream up something, I sure hope they’d learn to quite soon. Is it possible that Panarrotis (attack number two, muhahaha. I’m really sorry Panarrotis, but you’re the only ones that come to mind at the time of writing this) actually think that they churn out good adverts to the same high advertising standard that we’re used to in South Africa? Maybe I’m the wrong person to ask, as I’m sure these have a prevenient success attached to it amongst other target audiences.
    About to push the Olympic Games and the World Cup aside (and all peripheries), I think that there are many lessons to be learned. Is the amount of money you throw at something always proportional to the results? How many of you become discouraged by a bad advertising effort (be it marginal/singular or spam-flood) rather than maintain neutrality? Do all advertisers help with the overall success of an event?

    I think we need a revolution of sorts, more companies dishing out awesome adverts per quantity to raise the bar.
    The inputs are abundant and my attention (and patience) is scarce - surprise me!

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    Responsible Revolution

    Published by Jeremy Setzer on July 28, 2008 in Social Media. 0 Comments

    Recently there have been quite a few articles about how the Social Media revolution is the Industrial Revolution of our time. The Internet revolution has changed the face of the world forever and the social media revolution is changing the face of the Internet… Maybe it is more of an evolution than a revolution though.

    What has to be evaluated now is how we avoid the mistakes of the industrial revolution, or in some cases undo them. Almost our entire world was rebuilt around the industrial revolution, changing it forever (often for the worse). The industrial revolution has been over for decades and we are still living with the consequences of this time. Our education system is geared to this revolution, our cities were built to accommodate the factories (though now many have expanded to over-run the factories and are in dire need of restructuring) and our world has been plundered to feed the furnaces of ‘technology’.

    So now in our time of the next revolution how are we going to make sure that our ‘advances’ echo for eternity as real advances and not things that will forever come back to haunt us. Don’t get me wrong, many amazing things came out of the industrial revolution and much of the world was changed for the better, but there are also a great many things that are proving very difficult to change now that they have been embedded for so long.

    So in our time of social upheaval let us constantly think of what effect our revolution is having on our world that is more connected and easily changed than before.

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    Is Stoooooopidity Going to be Gooooooogle’s Legacy?

    Published by Shane Smith on July 24, 2008 in Attention Economics. 4 Comments

    To start off my Journey on the Huddlemind Express, I bring you folks this gem of an article (in case you missed it) from the Sunday Times :
    Stoooopid … why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks

    And for those in the mood for some extra reading, this great Nicholas Carr piece to compliment:
    Is Google Making Us Stupid?

    Excuse these blatant attacks on our beloved Google, but it really does fall in the sights of a convenient scapegoat/epitomisation of the pitfalls of our new ”attention economy”. The internet revolution broke huge barriers in allowing us to conquer the ivory towers that once restricted us from unleashing our potential; the internet brings us the world to our fingertips, but that in turn leaves our fingertips resting on the world. How many of you were able to read the above articles properly - absorbing the concepts and savouring the prose? Do we have a habit of reading the book, or watching the cheesed Hollywood rendition? Academics find themselves struggling to keep up with the saturation of irrelevant and unmoderated content on the net today and I fear that digesting the digested into digestible chunks is detrimental not only to holding up the proud gates of truth and logic, but (as expressed in the articles above) more so our way of thinking and functioning in everyday life.

    ”Distraction is the opposite of attention”. Can we still say that our lives are (now) fully optimised in light of technology advances around us? We are like seagulls, jack of all trades and the masters of none, skimming and swooping at bite-sized chunks of data : the days of eloquence, penetration and understanding are being replaced with poorly crafted user generated content of zero veracity.

    Amazing, we can emailsmsmakeaphonecalldraftaletterdrinkourcoffee all at the same time!

    I’m going to stop myself right there and end my rant prematurely. Do excuse if I come across as bitter or cynical, but I do like to nitpick at polar extremes to expose points as crassly as possible. As industry professionals, field experts and academics alike, I’m certain that you are all open to my message without me even having to garrulously chant it to you - and thus you walk away with a caustic lesson/articled thought to carry with you. The planets know their place, but information does not. Moderation starts with the indivual : the internet is serious business and it’s ‘’success” is up to how we handle it from here on out.

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    Web Mashups

    Published by Jeremy Setzer on July 24, 2008 in Collaboration and Social Media. 0 Comments

    Tiger rabbitIn an article on eHomeupgrade research advisory firm, Gartner Inc. have predicted that mashups that mix data from publicly available sources will comprise about 80% of new enterprise applications by 2010.

    The ease at which mashups can be created and the possibilities of combining many sources of info into one application has many benefits. We have all (or at least some of us have) seen the uses of Facebook applications in gathering information from people and this model is bound to go from strength to strength.

    With the rising need for information on clients and potential clients, the use of hybrid web applications might be the only way to satisfy the demand for precise, timely information. Social media has been the starting point for the generation of most of this available information but most people are wondering where the next source will come from.

    The next billionaire might just be the person who finds a non-intrusive way of getting people to freely part with their infomation…

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