I was listening to a podcast and at first thought I was simply uneducated enough to understand but as the two terms were defined it struck a chord with me. Glocalization I came to understand is the idea of inventing something in a wealthy support system and then when it is figured out, passing it on to poorer areas for distribution. The idea of first world countries inventing stuff to be used by third world countries.

The idea raised with reverse innovation was of things being invented in ‘poorer’ systems and then being distributed into the wealthy system. The example used was of a portable ultrasound machine which was invented where there were no hospitals so necessity provided for it to be light, cheap, portable etc. and has since then been distributed into the wealthy system due to the simplicity and functionality, something that have been a struggle in the wealthy system.

This got me thinking about the idea of how ’smaller/poorer’ churches are always looking to the ‘bigger/wealthier’ churches for the answers/inventions and I wonder what it would look like to involve ourselves in reverse innovation through ministry. I like how GE entitled the article: “How GE is disrupting itself.” I think we could do with a little bit more disruption in our ministry.

Acquisition Of High-Profile Western Brands By Chinese Companies Gives Chinese Designers And Brands Broader Distribution Base

Pierre Cardin was recently acquired by a Chinese fashion company, boosting the popular brand's reach in the China market. Photo (c) CRI English

In the wake of the global economic crisis, several Chinese companies have gone on global shopping sprees, spurred by the one-two punch of a drop in luxury consumption in developed markets and a motivation to control the sale of high-profit luxury goods inside the Chinese mainland. Although China, as the world’s most populous nation, has a massive consumer base, much of that base remains far below the income level of regular luxury consumers, meaning domestic companies often experience a difficult conundrum — if they want to tap into the wallets of China’s 1.3 billion consumers, they generally have only two real choices – toss brand equity aside and focus on the lowest-price-point consumer or bring a foreign brand with much higher brand equity to China and target the emerging middle class and wealthy consumers. As a result, the transition from local to global (or maybe more accurately, glocal), seems natural. In the capitalism-on-speed world of China’s major metropolitan areas, either you go global or you’re crushed by your competitors.

This week, the subject of Chinese companies purchasing established western fashion brands was raised in a Reuters article (via Canada’s Financial Post), which focused on the delicate balance some major Chinese companies are dealing with at the moment — whether to try to purchase distressed foreign brands to sell in the brands’ existing established markets or simply to buy the brands then control them as they please within the Chinese market. There is no guarantee that consumers in developed markets will bounce back from the recession to spend as freely on luxury goods and haute couture as they once did, but at the same time the majority of Chinese consumers are not in the market for these goods. Additionally, Chinese fashion companies may not yet have the management experience necessary to oversee a western brand (or its employees) in its usual markets, so time will probably be necessary for Chinese companies to work out the kinks that would emerge down the road if they were to focus too strongly on overseas markets.

According to some sources — such as the exporter interviewed in the Reuters article — Chinese companies shopping for western fashion brands would be better off counting on the continued growth of the Chinese middle class, as this area should see sustained growth that may outpace the rebound of the consumer in developed countries.

After decades of Made-in-China garments, China’s fashion industry is keen to move on from being just a mass manufacturer of clothes. It now wants to own western brands and to sell them to China’s 1.3 billion consumers.

The right to sell brands of several international fashion labels locally, such as Aquascutum and Pierre Cardin, have been recently acquired by Chinese clothes makers and sellers.

…

“It is a good time for Chinese firms to buy prestigious and well-established brands overseas and to introduce the brand back to the mainland China market, instead of building their own brands which is too time-consuming,” Chan told Reuters.

“Mainland China customers are gaining more and more sense of global prestigious brands as the economy opens up,” she said.

…

This stimulus has helped sustain the rise in incomes of Chinese shoppers, who are increasingly viewed as a rich seam of profit for luxury and fashion brands.

Bruce Rockowitz, president of global consumer goods exporter Li & Fung, suggested that cash-rich Chinese enterprises should focus more on acquisition opportunities in domestic markets rather than on buying and managing western brands outside the home market.

“I think most Chinese companies don’t have a strong enough management and setup yet to oversee these sort of American companies. There is a huge cultural difference, huge mentality difference,” said Rockowitz. Li & Fung’s customers include U.S. retail giants Wal-Mart and Target.

“If I was Chinese, I would look at all the opportunities in China. And I would take western brands and bring them in to China and not the other way around.”

As our global business economy continues to change, the reality is that your business needs to be changing too.  Glocalization is increasingly how business is done today.  The interplay of global forces within local communities is just too dominant to ignore.  And why would you want to?  There are limitless opportunities out there waiting for you and your business to take advantage of them.

Simply put, Glocalization refers to the “organization, group or individual who is willing and able to think globally, act locally”.  (Thank you, Thomas Friedman.)

The ability to take your customer’s brand, message and presence and customize them to local markets around the world is of increasing value.  Not only does it ensure a consistent worldwide branding campaign, but more importantly, the end user messages resonate with local audiences, motivating buying behavior.

Where will the next global event take you and/or your customer?  How familiar are you or your customer with the geopolitical impact within the specific countries and regions where you’ll be supporting them?  It takes time, skill and commitment to proactively monitor and stay on top of international governmental regulations, economic and marketplace trends and monetary fluctuations.  Success also demands expertise, trusted relationships and respect to each of the cultures, values, business practices and languages.  You can’t leave any of these elements to chance.

Think about it.  Wouldn’t you (or your client) be more apt to work within a framework where all of these elements are taken into consideration by a partner you trust?  At International Event Management (IEM), this is a day-to-day occurrence.  It’s how we navigate the world.  The end results are international events that are culturally appropriate and relevant.  IEM is your competitive edge – our low-risk strategy, high-yield return roadmaps enable you (and your customers) to have peace of mind when working with programs abroad.

As Thomas Friedman wrote: The World is Flat.  There are almost limitless opportunities – IEM will help you look at each one so you can to take advantage of the ones that are right for your company and your customers. Create the expectation – we’ll guide your efforts to deliver the results.

Visit www.iemlink.com for more information.

Leave a comment below – I’d love to know how your company is taking advantage of the current crisis!

-Jeffrey Byrne

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreybyrne

http://www.iemlink.com

Awww! How good is globalization? I mean really, you can pretty much go anyplace you like and still have yourself a Big Mac (McDonald’s), a Double Whopper (Burger King) or a Toasted Twister (KFC), wash it down with a Caramel Latte (Starbucks) and if you just want to look like you’d been having a great time at your holiday destination (cause the weather was actually crap but you’d never admit that) you’d simply buy some NIVEA tanning lotion for “Body Sunkissed Skin”. Or wouldn’t you? Well, in some places you might find that you actually can’t. Why is that??! (I hear you scream) Because of glocalization!

As a matter of fact, it’s not easy for (even the biggest) companies to expand into foreign markets. American companies for instance face huge problems when trying to enter the European market, let alone the Asian one. It has become so difficult, that businesses like Results.com were set up, specialising in helping international companies to successfully expand into the European market.

Why is it so difficult? Well, because even though globalization has slowly started to mix up and blend the world’s cultures and mindsets, some huge cultural, socio-economic and political differences (may) remain. Therefore, multinational businesses wanting to expand their operations to a new country, must choose between a) going with their original business strategy and running the risk of not being accepted into the new country, or b) adapting their strategies to suit the host country’s cultural, socio-economic and political environment, even if that obviously raises the economic cost of the venture.

This decision-making is of particular importance in the Food Industry, since differences in food and eating habits may be huge between and even across countries. In Australia for instance, people like to have beetroot on their burgers (gross, I know!), so McDonald’s has the McOz which has beetroot on it. In China, NIVEA had to adapt their product range to the local market by selling “skin bleaching lotion” instead of tanning creme (see photo), etc.

So there, next time you go somewhere, have a closer look at the local products, even if at first glance they seem oh-so familiar! 

Everything customer-oriented has to be localized, but also your management has to be locally present, with natives on board, so that you become a topic at the breakfast table, on TV shows, in the local magazines. Otherwise you’re the big, bad wolf, the outsider that everyone hopes will lose.                                  – Ola Ahlvarsson (chairman of Results.com)

As the Information Technology industry continues to evolve, so does the Localisation industry. Often in reaction to the former, the evolution of the latter is always the response to a specific need, supported by either advances in technology, processes or both.

Crowdsourcing, far from being only a buzz word, is a tangible trend born of the so-called Web 2.0 era. It has shown signs of spilling over into Localisation for some time and the first stages of this process have been somewhat less than successful. While user-generated content, web-based applications and social networking products/websites are flourishing, crowdsourcing seems to consistently yield controversy.

So what makes Web 2.0 hip and Crowdsourcing, especially in Localisation, decidedly uncool? It is partly the age-old debate on whether the internet should be used for mercantile purposes. But it is also the very nature of Localisation and our struggle to get recognized as an integral part of Product Development Life Cycle. We are despite our best efforts, still seen as an unfortunate cost which gets in the way of Product to market efforts.

Some definitions

Web 2.0 was once an empty buzz word for whatever comes next. “C’est tout simplement l’internet d’aujourd’hui (…) celui que vous et moi utilisons tous les jours. ” said a member of French parliament early this year (2009!), only weeks before he was expected to become State Secretary for the Digital Economy! Also used and abused as a fresh marketing slogan, Web 2.0 seems to have now gained respectability as a description of the combination of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and user-generated content. Importantly, ideas reminiscent of the Open Internet ethos and a stronger sense of community also feature in most definitions of Web 2.0.

Crowdsourcing describes the act of outsourcing a task to an undefined, generally large group of people. It also carries the idea of by-passing the professionals in favor of a strength-in-number effort.

Localisation 2.0 is a newer concept yet, partly championed by one specific LSP, which attempts to describe current trends in Localisation tools and processes, designed to respond to the exponential rate at which localisable content is generated in the Web 2.0 paradigm.

Wikipedia: a success story

The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit was created to “distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language”. Launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, it has 265 localised editions with a total of other 13 million articles.

The recipe is simple: Wiki is a non-profit, non ad-supported site, where users can publish their own articles and add or correct existing ones. Articles often differ from one language to the next so Wikipedia is a true example of an internationalised rather than just translated website. For example, the article about Wikipedia contains a statistics table by language in its French version which does not appear in the English version.

The model of Wikipedia creates a community with a feeling of shared-ownership and allows it to get the most out of its user-base without ever appearing to be exploiting anyone. This flavor of user-generated content, of which Wikipedia is only one example, should probably not be called crowdsourcing at all, although I put it to you that it may be the only viable way to use a “crowd” as a resource: for its own interest!

Online Translators: the first signs of trouble

Most everyone uses an online dictionary. Everyone who uses a bilingual online dictionary thinks they’re great. Once you double-check your results, and are familiar enough with the languages to navigate your way through synonyms, grammatical rules etc, they do the job. From that point of view, they are no different from their paper ancestors. Just a little more… portable.

But already a line was crossed with online translators: they created the illusion that linguistic skills are no longer required. They created the possibility for non-linguists to type a sentence in their source language and output a “translation”. While this may well be useful to a qualified translator as a reference, it should not ever be used to replace a translator.

An esteemed colleague of mine, well versed with internet searches and other smart ways to get what he wants, recently contacted me to translate “Plastical Surgery at Home” into French (I never asked why and never will…). By simple curiosity, I typed it into an online translator and received the suggestion “Plastical Chirurgie à l’Accueil”. This not only differed greatly from the translation I was about to suggest, it also gave me a good example of why it just doesn’t work. Because of a small error in the source text, the online translator reverted to guessing a word by word translation and used “Accueil” which is an IT translation for “Home”. The suggested target translation really means that someone is offering to surgically alter your appearance behind the receptionist’s desk. Not very inviting

Every time I ask someone “Which Translation Memory system do you use?” and they reply “Google Translate” or “Bablefish” etc. it gives me the shivers!

Facebook: crossing the Rubicon

Facebook has been the center of one or two controversies of late, and its localisation strategy could easily have become one. Whether it was taken out of focus by other issues such as facebook’s Terms of Use changes or whether it was a smart and creative move, remains debatable.

Facebook is available in 63 languages which is considerably more than their main competitor MySpace. Upcoming languages are expected to be Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Urdu, Yiddish and Divehi. It seems clear that the collaborative and benevolent effort behind this did allow faster localisation and opened it up to an array of languages which most likely would not have been deemed economically viable to localise the traditional way. And this is an important point: one of the challenges in localising Web 2.0 is keeping up with exponentially increasing content creation rate and the growing expectation for localised products. With the number of languages spoken in the world estimated in the thousands, how could anyone pretend to have a Global strategy and only localise their product into FIGS or even L17?

The methodology employed by facebook also seems to hold some ground. A web-based application (facebook Translations) is provided, and a staged plan is rolled out beginning with Glossary Translation, continuing with Strings Translation and including post-release Error Reporting and New Features Translation. Community votes decide between alternative translations and consistency checks are run. This doesn’t sound all that un-professional.

But the fact remains: having asked their users to translate the facebook UI for free, facebook are now deriving new users and therefore new advertising revenue through work which was donated not to them but to the facebook community.

LinkedIn: crossing the line

Attempting to emulate projects such as facebook, it would seem LinkedIn have manage to create a pretty big stir before they even got started. By all accounts’ it appears that a survey was circulated to LinkedIn members who are translators, and offended most of them by the wording of their enquiries regarding alternate compensation for translation work.

The survey has now been closed but some results have been published by Nico Posner project manager responsible for LinkedIn’s internationalization efforts. The fact and the matter is that thousands of responses came through, and only a minority selected the category Other, which was the only outlet for translators who considered the only suitable compensation was direct remuneration.

So what does that tell us? The professional translators community is not amused, and this survey is not a PR stunt LinkedIn will be looking to duplicate. However even through the controversy, and the claims of bias in the way questions were asked, there is still a substantial interest for collaborative and benevolent efforts in the linguistic community. The question now is how to liberate this potential in an ethically acceptable fashion?

Google Translate Toolkit

The Google Translator Toolkit is a new-comer (actually still at beta stage). A free and web-based translation application, which uses Machine Translation and includes TM (.tmx) and Terminology (.csv) management tools. In their own words, it is an attempt to bring human touch back into Machine Translation.

So does it work? This tool appears to bring the facebook model one step further in the right direction: it is not designed to help translate Google for free. It is designed to help amateur and professional translators alike to collaborate, share resources, and use a TM and Terminology enabled tool for free.

While it is not comparable to any powerful native CAT tools, it does offer a viable solution: the TM sharing potential is huge, the built-in collaborative tools are the right idea, and the limited file format compatibility remains functional (extract to TMX, create Terminology Databases without expansive tools etc.).

But there is always a catch: in this case, the fact that Machine Translation remains Machine Translation. The screencap included here shows the raw output from English into French of one of our articles. It wouldn’t take long to a French translator to recognize the tortured prose which time and time again comes out of such systems. If quality rather than quantity is a concern in a translation job, and if the content to translate is in any way wordy, I find it hard to believe that a translator would do a better work righting such blurb than they would translating in a TM + Terminology enviroment!

As a parting note, I will not provide any pearl of wisdom. First because the wheels are still in motion and we’ll only fully understand what is happening to the Localisation industry once it has happened. Second, because I would like to end by inviting you to translate this article in a language of your choice, email it to LocalizationLocalisation@gmail.com and include an SAE if you would like to receive a limited edition Localization, Localisation pen.

http://science-artificer.iwarp.com/rich_text_1.html

Attributes of Negentropic Deep Futuring

Virtual Personalities:

Interacting & Teaching in Social Networks; Gender Reunion; Makers, Producers and Servers, Communicative Action, Learning in Action; Action Research; Social Negentropy. An integrated politics of partnership no longer splits off the “private sphere” from the “public sphere” or “women’s rights” and “children’s rights” from “human rights.” The personal is individual, collective and political.

On the basis of criteria identified by Wildman (2003), some characteristics of social neg-entropy are:

1. Giving (in that giving from the heart without necessary expectation of return generates good will – an esoteric form of neg-entropy)
2· Empathy (care and concern for others health and well being as well as yourself)
3· Net energy creation (as contrasted to an energy sink)
4· Organologic (such as diversity encouraging, fractal geometry, spectral-reserve, self-organisation, recursiveness)
5· Diversity harmonising cp. to Conformity centralisation
6· Informal/outside the box (in that all the formal economic structures are now seriously entropic and generally shrink wrap any within house initiative); not one best way; the whole is more than the sum of the parts, neg-waste (another word for entropy)
7· Trans rational from either or to either and ie. towards the theory of the included middle where something can be both a and b rather than only a or b – with no middle overlap
8. Rebraiding thinking and doing
9· Replacing black with green letter law – this means being rewarded for what we will do right tomorrow and not punished for what we did wrong today. Wildman (2003).

Bridging & Bonding:

Wider and Deeper Global Networking; Learning Circles; Emotional and Action Learning
Value is viable and thus valuable neg-entropic complexity and evolution may be seen as the increasing of diversity within this viable complexity through self-organisation and fractal logic. This will then lead to the emergence of something valuable and potentially viable which can be found by such self-organising fluctuations among the neighbouring possibilities.

Ethical Economics:

Considerations of Ethical Economics includes for instance recognition of the importance of the Physical Economy cp. the Monetary Economy; Fractally Embedded Self-Reliant Economic and Political Systems; Creative Partnership Futures. See for instance Wildman (2003).

Cultural Reclamation:

Positive Sum Situations; Intentional Community; Anticipating Emerging Issues; Deliberative Democracy
Tocqueville 1825 identified a form of oppression as ‘mild despotism’, which he saw as erosion of liberty far more serious than violent form of despotism characteristic of feudal societies. Corporate feudalism rolls back the world clock by imposing propagandised groupthink of the lowest common denominator:

‘it covers society’s surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules though which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd: it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it really forces one to act, and constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannise, it hinders, compromises enervates (deprives, weakens), extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each person to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals (robots?) of which the government is the shepherd.’ Young (2001:38).

Cultural Dynamics of Self-Organizing Chaos, Order and Negentropy

We may be able to organize boundary conditions under which evolution on earth can continue. These boundary conditions are therefore no longer purely biological they have evolved to be culturological. The spreading of this logical insight about the primacy of mental and cultural evolution is the key task, which, we have to fulfill in a hurry, and globally. We need a Socio-Cultural Neg-Entropic Innovation Process and we only have a generation to do it.

Such a Neg-Entropic Social Innovation Process (NESIP) needs to focus on:

1· Glocal Governance
2· Glocal responsiveness to socio-cultural events and acts of terrorism
3· Zones of Social Innovation – resourced e.g. through private philanthropy or the UN
4· Strong commitment to improve the health and well being of all people and peoples
5· A Physics Of Love that ennobles relationships between living entities and enriches our planet leading to a deeper respect for all life and what supports it. This way of being is called ‘relatio’ where relationships, as a way of knowing, become neg-entropic. Wildman (1996).

DEEP FUTURES:

Evergreen Revolution; Metafuture; Compassionate Community; Collective Responsibility. Futuring means bringing proactive concrete responses to future issues into present-day operation. Rebraiding thinking and doing, this approach is suitable to present day challenges derived from global issues. This ancient ‘rebraiding’approach to futuring demonstrates a better tomorrow today, cutting the lag time from innovation to diffusion, and has the following characteristics.

· Mapping the Present and the Future through methods and tools such as the futures triangle and the futures landscape
· Anticipating the Future through methods such as emerging issues analysis and the futures wheel
· Timing the Future, understanding the grand patterns of change, macrohistory and macrofutures.
· Deepening the Future through methods such as causal layered analysis and four quadrant mapping
· Creating Alternatives to the Present through methods such as scenarios and nuts and bolts
· Transforming the Present and Creating the Future through visioning, backcasting, action learning and the transcend conflict resolution method. (Sohail Inayatullah; www.metafuture.org/ )

Establishing a Roadmap

A roadmap is the outcome of a collaborative foresight process that can include general and structure plans as outlined above and also it is an outcome that considers a broad set of strategies important to reaching back from a goal in the future. In this article we argue that to be neg-entropic such roadmaps need grow organically from within the social cradle outlined above and in this sense can include vision statements, forecasts, scenarios, strategy and plans, and yet deepen as they go beyond such roadmap tools in three crucial ways:

1. They emerge in a collaboration network of transdisciplinary and cooperating experts,
2. They emphasise uncertainties and challenges in the environment and in causations in the environment as well as within the researcher and use fractal logic and evo-devo sustainability, as well as identifying probable and preferred futures, and
3. They have long-term time horizons (25 years plus is de rigueur as one must structurally move beyond ones lifetime) by comparison to traditional forecasts and plans. ( www.metaverseroadmap.org/roadmap.html)

Fractal Logic:

Scientists throughout the world working at the cutting edge of human survival technology are now seeking a multidisciplinary solution to the social, economic and environmental crises threatening us all. There is a desire in Western culture to try, in some way, to enhance human values. Clearly, waste-based Western technology and over-consumption is now systematically causing the destruction of human values and the degradation of the global environment. More holistic worldviews of science and technology (Poetry Science; Science-Art; Freestyle Multimedia; Know-Brow Art) can lead toward viable visions of an optimistic future.

Art connected to Source and the zeitgeist of its times has a living taproot in the matrix of evolution. Our works “work” when they work themselves through our culture, based on that culture’s underlying psychological need. They become meaningful if perceived as carrying revelatory weight that somehow illuminates our collective lives. They may not be “true”, but good things come of this generative vision, reaffirming and celebrating our humanity.

Recent major scientific discoveries have been made which demonstrate that the living process is indeed associated with a very complex infinite universal energy system. New understanding of complexity and self-organization in nature, nature’s own means of self-assembly, reveals its geometrical basis. This new paradigm, rooted in Chaos Theory, Complexity and Holographic Theory, also identifies the geometrical logic base that retrieves the lost ethical and humane physics value system.

We can use this scientific knowledge to construct a global human survival technology of unimaginable wealth, resources and human opportunity. The catalytic properties of art have been identified as the essential ingredient needed to provide the opportunity for this human survival technology to be developed. Artists actively demonstrate the environments of the future and create new valuecosms. Biotech and cosmotech are less likely than infotech to be disruptive over the next 30 years.

Human survival technology must link life to an aspect of infinite universal reality. The culture shock associated with collapse of the entropic paradigm is enormous. The issue embraces fundamental human ethical values, and sooner or later it must enter the international legal system on behalf of global human survival. Already the United Nations University Millennium Project, South Pacific Node, American Council, has fully endorsed the concept of using Creative Physics fractal logic for the cause of global world peace and such an awareness is growing via the internet.

Glocalisation for Survival

In this article we have argued that human survival requires nothing less that the re-emergence of negentropic science and art which are braided together much as the Science-Art Centre Guild indicates by the term ‘fractal logic.’ It represents a paradigm shift from materialistic to holistic attitudes and presumed truths as a negentropic survival strategy.

Chaos theory helps us explain how new forms, or orders, even new self-images, cultural paradigms, and innovative artworks and scientific discoveries emerge. It is the third revolution in science after relativity and quantum theory. It is the prime source of unpredictability in the macrocosmic world and the human scale, formerly described only by classical Newtonian physics. Chaos and complexity is nature’s own way of organizing systems and creating structure. All systems emerge from and eventually dissolve back into chaos.

Fractals, nature’s dynamic self-organizing pattern, exist in the paradoxical space between dimensions, levels and forces of existence. They arise at the interface between processes, at boundary zones where they serve both to connect and separate multiple levels. They translate information/energy, structuring dimensions by adding or recursively removing structure, embodying evolution and change. Fractal dynamics escalate change from tiny to large scales.

Summarising

Holonism is a paradigm – a worldview, which is equally applicable to the universe and our human existence. It represents an escalation or change of domains from materialistic science. Chaos Theory is not a metaphor, per se, but functions as a science metaphor to describe systems, organisms, and dynamic behaviour, including complex adaptation. Fractal logic helps us access the aesthetic functions of ambiguity and paradox without polarization.

Order emerges from the creative edge of chaos – each self-similar local point is the Zero-Point centre of global fractal involvement, a mutual influence in the zone of interaction. Each point radiates creative potential. Local creativity is entangled in the totality of the global matrix. All interactions can be observed at all levels of complexity. The matrix of our creativity, active learning (by doing and shaping) and social structures helps us shape our glocal future. Elements link and combine in a virtually infinite contextual landscape and coordinate as concrete action.

Global connectivity – glocalization describes patterns within patterns — the multiplicity of factors and nonlocal relationships between each finite part of a system. In this post-Postmodern view, fragmentation is overcome synergetically. We are co-extensive with more vehicles for our consciousness than our physical bodies. Fractal logic helps us understand and exploit global processes, even when we can’t predict or control them.

Fractal logic is the logic of life, the basis of form, networks of nested networks – the logic of repeating patterns imposes itself at any level as an ingenious method of information storage, compression, transfer and indexing. The potentially infinite is actualized as a finite resource in a recursive fractal structure. De-centralized, de-territorialized platforms for communication, work and play, such as cell-phones, the Internet and Wii allow us to interact globally from any zero-point locale.

Wisdom and compassion are transmitted by harmonic resonance, by fractal affect – each of us carries within us the characteristics of all others. Thus, we move organically and experientially via cognitive and affective tuning from a paradigm of scarcity to one of infinite creative potential and hyper-connectivity, interdependence and spirituality for the betterment of the global human condition. This circular logic is embodied in Earth’s beautiful biosphere and promises a New Renaissance in science and art. The World will decide.

Ethical Economics is glocal – bottom up community economy development as opposed to top down Globalisation first. Further it is dedicated to the physical economy as opposed to the monetary economy we see so rampant today in our globalised nation based economies.

Rurban Planning – glocalisation requires self sufficient innovative bioregional permaculture netweaved sustainable settlements that braid rural and urban planning. These settlements need to ‘manage their footprint. Such planning also needs to be able to retrofit brownfield and design from scratch Greenfield sites.

Learning by thinking and doing – this is artificer learning, praxis learning, anticipatory action learning and so forth. In all instances this type of learning braids even blends thinking and doing and reflects what one may refer to as ‘indigenous circumstance’. Here kids and adults learn together vertically as well as horizontally in age cohorts.

Conclusion

In short the authors believe nothing less than the future of humanity depends of this redux of science and the re-emergence of neg-entropic science art~ifice. On this basis we have dedicated this site and established SAGI itself. We welcome contributions comments, ideas and projects along these lines. Maybe by featuring (y)our work we can help build towards a critical mass for this type of integrated science-art.

SOCIAL CRADLE

Our own development is integral to the evolution of the whole of human culture. Pursuing the realization of non-separation between the self and the world is crucial to the unfoldment of this process. Evolutionary paradigms describe the spiral of basic beliefs. Increasing levels of connection lead towards increasing systemic order.

HELP ME (Basic Survival)
TRIBAL We (Collective Survival
GRATIFY Me (Immediate Wants)
RIGHTEOUS We (Stable Authority)
COMPETETIVE Me (Material Success)
HOLISTIC Us (Global Harmony)
INTERDEPENDENT Me (Sustainable World)
SPIRITUAL We (Collective Renewal)

Fundamental Principles of the social dimension of the developed plan would need to include holonesquely:

· Express resolve to establish procedural and educational planning strategies – to gain public commitment to a set of fundamental principles – including ethical responsibilities to be adopted by all – to guide future urban and rural planning
· Present ethical arguments capable of practical demonstration and thus able to win public commitment to the principles of long term sustainability and responsibility for future generations:
· Call for public acceptance of a planning horizon that extends beyond 2020 to at least 2050, and preferably 2100.
· Ability to argue for public acceptance of the imperative to innovate and plan in science and art for a post-carbon era.
· Argue for public commitment to plan for and live within eco-regional carrying capacity and footprint limits.

Overall Planning Procedure, the developed plan would need to:

· Call for public submissions on alternative structure plan concepts for greenfield sites.
· Outline plans for submitting alternative structure plans to post-carbon era sustainability tests and comparative analyses in order to inform public choice.
· Outline strategies to engage public in democratic deliberation to (1) determine consent for the basic principles needed to guide evaluation and choice of alternative structure plans (2) decide on structure plans
· Outline plans to advance social methodologies for participation and technical methodologies for calculating eco-regional carrying capacity, and holonic footprinting (see explanation herewith) in order to inform decision making on structure plans. Outline plans to engage local/global partnerships and collaborations to undertake the research, and indicate the timeline for research completion.
· Outline action goals to engage educators in all sectors – schools, universities, communities, NGO’s, government agencies and corporations – to facilitate collaboratively the social learning and deliberation on the scale required (so that key players can anticipate the role they will need to play.
Greenfield Structure Plans should:
· Convey the known alternative conceptual options for guiding development of the structure plans and provide links to websites that provide developing analyses and discussion forums around each of the options.

· Include constitutional recognition of the following critical design policy issues:

1. Governance – constitution, grievance procedure – one day per week
2. Dependency – drugs and dole – addictions to chemicals and government handouts
3. Macro Planning – almost absent even obscenely so – rurban
4. Site Planning – economy – generate at least 2/3rds employment locally, contact patterns, relationship within and between the buildings, network market with other EV’s and so forth
5. Innovation – socially and technologically e.g. building materials solar decathlon wise
6. Focus – induction commitment ongoing involvement, agency structure balance
7. Community leaning the EV as a B&B
8. Socio-economic outreach – too often EVs are live in work out a sort of middle class boomer retirees pose’ with no economic centre with hundreds of regulations about noxious weeds and so forth with no through going evolving participation process and can only work for the educated upper middle class
9. Footprint – individually, house, household and community – this is one criteria that, I’m pleased to say, most of the EV’s have taken on board
10. All these integrated into participatory Design

· Outline plans to engage authorities and academic institutions to undertake suitability mapping and start-up siting for the development and demonstration of alternative planning models that offer promising long term sustainability prospects. (Wildman, 2008)

Negentropic Glocal Futuring:

‘It was Plato who introduced ‘the division between those who know and do not act and those who act and do not know,’ Paul Wildman explained in his eBook on Zen and the Artifice of Ingenuity (2008). After Plato in the West we have doggedly followed a staunchly mechanist view, identified with Newton, that ‘The Universe was a mechanical one whose order was maintained by a distant God’. Yet Newton in fact wrote more on alchemy than mathematics: he saw the universe enlivened by emotion and love. These works remain unpublished. The results of this split are readily seen today in terms of the specialisation of skills, separation of academia from actual social change projects, separation of producing from consuming e.g. we are moving rapidly away from being ‘prosumers’ – having our own gardens, making our own clothes and other bush mechanic type activities. Arendt (1963) claims this is the challenge for modernity: to re-braid thinking and doing.

In today’s complex and turbulent world it is vital to have futurists who can collaborate on collective projects, focus on action codified in exemplar projects and validate actions towards a better world. Unfortunately, current ‘education’ systems focus almost exclusively on the individual learner and have separated the learner from the praxis of the lived life. Furthermore, classrooms separate the learner from design, production and integration of learning into community life. Overcoming this separation of thinking and doing is one of the key challenges for post-postmodern glocalized future.

We may be able to meet this challenge as innovative individuals who look forward wisely and solve collective problems today through applying ingenuity with what is available, thus integrating thinking, doing and being in what in ancient times was called poiesis. Human knowledge of neg-entropic processes is urgently needed to avoid extinction. Sir Isaac Newton referred to the basic universal physics as a profound living philosophy to balance the mechanical description of the universe. This has become known as ethical physics and is known today through the logic of life viz. fractal logic the logic of neg-entropy. The holographic universe that such an approach begets and in turn begets it, is infinite, open, evolutionary and ethical – the new logic. This new logic needs to become the model for our social sciences such as economics. [Paul Wildman, Ph.D., (2003), (2004)]

Artificer or artificer learner now may be defined as: someone who while being deeply and broadly technically skilled is reflexively orientated and who ethically and participatively explores the big picture and prioritises, chooses, designs and enacts forward wisely by creatively developing prototypes towards a world transformed. [Paul Wildman 15-12-03]
*
Glocalization proposes both theory and practice for bridging global/local scales in an alternative equitable international system, using a mosaic of committed key actors in the physical and electronic environment. McLuhan called the environment a programmed teaching machine. The meaning of globally accessible information becomes organized in its local context as coherence. Intense local and extensive global interaction is a dynamic that operates in fractally embedded spatial and cultural dimensions. It mobilizes social and economic interaction at the local, national and transnational levels, igniting our active responsibility for future generations.

A potential movement, a peace-building activity combining realism and idealism, glocalization is a bottom-up view of the complex process of harmonizing local and global needs for sustainable futures. It brings globalization issues down to the human scale, linking committed local and global social actors.

Keywords: Futuring, Chaos theory, negentropy, fractal-logic, creativity, values and ethics, sustainable lifestyles, learning, holism, communication, science-art, networking, depth psychology, transpersonal psychology, paradigm shift, complexity, imagination, consciousness studies, fractal logic.

INTELLIGENT NETWORKS: The immediate goal of glocalization’s scale-relativity is practical development of pilot projects and best practice exemplars and policies that can be applied in many if not all areas. It includes proposals and concrete initiatives that promote balance of local and global dimensions via information sharing on a global or transregional basis. The purpose of aspirational futuring is not to predict the future, but to audaciously improve it. Wiser futures require trend identification and scenario development. Scenarios embrace and explore uncertainty in conceptual frameworks.

By adhering to a mechanistic worldview, Western civilization is on a path to extinction, says Science-Art philosopher Robert Pope. The ancient knowledge passed on by the Greeks upheld a survival science, a “Savior science” that was misinterpreted by Leonardo da Vinci but was privately understood by Isaac Newton. Da Vinci by “inadvertently” obscuring the “principle of creation” helped bring into existence a mechanistic mindset that is now accelerating a global crisis of destruction. He presumed all of the universe could be made visible to human perception, and yet the Greeks, and other ancients before them, identified with a universal reality in which harmonious, invisible atomic movement generated divine wisdom.

Negentropic futuring includes six synergetic aspects: 1) mapping acceleration, 2) anticipating, 3) timing and 4) deepening the future, 5) creating alternatives to the present and 6) transformation. Aspirational futuring includes environmental scanning, forecasts, scenarios, visions, audacious goals and understanding change and strategic issues (analysis).

Trends identify key forces shaping the future. Environmental scanning includes global, local, political, economic, technological, environmental and social trends. Scenarios map plausible and visionary space. Roadmaps help us visualize strategies and collaborative foresight, which evokes collective visualization. Paradigms are the assumed truths of our logic. Acceleration is built into the physics of the universe. We can draw from the organic metaphors of quantum physics, field theory, and chaos theory to illuminate the state of the arts.

In open systems, negentropy is the life-promoting generative force of the universe. It is the mobilization of our creative potential with cascades of positive results. Negentropy (emergent order from chaos) is a nonlinear higher order system, a dynamically creative ordering of information. Life feeds on negentropy. It is syntropy of free energy and organization. Complex systems can explode into higher forms of order and involvement — phase transitions to networked consciousness and intelligence.

Life is a survival-supporting negentropic pump. Thinking, science, and art are therefore neg-entropic. Negentropy, like art –as in the painting below, is ‘in-form-active.’ It is related to mutual information exchange and meaning. Information is embodied in the fractal nature of imagery and symbols, which compress the informational content of the whole. Opportunities are fractally reiterative instants and situations, openings for unpredictable synergy, quantum leaps — chance and choice. The better we understand complex arrangements, the better we understand and cope with what is going on.

Creativity is an emergent phenomenon patterned by strange attractors, which govern the complexity of information in dynamic flow. If you can’t see how to use continually less matter, energy, space, or time (physical resources) in your scheme to improve human performance, then you aren’t operating at the ‘leading edge’ of the tidal wave—somewhere else on the planet things are flowing much faster and more efficiently, and will soon change your game. How can we give people a choice as to which values they want to maximize first, so that different cultures can take different paths toward an inevitably faster future?

Negentropic Socioeconomic Transformation:

Can we formulate tailored local responses to growth imperatives from the inevitable forces of globalization? A combination of ‘Globalization’ and ‘Localization,’ Glocalization was first used by transnational corporations to mean a global marketing adaptation strategy. This corporate “buzzword,” a top-down view is NOT what this view is about. Joining negentropic vortices in global networks is a closer image.

Milton Friedman defines glocalization as “the ability of a culture, when it encounters other strong cultures, to absorb influences that naturally fit into and can enrich that culture, to resist those things that are truly alien and to compartmentalize those things that, while different, can nevertheless be enjoyed and celebrated as different.” A structural shift in information flow, Web 2.0 is about glocalization, it is about making global information available to local social contexts and giving people the flexibility to find, organize, share and create information in a locally meaningful fashion that is globally accessible.

Glocalization Definitions:

Diverse, over-lapping fields of global-local linkages — pan-locality, a merging of global opportunities and local interests, aiming to create a more socio-economically balanced world, reconceptualized in non-geographical terms. Comprehensive connectedness.

Conceptually Local: Combining globalization and localization, the coined-term Glocalization proposes both theory and practice for bridging scales in an alternative equitable international system, using a mosaic of committed key actors, including a full range of local, national, international, public, private, and nonprofit entities. The meaning of globally accessible information becomes organized in its local context. It means unpredictaly doing more than we know.

Networked Individualism: Intense local and extensive global interaction. Glocality is the social equivalent of “nonlocality” and entanglement in quantum physics.This dynamic operates in fractally embedded spatial and cultural dimensions to mobilize social and economic interaction at the local, national and transnational levels, responding to our responsibility to future generations. Deterritorialized active learning processes rooted in mutual understanding of needs, problems and solutions. Decentralized globalization, prioritizing strategic peacebuilding.

Placeless Power & Interconnectivity: A conscious development strategy, empowering non-subjugated localities to develop direct economic and cultural relationships to the global system through information technologies, bypassing and subverting traditional power hierarchies like national governments and markets. The identity-affirming senses of place, neighborhood, town, locale, ethnicity, etc. survive (if just barely) against the global onslaught of global capitalism, media, and network identities. Systematic integration of social and economic issues.

Vision: Activating & Motivating Individuated Autonomy

Glocalization is a potential movement, a peace-building activity combining realism and idealism. It is a bottom-up view of the complex process of harmonizing local and global needs for sustainable futures. It brings globalization issues down to the human scale.

Social Synergy: Glocalization links committed local and global actors, including virtual personalities, individuals, local, national and international business, governmental and nonprofit entities, coupling and decoupling for positive sum solutions. We can harness the benefits of multinational globalization, ethical economics and repurposing open-source information for local realities by extensive local and long-distance interactions.

In today’s complex and turbulent world it is vital to have futurists who can collaborate on collective projects, focus on action codified in exemplar projects and validate actions towards a better world. Unfortunately, current ‘education’ systems focus almost exclusively on the individual learner and have separated the learner from the praxis of the lived life. Furthermore, classrooms separate the learner from design, production and integration of learning into community life. The author argues that overcoming this separation of thinking and doing is one of the key challenges for modernity in future, in particular.

This paper argues that a way in which we may be able to meet this challenge is known by the term ‘bush mechanics’ in Australia—innovative individuals who look forward wisely and solve collective problems today through applying their ingenuity with what is available, thus integrating thinking, doing and being in what in ancient times was called poiesis and in Medieval times ‘artificing’ and today can be seen in action learning and the bush mechanic. The four principles, as well as examples, of the bush mechanic approach are discussed including their exemplar projects. Finally, the importance of the bush mechanic approach to ‘futuring’ and creating living breathing examples today of a future our children can live with is emphasised and collaboration sought.

–Paul Wildman, 2006

1. Introduction

2. The mismatch between conception and action

2.1. Emergence of the division between thinking and doing

2.2. Society as cephalocentric—accessing the overlooked mimetic epistemology of dexterity

3. From action learning to bush mechanic learning

3.1. Artificer learning—transforming praxis

4. Masterpiece—linking higher education, vocational training and the humble bush mechanic

4.1. A working definition of a bush mechanic/artificer

4.2. Related concepts

5. The four cardinal principles of the bush mechanic

5.1. Towards a revised definition of bush mechanic/artificer

6. Examples of bush mechanics and their exemplar projects

7. Integrating bush mechanicing into social and corporate design

8. Conclusion

9. Web References (accessed 10–01–2006)

References

http://science-artificer.iwarp.com/
SCIENCE-ARTIFICERS GUILD, Int’l – SAGI 2008
Disseminating Social & Scientific Innovations for Durable Futures

Scientists * Artists * Philosophers * Futurists * Benchworkers * Outsiders * Healers * Networkers * Inventors * Imagineers * Economists * Activists * Entrepreneurs

JOIN US: SAGI — a Nonlocal Action Thinktank — invites you to network, collaborate and collectively dream, design and build exemplars of Cultural Rebirth with us as we envision and embody the future in the present. Let’s create practical exemplars as the foundation memes for the next few decades. What visions of ourselves do we need to actively embody to ensure our survival as we move forward?

SAGI offers exemplar projects for the hot futures of a New Renaissance as an alternative to Apocalypse. It is a vision rooted in the negentropic forces of life itself. Let’s transcend boundaries in diverse fields, including durable lifestyles, political theory, health science, intelligence, macrohistory, women’s studies, art history, deep economics, ethics, medical best practice, communications theory, and more. Today’s research challenges are so complex it takes many minds to find viable solutions. We urgently need new options for collective participatory wisdom. SAGI is one such option — may we commend it to you.

VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY: The transdiciplinary Science-Artificers Guild, Int’l (SAGI) is a glocalized association for artists, scientists, engineers, artificers, mentors, healers and others interested in work that crosses the artificial boundaries separating contemporary arts and sciences as well as the divide that separates thinking and doing. Together, we form a Virtual University or Subversity of Scholar-Practitioners.

SCI-ART FUSION: We feature illustrated articles written by artists and scientists about their own work as well as articles by historians, theoreticians, philosophers and other researchers that are particularly concerned with issues related to the interaction of the arts, sciences and technology in contemporary society and their contribution to a positive creative and sustainable future society for our grandchildren.

Negentropic Futures: In today’s complex and turbulent world it is vital to have artful futurists who can collaborate on collective projects, focus on action codified in exemplar projects and validate actions towards a better world. Unfortunately current ‘education’ systems focus almost exclusively on the individual learner and have separated the learner from the praxis of the lived life. Furthermore classrooms separate the learner from design, production and integration of learning into community life.

Future Perfect Tense: SAGI argues that overcoming this separation of thinking and doing is one of the key challenges for modernity and in futures in particular. We applaud wider application of “Intern” programs, learning while doing. We encourage mentoring at every scale in every niche opportunity. Ideas at the leading edge of culture cannot, by their very nature, be adequately reviewed by conventional peer review processes. There is simply no one there capable of graspng the concepts adequately. But those who can, DO…

Subversity: The periphery is a source of power in terms of new research directions. Smaller universities are vital in this regard. On the outer periphery are independent scholars and further in are ‘pracademics’ and in the inner sanctum the ‘career’ academics with little or no ‘outside experience.’ Incredible skills and enthusiasm are possessed by those effectively excluded from the conventional University system by the systems of exclusiveness and preciousness so dear to the academic profession. Universities are no longer relevant in that the public sector, banking, armed forces, large corporations etc are all downsizing. Part-time work and associated ‘multiployment’ is in the increase. The informal sector is booming. We encourage ‘Polyphonic Multiversities.’

DEFINITIONS: We may be able to meet this challenge as ‘Artificers’ – innovative individuals who look forward wisely and solve collective problems today through applying their ingenuity with what is available. Integrating thinking, doing and being in ancient times was called Poiesis and in Medieval times ‘artificing’ and today can be seen in Action Learning and the Artificer.

Artists in Action: Many artists in this technical age are faced with perpetually learning new protocols for artistic production. Several media require elaborate production knowledge and technical skill. Much of this leading edge tech has to be self-taught, then unique applications in art may be discovered. One needs technical craft to produce digital fine art, for example. Today’s artist also has to find and meet commercial and competetive goals in promotion, marketing and design.

Practicum: Blending personal and business acumen in the enterprise of your life. The four principles, as well as examples, of the Science-Artificer approach are discussed including their exemplar projects. Finally, the importance of the Artificer approach to ‘futuring’ and creating living breathing examples today of a future our children can live with is emphasised and collaboration sought. Having a product in demand now means you’re dead in five years. The University system cannot solely answer ‘how can we then live?’ (note live not think). A system of learning needs to be practical and respond to the huge transdisciplinary and intergenerational challenges upon us such as:

* environmental and economical
* social, ie crime, violence and unemployment
* ethical, ie from genetic and biophysical engineering
* from ‘classroom teaching’ to ‘elsewhere learning’
* artificial intelligence and the web

Research Training: To be real you have to get out in front of the competition and indeed even the customer. Not so far that the customer is lost sight of but rather far enough to be able to explore alternative futures in which the customer may find herself in 20 yrs or so. Further the conventional academic qualification ie the PhD is in many ways inappropriate for professional students ie the ‘business’ of business is lateral thinking, decision making in turbulent environments, compromise, constant innovation, rapid and decreasing product development cycles, multi management etc. None of these readily fit into a conventional PhD.

A Science-Artificer or artificer learner now may be defined as:

someone who while being deeply and broadly technically skilled is reflexively orientated and who ethically and participatively explores the big picture and prioritises, chooses, designs and enacts forward wisely by creatively developing prototypes towards a world transformed. [Paul Wildman 15-12-03]

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon…

In essence, Globalization (Internationalization in MS speak) is your Kung Fu. Bear with me, I have a point here, either that or this is a thinly veiled attempt on my part to get you to read further.

Globalization represents more than just an all-embracing term used simply to describe the sub-processes of Internationalization and Localization, it is in fact both an ethos and strategy that describes how your organization needs to position and prepare every facet part of its being.

Those familiar with Chinese martial arts or who have spent too much time watching Kung Fu movies will understand the fundamental difference between the Tiger fighting style and the Dragon fighting style. The Tiger style relies on sheer strength and the memorization of moves, whereas the dragon style is based on the principal of a deeper understanding of movement. It’s about anticipating more than simply acting upon and reacting to events.

Staying on the fortune cookie philosophy theme, if you adopt the Tiger approach to Globalization you may make all the right moves, correctly identify your target global markets, prepare and push forward with Internationalization of your product with vigour and determination, and skilfully and swiftly execute product localization, but even this is not sufficient if you want to ensure your business is ready to go global and prepared for the effects of going global.  

You need to adopt the dragon Style. In addition to the above actions, you should seek a deeper understanding of the impact that these actions will have on your business and anticipate this reaction. After all, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Once you have decided to go global with your software offerings, you will have to consider how this decision will subsequently impact all areas of your business such as Programme/Project Management, Development & QA, Sales & Marketing, Legal, Accounting, Distribution, Support, etc.

Thinking out loud – So who does what?

Product Management: will need to coordinate with all groups to ensure that localized releases are part of any global product roadmap and are approved by and communicated to all stakeholders.

All global product release schedules need to recognize that the Development and QA teams will have to work in “harmony” with Localization Engineering and QA, and therefore core Development and QA time and resources will have to be allocated to addressing I18n, Customizability and Localizability issues.

Failure to factor these tasks into any global project scope will mean that a simship will be impossible, Developers and QA alike will be frustrated by having to potentially allocate additional time to deal with unplanned for I18N defects, Localization will be stalled until defects effecting Localizability and Customizability are addressed, and regional sales channels will suffer from late availability of localized product.

Development & QA: As mentioned above, these core groups, usually charged with domestic software releases, will now need to work in-synch with their Localization counterparts; the frequency and format of handoffs to the Localization team need to be agreed, I18N exit criteria will need to be established  for design and development phases, pseudo-localized software builds will need to be created for I18n testing, code freeze dates will need to be agreed to allow for the extra volume of i18n defects that will be logged during I18n/L10n testing, the workflow and management of i18N defects through the core defect tracking system will need to be established, and core Development and QA resources will need to be allocated to resolving and regressing i18N, Localizability, and Customizability defects.

The Localization team will mainly be focussed on addressing L10n issues, so the majority of I18n and Localizability issues will need to be resolved by the core Development team.

Even prior to Internationalization, it is essential that those at senior levels within an organisation understand the impact of going global on their core Development and QA teams.

As highlighted in my first post, assuming that the creation of localized software releases is the sole responsibility of a single Localization team is imprudent and unrealistic. Globalization means a significant investment in core Development and QA time and resources and cannot happen in isolation of these groups or without their involvement.  

Sales and Marketing: Sales and Marketing teams responsible for the target regions need to be made aware of strategic plans regarding localized releases. Often these groups will be the ones who identified the business case/requirement for a localized software release.

Regional Sales and Marketing teams will have an insight into the features that are important to their markets and any customer issues with in-market localized product that need addressing as a matter of priority for subsequent releases. They will also be able to advise on any region specific customization of software features that will be required. These customizations will need to be considered during design and development under the heading of “Customizability”. Furthermore, it is important for Programme Management to work closely with these teams when formulating the localised product roadmap, ensuring they are involved in any beta program review of the software and they have sign-off as part of the localized product review process. This may all seem fairly obvious and simply requires clear lines of communication, but I have often witnessed a certain disconnect between regional offices and global Programme Management.

The following excerpt from Beyond Borders – Web Globalization Strategies by John Yunker (2003) is a good example of how poor communication and planning within an organization can ensure a rather embarrassing false start on the journey to global domination;

“The marketing director of a professional society wanted to expand the subscriber base in other countries. The society already had many international members, but because none of the publications had been translated, members needed as least a moderate grasp of English to reap the benefits of joining. So the marketing director decided to translate the society’s membership form into Chinese, in the hopes that it would make joining the society much easier for Chinese speakers and increase membership.

Within a few weeks, the society received its first completed Chinese form by fax, the membership directory, unaware of what the marketing director had been up to, looked at this form, filled out in Chinese, and said, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” The membership director didn’t understand Chinese. No one of her staff understood Chinese. Even if someone on her staff did understand Chinese, their membership database didn’t accept Chinese characters.

So this person in China completed the membership form and subscribed to a couple of publications and the organization could do nothing about it. The professional society didn’t even know what publications were selected because the publication names were translated to Chinese – and they had no English template to compare it against. It may seem obvious that you shouldn’t create marketing materials in a language your company can’t support, yet companies that jump into global markets too fast frequently repeat this scenario.” (Yunker, 2003, p.82).

Branding and cultural customization are also important considerations that also require input from regional Sales and Marketing groups. Some may favour regional branding and cultural customization over global branding with a universally consistent user-experience. This allows regional Sales and Marketing the flexibility to better connect with their target audience. It is all too easy to alienate your customers if they get the impression that your organization’s software products, website, support etc were not developed with their region in mind. However, others would argue that allowing such distinct and unique branding combined with a high level of customization on a region-by-region basis, simply serves to dilute global brand power, resulting in a confusing and inconsistent user-experience. Additionally, by allowing diverse and inconsistent localized content per region, the global management of this content can be troublesome and costly. 

The whole area of cultural customization is vast and there is a lot of information as well as misinformation offered on this topic, and it can be hard to discern urban legend from truth. On the theme of colour and cultural significance of colour in the global marketplace, one publication I read recently would lead you to believe that red cars are illegal in Brazil and Ecuador because of the perception that they cause more accidents. This is in fact absolute bunkum. So approach cultural customization with caution and seek the guidance of local contacts.

Legal: There are a variety of laws governing software being sold in different regions of the world, many of these laws pertain to language and support for the official languages in these regions; such as the Toubon law in France, GB18030 certification for China, and the charter of the French Language in Quebec (Bill 101).  

For translation of End-User License Agreements (EULAs) and software warranties, your organization will require the services of legal translators and a review of the EULAs by your in-country operations centres/partners to ensure compliance with local legislation.

Legal regulation on the sale of software worldwide is unlikely to become any more lenient. To the contrary, with proposals such as the EU’s two year guarantee for software (games), which would allow users who are unhappy with “buggy” software to return their purchase, the situation will only become more complex. This is another reason why a well thought-out Globalization strategy combined with a strong focus on I18n is of paramount importance.

With poor I18n, your localized software will inevitably contain more functional and cosmetic defects than the source release, and that could be a real headache when faced with a future where customers are within their rights to simply ask for their money back on the basis of these defects and are not compelled to wait for a hotfix as may currently be the case under the terms of existing EULAs.

Accounting: Your accounting team must be ready to provide pricing in the local currencies of the regions your software is to be sold into. Accordingly, they will also need to be ready to accept payment in these currencies. Ensure you have a clear understanding of how royalties and revenues from localized software sales are distributed throughout your organization.

Distribution: You will of course need to consider your distribution channels, competition, and how you will physically deploy your localized software to your customers. For hosted solutions, automatic updates etc; existing data centres serving your domestic customers may not offer sufficient connectivity/speed to customers in other regions.

Support: Before you have localized software in-market, your organization will need to be ready to support these target markets. It is an all too common mistake to simply expect that this will somehow take care of itself and that existing support channels for domestic product will be sufficient. This is yet another way to disaffect the customers in new markets you’ve worked so hard beguile with your digital wares.

You need to consider the mechanisms for localized support; knowledge base, email, phone etc. What level of support will your in-country operations centres/partners can offer, if any? How are support issues with localized software escalated? Do your call centre representatives have the necessary language skills and knowledge of the localized software to handle calls/emails from all the regions you sell your software in? Do you have a Content Management System (CMS) behind your existing website/knowledge-base? Does the functionality of this CMS lend itself to the management of global content in multiple languages?

Once the knowledge-base route has been exhausted, there is a common preconception that it is a good idea to heard customers to email support, like cows being shoved into a cattle crush, as opposed to presenting them with the option of phone support. This is based on the logic that email support is far more cost-effective than phone support. Whilst it makes sense to encourage customers to avail of email support over phone support, I do not believe it is a good idea to completely eliminate phone support as an option.

Many organizations prefer to remove any reference to phone support from their site. For me, this represents a false economy, whilst you may be saving on call centre costs, you will probably be losing customers, and any chance of repeat business. This is particularly flawed strategy in new markets where you are fighting for market-share.

I have yet to experience an email support system where I have received a (useful) answer “within 24 hours” as promised. Besides, 24 hours may be a long wait depending on the nature of the issue. Even if there is a customer cost associated with phone support, it is better to offer this as an option as opposed to lose customers who may prefer to simply return your software (see “Legal” above) and align themselves with your competitors rather than wait for a delayed response from support.

What happened to Localization??

You may have noticed that I have made no mention of the Localization team/departments specific responsibilities in terms of Globalization. This is a deliberate omission. I will address aspects of Localization in various future posts (after all, the URL for this blog puts me under some pressure to do so!). For now, however, it is more beneficial to recognize that in the grand scheme of Globalization, Localization is actually one of the simplest components. Granted, as “Localization” experts, we are in fact required to be “Globalization” experts and provide guidance in relation to Globalization strategies, but if all other areas of your business are ready to go global, then Localization should be the least of your worries.

Once again, failure to take a holistic approach to Globalization will result in Localization being a tedious, costly, and protracted affair. Localized product quality will suffer and inevitably your organization’s performance in the target region will be poor. Additionally you will have filled the lives of your Localization team with a degree of despair! So for the sake of good Karma, get the fundamentals right and Localization will be a walk in the park.

The above are just some of the areas for consideration when formulating your Globalization strategy. One could certainly write a book on the topic and a number have been written on the topic. Globalization is the broadest and most subjective area when it comes to looking at G11n, I18N, and L10n and is therefore open to the most debate.

What color/colour is the sky in your world?

The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (roughly) states that through the medium of language, different cultures attempt to define their reality and enforce a structure on the world as they view it. This results in certain perspectives that are unique to particular cultures; this is why Localization and Globalization extend beyond simple translation.

This probably also goes some way to explaining why a Chinese friend and work colleague of mine finds a particular Rice Krispies Squares TV commercial so amusing, whilst I simple perceive it to be mind numbingly boring. Or maybe I just don’t get it! Whatever the case may be, to be truly successful in a particular regional market, your organization will not alone have to speak the language of that region, but also understand the predominant cultural perspectives distinct to that region.

The important thing is to have a carefully considered Globalization strategy that would make Lex Luthor seem nonchalant in his scheming, and to execute the plan in a decisive and coherent manner throughout the organization and without procrastination. Understanding that Globalization is the responsibility of your entire organization and must permeate through every level is a good first step.

This is particularly important in the current economic climate. Whilst many organizations are running home for shelter and scaling back on their global operations, this presents opportunities for other organizations to get traction in emerging markets if their Globalization strategy is sound. It may be a long term investment, but if your competition is busy running for cover, these recessionary times could represent an opportunity to gain market share in valuable new markets. As Warren Buffett said, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.” In other words, advance when your competition is retreating from global markets.

In conclusion, you could of course try the Tiger approach and see what happens, but as another icon of our times (Homer Simpson) once said, “Trying Is the First Step towards Failure”. So instead I urge you to think like the Dragon and have a deeper appreciation of how Globalization will impact your own organization and how your organization as a whole will need to evolve to meet these challenges.

This one should probably be in a fictive mode, maybe even in a science-fiction genre. In fact, I’m reconnecting with literature after a long hiatus and now would be an interesting time to start writing fiction. But I’ll still start this as one of those  ”ramblings” blogposts that I tend to build or which tend to come to me.

The reason this should be fiction is that it might sound exceedingly naïve, especially for a social scientist. I tend to “throw ideas out there” and see what sticks to other ideas, but this broad idea about which I’ve been thinking for a while may sound rather crazy, quaint, unsophisticated.

See, while my academic background is rather solid, I don’t have formal training in political science. In fact, I’ve frequently avoided several academic activities related to political science as a discipline. Or to journalism as a discipline. Part of my reluctance to involve myself in academic activities related political science relates to my reaction to journalism. The connection may not seem obvious to everyone but I see political science as a discipline in the same frame, and participating in the same worldview, as what I find problematic in journalism.

The simplest way to contextualize this connection is the (“modern”) notion of the “Nation-State.” That context involves me personally. As an anthropologist, as a post-modernist, as a “dual citizen” of two countries, as a folklorist, as a North American with a relatively salient European background, as a “citizen of the World,” and as a member of a community which has switched in part from a “nationalist” movement to other notions of statehood. Simply put: I sincerely think that the notion of a “Nation-State” is outdated and that it will (whether it should or not) give way to other social constructs.

A candidate to replace the conceptual apparatus of the “Nation-State” is both global and local, both post-modern and ancient: a glocal network of city-states (GNoCS).

Yes, I know, it sounds awkward. No, I’m not saying that things would necessarily be better in a post-national world. And I have no idea when this shift from the “nation-states” frame to a network of city-states may happen. But I sincerely think that it could happen. And that it could happen rather quickly.

Not that the shift would be so radical as to obliterate the notion of “nation-state” overnight. In this case, I’m closer to Foucault’s épistémè than to Kuhn’s paradigm. After all, while the “Democratic Nation-State” model is global, former social structures are still present around the Globe and the very notion of a “Nation-State” takes different values in different parts of the world. What I envision has less to do with the linear view of history than with a perspective in which different currents of social change interact with one another over time, evoking shifts in polarity for those who hold a binary perspective on social issues.

I started “working on” this post four months ago. I was just taking some notes in a blog draft, in view of a blogpost, instead of simply keeping general notes, as I tend to do. This post remained on my mind and I’ve been accumulating different threads which can connect to my basic idea. I now realize that this blogpost will be more of a placeholder for further thinking than a “milestone” in my reflection on the topic. My reluctance to publish this blog entry had as much to do with an idiosyncratic sense of prudence as with time-management or any other issue. In other words, I was wary of sticking my neck out. Which might explain why this post is so personal as compared to most of my posts in English.

As uninformed as I may seem of the minutiae of national era political science, I happen to think that there’s a lot of groupthink involved in the way several people describe political systems. For instance, there’s a strong tendency for certain people, journalists especially, to “count countries.” With relatively few exceptions (especially those which have to do with specific international institutions like the United Nations or the “G20″) the number of countries involved in an event only has superficial significance. Demographic discrepancies between these national entities, not tio mention a certain degree of diversity in their social structures or even government apparatus, makes “counting countries” appear quite misleading, especially when the issue has to do with, say, social dynamics or geography. It sounds at times like people have a vague “political map of the World” in their heads and that this image preempts other approaches to global diversity. This may sound like a defensive stance on my part, as I try to position myself as “perhaps crazy but not more than others are.” But the issue goes deeper. In fact, it seems that “countries” are so ingrained  in some people’s minds and political borders are so obvious that local and regional issues are perceived as micro-version of what happens at the “national level.” This image doesn’t seem so strange when we talk about partisan politics but it appears quite inappropriate when we talk about a broad range of other subjects, from epidemiology to climate change, from online communication to geology, from language to religion.

An initial spark in my thinking about several of these issues came during Beverly Stoeltje’s interdisciplinary Ph.D. seminar on nationalism at Indiana University Bloomington, back in 2000. Not only was this seminar edifying on many levels, but it represented a kind of epiphany moment in my reflections on not only nationalism itself (with related issues of patriotism, colonialism, and citizenship) but on a range of social issues and changes.

My initial “realization” was on the significance of the shift from Groulx-style French-Canadian nationalism to what Lévesque called «souveraineté-association» (“sovereignty-association”) and which served as the basis for the Quebec sovereignty movement.

While this all connects to well-known issues in political science and while it may (again) sound exceedingly naïve, I mean it in a very specific way which, I think, many people who discuss Quebec’s political history may rarely visit. As with other shifts about which I think, I don’t envision the one from French-Canadian nationalism (FCN) to Quebec sovereignty movement (QSM) to be radical or complete. But it was significant and broad-reaching.

Regardless of Lévesque’s personal view on nationalism (a relatively recent television series on his life had it that he became anti-nationalist after a visit to concentration camps), the very idea that there may exist a social movement oriented toward sovereignty outside of the nationalist logic seems quite important to me personally. The fact that this movement may only be represented in partisan politics as nationalism complicates the issue and may explain a certain confusion in terms of the range of Quebec’s current social movements. In other words, the fact that anti-nationalists are consistently lumped together with nationalists in the public (and journalistic) eye makes it difficult to discuss post-nationalism in this part of the Globe.

But Quebec’s history is only central to my thinking because I was born and Montreal and grew up through the Quiet Revolution. My reflections on a post-national shift are hopefully broader than historical events in a tiny part of the Globe.

In fact, my initial attempt at drafting this blogpost came after I attended a talk by Satoshi Ikeda entitled The Global Financial Crisis and the End of Neoliberalism. (November 27, 2008, Concordia University, SGW H-1125-12; found thanks to Twistory). My main idea at this point was that part of the solution to global problems were local.

But I was also thinking about The Internet.

Contrary to what technological determinists tend to say, the ‘Net isn’t changing things as much as it is part of a broad set of changes. In other words, the global communication network we now know as the Internet is embedded in historical contexts, not the ultimate cause of History. At the risk of replacing technological determinism with social determinism, one might point out that the ‘Net existed (both technologically and institutionally) long before its use became widespread. Those of us who observed a large influx of people online during the early to mid-1990s might even think that social changes were more significant in making the ‘Net what it is today than any “immanent” feature of the network as it was in, say, 1991.

Still, my thinking about the ‘Net has to do with the post-national shift. The ‘Net won’t cause the shift to new social and political structures. But it’s likely to “play a part” in that shift, to be prominently places as we move into a post-national reality.

There’s a number of practical and legal issues with a wide range of online activities which make it clear that the ‘Net fits more in a global structure than in an “international” one. Examples I have in mind include issues of copyright, broadcast rights, “national content,” and access to information, not to mention the online setting for some grassroots movements and the notion of “Internet citizenry.” In all of these cases, “Globalization” expands much beyond trade and currency-based economy.

Then, there’s the notion of “glocalization.” Every time I use the term “glocal,” I point out how “ugly” it is. The term hasn’t gained any currency (AFAICT) but I keep thinking that the concept can generate something interesting. What I personally have in mind is a movement away from national structures into both a globally connected world and a more local significance. The whole “Think Local, Act Global” idea (which I mostly encountered as “Think Global, Drink Local” as a motto). “Despite” the ‘Net, location still matters. But many people are also global-looking.

All of this is part of the setup for some of my reflections on a GNoCS. A kind of prelude/prologue. While my basic idea is very much a “pie in the sky,” I do have more precise notions about what the future may look like and the conditions in which some social changes might happen. At this point, I realize that these thoughts will be part of future blogposts, including some which might be closer to science-fiction than to this type semi- (or pseudo-) scholarly rambling.

But I might still flesh out a few notes.

Demographically, cities may matter more now than ever as the majority of the Globe’s population is urban. At least, the continued urbanization trend may fit well with a city-focused post-national model.

Some metropolitan areas have become so large as to connect with one another, constituting a kind of urban continuum. Contrary to boundaries between “nation-states,” divisions between cities can be quite blurry. In fact, a same location can be connected to dispersed centres of activity and people living in the same place can participate in more than one local sphere. Rotterdam-Amsterdam, Tokyo-Kyoto, Boston-NYC…

Somewhat counterintuitvely, urban areas tend to work relatively as the source of solutions to problems in the natural environment. For instance, some mayors have taken a lead in terms of environmental initiatives, not waiting for their national governments. And such issues as public transportations represent core competencies for municipal governments.

While transborder political entities like the European Union (EU), the African Union (AU), and the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are enmeshed in the national logic, they fit well with notions of globalized decentralization. As the mayor of a small Swiss town was saying on the event of Switzerland’s official 700th anniversary, we can think about «l’Europe des régions» (“Europe of regions”), beyond national borders.

Speaking of Switzerland, the confederacy/confederation model fits rather well with a network structure, perhaps more than with the idea of a “nation-state.” It also seems to go well with some forms of participatory democracy (as opposed to representative democracy). Not to mean that Switzerland or any other confederation/confederacy works as a participatory democracy. But these notions can help situate this GNoCS.

While relatively rare and unimportant “on the World Stage,” micro-states and micro-nations represent interesting cases in view of post-nationalist entities. For one thing, they may help dispel the belief that any political apart from the “nation-state” is a “reversal” to feudalism or even (Greek) Antiquity. The very existence of those entities which are “the exceptions to the rule” make it possible to “think outside of the national box.”

Demographically at the opposite end of the spectrum from microstates and micronations, the notion of a China-India union (or even a collaboration between China, India, Brazil, and Russia) may sound crazy in the current state of national politics but it would go well with a restructuring of the Globe, especially if this “New World Order” goes beyond currency-based trade.

Speaking of currency, the notion of the International Monetary Fund having its own currency is quite striking as a sign of a major shift from the “nation-state” logic. Of course, the IMF is embedded in “national” structures, but it can shift the focus away from “individual countries.”

The very notion of “democracy” has been on many lips, over the years. Now may be the time to pay more than lipservice to a notion of “Global Democracy,” which would transcend national boundaries (and give equal rights to all people across the Globe). Chances are that representative democracy may still dominate but a network structure connecting a large number of localized entities can also fit in other systems including participatory democracy, consensus culture, republicanism, and even the models of relatively egalitarian systems that some cultural anthropologists have been constructing over the years.

I still have all sorts of notes about examples and issues related to this notion of a GNoCS. But that will do for now.

Who’s responsible for Localization in your organization?

Seems like a simple question with a simple answer, right? However, whether they are aware of it or not, most people use the term ”Localization” when they may well be referring to areas under the broader headings of Globalization, Internationalization, Localization & Translation (GILT).

There are historical reasons for this anomaly of course; once upon a time Localization was only considered an afterthought to product development and had no real place in the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle). GILT is certainly a more accurate and all-encompassing acronym, but even as industry experts in “Localization” we do not typically embrace such broad terminology. Personally I find GILT a somewhat clumsy and uncomfortable acronym. After all, who in an organization would want to say they work in GILT, or are head of GILT! Even if we were to adopt this term within our organizations, I could foresee many blank stares when discussing GILT with those not familiar with what is traditionally known to them as “Localization”. So naturally we default to using “Localization” as an often all-encompassing term to avoid having to give every person we interact with a brief (and most probably unwelcome) history of what is better known as “Localization”.

The problem is, that by accepting our moniker as “Localization” we are also endorsing the view that Localization is still just an afterthought to development and is solely the responsibility of a single department within an organization. I still work as part of a Localization team, as Localization Engineering Manager. Some of you who work in the industry probably have a sign hanging over your little farm of desks that says, “Localization”.

In my experience, this tends to result in those in senior management, in charge of strategic decision making, and those in regional sales offices, believing that by having a Localization department; Localization is taken care of. It’s a black-box. It’s possibly even viewed as a glorified term for translation. Consequently, should any issues arise with Localized product, it’s clear to these groups where the responsibility lies.

So in response to the initial question I posed, who’s responsible for Localization in your organization? The truth is, in the broadest sense of the term, “Localization”, that everyone at every level of your organization is responsible for Localization (If we take it that by Localization we are in fact referring to GILT).

Just because a Quality or Quality Assurance department may exist within an organization, this does not mean that quality is the sole responsibility of this department and is no longer a concern for the rest of the organization. Similarly Localization, or more accurately Globalization, must be a discrete function of every individual within your organization. If not, there will be an inevitable adverse impact on Internationalization and subsequently the quality of the localized end-product will suffer, as will sales in the target region for that localized product.

Each step within the Globalization, Internationalization, Localization chain will have an exponential impact on the next. If you don’t take your Globalization strategy seriously enough, then, in the absence of a firm mandate from the highest levels of your organization, Internationalization will suffer because there will be no development impetus to properly Internationalize your software. If the Internationalization effort is poor, Localization will be painful, perhaps even impossible within certain software features, and you will be looking at a lengthy delta between your domestic software release and your localized releases.

Conversely, if you start with a solid and coherent Globalization strategy that is communicated, in a relevant and contextual manner, to all levels within the organization, then Internationalization will be an integral part of the SDLC, Localization should be a straightforward, finite task, and you will be in a better position to achieve a Sim-Ship of domestic and localized software releases.

Some people may prefer to use the acronym GILT, some may prefer “glocalization”. For me, the answer to this conundrum, and to addressing people’s sometimes limited awareness of what Localization entails, does not lie in changing terms or the invention of new terms and pseudo-techno-babble. It’s too late. The horse has bolted on that one. It would be comparable to Apple insisting that people stop using “iPod” as a brand name and adopt another title for their pre-existing portable media players. Instead, I believe the answer lies in educating all the relevant stakeholders within an organization on the importance of G11n, I18n, and L10n and how these relate to them and various groups throughout the organization in terms of responsibilities.

So with this in mind, in upcoming posts I will take a look at the terms Globalization, Internationalization and Localization in more detail, their inter-dependent relationship, who owns what in terms of responsibilities, what they mean to your organization, and what you should know when endeavouring to sell software in a global marketplace.

Microblogging (Laconica, Twitter, etc.) is still a hot topic. For instance, during the past few episodes of This Week in Tech, comments were made about the preponderance of Twitter as a discussion theme: microblogging is so prominent on that show that some people complain that there’s too much talk about Twitter. Given the centrality of Leo Laporte’s podcast in geek culture (among Anglos, at least), such comments are significant.

The context for the latest comments about TWiT coverage of Twitter had to do with Twitter’s financials: during this financial crisis, Twitter is given funding without even asking for it. While it may seem surprising at first, given the fact that Twitter hasn’t publicized a business plan and doesn’t appear to be profitable at this time, 

Along with social networking, microblogging is even discussed in mainstream media. For instance, Médialogues (a media critique on Swiss national radio) recently had a segment about both Facebook and Twitter. Just yesterday, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart made fun of compulsive twittering and mainstream media coverage of Twitter (original, Canadian access).

Clearly, microblogging is getting some mindshare.

What the future holds for microblogging is clearly uncertain. Anything can happen. My guess is that microblogging will remain important for a while (at least a few years) but that it will transform itself rather radically. Chances are that other platforms will have microblogging features (something Facebook can do with status updates and something Automattic has been trying to do with some WordPress themes). In these troubled times, Montreal startup Identi.ca received some funding to continue developing its open microblogging platform.  Jaiku, bought by Google last year, is going open source, which may be good news for microblogging in general. Twitter itself might maintain its “marketshare” or other players may take over. There’s already a large number of third-party tools and services making use of Twitter, from Mahalo Answers to Remember the Milk, Twistory to TweetDeck.

Together, these all point to the current importance of microblogging and the potential for further development in that sphere. None of this means that microblogging is “The Next Big Thing.” But it’s reasonable to expect that microblogging will continue to grow in use.

(Those who are trying to grok microblogging, Common Craft’s Twitter in Plain English video is among the best-known descriptions of Twitter and it seems like an efficient way to “get the idea.”)

One thing which is rarely mentioned about microblogging is the prominent social structure supporting it. Like “Social Networking Systems” (LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, MySpace…), microblogging makes it possible for people to “connect” to one another (as contacts/acquaintances/friends). Like blogs, microblogging platforms make it possible to link to somebody else’s material and get notifications for some of these links (a bit like pings and trackbacks). Like blogrolls, microblogging systems allow for lists of “favourite authors.” Unlike Social Networking Systems but similar to blogrolls, microblogging allow for asymmetrical relations, unreciprocated links: if I like somebody’s microblogging updates, I can subscribe to those (by “following” that person) and publicly show my appreciation of that person’s work, regardless of whether or not this microblogger likes my own updates.

There’s something strangely powerful there because it taps the power of social networks while avoiding tricky issues of reciprocity, “confidentiality,” and “intimacy.”

From the end user’s perspective, microblogging contacts may be easier to establish than contacts through Facebook or Orkut. From a social science perspective, microblogging links seem to approximate some of the fluidity found in social networks, without adding much complexity in the description of the relationships. Subscribing to someone’s updates gives me the role of “follower” with regards to that person. Conversely, those I follow receive the role of “following” (“followee” would seem logical, given the common “-er”/”-ee” pattern). The following and follower roles are complementary but each is sufficient by itself as a useful social link.

Typically, a microblogging system like Twitter or Identi.ca qualifies two-way connections as “friendship” while one-way connections could be labelled as “fandom” (if Andrew follows Betty’s updates but Betty doesn’t follow Andrew’s, Andrew is perceived as one of Betty’s “fans”). Profiles on microblogging systems are relatively simple and public, allowing for low-involvement online “presence.” As long as updates are kept public, anybody can connect to anybody else without even needing an introduction. In fact, because microblogging systems send notifications to users when they get new followers (through email and/or SMS), subscribing to someone’s update is often akin to introducing yourself to that person. 

Reciprocating is the object of relatively intense social pressure. A microblogger whose follower:following ratio is far from 1:1 may be regarded as either a snob (follower:following much higher than 1:1) or as something of a microblogging failure (follower:following much lower than 1:1). As in any social context, perceived snobbery may be associated with sophistication but it also carries opprobrium. Perry Belcher  made a video about what he calls “Twitter Snobs” and some French bloggers have elaborated on that concept. (Some are now claiming their right to be Twitter Snobs.) Low follower:following ratios can result from breach of etiquette (for instance, ostentatious self-promotion carried beyond the accepted limit) or even non-human status (many microblogging accounts are associated to “bots” producing automated content).

The result of the pressure for reciprocation is that contacts are reciprocated regardless of personal relations.  Some users even set up ways to automatically follow everyone who follows them. Despite being tricky, these methods escape the personal connection issue. Contrary to Social Networking Systems (and despite the term “friend” used for reciprocated contacts), following someone on a microblogging service implies little in terms of friendship.

One reason I personally find this fascinating is that specifying personal connections has been an important part of the development of social networks online. For instance, long-defunct SixDegrees.com (one of the earliest Social Networking Systems to appear online) required of users that they specified the precise nature of their relationship to users with whom they were connected. Details escape me but I distinctly remember that acquaintances, colleagues, and friends were distinguished. If I remember correctly, only one such personal connection was allowed for any pair of users and this connection had to be confirmed before the two users were linked through the system. Facebook’s method to account for personal connections is somewhat more sophisticated despite the fact that all contacts are labelled as “friends” regardless of the nature of the connection. The uniform use of the term “friend” has been decried by many public commentators of Facebook (including in the United States where “friend” is often applied to any person with whom one is simply on friendly terms).

In this context, the flexibility with which microblogging contacts are made merits consideration: by allowing unidirectional contacts, microblogging platforms may have solved a tricky social network problem. And while the strength of the connection between two microbloggers is left unacknowledged, there are several methods to assess it (for instance through replies and republished updates).

Social contacts are the very basis of social media. In this case, microblogging represents a step towards both simplified and complexified social contacts.

Which leads me to the theme which prompted me to start this blogpost: event-based microblogging.

I posted the following blog entry (in French) about event-based microblogging, back in November.

Microblogue d’événement

I haven’t received any direct feedback on it and the topic seems to have little echoes in the social media sphere.

During the last PodMtl meeting on February 18, I tried to throw my event-based microblogging idea in the ring. This generated a rather lengthy between a friend and myself. (Because I don’t want to put words in this friend’s mouth, who happens to be relatively high-profile, I won’t mention this friend’s name.) This friend voiced several objections to my main idea and I got to think about this basic notion a bit further. At the risk of sounding exceedingly opinionated, I must say that my friend’s objections actually comforted me in the notion that my “event microblog” idea makes a lot of sense.

The basic idea is quite simple: microblogging instances tied to specific events. There are technical issues in terms of hosting and such but I’m mostly thinking about associating microblogs and events.

What I had in mind during the PodMtl discussion has to do with grouping features, which are often requested by Twitter users (including by Perry Belcher who called out Twitter Snobs). And while I do insist on events as a basis for those instances (like groups), some of the same logic applies to specific interests. However, given the time-sensitivity of microblogging, I still think that events are more significant in this context than interests, however defined.

In the PodMtl discussion, I frequently referred to BarCamp-like events (in part because my friend and interlocutor had participated in a number of such events). The same concept applies to any event, including one which is just unfolding (say, assassination of Guinea-Bissau’s president or bombings in Mumbai).

Microblogging users are expected to think about “hashtags,” those textual labels preceded with the ‘#’ symbol which are meant to categorize microblogging updates. But hashtags are problematic on several levels.

• They require preliminary agreement among multiple microbloggers, a tricky proposition in any social media. “Let’s use #Bissau09. Everybody agrees with that?” It can get ugly and, even if it doesn’t, the process is awkward (especially for new users).
• Even if agreement has been reached, there might be discrepancies in the way hashtags are typed. “Was it #TwestivalMtl or #TwestivalMontreal, I forgot.”
• In terms of language economy, it’s unsurprising that the same hashtag would be used for different things. Is “#pcmtl” about Podcamp Montreal, about personal computers in Montreal, about PCM Transcoding Library…?
• Hashtags are frequently misunderstood by many microbloggers. Just this week, a tweep of mine (a “peep” on Twitter) asked about them after having been on Twitter for months.
• While there are multiple ways to track hashtags (including through SMS, in some regions), there is no way to further specify the tracked updates (for instance, by user).
• The distinction between a hashtag and a keyword is too subtle to be really useful. Twitter Search, for instance, lumps the two together.
• Hashtags take time to type. Even if microbloggers aren’t necessarily typing frantically, the time taken to type all those hashtags seems counterproductive and may even distract microbloggers.
• Repetitively typing the same string is a very specific kind of task which seems to go against the microblogging ethos, if not the cognitive processes associated with microblogging.
• The number of character in a hashtag decreases the amount of text in every update. When all you have is 140 characters at a time, the thirteen characters in “#TwestivalMtl” constitute almost 10% of your update.
• If the same hashtag is used by a large number of people, the visual effect can be that this hashtag is actually dominating the microblogging stream. Since there currently isn’t a way to ignore updates containing a certain hashtag, this effect may even discourage people from using a microblogging service.

There are multiple solutions to these issues, of course. Some of them are surely discussed among developers of microblogging systems. And my notion of event-specific microblogs isn’t geared toward solving these issues. But I do think separate instances make more sense than hashtags, especially in terms of specific events.

My friend’s objections to my event microblogging idea had something to do with visibility. It seems that this friend wants all updates to be visible, regardless of the context. While I don’t disagree with this, I would claim that it would still be useful to “opt out” of certain discussions when people we follow are involved. If I know that Sean is participating in a PHP conference and that most of his updates will be about PHP for a period of time, I would enjoy the possibility to hide PHP-related updates for a specific period of time. The reason I talk about this specific case is simple: a friend of mine has manifested some frustration about the large number of updates made by participants in Podcamp Montreal (myself included). Partly in reaction to this, he stopped following me on Twitter and only resumed following me after Podcamp Montreal had ended. In this case, my friend could have hidden Podcamp Montreal updates and still have received other updates from the same microbloggers.

To a certain extent, event-specific instances are a bit similar to “rooms” in MMORPG and other forms of real-time many-to-many text-based communication such as the nostalgia-inducing Internet Relay Chat. Despite Dave Winer’s strong claim to the contrary (and attempt at defining microblogging away from IRC), a microblogging instance could, in fact, act as a de facto chatroom. When such a structure is needed. Taking advantage of the work done in microblogging over the past year (which seems to have advanced more rapidly than work on chatrooms has, during the past fifteen years). Instead of setting up an IRC channel, a Web-based chatroom, or even a session on MSN Messenger, users could use their microblogging platform of choice and either decide to follow all updates related to a given event or simply not “opt-out” of following those updates (depending on their preferences). Updates related to multiple events are visible simultaneously (which isn’t really the case with IRC or chatrooms) and there could be ways to make event-specific updates more prominent. In fact, there would be easy ways to keep real-time statistics of those updates and get a bird’s eye view of those conversations.

And there’s a point about event-specific microblogging which is likely to both displease “alpha geeks” and convince corporate users: updates about some events could be “protected” in the sense that they would not appear in the public stream in realtime. The simplest case for this could be a company-wide meeting during which backchannel is allowed and even expected “within the walls” of the event. The “nothing should leave this room” attitude seems contradictory to social media in general, but many cases can be made for “confidential microblogging.” Microblogged conversations can easily be archived and these archives could be made public at a later date. Event-specific microblogging allows for some control of the “permeability” of the boundaries surrounding the event. ”But why would people use microblogging instead of simply talking to another?,” you ask. Several quick answers: participants aren’t in the same room, vocal communication is mostly single-channel, large groups of people are unlikely to communicate efficiently through oral means only, several things are more efficiently done through writing, written updates are easier to track and archive…

There are many other things I’d like to say about event-based microblogging but this post is already long. There’s one thing I want to explain, which connects back to the social network dimension of microblogging.

Events can be simplistically conceived as social contexts which bring people together. (Yes, duh!) Participants in a given event constitute a “community of experience” regardless of the personal connections between them. They may be strangers, ennemies, relatives, acquaintances, friends, etc. But they all share something. “Participation,” in this case, can be relatively passive and the difference between key participants (say, volunteers and lecturers in a conference) and attendees is relatively moot, at a certain level of analysis. The key, here, is the set of connections between people at the event.

These connections are a very powerful component of social networks. We typically meet people through “events,” albeit informal ones. Some events are explicitly meant to connect people who have something in common. In some circles, “networking” refers to something like this. The temporal dimension of social connections is an important one. By analogy to philosophy of language, the “first meeting” (and the set of “first impressions”) constitute the “baptism” of the personal (or social) connection. In social media especially, the nature of social connections tends to be monovalent enough that this “baptism event” gains special significance.

The online construction of social networks relies on a finite number of dimensions, including personal characteristics described in a profile, indirect connections (FOAF), shared interests, textual content, geographical location, and participation in certain activities. Depending on a variety of personal factors, people may be quite inclusive or rather exclusive, based on those dimensions. “I follow back everyone who lives in Austin” or “Only people I have met in person can belong to my inner circle.” The sophistication with which online personal connections are negotiated, along such dimensions, is a thing of beauty. In view of this sophistication, tools used in social media seem relatively crude and underdeveloped.

Going back to the (un)conference concept, the usefulness of having access to a list of all participants in a given event seems quite obvious. In an open event like BarCamp, it could greatly facilitate the event’s logistics. In a closed event with paid access, it could be linked to registration (despite geek resistance, closed events serve a purpose; one could even imagine events where attendance is free but the microblogging backchannel incurs a cost). In some events, everybody would be visible to everybody else. In others, there could be a sort of ACL for diverse types of participants. In some cases, people could be allowed to “lurk” without being seen while in others radically transparency could be enforced. For public events with all participants visible, lists of participants could be archived and used for several purposes (such as assessing which sessions in a conference are more popular or “tracking” event regulars).

One reason I keep thinking about event-specific microblogging is that I occasionally use microblogging like others use business cards. In a geek crowd, I may ask for someone’s Twitter username in order to establish a connection with that person. Typically, I will start following that person on Twitter and find opportunities to communicate with that person later on. Given the possibility for one-way relationships, it establishes a social connection without requiring personal involvement. In fact, that person may easily ignore me without the danger of a face threat.

If there were event-specific instances from microblogging platforms, we could manage connections and profiles in a more sophisticated way. For instance, someone could use a barebones profile for contacts made during an impersonal event and a full-fledged profile for contacts made during a more “intimate” event. After noticing a friend using an event-specific business card with an event-specific email address, I got to think that this event microblogging idea might serve as a way to fill a social need.

More than most of my other blogposts, I expect comments on this one. Objections are obviously welcomed, especially if they’re made thoughtfully (like my PodMtl friend made them). Suggestions would be especially useful. Or even questions about diverse points that I haven’t addressed (several of which I can already think about).

So…

What do you think of this idea of event-based microblogging? Would you use a microblogging instance linked to an event, say at an unconference? Can you think of fun features an event-based microblogging instance could have? If you think about similar ideas you’ve seen proposed online, care to share some links?

Thanks in advance!

Hello Y’all! 

Following up on the series of new literature it is the turn to Professor Ricardo Elizondo Elizondo.  Elizondo is a professor at Tec de Monterrey currently, guest lecturing and speaking of border and cultural issues. The book I had the pleasure to read written by him was “Narcedalia Piedrotas”.

This is a novel about the desert- the “no man’s land” for the Government- where mystic, excentric, beautiful, immigrant characters mix in a journey through the edges of the country and of language. NArcedalia, the main character, earns her name for being as tough as a rock, a “piedra”. Her husband, Valentín, gets involved with drug trafficking and drags his whole family into it. Only Narcedalia’s cunning might get them alive so she becomes a modern day “Godfather” like the cosa nostra for the Italians.

Elizondo reconstructed this book from his travels researching language changes and variations close to the border and in these travels he got to know of stories and towns that create new structures around drug trafficking. In places where the Government decides not to intervene, drug lords become leaders, heroes and saviors of those close to the border. A very interesting read, and a deep peer inside the newfound meaning for what being Mexican means close to the border.

Monterrey, 3rd largest city in Mexico and hometown to Elizondo, is part of the cultural phenomenon that involves border towns: drug lords and immigration.

Hello Y’all!

I have been thinking about what would Texican literature look like and have decided to devote a couple of posts to interesting reads that deal with the cultural identity of those who we born to Mexico, in fact or in their hearts, and have to live with both identities simultaneously while living in the US.

I remember taking a Latin American literature class a couple of semesters ago and my teacher being excited because a new hybrid literature is being born from what she calls “glocal” phenomenons. This means people are becoming aware of their role as local and global citizens, and this for writers means catering to stories of the region and making them global, universal, transcendent to other cultures. Im sure Morrocans in Spain can understand the plight of a Mexican worker in Texas, and that is the whole point.

Nobody does it better than master writer Carlos Fuentes. Fuentes has written dozens of books on history and mexican identity so he knows what kind of complex creatures Mexicans can be. The book I think best exemplifies the trials and tribulations of Texicans is “La frontera de Cristal” or “The Crystal Frontier”. This book is a collection of nine short stories that deal with the glass frontier that divides the US and Mexico.

“The glass border” is the one that separates Mexico and the United States: “an illusionary partition, porous, through which each year pass millions of people, ideas, merchandise, everything (in a whisper, contraband, drugs, counterfeit money).”- Fuentes

Its transparent glass allows us to see through it and in a way through ourselves as well. The border is a place of dreams and lost souls, of journeys and endings, of law and crime and passion. It is much more than just a separation between countries. It is a constant remainder of how different yet close we are.

This book talks about those left behind, those who leave, those trying to leave; like the struggle of a mother left alone by her husband who crosses the border to work the crops and she has to give birth to their son alone in a shack, or a couple of young men contemplating if they should just run across the border chancing the Border Patrol reaching and killing them, an old woman who takes care of the sons and daugthers of those who work on “the other side” during the week.

“The Crystal Frontier” is an excellent read for anyone who wishes to learn and experience this new wave in literature: coping with both our identities, our love for Mexico and our desire to be “as American as we can to fit in”.

Thousands of men leave their homes to find work and future in the US.

This entry is my attempt to summarize some of the key concepts that George Ritzer defines in his essay: “Rethinking Globalization: Glocalization/Grobalization and Something/Nothing”:

Globalisation can be referred to as a meta-term encompassing various sub-categories and areas. Both grobalisation and glocalisation are encompassed by globalisation. Glocalisation refers to the global and the local (the affects and relationship between both), whereas grobalisation (a term coined by Ritzer) focuses more on the imperialistic influence and imposition of “nations, corporations, organisations and other entities” on numerous geographical areas. The other key focus of the essay is on the concept of something and nothing. Ritzer uses the following table to introduce the terms:

Something                                               Nothing

Place (community bank)                             Nonplace (credit card company)

Thing (personal loan)                                  Nothing (credit card loan)

Person (personal banker)                             Nonperson (telemarketer)

Service (individual assistence)                      Nonservice (automatic, dial-up aid)

I initially understood the concept that he was trying to convey as “something” being a physical attribute and “nothing” being a non-physical attribute. However I initially misconstrued this idea; possibly because the diagram is (I found) quite misleading. The rest of the essay elaborates on the concept of something and nothing making it easier to grasp the idea. I will introduce the terms here: something refers to (typically) an entity produced locally e.g. a handmade scarf (for the example of a thing), or a knowledgeable tour guide (for the example of a person). Nothing can refer to anything mass-produced (e.g. an London bus keyring with a “made in China” sticker stuck to the bottom of it) or a chain store/franchise restaurant (as an example of a nonplace). So the physicality of each does not bear any relevance. It is worth noting that both something and nothing must be juxtaposed with each other or else they would not exist (although it is worth discussing them as a dichotomy).

This gives a brief definition to the terms that Ritzer discusses in his essay. Furthermore he discusses the correlation between glocalisation, grobalisation, something and nothing (this is what I really struggled to get my head around).

Ritzer suggests grobalisation often goes hand in hand with nothing and glocalisation often goes hand in hand with something. I will elaborate:

Glocalisation and something

Ritzer gives the example of glocal things being (for example) handmade/crafted souvenirs made and sold by locals then sold to tourists (hence the global part). However Ritzer suggests that these can often be more expensive and sometimes not as appealing to the tourists as, say, a mass-produced tourist souvenir (e.g. a cheap fake tomahawk with the made in China sticker on it (it is both cheaper and safer)). *As a side note it would be interesting to explore Ritzers ideas in relation to authenticity, as I think there could be some interesting debates.

Grobalisation and nothing

Grobalisation dominates the consumerism market. It encompasses such brands as McDonalds, Starbucks, Borders, Sony, Disney (including Disneyland) and the list goes on and on. The majority of the products that these huge multinationals produce are “nothing” (mass-produced, delivered by nonpeople (McDonalds cashiers)).

Of course there are exceptions that are explored in fully in the essay. But briefly glocalisation and nothing could be mass produced tourist souvenirs, and grobalisation and something could be a rock band performing at local venues in different areas around the world.

There is one thing I am quite perplexed by and that is how all of this can relate to the internet?

I found the essay interesting and if you wish to read it it can be found here

Good morning everyone, bright day isn’t?

Ok, here are the words for today:

GLOBALIZATION, GLOCALIZATION, and GROBALIZATION.

These words are derived from this word: McDONALDIZATION.

Seems familiar to you? I’ll describe it to you later. For now, I’ll grab my quick lunch first. Ciao.

I hate having an axe to grind. Really, I do. “It’s unlike me.” When I notice that I catch myself grinding an axe, I “get on my own case.” I can be quite harsh with my own self.

But I’ve been trained to voice my concerns. And I’ve been perceiving an important social problem for a while.

So I “can’t keep quiet about it.”

If everything goes really well, posting this blog entry might be liberating enough that I will no longer have any axe to grind. Even if it doesn’t go as well as I hope, it’ll be useful to keep this post around so that people can understand my position.

Because I don’t necessarily want people to agree with me. I mostly want them to understand “where I come from.”

So, here goes:

Journalism may have outlived its usefulness.

Like several other “-isms” (including nationalism, colonialism, imperialism, and racism) journalism is counterproductive in the current state of society.

This isn’t an ethical stance, though there are ethical positions which go with it. It’s a statement about the anachronic nature of journalism. As per functional analysis, everything in society needs a function if it is to be maintained. What has been known as journalism is now taking new functions. Eventually, “journalism as we know it” should, logically, make way for new forms.

What these new forms might be, I won’t elaborate in this post. I have multiple ideas, especially given well-publicised interests in social media. But this post isn’t about “the future of journalism.”

It’s about the end of journalism.

Or, at least, my looking forward to the end of journalism.

Now, I’m not saying that journalists are bad people and that they should just lose their jobs. I do think that those who were trained as journalists need to retool themselves, but this post isn’t not about that either.

It’s about an axe I’ve been grinding.

See, I can admit it, I’ve been making some rather negative comments about diverse behaviours and statements, by media people. It has even become a habit of mine to allow myself to comment on something a journalist has said, if I feel that there is an issue.

Yes, I know: journalists are people too, they deserve my respect.

And I do respect them, the same way I respect every human being. I just won’t give them the satisfaction of my putting them on a pedestal. In my mind, journalists are people: just like anybody else. They deserve no special treatment. And several of them have been arrogant enough that I can’t help turning their arrogance back to them.

Still, it’s not about journalist as people. It’s about journalism “as an occupation.” And as a system. An outdated system.

Speaking of dates, some context…

I was born in 1972 and, originally,I was quite taken by journalism.

By age twelve, I was pretty much a news junkie. Seriously! I was “consuming” a lot of media at that point. And I was “into” media. Mostly television and radio, with some print mixed in, as well as lots of literary work for context: this is when I first read French and Russian authors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I kept thinking about what was happening in The World. Back in 1984, the Cold War was a major issue. To a French-Canadian tween, this mostly meant thinking about the fact that there were (allegedly) US and USSR “bombs pointed at us,” for reasons beyond our direct control.

“Caring about The World” also meant thinking about all sorts of problems happening across The Globe. Especially poverty, hunger, diseases, and wars. I distinctly remember caring about the famine in Ethiopia. And when We Are the World started playing everywhere, I felt like something was finally happening.

This was one of my first steps toward cynicism. And I’m happy it occured at age twelve because it allowed me to eventually “snap out of it.” Oh, sure, I can still be a cynic on occasion. But my cynicism is contextual. I’m not sure things would have been as happiness-inducing for me if it hadn’t been for that early start in cynicism.

Because, you see, The World disinterested itself quite rapidly with the plight of Ethiopians. I distinctly remember asking myself, after the media frenzy died out, what had happened to Ethiopians in the meantime. I’m sure there has been some report at the time claiming that the famine was over and that the situation was “back to normal.” But I didn’t hear anything about it, and I was looking. As a twelve-year-old French-Canadian with no access to a modem, I had no direct access to information about the situation in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia still remained as a symbol, to me, of an issue to be solved. It’s not the direct cause of my later becoming an africanist. But, come to think of it, there might be a connection, deeper down than I had been looking.

So, by the end of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85, I was “losing my faith in” journalism.

I clearly haven’t gained a new faith in journalism. And it all makes me feel quite good, actually. I simply don’t need that kind of faith. I was already training myself to be a critical thinker. Sounds self-serving? Well, sorry. I’m just being honest. What’s a blog if the author isn’t honest and genuine?

Flash forward to 1991, when I started formal training in anthropology. The feeling was exhilarating. I finally felt like I belonged. My statement at the time was to the effect that “I wasn’t meant for anthropology: anthropology was meant for me!” And I was learning quite a bit about/from The World. At that point, it already did mean “The Whole Wide World,” even though my knowledge of that World was fairly limited. And it was a haven of critical thinking.

Ideal, I tell you. Moan all you want, it felt like the ideal place at the ideal time.

And, during the summer of 1993, it all happened: I learnt about the existence of the “Internet.” And it changed my life. Seriously, the ‘Net did have a large part to play in important changes in my life.

That event, my discovery of the ‘Net, also has a connection to journalism. The person who described the Internet to me was Kevin Tuite, one of my linguistic anthropology teachers at Université de Montréal. As far as I can remember, Kevin was mostly describing Usenet. But the potential for “relatively unmediated communication” was already a big selling point. Kevin talked about the fact that members of the Caucasian diaspora were able to use the Internet to discuss with their relatives and friends back in the Caucasus about issues pertaining to these independent republics after the fall of the USSR. All this while media coverage was sketchy at best (sounded like journalism still had a hard time coping with the new realities).

As you can imagine, I was more than intrigued and I applied for an account as soon as possible. In the meantime, I bought at 2400 baud modem, joined some local BBSes, and got to chat about the Internet with several friends, some of whom already had accounts. Got my first email account just before semester started, in August, 1993. I can still see traces of that account, but only since April, 1994 (I guess I wasn’t using my address in my signature before this). I’ve been an enthusiastic user of diverse Internet-based means of communication since then.

But coming back to journalism, specifically…

Journalism missed the switch.

During the past fifteen years, I’ve been amazed at how clueless members of mainstream media institutions have been to “the power of the Internet.” This was during Wired Magazine’s first year as a print magazine and we (some friends and I) were already commenting upon the fact that print journalists should look at what was coming. Eventually, they would need to adapt. “The Internet changes everything,” I thought.

No, I didn’t mean that the Internet would cause any of the significant changes that we have seeing around us. I tend to be against technological determinism (and other McLuhan tendencies). Not that I prefer sociological determinism yet I can’t help but think that, from ARPAnet to the current state of the Internet, most of the important changes have been primarily social: if the Internet became something, it’s because people are making it so, not because of some inexorable technological development.

My enthusiastic perspective on the Internet was largely motivated by the notion that it would allow people to go beyond the model from the journalism era. Honestly, I could see the end of “journalism as we knew it.” And I’m surprised, fifteen years later, that journalism has been among the slowest institutions to adapt.

In a sense, my main problem with journalism is that it maintains a very stratified structure which gives too much weight to the credibility of specific individuals. Editors and journalists, who are part of the “medium” in the old models of communication, have taken on a gatekeeping role despite the fact that they rarely are much more proficient thinkers than people who read them. “Gatekeepers” even constitute a “textbook case” in sociology, especially in conflict theory. Though I can easily perceive how “constructed” that gatekeeping model may be, I can easily relate to what it entails in terms of journalism.

There’s a type of arrogance embedded in journalistic self-perception: “we’re journalists/editors so we know better than you; you need us to process information for you.” Regardless of how much I may disagree with some of his words and actions, I take solace in the fact that Murdoch, a key figure in today’s mainstream media, talked directly at this arrogance. Of course, he might have been pandering. But the very fact that he can pay lip-service to journalistic arrogance is, in my mind, quite helpful.

I think the days of fully stratified gatekeeping (a “top-down approach” to information filtering) are over. Now that information is easily available and that knowledge is constructed socially, any “filtering” method can be distributed. I’m not really thinking of a “cream rises to the top” model. An analogy with water sources going through multiple layers of mountain rock would be more appropriate to a Swiss citizen such as myself. But the model I have in mind is more about what Bakhtin called “polyvocality” and what has become an ethical position on “giving voice to the other.” Journalism has taken voice away from people. I have in mind a distributed mode of knowledge construction which gives everyone enough voice to have long-distance effects.

At the risk of sounding too abstract (it’s actually very clear in my mind, but it requires a long description), it’s a blend of ideas like: the social butterfly effect, a post-encyclopedic world, and cultural awareness. All of these, in my mind, contribute to this heightened form of critical thinking away from which I feel journalism has led us.

The social butterfly effect is fairly easy to understand, especially now that social networks are so prominent. Basically, the “butterfly effect” from chaos theory applied to social networks. In this context, a “social butterfly” is a node in multiple networks of varying degrees of density and clustering. Because such a “social butterfly” can bring things (ideas, especially) from one such network to another, I argue that her or his ultimate influence (in agregate) is larger than that of someone who sits at the core of a highly clustered network. Yes, it’s related to “weak ties” and other network classics. But it’s a bit more specific, at least in my mind. In terms of journalism, the social butterfly effect implies that the way knowledge is constructed needs not come from a singular source or channel.

The “encyclopedic world” I have in mind is that of our good friends from the French Enlightenment: Diderot and the gang. At that time, there was a notion that the sum of all knowledge could be contained in the Encyclopédie. Of course, I’m simplifying. But such a notion is still discussed fairly frequently. The world in which we now live has clearly challenged this encyclopedic notion of exhaustiveness. Sure, certain people hold on to that notion. But it’s not taken for granted as “uncontroversial.” Actually, those who hold on to it tend to respond rather positively to the journalistic perspective on human events. As should be obvious, I think the days of that encyclopedic worldview are counted and that “journalism as we know it” will die at the same time. Though it seems to be built on an “encyclopedia” frame, Wikipedia clearly benefits from distributed model of knowledge management. In this sense, Wikipedia is less anachronistic than Britannica. Wikipedia also tends to be more insightful than Britannica.

The cultural awareness point may sound like an ethnographer’s pipe dream. But I perceive a clear connection between Globalization and a certain form of cultural awareness in information and knowledge management. This is probably where the Global Voices model can come in. One of the most useful representations of that model comes from a Chris Lydon’s Open Source conversation with Solana Larsen and Ethan Zuckerman. Simply put, I feel that this model challenges journalism’s ethnocentrism.

Obviously, I have many other things to say about journalism (as well as about its corrolate, nationalism).

But I do feel liberated already. So I’ll leave it at that.