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February 10, 2006: Tools for Considering New Media

In McLuhan for Managers (Viking Canada, 2003) Derrick de Kerkckhove and Mark Federman don’t provide “seven habits of successful companies” or a new strategy for business success. They offer four questions that were originally asked in Marshall McLuhan’s 1964 book Understanding Media.

This ultimately makes de Kerkckhove and Federman’s book a far more timeless work. It provides a mechanism to step outside the current mindset and ask, “What haven’t we noticed lately?” Granted, the questions address media; but modes of communication are fundamental forces in the businesses and marketing. In McLuhan’s words, the “medium is the message” that our customers and employees are responding to.

February 07, 2006: Dots and Dashes Make Way for Dot Com

On Jan. 27, Western Union transmitted its last telegram. While most considered the 162-year-old dots-and-dashes technology quaint, it easily leads the list as the communication medium that had the most dramatic impact on society.

The Internet, the printing press and radio all changed culture in important ways; but they all grew out of previous communication forms. The electromagnetic telegraph was fundamentally different from anything that came before. Once telegraph wires came to town, the community was connected to the world. Messages from across the nation, and eventually around the world, could be sent and received almost instantly. The results of elections, military battles and the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk were known within hours, rather than weeks.

February 03, 2006: Politicians Attempt to Spin Wikipedia Listings

The Internet should present a variety of opinions… unless those opinions make you look bad or your opponents look good.

That’s been the approach of some in Congress who have recently been caught editing Wikipedia listings with a heavy hand.

Last week, the Lowell (Mass.) Sun reported that Rep. Marty Meehan’s (D-Mass.) staff admitted altering his listing to remove unflattering information, including a broken term-limit promise and his accumulation of $4.8 million in campaign funding, a figure far beyond that of any other House member.

February 01, 2006: Yahoo Takes Heat for Human Rights Violations

While many would argue that opening up business relationships in China has lead to greater freedoms, it’s also put businesses in a position to impact human rights issues.

As noted in an earlier blog, a few U.S. companies have been criticized for helping totalitarian governments censor the information and sites that users can access. Now, Yahoo has come under fire from Amnesty International for identifying a Chinese journalist who had disclosed a Communist Party directive instructing the media to downplay the June 4 anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre.

January 30, 2006: Apple Not Afraid to Flush Old Technology

David Pogue’s recent overview of the new Intel-based Macintosh computers provides some valuable insights into the next-generation laptop and desktops models recently unveiled by Apple. Pogue presents a number of useful observations that anyone considering a new computer (Mac or PC) should consider.

January 27, 2006: New Economy Less About Immediate Gratification Than We Thought

John Hagel’s Edge Perspectives blog provides some interesting insights into globalization and the impact of the Internet on the global economy.

Among the problems he identifies in several posts is the tendency of companies to focus on short-term savings from suppliers, thereby creating an ongoing adversarial relationship that doesn’t ultimately serve either party well. Hagel suggests that a better solution is to cultivate long-term supplier relationships that can lead to better responsiveness and greater flexibility. He identifies this as one of the major problems that has placed U.S.-based automakers behind the competition.

January 25, 2006: Governmental Censorship Derails Internet Promise

The borderless Internet may have been the goal, but government interference into the free flow of information has put serious restrictions on the liberating effect that might have had on culture and society. The Open Net Initiative, sponsored by the University of Toronto, Harvard and Cambridge Universities, is focusing its research on what individual governments are doing to control information flow, and the impact this has had on politics, human rights, state sovereignty and law.

January 23, 2006: Selling Our Souls for Security Checks

The Transportation Safety Administration has followed the Bush Administration’s directive by offering private companies the option of creating “express lanes” for travelers who want to avoid delays at airport security checkpoints

The agency, which has recently been criticized for a variety of blunders including stopping a 4-year-old boy whose name was similar to one on a terrorism watch list, will require that program applicants undergo a government background check and submit 10 fingerprints that will be stored on a digital identification card.

January 19, 2006: Another Stab at Electronic Books

In light of Sony’s poorly managed rootkit fiasco, the introduction of the Reader for electronic books offers the company an opportunity to redeem itself, and put some exciting new technology in the hands of consumers. (The Reader is an updated version of the Librie, which was released last year in Japan. The product received bad press because of its high cost and its digital rights management software that automatically deleted purchased ebooks after 60 days.)

January 17, 2006: Scientists "Backing Up" Grain Varieties

The facility would make the villain from a James Bond film envious — a concrete bunker with blast-proof doors carved out of a mountain on an island off the coast of Norway. Inside, the permafrost will provide a cool environment for storage of every known variety of crop seed.

The goal of the seed repository — construction is slated to begin next year — will be to ensure that a global disaster would not wipe out essential crop species. Currently, there are about 1,400 seed banks around the world, but many are located in politically or environmentally unstable areas.

January 16, 2006: Copyright Battles Heat Up Abroad

Copyright law is a dinosaur; or maybe, calling it a BetaMax would be more appropriate. Like the ill-fated video tape format,  intellectual property law had its place in history, but it simply doesn’t work with current technology anymore. Recent battles over implementation of copyright laws in France and Canada illustrate the need to rethink issues of content ownership.

January 13, 2006: The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be

By the 1980s, we were supposed to travel by jet-pack while robot housekeepers cooked our meals. At least that’s the high-tech view of the future that science fiction writers presented in the 1950s. Today, the future isn’t such a distant vision: it’s happening in our lifetimes.

The Lemelson-MIT Program, which celebrates innovation and inventors, recently polled high school students on their view of the future. Virtually all of them predicted dramatic technological advancements during their lifetimes and most felt comfortable dealing with those rapid changes.