Category: culture-and-politics
Yet another campaign for a english (silicon valley) techhub
So I started to write a comment to this TechCrunchUK blog post. But decided it was worth writing a blog post instead.
So a quick overview of the blog post. Mike Butcher went to Dublin to check out Digital Hub which is funded by the Irish government. He then launches into a pled for the same thing in the UK. He names it the Techhub and starts to say it should be based in London.
But I think it ought to be in London. Why? Simple really. Money, access and the networks inside London. Startups can make use of the amazing access to the wealth of mentoring, venture capital and talent here. I know there is an argument for creating other centres around the UK. But the classic clustering effect created by Silicon Valley would be replicated by concentrating efforts on one geographical area.
Yawn! I've heard it all before, and to be frank its getting a little tired. What is it with people and big shiny shiny central locations? What would this all achieve? Remember the dome people dummys! What about all the other simular activities going on all across the country? Liverpool where I was tonight has something like this, Manchester already has the MDDA and is working with many others on Media City UK, even Bristol now has the iShed project which i'm hearing so much about. Yeah forget all those, lets build another one bigger that everyone elses. Also what is the need to duplicate Silicon Valley in the UK? We should be building on our strengths and building the next, not a copy of the past.
What really gets me is, what is techcrunchuk going to do to make this all happen? Seriously, what practically are they going to do?
I was talking to the people at Geekup Liverpool today and explaining how Geekdinners changed over time and how it was different from other events in London at the time. The point I was making, was that when I first moved to London, I got fed up of the events I was going to. So I did something about it. I made something happen. I mean for example, the Techcrunch tours, what happened to those? What came out of them? Anyway, Mike jokes at the end…
This is going to require people from government to get involved. I may even have to kidnap Boris Johnson and hold him to ransom.
I'm not advocating kidnap, but hell if you could get some action by fingering through that massive contact list you must have and pulling some strings to get something done. Then great do it. But till then, I don't really want to hear anything more about techhub. Support whats currently going on across the country before thinking up yet another version of the same.
Rant over….sorry mike but its frustrating to see what people are doing across the UK and your advocating something which doesn't seem to help them or the industry in a meaningful way.
Social Enginnering at any cost?
I was waiting for my train for Manchester today at London Euston. A old woman comes up to me and asks me, if I'm from Kenya, I say no and she thinks for a second and then asks me if I'm from Africa. I say no once again and she then asks where I am from? I say the UK and she gives me a funny look and asks wheres my parents from? I say the Caribbean and in return she takes a second and says can I give her 4 pounds. I look at her and wait for her to say more about why she needed the money but it doesn't come. So I say, I only do cards, I don't have any cash at all (which if you know me well, is very true actually). Anyway, she turns away and just walks away.
The whole thing lasted less that a minute, I was thinking afterwards while running for the train so I can get a seat with a table (I got one, facing backwards). She didn't even ask for spare change or a low amount of money, I mean would you give someone you don't know a fiver for no reason? Anyway, also the repour thing was quite laughable and i'm never the kind of person who goes for that whole thing. Yo yo, were from the same city, now give me a fiver.
Cheating for the right reasons
So I only watched the film Cheaters. It was excellent and put across the true story really well. Anyway here's a really good user comment which sums up my thoughts.
What I absolutely loved about this movie is the fact that it displays a genuine moral dilemma without necessarily preaching anything. It doesn't provide viewers a standpoint for moral ascendancy, instead, the viewers get the pleasure of interpreting the situation, thus gaining that threshold for ascendancy.
I'd say the film did play out a bias, and the bias was in favor of the students from Steimetz High. I'd say that it is rather a fair bias, because it is rare to see the cheaters as the protagonist. Amidst this, they weren't portrayed as the over-glamorized heroes that will promote a cheating society. What John Stockwell did was to give us a dose of reality, an arena for sympathize with cheaters, at the same time, displaying the consequences of the human act.
I love the mixture of documentary footages. Opening Credits was awesome, wherein there were raw footage in grainy stock of actual American high school. It played greatly on the emotional framework that the film worked on and I'm so glad my parents were able to find a copy of the film on DVD.
Nice work John Stockwell, I don't usually like Jeff Daniels but he did a great job in this film. If you get the chance to see this film, do watch it, you won't be disappointed.
I love these moral dilemma's and coming from a not so great school I can certainly agree with what they did. Sometimes you do need to break the rules to get things changed or at least make a difference. This isn't justification to break the rules but I guess most people know when the right time is.
Technorati Tags: cheating, cheaters, documentary, dilemma, moraldilemma, morality, dvd, film
Manipulation of women or just a upper hand in the game?
Rules Of The Game – Episode 1: Be A D–khead
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I'm sorry but as far as I'm concerned its manipulation and I really don't like it. What am I talking about? Well shows like the one above (cheers Dave for the link). The weird thing is its not exactly the show aspect which is the problem, its the pure social engineering aspect of it to trick women into giving out there numbers, going on a date or getting them into bed.
Yes I know its a bloody complex issue because you could say well we all use manipulation to a certain extent but this is something else and the reasoning behind it is for pure personal gain which in my book is not cool. What I don't get is what do these guys think will happen in the future? Are they expecting to keep up the act, show or persona forever? Maybe?
So yes I've opened a huge box of topics in this very short post. And I keep rewriting rants about social engineering, confiedence, social control and ultimatly Neuro-linguistic programming. We should be teaching this stuff in schools so everyone can protect themselves from con artists and social hackers like some people I know. I made reference to the real hustle in a previous blog post educating the masses about these such topics but we kind of need a show to talk about protecting yourself from the opposite sex (or same sex if you prefer). Don't get me wrong I'm not a player-hater as such but I don't feel it fair someone holds an advantage over someone else, specially when it comes to the painful world of mating or dating.
Technorati Tags: dating, thegame, mating, nlp, socialengineering, social, manipulation, women, men, sex, love, con
Sam Sethi in hotwater once again
So I'm late to all this because I was tied up with meetings all day for reasons which will come out soon. But Sam Sethi of Blognation is in trouble again. I only heard about it from John tonight at the girl geekdinner christmas party (good party, shame I came late and didnt win the xbox 360, specially after the previous blog entry). And yes John was right, its now across many blogs and its become a real meal of a story now.
I don't usually read the over gossip driven valleywag but they have a decent summary.
In short, Starr charges, Sethi hasn't funded BlogNation, can't pay his contributors, lies to the press and his employees, and will have a hard time raising funding because he is a liar, not a CEO. Imagine that: Oliver Starr, burning bridges?
In this case, no one wins but Arrington. Never one to shy from a nerdfight, the prickly blog impresario has had a running feud with his former coworkers. If BlogNation ceases to exist, they'll be missed — if only for the entertaining feud.
There right about Arrington winning. Blognation was a good idea and actually had legs. Now I don't know Oliver Starr that well but when I read what Nicole Simon had to say, I was disappointed. Nicole is a very straight down the line kind of person, a person who I certainly trust and it sounds like she was getting a bit of a run around too.
Although I believed 100% that my hiatus would just be a temporary thing until payment would be in and then I would go back and continue working, it becomes now clear to me that this is unlikely to happen. I assume that I will find my postings deleted as are Oliver's soon, but of course I do have backups as well as documentation of posted items. Just because I am trusting other people does not mean that I am stupid.
No Nicole your not stupid, even Sam asked me to write on blognation at one point. (Imagine that, dyslexic writer?)
Anyway Sam did briefly reply on Techcrunch and Twitter saying Techcrunch isn't as clean as they may think. I'm sure Sam will more to say about this all soon, maybe via Jemima Kiss this time around? then maybe get back to unbalancing the mighty grip arrington has over this area of the startup business?
Reading the Cluetrain by our PR lady
Our PR lady started reading the Cluetrain Manfesto after I gave her a copy to read. She seems to be reading through it slowly but at the same time its brought up more questions that I'd expected. So I suggested to her that she should blog internally or even externally about reading through the book. So I was kinda of shocked when she agreed… And now reading the cluetrain is born.
I think its really good to see our PR lady blogging, shes quite strange in a nice way. Kind of person who would forgive you at that moment but would never forget what you did. Anyway, shes been willing to learn about the changes online markets make to PR and thats a really good thing. Please check out her blog, as she really wants comments and constructive ideas around what she reads and blogs.
Suicide bombings virtually, same as in reality?
Found via Bruce Schneier's blog. An awesome thought about how the psychological make up of being the underdog in a asymmetrical war forces you to rethink the sacrifice involved.
Interesting and thoughtful article about suicide attacks in the online video game Halo 3:
Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I'm only making it easier for them to shoot me — and thus I'm marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero.
But at the last second, before I die, I'll whip out a sticky plasma grenade — and throw it at them. Because I've run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I'll die — but he'll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off. (When you pull off the trick, the game pops up a little dialog box noting that you killed someone “from beyond the grave.”)
It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber — or a kamikaze pilot.
It's not just that I'm willing to sacrifice my life to kill someone else. It's that I'm exploiting the psychology of asymmetrical warfare.
Because after all, the really elite Halo players don't want to die. If they die too often, they won't win the round, and if they don't win the round, they won't advance up the Xbox Live rankings. And for the elite players, it's all about bragging rights.
I, however, have a completely different psychology. I know I'm the underdog; I know I'm probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I'm poor.
Women in Games London Mixer video posted and more…
Its been a really busy week and I've still not quite got around to blogging most of it but I did want to say (quickly) that the Videos for the Women in Games Mixer videos (part 1 and part 2) are now up on BlipTV. As usual unedited and under a creative commons licence, so you can edit the best bits if you like. Nothing to stimulating but interesting. Good work Thayer.
You can also find the boagworld 100th Live meetup video at the same place this time in 4 parts. Expect to hear audio from the Will Wright Lecture, some shouting about how Andrew 'amatuers are killing the industry' Keen got a frosty reception at the Arts Council and some writing about other games related events soon. Still I can't believe I missed Toshio demonstrating Electroplankton at ZeroOne, I would have paid to have been there. Anyway, don't forget today is the Geekdinner with the Wii and Thursday a Geekdinner with Stowe Boyd.
BBC.co.uk 2.0, why it will happen
So since my post in reply of Jason's post there's been a lot of discussion and conversation. Technorati as usual doesn't quite get as close as Google. Either way, its the emails and im's I've been getting which are also interesting. Most people have been really supportive, while others have been less that supportive. They felt I was slagging off the BBC and making things worst by talking about my own views. I mean how dare I express my own personal views on my own personal blog right? The same blog which has the subtitle, The views and thoughts of a dyslexic British designer/developer. Anyway, its late again but I'm going to finish what I was writing before as somethings were not explicit.
When out and about people ask me many things about the BBC, one of which is about the iplayer. Even in Boston, people once they know you work for the BBC wanted to know more about the decisions which formed to create the iplayer. They ask if I use it myself and I say no. Most ask why, and I try and explain my media consumption diet in a short period of time. But the main point is people ask, I'm sure all BBC employees get this? Its great, people are very interested in consuming BBC content and services but are very puzzled about the whole DRM issue. They ask why would a public broadcaster apply DRM to its content? Some more clued up people ask the same question and then point out that our analogue and dtv content has no such restrictions. Yes the BBC puts out press releases and has a official website with discussion boards (not indexed by google), but people still ask. So I put across the point of most of the content we play on TV, we only have broadcast rights to and that indies own a good proportaion of the content rights which goes out. However the question remains why DRM?
Some of my non-supporter, seem to think its just the geek world which are upset about this. Well we have to remember its the geeks which are fixing and installing stuff on their parents computer come Christmas time, geeks that are willing to test drive a beta service/product like iplayer and finally geeks who lead the way into the mainstream market. So thats a sure reminder not to just write off this stuff to geeks. However what also prompted my other post was this video by Robert Llwellyn. Its a rant and his own view but its interesting to note, like I have done up till now, Robert bundles the iplayer into one. Yes and that is the vision but has also wound people up royally. So to explicit here, when I say iplayer is a mess and I'm sure when most people say they hate the iplayer, its not because of the system behind it or the interface or the delivery system or even the quality of the video. No its all down to the DRM. The DRM is so attached to the iplayer, and because of it over 2mins of Roberts rant was about DRM in iplayer.
The iplayer team have worked damm hard on a good solid product/service and are hearing lots of negative comments about the iplayer when actually people mean the DRM. However, because the whole service is robustly built, I'm sure it will out live its current form and who knows whats around the corner?
Right to address, if I should be talking on my blog about this stuff. This seems to rub a lot of people up the wrong way., some seem to think I might be bigging myself up at the expense of the BBC. Well I'm not and I'm not going to let you guys bring me down. I love working at the BBC and love my job, its ground breaking and I go places and speak to people most never get a chance. So, I want to make meaning and I believe the BBC is capable of moving into the next curve with its unique funding model. Unlike Jason, I think its unique public funding model will be an advantage over the advertising or subscription models. Oh at the same time can I make it clear I was disagreeing with what Jason was blogging about. So why write anything at all? Its the Cluetrain effect. Things have changed. Take a look at the difference between the Newswatch and the editors blog. Its not so much about the layout but more the conversation or voice. So rather than talk any more, here's a few Cluetrains which sum up what I'm getting at.
#3 – Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
#10 – As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
#12 – There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
#14 – Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
#34 – To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.
Some good examples, Wikipedia entry on the iplayer, Imp's ultimate review of the iplayer, E-petition and Currybet's first 14 days.
So at the end of day, iPlayer is just the start (and in beta), over the next few months you will see a BBC which will silence its critics and launch a range of services which will impress. Transparency and conversation is important and it will take time for everyone to adjust but with time… BBC 2.0 it will happen. Look at projects like Backstage, Innovation Labs, TV Backstage, BBC Blogs, etc… to get a feel of the changes starting to happen.