Category Archives: Uncategorized

Apple Marketing

I’m getting worried that Apple could sell me… to myself. Here’s how

_____________________________

Announcing the

iME

from Apple.

What is it?

Well, it starts when you start wearing elegant white or charcoal clothing. Then you have a general feeling of aloofness and only partial compatibility with your fellow human beings.
You’ll quickly get used to admiring glances as you glide down the street.  At the same time, you should be very good at performing design and entertainment related tasks. You’re not necessarily good at games, but that’s ok.
Because you’re an Apple. And you’re better.

Think different. Make the choice to live a life less ordinary.

The iMe. “A whole new you” Shipping today.


_____________________________

This really could sell. Want proof? Go to http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=762035792437485705# and watch Steve Jobs pitch the 1984 Macintosh. Watch the entire video and ask yourself when you’ve finished whether you really could do without this wonder machine.

The past 2 years of digital speakers at the IIEA

It’s time to take stock. Here’s an idea of what we’ve been up to since 2008 at the Digital Future Group of the IIEA. In reverse chronological order… Continue reading →

Kool DJ Herc and the future of hacked media

Celebrating the arrival of page proofs of the book, this snippet comes from a section that describes the future of ‘extruded media’…

A digital media boom is underway in which assertive audiences are beginning to use and extrude media rather than watch it. To understand the nature of the coming global media boom, reflect on the birth of break beat hip-hop music.  In the early 1970s a high-rise apartment building on 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in New York’s Bronx became the birthplace of a new culture, and a new style of editing and adapting music. Clive Campbell, aka ‘Kool dj Herc’, a Jamaican-born resident, began playing records at events in and around the building. Continue reading →

Links worth clicking: David Simon of The Wire

David Simon, one of the duo behind The Wire, The Corner, and Generation Kill, on society and news journalism:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2009/aug/29/david-simon-edinburgh-interview-full

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8E8xBXFLKE (skip the first 6 minutes of preliminary dialogue)

(part 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJNkL12QD68 (part 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhPZYjRgqTI

David Simon, “Does the news matter to anyone anymore?”, The Washington Post, 20 January 2008.

A marvelous sentiment

Adam Curtis, the BBC documentary maker with a keen eye for archival footage and historical trends said this, during an interview with the Register:

“We should be saying to people ‘I’m going to take you out of yourself and show you something you haven’t thought of, which is either awesome, or incredible, or will inspire you’”.

This is the first – and perhaps only – post on this blog that simply presents a quote, but the sentiment is so marvelous that it is worth repeating. More from Curtis here.

Working paper “‘TWO WAY POLITICS’: THE NEW MEDIA ENVIRONMENT AND THE EU CREDIBILIY CRUNCH”

We have arrived at the end of hierarchical communications and are at a new credibility crunch. Continue reading →

Assessing the recommendations of the coalition for a realistic foreign policy in their January 2005 statement in the Economist.

“Americans should be deeply concerned that we are so unpopular in the region inasmuch as it makes it harder, rather than easier, for us to achieve our major national security objectives in the Middle East”.[1]

In The Economist’s first edition of 2005, the coalition for a realistic foreign policy (‘the coalition’ hereafter) published a statement criticizing the Bush administration’s Middle East policy.[2] According to the signatories, the continued Israeli-Palestinian stalemate jeopardizes America’s two key regional objectives: defeating Al Qaeda and preserving access to oil. They criticize President George Bush Jr’s unreserved support for Israeli expansion and occupation. The support Continue reading →

Unipolar moment or unipolar era?

UNIPOLAR MOMENT OR UNIPOLAR ERA: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA’S ASSERTIVE GRAND STRATEGY
February 2005.

In the run up to the 2000 election, Condoleezza Rice laid out the central tenet of candidate Bush’s foreign policy manifesto: ‘Foreign policy in a Republican administration will … proceed from the firm ground of the national interest, not from the interests of an illusory international community’.[1] Five years later, one European newspaper marked President Bush’s second inauguration by announcing ‘world fears new Bush era’ on its front page.[2] In the interim, an Continue reading →

Principled failure: British policy toward Rhodesia, 1971-72

The History Review 2004. Copyright Johnny Ryan 2004.

INTRODUCTION

The choice lies starkly between a compromise settlement, which by definition will not satisfy anyone but which will gain for the Africans substantial new opportunities for advancement, and a rapid and complete polarisation of the races and the prospect of conflict.[1]

In May 1972 the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary told the British Parliament that the peoples of Rhodesia stood at the crossroads between two destinies: they could accept a compromise settlement or suffer total racial polarisation and civil war. By then, the choice was already made. Despite attempts to initiate dialogue between the European and African parties in Rhodesia, British diplomacy failed to avert slaughter. Continue reading →