Nico Luchsinger

trying to make sense out of stuff

Some quotes from DLD10

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Image by dotdean on Flickr

I attended the DLD Conference in Munich earlier this week. It was my first time, and I'll certainly be back - from all the conferences I've seen so far, DLD is one of the best (my favourite remains LIFT in Geneva though). Here are some noteworthy quotes and thoughts from the conference:

"Whenever media changes, society changes." - Hubert Burda quoting Walter Benjamin.

"It's not about simplicity, but about subtlety." - Jonathan Harris on storytelling.

"Technological feasibility is not a problem anymore. Now, it's about policy." - Dave Morgan from Simulmedia

"The real dangers facing the development of the web in the future are complacency and mystification." - David Gelernter

"If the web is so good in bringing people together, then what the hell are we all doing here?" - David Gelernter again

"Don't listen to the consumer. Surprise the consumer." - some participant at the marketing panel whose name I didn't get.

"There is no web 3.0 yet. We're still in the middle of the web 2.0." - Reid Hoffman

I wrote about DLD in greater detail for my blog at NZZ (in German).

Das beste Studium der Welt - Redux

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«History», Mosaik von Frederick Dielman. Bild von Wikimedia Commons.

Vor etwa einem Jahr habe ich eine Kolumne für das Historiker-Magazin der Universität Zürich, den Elfenbeintürmer, verfasst, in der ich versucht habe darzulegen, warum Geschichte das beste Studium der Welt sein soll. Als mich kürzlich jemand danach gefragt hat, ist mir aufgefallen, dass der Text nicht mehr länger online verfügbar ist. Und da sich mein Studium rasant dem Ende nähert, schien dies ein guter Moment zu sein, um die Kolumne hier nochmals einzufügen (hauptsächlich, damit ich sie selbst später wieder finde - man weiss ja nie, wann man sowas wieder braucht)

Das beste Studium der Welt

Nicht-Historiker haben manchmal einige Mühe, die Wahl eines Geschichtsstudenten zu verstehen. Einige erklären zwar noch etwas bemüht, Geschichte sei schon «interessant» und habe sie in der Schule auch immer fasziniert – doch wie man sich als ausgebildeter Historiker sein Leben finanzieren kann, bleibt für alle schwer vorstellbar.
Ist Geschichte tatsächlich eine brotlose Kunst und ihre Vertreter sich an obskuren Quellen delektierende Schöngeister, die im Haifischbecken der freien Marktwirtschaft gnadenlos in Stücke gerissen werden? Keineswegs. Denn die Wahrheit lautet ganz simpel: Geschichte ist das beste Studium der Welt.
Das hat nur wenig mit dem insbesondere von professoraler Seite zuweilen vorgebrachten Argument zu tun, aus der Geschichte lasse sich für die Gegenwart und die Zukunft lernen. Das ist zwar nicht per se falsch, aber für wegweisende zukünftige Entscheidungen sind historische Analysen kaum ausreichend. Zumal das historische Faktenwissen eines Geschichtsabsolventen normalerweise, sagen wir mal, fragmentarisch ist.
Der immense Vorteil eines Geschichtsstudiums liegt vielmehr im sich rapide ändernden Umgang mit Informationen. Vor noch nicht allzu langer Zeit waren Informationen eine knappe Ressource, und der Zugang zu ihnen folglich wertvoll. Mit der rasanten Entwicklung von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien hat sich das aber radikal geändert. Informationen sind im Überfluss, überall und jederzeit für jedermann vorhanden. Den entscheidenden Vorteil verschafft sich nicht mehr, wer über Informationen verfügt, sondern wer relevante Informationen schnell identifizieren, analysieren und in einen Kontext setzen kann.
Dabei geht es um viel mehr als nur darum, Google richtig bedienen zu können. Zunehmend komplexe Problemstellungen lassen sich nicht mehr mit vorgefertigten Herangehensweisen lösen. Der Erfolg beruht stattdessen darauf, sich Wissen und Kontextinformationen in einem bestimmten Gebiet schnell anzueignen, um es dann anzuwenden – nur um im nächsten Augenblick dasselbe in einem völlig anderen Themengebiet zu tun. Die alte Prämisse vom life long learning wird immer wichtiger, und für Firmen und Organisationen wird die «konstante Innovation» zur Maxime. Und dafür braucht es neben Spezialisten eben auch smarte Generalisten, die sich schnell in neuen Bereichen zurecht finden.
Genau darin sind Historiker gut. Denn Geschichte ist keine Lehre von Fakten und Ereignissen, und auch nicht so sehr eine Lehre von Modellen, die bestimmte Prozesse erklären können. Geschichte ist, in vielerlei Hinsicht, die Wissenschaft vom Umgang mit Informationen. 
Natürlich trifft das auf viele andere geistes- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studiengänge auch zu. Aber schliesslich ist das hier ein Historiker-Magazin. Deshalb nochmals: Geschichte ist das beste Studium, das es gibt. Denn woran es den Historikern definitiv mangelt, ist Selbstvertrauen. Und ohne das wird auch der Rest der Welt nie verstehen können, zu was ein Geschichtsstudium taugt.

Time-space compression

Time-space compression is a term used to describe processes that seem to accelerate the experience of time and reduce the significance of distance during a given historical moment. Geographer David Harvey used the term in The Condition of Postmodernity, where it refers to "processes that . . . revolutionize the objective qualities of space and time" (240).

Time-space compression often refers to technologies that seem to accelerate or elide spatial and temporal distances, including technologies of communication (telegraph, telephones, fax machines, Internet), travel (rail, cars, trains, jets) and economics (the need to overcome spatial barriers, open up new markets, speed up production cycles, and reduce the turn-over time of capital). According to theorists such as Paul Virilio, time-space compression represents an essential facet of contemporary life: "Today we are entering a space which is speed-space ... This new other time is that of electronic transmission, of high-tech machines, and therefore, man is present in this sort of time, not via his physical presence, but via programming" (qtd. in Decron 71). Virilio also uses the term dromology to describe "speed-space." The present moment, which some would characterize as postmodern, presents one example of an historical period marked by time-space compression.

Theorists generally identify two historical periods in which time-space compression occurred: the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginnings of the First World War, and the end of the twentieth century. In both of these time periods, according to Jon May and Nigel Thrift, “there occurred a radical restructuring in the nature and experience of both time and space . . . both periods saw a significant acceleration in the pace of life concomitant with a dissolution or collapse of traditional spatial co-ordinates” (7).

via en.wikipedia.org

I like the term «time-space compression» to describe effects on our experience of time and distance by new communication technologies. Just came across it in a book; apparently, it has been around for a while.

Political flash mobs

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A Michael Jackson flash mob in Iasi, Romania, by epox on Flickr

A few months ago, I participated in an event about "Politics 2.0" here in Switzerland. One of the input speakers was the head of the youth section of one the major Swiss parties. His section had used a lot of social media tools to push their political agenda. They used them smartly and created good stuff that often went viral and made it to mainstream media. However, at one point in the discussion I suggested that what we were talking about wasn't actually "Politics 2.0", it was merely "political marketing 2.0". It was the communications part that was being redone; but the old system of doing politics and creating policy remained unchanged. I went on to predict that the social web (or whatever you wanna call it) would change this too; and that the future would see a decline of classical political parties and the rise of "political flash mobs" - groups of people finding together online to push a specific issue.

Needless to say, the speaker didn't agree with my prediction. He didn't only state that this would never happen, he also said that it shouldn't - because only political parties could secure the working of a democratic system. And granted, I'm not sure myself whether "political flash mobs" ever will (or should) replace political parties. But nevertheless, I have kept thinking about this idea because, actually, I think that we're already seeing signs of this happening.

Of course, there's the often-cited statistical evidence that less and less young people are willing to join a political party. Most of them probably really don't care that much about politics, but there's also others (including myself) who actually do care, but don't find themselves represented by any of the available parties and their ideologies. Meanwhile, I think there's also a quite fundamental shift in how philantropy is done (I'll write about that in more detail some other time). After the devastating earthquake in Haiti last week, a lot of the donations were done through mobile phones; and organizations like Kiva, Betterplace or Kickstarter allow to "crowdfund" very specific projects (check out this post by my Sandbox team colleague Paul Gleger for more info on mobile banking and crowdfunding). The trend is two-fold: First, thanks to online technology, large groups of people with no apparent previous connection can be convinced to contribute or donate to the same cause; and thanks to online communication, accountability rises, and people are more and more inclined to contribute or donate not to organizations and what they stand for, but for specific projects or issues.

I'm convinced that we'll see more similar developments in national politics too. That doesn't mean that parties will cease to exist altogether, but maybe they have to become more open platforms that allow people to come together and work on specific issues. And they'll have to accept that most of these people will never pledge allegiance to a party, but rather turn to whatever issue they think deserves their attention - regardless of the corner of the political spectrum it originated from. In a way, the idea of "political flash mobs" is the political equivalent of the idea of "social business design", one of the six big topics we identified at Sandbox for the coming year (and beyond).

Product vs. business

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I've been re-reading Steven B. Johnson's excellent essay on the future of news from last March (thanks to Eric Kuhn for pointing me to it again). It makes many great points, but one stood out particularly for me:

[...] there are really two worst case scenarios that we’re concerned about right now, and it's important to distinguish between them. There is panic that newspapers are going to disappear as businesses. And then there’s panic that crucial information is going to disappear with them, that we’re going to suffer as culture because newspapers will no long be able to afford to generate the information we’ve relied on for so many years.
I think this distinction is crucial. It's probably true that newspapers as a stand-alone business will have it more difficult in the future (there will probably still be some that are profitable, but not many). But the newspaper as a product, either as part of a bundle of news products (newspapers, magazines, websites, TV shows, Twitter channels, Facebook pages, whatever), or cross-subsidized by, say, a lucrative business intelligence department, most likely has a future.

Feedback on the personal e-mail update

Two weeks ago, I sent out a personal e-mail update to roughly 200 contacts of mine. I thought that I'd share some of the feedback and learnings:

First, the background. I wrote the update (which was inspired by Ben Casnocha's regular e-mail updates) because I felt that true value is only created if one manages to stay connected with people. I had the feeling that a lot of people I had met at one point had no idea what I had been up to - and I didn't know what was going on in their lives.

Over the last two weeks, about 20 people, roughly 10 percent of the recipients, replied to my message. Some of them just said thank you, others replied in more detail and actually gave me an update about their lives. Most of the people who replied were contacts with whom I don't interact on a regular basis - "weak ties", if you will. I believe that the power of such an update lies exactly in being able to reconnect with these people, and learning what they are up to.

Most of the feedback about the e-mail was positive, although some said they would prefer just grabbing a beer at some point instead of receiving e-mail, and others told me that the automatic unsubscribe link in the e-mail was too "professional" for such a personal message. I agree with both; I will try to catch up with as many people as possible in person - and I'll remove the unsubscribe link in my next update.

Speaking of which: Yes, there will be a next update. I have no idea when I'll send it out or what it'll say. After all, this is still very much an experiment.

The power of simplicity

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Over the last years, I have tried many many task management tools, but I have never been really happy with anyone of them. About two years ago, I decided to stick with Remember The Milk, which seemed to have everything a task management service should have; from lists to tags to priorities to e-mailing in functions etc. RTM is a really powerful tool; and yet, I have to admit that I only used it from time to time. Every once in a while, I made an effort, and managed to actually manage my tasks with it for a couple of weeks, but soon, I gave up again.

I'm not blaming RTM (or any other task management software) for this; it just seems that I haven't figured out a way to work with them yet. So I have recently decided to give a new tool a try: Teuxdeux, designed by blogger and designer Swissmiss (who recently attended one of our Sandbox dinners in NYC). And so far, I'm really happy with the tool - for one main reason: It is really simple. Dead simple.

There are no lists and no tags. You can't add notes to tasks, or places, you can't connect them with your e-mails, color them differently or sort them alphabetically. There is simply a list for each day, and a "someday" bucket. You can add tasks, rearrange them with drag and drop, mark them completed and delete them. That's it.

And it turns out that probably that's all it needs, at least for a big majority of people, including me. Our lives, while sometimes hectic, are simply not that complicated that they need very sophisticated software to manage it. A simple yet well-designed tool does the trick.

Now, having said that, there are still a few things I'd like to see added to TeuxDeux: Offline access (through Google Gears), and an iPhone application. But that's all. Really. 

Making Twitter trends meaningful

Clive Thompson has a good post where he complains about the banality of Twitters trending topics for 2009:

The problem here is the problem with all mainstream, middle-of-the-road subjects: They’re not going to be surprising, and information that isn’t surprising often isn’t useful or interesting either. (The way I see it, mainstream topics mostly useful in social bonding: Heavily-trod subject matter is great when you need to make pleasant chatter with strangers. “Crazy weather we’re having, eh?”) It’s not that the concept of “trending topics” is itself useless. It’s that sampling the entire population of Twitter is often pointless, because it’s too broad.

Instead of showing trending topics from the entire "Twitter population", Thompson suggests to filter specific subgroups and analyze their tweets for common words. That's certainly a very interesting idea; unfortunately, none of the tools he mentions in his post produce satisfying results. With the new Twitter list functionality, it would be great (and, I guess, pretty easy)  to have trending topics for every Twitter list (I would, for example, love to have the trending topics for the Sandboxers Twitter list). If the analysis is broken down to specific lists, the results over a longer period of time and especially the shifts (like appearance and disappearance of a specific term) could potentially be very interesting.