MC Hammer: If ever there was a brand that delivered a positive contribution to student unions, post-modern-ironic-cheesy-music parties and provincial nightclubs the world over, it was MC Hammer. We were very disappointed to see that Mr Hammer’s brand value seems to have fallen to new lows. You’ll see from the image above it’s now possible to buy a coveted signed copy of his 1990 classic “U Can’t Touch This” on 12” vinyl for a mere $1.25 (at the time of publishing). We never expected him to make it on to Interbrand’s rankings, but if current market value is one of the measures we can use to asses a brand’s ‘worth’ MC Hammer ain’t lookin’ great. If any of you want to make the guy feel any better, just follow the link to bid on this particular piece of cultural history.


A big thank you to MC Hammer for all those poorly executed dance moves he inspired.

Our white-coated friends at The Future Laboratory (who are based in Shadwell, the Wimpy end of East London, the most unlikely place for a team of trend forecasters) produced a report for Orange on the Future of Football in 2020. One interesting finding suggests that managers of the future won’t simply trust their instincts, but will rely on technology and artificial intelligence to make their decisions. As current systems such as ProZone evolve, supercomputers will help design teams and match players best suited to coping with the opposition. I doubt that all this maths and gadgetry will ever create managerial legends like Bill Shankly, but I wonder if it could spot, say, a goalkeeper with really poor hand-eye coordination before a World Cup opener? That’d be really useful. The report also explores stadiums as malls of the future, nanotechnology shirts, and computer-generated fans.

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Dragon’s Den to pitch his range of school accessories designed to help kids concentrate, it was clear that we were looking at an inventor with ambition, genius and a touch of insanity. Most of the Dragons were unimpressed with his prototype products, but Peter Jones saw potential in the entrepreneur, offering the full £100,000. Since then, Mark’s educational design company Concentrate has launched several products including a schoolbag that transforms into a chair cover (to make kids more comfortable), the voting ruler (to help kids express their opinions), and novelty pre-chewed pencils (less chewing, more concentrating). Mark popped into Mother last week to talk about how he designs things. The Pre Chewed Pencils started out as a joke idea he said, but became an overnight business and viral hit. Instead of employing an army of hard-toothed interns to help him, he developed a production process that would help keep up with demand. Now he just needs to come up with a pre-written to do list and an already updated Facebook account and we’ll all be distraction free.

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In his seminal book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki convinced us that the masses would be better than the elite few at fostering innovation. Brands swift to embrace user-generated content were seen as ahead of the game. Writers like Nicholas Carr turn this thinking on its head in his essay The Ignorance of Crowds. Talented individuals, rather than crowds, they say, are still the best at innovation. One of the most compelling arguments is that the Web 2.0 model, exemplified by Wikipedia, is built on consensus rather than fact. Therefore, if the crowd says two plus two equals five, then this becomes truth, which renders Web 2.0 deeply flawed. This is one of the reasons why ‘co-creation brief’ has started to be seen as a curse rather than a blessing. So how do you make sure that “wisdom” doesn’t turn into “groupthink”? We think it’s probably about understanding what consumers are good at, and what’s best left to the experts, and where involving the customer makes business sense. The music industry is a good example of the how the wisdom of the crowd has succeeded where the short-sightedness of the elite has failed. Sites like Slice The Pie, Sell A Band and Artist Share have turned fans into investors and created a new business model for an industry in transition.


Thanks to jon miller and sarah rabia for this one.


References:
Viewpoint
Antidote


Image Credit:
The Apathist

I once did some research into “deviant” or new uses for mobile phones for 3. One of the best examples we came across was a group of lads on the pull. At the start of the evening, they each went into a different bar and live streamed a video of the “totty” to the rest of the group. The bar deemed to have the fittest birds was the one they all spent the night in. Assisted Serendipity is a new service which takes this thinking to a less Loaded magazine level and offers it up as a free location networking tool aimed at those on the pull (though we’d recommend a less suicidal-like name). The service simply alerts you to a ‘tip’ in the balance of male to female ratio at your favourite hangouts by monitoring the check-ins at those venues. So if you’re stood in a bar/café/ supermarket, your virtual ‘wing-man’ gives you a nudge to pick up your game. Grindr is a similar iPhone service that is quickly establishing itself as the new Gaydar (ask Richard for a demo). All this could be seen as a bit seedy, but it’s interesting that technology is starting to tap into some very deep-seated emotional and sometimes private desires. People talk about the constant monitoring of our activities and the idea of a nanny state, but these are great examples of technology bringing people together, quite literally, in the real world.

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Imagine when a machine can not only convince us of their intelligence, but attract us with it. Bladerunner gave us a glimpse in the 80s: sexy androids manipulating humans with their power to woo. Science fiction has always tackled the sticky subject of sexuality and technology. What about virtual reality? Think of The Big Lebowski: “Interactive erotic software. The wave of the future, Dude. 100% electronic!” ‘Exosex’, sex outside the biological body, could be simulated in virtuality, much like Second Life or Skype and other digital formats where sex is enhanced, extended, digitised, and synthetic. It would be more real than real – a hyper-real experience. One of the activities which we consider to be uniquely human is our relationship with sex. But as “human” evolves, what happens to sex? In the future, sex for procreation could be separated from sex for pleasure. What if future generations wanted to separate the practices altogether, trusting embryos to the controlled safety of test tubes? And if biological sex were suddenly divorced from its evolutionary function, how would such a shift change our societies? Polyamorism is predicted to become the norm. In Brave New World, a major character is reprimanded by her friends for not being promiscuous enough. After all, “everyone belongs to everyone else.” Huxley’s dystopia offered a critical perspective on how our values evolve with both our technology & society, and he knew that sexuality wasn’t static.

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It took a 19-second video that consisted of a geek talking about elephants at San Diageo Zoo to kick off a revolution that changed the way the world consumes media. That revolution was YouTube, which has just turned 5-years-old (digital years feel more like cat years). The clip stars Jawed Karim, one of the 3 co-founders of YouTube. This slightly awkward first video marks a cultural phenomenon where the whole world now creates, shares, customises, and comments on video content. We’ve seen everything from ten seconds of a clever cat playing the piano, to people talking about about what they’ve had for tea, to videos that augment reality. So what’s next for YouTube? Wired editor David Rowan has said, “YouTube will be at the heart of another Google v Apple war, as it becomes a portal through which we pay for mobile video”. Whilst cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, thinks it’s destined to be the telly of the 21st Century. “Most people are going to be sitting in front of their TVs with on-demand video. YouTube may be the one that delivers that – and the advertising revenue.”


Thanks to neil bennett for this story.


Reference
The Guardian
Don Martelli’s blog

As evident in our office, fixed-gear bikes and iPhones go hand in hand in the young creative’s man bag. Which is why we’re seeing the rise of Bike Apps as the new must-have accessory for the urban cyclist. One of our favourites is the Bike Dashboard. It sits on the handlebars of your bike and shows a display of speed and distance you’ve covered. It even operates the bike’s light and horn. It was the winning idea for the Nokia’s Push N900 “Mod in the USA” competition, which asked creatives and technologists to hack and re-appropriate the N900 mobile device. Then there’s the iPad Pocket Sprocket, which is a wearable app that displays signals of the cyclist’s navigational intentions to fellow motorists. If the rider slows down or stops, the iPad will display a STOP sign etc. Nifty.


Thanks to Neil Bennett for this story.


Reference
PSFK

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Last week, a rogue piano player took our new favourite social networking site Chatroulette by storm, performing an impromptu concert to his chat partners. A user named Merton played his piano and improvised lyrics based on what each chat partner was doing, filming it all and posting them as 3 music videos on YouTube. Amazingly, his concerts have garnered over 4m views. Merton wears a green hoodie and a pair of glasses to disguise his appearance, which is fuelling speculation about his true identity. Fans have suggested Merton is Ben Folds in disguise. To add to the mystery, Ben Folds has just made a “Ode to Merton” video where he performs in front of 2000 fans live on Chatroulette wearing Merton patented green hoodie. Maybe Chatroulette could become a new way for musicians to communicate with fans, one Chatroulette after the other?


Thanks to Paddy Fraser for this story.

Many people have predicted the death of the printing press and to an extent this may be true, but put the printing press in the hands of the consumer and things can change. It’s this idea that drives the Newspaper Club, a London-based start-up run by our friend Russell Davies and designer Ben Terrett and their software coding friends. After deciding to print a newspaper of their friends’ best blog posts and photos, they decided why not turn this into a public on-demand newspaper service. The Newspaper Club allows members to print small runs of their own newspapers at a low cost, be it a newspaper to mark your wedding or a printed version of your morning’s Netvibes feeds. Brands who have used the service include the BBC, Wired UK and Last.fm. Penguin also used it to debut a preview of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Other companies, such as UK-based The Printed Blog, also allow people to create printed versions of their personal weblogs. Wired UK’s Ben Hammersley calls it stupidly exciting. “Newspapers are the last bastion of old media, they are almost the last thing standing. This creates a new industry, almost from the ashes of the old one.” The Newspaper Club hope to spread homemade newspapers across the world.


Thanks to Neil for coming to the rescue.


References
BBC
Russell Davies
Editors Weblog