information

I sometimes think that one of the most fundamental issues that content producers (of any kind) consistently fail to get their heads around is just what they are competing against in the new world.

Just landed in Rhode Island and spending the next 2 days in Providence, long working sessions ahead, expect to some productive knowledge exchange. The topic will be around where arts meet science, design meets technology.

• WikiLeaks shakes the security assumptions of the US government by releasing classified documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• An operation called Project Vigilant hacks WikiLeaks and reveals its source.

For all the talk of the momentous changes in media and marketing that we are living through, I felt there was a need to speak up for what I believe may be the greatest opportunity that businesses will have over the next few years to deliver real value back, accumulate not just knowledge but wisdom and understanding, and to recognise the huge opportunity we have to do things quantifiably better than we do now. So I penned a leader for the good people at Marketing Week on the subject, and they've kindly allowed me to reproduce it here in full:

Howard Greenstein has a nice article on Mashable which notes why feedback and filters are necessary in social media.

Seen from the point of view of information, a modern company is a fortess - a fortress that's very good at erecting barriers to the natural flow of information from outside in and vice versa.

“Transparency is Not Enough”

Frank Zappa

The New York Times brings this story of an economist who has been predicting - disconcertingly accurately - the medals tally for the last few Olympics. (Via Freakonomics.) Daniel Johnson - the economist in question - is currently in the news for his predictions for the current Winter Olympics.

This is the unabridged, non-edited version of an article published at bnet.co.uk
The Morgan Stanley report entitled “media and the Internet, how teenagers consume media” is one of the most striking examples of instant information circulation on a global scale. Matthew Robinson — a 15 year-old trainee who was asked to put together a report on how his peers were using the media — no longer needs to work on his online reputation. In a flash, his report was on everyone’s lips (on everyone’s desktop rather) and widely used as a perfect representation of generation Y usage of media and – especially – the Internet.