Robert Paterson's Weblog

30 Years Of Music Industry Change, In 30 Seconds Or Less... -

via digitalmusicnews.com

Hit the link to see the animation

When you see this - I think you see the underlying trend from analog to digital and then digital to shared on line. It is just music but we see this is all aspects of life.

All designs now are digital. Once digital, they can be shared. They want to be shared. This is why software is going Open Source. This is why a digital market will emerge for food. This is why even manufactured good will go down this road.

Soon I anticipate Common Digital Design resources "Forges". Using 3D Printers, people will realize the design locally and assemble locally - Mass Customization!

A letter to Canadians from the Honourable Jack Layton

August 20, 2011
Toronto, Ontario

Dear Friends,

Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.

Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.

I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.

I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election.

A few additional thoughts:

To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.

To the members of my party: we’ve done remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.

To the members of our parliamentary caucus: I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again. Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come. Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in the recent election.

To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for us all.

To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

All my very best,

Jack Layton

via ndp.ca

Modern Medicine - Monty Python shows the Reality

 

History is Not Your Therapist

 Nobody can believe what's happening. Nobody knows what to do. Well, here's some straight dope: do you want to have an economy? Then prepare to cut your losses and move on. There's so much to do "out there" in America, but the catch is it's not the same as what we've been doing. Do you want to eat a few years from now? Get serious about reorganizing agriculture on a smaller, finer, more local scale. Believe me, there will be plenty of jobs. Only they won't be like sitting in a cubicle writing a marketing plan for a video-game about the slaughter of gym rats from another planet. Do you want to be able to travel around this big country in a few years? Start working on the nearest reconstructable railroad line - and get over your techno-grandiose fantasies about running all the cars on algae, corn, or the plug in the wall. Do you want have some household goods in the future without sending an order halfway around the world? Figure out a way to make stuff in some North American place where there is running water for electric power.

     There isn't a politician out there, including the Paul duo, who can really articulate the direction in which history is propelling us. This "recession-depression" narrative doesn't even adequately capture it. This is the end of a certain way of doing things - the industrial growth-spurt fiesta. We're in permanent contraction now. There are no technological rescue remedies that will restore the old economic regime. The banks are not working anymore because we can't create more real wealth, and the wealth we pretended to create for thirty-odd years in the form of IOUs can't be paid back into existence. We can't fund any more senior golfing careers and a lot of people will have to just stop eating fried pork rinds, guzzling Pepsi Cola, and then waddling into the emergency room for consolation.

      Does this sound a little harsh? Surprise: history is not your therapist.  This is the New Age you never expected. Crybabies need not apply.

via kunstler.com

Time to look to ourselves and to be sensible about the future. If you rely on the "man" - you will be sorry.

UK riots were product of consumerism and will hit economy, says City broker

The recent riots in London and other big cities were the product of consumerism and will have profound impacts on the UK economy, a leading City broker has said.

Unusually for City analysts, the report by Tullett Prebon focuses on social and political rather than economic issues. It says: "The consumerist ethos, in which a materialist vision is both peddled and, for the vast majority, simultaneously ruled out by exclusion, has extremely damaging consequences, both social and economic."

The report, by Tim Morgan, the firm's global head of research, is part of a series in which the broker analyses bigger issues for the UK. Last month, Tullett Prebon issued a report on the UK's economic situation as part of Morgan's Project Armageddon.

The latest report details recommendations to resolve what it sees as a political and economic malaise: new role models, policies to encourage savings, the channelling of private investment into creating rather than inflating assets, and greater public investment.

"We conclude that the rioting reflects a deeply flawed economic and social ethos, one which acts as a common skein running through the themes of generational theft, recklessly borrowed consumption, the breakdown both of top-end accountability and of trust in institutions, and severe failings by governments over more than two decades."

The note pinpoints consumerism as the philosophy behind the riots.

"Consumerism is the underlying message of the advertising and marketing industries, and huge budgets are devoted to pushing a message which, updated from Déscartes, is: 'I buy, therefore I am.' "

The typical internet user is subjected to one hundred advertisements an hour, the report says, and the underlying message received by many is: "Here's the ideal. You can't have it."

That has been accompanied by an inflation of government and private debt, a key theme of Dr Morgan's other work.

"The economy has been subjected to repeated 'boom and bust' cycles, above all in property. The overall pattern has been that an over-consuming West has borrowed and spent the surpluses of the increasingly productive and under-consuming East.

"The dominant ethos of 'I buy, therefore I am' needs to be challenged by a shift of emphasis from material to non-material values. David Cameron's 'big society' project may contribute to the inculcation of more socially-oriented values, but much more will need to be done to challenge the out-of-control consumerist ethos.

via guardian.co.uk

Wow - a City Analyst making these comments!

Iceland talls the Banks to take a hike and look - they are on their way back - A lesson!

As one European country after another fails or risks failing, imperiling the Euro, with repercussions for the entire world, the last thing the powers that be want is for Iceland to become an example. Here's why:

Five years of a pure neo-liberal regime had made Iceland, (population 320 thousand, no army), one of the richest countries in the world. In 2003 all the country’s banks were privatized, and in an effort to attract foreign investors, they offered on-line banking whose minimal costs allowed them to offer relatively high rates of return. The accounts, called IceSave, attracted many English and Dutch small investors. But as investments grew, so did the banks’ foreign debt. In 2003 Iceland’s debt was equal to 200 times its GNP, but in 2007, it was 900 percent. The 2008 world financial crisis was the coup de grace. The three main Icelandic banks, Landbanki, Kapthing and Glitnir, went belly up and were nationalized, while the Kroner lost 85% of its value with respect to the Euro. At the end of the year Iceland declared bankruptcy.

Contrary to what could be expected, the crisis resulted in Icelanders recovering their sovereign rights, through a process of direct participatory democracy that eventually led to a new Constitution. But only after much pain.

Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister of a Social Democratic coalition government, negotiated a two million one hundred thousand dollar loan, to which the Nordic countries added another two and a half million. But the foreign financial community pressured Iceland to impose drastic measures. The FMI and the European Union wanted to take over its debt, claiming this was the only way for the country to pay back Holland and Great Britain, who had promised to reimburse their citizens.

Protests and riots continued, eventually forcing the government to resign. Elections were brought forward to April 2009, resulting in a left-wing coalition which condemned the neoliberal economic system, but immediately gave in to its demands that Iceland pay off a total of three and a half million Euros. This required each Icelandic citizen to pay 100 Euros a month (or about $130) for fifteen years, at 5.5% interest, to pay off a debt incurred by private parties vis a vis other private parties. It was the straw that broke the reindeer’s back.

What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.” (How many times have I written that when Cubans see the dire state of their neighbor, Haiti, they count themselves lucky.)

In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country.

But Icelanders didn't stop there: they decided to draft a new constitution that would free the country from the exaggerated power of international finance and virtual money. (The one in use had been written when Iceland gained its independence from Denmark, in 1918, the only difference with the Danish constitution being that the word ‘president’ replaced the word ‘king’.)

To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituent’s meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape. The constitution that eventually emerges from this participatory democratic process will be submitted to parliament for approval after the next elections.

Some readers will remember that Iceland’s ninth century agrarian collapse was featured in Jared Diamond’s book by the same name. Today, that country is recovering from its financial collapse in ways just the opposite of those generally considered unavoidable, as confirmed yesterday by the new head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde to Fareed Zakaria. The people of Greece have been told that the privatization of their public sector is the only solution. And those of Italy, Spain and Portugal are facing the same threat.

They should look to Iceland. Refusing to bow to foreign interests, that small country stated loud and clear that the people are sovereign.

That’s why it is not in the news anymore.

via pukeskywalker.blogspot.com

What more can I say?

The Corporation and your Kids - who is winning? What are you going to do about this?

A clash between these two newly created legal entities — children and corporations — was, perhaps, inevitable. Century-of-the-child reformers sought to resolve conflicts in favor of children. But over the last 30 years there has been a dramatic reversal: corporate interests now prevail. Deregulation, privatization, weak enforcement of existing regulations and legal and political resistance to new regulations have eroded our ability, as a society, to protect children.

Childhood obesity mounts as junk food purveyors bombard children with advertising, even at school. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study reports that children spend more hours engaging with various electronic media — TV, games, videos and other online entertainments — than they spend in school. Much of what children watch involves violent, sexual imagery, and yet children’s media remain largely unregulated. Attempts to curb excesses — like California’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors — have been struck down by courts as free speech violations.

Another area of concern: we medicate increasing numbers of children with potentially harmful psychotropic drugs, a trend fueled in part by questionable and under-regulated pharmaceutical industry practices. In the early 2000s, for example, drug companies withheld data suggesting that such drugs were more dangerous and less effective for children and teenagers than parents had been led to believe. The law now requires “black box” warnings on those drugs’ labels, but regulators have done little more to protect children from sometimes unneeded and dangerous drug treatments.

Children today are also exposed to increasing quantities of toxic chemicals. We know that children, because their biological systems are still developing, are uniquely vulnerable to the dangers posed by many common chemical compounds. We also know that corporations often use such chemicals as key ingredients in children’s products, saturating their environments. Yet these chemicals remain in circulation, as current federal laws demand unreasonably high proof of harm before curbing a chemical’s use.

The challenge before us is to reignite the guiding ethos and practices of the century of the child. As Nelson Mandela has said, “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” By that measure, our current failure to provide stronger protection of children in the face of corporate-caused harm reveals a sickness in our societal soul. The good news is that we can — and should — work as citizens, through democratic channels and institutions, to bring about change.

via nytimes.com

Do you take it for granted that the food that you serve or allow your kids to eat is good for them? Do you take it as a given that all the chemicals you bring into your home are safe? Do you think it normal that so many kids - maybe yours too - have to be medicated?

Why?

Gutenberg, Galileo and Luther - Portents of our own Time?

I wrote this for a book back in Feb 2005 - I think what I said then is even more relevant today than then - do you too?

Back to the Future - Going Home!

We are going back to the end of the Middle Ages. We journey back to the beginning of the time that gave birth to our own culture. We go back to Europe of the early 16^th century. We go back to the beginning of our own pattern. A great cultural system is in terminal decay and a new cultural system is being born.

Like now, this is a turbulent time. War has been constant. Plague has killed 25% of the people. A new world had just been discovered that is going to pump money into Europe and will pull adventurers away. Islam has just been driven out of Europe. There has been a tidal wave of social and religious unrest that has been crushed utterly by an invincible combination of a universal church and by Kings that are gaining in power.

More powerful than the sword of the King is the power of the media. 

The pulpit is the mass media. It is the only source of information for the mass of people. Literacy is confined to the Church. Books are rare and very expensive. They are written in Latin or Greek. Knowledge is locked up. Not only does the church control the processes of communication but it has a tight control on message as well. Its two main messages are that salvation is only possible if you give the church your total obedience and much of your worldly wealth. The other message is that God himself has appointed the temporal rulers over you. 

Then on October 31^st 1517 Martin Luther nails his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. At the heart of these theses was a big idea. That people did not need an institution between them and God. 

A hundred years later, in 1633, the Inquisition convicts Galileo of heresy.  His crime was to use evidence to refute the dogma that the earth was the centre of the universe. 

These are powerful ideas. But when faced with all this power against them, to spread they needed a viral vector. With all this power lined up behind the establishment, open war would have been suicide. Only a virus could get though the immune system of the time.

The viral vector began humbly in Frankfurt, in 1455 at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 

In that year, Johann Gutenberg sells the first copies of his mass-produced German Language Bible.  He sells them for 300 florins each. This was the equivalent of approximately three years' wages for an average clerk. However it was significantly cheaper compared to a handwritten Bible, which could take a single monk 20 years to transcribe. The viral vector was out and the ideas that it carried could not be stopped! The lock on communications was broken. 

Who would have known then that a priest with a big idea, a man with a telescope and a man with a new communication tool would come together to shake the world?  

Who would have known then that the vast power of the universal church and of the divinely empowered monarchs would be soon challenged and be overthrown? Who would have known then that science would be born? Who would have known then that the individual would soon have greater power to communicate than the church or the King?

Can we see our own predicament in this light today? Is this not our pattern too? 

Is not our great problem that the great institutions of our time, government, healthcare, education, arts and entertainment, even business, no longer serve us but only themselves? 

Is not their organizational doctrine based on a dogma of control? Have they not divorced their world-view from observable reality? Is not this split from the laws of nature their dogma? Are they not prepared to fight to the death to preserve this dogma? Do we not see the entertainment industry as an Inquisition? Do we not see the IP industry as the agent of the controllers and not of the creative?

Is not the new “big idea” of our time to disintermediate the institutional middleman and to enable direct relationships? Are supermarkets eternal? Do we need factory universities to learn? Is our health dependent on a doctor? Is the news what we see on TV? 

Is this idea of going direct, the same for us as Luther’s big idea that man could talk directly to God?  Is not the new doctrine for organizations based on the observable working laws and designs of nature the same as Galileo’s observations?

Is not the enabling vector, a new type of communication device that is so simple and so inexpensive that it will give voice and hence power back to individuals and to their communities?  Did not the printing press give men back their voice in the 16th century? Was not pamphletting the blogging of their time? Was not a consequence of printing, mass literacy? Did the use of this new media topple the power of the old media system? Did it not change politics? Did it not push Alchemy aside and give birth to science? Why would we expect less of Social Software?

Are we not standing at the beginning of a new reformation? Has the wheel of history turned full circle?

Making a Living - the future - not a job

Dave Pollard used this chart to explain the need to shift our mindset away from "Can I get/keep a job" to how can I make a Living.

It is possible for nearly everyone here - including many of the children - to make a living. We can all make a contribution. 

If we stop thinking of the job as the only goal and we start to see how we can connect each living to others.  We versus Me!

My last post on the Fast Forward Blog - The tools are accepted but the work has just begun

In my first post in July of 2007, I asked myself  - What were all these new tools going to be about?. For when the steam engine arrived, I am sure the Steam Geeks, all talked about pressure, bearings etc. But steam changed the world. It forced us to use the clock. It meant that food could move long distance and so enabled vast cities pulling us from the country where we had lived for millenia.It changed war and enabled millions to be supplied and to move.

So back in July of 2007, that is the context that I asked the question “What’s it all about?”

I feel good and bad about how my question got answered by life.  What we have seen is an acceptance of the new tools in many cases. I wrote the Twitter Guide for FF in December of 2008. Then most could not spell Twitter let alone imagine how it would change media and how we get our news. While Facebook can be seen as silly with all its games and pictures that we might regret, Twitter and Facebook have made a difference in the emerging freedom movements in the world. Social Media, especially in the video context, has enabled new ideas to get traction way earlier than before. Web Based Video is surely the Gutenberg Press of our time?

Most people have made the new media part of their lives. Skype is how we old farts communicate with our kids and grand kids. Who does not have a Android or iPhone that enables us to navigate, read books, stay in touch in a way that was impossible to imagine back in 2007.

The area that I am sad about is business. Yes in some cases the tools have been adopted but not the culture that is the game changer. So most large enterprise is really no different than it was back in 2007. Less than half of small business has ven taken the first step! Government also keeps the lid on. Politicians have their twitter handle. Departments have a facebook account. But the need to control everything from the top remains the dominating pressure.

So for me there is this disconnect between the people – who are all of us – and when we get inside a traditional organization.

As the people, we are being empowered and liberated by this new technology. Like Steam in its day, it is starting to change everything. People now can work where they live and chose where they live based on what they want and not have to fit into an office and one place. Very small business now has access to a global market and has tools that are often better than those used by large firms. New food systems are emerging. You can buy Bison meat online. A new education system is emerging. You can participate in some of the best lectures given by the best people at the best universities. New approaches to health are emerging – witness the take off of Paleo and Ancestral Health.

But the establishment is entrenching. Newspapers are putting up paywalls. Politicians praise the use of social media in the Middle East, but want to halt its use at home. Business leaders talk about innovation but do all they can to prevent it.

I think we close the Fast Forward Blog at an important juncture. I and my colleagues have done our best to show you what is coming in a timely and thoughtful way. We have stressed adoption. But now I think a line has been drawn in the sand. It is clear to all that just as Henry Ford invented a model for the enterprise in 1905 that overwhelmed all the artisans, so all the artisans connected in a global network, will overwhelm the Ford model. There is nothing moral about this. It is Darwin. In 1905 the better model won. So it will be again today.

So here is my last exhortation to any of you who push back at the cultural work that comes with using social media to its potential, do you want to be on the right side of history or not?

I know I ask no small thing. For when we change ur core culture, a large art of us has to die and who can face that easily?

So in all humility, thank you for reading us here. Thank you Fast and Microsoft for being so generous as owners. I have never been told to toe a party line. Thank you my dear fellow FF writers. We have known each other for many years now. I will miss interacting with you so much.

via fastforwardblog.com

Our sponsor Microsoft has decided to close the site. What a ride it has been for me - 4 years of describing what is going on in the world of social media.

As I say above, the tools are now accepted. But the real work of how we use the tools to change our world has just begun.

In the context of a crumbing and deeply flawed society where the few control everything, our only chance is to use these tools to create a society and human culture that is more akin to nature. A network rather than a machine.

It is the theme of my own blog and will continue as I shift my own mode from protest to action