10th December 2016
From @newstatesman – ‘Why are we so quick to take offence?’ Ian Hislop on Orwell, Trump and the death of debate in post-truth politics.’Anyone who thinks that “post-truth politics” is anything new needs to be reminded that George Orwell was writing about this phenomenon 70 years before Donald Trump.‘
Always an essential read, here is the Most Contagious 2016 Report.Some of the memes and themes covered, include – Movements, Machine Learning, Humanised Computing and Less Social, More Media.
From McKinsey & Company : The new era of global flows.’Conventional wisdom says that globalisation has stalled. But although the global goods trade has flattened and cross-border capital flows have declined sharply since 2008, globalisation is not heading into reverse. Rather, it is entering a new phase defined by soaring flows of data and information.’
From @theeconomist. ‘How the internet unleashed a wave of cartooning creativity’. ‘As the newspaper industry continues its decline, the funny pages have decoupled from print. Instead of working for huge syndicates, or for censored newspapers with touchy editors, cartoonists are now free to create whatever they want. Whether it is cutting satire about Chinese politics, or a simple joke about being a dog, everything can win an audience on the internet.’
On a bit of a travel trip, Lonely Planet has released its Top 10 US destinations you need to see in 2017. The very beautiful Texas Hill Country’s wine region,comes in at number 8.
A new soundbite or something more? From Beth Comstock – ‘Are We Living in The Emergent Era?’ ‘An emergent system…is one where order can emerge from chaos. It’s also one in which power and structure are created by the network, not decreed by hierarchy. Relatively simple rules govern all the individual components of any emergent system, but when they interact en masse they can evolve into complex, adaptive structures.‘
From The Challenger Project, smaller, challenger brands are turning away from ‘Advertising’ and towards ‘Invertising’ – ‘budgets and resources which may have previously been spent on external communications are shifting inside, being spent on internal communications, ways of working and cultural activities that reinforce and propagate the brand’s identity.‘
The very excellent book The Circle by Dave Eggers has been made into a film, see the trailer here. The book is a parody of Facebook and Google – in the future, and is just as scary as you would expect. Starring the ubiquitous Tom Hanks, and Emma Watson.
This one is somewhat random, but I saw it and had to include. This is the official court transcript from the Salem Trials and the prosecution of Bridget Bishop, executed June 10th 1692. Any doubt on how powerful this moment might have been, is easily quashed by Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible (itself an allegory of McCarthyism in 1950’s America) brought powerfully to life in this edited theatrical adaptation.
Interesting if oddball take on the song Bohemian Rhapsiody, acted out (sans music) and turned into a crime thriller. Here’s a book that the devil put aside for me.