Microsoft's curious purchase

I have to wonder how Microsoft think they can integrate with companies like Avenue A Razorfish, Amnesia and DNA whilst leaving the creative cultures of those companies intact. As someone who is perennially agency-side, I see what many call 'agency culture' as something fragile and sensitive to corporate influence. The kind of professional risks that a creative agency habitually must take are hard to fit into conservative balance sheets. It takes a rare breed of management that can scale this kind of business whilst retaining creative integrity. And without that creative integrity it's hard to hang on to the kind of people you need in an agency. Bear in mind that, to a much greater degree than most, creative agencies' value lies in their staff. When you empty the people out, there's precious little left at the bottom of the bucket.

Microsoft has a highly questionable track record when it comes to fostering innovation and creativity. Most of their decent products have come through acquisition, and their current forays into new territory have been haemorrhaging money (Zune + Xbox). The labyrinthine nature of their middle-management bureaucracy is fabled. And it's evident Ballmer and Gates wouldn't know good design if they were locked in a room with it. Without Apple as their outsourced user-experience lab, one shudders to think what the state of our PC user interfaces would be today.

Combine this with the usually technology-neutral role of agencies. When a client goes to an agency they want independent advice as to what technology to use. How easy is it going to be for any of these agencies to recommend a Java or open-source based solution for their clients? How long before the zealous sales teams within Microsoft start trying to cross-sell?

I'm really curious how they plan to make this work. I experienced Microsoft first-hand during the original .com boom when they were quietly looking at acquiring agencies in order to push products like IIS and SQL Server into businesses. It didn't work then, I wonder what is different now?

What this deal smells of to me is that Microsoft had to buy the whole company in order to get the product. I know what this reminds me of. And I note with sadness how only sequels (and nothing new) has come from this.

Chalk me up one ticket for the stalls. If it works it will be something new for our industry, but the risks of failure are high.

The end of folders?

Oh how I hate folders. They have a fundamental flaw: what happens when a document belongs in several places at once? Since I'm usually working across multiple projects I get unstuck when trying to file stuff (and remember 'filing stuff' is just a time sink). Should the document go in 'strategy' or '.com' or 'web 2.0'?


Increasingly I've not been bothering, just sticking files into new folders each month and using Spotlight to find them. It's fast to file, fast to find, and especially removes the 'mental overhead' of having to take the time to think about where to file stuff.

Included in Spotlight is the ability to embed metadata within a file. This metadata can then be searched against. However the standard way to add metadata using the Finder is very clunky. You have to select the file, choose 'get info' and then type the label into a text field...



I've just stumbled upon an application that very nearly solves this. It's called Tagbot. It provides 'tag' management panel that allows you to quickly add tags (ie labels) to files and folders from an editable list of tags. It also provides one-click search to retrieve all files with that tag, plus the ability to tag multiple files at once:


All that's missing is the ability to apply multiple tags to a file in one step. Coming soon no doubt.

Highly recommended. It's only a matter of time imho before the metaphor of a 'folder' disappears from our desktops (in much the same way that the idea of a 'structure' underlying a web site is becoming increasingly nonsensical).

Is your civilization collapsing?

A recording of Jared Diamond's lecture discussing the themes of his latest book: 'collapse', is well worth watching.

In particular I like his discussion of how the core values of a given society that have served it well may need revision when conditions change. He gives the examples of how Europeans began the gradual transition from thinking of themselves as separate nations to being 'European' after the second world war. And how the US's core values that are 'up for revision' are its isolationism and it's consumerism, due to changes in conditions: namely globalization and diminishing environmental resources.

Also interesting is his analysis of how social change takes place. A common scenario is that there is a major issue that benefits a small number of people greatly, and inconveniences a large number a little. Examples are rife, global climate change being one. Only at the point where the consequences of the issue either negatively impact that small group, or greatly effect the common majority, does change occur. This suggests some interesting possibilities for new media technology to increase our cultural reaction times to nascent issues, as mainstream thought is increasingly assailed by the long tail of ideas. Or put another way: reducing the inertia of the mainstream will accelerate the speed at which needed changes in cultural values can occur.

One wonders how his ideas might transfer to online social networks where 'cultural change' can shift and re-form orders of magnitude more rapidly that in traditional cultures.

Something for another post, but I do wonder whether social capital could be seen as one of his 'resources' that can provoke collapse if exhausted.

The potential for direct democracy?

I doubt anyone needs reminding in these politically messy times of the downsides of representative democracy. The gaping void between the interests of the elected and the voting public lies in plain site. It's almost stating the obvious to say that our politicians are frequently not representing the best interests of the public, but rather the best interests of their 'special interests'.

What I find very interesting is the relationship between campaign financing and political success. Since advertising costs money, candidates need money to run, and lots of it. The result: when coming to office they are forced to represent the special interests of their financial backers. This is to be expected, you don't get something for nothing. In short, the purportedly democratic decision making process of politicians has been compromised by capitalism. The manufacturing of consent is a business like any other.

I wonder how the internet is changing this. Most of the evidence in the business of marketing points to a precipitous decline in the effectiveness of conventional advertising: the same means that politicians and parties use to brand themselves. Perhaps they are seeing the same 'problems'?. I'd expect so.

Sure, candidates have blogs now, and myspace pages. But that is only the beginning. The larger question is whether the participatory web might make direct democracy viable? Or at least a hybrid between representative and direct democracy, a move towards direct democracy. Perhaps the move online by politicians will lead to use of the web for democratic purposes beyond self-promotion.

A quick definition: 'direct democracy' is when citizens are able to participate directly in the decision making processes of government. This is as opposed to 'representative democracy', where we periodically elect representatives to make decisions for us.

Consider the standard arguments against direct democracy (taken, I confess, from Wikipedia):

Scale (practicality and efficiency): direct democracy doesn't scale. It's just too unwieldy to get the opinions of millions of people quickly, and to categorize, rank, distribute and otherwise sort these opinions.

Demagoguery: that the public doesn't pay much attention to the real issues and is subject to charismatic argument. Outspoken individuals can exert undue influence, setting the agenda and defining the arguments.

Complexity: that the political process and the issues being addressed are too complex for most to understand adequately. Providing detailed information is flawed because most of us don't know how to interpret it anyway. Politics as the 'ready-meal'.

Voter apathy: we don't care, we're not interested and we're not going to take the time to get involved.

Self-interest: we each think only of our own needs, rather than the interests of our society as a whole. That we aren't equipped to take our social responsibility seriously.

Now consider how the web, and web 2.0 in particular, alters each of these. The chinks are probably in plain site, but here is my take:

Scale: the web does not play by the same rules of scalability as previous media. Designed well, user experiences can scale. Opinion on a mass scale can be gathered, refined and expressed in ways never before possible. Admittedly we're just figuring out how to do this, but the future looks bright. Or at least, not inevitably dark.

Demagoguery: This is in a sense a false criticism, since this problem also applies equally to representative democracy. But I consider this to be one of the benefits of online direct democracy. Right now our demagogues are a select few (wealthy and well-connected), this is changing via the web. If you can make your point then you are able to effect change. The ability for individuals to publish their opinions to a wide audience is far greater than ever before, and increasing all the time. We are no longer forced to chose from a small group of (pre-selected) demagogues, but rather we can choose from a far wider set. Let the best ideas win. Anyone can be a demagogue, in other words, assuming they can cut it.

Complexity: I'm not sure I agree that politics is dealing with issues too complex for most people to have a worthwhile opinion on. It's one of the conceits of power that only it has the competence to wield power. The great majority of people are far smarter than we are given credit for. Additionally, the web provides a great means to find out more about any issue you are interested in, rather than having to hope its going to be covered on the nightly news.

Voter apathy: sure, there is voter apathy. But make it simple, accessible, easy to use and relevant (read: personalised to the issues I care about) and I think we'll see less apathy not more. Perhaps much of the current voter apathy we see is because people feel their representatives don't really represent them? Lack of representation can be seen as a cause of voter apathy, not solely an effect.

Self interest: this is not a problem. Rather, it is the essence of democracy. If each person stands up for what matters to them, and consensus is created, then democracy has been served. The current problem is that the career politicians self interest in their own careers outweighs their interest in their policies. If more (most?) decisions were made by non-politicians, then this career self-interest is absolved. What is democracy other than the collection and consensus of self interest? The greatest benefit of direct over representative democracy is that this self interest is direct, rather than channelled through representatives: representatives who can never have have your interest as their self-interest.

Edward Bernays expressed his feelings on the need for representative democracy in his book Propaganda:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

This was written 1928 when the mass media was in its ascendancy. As one of the founders of the PR (Advertising) industry, his ideas has been inherent in the thinking behind how political ideas have been distributed. But now, with the rise of user-contribution via the web, these ideas are looking unsustainable.