Radio and papers filled with people complaining that the odd flake of snow has achieved what the Luftwaffe couldn’t and brought London buses to a halt . Terrible toll on British productivity. Where’s our sense of pride?
Well, mine is in the garden. We made a snow fort tough enough to withstand attack by football.
I honestly do like my job. I believe in what I do and I enjoy the people I work with (most of the time). But I’ve just picked up the first work-related email I’ve had since Christmas Eve, and the sense of prison doors clanging shut is driving me to the emergency chocolate supply.
What I seem to have been groping for in the last post was a view of how quickly technology is already changing reality and how it is going to continue to change us in the future. Inevitably someone else was doing the same thinking as me, but doing it far more eloquently – and, unlike me, coming up with some answers. The Guardian has been looking at predictions about the future made by the Edge Foundation – “some of the most interesting minds in the world”.
There’s some really thought provoking stuff in the article, but the contribution I liked most was this one – mainly because alone among the chaps (and they were all chaps) quoted, this is the only one to suggest that no-one’s really got a clue about what’s going to happen:
The snowball has started to roll and there is probably no stopping it. Will the result be a utopia or a dystopia? Which of the novelties are self-limiting and which will extinguish institutions long thought to be permanent? Will universities and newspapers become obsolete? Will hospitals and churches go the way of corner grocery stores and livery stables? Will reading music soon become as arcane a talent as reading hieroglyphics? When you no longer need to eat to stay alive, or procreate to have offspring, or locomote to have an adventure-packed life, when the residual instincts for these activities might be simply turned off by genetic tweaking, there may be no constants of human nature left at all. Except, maybe, our incessant curiosity. (Daniel Dennett)
Which proves nothing much – except perhaps that Aldous Huxley was the most accurate futurologist of all time!
Blogging is like going to the gym, enthusiasm is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going. So rather than fall off the wagon over Christmas, I’ve been trying to write something that pulls together the thoughts that have been floating round my head for the past few days. Sometimes it all seems to be about to come together to make something meaningful, but the bits always drift apart in the end. So, can you join up the dots and make a profound statement about progress and technology on my behalf? I’ll just dig out my trainers and go to the gym…
1. The Christmas I was nine my parents bought Pong which was then state of the art in electronic entertainment. I did most of my under-age drinking in the first pub in Lichfield to have a Space Invaders machine. This Christmas my children are 11 and 8. My parents provided the funds to buy us a Wii for Christmas. Is this progress? Should I be worried that geological ages can pass before they get tired of playing the racing cow game ? One of the virtues of Pong was that it was so dull that once the novelty of playing wore off you generally stopped and got a book to read instead. Are books “better” than TV games? What will my grandchildren be playing when they’re nine? Isn’t it weird that I, who still think of myself as being (quite) young, have seen in my lifetime two entire industries (gaming and mobile telephony) be born and take over the world, to the point that they are changing the way human beings behave?
2. On Start the Week , Susan Greenfield was saying that the ubiquity of computer-based entertainment was changing the way that we think, so that young people now find it hard to deal with abstract ideas or with narrative which develops slowly. As she puts it –technology is moulding a generation of children unable to think for themselves or empathise with others. Is this a) true? b) inevitable? c) what middle aged people always say about the young?
3. Amazon’s biggest electronic seller this year was that electr0nic tablet which impersonates a book. I’m happy to carry all my music around with me on my iPod despite being devoted to vinyl. Why do I hate the idea of carrying lots of books around the same away? Will I give in eventually, just as I have with blogging and owning a Blackberry?
4. Julie’s post about work-life balance came to mind when I was listening to a programme about the Slow Movement, which aims to restore a gentler pace to modern life. The programme included a clip from Tom Hodgkinson of the Idler magazine which campaigns against the work ethic. He blamed the Puritans for the decline in the value placed on play in modern societies and the stress placed on work and duty. In which case is it actually a good thing that my children are enjoying the racing cow game?
See? Completely random, but somehow also linked by something. (Polite) suggestions as to what it might all mean would be very welcome!
The standout sentence of the weekend’s papers for me (before I gave up reading and took refuge in drink) was John Simpson’s assertion that we’re heading back to the 14th century – generally accepted as the worst ever century to be alive in the history of the world. So that’s famine, the Black Death, a new 100 Years War, a Peasant’s Revolt (count me in) and religious schism in Europe to look forward to. On the plus side it looks like a great time to be a warrior woman, or install some energy efficient central heating ; and narrative poetry is probably well overdue a comeback. This does, of course, have absolutely nothing to do with communications or new media, other than proving yet again what a truly fantastic resource Google is for those moments when you REALLY don’t want to start work on the accounts…
It’s the 60th annivesary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights this month (December 10th, to be precise). Looking round the planet it seems that we still have a way to go to make a reality of the idea that “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” Still, as the founders of Amnesty pointed out, it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness. So here is a short list of no-effort-required ways to use the power of your internet connection to fight the good fight. Now, flex those social networks and pass it on:
Read the Declaration to see what it’s all about; join Amnesty – and support their greetings card campaign; support Reprieve which fights against the death penalty; pick an issue which really makes your blood boil and find out more about it (personally, mine are Burma and Zimbabwe, so there are a couple of links for starters), and keep an eye on what’s happening at home too
Thanks. Normal PR-based services will be resumed in the next post…
Typically, on the day I decided to take the plunge and set up a blog, the Today programme gleefully told me that blogging is so completely over that anyone who has a blog should close it down and hop off to Twitter instead. Apparently the blogosphere is sinking under a “tsunami of paid bilge” and most people have an attention span which is too short to deal with more information than they can get in a typical txt msg or tweet.
If even John Humphrys is telling me that I’m behind the times I evidently have some catching up to do. But having been prompted by blogging enthusiast Richard Bailey to set up my own space, I’m now really excited at the thought of having somewhere to organise my thoughts about the best way to manage a PR business through what promises to be a pretty grim recession.
PR Week ran one of their “thought leader” supplements about the future of the PR agency, recently which came up with some interesting ideas about how agencies can rise to the challenge of the credit crunch. The tone was pretty upbeat – there may be trouble ahead but the PR industry is well placed to weather the storm and our communications skills are always going to be needed. Cheerily, for me at least, there was some suggestion that more business will be outsourced from inhouse staff to freelancers. This allows companies to cut their overheads and not have to pay for all those expensive fripperies like heating, lighting and pension contributions for their staff. This means that I may be able to keep paying the mortgage, but may never be able to retire. Suggestions as to whether this is good or bad news will be very welcome!
Sole Trader PR 