Serendipity Book

The Trap - Whatever Happened To Our Dream of Freedom

I just finished watching the final part of Adam Curtis' latest documentary for BBC2, The Trap - What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom?

Using only a voiceover, huge amounts of archive b-roll and the occasional interview, Curtis argues that the hegemony of the concept of freedom has underpinned all of the major ideological shifts in post cold war global politics.

Spiked provides a great synopsis:

The thesis of the series is quite straightforward. It is in fact stated clearly and often, and it is patently not a conspiracy theory. It is that we live today within a conception of freedom and of ourselves that is narrow and limiting. It is an ideology which views human beings as selfish, mistrustful, isolated individuals who are seen, and have come to see themselves, as simplistic beings who can be understood and directed through the application of scientific techniques. This diminished view of the self might have been of use in countering communist tyranny but it was a ‘trap’ and it has left us with ‘no positive vision in the face of all the reactionary forces’ that it has in fact helped to awaken around the world, says Curtis.

From a review by Charlie Brooker in The Guardian:

Curtis has an uncanny knack for hovering coolly above recent world history and spotting huge, sweeping, disturbing trends, then recounting them in a way that feels subversive and playful, thoughtful and entertaining, all at once. He has an incredible eye for archive footage, assembling one haunting montage after another, apparently from thin air. His programmes unfold like a series of revelations; watching one is like having all your slumbering suspicions about the world - suspicions so dormant you didn’t even realise they were suspicions - confirmed and explained for the very first time.

As with all of Curtis' recent work for BBC2 (Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self) The Trap makes for very seductive and stimulating television but somehow as I find myself getting drawn into his arguments I can't shake off the suspicion that I am being hoodwinked by a master storyteller. All the same this is must-watch television.

If you want to find out more about the themes featured in The Trap then the fabulous Intute: Social Sciences database can help:

The first programme looked at how mathematical models of human behaviour influenced security decisions in the Cold War and later the field of Economics as Game Theory sought to explain the economic choices made by people. It also looked at the ideas of R.D. Laing and his controversial work that challenged the role of psychiatry in the diagnosis in mental health disorders. Curtis brings these ideas together to explain the rejection of the idea that politicians and bureaucrats act in the public interest.

The second programme looked at the role of genes in determining behaviour and cited the Ax Fight anthropological study of the Yanomamo people, as well as, the work of Richard Dawkins. These ideas were brought together with the economic theories of Friedrich Von Hayek to produce governments obsessed with targets and measurable outcomes. Curtis argues that this obsession produced distorted outcomes, reduced social mobility and reinforced existing elites, causing economists to look again at the game theory / free market model and reassess the concept of behavioural economics.

The final programme saw how Isaiah Berlin’s work on liberty had shaped political theory and had been used to justify extreme economic deregulation in Russia, which produced a crisis in Russia’s economic transition. It concluded by looking at how neoconservative ideas about using military force to bring freedom to Nicaragua and Iraq had interacted with modern terrorism to end up restricting freedom in Western countries.

Sadly, if you want to get hold of a DVD of any of Curtis' work then you are out of luck. In response to the demand for DVD copies of The Power of Nightmares, Curtis has been quoted as saying:

The problem is that the films are full of archive film and music from a multitude of sources. The reason my series are normally not released on DVD is that it is prohibitively costly and a nightmare - no pun intended - to clear the rights.

Nonetheless his works are very easy to find on Google Video or YouTube and the BitTorrents are everywhere.

Earlier: The Power of Nightmares

The future that never was

The Guardian Guide's Internet section tipped me off to a  smashing little blog called Paleo Future: A look into the future that never was.

The Guardian's synopsis...

A universal truth about the past is that the future was always brighter back then.  This wonderful blog about the future that never was provides more than enough evidence, from Michael J Fox's hover board and Nike boots to jet packs for commuters. A 1966 Time magazine article predicted that no one would need to work by 2000, while Motorola TV ads of that period imagined us all living in underground bachelor pads.

In his opening post a couple of months ago, the blog's author, Matt, said:

While I might poke fun at the outlandish ideas of 1950s America, corporate puffery, or Jules Verne I do it with an admiration for the idealism we seem to be losing in our post-modern society. The belief that technology has the potential to improve the lives of everyone on Earth seems rare. Just remember that an optimism for the future and the attempt to better the world for all humanity is hidden somewhere within each sarcastic comment about flying cars and space farms. In that same vein, I will always remember that the dystopian societies depicted by George Orwell or Alan Moore are just as plausible if we surrender freedom in the name of security.

Couldn't agree more. As I wrote in a post last year:

"I often find myself mourning the magical urban future that I felt I was promised as a child. You know the one: Cars that fly over houses. Monorails. Streets in the sky. Bold colours. Curved white concrete buildings. Space travel."

Earlier:
Retro Utopian Visions of the Future
A Lost Future

Consumers fight back

Consumers are taking over. The "Day of the Long Tail" has arrived:

A film by Michael Markman, Peter Hirshberg and Bob Kalsey for The Computer History Museum.

Set Research Free!

The subversive activities of the Research Liberation Front were noted by Campaign's diarist this week:

"Word reaches Diary that anarchy was about to reign at last week’s Market Research Conference in Brighton when a group calling itself the Research Liberation Front staged an “anti-research demo” outside the conference venue. The local police were alerted but the “demonstrators” turned out to be actors creating a bit of PR for MESH Planning."

To set the record straight, this was no mere PR exercise. As you can see from the picture below this was a deadly serious attempt to challenge the research orthodoxy and set research free.

Kit Kat: Have a break, get a Third Life

Nice extension of the Have a Break Have a KitKat campaign idea ...

Via: Ilya at the MIT AdLab
Created by Ubachs Wisbrun JWT

Steve Jobs and the power of oral history

Ernie Schenk posted a video of Steve Jobs' famous speech to a 2005 Stanford graduation ceremony the other day. I sat and watched it again last night in preference to the tat that was on TV. One bit really stands out for me:

"You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle."

I first came across the text of this script in January 2006. I had just been to MacWorld in San Francisco and was flying back to New York on American Airlines. I was sitting in Business Class and dressed quite casually and this seemed to stir the curiosity of the well built and smartly dressed businessman in his 60s sitting next to me. When the conversation turned to Apple and MacWorld he conspirationally pulled out his Blackberry and showed me an email he had been sent with the script in it. I read the speech and when we were in the air we got to talking about his life, his ambitions, his loves and his family and how his life hadn't turned out quite as he planned. It was by far the most interesting 5 hours I had ever spent on a plane and it reminded me to ask more questions and spend more time listening than talking.

Virtual Worlds: quests as a medium

One of the most interesting papers at this years Market Research Society Conference in Brighton this year was by Nick Gadsby of Wardle McLean. His paper was called "The Dancers at the End of Time: researching the future through MMORPGs"

Whilst Nick didn't say a great deal about research he was very eloquent about the experience of participating in virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life and he used video well to bring the experience to life for the conference attendees.

Nick made some interesting observations about virtual 3D worlds which I've paraphrased here:

1. WoW is more involving than Second Life because there is a purpose - to complete quests and advance to a higher level.
2. Brands face significant barriers to acceptance in virtual worlds due to the desire of participants to escape many aspects of the real world.
3. Brands must behave appropriately for the medium in order to be accepted -- often that means *not* behaving as they would in the real world.
4. WoW quests offer a potential opportunity for brands to participate using quests as a medium

The more I think about it the more important I think that first observation is: Second Life's main failing is the lack of any real purpose for participants. The secular amongst us might reflect on the obvious similarities with our First Lives but it is really hard to define a purpose within Second Life. You could argue that World of Warcraft is more successful (it has four times as many players as Second Life) because there is a clear mission. Or you might agree with the nihilistic character from NBC's Heroes who argues that the only way to be happy is to live entirely in the present: "No thought of what’s gone before, and no thought of what lies ahead." For Nathan Petrelli at least, happiness and meaning are mutually exclusive.

P.S. ADMAP's long standing editor Roderick White provides his summary of Nick's paper here on the WARC blog of the conference.

P.P.S. Love the references to pointlessness nerdery in the Urban Dictionary definitions of Second Life.

P.P.P.S. This article in AdWeek summarises an interesting if methodologically questionable survey by a German research firm called Komjuniti about the attitudes of Second Lifers to marketing. Can't have been very easy to sample so I must question the validity of the results.

Picture credit: October Hush

Polaroid case study - 1957-1977

This fantastic site by the designer and illustrator Paul Giambarba is dedicated to the history of branding at Polaroid from 1957 - 1977.

Subtitled "how we beat Eastman Kodak and its little yellow boxes at the point of purchase despite a clunky product and an irrelevant corporate name", the site is clearly divided into chapters which deal with different stages in the development of the brand.

Giambarba talks about his designs for the packaging and typography and also shows examples of the DDB campaigns that Polaroid ran in the 50s.

This is a classic example of how a blog format can work well as a universal and easy template for all kinds of web publishing and not just the 'scrapbook' and 'journal' models of blogging.

Paul Giambarba also has an excellent site dedicated to 100 years of illustration.

The first reader-edited book?

The latest draft of Charles Leadbetter's book on collaborative creation, "We Think" is available for free download here. Charles is taking comments on this draft via a wiki and intends to acknowledge all comments made. He claims that this will be the first reader-edited book. We Think is currently slated for publication in 2008 and is the a follow up to the 2004 book he wrote with Paul Miller, Pro-am Revolution.

Ahem: Charles Leadbetter may have been stretching the truth a tad by saying that his was the first collaboratively edited book. Here, Cluetrain Manifesto co-consipirator David Weinberger talks about how online collaboration helped him to develop his thesis for Small Pieces Loosely Joined.

100 year trend in leisure time

  Average Hours of Leisure 1900-2003 
  Originally uploaded by ed100.

Ed from Influx Insights had this image in his Flickr stream. It's an incredible bit of longitudinal data showing the trend in leisure time in the USA for the last 100 years.

Researchers Ramey and Francis have created a useful measure of time spent in market work, home production, schooling and leisure. You can download the paper this is based on here.

Barring the impact of the Second World War, the most significant finding is that, contrary to popular belief, leisure time remained relatively constant throughout the 20th Century.