Saturday Links for the Week – December 23, 2006

Marketers and Corporatists Still Don’t Get It: An article in the NYT previews companies that try to analyze web data to assess consumer demand for their products and their brand reputation. If you really want evidence that marketing will soon be dead once and for all, read what these losers are trying to do. They still don’t understand that in the new world, every customer is a market of one, communicating peer to peer with other markets of one. The use of secondary research to look for patterns and meaningful buzz in these millions of individual context-rich conversations is the modern-day equivalent of alchemy. But it’s no surprise that the corporatists, who know no better, lap it up.

Children of Men: A Movie About Environmental Apocalypse: “Beset by racial intolerance, continental pandemics, rising international terrorism and environmental chaos, writer-director Alfonso Cuaron’s fictitious world has managed to render itself infertile. Loosely based on the book by British mystery writer P.D. James, Cuaron says he uses global infertility as a metaphor for the fading sense of hope that he — and countless others — seem to be feeling these days.” An ironic way to depict a world that will be plagued by too many people, but it sounds interesting. Watch for it. Thanks to Jon Husband for the link.

Exploring the Nature of Conversation: The Co-Intelligence Institute presents a variety of points of view on the nature of dialogue and conversation, and how to make it more effective. A great overview. Thanks to Siona van Dijk for the link.

The Future’s So Bright They’ve Gotta Wear Shades: A website allowing people to predict the future and then bet on it with others (the proceeds going to charity) is so replete with technophilia and devoid of predictions of environmental and social catastrophe, I’ve gotta wonder what planet these people are living on, ’cause it sure isn’t the one I know. Thanks to John Maloney for the link.

Climate Change Roadmap for New England and Eastern Canada: An interesting partial implement of George Monbiot’s (Heat) prescription, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for this area by 75% by mid-century (Monbiot says we need to reduce them by 90% by 2030). But definitely dreaming in technicolour, since it would require massive foresight and collaboration from a majority of politicians and citizens. Thanks to Craig De Ruisseau for the link.

German City Tries to Live Without Cars: Well, with fewer cars, anyway. Thanks to Cindy Hoong for the link.

Ontario Power Generation (formerly Ontario Hydro) is Canada’s Worst Polluter: No surprise that most of the country’s worst polluters are energy utilities, with the top few alone accounting for over 15% of the country’s greenhouse gases.

Understand the Present Before You Try to Change It: An interesting article in Core77 suggests that one of the keys to innovation is better detective work on why things have evolved to be the way they are now. Thanks to Innovation Weekly for the link.

Iraq Slides from Civil War to Genocide: Time magazine suggests the corollary to the civil war will be attempts by each faction to exterminate the rest. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link.

Thought for the Week: Something I said I three years ago:

I still feel the same way.