Startling Science of the Social Starlings
Be amazed. It's not just humans that have a strong Social Code but birds too. Treated as a mass this kind of phenomenon is known to scientists as "murmuration". AI enthusiasts will know this as "emergent functionality" - the idea that complex behaviors can emerge from very simple rules.
Reclaim New York - the power of our Social Code
Brian Lehrer has been asking New Yorkers to help find the city's "privately owned public spaces" – those small patches of indoor and outdoor real estate that property owners have committed to making available for public use. The world has heard of Zuccotti Park, thanks partly to the Occupy protests. But New York is dotted with these beautiful spaces.
Members of Occupy Wall Street sleep in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, New York. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
Developers were given valuable exemptions to the city's zoning rules in exchange for building and maintaining public areas. But building a space and letting the public use it are two different things. Michael Keller, behind the project, says there's very little enforcement of the "public" part of these privately owned public spaces and equally little data about the shape they're in. "Some, like Zuccotti Park, are very well maintained, while others,
Our Social Code: connectivity or die. Here's how we turn unfriendly social spaces back into the humane. Here's how we turn the stolen back over to the public domain. Great article. More examples of how the Social Code reclaims social space:
* Guerilla Gardening
* The Amazing Bubblegum Alley
* More Social Spaces Reclaimed
* Abandoned Theme Parks
Social Connectivity is Key to Success (and Survival)
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Here's a scene from the introduction of my book. It's based in Hachiko Square, Tokyo - the world's busiest station exit serving the world's busiest mass transit system. It was a powerful analogy to the dynamic tensions we face in everyday life - the desire to belong in the seething mass of humanity that is the city set against the loneliness of urban life. I wanted to tell the story of the human Social Code through human experience rather than scientific analysis. I hope you enjoy it.
Four students stand in a neatly organized line in front of a makeshift bus positioned inconveniently in the square for marketing purpose. They stand equidistantly apart, consulting their tiny screens for some sign of recognition by the outside world. Solitary smokers sit by the tree watching a swarm of photographers, camera crew and improbably adorned girls disappear as quickly as they descended onto this busy corner of Tokyo life.
A group of girls gather around their mobile phones. They giggle in collective delight at photos on their handsets. Maybe boyfriends, maybe “print club” pictures from last weekend. Their deep orangey tans and bright blonde hair makes them easily identifiable. Against a blander backdrop of pale-faced, anonymous 30-something female shoppers treading the familiar path towards department stores and lunch with friends at the latest Italian restaurant recommended in the guidebook, the riot of daring Gyaru color stands out.
The younger girls are Japanese “Gyaru” (corruption of the English slang “gal”). Despite its ageing population, youth culture in Japan is vibrant and identifiable. In the last decade a wealth of fashions have come and gone. She has been the “Ganguro” (Lit “burned face”) with florescent makeup or the white haired “Yamanba” (Lit “mountain witch”) then just “Banba”, a brightly colored, less sinister Yamanba or “Himegyaru” (Lit “princess Gyaru”). She changed the way she spoke. She adopted the coarse Gyaru vernacular and used “Gyaru-moji” (an often unidentifiable writing style only decipherable by other Gyaru). She indulged in tightly synchronized “parapara” dancing with her circle of friends, shopped at the right stores, hung out at the right coffee bars.
Tokyo for many young migrants, like Hidemi, is defined by abundance - a seemingly unlimited capacity to cater to consumer fetishes and fantasies in every format: as many friends as your mobile phone address book could hold, 24 hour drinking, vending machines that sold everything from beer to bowls of hot pork tonkatsu and ramen noodles and convenience stores on every corner.
So intrinsic is this story of unyielding faith and friendship to the story of modern urban living in Japan, that the Japanese decided this spot - possibly the busiest meeting place in the world - should bear the dog’s name.
Whether boldy-dressed high school girls or low-key 30-somethings, they all squeeze through the narrow concourse under the watchful gaze of a discrete statue of an Akita dog sitting discretely on top of a pedestal. And this is where the exit’s name derives. This overlooked homage to a humble Akita dog named “Hachiko” was erected to commemorate the late servant of a one Hidesamuro Ueno, a college professor who lived in the district in the 1920s and 30s. When Ueno left for work in the morning, Hachiko would loyally follow him to Shibuya station where he’d wait for his master to return at 4 o clock the same afternoon. Despite Ueno’s passing from stroke in 1938, the masterless hound would return to the Shibuya crossing to wait patiently for 19 years until his own death in 1957. So intrinsic is this story of unyielding faith and friendship to the story of modern urban living in Japan, that the Japanese decided this spot - possibly the busiest meeting place in the world - should bear the dog’s name.
For the last two generations of Japanese high school girls Hachiko has improvised as a spiritual home. Access to some of the most densely packed retail and restaurant space in the world is one reason they come in numbers. Here you can get lost in the side-streets and stumble upon any number of boutique fashion outlets, dingily lit Isakaya restaurants or ambiguously named clubs that range from strip joint to soulless dive to raucous drinking den. The other draw is the unswerving drive to belong. Whether lying snug in an audaciously titled “mansion” (i.e. A 4 square meter apartment with a single room that serves as living room, kitchen and diner), arms’ length from their neighbors or rammed like sardines pressed up against a sweaty mass of commuters reeking of body odor, last night’s alcohol, tobacco and coffee on the Yamanote subway during rush hour you’ll never be far from the next person.
When the internet became mainstream media fodder during my time in Japan in the 90s, pundits painted an image of the future where we’d be freed of the yoke of city living. Cities would become ghost towns populated by robots and the underclasses. Why live in the cramped bedsits in Hoxton, Brooklyn or downtown Chiba when you could “telecommute” (as it was known them) from your idyllic country pad or some beach in Thailand?
20 years on rental yields for those cramped bedsits comprise some of the most attractive in the world and Tokyo continues to grow at a dizzying rate. 30 million people. To understand its sheer size you’ll need a 4-hour local train ride from East to West. To put that into perspective, in less than 4 hours you can catch the train from London to Paris or even Amsterdam.
They come in search of bright city lights, tantalized by MTV hip hop videos and fashion magazines that remind us how backward, “dasai” (Lit “uncool”) and imoppoi we are when we live outside of the city boundaries. They leave not because they haven’t found any social benefit on the internet but because nothing seems able to replace the timeless draw of belonging that comes from being surrounded by familiar faces.
Why does Silicon Valley continue to turn out great tech success stories? Why are there more millionaires per capita in cities like Mumbai and Shanghai than anywhere else in the world? The answer lies in the reason why the ghost town dystopia of city living never materialized - social connectivity.
Internet, mobile and social media may help us connect but the reality is that real meaning still happens offline. These media are means to that end rather than the end itself. And, in the end - what is it that everyone craves? Face time.
But for every one that leaves thousands take up residence in “bedtown” as the Japanese call it - a land of simple bedsits and apartments in the faceless, sprawling suburbs that define Tokyo’s extensive 100km wide commuterland. Being connected is not only psychologically reassuring; it’s also vital to our success.
Rather than flee the cities, the cities have become huge black holes of talents sucking generations of Hidemis out of the surrounding countryside. Every year, farmers from northern-most Hokkaido make the long trip down to the big cities to publicly address the disenchanted women of the nation offering them a simple life of hard work and toil over nail salons and weekday lunches. Every year a handful take them up on their offer and start a new life. But for every one that leaves thousands take up residence in “bedtown” as the Japanese call it - a land of simple bedsits and apartments in the faceless, sprawling suburbs that define Tokyo’s extensive 100km wide commuterland. Being connected is not only psychologically reassuring; it’s also vital to our success. As we’ll discover later on, social connectivity is also fundamental to our survival.
Innovation Communities - how do they work?
Thanks to Gavin @ Servant of Chaos for this find. In the book All is Social I share stories of how innovation is a function of culture not strategy (The Porpoise, Scion and mobile technologies like SMS being examples). In this video, Marilyn Pratt and Anne Hardy and talk about social innovation as a function of its innovation community.
Facebook and Twitter Users don't engage with brands (survey)
UK users of social media sites such as Facebook don't want the hard sell from big brands, according to a survey. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty ImagesAlmost two-thirds of Britons do not want to be bothered by big-name brands on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, according to a survey.
The survey of more than 72,000 internet users indicates that Britons are less susceptible to online marketing messages and corporate blogposts than web users in other countries.
No surprises here. People don't wake up thinking about brands anymore. The challenge for brands today is understanding what they do wake up thinking about - their social needs.
Watering the Bamboo (book extract)
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This is an extract from chapter 1 "Watering the Bamboo" of the book. I've used an analogy of watering the bamboo to describe the challenges facing modern marketers today.
Sometimes you can’t articulate why something has to be done. It just feels right. It’s an act of faith when all around you common sense and feedback is telling you to give up. You plant the bamboo bulb and water it but nothing grows. You keep watering it for a year and nothing grows. Most people would give up but the diligent, the crazy ones, keep watering the bulb. At the end of the second year the bulb breaks through the ground and the bamboo cane grows a full 20 feet (6 meters) in 72 hours. The first two years of growth were entirely underground. When most would have given up the bulb was quietly growing out a complex root system called rhizomes.
Marketing today is like watering the bamboo tree. Something exciting is ready to break through the topsoil at an incredible pace but we’re too lazy, too impatient to wait for it to happen. We need results right here, right now. We hire trendspotters to deliver the magic silver bullet. Agency pitches that promise a campaign to take the brand pain away seduce us. All along the patient brands are diligently building out their underground networks - one customer at a time.
Is Advertising pollution?
Like a scourge on our eyeballs, so-called ‘visual pollution’ proliferates in our cities in the form of advertising big and small -- from distracting billboards in public spaces to those annoying ad panels in bathroom stalls. But there’s a grassroots movement that’s starting to fight back, as documented by American filmmaker Gwenaëlle Gobé in a new documentary called This Space Available.
Trailer from This space available on Vimeo.
Advertising ain't what it used to be: youth aren't paying attention to it, they're not watching TV and although it's still "sex", only losers today are paying for it. This documentary by filmmaker Gobe examines the concept of advertising as "visual pollution".
Write that book... even if you don't get any readers
Image by brody4 via Flickr
Because the most important reader is you. You'll teach yourself a lot in the process. Even if you don't sell a single copy you'll end up elevating your level of insight beyond the wall of internet noise. Every book you do sell is a bonus. As an author you'll carry a mental map that helps organize noise and turn it into insight. People will pay big bucks for that. You'll also have a ready made repertoire of stories to entertain. People will pay big bucks to hear you tell them on stage.
I'll never regret writing this book. Now I'm hungry to write more.
The View From Space (book extract)
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Enjoy the following extract from the book All is Social. I wanted challenge the reader to view our collective achievements from afar. Perhaps, with this knowledge we can not only get a better handle on what exactly marketing is and how we need to focus on the daily challenges the human race faces but also gain are much deeper insight into what is means to be human.THE VIEW FROM SPACE
“For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.”
Donald Williams, NASA astronaut on Discovery & Atlantis.
Distance provides perspective.
I encourage clients to look beyond their industry walls for answers. It’s funny how much insight distance can afford when you step outside your own world. From our worm’s eye view owe see walled office cubicles, firewalled laptop computers, memos, emails, lunchtime sandwiches in the park and the daily commute. Yet, viewed from afar we can appreciate we’re part of a much bigger picture. How will all this appear viewed from afar? When it comes to Earth, our home, very few have had the good fortune to know the answer. For centuries we speculated.
Before we could even travel there we philosophized about it.
What is the only man-made object visible from space? Ask and I’ll wager most of them will say “The Great Wall of China”. Why? Because we’ve come to accept the story even though it was first circulated in the 1930s, 40 years before Man walked on the Moon.
We’ve long held on to this world-view. It’s a story that defines history and the triumph of civilization as the product of heroic generals, military might and control of the map. At 4,500 miles (7,200 km) in length this vast bulwark against the unknown spanning from Shanhaiguan in China’s east to Lop Nur in the west stands as a monument to man’s timeless drive to own, control and protect. That the most visible manifestation of the human story should also be a wall so vast and monumental it outlived its mortal wards appeals to our subconscious.
It’s a story that defines history and the triumph of civilization as the product of heroic generals, military might and control of the map.
We want to believe.
But, it is true?
When 38 year-old Yang Liwei from Suizhong County in the North East of China crash-landed back to Earth at 6:30 in the morning of October 16, 2003, he emerged from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia as a national hero. It was exactly 21 hours since his celebrated launch at the Jiuquan Launch Center situated in the remote Gobi desert, Gansu province. Party officials led by Hu Jintao waved off their first “Yuhangyuan” (lit: Space Navigator) propelled by the Long March 5 rocket declaring "the glory of our great motherland," describing the flight as an "historic step of the Chinese people in the advance of climbing over the peak of the world's science and technology."
China was now the third nation in the world capable of developing and launching a manned space vehicle. Their arrival at the top table of international power brokers was a carefully engineered PR exercise; although two Chinese born astronauts had previously gone to space, none were Chinese citizens per se and Liwei’s pedigree was more remarkable in that he was the model citizen.
As a child LiWei dreamed of flying, and at age eighteen he entered the People's Liberation Army Air Force College where he obtained a bachelor's degree in 1987. After graduation Liwei became a fighter pilot eventually accumulating 1,350 flight hours. In 1998, now a lieutenant-colonel, he was chosen as one of fourteen astronaut candidates from 1,500 applicants to spearhead China’s first homegrown space mission. Fellow applicants who missed the cut deferred to their future hero’s better character, describing him as “a man with a good team spirit and dedicated to his career.” With his wife Zhang Yumei - also working for the national space program - they raised their regulation one child.
Sustained on a diet of specially designed packets of shredded pork with garlic, spicy marinated Kung Pao chicken and eight-treasure rice, along with herbal tea, Liwei embarked on a program of scientific measurements aimed to verify the observability of the The Great Wall as he circled the Earth 14 times. During the mission he took two three-hour rest periods and had two meals. He maintained communication with ground control, beaming in on color television via the programme’s four tracking ships stationed out in the far reaches of the Earth’s oceans. He spoke with his wife and son by telephone. Before long, the media became less concerned about the bravery of their first citizen in space and his 500,000 km journey and more interested in what he saw up there. Did LiWei see the Great Wall? How did it look from outer space?
From the Shenzhou 5 mission Liwei reported what many of his predecessors had observed; from space the Great Wall was invisible to the naked eye. With that bombshell, chatrooms from Shanghai to Beijing exploded. Was Liwei telling the truth? Was he being unpatriotic? Experts argued school textbooks had to be rewritten. Prominent geological professor Weng Chengjie was so moved by the incongruity of Liwei’s statement he challenged the astronaut to appear on national television in 2006 and debate the findings. Chengjie concluded in his professorial manner that despite the astronaut’s first hand testimony the matter was inconclusive; better-trained astronauts may have actually been able to observe The Wall.
LiWei is not alone. Ed Lu, astronaut on the ISS (International Space Station) later said of the Wall “…it’s less visible than a lot of other objects. And you have to know where to look. In fact, stretches of The Wall aren’t even visible from China itself. They’ve been buried by sand for centuries.”
“Some astronauts have said that they didn’t see it,” adds Professor Cheng Jie on the controversy, “but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there”. As any seasoned news editor will tell you – don’t let the evidence get in the way of a good story.
Although sections near Beijing, China’s capital, have been restored for tourists, in many areas the structure is crumbling. Where it still stands, the wall’s mixture of stone and clay blends into the surrounding land and for Lu to see The Wall in earnest he’d have to use one of the US Geological Survey’s space based Landsat radars.
“Some astronauts have said that they didn’t see it,” adds Professor Cheng Jie on the controversy, “but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there”. As any seasoned news editor will tell you – don’t let the evidence get in the way of a good story.
Identifying the Great Wall from space became less about scientific fact and more about seeking validation for nationalist myth. On 24th April 2005 after 6 months in space, Chinese American astronaut Leroy Chiao from California, commander of Expedition 10, returned from the ISS with results from a geological survey that aimed to resolve the issue of ‘visible or not’ once and for all. Orbiting the Earth every 92 minutes Chiao compiled over 24,000 images that were later authenticated by Professor Cheng Jie.
Jie proclaimed the findings an irrefutable indictment of his original argument. Chiao’s photographs of ambiguous lines tracing out the arc of the Wall against the background of the border with Inner Mongolia made the front page of the Chinese national newspapers. But, even in the midst of this ensuing patriotic media frenzy, Chiao himself remained largely unconvinced.
"It is hard to say whether or not I have seen it,” he reported in a media interview.
According to Chiao, “seeing” the Wall requires a perfect storm of prerequisites: near perfect atmospheric conditions, an orbiting height of exactly 350km and knowing where to look.
“Although I captured it in photos, I cannot say that I was able to discern the wall,” Chiao said.
“If one had perfect weather conditions and knew exactly where to look, the Great Wall should be visible. The task of identifying it is more difficult… From our altitude,” he concluded, “I cannot distinguish between the Wall and roads”
From space, what stands as monument to our collective achievements?
Here on Earth our media and representative politicians warn their people of societal breakdown and the erosion of our collective spirit. Alien observers (and a few fortunate astronauts) would disagree. Astronaut logs reveal a truer nature of the human race. Distance provides a unique perspective.
The most visible monuments to the sum of our race’s achievements aren’t walls and artifacts of division and control but airports, roads, railway lines, aircraft vapor trails and seafaring freight. These are symbols of dialogue and the most tangible manifestations of our Social Code.
The most visible monuments to the sum of our race’s achievements are the symbols of our desire to connect.
Genchi Genbutsu - the secret of innovative co-creation
"The car built by Facebook likes" (aka the VW Slamwagen) sounded great at the agency pitch but it's a waste of money - a bit like Chevy throwing the Sonic out the back of a plane. Gimmick.
It's easy to believe a Facebook fan page can take away your innovation pain.
Crowdsourcing ideas isn't about asking people to vote on those ideas. Anybody heard of the Homer Simpson car that played the Cucuracha? ("O Brother where art thou?")
Nobody ever made anything noteworthy because they "liked" it and it certainly won't work for VW and the Slamwagen. The brands and products that made a difference were made out of love. Sitting behind Facebook all day and counting likes is exactly the opposite of what VW needs to be doing. Facebook "Likes" are lazy.
John Waraniak from SEMA (the after-parts market that provides the auto industry its own "department of great ideas") reminded me about the Toyota philosophy of "Genchi Genbutsu" - or in English "going to the source". The American corruption of this idea is more easily understood as "get your boots on". Get your boots on, get out there and find out what drivers love.
Before you think it's auto-brand bashing season (see The Chevrolet Sonic ad campaign is a waste of money) consider this - there are some winners out there worth praising. Innovation isn't about asking for people to "like" stuff but getting out there and embedding yourself in the community like Ford Fiesta Movement or Toyota Scion. These brands (namely the people who are/were behind their rise to prominence e.g. Jim Farley, Jeri Yoshizu etc) quite simply "get it". That means talking to real drivers, offline. That means getting out there in the community and supporting their own events (like Rebel Industries did for Scion). That means getting off Facebook and seeing where real meaning is created - offline.
Real innovation is Social. Innovation doesn't happen on social media but in the social context of how drivers really use the vehicles (at shows, rollouts, meetups, local community events etc).
So let's have a look at 3 quick-fire secrets to Genchi Genbutsu from you can draw from my work in Social Innovation in the book All is Social:
- 1) CONTEXT: Study innovation and usage behavior in its natural environment. Re-create the social context that drives innovation (positive deviance).
- 2) FANS: Don't bother co-creating with everybody. Society has leaders and followers for a reason. Give everybody a voice (like the Threadless model) but you have to structure a social dynamic that affords everyone significance and belonging in your creative community even if they're simply watching from the bleachers. Practise the 90-10 rule. Focus on the 10% who influence the 90%.
- 3) REAL-TIME: Don't be suckered into thinking Facebook is the answer. Any media agency selling you a Facebook solution to innovation is a liar. Innovation is a real world process not an online event. Get out there and connect in communities, events, night-clubs, auto shows and wherever those fans are.
Now turn your computer off and get your boots on.
(image via psfk.com)
