Rosicrucians

Shall we bring the opposing sides together? As above, so below "und so weiter".

Eleanor Rigby, Wigan Pier

What's the difference between Motown and Tamala

Locomotieve Ghost Mix by ADIN

Lifting The Veil - Metanoia Films

You wont be disappointed.

RGB

Two completely different directions but this and the last post are both executions I really like, though that doesn't mean I think they are effective. Liking something is a little too subjective from a planning perspective as I may be projecting my bias against cars and thus for environmentally responsible motoring, though that too is up for debate given the manufacturing footprint both of these may or may not require. Like I said, I just like the work. I'm feeling too lazy to figure out if they would actually work.

This execution via AJ

a priori language?

A priori language via Gemma

Car Logic

This piece of film is possibly as good as it gets in being controversial, inspirational and compelling.

It's via Faris and it's awesome. Will it do the trick? That's up to us not the corporations. It's about personal decisions to run, walk, cycle or take public transport if the car or more accurately the internal combustion engine is ever to be sidelined as the single most extravagant commitment to our own demise in the history of history and remainder of future.

What is Honda doing about this? They're making provocative film, which is to be applauded because it does at least encourage people to reframe their relationship with 20th century technology that is mostly stationery (parked) and then when being used is mostly empty.

So we're stealing from our children. But they may not have anything to look back at and moan about if that pricks your conscience.

I don't know if we have 80 years because the whole point of the Long now project is we stopped dreaming about the future as we may have tipped the carbon scales against us while snorting the fossil ones that are evidently so addictive.

But I tend towards optimism. 

In any case like I wrote back here, we built our cities around cars instead of around people and it seems like Honda have recognised that's a bad thing although they could start by mentioning the Toyota Winglet if they weren't so self obsessed. No doubt Toyota would be just as solipsistic. It's how greed works.

But I'm also somewhat pessimistic  when it comes to specifically car culture because even though there are clearly some awesome dudes in this piece of film (the Alpha male? - you rock) the best way Honda et al could change the world would be for the automobile manufacturers to collectively lobby government in a self imposed manner and clip their wings by imposing HUGE penalties unless they make standard, low emission, tax incentivised hybrid plus NPD mobility. 

But that's a bit like the collective self determination of many Japanese males (XX Generation) recognising that the future of the salary man was a bit of an intellectual con job that largely fostered a culture of bullying against women. XX Generation decided to disappoint their fathers and now still live with their longer living mums and wear lipstick for reasons that seem related to their rejection of getting laid. I've made that up of course. Or have I?

It's a collective decision for the better in that example, (and historically not exceptional). Yet any cretin can see that the corporation is all about those fathers, maximising the quarterly report for ever quicker and larger earnings velocity without really addressing the urgent and pressing issue that it only hastens us faster and faster and faster towards our own demise. (There is a role for socialised communications in all this by the way)

Top of mind as a throw away solution for a disposable society is slowing down the Corporations quarterly report to a bi-annual one. I'm sure you can think of better one's, but the greedy guys at the top aren't going to dig that are they? They're too busy digging our own graves.

So anyway, even though the environment singularity (where nature teaches us a big lesson) is tumbling ever closer and ever quicker than the insanely quick technological one, demanding we need tomorrows consumption today; we're still kind of relying on the stone age equivalent of fossil fuel combustion to be moved around, which I can't help but think is about rubbing two sticks together while surrounded by powerwindows, a sense of empowerment through acceleration and some decent subwoofers to drown out the drone of other cars ouside, because it isn't noisy kids that anymore and that's not because of the paedophiles but because of the car.

All that pace of change and we're stuck with corporate Cro-Magnon. You should watch this movie, but if you rely on Honda to get it right in 80 years time you might as well be honest and sphyxiate your children now.

You probably are if you're dropping them off at school.

Maruti Suzuki

Suzuki of Japan have a patnership in India called Maruti Suzuki. I did some consultancy work a few years back running around India for a multinational looking into the auto market and specifically car networks so this ad resonates quite a lot with me as some service centres are little more then an few oxen and some rope to rescue a stranded vehicle through to the usual highly trained professionals that run large dealerships. Pretty good no nonsense guys in my experience when it's a big outfit.

This ad is both powerful and lovely. As good as it gets in advertising, and came to my attention via Bhatnaturally who I think is a must have Indian Advertising blogger you need in your RSS feeds if you're serious about keeping an eye on what's going on in the subcontinent. It's up to a very high international standard in both frequency and quality of content as well as professional viewpoint. I haven't found an equivalent yet in China but will let you know if anyone comes up to speed or indeed you may first. Let me know please.

Qik - Part II

I left a comment on Robert's blog some months back about QIK because I could not access it in China without the aid of a proxy server and also because I couldn't get a QIK invite, which I thought was something to do with being in China. QIK got in touch with me and gave me an Alpha Tester or something, and I was off and away with live to the internet streaming from a Nokia N95. When I showed it to Nokia in China they were blown away as I demoed it in their offices but as usual with the future, too many clients are buckling under the present to be truly inspirational.

Anyhow an immediate thought was how controversial this could be if I was in the wrong place at the wrong time or the right place at the right time depending on the context (everything is after all contextual) and I think the recent spotlight in China has highlighted that.

I had a low key QIK incident of my own when making my way to the Forbidden City. I saw a crowd gathering around the kind of vehicle that only the very rich and powerful can afford to own, as ostentatious luxury cars in Beijing are frowned upon more so than Shanghai. The police were on the scene already, and I took a glance as I walked by only to see a young Caucasian male stuck in a crowd of 20 something Chinese who were looking on intently.

I thought he seemed like he needed some help and made my way over to offer a hand. He had a cut finger, the car was scratched and he explained to me that it had knocked him off his bike. I could see that the police were at a loss for what to do because they didn't speak English and both the boy wanted to get on his way and the car owner was eager to accept the cost of a spray job and avoid bureaucracy escalation. I called our brilliant HR Manager Grace who is way more of a planner than most planners in China, to see if we could get the cops to put the pad away and save everybody a few hours. But you know how it is with those who are used to orders. Once the pad is out its not worth their job to put it away and also the Olympics mean that they are very binary about sticking to the rules. Once I'd done all I could I thought I'd whip the N95 out and do a QIK scene which was beamed straight to the web. Those of you who follow my Tweets are immediately alerted to the live streaming nature of QIK (Althought China is still waiting to go full-on 3G)

Here it is:

And without further ado here's a cut and paste from Johnnie Moore who should take you to the next level of why I am inspired by the tools that are created by the people and for the people. Way more so than Marx had in mind when pushing for the workers to acquire the means of production and why I don't have a problem calling it Socialist Media

If you get excited about where social media might take us all, you'll probably enjoy this post by Grumblemouse: San Fran torch relay is a social media extravaganza. The notion of a guy helping to organise a protest in San Francisco by watching a livestream of NBC and sending updates via Twitter, from his kitchen in London, is pretty cool, I think.

I think today is going to be the social media event of the year as I hear that the Rick Roll flash mob thing is happening in London and you can watch it live from Jamie's phone too if you can't make there. Rumour has it that a brand is involved and I'm wondering if Nokia were paying attention to the presentation Rob and I wrote back in London. We'll see later today.

Fin de siècle

Cheesy and horrifying isn't it? 'Let it be cool' they tell us, just like the following brand spanking new ad from DDB which asks with a firm handshake and no hint of irony, 'When was the last time you smelt something real?'



So now I'm left with the question. Why do people flee from the cities to the coastline to get some clean air in the first place?