Saving SIX For Last [Plausible Deniability]

Plausible Deniability?

West to East

Coming back from Xidan on Monday riding my electric bike, I did some drive by filming of the North end of Tiananman Square from the Western to the Eastern part where I live by the forbidden city. It's a little wobbly as I'm a bit of a porkster at the moment and trying to keep my balance too. As you can see I nearly got taken out around 40 seconds in because those Audis are driven by government officials and need not stop for anyone (although they are largely well behaved). I filmed this because I wanted to convey how huge Tiananman Square is and give some feeling of the impending seat of power on the planet if it isn't already psychologically.

I've gone up and down, and round and round this area time and again because I live so close and to do so, is to take in what China is all about. You may notice there isn't a single piece of advertising and while its not as warm as Time Square or Trafalgar Square you can't help respecting its scale and solemnity. As we draw towards the end of the fundamentally erroneous (and by logic, morally wrong) adventure in neoliberal capitalism, all we have to hope for in the long run is that this power shifts towards goals that are good for the collective. Either way its a Chinese world.

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.

Qik

Some of you have been viewing my Qik videos already, so I thought that now was as good a time as any to introduce them formally. I first came across Qik on Robert Scoble's blog and I thought it was a neat feature having the live video to internet on a Nokia N95 which is the smart phone I'm using. I also thought it would compete with some of the other video to net features like Kyte.tv or Ustream but as I've been using it I've also come to appreciate that its a cinch to use and has one extra feature that gives the broadcasts currency; there is a check box to send a link to my twitter account immediately. So it's kind of fun getting twitters back from friends about what they imagine I'm doing to whom in that hot tub in the second bathroom of the Hutong I'm intending to move into. Evidently my twitter chums have quite vivid imaginations!