Fritz Lang, Werner Von Braun & The Moon Landings

I think this is even more interesting than the first part of the documentary I posted earlier. There's less of a focus on the questionable moon landing photography and more on manipulation of populations through media and film entertainment. It starts off with questions of the Van Allen belts being to dangerous for man to travel through without being irradiated to death but does move on to the whole Soviet and United States manipulation and deceit of space travel. I had no idea of the Von Braun/Fritz Lang connection or that the Soviets too were faking so much stuff.

I'm genuinely confused in a good way trying to fit in both sides motives because intercontinental complicity seems to be a theme I pick up now and again, and I may have to explore much deeper. 

The lie is different at every level isn't it?

Community

This is such an overdue response to a post I wrote over here to Andy from New Zealand but it's an important topic on what we mean by community on the net. Here's some of what I think for what it's worth. I want to get into the video responses a lot more so do add me on seesmic if you wish. 

Also I've added intense debate to my tumblr blog and you can get stuck in there because I'm using that as a social media sandbox more and will eventually strip this down to the minimum for faster loading and do that redesign it's badly in need of. 

Human is the new black but what colour is that for my blog? I need to know. ;)

LEAVE ME ALONE

You may have noticed the new panel I'm sporting on the side of this blog called Google Friend Connect. Well that's there because I've been "Whitelisted" by Google who think I'm a big enough social meeja kahuna to invite me on board.

Yeah, check me out! *throws meaningless gang signs*

So if I haven't spammed the life out of you yet by joining Plaxo (who've allied with Google) and Google Friend Connect, don't feel shy to click on something over there, and join in because it's not like you actually have to really like me loads and loads to be my fwend.

I'm particularly interested in the open social platform as it develops and hey you get to come along for the ride too. Carrying our own social network data around has to be the future for some sort of transactional value relationships with the world of commerce and brands. It's pretty radical but will make a lot of sense when giving permission for interruptive or distractive marketing communications as the quid pro quo for utility or content.

Well something like that anyway, but the reason for this post is also to see if I've managed to get the Disqus comment system finally integrated. The last attempt was a template and commenting form disaster. And now that even Craig, Peggy and Eaon are Disqus'd up I feel I'm on the back foot for my geek creds.

I'd be most appreciative if one or two of you could attempt a comment but don't try too hard as I've probably buggered it up and will have to reinstall that scary .xml file now lurking on my desktop to get back to normal.

In the meantime here's a picture of Sam who has joined forces with Eaon at Geronimo which is where he's going to kick ass in the marketing communications industry. Yesterday on Skype, I made him swear on the baby Jesus and U.S. Supreme court justices not to release a certain "sensitive" file I've graciously shared with him but I have given him permission to show you the screen if you're ever around. Word is bond Sam!

On a more sober note, thanks all of you for the positive response to yesterday's post. I'll respond more fully but I'm really pleased that I can kind of throw that stuff out there and not be cut down in flames. The motivation for writing it was to hopefully encourage the idea of a back up plan. If that has worked then I'm a happy camper :)

GOODBYEMOTO

Ben Ward

A couple of nights ago I met up with the Creativistan gang at The Commercial Tavern. It was good to catch up with London's young creative talent and get an idea for people who I may one day be working with. If you are looking for a creative break in advertising you should really make an effort to meet Wal who organises these things because he's got a bright future ahead of him and is a social hub for young creative talent. One small criticism aimed squarely at the British creative wannabes of adland is that none of you were present on this night and frankly were conspicuous by your absence. I met Germans, Scandinavians, French, Baltic States, Italians, Russians and more, all speaking spot-on English but no Brits; which tells me something about our ability to broaden the creative gene pool. I've said it before that homogenous advertising agency cultures produce homogeneous work. I think there were three planners there, that I knew of which confirms something about 3rd Millenium Planners too. We're a much more social bunch than the old guard because there really is no better social research than socialising.

And on that subject of research, I met a young man outside The Commercial Tavern who worked as global research for insights with Nokia. I've been rattling on a bit lately how Nokia have their shit together because of their ability to embrace social sciences into the corporation and putting people over profits as the objective which of course is a more profitable long term strategy as I wrote about over here and which you can watch a related online video over here.

Anyway we got talking about Motorola who are clearly having a hard time of things over in Chicago. Knocked off their number two spot by Samsung for market share and having just posted their second quarterly loss I guess the iPhone is starting to look like a corporation killer. I hear the CEO is on his way out too, no doubt with one of those Platinum Parachutes that the American corporation magnificently rewards failure at the highest level.

I started to recall when the Motorola Razr arrived because it was a huge hit in Asia - absolutely massive and unprecedented. The first one I saw belonged to my German boss while we were running around The Philippines, Indonesia, Malayasia and Thailand. I was fascinated how he had developed an automatic reflex to keep the screen clean of smudges, flicking the screen open, wiping, check and closing; a case of techno design-lust I guess.

Nobody could deny that for style it was a killer phone and for a time it was THE must-have accessory. But what struck me later when I got talking to Jens about the product, provided me with a valuable insight. He told me that the camera was rubbish, the interface so difficult to use that he didn't bother to learn all the functions, and that the only reason for purchasing it was style. Style of course is great but style over substance is a long term problem. Pretty much like putting money before people I guess. So 100 million phones later the Razr has been gang raped into submission by the relentless demand for volume sales and profits by Motorola and is now less of a supermodel and more of a crack whore thrown into a mobile tariff plan for free. I believe even the chavs are reluctant to be seen with them these days. Ironic really if the Razr phone is responsible for Motorola slashing their corporate wrists.

Update: I first saw the RAZR in Penang, Malaysia where Motorola have a plant manufacturing wireless radio products. It was just after the Tsunami which clipped the island I was on so that was around January 2005.