August 22nd, 2006
Richard Delevan on Ibec
Praise be, Richard Delevan’s back with an excellent article originally published in last weekend’s Tribune. He reveals IBEC’s luddism about the future and today’s youth and Richard posits:
“Ask yourself the following questions.
Which podcasts do you sink? What did you think of geriatric1927 on YouTube this week or the Un-pimp My Ride III video? Is your WiFi good enough to Skype on my Treo? How many MySpace friends do you have? Have you got the work-around for the Bebo ban at your school? Isn’t that, like, sooo Google in China? Will the blogosphere back Bertie?
If that paragraph was incomprehensible, you fall into one of the following categories: you’re over 35, you’ve been in a cave since 9/11, or you’re working for Ibec.
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:19 am
wow, that was wonderful! He hit the nail on the head.
Thanks for the link, I’d have missed it otherwise…
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:48 am
One of my marketing lecturers (17 years ago!) said that after 35 you should not be in the front line of marketing tactics, because you don’t understand the youth market, where a lot of the money is. Also, the more “boundary spanning activity” that is going on the more you will understand your environment. So ask IBEC these questions as well (1) How many trade shows did you go to this year that you have never gone to before? (2) How many new magazines do you read each month that you have never read before? (3) Do you read springwise newsletter?
Regards
August 22nd, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Its all about futurologist really. I can’t help but feel that I’ve heard these sort of warnings to business before as well. He is right about these new modes of interaction being wedded to existing work structures, I know in the highly regimented banking sector people use an inhouse version of instant messaging to pose questions back and forth between departments over accessing accounts and the like. If history tells us anything about business, its that it will wed new technologies to its productive efforts. Most of these new interactive tools are after all the end result of greater shifts by business towards IT and communication, how much MSN dialouge occurs in work and how much of Youtube is uploaded on company time? Once its realised how much people use these services in work, businesses wil incorporate them into work routine. Rather than creating fun and novel ways of work, you’ll see the usual degradation of work where these technologies will be used to embed us further to the work ethic. I mean if the vanguard of these forms of work are Google with their campus routine, then you are simply looking at a greater colonisation of areas of life that existed outside of work by capital. Instead of a lunch break, they kindly provide you with food so you never have to leave shop.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:43 pm
How can a website like MySpace be considered revolutionary if it is owned by a multinational organisation like News International? I agree with James R that these technolgies while at first appearing to be emancipatory are in fact enslaving. It is about the extension of the domain of control into people’s private lives, where friendship, sexual preference and taste can be recorded, categorised and commodified. The kids are alright? As product maybe.
August 23rd, 2006 at 9:48 am
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp only bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million dollars when it had already been in existence for two years. When it started it was one of the first social networking sites and it was revolutionary in the way it allowed people to interact and in the way it has encouraged users to customise and alter the code to suit themselves. It’s not cool or revolutionary now - NewsCorp pretty much killed that - but it was when it started.
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:06 pm
‘It is the creative destruction at the heart of capitalism, made flesh. It is corrosive to traditional authority and hierarchy. Its organising principle is irony. It revels in sex and music and argument and money and sportand laughter. It is seductive and insatiable. It is glorious to behold. It is young’
Nothing new there but lets not fool ourselves, the heart of capitalism will survive this years model of teenager as it has survived every previous model since it invented them. It’s an interesting link Sinead- thanks for that because it’s the sort of thing I’d have missed: with the near constant advertising we all endure everyday, I find it’s hard to muster an interest in anything to do with the whole marketing/ advertising sphere. I’ll have to weigh in with James R above though that we have heard all of this before, even down to the familiar co-opting of emergent technologies. The original article makes several very good points (and any kicking of Ibec is to be supported) but I’m not convinced this is a major skirmish in an ‘inter-generational culture war’, I would have thought that this was a constant state; combatants and technologies come and go but the culture clash goes on, gets co-opted, recharges a few years later and somewhere in all of that we’ll get the odd good song, the odd good novel, and the occasional bit of useful technology for those of us squarely located between the technology-hipsters and the Luddites.