I read the start of Media Virus by Rushkoff. It’s very excited about the possibilities of media viruses.
To me it’s a little troubling because a culture based on viruses spreading information is likely to be sensationalistic. I can’t see a lot to be optimistic about in a world where being the next big thing to hit on the Internet is the best way of spreading your message. Worship of the new and of fads is the basis of consumerism: viruses are as likely to be used against us as in our favour. Still, understanding the ways the Internet and broadcast media work together to create short-lived hype for something is useful in terms of both guarding yourself against it and using it to your advantage where you can.
Some activist/artist organisations are doing some interesting virus/guerilla work:
Moveon.org – run grassroots political campaigns, mostly though letter writing or petitions or calling of elected representatives. No good to me as a non-citizen, but a nice mix of the old methods of registering opinions with politicians and new ways of using the Internet to organise.
RtMark – these guys are really funny. They suggest artistic and activist projects for people to do and have spoof enterprise software and put trademarks on everything.
The Thing – I used to spend a lot of time reading stuff on Thing a couple of years ago. I saw Ricardo Dominguez, who is one of the editors of the magazine part of the site, speak at MediaLab Europe before it went tits up. The site is based around activist art and humorous resistance to mainstream culture. It’s pretty cool, if a bit incomprehensible at times.
eToy – a bunch of artist/activists from Austria who act as though they are a corporation. They got in a fight with eToys.com
This fight is documented in InfoWars, a documentary about various fights against mainstream culture and politics by various satirists, smart arses and pranksters. There’s a great bit when some guy goes to a conference he was invited to by people who thought he was from the WTO. Funny and though provoking.
Idea Virus by Seth Godin – this is a loathesome article based entirely on what happens in the world about how to use the Internet to market your ideas or yourself. To me this is really what Viral Media is = viral marketing. A standard trick in the bag of most ITP students trying to get their stuff out there when they’ve finished. I’ve no beef with people who do this, but I can still wish things worked a little differently.
Cluetrain Manifesto – despite sean’s misgivings of this being a bit early-Internet idealistic I found it delightful. A lot of the ideas from the dotcom boom days were great – treat your workers well, realise they know their job better than you do, etc. are sound. From my work with the Forum on the Workplace of the Future I know that the whole knowledge workers schtick is very cool in government policy in several countries around the world. A lot of is just lip service that won’t change anything, but the basic thesis makes sense – people who work for companies are intelligent and trustworthy and you get most out of them if you treat them like aduls. Bottom liners don’t care for this logic though – all McKinsey and “if it can be counted it can be managed”. Barf.
I read some more of The Tipping Point, this time the introduction and a case study. Both things were about shoes becoming really fashionable: Hush Puppies taking the US by storm from the hipsters in the East Village, which came as a surprise to the company; Airwalks going from cult skater shoe to high street brand with the help of Advertising firm Lambesis who used the credibility of the “early adopting” skater hipster crowd to make the shoes popular. Silly Airwalk didn’t bother to keep their cool customers happy. I had a pair of Airwalks in 2000 or so – I guess I must have been the last person on earth to follow that trend.
FINAL PROJECT:
Amit, David, Sean and I are working together on our final project.
I’m just trying to put something down about our project that we can be thinking about/develop/dismiss as stupid.
The only name I can think of so far is Scaffold. I like it because it sounds cool and also because it sounds like a supporting structure or something you put in place to build something bigger or make something stronger. I’m not attached to it though, but it might give us a place to start thinking of a name since we seem to agree it’s important.
WHAT?
We’re going to make a website/organisation that rates companies based on their coercive techniques and privacy policies/invasions.
WHY?
We feel that the Internet is becoming unsafe and unhealthy for regular people because companies looking to make a profit are behaving in ways that are detrimental to, or at best careless of, the interests of their customers.
Unfair and coercive marketing practises are practised so commonly that it is difficult for an ordinary Internet user to seek out companies that offer alternatives. We want to make it easier for people to choose companies that treat them fairly, and also let people know about the ways they are being manipulated and mistreated by the people they spend their money with.
HOW?
We are going to draw up a list of unacceptable practises and a wish list of desired practises and figure out a rating scheme.
We also need to figure out how to allow website/companies to let people know they have been approved in a way that will not be easily faked.
We are also going to get in touch with EFF and see if we can find a lawyer to help us draft a standard rights-based privacy policy that companies could sign up to, so that people using their site could know what they were signing up to.
PERSUASION
We need to figure out how we’re going to let people know about what we’re doing as this is something that works only if a number of people are on board. I guess word of mouth is ideal. What kinds of persuasive practises are we cool with? We need to think about this, because how we comport ourselves will be important in establishing our credibility and whether this thing is worth anything at all.
We should approach some companies to sign up. Which ones? I guess we need to know what we’re looking for first.
