Set in a South Africa which has foregone apartheid between the human races for apartheid between human and alien the film allows the viewer to not simply speculate on how we might treat those from another world, but realise how like them we often treat those of other races. This is science-fiction at its best – using the other-worldy and technology to make us deeply consider our humanity.

And Postman’s comments on the poor quantity and quality of public discourse and debate in favour of the semblance of democracy are entirely relevant to all media then and now.

In 1998 my techno-utopian self would have been incensed at Postman’s dismissal of the Internet and rage-quit. But today I find his approach to analysing the use of technology and the need to help people understand new developments in terms of their historical context is extremely appealing. I would probably change the details of his “6 questions” for evaluating new technology, but it is a good notion.

1. What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?
2. Whose problem is it?
3. What new problems might be created by solving the original problem?
4. Which people and what institutions will be most seriously harmed by this new technology?
5. What changes in language are being forced by these new technologies?
6. What sort of people and institutions gain special economic and political power from this new technology?

Having only 5 minutes I decided to forgo slides altogether and go for a quick slice of delight, insight and impact. Or at least, that was the plan. In thinking about a topic beforehand I noticed it was Hip Hop Appreciation week the week of the event which was too timely given my fondness for the genre and using it as a metaphor.

So I decided to examine the art of the remix from the position that it isn’t a recent phenomenon but one that had roots, pop-culturally, in hip hop. Hence, “we didn’t invent the remix”. The “we” being the web 2.0 crowd attending. I then briefly sought to (tongue-firmly in cheek) eek out some lessons about branding that one could learn from hip hop.

I presented as a spoken-word poem, with some backing beats played from a ghetto blaster, a 5 minute countdown clock around my neck (ala Flava Flav), and with record sleeves to hold up as my talking points.

Originally my topic was Drinking from the firehose and concentrated on website measurement, but I diverted thought streams a little and decided to talk more about governance, visualisation and telling the story of websites rather than just their statistics.

I came up with the metaphor of a website’s operational team being like the tactician on a yacht and discussed how this might inform how a team measures and reports on their online activities.

As a thread throughout my presentation I created a make-believe assignment – as if 10 year old Thomas had written about the 1987 America’s cup and his favourite member of the New Zealand squad, the tactician Brad Butterworth. The faux-child drawings were a useful talking point and piece of levity between sections of the presentation.

At this stage all I has is a new bio (see below) and a bit of self deprecation – as to what topic i eventually speak on, we’ll see,

Thomas wrote an article on the topic of online etiquette in 1993. For the past 16 years he has consistently failed to practice what he preached. He has, however, been a long time advocate of the medium’s conversational nature and applying it to anything from research through to marketing. But mostly as argumentum ad hominem. Talk: will last only 5 minutes. For those used to his lengthy rants hearing him have to shut up after only this long … will be worth the price of admission alone.

Plenty of awesome folk speaking, so open invitation to anyone in the area!

The first is from another volume which Goffman quoted,

It is probably no mere historical accident that the word person, in its first meaning, is a mask. It is rather a recognition of the fact that everyone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role . It is through these that we know each other; it is in these roles that we know ourselves.)

The rest are quotes from Goffman himself,

While in the presence of others, the individual typically infuses his activity with signs which dramatically highlight and portray confirmatory facts that might otherwise remain unapparent or obscure. For if the individual’s activity is to become significant to others, he must mobilize his activity so that it will express during the interaction what he wishes to convey.

However, there are situations, often called ’scenes’ in which an individual acts in such a way as to destroy or seriously threaten the polite appearance of consensus, and while he may not act simply in order to create such dissonance, he acts with the knowledge that this kind of dissonance is likely to result. The common-sense phrase, ‘creating a scene’, is apt because, in effect, a new scene is created by such disruptions

Teasing, it often seems, is an informal initiation device employed by a team to train and test the capacity of its new members to ‘take a joke’, that is, to sustain a friendly manner while perhaps not feeling it. When an individual passes such a test of expression control, whether he receives it from is new team-mates in a spirit of jest or from an unexpected necessity of playing in a serious performance, he can thereafter venture forth as a player who can trust himself and be trusted by others.

When an individual appears before others, he knowingly and unwittingly projects a definition of the situation, of which a conception of himself is an important part

I’ll post this as a podcast on this site when done but if you’d like to have me present something similar then contact me.

At this stage I’m planning on presenting a modified version of the piece I gave at the TIANZ conference in 2008.

It was originally called, From story telling to play – the co-creative future of media but as usual by time it was locked in I had a more poetic and less descriptive title.

The conference programme description was,

Story telling is a timeless aspect of great media and indeed great marketing. The digital revolution has grown the ability of every person to tell and disseminate stories whether via text, photography or video. Brands are now learning to harness these creative consumers and work with them, not against them, to expand their own stories. In some cases this story telling is transitioning from co-creation to play – not only in the online arena but in physical environments. No longer restricted to nerds in basements or children in sandboxes – millions of people around the world are engaging like never before with media properties and brands through imaginative play.

In the end I focused on the cultural benefits of play and how technologies are re-enabling a form of play that is making the development of culture a more democratic and rewarding process than it has been for some time.