Network Literacy

Howard Rheingold has put up the first video in what will hopefully be a series of talks about networked literacy. Drawing on the insights of some eminent people (David Reed, Lawrence Lessig, Manuel Castells, Duncan Watts, Yochai Benkler as well as himself) Rheingold spoke of what I feel is a very important view: that understanding how networks work – in a social and economic sense as well as technically – can influence how much freedom, wealth & participation might be experienced in the 21st century. I agree with that.

From a technical perspective, understanding the end-to-end principle is important to know why & how the architecture of the internet was designed so that content can flow from one end point to another without centralised permission or control. Understanding the social drivers behind the formation of human networks and their ability to self-organise  – drivers that go back to ancient human history – is necessary to get a feel for why the internet is such a powerful participative tool. It’s why the web has been so transformative. It’s why we now life in a networked society. Understanding the difference between individual freedoms enabled by the internet vs. institutional control is at the heart of appreciating why the 20th century power elites find the web to be so disruptive, why they now battle for control, and why others strive to maintain internet freedoms. Some see the transformative web as a threat, others see it as an opportunity. Those that achieve network literacy are more likely to see, and to grasp, the opportunities and generate new forms of value.

Understanding any of these social, economic and technical spheres individually is a challenge. Understanding them all – especially in relation to one another – is overwhelmingly the greatest challenge. It’s a challenge that exceeds the capabilities of any one discipline, department, value-chain or service/product line. It’s a challenge that Howard Rheingold appears to have grasped, and I commend him for it.

However, there are others at work on this issue beyound those that Howard is currently drawing from. A couple of weeks prior to viewing Howard’s video, I was pleased to see that danah boyd and co at the Digital Youth Project have released Hanging Out, Messing Around, And Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. They write about youth-driven peer-based learning. They say there is “an opportunity to define, in partnership with youth, the shape of online participation and expression and new networked, institutional structures of peer-based learning”.  In other words, the task is to adapt to the web – to new forms of interconnection and expression – by participating in the process. I now see that these insights are an example of network literacy in action; of seeing where the opportunities are to generate new value.

So I feel that networked literacy is a competency necessary to grasp the opportunities lying ahead. Networked literacy is a competency necessary to gain comparative advantage. But most importantly, networked literacy is necessary to know what to promote and what to safeguard against, in order to make the most of the transformative web.

Clay Shirky on the future of newspapers and accountability journalism

Professor Clay Shirky spoke recently at Harvard on internet issues facing newspapers. Click here to view the video or read the transcript. It is very interesting and fascinating stuff, covering newspapers’ shrinking ability to produce accountability journalism. The focus is on the U.S. and the public good role that commercial media – in this case advertising supported newspapers – have played in accountability journalism.

I read the transcript to learn about the role that social media is playing in this…and was not disappointed. Social media disrupts the traditional role that media has played in deciding what information is bundled with the ads. Newspaper web sites by and large have mirrored the print copy of newspapers, assuming that readers would go to the web site just as they picked up a newspaper to read. With social media, that assumption no longer holds. Instead of going to the web site, people go directly to the storey, because someone in their network Twittered about it or put it on Facebook or sent a link in an email. So the audience is being assembled not by the newspaper, but by other members of the audience. Now, that’s true for me too. I spend less time on media web sites and on RSS feeds and more time on Twitter & Facebook because of the quality of information I’m getting through my social network.

There is little doubt that social media is a disruptive force in media and in advertising. Companies born digital are taking on more social dynamics into their business model. Take Google for instance, having just released an experiment with search going social.

Professor Shirky’s presentation goes into the public good generated by the social distribution of news online. The public good comes from republication and reuse on a scale that was not feasible from just hard copy print alone.

People can share or forward commercially produced articles online very easily right now, but for how long is unclear.  If newspapers put news and information behind a pay wall, that would block republication and reuse. But then, as Shirky says, the internet enables non-commercial models for news and information production and distribution, including socially produced material. So whatever newspapers do, they will need to rebalance with these alternatives. But the uncertainty is whether the alternative models will be effective substitutes for accountability journalism. Shirky thinks a transitional problem is looming due to the rapid decline of the newspaper industry (particularly in the U.S.); and the uncertainty about the nature and length of time of the intervening period until the (or whether the) social media ecosystem has evolved to fill the gap, particularly in respect of local journalism.

The Genie is out of the bottle – and is driving convergence between computing, communications, media and devices

The subject line of this posting paraphrases the heading of a paper on telecommunications/communications recently published by Oppenheimer, US investment bank (HT: David Isenberg). To those who have not been tracking ICT and telecommunications trends for a while, David Isenberg coined the term “stupid network” in calling the transition from the ’smart networks, dumb terminals’ Telecommunications Age, to ‘dumb networks, smart terminals’ of the Internet Age. Basically the message is that applications running over-the-top of underlying networks do not need “smarts” in the network provided by telcos. Just high bandwidth connectivity will do. This is the “dumb pipes” nightmare outcome that telecommunications vendors and network operators fear the most.

Indeed, a battle has been raging between telecommunications and computing industry interests for some years now. The telecommunications sector has a dream: “next generation networks”. Meanwhile, networked computing interest have lived their dream: the open Internet – or has Oppenheimer calls it, network-centric (NC) computing. NC is described as “….networking and sharing computer processing, storage and data, which can be accessed over the Internet using thin devices at the edge of the network” (page 25). Oppenheimer is calling the victory for NC computing. Oppenheimer summarise their analysis by saying “The migration to NC computing will…eventually lead to the break up of vertically integrated service providers along horizontal lines”. They support their case by pointing to the success of the iPhone, which in terms of its applications is separate to the cellular network.

Under a network-centric (NC) computing age, applications and smart devices have the advantage of global economies of scale. Applications and services innovation and deployment can happen much more quickly than services that are coupled to underlying network configurations. So these two forces at work – global economies of scale and rapid innovation development – are the most important dynamic that telecommunications service providers are likely to face over the next few years.

Oppenheimer point to a few examples of applications innovation in VoIP over mobile, such as Fring and Truphone. Fring makes it easy to connect to your favourite VoIP, social network or messaging application and WiFi hotspots. Truphone is a London-based but global provider of mobile VoIP – you can connect to Truphone’s social networking presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and flickr. Later this year Truphone is expected to launch a ‘Local Anywhere’ service where customers will be able to make and receive calls via a local number and at local rates wherever they are. Great for overseas travel! According to Oppenheimer, developments like that could potentially cannibalise telecommunications industry voice revenues (fixed and wireless) and text messaging revenues. Oppenheimer expect that the explosive growth in data traffic would provide some good news to network operators, but that in the longer-term carriers might be better off being transport wholesalers. Oppenheimer assume that carriers could anticipate a healthy share of applications and advertising revenues.

In other respects the NC value-chain is expected to evolve into a horizontally segmented structure with the three main layers being 1) service providers; 2) software companies; and 3) devices. Interestingly, Oppenheimer anticipate that software companies and telecommunications network providers will strive for an open mobile Internet to avoid being dominated by a monopoly operating platform.

Oppenheimer also expect carriers to continue with a strong presence in the enterprise market, providing integrated security, mission-critical execution, dedicated customer service and integration with other data systems.

Government 2.0 Taskforce is off to a great start

I was one of those who were impressed with the Australian Government’s decision to launch the Government 2.0 Taskforce (#gov2au) on 22 June 2009. The announcement came from Lindsay Tanner, Minister for Finance and Deregulation. Minister Tanner drew some leverage from another high quality gov2 initiative – the second PublicSphere held in Canberra on the same day.

My expectations

As someone with project leadership roles in participative consultation, can I say I’ve had many expectations. Oh yes, when it comes to drawing on multiple perspectives and values (tapping into the broad knowledge base of large groups of people, forging new awareness, better understanding, creative vision and pragmatic action) it all lies ‘out there’ in the crowd. I have known intuitively and know from experience that tapping into the wisdom of an organisation lies in cross-organisational coordination, co-operation and (when it really sings) collaboration.

The magic of Web 2.0 (interacting, sharing, innovating, creating and massive networking) makes organising the wisdom of the crowd much easier… and a much more powerful force. Potentially powerful enough to sit alongside the power institutions of the 20th century – Government and industry.

I’m also very aware that expectations among participants in public policy processes are diverse. The gov2au will be no different as is already evident in the postings and comments on the taskforce blog. Some see the taskforce as a vehicle to set government data free, others to improve e-services and e-accessibility. I too hope that the taskforce meets those expectations.

Some, including the Chair, Nicholas Gruen, see the taskforce as having a transformative role where the business of government is gone about in new ways. It’s that expectation that gets me really excited about the potential of this taskforce. For, despite the tranformative potential of Web 2.0 (and other cultural, social and economic drivers of change – it’s not all about Web 2.0) to change the way people work and how organisations function, the most fundamental change is cultural. Cultural change that embraces facilitation, transparency and shared outcomes. Change of that nature calls for the agencies of government to go about their internal and inter-agency practices in new ways.

btw, it’s great to see four of the taskforce members having already posted to the gov2au blog. The quality of comments to the postings are rich signals of the type of change I really hope the taskforce will become known for driving, more than anything else. For if the taskforce achieves that goal, all other expectations will be met over time.

Largest increase in expressing capability in history

Clay Shirky’s latest presentation is inspirational.

How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history

What is changing is that the people formally known as the audience (in broadcasting terms) or the user (in telecommunications terms) can connect to one-another to talk and ‘do media’. It’s these networks of inter-personal connections that is the driver of change.

The ‘Telecommunications Age’ was one of one-to-one communication. The ‘Broadcasting Age’ was one of ‘one-to-many’ content distribution. The ‘Networks of Inter-Personal Connections Age is ‘many-to-many’.

Those institutions that were in control are no longer. They can convene groups of networked people but cannot control them. Adapting to that change involves a mature realisation of that social phenomenon.

Radio business models, attention and hyper-influence

For some reason there was a bunch of news about radio matters yesterday, traversing the UK, USA and Australia. This was too much for me to resist. So this is a longer posting than usual, but hopefully of  interest.

Digital Britain

Firstly there is news from the Digital Britain Forum (having an online forum is at least something that Digital Britain has got right). In the latest posting, given the dominance of analogue radio over digital radio and the growth of radio content online (speech and music) a question is posed “Is there a case for broadcast Digital Radio?” It seems the Digital Britain final report to be released later this month will provide some sort of response to this question.

The comments in response to the posting make for interesting reading too. One was steadfastly a broadcast radio enthusiast (there is no viable alternative to radio for mass audience listening). Another from an internet enthusiast (people are moving to more personalised forms of entertainment). East is East and West is West, never the twain shall meet. Personally, my substitutes for radio are my iPod, early morning news on TV, digital radio on Foxtel and the Internet.

Why NPR is the future of mainstream media

The subject heading of this section is from yesterday’s Mashable . NPR (National Public Radio) is a non-commercial broadcaster in the USA. NPR seems to do a great job in sourcing and creating content for localised radio stations, helping to fill a growing local news and information void as traditional newspapers and broadcasters cut costs or exit the industry. Hyperlocal content is targeted a relatively small and discreet geographic spaces (eg. neighbourhoods, small communities). Hyperlocal news and information services could be sponsored by advertising that is highly relevant to local information users.

NPR is chasing social media. Their nprpolitics Twitter account has over 793,000 followers ranking it in the top 25 Twitter profiles. Their Facebook page has over 400,000 fans. NPR puts out podcasts, mobile phone applications and blogs and their own social network.

So NPR’s value proposition is allowing people to access content on their own terms. Of course being non-commercial seems to lend itself to being more risk-taking in terms of digital media than commercial media. Nonetheless, all media need to go where the attention is.

Comparing the Regulatory Models of Net-Radio with Traditional Radio

Andrea Baker (Monash University) has had an article with the subject as above published in the International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society. In the introduction Baker notes that traditional radio is a linear system of mass communication that is domestic in scope, whereas net-radio (streaming over the internet) is a non-linear system of digital-networked information technologies that is international in scope. I support Baker’s emphasis on the globalised reach of net-radio as an important distinction, particularly given expectations around hyper-localism.

In terms of net-radio, Baker makes a distinction between online radio (regulated, traditional radio that have incorporated the internet into their business models) and net-only radio which webcasts exclusively over the internet and is generally unregulated. There are some interesting statistics on the net-radio reach with the USA accounting for over 42% of online radio stations in 2006. Australia hardly registers, although that is not to say Australian’s are not listening to USA-based or other international online radio. In comparison with net-only radio, well it was reported that there were about 5,000 net-only radio stations internationally by 2009 (still with the majority in the USA). That’s a significant difference to online radio.

Baker has an interesting section on regulatory pressures, including extensive reference to Australian regulation. Amongst other things there seems to be a realisation that the internet is adding substantially to competition and diversity and provides increased flexibility. Recognising the fast and unpredictable nature of change, Baker concludes by coming out in support of designing regulations that are flexible: “policies should be flexible enough to compete with new technologies and cope in the modern business environment”.

Observations

Defining and measuring ‘influence’ in the digital/networked economy has become complex. The shift from mass media to personalised media is real. The shift from one-to-many to many-to-many is real. Media has become social and there are a whole bunch of new influencers. At the same time, media creation and distribution is both hyperlocal and hyper-distributed, depending on the user context (their location, activity, connectivity & social networks) and what they are paying attention to. In other words, information is likely be targeted by geography and context in order to get user attention. Media diversity considerations may go the same way, i.e not by platform (TV, radio, newspaper – or even by mobile or some other device) but by location and context.

In my view local will continue to be important, but the influence of highly distributed groups – where geography does not matter – is also expected to rise. Distributed groups define what is of interest to them. That’s why mainstream media outfits and internet start-ups are chasing social networks.

Putting the citizen at the centre of public service

Australian Public Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs gave what I feel is a landmark presentation at the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy on 21 May. In signalling what I take to be a move away from designing and delivering programs on an inputs/outputs basis, Lynelle Briggs declared that a “new paradigm has emerged” about “putting the citizen at the centre of public service”. Public sector effectiveness ought now be measured in how well programs address the needs of those to whom it is being delivered. This posting provides a summary of my take on the presentation, and suggestions about possible implications for government agencies.

Leading

A key challenge for the public service is to become public facilitators. A key challenge for the public is to take on responsibility and to express their values and preferences to government. In both cases is requires a more open culture of decision-making. Recognising that increasingly complex problems are beyond the ability of governments to manage alone, being open to the knowledge and experiences of citizens, and to sharing data and intelligence across the public service, will improve the effectiveness of the public sector. As noted in the presentation:

“Innovation in the first decades of the 21st century is more open and pervasive, characterised by skill in collaborating and making connections so that knowledge flows and grows, and so becomes available to meet customer and community needs”.

Taking an open, facilitative approach means allowing for some managed risk and to be accepting of failure as a result. As Lynelle Briggs said “We have to try new things, and we have to learn and move on. Our accountability and responsibility regime needs to let us do that”.

A number of best practice solutions were identified. Lynelle Briggs would like to see them all in place. In particular, I would like to see:

• a greater focus on systems thinking and collaborative policy and program design as a critical capability to be developed and valued. As part of this, we need to understand the impact of complexity and the fragmentation of services and related requirements on citizens
• use of communities of interest across public sector agencies
• better sharing of data and intelligence across the public service.

Implications for government agencies

One immediate take-away in the formation of 2009-10 business and operating plans is for citizen engagement processes to be integrated into business outcomes and service inputs (eg. training and development).

In terms of service delivery, there are two aspects for government to consider. One is in the effectiveness of information and education awareness programs. The other is in the effectiveness of service delivery.

There is scope to review the effectiveness of processes and procedures to see how well they meet the needs of citizens rather than how well they are tailored to meet the structures of government.

Beyond that, the Netherlands e-Citizen charter referred to by Lynelle Briggs provides guidance on the practice of citizen engagement and what citizens can expect from it, through principles covering things like choice of communication method – an important issue in considering what collaboration tools to use. The question to ask is, what relationship do you want? Then select the right tools and processes.

Future of communications

I’ve come across a presentation and a qualitative research study exploring the future of communications in a high speed broadband/networked economy context.

Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist based in Switzerland, gave a presentation on the future of content and telecommunications. Gerd anticipates the emergence of a new ecosystem where content and applications creators, search engines, web portals, social networks and telecommunications collaboration will determine a new balance of power. What is driving that?  The web has removed barriers to content copying and distribution. New forms of IP-based communication  – like email, IM, chat, text messaging, social networks – are substituting for voice, particularly traditional voice over the public-switched telecommunications network. Growth (in terms of use and revenues) is coming from creating added value around content, not from content. The wheels are falling off traditional business models based on centralised networks and centralised distribution of content.

Getting attention (via platforms, applications and location) is increasingly about taking user context into account. For the advertising industry, this means display ads are the past and engagement, involvement & interactivity are the future. It’s about pulling attention to ads rather than pushing ads out broadcast-style. Getting attention means developing trust. The new ecosystem is a convergent system based on collaboration between all of the industry players in the value-chain. The beneficiaries of trust are those than can collaborate.

Accenture (a management consulting and technology services company) released research on the future of the telecommunications industry earlier this month. My source and a link to the research results are here. Views expressed in the study are consistent with taking a more collaborative approach, although there are some interesting twists. Accenture postulates that companies are likely to “find themselves collaborating and partnering one day and competing against each other the next”.

According to the Accenture study, many telecommunications executives still assume they will retain control through “intelligent networks” (i.e middleware like IMS). To quote a telco exec “We will be delivering and controlling a great deal of multimedia…” (i.e. in response to declining revenues from voice services, telcos want to control content). Contrast that with an IT executive view noted in the Accenture paper: “I don’t think the carriers are on top of IP transformation”. And then there is the IT view, that nodes on the network will be communicating with each other quite nicely without the need for middleware. Accenture concluded that “the stifling effect of legacy business models and cultures is another obstacle to be addressed by the carriers” (page 2). I think that is right. In fact it was five years ago now that telecommunications culture was identified as a barrier to change.

New Media Futures

Well, it’s been a while since I took notes of the New Media Futures event held at the RSA (UK) on 8 April 2009. I’ve have not had the time to share ’til now. There were some very interesting points about emerging business models and shifts in consumption. There is an audio of the event here and a video of one of the speakers (Media Futurist Gerd Leonhard) here. Other speakers were David Smith (Global Futures Forum) and Richard Titus (Head of Future Media, BBC). 

Some key points 

In a digital, IP world, technology becomes a commodity. What then has value? 

•    data and relationships between data 
•    events 
•    user experience (eg. mobiles know who and where you are, offering a  more personalised experience; advertising morphing over the next 3 – 5 years  to become interactive) 

The BBC’s iPlayer is available on mobiles now. There has been 300 million downloads/streams in the last seven months. Real-time information is displacing stored information  - Google is old information, Twitter is right now. 

In an age of an “exaflood” of information, where the internet has removed barriers to distributing content – including copying – what comes in place of selling copy is attention. Content distributors are dis-intermediated. The objective of those with something to offer over the web is to get attention. Money is made around the content, not from the content, through 
things like: 

   - packaging 
   - time-shifting 
   - personalisation 

The current situation for the media industry is described as being in a state of transition from an age of control, domination & power, to an age of collaboration. Everything is going to the cloud (music, video, print). No one is in control of the cloud. Content owners, telecoms carriers, brands, advertisers all need to collaborate to create a new eco-system, maybe 
supported by a collective license to access and share content – similar to a radio broadcasting license to play music. The system would legalise what people are already doing on the web (copying and sharing content ). Payments would be made according to popularity (eg. clicks on YouTube). 

Gerd Leonhard referred to a piece by Kevin Kelly, The Technium: Better than Free  It’s a thought provoking piece on where value lies the networked economy. The answer lies in what can’t be copied or reproduced. The new generatives add value, say be interpreting or finding stuff, or just by making more accessible. Publishers, broadcasters and recording labels aren’t needed for distribution over the net, but they do have a role in channelling attention to particular content. The more that new media generatives know about people (where they are and what they are doing) the more likely they are going to get their attention. 

Writing this posting got me thinking about “regulation 2.0″ as it where. What are the new generatives for you to consider going forward? Ideas anyone?

Participation Divide

I gave a presentation on the social web to a professional services firm yesterday. My two key messages to them were about:

• the fast pace of change; and that
• massive networking changes everything

On the first point I looked back to the early 1990’s – before the public internet and in the days where the few people that had mobile phones carried around what looked like bricks.  Today, there are over 1.6 billion people connected to the Internet and over 4 billion mobile phone users. And we are on the threshold of fundamental change in how people communicate, work and how organisations operate. With the “Participative Web” (Web 2.0) now mature we are moving toward the “Personalised Web” (Web 3.0) where context rather than content is more likely to be king.

The mobile internet space is growing rapidly. Take iPhone for example, with over 1 billion applications downloaded in the last nine months. As I recall, the Skype app is the most popular, helping to spur the Skype user base past 400 million. Such is the ubiquity and potential utility of smart phones, some expect that 80% of Internet connectivity will be through mobile devices.

There are now over 5 million Australians using Facebook at least once a month, half of them using Facebook everyday. Internationally there are over 200 million people on Facebook with 500,000 people joining every week. Then there is MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Goofy2 and many other social networks and bulletin boards around the world. Part of my presentation yesterday was The Conversation by Brian Solis that shows how many apps there are and their diverse use, all based around that very human activity of conversations. Twitter growth has been just amazing over the last quarter. FriendFeed appears to be on a winner with the introduction of real-time multiple person conversations. During my presentation I spoke about the benefits of the social web to productivity. I spoke about a re-balancing of power between institutions and distributed groups of people.

Now, I had a mixed reception to my presentation. Most of the younger people present were nodding their heads. Some of the older people just shook their heads. They have choosen not to participate, perhaps just regarding the social web as a fad, preferring to assume it will not make much difference to them. Perhaps they just don’t realise that having conversations – that very real and powerful human activity – is happening online as well as offline. It is better to integrate the two, far better, than to assume online conversations are not hear to stay.

Now that is a serious issue. This participaton gap may well be looked upon as a productivity gap, and sooner rather than later.