E-Culture and Communications final exam

1. Blogs and E-Culture
Blogging appeared recently on the net and rapidly expanded to a true social phenomenon.
A blog is a sort of pre-formatted personal website: templates are provided that you can improve and personalise. Sometimes very basic, they can become very sophisticated if you decide to use more advanced functionalities (pictures, web links) and ad regular postings, interact with other people's comments. Anybody who wants one can have one: they are free and accessible from the net at any time and from any place with a connection. Now with wifi possibilities, you can blog from the street or on the move and provide the net with regular postings on any subjects you may think of. In that respect, blogs are a kind of gazette: they would not compare with Le Monde – which is the official upmarket type of press – but they could very well compare with local newspapers providing information about the community, or with the type of editorial work a columnist would do. For instance, in the famous TV serie Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw writes about relationships, love life and romance in her column for the New York Times. All her thoughts are actually related to her and her girl friends personal experiences: the talks they have together generate material for Carrie’s weekly column. We could very well imagine that in a Sex and the City new serie, Carrie would actually publish her blog instead of a printed column.
This aspect of blogging reflects two main characteristics of the qualities and principles of e-culture. First, they illustrate the fact that e-culture is impermanent: to be a good blogger, you need to make regular and interesting postings almost like a journalist would do, otherwise your blog dies slowly. Also, blogging rewards open-mindedness and a will for transparency: Carrie Bradshaw exposes her love and sex life in her column and that results in her better understanding of human relationships in a urban contemporary environment: she gets feed-back from real people in the street telling her about their own point of views or experiences. She interacts with real people through the exposure of her own experiences and that leads her towards new experiences. Blogging has been used recently by celebrities to have a better contact with their audience or even to recover from failure and blackout. For instance, Billy Corgan, the former lead performer of the grunge band Smashing Pumpkins is using his blog as a diary to tell his fans about his struggle against depression and drug addiction. By the way, he also keep them posted about his ongoing projects and new musical releases. He’s using blogging as a transparent and evolving tool that brings him together to the community of his fans, a community of values.
The most extreme example being pointed out in our class was by Louk referring to Entropia, where a community created an artificial value to a non-existent island.


2. Is E-Culture pro social or anti social?
I think e-culture is more pro-social than anti-social. Because of transparency there is a self regulation that applies to the public space of the Web. The best example I think is Wikipedia which is a free online Encyclopaedia regularly improved by a community of posters.
Nearly any visitor may edit Wikipedia's articles and have their changes be instantly displayed. It is built on the belief that collaboration among users will improve articles over time, in much the same way that open-source software develops. Users are warned that their contributions may be "edited mercilessly and redistributed at will" by anyone who so wishes.
The main characteristic of Wikipedia is sharing, and sharing is a very social and sociable value: people were swopping goods before they got to start selling them and before rampant capitalism became a source of growing inequity increasing numeric and social fracture.

3. The six personnal qualities which are essential to professional and personal success are Generosity, Discipline, Patience, Perseverance, Insight and Analysis. We are going to observe how they apply to and interfere with E-Culture
Generosity for instance is a quality but it can also be a killer application when coming to e-culture: Wikipedia killed the need for buying any personal printed Encyclopaedia ever. We may want to consult one in a public library, but as a single, private, personal user, I find more reward in having all this knowledge for free on the web.
Discipline is much needed in E-Culture too in order to keep applying rules of good conduct, good practice any time you post anything on the web. Transparency and constant changes being the main rules on the web, we know we cannot hide and if we do anything forbidden, we’re going to be tracked down. Also we’ve got to be disciplined to make regular postings on our blogs and keep an eye open on whatever new is happening in this very impermanent world. In our course, we saw the example of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski as being the main exemplary case of transparency. We could also say that if Bill Clinton had been more ‘disciplined’ as an American President, he would not have been so exposed to public ordeal.
Patience is much needed in a technological world subject to bugs, viruses and breakdowns.
Perseverance is also a key tool of personal development that applies to E-Culture: for instance, elderly people were not the first ones to jump on the Net, but now they’re catching up. They’ve learnt how to use a computer and can now make good use of e-technology to buy online, for instance, and make their life easier.
Insight is the ability to reflect and think about oneself. This is important in an ever changing and fast paced e-environment which can be very unsettling sometimes. It is not innocent that the more new technologies developed, the more a renewed spirituality developed too. There are many new age or well being sites on the net encouraging people to step back from a stressful life and keeping time for themselves and personal development.
Analysis sums up all the above qualities: it proves people are being able to step back from details and understand how they fit in a bigger picture. It implies that people do not think only about themselves anymore but that they also relate to other human beings on a much larger scale. Thinking about others proves their generosity, which brings us back to our first quality and make the cycle complete.

What motivates me in E-Culture...

Well, somehow, I've always felt "e-cultured", and that means before e-culture happened.

As far as I can remember, I've always had a thirst for knowledge. But libraries would bore me and I would feel that life itself was more rewarding in terms of learning valuable information and experience.
With the internet, we were facing an infinite resource of information, and the quality of it was it was information on the go:
no need to be sitting in a library no more! Just like for this generation of writers fom Blaise Cendrars to Hemingway, words were in motion and culture was confronted to a sometimes tough reality.

I love books. Books are a human being's best friend.
But I dont like old dusty libraries, with grumpy librarians in them, asking for I.Ds and forms to be filled in.
Curious about so many different things as I am, the internet brought me the permanent and easy access I needed to knowledge and information. I like the idea that you can wander around the internet like in Borges' library: everything's there, the useful and the useless, the very general and the very specific. It's an infinite garden of so many resources!
I like the openess of it: since the internet appeared, offices layouts have changed, from clogged up little booth to wide airy open spaces...

Finally, what motivates me in E-Culture is that it creates a link between generations.
It's a constant source of rejuvenation. As a citizen and as an individual, it helps me stick with my time.
Keeping up with it might require restless awareness, but the challenge of it is also very energizing to me.

O-Culture vs E-Culture

Sometimes, we think it's all over with O-Culture and that, from now on, we only going to live a free flow of life within a seamless world of new technologies that will all improve our daily chores and our ways of traveling and communicating.
How can we be such fools? Utopian beliefs in the positivity of modernity can lead us to prompt behaviours we might regret! But let me explain by telling you the little story that happened to me last week-end...

At 4.30pm last Saturday, I decided I could go and visit my parents in Lorraine, just like that, drop of a hat, because I needed a break and I wanted to see a bit of countryside.
I checked the SCNF website and in one instant I had booked a return ticket that was cheap and convenient. As I didn't have a printer myself, I chose the option to pick up my ticket at a ticket machine at the station.
The train was at 5.52pm: I just had the time to take my book, Moblité.net, and my laptop with me, jump on the tube and catch my train. As a positive thinker who believes E-Mobility and E-Culture run the world, I would have never thought some stupid machine would stop me from doing so! But it did.
Sadly, I had not read on the booking form, written somewhere, in very small fonts, that automatic ticket machine were not accepting foreign Visa cards or even American Express cards, the card that, however, epitomizes the power of international business and reliability...
It happened I had used my UK Barclays card to book online. (Back in France, I opened an account with Crédit Lyonnais, but they didn't allow me to have a Visa card for I needed to be a client with them for at least 3 months before I could apply... O-Culture, Ô O-Culture...)
Then, I could not actually produce a printed version of the ticket I had booked and paid online!!! I was therefore condemned to 1) join the very long queue at the ticket desk and get an SNCF agent to print a ticket for me and therefore probably miss my train or 2) jump on the train I was supposed to catch but without a valid ticket and hopefully the ticket controller would be able to sort me out.
As, by that time, I was still believing in E-Culture, I chose the second option. And very bravely, I explained my story to the ticket controller on board of the train who said: 'Nice story, Miss. But all I need to see is a valid printed ticket. As you dont have any, you must buy another one and it's gonna be more expensive cause you're buying it on board'.

I was baffled. Devastated.

And guess what, in order to pay that new ticket issued on board, I handled the same Barclays card that was incrimated in the first booking procedure, and, Oh Joy!, the little portable card machine the controller was using accepted it ! Oh irony, Oh oh ô irony.

So : in total, I’ve paid 73 euros for a Paris-Metz ticket whereas the ticket I had bought online was only 27 euros. Great. And I can’t get any money back (so the customer service said) cause it was written somewhere on the contract I could not use my foreign card, and even though I was in a rush and it was printed very small, I should have READ it.

Just as a reminder, it’s been almost twenty years that the SNCF is planning a TGV line towards the East of France. After many years of tough negotiations, the project should be completed eventually by 2007. The Gare de l’Est in Paris is going to be modernized and refurbished in order to welcome the fast train and all the modern amenities that go with it. In 2006, ticket controllers will carry mobile PDA interfaces that will enable them to check bookings and produce tickets on board of the train. This fast train line will be called TGV Est Européen : it will bring many foreign business people and diplomats to and fro Paris, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Germany…
Will we seriously ask these people not to use their foreign Visa cards (which is supposed to be an international way of payment anyway), or American Express card ?
Will they be fined as soon as they won’t be able to produce a ticket ?
And what about the proactive people, early adopters, who do believe in E-Culture, who may not be business people or diplomats, but who still believe that fluidity is the future of public transportation ? What about them ? What about me and my 73 euros ticket ? Hey ?

Well, Dear E-Culture friends, I’m telling you that O-Culture is still nagging around and ready to stop the free flow from being.
So let’s be vigilant and very prepared …

The 12 principles of Killer App design...

What is a killer app? It's a new application that kills the application that was there before!
Example: Google killed the need for a printed Encyclopedia, Wordprocessing killed the typewriter... and digital camera may definitely kill traditional film camera.
A killer app is a major system that makes other system look obsolete.

Reshaping the landscape
1. Outsource to the customer
Online banking has outsourced to the customer a whole bunch of tasks that were previously done at the bank, by a cashier, after the customer had queued for a while and filled in and signed loads of receipts and documents. Now from home and from his computer, the customer can pay bills, check his account, transfer money all by himself, without needing any bank employee.

2. Cannibalize your markets
Online dating and online matrimonial agencies have cannibalized traditionnal dating and matrimonial agencies. Further than that, online dating has created speeddating, a new type of events where people can date and meet : "At speeddating events you get to date around 20 people in one night!" says the advert.

3. Treat each customer as a market segment of one
Amazon.fr offers its clients to personnalize their Amazon homepage so that their details are already in for their next online order.

4. Create communities of value
Sometimes, you have a passion, but nobody to share it with.
With Forums and Associative Websites, people can tell tips about their favourite activities and find buddies to share their passion with.

Building new connections:
5. Replace rude interfaces with learning interfaces
Before the internet, people were not only unemployed but they also had to go and queue at the Job Center for ages and fill tons of papers. That could be very depressing and somehow humiliating. Now, no need to queue anymore! They can just go to ANPE online instead.

6. Ensure continuity for the customer not yourself
Diets are very popular all over the world and the internet has been very popular on that matter too. Weight Watchers is very famous for its assistance to customers by providing meetings where people can share their experience about being on a diet. With the World Wide Web, they have to provide this continuity on the net too!

7. Give away as much information as you can
What would become of us without the Yellow Pages? Not much, that's for sure!
The Yellow Pages provide us with the priceless service of accessing free information anytime we request, and now that they are on the Net, they give away even more information... being in France, in the UK, or in the USA...

8. Structure every transaction as a joint venture
In the World Wide Web, information spreads and it is easily shareable.
Workflow and groupware have become a common way of working in most corporate enterprises.

The 4 basic qualities of the Internet and the E-Culture

1. The first basic quality of the Internet is its impermanence. Changes on the Net are constant.
2. The second characteristic is the negative effect of holding onto things, of avoiding things or being ignorant. E-Culture rewards open mindedness.
3. Then, there is transparency. Everything is known on the Net. Good and bad acts have an inevitable effect. You cannot hide!
4. Finally, the Internet offers precious opportunities. In order not to miss them, you need to be quick.

Here are some examples to illustrate the 4 points above:

Impermanence: Fashion is an area where impermanence is expected. Even though there are rules, patterns, crafts and all what makes "l'esprit Couture", Fashion is expected to be volatile to the point of being sometimes superficial and it constantly reinvents itself. Fashion on the Net is expected to be the same. There would be nothing more unfashionable than a website about fashion where constant novelty and creativity would not be a rule. That would be SO uncool...!

Negative effect of holding onto things: Changes are constant on the internet and the music industry should have known better! Formats in music have kept on changing since the late 19th Century when Thomas Edison invented the first phonograph. 78, vinyls, tapes, CDs, MiniDisc, and now MP3 files downloadable from the Internet. The Music industry shouldnt have hold onto its old formats and standards of industry! Maybe if it had kept in mind that the main principle of the internet was free flow on an open network, the music industry wouldnt be in such a bad state today.

Transparency: People are sometimes scared that they might lose their privacy on the internet due to exposure. However, exposure also brings to light what could have been negative to society if it had stayed hidden.
The fact that the acts of torture perpetrated by American Soldiers in the prison of Abu Ghraib were revealed in the press was a major development of the war in Irak. Warblogs brought together a reflexion about the cruelty of war and the practice of torture in general.

Precious Opportunities: At 38 years of age Stelios Haji-Ioannou is best known for creating easyJet PLC when he was 28. He is often credited as the pioneer who changed the European aviation scene by establishing his low cost "no frills" airline on the market through the reduction of costs and the usage of online bookings. This serial entrepreneur is one of the best exemple of someone who did not miss the opportunity to make an extremely successful business out of what internet technology enabled: this was back in April 1998, before any other airline dared to do it.