How do you sell authenticity when there’s no such thing?

Have a look at this 15-minute talk to see how you can be (un)true to yourself and (not) say what you are. Or, how you can produce fake fake, real real, real fake, or fake real.

Interesting, especially for those working on sustainable entrepreneurship, because Pine’s two-by-two can help you re-evaluate who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish (a process The Necessary Revolution also talks about).

And for us Dutch, he’s as entertaining as he is painful. If we think we’re authentic in comparison to ‘you Americans’, have a look in the mirrow: every square meter of The Netherlands is manufactured – most of it made look as if it had always been like that.

To summarize, for successful entrepreneurship in the experience economy, you have to stick to 3 simple rules:
- Don’t say you’re authentic unless you really are;
- It’s easier to be authentic if you don’t say you are;
- And if you do say you’re authentic, you better walk the walk.

(photo Carol Channing Certificate of Authenticity by zoomar)

Witty and often hilarious – and obviously with plenty of examples, this is surely on of the best and most entertaining seminars ever dished out to the Library of Congress.

Having watched this, I strongly believe that if Google ever tries to shut the platform down (it still struggles to make money from Youtube), there’ll be murder and mayhem everywhere.

Click play below to watch (it lasts almost an hour, but worth every minute).

(photo watching the anthropology of Youtube on the iPhone by ~C4Chaos)

Alluding to George Orwell’s 1984, it proved a masterly teaser to Jobs’ (also masterly) personal introduction of the Macintosh two days later. For one, the ad became a free publicity stunt when it was shown in full on several of the major news networks. But, according to Murray, its real success was striking a specific chord with the audience. Have a look at both ad and presentation, and a short explanation of how and why.

In this CNBC interview, Murray explains how the board deemed the commercial too radical and initially didn’t want to air it. But with the Super Bowl slot already paid for, and no suitable replacement commercial, they reluctantly agreed to have it shown.

Why it struck such a chord? Murray: ‘What that commercial did was it picked up on a particular vibe of a large segment of American society. Young people, innovators, creative people, people who don’t want to feel like they’re just stuck in the masses. And we felt that way, but I think we also perhaps underestimated what a strong vibe that is.’

And now for Jobs on stage, introducing the world’s first graphical user interface, mouse operated personal computer:

Thanks to Zee and his The Next Web post Today Marks the 25th Anniversary of Apple’s 1984 Ad. What Are Your Memories?
(photo Bastelstunde: Mac by dersVen)

Internet Service Providers are done enticing consumers with mere access

The clever ones transform themselves into Content Service Providers, or as Playlouder will have it, MSP’s.

From their website: ‘That’s right, PlayLouder is bringing yours truly the first ever Music Service Provider! Raaaaaaahhhhh! Which basically means you will now be able to share and download music with your mates and virtual chums all over the UK, without worrying about Mr Big beating you with a truncheon, nicking all your cash and throwing your miserable ass in chokey.’

What makes it so great – ‘you dear music lovers’ – is that together with a broadband connection, the lucky citizens of the UK can now gain access to thousands of legal music files, free of Digital Rights Management (what’s DRM?).

And how, in Conservative Music Mogul’s name, do they do it? They’re paying royalties to the record companies for activities previously unlicensed and unlawful. ‘Neat eh?’ I should think so (if not for the idea, then at least for pulling off such a deal).

True business model innovation, and it comes packed with a fair amount of witty laughter. I’ve already e-mailed the good people at Playlouder MSP, begging them to come over and connect us deprived citizens of the Netherlands.

But they let me know we’ll have to sit our miserable Mere Access Provision for the time being.

Read more elsewhere

Playlouder seems to grab a bit from all of Eric Bun’s Five inspiring Business Model Innovations in the Telecommunication Industry, which is a good overview on what’s happening in the ISP industry.

And, for some stick on how not to approach this – on both ISP and the music industry fronts, have a look at The Register’s Andrew Orlowski: How to Destroy the Music Business. It talks of blanket license free proposals of €1, per year – per household, and how such measures would destroy any incentive for consumers to pay for better-than-almost-free ‘value added services’  (check out more recent, related articles at the bottom of that post).

Finally, read Wikipedia’s article on the analogue hole to find out what the photo at the top wants to convey about the futility of DRM (and don’t get your hopes up, because it’s not about porn).

(photo Radio At The Edge Session on Digital Rights Management dan taylor)

Brilliant street art/animation combo by Argentine-based artist Blu, even more so when you consider how it was made. Once shot, a mural painting had to be destroyed to make room for the next one, so there was no possibility of reworking and re-touching old frames in the studio.

Click play on the screen below to watch the 7-minute film, and have a look at the brilliant blublu.org website.

Also check out Baptiste Buonomo’s 2005 film Virus (further down).

Thanks to Ime for passing it to me.

(photo IMG_5043.jpg by Matt Woolner)

Very clever, extremely humorous, and free to watch (donations happily accepted). Click play on the screen below, and/or read on for a textual nutshell.

Beware of People

Society has become cultural industries’ biggest competitor. Copyright law – and especially all its subsidiaries (many of them lobbied into life because of the Internet), is working extremely hard to prevent this competitor from moving around in a free market.

People now have cheap access to the tools that used to be reserved for heavy-on-equipment, professional creators. This allows almost anyone to be a producer of culture instead of a mere couch potato.

But the kind of creativity this spawns is dangerous for the well being of the established industry model. So its moguls call out to their exterminating agent: copyright law.

By suing the fans, the industry hoped to make set an example to all the downloaders and remixers out there. But, for one, bald chickens make for bad plucking: they don’t make any money from what they’re doing; they don’t have the money to pay the required fees for what they’re doing; and if they did, it would take someone like GirlTalk – musical cut, edit, mix and mash up genius, about 50 years to clear all the rights for what he’s doing (click here for my personal selection of the late greats of 2008, including a GirlTalk track).

but more importantly, it doesn’t work. If anything, it’s destroying what little credibility big creative industry companies still have in fostering cultural development. So where’s the fun in that? What’s it helping anyone?

The only one making a ‘better’ living through all of this is the lawyer who gets to spend his expensive hours suing twelve-year old girls.

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Reality and Love the Remix

If you know where you’re music’s being played the most, you’ll better be able to decide where you should be on the stage. If you sell a live registration of your concert, to the audience, immediately after your performance, your studio work is but a marketing gimmick for the real thing – the real experience connected to a specific place and time.

So instead of going after downloaders and the remixers, to try and punish them so to set an example for the rest of us (or: to fence in what’s turning into common cultural practice), entertainment moguls should really be looking at them as a source of business model inspiration – or even as partners.

Emerging cultural forms of production are the R&D-labs of cultural industries. Not only do they provide insight into what’s driving potential consumers, they’re brimming with enthusiasts promoting someone’s work for free. Such developments are an opportunity, and seeing this allows companies to rethink what makes their business. Yet few are able to let step out of the comfort zone, to nurture this new practice, and make it work for instead of against them.

‘You can’t be taller than me and shorter than me at the same time. You go ahead and take the high-end of the market; let us play elsewhere. We’ll happily occupy that space.’ This film is remixed poetry – in images, music, and words.

Thanks to Rolf @ Loupe for letting me know.

(photo IMG_0729 by mecredis)