21st Century Enlightenment

A wonderful RSA animated talk that explores our previous endeavours as a society to create human happiness and how, in this day and age, that approach to 'happiness' is no longer valid.

Our previous priorities of driving progress through science & technology, the logic of markets and bureaucracy desperately need to be tempered with 'humanism', a deeper understanding of who we are as people and our ever increasing requirement of empathy for our fellow man in order to live in peace with each other. 

It's a bit academic but absolutely worth watching.

'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world'

The evolution of an internet meme: Bed Intruder

Meet Antoine Dodson, the latest 'darling' of the interwebs and the originator of the current 'bed intruder' meme sweeping everyone's Facebook, Twitter and Inboxes around the world.

It all began on July 28th when he was interviewed on an NBC-affiliate news program after the attempted rape of his sister in 'the projects' in Lincoln Park.
The video was made available online and quickly caught the attention of many of the viewers due to his flamboyant attitude and generally hilarious commentary.



The video understandably went 'viral' and within a few days was remixed by Youtube mash-up artists and musical group 'The Gregory Brothers' using autotune to quickly become an over night phenomenon:


Another day, another remix. This time from Hayley Williams, lead singer of Paramore and Jordan Pundik, lead singer of New Found Glory:


After just 3 weeks, Dodson has become a superstar with more than 16 million video views on Youtube and with the autotune 'bed intruder' song at no.35 on the iTunes chart. He was recently interviewed on NBC's Today Show about his new found fame...


Now 4.5 weeks in there are thousands of copy-cat videos on Youtube, you can buy t-shirts and other merchandise and Dodson has set up a website asking for donations to help his family move out of the 'hood', plus he is receiving 50% of all profits on the song sales! A great ending to a horrific beginning...

Oh the power of the interwebs!

My personal favourite:

Gaming mechanics for behaviour change

I've been reading alot lately about gaming mechanics and their effect on influencing and changing our behaviour both consciously and subconsciously.

Gaming is a part of all of our lives whether we realise it or not but many people's classification of of it is very narrow. They assume that video game players such as those who play 'World Of Warcraft' are 'gamers' but if you've ever used a rewards card (e.g. buy 5 coffees get the 6th free) then that makes you a gamer too, you've participated in an activity that works based on game mechanics.

Below is a great talk by Seth Priebatsch who runs SCVNGR, a mobile start-up who's aim is to build a 'game layer' on top of the world.
He argues that for the last decade we've all been focused on Social Networking and making connections but that the framework for doing this has now come to fruition and needs little to no tweaking, therefore our Social Networking phase is done and dusted.
The next phase which will develop over the next decade is 'Game Mechanics' which is all about influencing and changing our behaviour by placing a gaming layer over our everyday realities. It may seem far fetched to think that we'll all become 'gamers' but if we widen our definition of 'gaming' to encompass more than just traditional video games then it doesn't seem quite as implausible, it starts to seem entirely possible.

Seth discussed 4 key game mechanics that influence our behaviours and how we've already been exposed to most of these mechanics already:

1. The 'Appointment' Dynamic: A dynamic in which to succeed, one must return at a predefined time to take a predetermined action
2. The 'Influence & Status' Dynamic: The ability of one player to modify the behaviour and actions of another player via social pressure
3. The 'Progression' Dynamic: A dynamic in which success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemised tasks
4. The 'Communal Discovery' Dynamic: wherein an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a challenge

Applications such as Foursquare, social games such as Farmville and feedback loops such as Nike+ are just the beginning...
Check out his talk below, well worth watching: