Arte (French-German TV channel) was interviewing young Germans picked randomly in the street this week-end. The question: “do you know what the holocaust is?” A few embarrassed “no” later, it became evident that unless the educational system does something to occupy the online landscape were these kids live, a few hard-earned lessons will go down the memory hole.

When the public will discover this, the internet will be the usual suspect. Truth is the educational system has the exact same problem than the media or music industry: a chronic incapacity to follow the new habits of their “audience”. The reasons are different (resistance from professors, lack of training and budget, inertia of centralized programs or presidential interruptions) but the results the same.

It is time for more class blogging and Youtube short documentaries.

The media goes where audience’s interests are right? Doing a research for my previous post here is what I found for “sarkozy”:

As long as this guy’s wife, divorce or drink habits will interest the public more than his work, we will have tabloids and cheap reporting.

It finally looks like our political powers are on the verge of making a SMART decision in the Internet world! The European Commission will close websites who are misleading consumers within a year if they don’t improve.

BBC: Airline websites are ‘misleading’
At least 200 European airline websites are misleading the consumer, a study by the European Commission has found. […] Common infringements included:
• prices on the home page that don’t include taxes and charges
• free flights that aren’t in the end free
• compulsory purchase of insurance attached to an offer

Halleluyah.

“Chief of inspiration” sounds like a huge imposture mixed with a permanent lie. “Inspiration officer” sounds as cool as “creativity feldmarschall”.

All these words combined ? Chief Inspiration Officer, one of the job titles of the future (oh really) and a huge proof that the company who uses it does NOT get how innovation and inspiration work in a connected world.

A nice way to get your hands on the coolest laptop on earth: the One Laptop Per Child give 1 get 1 program.

For 399$ you will get a laptop AND offer one to a child. Only available for a short period and US only, but worth mentioning.

Things are moving, as in really moving, on the LIFT08 front. The event is getting bigger and bigger as we welcome more partners, speakers, participants, etc… A quick roundup if you haven’t checked the conference website in a while:

• We added two events to the agenda of the conference: a sustainable development night and a startup contest.
• Bruce Sterling, Pierre Bellanger and Paul Barnett joined our already impressive programme. Bruce opening the conference with a 30 minutes address on the state of the Internet will surely be one of the highlights of the conference, don’t be late!
• We have 120+ registered participants which is the most we’ve ever had at this time of the year.
• I saw the new brand and poster, it looks fantastic and will become one of the most viral posters ever. But I can not say more now, the bread and butter folks are still putting the finishing touch to all this.

If you have three minutes I did a small video for the LIFT08 facebook group that you can also see on Youtube here.

One thing struck me while listening to yesterday’s interview at the radio: I am still using the “traditional media” expression to refer to newspapers and TVs, and “new media” to define Youtube and blogs.

It was the last time. This distinction does not make sense anymore. Things are way too embedded now. The BBC is on Youtube, user generated videos on cable TV (current.tv), blogs publish magazines, newspapers write blogs. Media. Not new, not traditional. “The media”.

After the tragedy that hit Finland a few days ago, Youtube is accused of spreading dangerous messages and the “masses are calling for more control“. I got invited to the Swiss national radio to make a few points this morning:

• You can’t control media. Get over it!
• The debate is not about YouTube, it’s about video on the web. This guy could have posted the video on his own website. The only way to stop this? Shutting down the internet (in itself an impossible task).
• It might actually be a blessing in disguise that he posted it on YouTube where it could be taken down in a click. Obviously this guy did not have the most effective strategy which would consist in allowing users to download his video (i.e. NOT posting it on YouTube), because spreading the video would have been easier and “outsourced” to viewers, therefore totally impossible to shut down.
• It seems the finish teen was replicating scenes of the Columbine massacre which happened in 1999, 6 years before the birth of YouTube. Inciting messages have spread way before new medias arrived, via TV footages and, in the case of Columbine, cinema when Michael Moore used the footage in his movie. Let’s shut down TV and Cinema then?
• Experts validating content is not a solution from the moment cultures don’t agree on what’s right or wrong. Racist discourse is allowed in the US (I am always shocked to see the yearly Ku Klux Klan gatherings happening in this country, certainly blown out of proportion by the media but still…) and punished by law in France. How to deal with that?
• What is an expert in Youtube videos anyway? Is there such a thing as a PHD in guys-mixing-mentos-with-coke-videos?
• Validating videos does not scale economically, it is way too expensive. Do we therefore shut down a media used in a legal way 99.99% of the time in the name of a few mishaps? As Bruno Giussani used to say back in the early days, “you don’t shut down the postal system because it sometimes delivers a letter bomb!“
• From the moment there is no technical solution, the problem has to be handled by the receivers of the information, i.e. you and me. We need to stop being fascinated by this kind of incidents, creating a hunger for coverage and therefore for more “reward” (in a very sick way of course) for those who create this kind of incidents.
• Again, and from a social perspective, this might be a blessing in disguise. Social media are forcing citizens to use their filters again! We will finally stop believing everything that comes from the media, and start questioning things we took for granted. If the NYT says it it must be true. No no, time to think again, you are responsible of your own truth.

The interview (in french) is archived here.

James Gosling of Sun Microsystems will talk about the state of the Java Universe at the CERN on November 30. Another great free event organized by François Grey and his team, email them if you would like to attend (francois.grey@cern.ch).

More information here.