I got an Xbox controller in my hand a few days ago, and was puzzled by the unlikely design. It is too big, some buttons are really hard to reach, they can not be pushed as quickly as they should, etc.

Part of what motivated Microsoft to design this was probably a will to differentiate their hardware from the previously released Playstation’s controller. Bad idea. Sometimes you should recognize that something can not be improved - or at least not with the ideas you have right now.

I was surprised when Sony kept the same design across versions of their Playstation controllers: the PS2 one had the same shape than the PS1, and the PS3 is basically the PS2 but wireless. With a new product automatically comes a new design? Not the controllers which remained the same, probably the most ergonomic gamepads ever design (not considering the Wii which is something different). Sony was smart to acknowledge they couldn’t do better, and therefore should not change for the sake of changing.

This reminds me of an old story when a few years ago Swissair collapsed. The national company was taken over by a small and local carrier that hired Tyler Brulé to design a new brand. Swiss was born with a logo made of a white cross inside a red square. Critics started to pile up: how can you pay that much money to come up with such an obvious brand?

Brulé’s thinking was right. Designing for the sake of it is wrong. Swiss best asset were its swissness, an image of quality, reliability, ponctuality. The Swiss flag is one of the most recognized symbol in the world. Going with something else than this would have been wrong.

That is where design is different from other domains. Sometimes doing less means doing better. See the minimalist packaging trend that has been spotted in Japan. Less can be more, or as the world’s best slogan put it back in 1997: “Reduce to the max“.

How much “information” does an American consumes on a single day? 34 gigabytes or 100′000 words…

Link

Update: a related article on the challenges of data overload by The Economist: “Information has gone from scarce to superabundant. That brings huge new benefits but also big headaches“.

Social networks started on the past (classmates), moved to the present (Facebook), then the future (dopplr). Social networks used to be on people you knew (classmates), people you know more or less (Facebook), people you do not know (dating websites), they will soon also be about people you do not necessarily want to know.

At Lift Asia 09 we welcomed Jin-Ho Hur, CEO of Neowiz, a social network/gaming platform whose fundamental concept is that everybody can hide behind an avatar. Why? Because not knowing who the other users are is a feature! If you spend hours playing online games from the office, do you really want to share that with your network? And what about meeting people randomly like what happens at bars? This is not really covered by existing networks, hence the success of something like chatroulette that “generates one-on-one Webcam connections between you and another randomly chosen user” (NYT link).

I believe this is a trend, not only because it corresponds to a need, but because it is the only place where social networks can innovate under the current framework, where each positions itself along the past/present/future and friends/acquaintances/strangers dimensions.

The red bubble is where we have the less players at the moment. I expect to see many new services in the coming months, reproducing a phenomena that is omnipresent in our lives but mostly absent of online life: serendipity.

The fact these services are used & created by teenagers is also not very surprising. After all this generation seems to have lost many of the opportunities we had to connect randomly: the arcades have been replaced by Playstations, the rave parties have been forbidden, dating happens online rather than in bars, etc etc.

Here is the video (in French) of my recent talk at CreaDigital. It was fun to prepare and give, I hope you enjoy it as much as me :)

I am discussing:

• The new interfaces
• The current transition of media
• Business models
• The new multipolar web
• Cultural / generational differences
• Buzz
• Digital footprint
• Managing openness

Slides here.

The discussion on Publicy continues: I posted a second round of thoughts, Stowe Boyd explores the decade of Publicy, and twitter and blogsearch will soon have to stop asking “did you mean publicly?”

Brian Solis (who seems to belong to the endangered specie of people who actually read articles before linking to them) is adding up to my argument, and seems to agree with me that the attitude you can build towards social media (the “plausible me”) could be a good news to a massive problem:

In describing publicy, Laurent Haug paints a picture of what he refers to as the “plausible you,” but it is his idea around new privacy and intention that serves as the light at the end of the tunnel:

Now that you are back in the driver seat, you have your privacy back. Just of a different kind. You have built a space that could be called “publicy”, or “the plausible me”. It is a credible space where people expect to see information about you. Whatever credible information you say in there will be taken as true by the world. That is your new privacy. A space that is public but that you control, where you can say anything you want and have it taken as true.

In Social Media, it is our responsibility to define who we are and why we are significant. Who we are online is formed by an assemblage of everything we contribute – whether intended or not. Regardless of medium, we save ourselves from ourselves through the practice of restraint and the recognition that we are what we share. The socialization of media distributes pieces of us across the Web and without our knowledge, they are reassembled at will, without our ability to directly shape perception. Thus, our digital shadow is a reflection of our persona and reputation and therefore requires dedication to the active, thoughtful shaping and feeding of the “brand you” through everything you share.  In doing so, we dictate who we are today as well as who we become tomorrow and over time. The doors between public, private, and secret must remain discrete and preserved. While we embrace an era of publicy, we do not relinquish privacy, for without it, we fulfill the prediction of becoming servants of the Web instead of its engineers and conductors.

Link

Sorry for pasting somebody quoting me, but receiving coverage on this post for what it is (a reflection on how we can navigate the current public/private equation) and not for what it is not (an apology of the end of privacy) feels good.

Marc Laperrouza - in my opinion one of the best specialist of technologies in China - has a blogs on Lift Think. He shares his thoughts on the Google/China story:

Google is threatening to stop censoring search results and even to leave the Chinese market alltogether - the first action almost automatically leads to being forced to close operations.

One can easily imagine that if Google’s chief legal officer decides to take the affair public, it is probably because the firm is not able to get the necessary assurance from the Chinese government that such attacks would end - else why risk leaving what promises to be one the fastest growing market in the near future.

A number of things are surprising. First, officially, the threat comes after a series of cyber-attacks that hit more than 30 companies. Google’s response thus seems mismatched. Second, the US government got involved rather rapidly by making a public statement.

At the end of the day two questions remain. First, can China do without Google? Domestic companies would be thrilled to have the number 2 search engine leave its 30% market share for grabs. For sure, the pressure to innovate will diminish but the creativity of Chinese firms should compensate. The reason for Baidu’s dominant market is that the firm understand its market better. Second, can Google do without China? Analysts don’t seem to leave the idea too much (the share dropped by 1% solely on the news of the threat). More importantly though, Google can not afford to have the integrity of its data compromised, not for a company which plans to become the repository of all your personal information all over the world.

Link

Be sure to also check Marc’s talk at Lift08 on Mobile in Asia.

I have posted some links on generations lately (see “Enter the Millennials“, “About youth“) ahead of the upcoming sessions on the matter at Lift10. Here comes further information from a University College London study, on the now called Google Generation, those born after 1993 and referred below as the “young people”:

• the information literacy of young people, has not improved with the widening access to technology: in fact, their apparent facility with computers disguises some worrying problems
• internet research shows that the speed of young people’s web searching means that little time is spent in evaluating information, either for relevance, accuracy or authority
• young people have a poor understanding of their information needs and thus find it difficult to develop effective search strategies
• as a result, they exhibit a strong preference for expressing themselves in natural language rather than analysing which key words might be more effective
• faced with a long list of search hits, young people find it difficult to assess the relevance of the materials presented and often print off pages with no more than a perfunctory glance at them
• young people have unsophisticated mental maps of what the internet is, often failing to appreciate that it is a collection of networked resources from different providers

This graph on article discovery strategies is also interesting:

Link (thx Bruno G)

Following Eric Schmidt’s latest take on privacy, I am getting some link “love” from the big guys, with Techcrunch and Cnet both pointing to an early 2009 article I wrote on my take on privacy, something I believe you are not getting at birth anymore, but need to build around the concept of a “plausible me”. Publicy is a space you can control and where you can regain your privacy by publishing fake information - like 50% of social networks users aged 13-21 who claim they falsified information (see page 28).

Almost one year has passed since that post, and this important topic deserves a few more thoughts:

• More logging planned
  One year later, laws like Hadopi are popping up all around the world, which means every single act you do online is being monitored and logged. In France again, several databases are in the works, some storing information like philosophical, religious and sexual orientation, and other strangely irrelevant information when it comes to something the government should know on you. All this to say that the situation got worse, and definitely, privacy is not a choice anymore. Nobody can shut down all the video cameras capturing our movements in the streets.
• Privacy in the old sense of the word is dead
  Saying this does not make me agree with that development. But whether we like it or not (and I mostly don’t), there are many files on each of us, and we need to find a way to limit their impact. Privacy in the 19th century sense of the word does not exist anymore. Reversing the trend will demand a lot of catastrophes and abuses for public opinion to realize the pitfalls of such systems, and start making the legal, social, and technological changes. It is like the financial system, one government, person or company can not change this alone. It is a global issue.
• Privacy is not something we are granted at birth anymore
  It is not the default setting of our lives. In developed countries babies get their first database entry a couple of minutes after birth. The first data given up is weight, height, gender, name. Trivial and revealing at the same time. What is at stakes here is to find balance between the usefulness of data - tracking babies allows for better public health, and hopefully helps avoid confusions - and their nuisance potential. In the case of babies, it is pretty clear that the positive out gains the negative. But what happens for criminal databases? When they allow the capture of a recidivist, pretty good. When they prevent someone who has changed to get a new job and work himself back into society, they are a negative force. Where the balance point is depends on your political view, on whether you had such a case in your family, on the history of your country, etc.
• Not to mention lost data…
  And I am not even talking about the worrying number of hacked/leaked data making it to the open. There is storing data, then there is securing it. And every time I call my insurance company and witness their global incompetency in handling event the most basic process, I am terrified to think that the same people are managing servers with a lot of my personal data on it.
• The loss of the right to be forgotten is a terrible thing
  Because it prevents one from getting recognized as having gotten over any past mistake. Shrinks (they are put to contribution in the pre-cited CNET article) will tell you that a people can change radically through the long process of therapy. But as the recent Roman Polanski saga shows, there is no need for Facebook or Twitter to have things catch up with you 30 years later. Again, not a new problem, and probably more of a social than technological problem. 21st century is very bad at giving second chances it seems, despite the many stories of former convicts turning into positive forces. It is like, implicitly, society has accepted the total futility of the jail/punishment system. It does not work, criminals will strike again so we need a record on them. It is a shame there is no debate on how to regain trust in the correction system. If it was working 95% of the time we might not need databases.
• The search for fame is not the only driver of online existence
  There are many reasons for us to go online, and therefore try to control our identity. The distance with friends (I’m in touch with my childhood friends now living in Reims, Paris, L.A, Lisbon, etc. It can only happen online), participation in an online community (and something like Lift is only possible through online communities), launching a business (which means having a website with your name on it), etc. There is much more than pursuing an elusive fifteen minutes of fame. For a lateral view on this, take five minutes and read Howard S. Becker on studying new media. He mentions the many reasons why people are active online.
• We are not the only source of negative information on us
  Where I disagree with Eric Schmidt is when he seems to imply that one is the source of all negative information about him/herself. Yes, “if you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place“, but many exceptions should be taken into account there. I am not sure 14 years old Joseph Ratzinger (a man for whom I don’t have any special sympathy whatsoever) voluntarily engaged in the Hitler Youth, yet this was held back against him when he became Benedict XVI. A disease can also be a source of information you want to rightfully hide from the public, and this should be possible. People do not chose to have cancer, yet a few cases of people fired after searching for data on this condition have surfaced. Some information can hurt us, and we might have nothing to do about them.
• Privacy needs a serious framework
  Trying to find a definitive rule to guarantee an even privacy to all citizens is probably a lost cause, because we all need to solve a different equation. Some of us need total privacy, others need to be semi or fully public figures because of their business, personal or political activities. Being totally transparent can even protect you from government abuse! What we need is more of a framework where anybody can position the cursor as he wants, and more importantly, change its position over time. As the founder of Lift, I have to communicate online as I am the first node of a global community. Whatever my next job is, I might want to reverse the trend and become more secret. This is not really possible right now, and if you have a solution in mind you will be very rich and you should contact me, I will invest whatever I have in your company :)
• Self regulation is already underway
  This kind of larger than life issues tends to self regulate. And I think that in the end, Google and the advertisers - often cited as the ones asking for less privacy - are the ones who have an interest in it. Why? I already mentionned earlier a study showing that 50% of users among the 13-21 age range falsify information. You want to spy on me? I will feed you with fake data to push the envelope to where I want it to be. And I will make your profiling efforts much more complicated in the process. In the contrary, if you give users a system they can trust, one where they can control what is controllable, then they will share the data advertisers need. I am sure Google [Disclaimer: a partner of Lift] understands this, as their recent Data Liberation Front initiative shows. Facebook does not seem to be that far in terms of thinking, but it will inevitably come. This reminds me of the click fraud controversy: you can hardly identify them so the solution is to acknowledge them directly in your bidding for AdWords.For more on the lying habits of online users, be sure to check Genevieve Bell’s talk at Lift08:
  

A few facts shared by Pew Research Center on the millennials, born between 1981 and 2000. A few things are radically different, apparently for the better:

• [Millennials] are the most ethnically and racially diverse cohort of youth in the nation’s history. Among those ages 13 to 29: 18.5% are Hispanic; 14.2% are black; 4.3% are Asian; 3.2% are mixed race or other; and 59.8%, a record low, are white.
• They are starting out as the most politically progressive age group in modern history. In the 2008 election, Millennials voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by 66%-32%, while adults ages 30 and over split their votes 50%-49%. In the four decades since the development of Election Day exit polling, this is the largest gap ever seen in a presidential election between the votes of those under and over age 30.
• They are the first generation in human history who regard behaviors like tweeting and texting […] not as astonishing innovations of the digital era, but as everyday parts of their social lives and their search for understanding.
• They are the least religiously observant youths since survey research began charting religious behavior.
• They are more inclined toward trust in institutions than were either of their two predecessor generations — Gen Xers (who are now ages 30 to 45) and Baby Boomers (now ages 46 to 64) when they were coming of age.

Link

I was a bit surprised to find that this generation has that much trust in institutions. The rest had been known for a while as the Pew explains. Generations will be one of the topic explored during the upcoming Lift10. We will try to understand and uncover the myths and realities behind the cliches, and understand the different usages of technology. Check the conference program for more.

PS: Wikipedia puts a different name on this generation. There Millennials are Generation Y (mid seventies to late nineties), and Generation Z is what the Pew calls Millennials. Confusing, but not very important at the end of the day.

The Trinidad and Tobago Police wants to post wanted criminal mugshots on Facebook. Main argument behind the move: it’s free!

Facebook is being considered for use to post photographs and other information about wanted criminals. Acting Police Commissioner James Philbert said so during Tuesday’s launch […] of Crime Stoppers Caribbean Most Wanted. Philbert said improvements to the official Police Service Web site and other online media also were being considered to disseminate information about criminals and receive assistance from the public in the fight against crime.

Link (thx Galipeau)