As many of you have begun to gather, I am not a one-draft wonder. What follows is a significant rewrite of the Table of Contents. I look forward to your comments, which will let me know if I am primarily there, or if this document requires more work.
Please let me know what you think.
PART ONE: What’s Happening
1. … The
more we remain the same
This allegorical chapter illustrates
that human nature stays the same even as technology makes worlds bigger.
Boogi and Woogi, two
skilled hunters are among the most revered members of their small, isolated
cave-dwelling community of cave dwellers, living some 10,000 years ago in the
shadow of a receding glacier.
These guys are held in such
high esteem because they communicate in three ways. Not only do they bring home the mastodon, but
they bring home valuable information and interesting stories from beyond the
village edge. Finally, as travelers and
hunters, they are constantly devising and refining tools.
These two have traveled
further from the safety of their neighborhood than anyone else causing loved
ones and neighbors to wonder and worry. In their travels, they have discovered
the safest, warmest and most convenient places to stay. They follow known paths
then make new ones when expedient.
Sometimes Boogi and Woogi encounter
other Cro-Magnon, who grunt with strange accents, difficult to understand. These
encounters sometimes result in trades and shared information. Just as often
they result in some serious attempts at skull bashing.
Over years, Boogi &
Woogi become increasingly effective as a team. During hunts, they use subtle gestures
to communicate. They continuously refine their tools to become better hunters.
They devise a system to signal information back to the community by banging a
rock on a hollow stump.
Boogi and Woogi often
return home to an excited village hungry for food and information. At night, the
community huddles around a cave fire to hear Boogi and Woogi tell their
stories. Sometimes, they use sticks to draw maps in the cave floor dirt or illustrate
their biggest adventures by drawing cave wall pictures with blood and berries.
The chapter concludes that
through 100s of millennia, the human animal has pretty much remained the same
at the core. We are taller, live longer,
have better tools for building and killing, communicate so much better, know so
much more about what the happens beyond the borders of where we live.
But by nature we remain
curious and adventurous animals. We simply must go beyond where we’ve
been. If it is our nature to stay close
to home, we encourage others to go into outer space or to the bottom of the
ocean and the community regards those brave people, who bring back new
valuable, interesting information in the very highest esteem.
TS Eliot may have said it
best: “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one
can go.”
2. The virtual megalopolis
This chapter looks at the
nature of tangible neighborhoods and why, in an era of massive urbanization,
people cling to the comforts of their own neighborhoods, where they share
interests and values with many of their neighbors.
It shows how this
neighborhood unity gets diluted when one regards the huge megalopolises of more
than 20 million people, filled with social and economic contrasts, seeming
confusion and chaos, unknown dangers lurking up unknown streets. It discusses
the mutual discomfort of a Sao Paulo
From there, the chapter
compares real life cities to online communities, some of which are more than
five times larger than the world’s largest cities. If MySpace, growing by 85,000
new inhabitants daily could have more than 200 million registered users by the
end of 2007, making it larger than most countries.
From there, this pivotal
chapter, introduces and defines a global neighborhood comparing its many
similarities with tangible neighborhoods. Emphasizing that the relationships formed
in virtual places are real, they have a certain added benefits. We can each
join as many as we want where we find people all over the world who share our
interests. These neighborhoods are organized from the bottom up and the rules
of them are decided by those who reside there. We are influenced by our peers and those who
have the most influence, like Boogi and Woogi of yore, are held in the highest
esteem.
Observing that hundreds of
millions of people, perhaps over a billion, from over 100 countries are already
participating in global neighborhoods, and the impact in recalibrating
business, government and education has just begun. It points out that these global neighborhoods
are inhabited mostly by a young population who are about to inherit the earth
and change a great deal.
3. Social Media—a
guided tour
This anecdote filled
chapter takes readers on a brief tour of the best known online communities as
well as some of the most interesting localized ones. The chapter will include
some interviews with site executives, but the main focus will be reporting on
user experiences—the enriching and odd anecdotes that tell the story of the
attraction and power of the virtual communities.
The chapter will also
examine some of the small community-oriented communities and how differently
the “hometowns” are from the virtual megaloplises.
It also introduces the
concept that global neighborhoods themselves may transcend virtual community
site borders. The same people, sharing
same interests keep finding each other at blog and photo sites. They enjoy the same audio and video
broadcasts and clips. They may even meet in the real world at a selected event,
attending not so much to hear a dais roster, as to meet face to face with
people who they first got to know in a virtual community.
4. Forget the crystal ball. Look at the kids.
The book’s most important premise
is laid down in this chapter. To understand how business, and politics,
education and culture will change in the next 5-10 years, watch the young
people. The habits that they form
between the ages of 16 and 25 are likely to remain with them through their
lives. This developing generation does not watch television or read newspapers.
They are immune to most of the 3000 marketing messages hurled at most of them
every day. They do not believe products because a famous person has endorsed
them.
Increasingly they get the
information they use to make decisions from online resources and the people who
most influence those decisions are their own global neighborhood peers.
The chapter takes a look at
how the world is likely to change as this generation enters the marketplace and
an older one leaves it.
5. The
Global Classroom
The
chapter discusses the enormous opportunities for social media in education along with its ability to offset one of the most universal
liabilities of traditional teaching methods—classroom boredom.
The
chapter spotlights Scotland
It
looks at virtual reality’s potential for bring history, geography and current
events to life and it reports on a special program that shows autistic children
getting fully immersed in virtual reality programs. The chapter envisions a
next generation of Scots coming to age with a more global perspective on the
world, who may use the internet to be part of a global company or profession
while remaining in their own homes and country.
6. Politicians in Pursuit
Statistics in America
So ifa politician can “get
them while they’re young,” they can have the loyalty of a voter throughout
their careers and they will have delivered a voter to their party for life.
Today’s young undecided
voter makes decisions from information he or she garners online. Perhaps that’s
why government officials and political aspirants are moving online in droves
all over the world. Besides, social media is a lot less expensive than TV
advertising, which is greeted by most young voters with Teflon immunity.
The chapter reports on
political social media campaigns in at least a half dozen countries and it digs
in to the campaigns of John Edwards for US president as well as David Cameron,
running for British Prime Minister. It also reports on the Farsi language blog
of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
who uses it to hurl accusations at Israel US Iran
By
following voters online, the very nature of politics in itself changes. First,
it significantly lowers the cost of communications allowing greater opportunity
for aspirants who have not amassed huge war chests. Second, it allows voters to
talk back (except maybe in Iran
7. The Bottom Up Democracy
With
a population of just 1.4 million people, Estonia
Estonia
The
result: over 90 percent of the people vote. Tax payers, never jubilant about
the requirement, feel they are fairly treated and business people feel
comfortable just dialing up government officials for a chat when they have an
issue to discuss.
The
chapter speculates on what other, larger democracies have to learn from the
Estonian experience. It also looks at Skype and other startups and explains hpw
connection has led to the country’s rapid emergence since turning focus to the
west after the Soviet empire crumbled.
8. Crisis and the Instant Neighborhood
Social
media seems to be at its best and most dramatic when natural disasters occur.
This chapter tells the stories of how instant global neighborhoods formed after
the catastrophes of the tsunami, Katrina, and the disappearance and deaths-- of
two American journalists in the space of one year into unpopulated areas of the
American Northwest. It talks to officials at Wells Fargo bank on why they are
trying to become the go-to blogsite, whenever a natural disaster occurs in the US
It
examines how social media can be used to share information quickly and
effectively and how in the future rescue operations can use social media as
informational base camps.
9. The Global Start-Up
In
the technology sector, the conventional wisdom is that Silicon
Valley
This
chapter looks at the trends toward decentralized global startups that are
taking advantage of internet efficiencies to build global consumer marketing
companies, often located in several countries, yet employing less than 20
people. Many of these startups are providing innovations in social media that
are bolstering the growing strength of the global neighborhood.
It
notes that the barriers to entry are quite low for these new companies but the
barriers to exit are quite high. The chapter looks at the benefits and problems
this poses to the startups, disrupted incumbents and end users.
10 Touch in the Neighborhood
Despite
the revolution of social media, Global
Neighborhoods notes that nothing helps a relationship more than an actual
face-to-face meeting. And often better than online interaction is the
spontaneity and audio subtleties of a telephone conversation.
This
chapter looks at the cultural impact on low cost airlines and the new ultra low
cost telephony providers. It spotlights RyanAir, a profitable airline that
allows Europeans to travel internationally for as little as $30 while turning a
tidy profit.
It
examines the impact of Skype, the Estonian company that now carries 10 percent
f the voice traffic between Europe and the US
The
chapter looks at how these services are connecting more and more people to more
and more places and speculates on how that is contributing to the fast
emergence of new markets and the changes in local cultures to a more global
perspective.
PART 2: The Issues
11. Supertankers
& factory towns
Big companies are not
ignorant of the rapid changes being brought about by the social media
revolution. They understand that marketing and advertising are becoming
increasingly cost ineffective. But change systems that have been in place for decades
in a multinational organization with thousand and thousands of employees is
pretty much like trying to turn around a super tanker moving on open seas at
full throttle.
It takes a lot of time and
you travel a long distance before anything happens. At issue is the fact that power
has shifted from large organizations into communities where their customers and
prospects are found. In these new neighborhoods the most influential people are
the most generous.
When large organizations—companies
and government bodies approach online communities, they want to “own the
inhabitants,” use the media as they used traditional media, to build awareness
and enthusiasm for the company’s products and services.
The problem is that these result
in little more than a company addressing a large user group with a blogged
thrown into the marketing mix. It’s a top-down approach, a modern version of
the old company town, where manufacturers owned every house, the general store,
even the churches and schools.
To work, a big companies
need to not try building a community, but to find the neighborhoods where their
customers, prospects, employees and recruits hang out—then be generous to that
community so that they can build trust.
This is difficult to do, requiring
a whole new way of thinking. The book points to Hitachi Data Systems a division
of one the world’s 100 largest companies. It turned to a 30-year-old, mid-level
employee to become achieve leadership in a community to which it referred users
to competitors and invited competitors to join the conversation.
12. The Babel
Not only is language the
most obvious barrier to all people in all places sharing words and ideas in global
neighborhoods, it is also among the most persistent. The promise of computer
translation software has been around for at least a decade longer than has the
worldwide web. And while has improved,
it still provides results that might best be described as goofy. This chapter
discusses the implications.
It looks at the dilemma of
entrepreneurs in non-English speaking countries. While English is the dominant
language of the internet for now, it may not be the dominant language of where
a person lives. Even if it is, there is
work involved in localiztion of language that can get muddled in the global
neighborhood. The chapter interviews at least two entrepreneurs—on Italian and
the other Estonian that built significant local language communities then took
decidedly different strategies to go beyond what they started.
It also examines the issue
of emerging countries where English is not among the top languages and
speculates on how that will impact global neighborhoods looking forward.
13. The Dark Side of
the Neighborhood
A great many tangible
neighborhoods have dangerous or unsavory sections. It’s no less true in global
neighborhoods. There is a virtual Cold
War going on between hoaxsters, spammers, camp joiners, elixir salesmen and
worse groups that include hate mongers, terrorists and child predators. The
better communities et at protecting themselves from these unwanted denizens,
the more adept the bad guys seem to get at slithering in to them in search of
innocent victims.
This chapter looks at
several examples—some annoying and some disturbing and suggests cautions that
visitors—and their parents—should consider.
PART 3: Into the future
14. Small steps for humankind
In Naked Conversations, the co-authors wrote that blogging was a tool, just like a hammer. A hammer can be used to either build or bludgeon. This is true now to an even greater suite of tools, collectively called the social media. Like blogging, the first of the toolset to become widely popularized, most people seem to be putting these tools to good use, and the book concludes that the evidence is overwhelming that this is the case of global neighborhoods.
It closes with a strong statement of faith in what the emerging generation will achieve in its collective lifetime. It sees a world in which companies serve customer needs by talking with them up front and candidly; where politicians say what they like to do if elected and people tell them why they should follow that path or adjust course. It looks a generation beyond at children whose classroom instructors will take them via virtual reality to the scenes of history's greatest moments, to experience the views from the top of the Alps before glaciers receded.
It sees a great percentage of the world's people able to bypass intermediaries of government, media and marketing departments to communicate directly with each other. It sees children of hostile nations preferring to compete on football fieds rather than battlefields.
Does Global Neighborhoods argue that what is happening today will bring about word peace? No, the book is not quite that optimistic. But it does conclude that global neighborhoods is one small step in the right direction for humankind.
