Pornography and Pavlov

Is social software any good?

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Pornography and Pavlov

What is traditional marketing?

I contend its grown up to be a combination of Pornography and Pavlov.

We have had years of refining the skill of titillating people while broadcasting a message and getting a
result.

Of course this has occurred such that companies are engaging with consumers such that they are
stuck in a discourse.
The discourse of consumption.

And now to the pornographic image.

 1.1 billion people without drinking water

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Not what you expected?

This is a typical consumer in the world today from the perspective of traditional marketing we see
three things.

An emotionally stimulating image (titillation) hence pornography.

A potential market as this consumer has needs and has already purchased.

Charity – Which in the long term is about as useful as a concrete meatball, as people need to strive to
then survive and finally thrive and they need local bespoke solutions and mainstream charity has not
yet got the hang of any of that.
 200,000 to 300,000 child soldiers

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Traditional marketing also befits this image and I’ll let you imagine why.

Traditional marketing looks at the world and says what are the conversations going on and how can
we fit in?

It looks for robust discourses of order (Foucault) such as ”Halloween” or ”helping the poor” and it
tries to tailor a message to be consumed that fits and that people respond to emotionally.

Rarely, if ever, does even the most outrageous marketing try to take on an existing conversation let
alone a robust discourse.

Why?
 9.9 million refugees

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Fear! The fear that this image is the inevitable result of breaking a discourse.

Tian an men 1989 peaceful demonstrations supporting the discourse of law. I saw it all from the
ground. The government only sent the tanks in after the discourse of the party was threatened by
foreign media.

This is a real possibility and those who profit from the break may be aware of the suffering caused or
they may not and those who are suffering may be aware of why they are suffering or they may not.

Yet breaking a discourse may need to happen if we are to survive as a species. The discourse of the
suppression of women being broken has has powerful positive effects and relatively little suffering has
been caused as a result.

Perhaps the morality of breaking a discourse can only be measured in human suffering?
 We are all one species

Out of an average 100 people in the world...

• 95 are religious in some way.

• 3 are expatriates.
• 8 own a computer (5 have Internet).
• 14 of the adults are unable to read.
• The wealthiest 3 own a modern home.

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Traditional marketing looks at the world and breaks it down into the various type of consumers
because consumption is the discourse and the paradigm that it exists in accustomed to and it works
really really well.

It will probably continue to work as long as we can have cheap energy and by cheap I mean the kind
of cheap that counts the morale costs not the purely clinical financial cost.

We would be outraged (tho still likely to fly) if airlines put a price on our lives and then calculated
how much they could skimp on engine maintenance yet we tend not bat an eye when a government
advisor says that the financial cost of reversing global warming out ways the financial cost of the
warming going ahead as long as you can put a price on the life of a coastal Bangaldeshi.

Maybe traditional marketing is right and should just keep on going and as a side effect of continuing
the consumption paradigm it might be possible to ignore the deaths of millions (Man, plant and
Animal).
 Plastic waste in the Pacific Gyre

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Then again maybe there is a lot fo money to be made and a lot of lives to be saved by asking a few
timely questions?
What if we looked at our species in a different light? What if we acknowledge that nature is not a
consumer?
What if we look upon ourselves and all our artefacts as a force of nature?
What if we are not consumers? What if we are producers? What if we are all really Recyclers?

What if we are naturally a balance of the three and through a deadly combination of arrogance and
mass hysteria have strayed from the path?

What if we have made systems and even laws that favour consumption over recycling and
production?

For example remixing a song is recycling and producing and it works and it can also be illegal,
breaking the millennium copyright act alongside the discourse of consumption.
 Mission: To Shift Consciousness

• The Declaration aims at promoting global

citizenship as the idea that all people are
connected with each other and depend on each
other's integrity for the ongoing survival of
humanity and the world.
• The Declaration offers people an opportunity to
take part in transforming global issues and
hence have a real impact utilising their social
capital.

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People are capable of amazing dedication if they find a cause. They can produce, they can recycle and
they can die and all of this is passionate communication.

They love to produce and to recycle and yes also consume. Unfortunately pure consumption is bad
for us and really bad for our world.

Our entire existence is about communication and the information age is making many of us powerful
in our individual communication.

The game of social software is fun and it is compelling and it is nothing to do with traditional
marketing or corporate strategy.

Social software is a lot about looking good to your peers and that is where reciprocal incentives allow
for viral growth and the spread of new systems.

Systems which later this month neo.org will exploit to shift the worlds consciousness which is the
mission that last year I dedicated my life to.
 Impact: What it could bring

• The more you speak your word the more real it

becomes.
• Once at scale, even a small percentage of
signatories doing what they said will have a
significant impact.
• Political processes can be influenced; do you
know a politician who would not be interested
in the opinion of thousands of electors?

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Traditional channels for marketing are not becoming less efficient they are being lost in the Noise
because of faulty assumptions.

The Noise is getting louder by the way because all of the internet and social software and blogs as we
struggle with the balance of production and passion and recycling versus consumption.

You could say that online networks and world communities rather than reshaping our ways of
communicating are simply artefacts expressing some truths that are becoming evident and gaining
new power as discourses for example;

We are not all talented tho more of us are than we know.

We are all genetically obsessed with looking good and that is becoming both harder and easier to
achive.
We are not just consumers nor should we be. We are people.

The Internet is a new tool and it is a a very multipurpose tool it provides many channels. Yet no one
knows which way the channels are supposed to flow.

What if companies don’t need to rethink communication from the start what if instead they need to
rethink consumption from the start?

We, you and I in this room, are the most powerful beings to have ever existed on this world and
millions of our ancestors have died to get each one of us here.