"My First Digital Death" on the new HBO documentary site

Author and Interplanetary Man of Mystery Mac Tonnies who died in October.

As part of a new HBO documentary called "Meeting Online," a series that will explore how "meeting someone online has dramatically affected" people's lives, Rita J. King submitted a story about her relationship with her friend Mac Tonnies. It's a touching and true story about the power and potential the digital culture to foster meaningful relationships.

Her story "My First Digital Death: The Technology of Consciousness" has just been published on the HBO documentary website, "Meeting-Stories.org." An excerpt:

In October of 2009, Mac asked me about a novel I'd been thinking about writing for a couple of years but didn't have time because I'd started a company that continues to grow. I told him that I didn't have time and he asked to see part of it. We signed into an editing tool and chatted while reading and writing. He absolutely loved what I'd written and gave me a spectacular piece of advice about how to pare back the narrative voice. He was a few days away from finishing his manuscript for Anomalist Books, "Cryptoterrestrials." On October 18, at the age of 34, Mac Tonnies sent two tweets on Twitter. One was a link to the Byrne/Eno song, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today," which is a song about death if ever there was one, and a message to me. Then he died in his sleep from an undiagnosed heart condition.

Rita also produced the below video as a tribute to the life of Mac Tonnies.




[My First Digital Death: The Technology of Consciousness]

Scarface School Play

This is the way education should be!

Scarface School Play is one of the funniest videos I've ever seen in my life, destined to be a classic.

Thanks, Jesse Dylan, for tweeting it!

Education and Second Life

Very cool. Second Life has launched their new education microsite. Hundreds of universities worldwide have been using Second Life for both simulation, immersive education, and new forms of distance education. This is the first time, that I have seen these ideas encapsulated into one resource section on the Second Life website.

The new site contains some initial case studies (on which Rita J. King was the writer) exploring the efficacy of virtual worlds in education. The current profile include the work of Ken Hudson at Loyalist College near Toronto, Canada, and the New Media Consortium in Austin, Texas and the Open University in the United Kingdom.

Narcicyst x SXSW: No Party in Apartheid

Josh Asen, CEO and Co-Founder of Hip Hop Diplomacy is a guestblogger and collaborator on The Imagination Age.


Hip Hop protesters at the 2010 South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.

For those of us (myself included) who missed last week's South by Southwest festival, there was one notable event that took place outside of the venues and that was a small but heartfelt protest against a private Israeli consulate party. The party featured a number of Israeli bands, including the popular Hip Hop act, Soulico, at a club in downtown Austin. However, not everyone found the timing of the party to be particularly appropriate (but since when do Israelis give a F about timing?). Iraqi-Canadian rapper The Narcicyst, alongside Syrian-American rapper Omar Offendum and Palestinian rapper Ragtop, led a rally outside the club, with bullhorns & placards, chanting "Ain't no party in apartheid!"

The reference to South Africa is apt, in my opinion and from my firsthand observation of the willful isolation of Arabs (read: Palestinians) in Israel. And the protest also strikes me as completely appropriate, if not necessary, given the announcement only a week earlier of the construction of 1600 new Israeli homes in East Jerusalem, an arrogant affront to the world community.

Narcy puts it very succinctly in an interview that was later broadcast on NPR, "Our basic thing is BDS: Boycott Divestment Sanctions. We want the people of Palestine to be represented and for them to have an identification just like everybody else in the world does.”

One of the members of Soulico, Ronen Sabbo, felt that Narcy and the other protestors were protesting against the wrong people: “They don’t know us personally, they don’t know what we are about. They don’t know that we are trying to do the opposite of any government or of any occupation or establishment. We are trying to do music with people like Arabic MCs, Arabic singers, we have Arabic instruments, and, it’s funny that they demonstrate in front of us as if we’re soldiers. We’re just musicians you know.”

But I have to admit, and Narcy says the same in his own response, the protest is not against the musicians themselves but against a government whose actions they implicitly condone by agreeing to play at their party. Narcy said, "We have no problem, we’re not here to boycott the artists per se, we did research on the artists and checked their work out and it’s not necessarily anything against them, but the Israeli consulate represents the Israeli government, regardless, so you can’t really separate the two."

Anat Gilead, Israeli consul to the US for cultural affairs, had this to say: "We’re doing culture here. We’re focusing on music and people that music can bring. That is what we’re here for.” But I can't accept that any thinking person could celebrate culture in the midst of a total disrespect for humanity.

There really is just no party in apartheid (except, unjustly, for the oppressors). The just party will be afterward, when the separation and humiliation finally come to an end and everyone can join, or at least enjoy their own, in peace.

("Ain't no party in apartheid" slogan courtesy of Narcy's excellent blog, House de Narcel.)



About Joshua Asen, Co-Founder/CEO, Hip Hop Diplomacy

After graduating from Brown University, Joshua made the first of several trips across the Atlantic to promote Hip Hop abroad. This first crossing was on behalf of storied Hip Hop label, Rocafella Records, for whom he created the label's first international promotions campaign in Paris. Later, Joshua ventured further south to Morocco, earning a Fulbright grant to study Hip Hop in an Arab/Muslim context. Joshua immediately expanded his project into a documentary film and became the first American to interview the leading Hip Hop groups in Morocco. Responding to their need for more performance opportunities, Joshua began developing plans for the country’s first Hip Hop festival, which he convinced the American Embassy and the Coca-Cola Company to co-sponsor. The 3-city concert tour was attended by over 36,000 young Moroccans and reached thousands more, across the globe, in screenings of the eponymous documentary film (www.ilovehiphopinmorocco.com).

Joshua has since gone on to produce independent films and video content, and continues to develop the Hip Hop Diplomacy brand, encompassing a number of cultural diplomacy and youth outreach campaigns, with varied public- and private-sector partners, as well as an online journal of global Hip Hop and geopolitics, www.hiphopdiplomacy.org.

The Robot Invasion

Robots continue to infiltrate more aspects of human life. (thx @davemosher!)

I strongly recommend my friend PW Singer's book, Wired for War, for those who are interested in learning more about what this means. When PW did an appearance in Second Life we created a short machinima, below, to document the event. They asked us to come as robots for the event...

We Are Family: The Pastor and the Imam

The Just Peace Summit brings together teen global leaders who create and run powerful movements with important figures such as Mattie Stepanek's mother, Jeni, featured in this video, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who shared a powerful story about being shot at in Haiti, and the Pastor and the Imam.

A few days ago, Nile Rodgers, one of the most influential producers in the history of popular music, tweeted that he had just spent the best two days of his life with the Pastor and the Imam. I instantly responded.

"Are the Pastor and the Imam in New York, or are you in Nigeria?"

He was surprised that I know Pastor James Wuye and Imam Muhammad Ashafa, founders and co-executive directors of the Interfaith Mediation Centre and the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum of Kaduna, Nigeria, a country afflicted with violence between its Muslim and Christian communities.

In the early 1990s, Pastor Wuye and Imam Ashafa led opposing militia groups in Kaduna. In 1992, Wuye lost an arm and Ashafa lost his teacher and two sons. After years of lethal combat, new awareness brought the men together and they turned to the pursuit of unity and peace with the same commitment that they once pursued eradication.



Nile responded instantly that the Imam and the Pastor were in town for the We Are Family Just Peace Summit, founded by Nile Rodgers in honor of Mattie Stepanek, a messenger of peace who died at 13, far too soon, but not too soon to plant his message (even Oprah became a messenger by proxy).

I first met the Pastor and the Imam in Doha, Qatar, at the US-Islamic World Forum hosted by the Brookings Institution. My collaborator Joshua S. Fouts and I were there to kick off our Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds project, for which we interviewed scores of people in the physical world as well as people from 22 countries with avatars in the virtual world Second Life.

The Pastor and the Imam were among those interviewed, and the time we spent with them over breakfast in Doha will stay with me for the rest of my life. At the heart of the work that we do toward a new global culture and economy in the Imagination Age are several core ideas.

1) Technology is a prism held up the bright beam of the imagination.
2) Life is a game, which doesn't make it any less real or serious but rather more fun to organize and level up.
3) Peace is not the absence of conflict.

The Pastor and the Imam are the greatest living example I have ever encountered of this third idea. I am filled with gratitude that Nile Rodgers responded immediately and extended an invitation to join him, the Pastor and the Imam the very next day. Being with the young people at the summit was remarkable.

I will never forget walking through the busy streets of Manhattan on a sunny day with these two radiant men, discussing ways that their work can be woven into the digital culture so they can raise much needed funds to fill requests to work in other divided cities such as Kosovo.

As spiritual seekers, they have resisted the urge to participate in the digital culture, posting photographs of themselves with heads of state for example, out of a commitment to minimizing the role of ego in their lives and perspectives. We walked them from the summit venue to their hotel, and by the time we reached the front door and hugged them goodbye they were genuinely excited about the idea of becoming digital citizens. In coming months, we will be working with them on this effort.

Nestle Crunch

Nestle's Facebook fan page (click above to enlarge detail) is crackling with commentary in the wake of an ethics fracas as Indonesian palm oil farmers threaten a boycott in a chain of events set off by Greenpeace and compounded by Nestle. The company has responded.

The 92,763 Nestle fans are creating an experimental lab. Their comments are extremely diverse and compelling. Corporations should pay attention.

Thankfully being extremely dull isn't a crime, but Nestle wouldn't win any awards for content on the page, either. The two albums posted by the company show off the brand to its legion fans. Why not post albums of products being created from the field to the shelf? The visuals would satisfy fans and foes about progress, but would also serve the company's executives who are responsible for making difficult ethical business decisions.

One image does go in this direction, linking to information about the company's Cocoa Plan and other issues.

Thanks @kerenflavell and @andysternberg!

Artifacts from the Imagination Age

Correspondence follows between the Minister and the General regarding a lingering headache, a new era, a glamorous party in São Paulo and an assignment to go to Berlin to meet with the Berlin Bureau Chief of the Imagination Age to begin planning the fall summit:

My Dear Minister: You ask me if you're going to be okay after a few days with a headache. It is no surprise that you have a headache. This is what happens at the end of an era, like a bird coming out of an egg, you have had headaches from all the pounding. Now that the shell is broken, step out of it.

You are leaving a place that you love in São Paulo. Staying in bed for the past few days has been your way of getting the most out of your remaining time there. You will be fully restored after the spring summit of the Imagination Age in the Cyclades Islands in Greece, I am certain.

A provocative invitation from the Minister to the General.

I'm glad that you rested up and that you had such a glamorous party last Friday night filled with constellations, brilliant humans and mysteriously beautiful thematic coincidences befitting a Minister of your magnificent stature!

Please let me know when you've recovered sufficiently so we can discuss the specifics of your upcoming assignment to Berlin, where you will be meeting with the Berlin Bureau Chief of the Imagination Age to start planning our fall summit.

I await your response.

Love,

The General

Have a Magical Obscura Day!

Alexis Madrigal just tweeted about @AtlasObscura Day and I'm going to participate--I know just such a wondrous, curious and bizarre place to go! I'll post links later, as requested in the steps, outlined in the above image (click to enlarge).

Happy Obscura Day, everybody!

Proper Care and Feeding of the Savage Backchannel

Chances are that Natasha Tsakos doesn't need to consult the backchannel to know her presentations are beyond fabulous. Better to rock than to skittishly consult the court of public opinion throughout a talk, performance, panel or presentation. Photo from natashatsakos.com.

Jay Rosen's How the Backchannel Has Changed the Game for Conference Panelists makes some excellent points but misses the fact that panel moderation is no longer a one-person show.

He uses the example of Umair Haque's recent SXSW bomb, during which a discussion with Twitter's Ev Williams cleared the room. Rosen suggests that Haque should have monitored the hundreds of comments in the backchannel while interviewing Williams. I disagree. Watching someone read a Twitter stream is lethally boring for a crowd and doesn't make a moderator any more provocative.

Oh, the crowd thinks I'm dull! Quick, think of a joke...think of a joke!

It just doesn't work that way.

I haven't seen the Haque/Williams talk, so I don't know if it really was incredibly dull or if the crowd, bolstered by group-think, decided en masse to abandon the session because so-and-so saw so-and-so get up and go.

As a person who serves on panels with a backchannel racing in the background right next to my head, and a person who moderates panels, I'd like to share an example from my own experiences pertaining to each about how to regard, or disregard, the backchannel while in the midst of a session.

First, let's take the O'Reilly Gov 2.0 Expo from last September. I was booked to speak about Digital Diplomacy two days in a row, in the Ignite format, meaning twenty slides in five minutes. Adding to the pressure was the fact that I'd been identified as a "Gov 2.0 Hero" prior to the event. I considered busting out my Wonder Woman costume for the gig, but there's only so much the DC crowd can take.

The first day, I don't know what came over me. Judge for yourself, but as far as I'm concerned this was one of the best presentations I've given in a government format (in which even the appearance of black leather at the podium is considered a risk). In fact, I won the Government as Peacekeeper award for it. Good thing I wasn't too self-congratulatory, because the next day, well...

It is unthinkable that I should have stopped to read the backchannel comments while giving the presentation, especially with 15 seconds for each slide.

The next day, I was slated to give the same presentation again. The energy was completely off. I was led through a back path to the green room, which wasn't so much a green room as a hallway through which workers passed with trays of food, asking me to get out of the way.

The only consistent factor on both days was the backchannel. The second day, it was illuminated on the wall. When I took the podium to give my presentation, many of the people in attendance hadn't seen me the day prior and therefore didn't know what to expect.

As luck would have it, the split second timing of the slides on which the presentation is contingent was destroyed by a technical error. Unfortunately, however, people in the audience don't sit there with stop watches, so of course the error appeared to be mine when my words didn't match up with my images, which sped past, jumbled up and then froze. I'm sure that somebody tweeted about the presentation being disjointed, just as people had tweeted their approval just a day earlier.

The trick to great public speaking is to feel the energy in a room. If you need to rely on the backchannel to tell you that you bombed, you probably shouldn't be on stage. On the other hand, we all have off-days, but again, do you really need the backchannel to tell you that?

The value of the backchannel is truly to bring the audience into the process. One example of this is when I moderated a discussion (click here to see the video produced from the event) with a large group of executives. The event featured digital work expert Don Tapscott, best-selling author of “Grown-Up Digital” and “Wikinomics.” Tapscott was joined by Manpower Inc. Chairman and CEO Jeff Joerres; Linden Lab Executive Director of Enterprise Marketing, Amanda Van Nuys; Manpower Senior Vice President for Global Workforce Strategy, Tammy Johns; Manager of e-learning Strategy and Education Solutions for IBM’s Center for Advanced Learning; Chuck Hamilton; and President of Louisiana Digital Workforce non-profit 3D Squared, Spencer Zuzolo.

Moderators need to focus on the fluid dynamic of the event itself while at the same time bringing the audience into it.

How can this juggling act be accomplished, short of boring everyone by reviewing the tweetstream on stage?

Through collaboration.

During this event, and others like it, I worked with collaborator Joshua Fouts, who not only manages the backchannel across multiple platforms (in this case with hundreds of comments being shared) but responds to specific remarks and questions with links. He also filters the stream to forward the most provocative and pressing queries to me, so I don't have to read hundreds of comments while trying to meaningfully interact with seven to ten executives during a session.

Panel moderation is no longer a solo act, and the art of presentation hasn't changed --it's just that now, people can agree that you're boring in real time instead of nodding along and fighting the urge to drift off. My hope is that this will lead to presentations getting better and yes, more entertaining. Just because the subject matter is serious doesn't mean it has to be lethally boring. In fact, that's part of the reason why we're in the serious jam we're in today, culturally and economically. We're not all Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert or Natasha Tsakos, but we can all try a little harder to take ourselves a bit less seriously and keep in mind that it's harder these days to keep a crowd paying rapt attention.

Rock it out, people. Rock. It. Out.

DAM in Sheikh Jarrah: Protest re-Imagined

Josh Asen, CEO and Co-Founder of Hip Hop Diplomacy is a guestblogger and collaborator on The Imagination Age.

Image credit: Uruknet.info.

By Josh Asen,

For several months now, left-wing Israeli and Palestinian protesters have been holding weekly protests in the town of Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem, to protest the evictions of Palestinian families from their homes in favor of Jewish settlers. Protesters, Arab and Israeli, have been met with police violence, rampant arrests, and visits from stone-throwing Orthodox Jews.

Nevertheless, hundreds continue to gather each Saturday in Sheikh Jarrah, among them foreign activists and Arab-Israeli lawmakers. Social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, have been instrumental in raising international awareness about what's going on in East Jerusalem and keeping supporters informed about the rallies. YouTube and Flickr have also played important roles, allowing for real-time photo/video archiving of the rallies, including aggressive police behavior, arrests, and counter-protests from Orthodox Jews. The video below shows a typical scene from such a rally, beginning with smiling Israeli demonstrators offering a bouquet of flowers to the chief of police, and ending with police getting aggressive with demonstrators at the end of the rally and Orthodox Jews approaching.



The day before, the Palestinian rap superstars, DAM (Da Arabian MCs) gave a free performance in Sheikh Jarrah (promoted by the International Solidarity Movement) that drew a large crowd as well, though no arrests or violence (though the concert did lead to the police declaring the next day's rally unauthorized, citing a regulation that allows only 1 public assembly per week).



Their underlying message was the same as that of the protesters, though the words they used go beyond a simple chant to the complex rhyme scheme of their 2001 anthem, "Min Irhabi/Who's the Terrorist?", which frames the rhetorical conundrum of the powerless Palestinian being accused of terror by those who terrorize (the Israeli government) by evicting families from their homes:

Who's a terrorist?
I'm a terrorist?!
How am I a terrorist when you've taken my land?
Who's a terrorist?
You're the terrorist!
You've taken everything I own while I'm living in my homeland
You're killing us like you've killed our ancestors
You want me to go to the law?
What for?
You're the Witness, the Lawyer, and the Judge!
If you are my Judge
I'll be sentenced to death
You want us to be the minority?
To end up the majority in the cemetery?
In your dreams!

The question this raises for me is one of the effectiveness of public assembly and how, in the Imagination Age, we can understand political protest in the form of cultural performance. By drawing a crowd of young people to a live music event, where the focus was on the artists and their words, not on confrontation with the police or with Orthodox Jewish settlers, the organizers of the DAM show in Sheikh Jarrah achieved, in my opinion, a level of political statement as strong as any other. This type of event allows the call for justice to be sounded without inciting violence, and offers an alternative means of contextualizing the conflict within the minds of young audiences, wherein the arts are seen as a viable form of protest, and an alternative to physical conflict. It is yet another powerful example of music being used as a political tool in the Middle East, with Hip Hop leading the charge.

In comparing these two events in Sheikh Jarrah, neither of which received much attention in the press nor any official response from the Israeli government, how do we then measure their relative effectiveness? I would argue that the events were most effective in tandem, expanding a traditional protest event into a multi-dimensional, cultural happening and linking cultural expression to an ongoing political struggle. With the dissemination of photos and videos via social media and crowd-sourcing platforms, both events succeeded at reaching local and international audiences in a way that they never would have been able to achieve through traditional news coverage. Furthermore, the coupling of diverse events around a single cause augments the dimensions of the overall campaign by offering multiple points of engagement for activists, supporters, and observers. In the case of Sheikh Jarrah, Hip Hop has added that dimension of cultural engagement and, in so doing, expanded the local base of support and the global impact of the movement. Whether this model of public protest will eventually eliminate the need for traditional physical confrontation is almost irrelevant. What is important here is that the legacy of young people rallying around political art is alive and well in the Imagination Age.

Photo credits: Brady Ng via Palestine Monitor

For those who are more interested in the pure rhythm of protest, here's a clip from an impromptu drum circle that took place a month after the DAM concert at Sheikh Jarrah.




About Joshua Asen, Co-Founder/CEO, Hip Hop Diplomacy

After graduating from Brown University, Joshua made the first of several trips across the Atlantic to promote Hip Hop abroad. This first crossing was on behalf of storied Hip Hop label, Rocafella Records, for whom he created the label's first international promotions campaign in Paris. Later, Joshua ventured further south to Morocco, earning a Fulbright grant to study Hip Hop in an Arab/Muslim context. Joshua immediately expanded his project into a documentary film and became the first American to interview the leading Hip Hop groups in Morocco. Responding to their need for more performance opportunities, Joshua began developing plans for the country’s first Hip Hop festival, which he convinced the American Embassy and the Coca-Cola Company to co-sponsor. The 3-city concert tour was attended by over 36,000 young Moroccans and reached thousands more, across the globe, in screenings of the eponymous documentary film (www.ilovehiphopinmorocco.com).

Joshua has since gone on to produce independent films and video content, and continues to develop the Hip Hop Diplomacy brand, encompassing a number of cultural diplomacy and youth outreach campaigns, with varied public- and private-sector partners, as well as an online journal of global Hip Hop and geopolitics, www.hiphopdiplomacy.org.

Hue Are You?

Zinnia Zauber's "Hue Are You?" space in Second Life is about expression through color, art, apparel, aspiration, "gear and goods for the superhero in us all."

Zinnia Zauber asks: What makes you one of a kind? How do you express your true nature through color? How do you share your superpowers? The fastest means to create an impression, with the emphasis on personal motivation, is with color.

Zinnia is "an artist, instructor, and superhero (arts advocate) promoting the importance of creative education and community participation in the arts that are active and inclusive. I create real world one of a kind handcrafted art, apparel, textiles, computer assemblages, sculptures, videos, and publications that embrace the empowerment of brilliant hues, individualism, and acceptance. My artwork and apparel in Second Life samples from my own studio like hand-dyed handwoven textiles to digital prints on draped fabric."

She sent her Artist Statement on a notecard:

“My passion is to interweave color theory, iconic content, and education with hopeful beliefs and storytelling to produce a multi-layered message about kind acceptance.

The intent of my artwork is to demonstrate the idea of humans' ability to oscillate between existing as one of a kind, as well as, one of a greater assemblage. The work is a narrative of my convictions, conduct, and courage for acceptance and inclusion. My belief is that we are all different in our own way, and that makes us equal. We have the ability to embrace the dual nature of light as a wave and a particle of matter. We also have the potential to be filled with awe, instead of fear, in the confidence that we are unique, as well as, united.

A great deal of my artwork is crafted from textile methods and playful interpretations of identity through colorful means. I have been working with computers as a fine art and interactive medium for over twenty-seven years. This technique lends itself to sculptural artwork and my assemblages contain elements of computer-enhanced images, transparencies, hand weaving, and textiles."

Teleport directly to Hue Are You? in Second Life here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Brauni/182/1/22

Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity

Ethnographer danah boyd by James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media, Inc.

If you didn't hear danah boyd's welcome keynote, "Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity," at SXSW, check out the rough, unedited manuscript of the speech here.

Boyd looks at the privacy FAIL around Google Buzz:

"No matter how many times a privileged straight white male technology executive pronounces the death of privacy, Privacy Is Not Dead. People of all ages care deeply about privacy. And they care just as much about privacy online as they do offline. But what privacy means may not be what you think."

Immortality and Hazard (for Jamais Cascio on his birthday)

Yesterday, Jason Silva (half of the Max and Jason duo) sent me a link to a solo project, a short video, The Immortalists.

I love the ideas posited in this work. I'm as life-and-death-obsessed as any other girl who started reading Albert Camus before the age of reason, thanks to a childhood that unfolded prior to the "age appropriateness" meme. I well remember standing before my parents and their friends, laughing during a dinner party, with my tiny fists balled up on my hips after they disturbed my insomniac dream-scape with their mirth.

"Why are you laughing?" I demanded. "You're all going to die one day."

Death is a part of life, the very existence of which divides endless eternity into manageable cross-sections that together create a ceaseless process of transformation.

But does it have to be?

The Future, Without the Futurists

Just today, I caught this tweet from Jamais Cascio:

Perhaps the future we envision will take place without us, or maybe Jason Silva is right when he says he's convinced that new awareness can be engineered and death beaten.

But what does "beaten" mean in this case? There's no way our tiny blue planet can support immortality for the bodies we have now, much less the new ones that would continue to get born. Inevitably, such a crisis of resources would lead to some catastrophic, thinning-the-herd projects, the likes of which we have already seen many times in human history. The implications of this are vast. Not everyone can be immortal in physical form, even with a miraculous technological solution.

Virtual Immortality

It is far more likely that if we ever manage to approach a deathless state, it will be virtual, and maybe even evolve to where the embodiment of a physical self no longer seems relevant. Even if we are able to move the flow of consciousness into a different format, however, we would never be immune to hazard. The machines that sustain this form of immortality would still exist in a physical environment, rendering them susceptible to damage or extinction.

The Last Mortal Generation?

I perceive life and death in a game-like way. Reality can be hacked, and I've no doubt that many of the people I know well who are working on artificial intelligence, machine sentience and the quest for immortality will make exponential strides in coming years, but will it happen fast enough for some form of extended consciousness to be achieved in my lifetime? As far as you've come can't be undone.

I hope that immortality in any form is not achieved before humans are capable of the kind of existence that would make an individual life or a society worth perpetuating for all eternity--or at least as close as we can get before hazard strikes, or gets averted. The way we've let the world fall apart economically and socially demonstrates that perhaps it's for the best to allow new thoughts and fresh perspectives to permeate the global culture and economy.

Or are we finally getting there?

What do you think?

Mr. Plimpton's Revenge

"Mr. Plimpton's Revenge,," an essay told on Google maps, is a magnificent example of web-surface storytelling.

It also reminds me of the long-ago afternoon I spent with George Plimpton at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. That guy got around, which makes the medium of telling a story about him on a Google map all the more brilliant.

(Note to @chapmanchapman: Thanks for tweeting this link!)

Leadership in Cultural Relations

Image credit: Rita J. King

Since we've started working with the British Council, I've been amazed to learn the scope and depth of their cultural relations programs.

There is a key difference between how the British approach cultural relations, from which many countries could learn in their approach to cultural engagement. Simply put: They focus on issues and topics of our day such as Climate Change, not on the merits of their culture per se. It sounds simple but it's a critical difference. In this capacity they are authentically facilitating intercultural dialogue around the critical issues of our time rather than pushing forward political agendas.

The last two days they have published poignant, moving blogposts, including a first person account of what it felt like to monitor the elections in Iraq by Tony Reilly, Director British Council Iraq and an Afghani teacher's story about teaching in the UK as a Muslim woman.

And take a look at what the British Council did just last week:

Launched a $500,000 Fund to Develop US-UK Higher Education Partnerships
"Despite strong higher education relationships between the two countries, the international education market is changing and the UK needs to re-invest in strategic higher education partnerships with the US in order to realize the full potential of UK-US cooperation."


Collaborated with NATO to explore the role of Cultural Relations in Conflict Prevention
This conference, which was part of the British Council's TransAtlantic 2020 (TN2020) initiative (Rita J. King launched The Imagination Age in an essay she contributed to a TN2020 book). This week's NATO convened young US leaders in Brussels with Martin Howard, Assistant NATO Secretary General (Operations); Martin Davidson, British Council CEO; Marietje Schaake, Member of the European Parliament and TN2020; Brigadier Hamza Visca, Bosnia and Herzegovina Armed Forces; Afifa Azim, Executive Director for the Afghan Women's Network; and Professor John Sugden, Director Football4Peace.

Robin Davies has a nice write-up.

In Rome, the first TN2020 debate explored the transatlantic relationship between Europe and North America in the context of the new administration in the US and the recent ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in Europe. The second debate, "Social Entrepreneurship and Innovative Technologies for a Sustainable Future," considered how Europe and North America might work together to tackle issues which are increasingly global in nature, but which need local implementation. The debates were presented in partnership with the British, American and Canadian Embassies in Rome.

Launched "Long Horizons," a collection of personal reflections about art, artists and climate change.
"Arts, Climate Change and Sustainability is a British Council programme aimed at harnessing the inspirational qualities of the arts, along with the trust felt towards artists, to demystify and energise the debate about climate change. By energising and invigorating others, it will help find creative and local solutions to the challenge of climate security and encourage the necessary behavioural change in the UK and internationally. Art and artists can help move the climate change agenda from intellectual understanding to emotional engagement, and then on to action."

Smarter Work

As part of the Smarter Work project I'm documenting how people work but also the changing nature of the spaces we work in. I captured a series of images people playing video games from behind a papercraft curtain (yes, they knew I was there!) and it was amazing to see not only the way they became completely immersed in the games but also--the curtain itself is another layer of reality, no more or less augmented than the layers that can be added through creative use of technology and imagination.

"My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist"

Josh Asen, CEO and Co-Founder of Hip Hop Diplomacy is a guestblogger and collaborator on The Imagination Age.



By Josh Asen.

"My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist". This is the leitmotif of the new film from acclaimed Bollywood director, Karan Johar, and it is one that bears repeating, especially in the United States. The main character, a Muslim Indian with a severe case of Asperger's syndrome (played by Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan, who is also Muslim), first utters these words at the very beginning of the film, as he is being roughly searched at the San Francisco Airport. This sets up the primary theme of the film (which Khan's grandmother whispers to him before he sets out for America), that "there are two kinds of people in the world, good and bad".

What she doesn't explain to him, however, is that most people tend to extend this judgement over entire groups and have difficulty making exceptions to their deeply-ingrained prejudices. Such is the painful truth that Khan is forced to learn in post-9/11 America, as a series of anti-Muslim attacks unfold, including one that results in the death of his wife's son, who isn't even Muslim. Khan sets out on a Gump-esque mission to tell as many people as he can that he is "not a terrorist", including President Bush, to whom he shouts those very words at a rally and is promptly tackled by Secret Service and sent to an FBI detention center for interrogation. Khan is eventually released when 2 young Indian journalists come across video footage of the rally to corroborate Khan's story but the point has been made: In the US, if you're name is Khan, you will be treated like a terrorist.

And, in the great tradition of art imitating life, this point proved true last summer when Shah Rukh Khan, the actor who plays Khan in the film, was detained at Newark Airport for over an hour of "secondary questioning". Khan, one of the biggest film stars in India and the developing world, was on his way to New York to promote "My Name is Khan" when this tragically ironic twist of fate occurred. Below is a news report from CNN-IBN.




By the end of the 2.5hr film, Khan has also journeyed to a poor village in the deep South and helped save a Black church after a Katrina-esque hurricane, establishing an interesting link between Muslims and African-Americans and setting up the requisite happy ending (a natural law in Bollywood) in which the newly-elected President Obama awards Khan for his heroism and says to him, "Your name is Khan and you are not a terrorist!". Then everyone in the crowd joins hands to sing "We Shall Overcome" and we all live tolerantly ever after.

But only in the movies. In the real world, President Obama has fallen well short of the promise he made last April, in Cairo, "to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect...” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Doha last month, at the US-Islamic World Forum, conceding that the Obama administration had not yet fulfilled many of the policy changes it had promised and pleading for patience. The Secretary spoke of "shared responsibility" but the general consensus across the Arab world is that the US commitment has been "insufficient and insincere". One need only look at the stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and ongoing occupation of Gaza, the still-open detention center at Guantanamo, the expansion of the war in Afghanistan, diplomatic deadlock with Iran, and a lack of cultural engagement to see why Muslims the world over are feeling disappointed and deceived.

Meanwhile, the White House recently announced the appointment of a new "special envoy" to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of 57 states that considers itself the collective voice of Muslims around the world. And, guess what... the special envoy is a Muslim! But, luckily for him, perhaps, his name is not Khan. It's Rashad Hussain, a deputy White House counsel who helped prepare the Cairo speech last year. The White House touted this appointment (which comes less than 1 year after the State Dept.'s appointment of a 'special representative' to the Muslim world, Farah Pandith) as "an important part of the president’s commitment to engaging Muslims around the world based on mutual respect and mutual interest".

In honor of all the Khans in the US and abroad who are not terrorists, I will withhold my applause until Mr. Obama and his special representatives actually get on the stage and start singing the song they promised us all we would hear. They may not know the exact words yet, but it couldn't hurt to take a cue from one very hopeful Hindi film and just start humming "We Shall Overcome".

Here's a teaser from the official website with a familiar melody...



And here's the full trailer with English subtitles:



About Joshua Asen, Co-Founder/CEO, Hip Hop Diplomacy

After graduating from Brown University, Joshua made the first of several trips across the Atlantic to promote Hip Hop abroad. This first crossing was on behalf of storied Hip Hop label, Rocafella Records, for whom he created the label's first international promotions campaign in Paris. Later, Joshua ventured further south to Morocco, earning a Fulbright grant to study Hip Hop in an Arab/Muslim context. Joshua immediately expanded his project into a documentary film and became the first American to interview the leading Hip Hop groups in Morocco. Responding to their need for more performance opportunities, Joshua began developing plans for the country’s first Hip Hop festival, which he convinced the American Embassy and the Coca-Cola Company to co-sponsor. The 3-city concert tour was attended by over 36,000 young Moroccans and reached thousands more, across the globe, in screenings of the eponymous documentary film (www.ilovehiphopinmorocco.com).

Joshua has since gone on to produce independent films and video content, and continues to develop the Hip Hop Diplomacy brand, encompassing a number of cultural diplomacy and youth outreach campaigns, with varied public- and private-sector partners, as well as an online journal of global Hip Hop and geopolitics, www.hiphopdiplomacy.org.

Becoming My Avatar

Second Life is looking for a few good avatars. It's a brilliant campaign geared at showing that avatars are real people. If you have an avatar in Second Life, consider joining in. It's fun!

I recently gave an interview to the Digital Nation project at PBS about becoming my avatar. PBS asked me to submit comments and participate in an ongoing discussion on the subject. Check back next week for a link.

I found this beautiful picture while checking out the Second Life Flickr stream.

Welcome to Loveland!

Plymouth is the first full colony of inches in the Loveland project in Detroit. The yellow block of 1000 inches is my neighborhood, The Imagination Age. Loveland is being featured today on NPR's "All Things Considered." (Click here to listen to the archive)

What is Loveland?

It's an experiment in the micro-ownership of real estate, economic revitalization and cultural development.

It's an art project.

It's a statement about creating something new and unexpected.

Yes, it's about a guy selling a million square inches for a dollar each. With so many people out of work and seeking new ways to make money, create connections, excitement, fun and new ideas about the way communities work--that's a visionary way to get something going in an economy that promises to steamroll people who fail to freshen their skills, update perspectives and figure out new ways to pay bills.

Me, Jerry and our friend Tish Shute.

Sarah Hulett, the insightful journalist who interviewed me and Loveland founder Jerry Paffendorf, started off by saying that she wanted to understand the thinking behind the project.

I'm frequently asked why Jerry, who splits his time between the coasts, chose Detroit for this project. Why not? Why shouldn't a young, provocative artist move to Detroit and get something going? Is there some unwritten rule of etiquette that says we must avoid American cities in crisis? Detroit was once a city of the future, and that blueprint from the past is greatly appreciated by Jerry, who slept over at the Imagination Age Salon last night before catching a top-of-the-morning flight back to Detroit. We were up all night discussing plans for the future of Loveland and Detroit, ways we can explore Square, for example, to raise much-needed funds for local initiatives.

Sarah Hulett thoughtfully went back to interview the two little girls who live in the house next to Loveland, Celeste Moore (left, 11) and Ricki Collins, 9. In fact, their house is the only house left on the block. Ricki said she hopes the inchvestors will come and visit her. I am planning a visit soon.

Sarah Hulett asked me how Loveland might benefit the local population in Detroit. I don't know yet, but in order to find out I've opened up a block of 100 inches within the 1000 inch Imagination Age neighborhood in the Plymouth colony, a network that includes many notable residents already, including IBM Senior Research Fellow Grady Booch, WIRED writer Alexis Madrigal, filmmaker Josh Asen and educator Liz Dorland, to name a few. If you have an idea, even a tiny one, and imagination enough to envision how big you might make an inch, ping me on Twitter or leave a comment on this blog post.

I'm working hard to turn my inches into opportunities to connect people in Detroit with a larger community of innovators around the world, and I need your help, your ideas, your support and most of all, your imagination. Inches are tiny, but I hope you'll think big. Technology is a prism held up to the bright beam of the imagination.

[NPR: Inchvesting in Detroit: A Virtual Realty]

85-Year-Old Auschwitz Survivor and Hip Hop Performer

Josh Asen, CEO and Co-Founder of Hip Hop Diplomacy is a guestblogger and collaborator on The Imagination Age.

Image from Listen up, Auschwitz survivor is hip-hop MC

By Josh Asen,

Here's an article from the UK Independent about an amazing Hip Hop Diplomacy story that I came across this morning. The story ran in January, but the elements and relevance to Hip Hop Diplomacy are clear.

Two quotes from the author's interview with Esther Bejarano, pictured above:

"[We] all love music and share a common goal: we're fighting against racism and discrimination."

Kutlu Yurtseven a Turkish rapper from Microphone Mafia said, "I asked Esther how she can make music after Auschwitz, and she said if they had taken the music from her, she would have died."

[Listen up, Auschwitz survivor is hip-hop MC]

A Week in Israel

Filmmaker and cultural visionary Joshua Asen created this video at the Imagination Age Salon yesterday from his week-long trip to Israel.

I spent yesterday working with Josh Asen, who speaks Hebrew, Arabic, English, French and Dutch and sees the world and the people in it through such a beautiful prism that I can't believe the State Department hasn't commissioned his services to document events like the recent Russian Tech Delegation so that the world, or at least the taxpayers funding the important mission, can see how it all went down. While he's a spectacular director, he's also a creator of events-- check out his incredible I (heart) Hip Hop in Morocco.

In addition to guest blogging for The Imagination Age, (check out his Israel x Obama: Yes We Can Co-Opt the Brand) Josh Asen works with The Imagination Age on initiatives that create new cultural insight for the global business community, particularly between the United States and the Middle East and the United States and Europe, as well as within the global diaspora community. Our work includes a series of global summits aimed at generating vibrant action from the nascent ideas that will continue dominating the business landscape for even the unforeseeable future. The spring summit for the Imagination Age will take place in Amorgos, Greece, a place with an ancient history in a country that has serious economic problems today. Our fall summit will take place in Berlin.

For more information, ping @RitaJKing on Twitter.

Rutger Hauer's Blader Runner Farewell Speech in LEGO

One of the seminal film scenes of all time, and a contender for my Top 5 Most Existentially Resonant Moments in Film is the farewell monologue of Roy Batty (played by Rutger Hauer) in the film Blade Runner, captured above in LEGO by Zach Macias of Mindgame Studios. In Blade Runner Roy Batty is a cyborg (known as a Replicant) who is reconciling the fact that he has a finite lifespan. His farewell is an ode to the fullness of the life he has lived and the memories of his that will be lost. The relevance of Blade Runner to our present moment in history and ethos of The Imagination Age increases almost daily for me as new discussions arise about the evolution of human consciousness at the intersection of technological innovation.

If you haven't seen the other stop motion videos by Zach Macias, I've embedded another below.




Hat tip to Paleofuture and Julio Ojeda-Zapata

Israel x Obama: Yes, We Can (co-opt the brand)

Josh Asen, CEO and Co-Founder of Hip Hop Diplomacy is a guestblogger and collaborator on The Imagination Age.

A Russian falafel-maker in Tel Aviv hopes for the Obama dream to come true. All video copyright Josh Asen.

By Josh Asen.

Having just returned from a week and a half in Israel, I'm torn over how I want to portray what I observed there. And perhaps that is the only true portrayal that I can give, one of a land torn in at least three directions: by ultra-Orthodox Jews, Arab Muslims, and those who want nothing to do with either and just want to live a secular life.

This comes as no surprise to anyone who follows Middle East politics, though what did come as a surprise to me was the lack of positive (read: non-violent) interaction between these groups on a quotidian basis. No matter what city I was in, there remains a stark separation between Orthodox Jews, secular Israelis, and Arabs, with the latter being relegated to hidden enclaves, run-down neighborhoods, furtive shadows in big city streets. My own cousins, secular, progressive Israelis by any measure, have only one regular encounter with Arabs in their neighborhood: their gardener. Even their eldest daughter, who is my age and getting a Masters at Be'er Sheva University, has no Arab students in her social circle, nor any in her classes.

These discouraging statistics were reiterated by nearly every Israeli, young or old, that I talked to over the 10 days I was there - even those who claimed to be sympathetic to the "Arab situation". And don't even try getting ultra-Orthodox Jews to interact with anyone else or anyone to interact with them. They live completely isolated from the rest of the world and everyone in it. So how can these three groups hope to live together in any kind of peace if they don't even attempt to interact with one another on a daily, non-political basis? Call me naive, but I had hoped to see a little more integration, especially among young people, by 2010. After all, if the US can elect a black man to the White House...

And, sure enough, that black man has already had a powerful impact in Israel, but not necessarily the one that I (or Obama himself) would have hoped. Instead of embracing the Obama message of community engagement and multiculturalism, it seems that Israel is more interested in the Obama brand, as evidenced by this commercial for one of the big Israeli TV networks, YES:



Apparently, the YES network will be offering new shows and more stars this season and viewers should be as excited about this as the smiling black couple and their enthusiastic supporters dancing across the White House lawn. Clearly, this has nothing to do with the original "Yes We Can" message but the cynicism that such a shameless commercial appropriation demonstrates caused me a moment of anger and resentment at the whole Israeli people for trading in a noble sentiment of collective strength for a convenient TV slogan. It's the same resentment I felt towards the incumbent Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, when he completely co-opted the Obama website, without actually embracing the spirit, let alone the politics, of Obama himself. This kind of slick appropriation of the Obama brand and style, in my opinion, evidences a larger theme of Israeli smugness in internal and external politics.

Another example was the recent sardonic Tweeting by the Israeli Embassy in London "Israeli tennis player carries out hit on Dubai target", which was posted on the day the Israeli ambassador was asked to tell the British government if he knew anything about the use of fake passports in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai last month. The tweet linked to an article about the Israeli tennis star, Shahar Peer, who reached the semifinals of a tournament in Dubai before losing to Venus Williams. The Israeli Embassy removed the posting as soon as it was reported in the British press, but the ongoing question of Israeli involvement in the assassination remains an unfunny joke to the rest of the world as it is widely understood that the job was carried out by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

While all of this was going on, I was also reading about the violent protests erupting in Hebron over the Israeli government's announcement that it would extend control over two holy sites within the Palestinian West Bank territory. This may have been just another week in the land of stones and tear-gas but I couldn't help feeling that the hubris that enables Bibi to snatch holy areas is the same that enables Mossad to take out Hamas leaders in a foreign country, and the same that enables Israelis to go about their lives ignoring their neighbors, just watching TV with more stars and shows, saying smugly to themselves, "Yes We Can" But I wonder for how long.

To be fair, I did hear the Obama slogan one other time last week from an earnest falafel-maker in Tel Aviv. He was not trying to sell me anything (besides falafel) but instead wanted to convey his genuine belief in what Obama could mean for the world. It restored in me a modicum of faith that there can still exist in the holy land hope for a better day, when overcoming human differences can lead to peace. Thank you, falafel man. I hope you're right.



About Joshua Asen, Co-Founder/CEO, Hip Hop Diplomacy

After graduating from Brown University, Joshua made the first of several trips across the Atlantic to promote Hip Hop abroad. This first crossing was on behalf of storied Hip Hop label, Rocafella Records, for whom he created the label's first international promotions campaign in Paris. Later, Joshua ventured further south to Morocco, earning a Fulbright grant to study Hip Hop in an Arab/Muslim context. Joshua immediately expanded his project into a documentary film and became the first American to interview the leading Hip Hop groups in Morocco. Responding to their need for more performance opportunities, Joshua began developing plans for the country’s first Hip Hop festival, which he convinced the American Embassy and the Coca-Cola Company to co-sponsor. The 3-city concert tour was attended by over 36,000 young Moroccans and reached thousands more, across the globe, in screenings of the eponymous documentary film (www.ilovehiphopinmorocco.com).

Joshua has since gone on to produce independent films and video content, and continues to develop the Hip Hop Diplomacy brand, encompassing a number of cultural diplomacy and youth outreach campaigns, with varied public- and private-sector partners, as well as an online journal of global Hip Hop and geopolitics, www.hiphopdiplomacy.org.

The Transformation of Virtual Worlds

Screenshot from "Transformation" a video accompanying Rita J. King's forthcoming art installation to be published by Proboscis Art Studio in London, England.

If you have ever wondered about the significance, meaning and experience of virtual worlds, you must read these two new essays:

• "Where virtual worlds once ruled, FarmVille dominates," a CNET article by Dan Terdiman, and
  
• "Are Virtual Worlds Over?" by Raph Koster on his blog.

Aside from the media spike around Second Life's release of a new viewer last week, the media narrative and investment in virtual worlds has shifted dramatically over the past few years. These two articles capture the zeitgeist of the current moment the industry is experiencing while also exploring, in-depth, the form, structure and expectations of the industry.

Terdiman has been writing about the virtual worlds industry for longer than almost anyone else. I first met Dan when I launched the "Public Diplomacy through Virtual Worlds" worldwide game design competition in 2004. Relevant to Dan's article, the winner of that competition was a stand alone game called "Peacemaker" but the second through fourth place awards were all for games built within the virtual world of Second Life -- back when Second Life had less than 100,000 registered users.

Terdiman uses the wildly popular Facebook game, Farmville, as a launchpad to explore the direction virtual worlds seemed be headed in 2005 and where they are today. He traces what he sees as a declining arc of innovation in virtual worlds toward things like Farmville: "The rub of it, for folks like me, is that kids and tweens don't need 3D environments to get their social needs met. Rather, they need a platform that makes it simple and easy to get together with their friends, play simple games, and have fun. And the same seems to be true of the mainstream adult audience."

He ends the article with a call for the virtual worlds industry to get back to innovating.

Raph Koster's essay is a lengthy dissection of the core elements and expectations of virtual worlds, games, social media and the current beliefs within the industry as to how virtual worlds should be made. Raph ends at a somewhat depressing prediction that virtual worlds, as we know them, "For those of us who dream of a place we can’t possibly be, doing things we couldn’t do, as someone else, with friends… well, we’re a little bit out of luck."

For those who don't know him, Raph Koster is a game designer, the CEO of Metaplace (a virtual world that recently closed), and more importantly to my formative virtual world experience, the former Creative Director for Star Wars Galaxies, a massively multiplayer online game made by Sony Online Entertainment that had peak growth and usage from 2003-2006. (I've written about the influence of Star Wars Galaxies on our work here.)

Raph's post, despite its dark prediction, which I disagree with, gives an excellent description of the pyschology of creating multiplayer environments.

I think the mass-commodification of virtual worlds had to simplify toward lowest common denominator experiences like Farmville. It's like tabloid magazines versus newspapers. Tabloid magazines are thriving in an era in which we are decrying the death of newspapers. Or its like wondering why more people eat at McDonald's despite the constant media reminder about the health-risks of eating too much high-cholesterol foods.

I'm most interested in the value of these spaces for cultural relations: Providing meaningful opportunities for shared experiences despite geographic location. I do not think that virtual worlds are fading nor that their innovation will disappear amidst the backdrop of Farmville. Farmville was to be expected. It means that virtual worlds as a meta concept have matured. The multi-billion dollar worldwide fashion industry exists on creativity, not on decrying the natural appearance of derivative works in which concepts are diluted and sold to mass audiences with low creative expectations and needs.

Virtual worlds, I believe, exist and thrive on the foundations of creativity.

Rita J. King described it like this in her essay, Art, Reality and Cultural Diplomacy: "As far as the practice of cultural diplomacy goes, we finally have a platform that equalizes all participants by making creativity and innovation the highest aim, and that’s a good thing. That isn’t to say that some people don’t use Second Life for less than progressive purposes, but so do people in the physical world and that doesn’t stop diplomats from practicing. Race, age, gender, ethnicity and extreme physical beauty or disability all cease to matter. Second Life is whatever users make of it."

I also agree with what Richard Bartle said in the comments section of Raph's blog:"... People have always sought to visit imaginary worlds, whether transported through books, music, theatre, dance, ... and they always will ... it’s as if we invented the novel and now people have taken that idea and developed newsletters, textbooks and magazines. Same technology, content that is similar in some ways but different in others, but only a challenge to novels because they compete for the reader’s time."