The changing nature of television, including how new platforms and content delivery methods are being developed, is something I've been working on for a while. A great example of the changes afoot is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a new project of writer-producer Joss Whedon. Bored during the television writers’ strike, Whedon—the mastermind behind cult fave Buffy the Vampire Slayer—along with his brothers devised a short-form musical story to be broadcast over the Internet. The result is a perfect example of what we mean when we talk about power shifting to content producers with the advent of these new delivery platforms. Following the "airing" of the first (of three parts), the show racked up more than 300,000 Google hits and more than 100 Google News hits, and is the top selling video on iTunes. (That people are paying $1.99 for something they can watch for free is the subject of an entirely different blog post.)

Granted, the popularity and seeming success of this is due in part to Whedon’s large and enthusiastic fan base, but nevertheless, television programming execs should be nervous. You can hit the link at the top to watch but hurry, it is only online for a limited time.

Iron Man? Incredible Hulk? Hellboy? What do they all have in common? Besides opening number one at the box office this summer, they are all characters or properties that began as comic books. There has been a veritable invasion of page-to-screen in the past five years, and with The Dark Knight, set to open Friday ahead of rave reviews, I was asked by a reporter about the proliferation of comic-based movies.

I believe there are a number of reasons for this comic book invasion of movieland:

Technology: New filming techniques, digital cameras, and computer designed and executed special effects make it easier to translate the fantastic from page to screen. James McAvoy dodging bullets in Wanted could not have happened pre-CGI (or pre-Matrix, which really set the bar for what could be done).

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We recently finished some research for Spike TV, and unlike most of our work (which tends to be client-confidential), this is something we can actually share a bit. It was a project in support of Spike’s Guy’s State of the Union 2008—in which they take stock of the state of American guys.

Social Technologies handled the qualitative portion of the project. We mined our trendbase, did expert interviews, and created a set of hypotheses about the current and future state of American men. The polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB) tested the hypotheses through an online quantitative survey, and we worked in parallel doing focus groups in Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Minneapolis to hear from guys in their own words.

Using a segmentation provided by PSB we created a set of composite personas to help bring the survey and focus group findings to life. We also used the personas as a way to talk about where these segments might be headed in the future.

Five types of American guys

The segmentation revealed 5 types of American guys aged 18-49:

1. Young Carefrees (23%)—friend-focused digital natives enjoying their post-college years
2. The Above Average Joes (29%)—modern guys, thriving in their role as fathers and husbands
3. The Good Ol’ Boys (13%)—traditional guys with traditional views; rugged, stoic, and pragmatic
4. The Mac Daddies (20%)—the alpha guys…intense, successful, and in love with their gadgets
5. The Worry Warriors (15%)—hard working, well-off…but totally stressed

See the public version of the Spike TV report here, with detailed descriptions of the segments and the personas we used to bring them to life.

We're in the final stages of prepping for our June Futures Consortium event this Thursday, where we'll explore the future of transparency and it's impacts on consumers and organizations. We've got a great event planned and will look at a range of topics including:

• personal medical transparency (one of our team will report out on what kinds of info a $1,000 genetic test actually yielded about him)
• the hype and reality of consumer data collection services
• the future of transparency technologies

We'll also present some consumer personas, developed to express different viewpoints on transparency, and explore the future of transparency via scenario archetypes. We'll have more on this after the event, but all of these workstreams have us tracking transparency closely and have yielded some interesting scanning hits.

One I found particularly interesting was this mention of a transparent newsroom on the the Guardian's greenslade blog. The Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review webcasts its editorial conferences publicly, invites local bloggers to critique its work, and has a journalism professor review its reporting. The paper's editor reports it has "improved the newspaper's credibility and made it more relevant to readers' lives."

Could this be the future of all news organizations? If this move towards transparency is improving the experience for readers, it's definitely worth considering, given the deep uncertainty about the future of newspapers (as in this post from Jeff Bercovici's Mixed Media blog). 

Image: James Abbott (www.sxc.hu)

"Television today is in a state of flux," writes TelevisionWeek correspondent Allison J. Waldman in the May 11 issue of the magazine. "New technologies, multiple platforms, decreasing audience share for the major networks, emerging digital interactivity—how will the industry adapt to the changes and make them television viable and thriving in the decade ahead?"

For a glimpse of the future, Walden interviewed Social Technologies' futurist Christopher Kent. Here's a bit of what he had to say:

TelevisionWeek: Where is TV going to be in the next 15 years?

Christopher Kent: Your question of where really hits on it, because the really big thing in the next 15 years is going to be moving away from the traditional television set itself, with programming being in a number of different places. We’re already starting to see this a bit today with iPods and Apple TV, but the emergence of mobile TV on any number of platforms—be it your phone, a media player, even in your car—the where is the big thing with mobile standards now being finalized. It was in Europe last year, and the U.S. is still working on it. The future of television is going to be mobile. It’s going to be less sitting in front of the TV and more taking your TV with you.

Read the entire article.

Image: (c) 2008 JupiterImages Corp.

Iran’s online world is more vibrant than you might expect. While Reporters Without Borders ranked Iran’s press as the fourth least-free in the world, its blogosphere is full of lively conversation and rife with political dissent, as revealed in a new Berkman Center for Internet and Society (full disclosure: my former employer before I came to Social Technologies)  report on the state of the Internet, the blogosphere, and its affect on democracy in conservative, religious Iran.

 The report found that:

• Iran's blogosphere is male-dominated and incredibly diverse in content, and often features heated discussions about politics, religion, and pop culture.
• While the Iranian government vigorously censors the Internet and has arrested bloggers for expressing dissenting opinions, the report found a significantly smaller percentage of blogs being blocked than they expected: only about 15% of what the report deemed “reformist” (anti-government) blogs were blocked.
• Women are a significant minority in the Iranian blogosphere, except in poetry-themed blogs. (Poetry is a very popular form of expression for Iranians.)
• Even with the threat of arrest, Iranian bloggers don't write anonymously nearly as much as expected: for instance, the majority of "reformist" bloggers wrote under their own name, while the majority of "conservative" bloggers wrote anonymously.
• Young Iranian bloggers tend to be conservative and religious, while older bloggers tend to be reformist and secular.

What has emerged is a portrayal of an engaged, lively online community in Iran, a country where freedom of expression isn’t exactly valued. It's fascinating to see how a somewhat open Internet can change the way the citizens of an authoritarian regime are able to express themselves. It is also clear that while the Iranian government has attempted to block the most contentious blogs online, it lacks the resources to get all of them. And while it might be overly optimistic, the fact that this kind of honest and open dialogue can exist (with limits, of course) gives many the hope that the Internet can foster change in Iran, beyond just expression of personal opinions.

Image: Sander (Flickr)

A superhero Vishnu fighting bad guys on city streets? Monkey god Hanuman reincarnated as a soccer playing, evil-fighting youngster? It’s the latest craze in Indian entertainment: “mytho-cartoons,” cartoons that borrow from Hindu mythology to entertain as well as teach Indian youth about Hinduism.

There is an unusual cultural exchange present in Indian mytho-cartoons: Indian animators are borrowing from Western entertainment to tell centuries old Hindu myths in a new and innovative way. Many popular mytho-cartoons use the concept of the modern comic book superhero to portray Hindu gods to Indian kids. Mytho-cartoons are becoming so popular that production companies, such as Percept Picture Company, which produces the popular “Hanuman” films, have plans to release their films and TV shows in the US and Europe, completing a cyclical cultural exchange of ideas and beliefs.

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"Location, location, location," is increasingly becoming the mantra around new media services, and 2008 seems poised to be a year of growth for hyperlocal content delivery and other location-based services.

Google recently unveiled a new feature on its Google News page--Google News Local, allowing readers to get news occurring only in their local area. Google is moving into this space at a time when GPS is making people more aware of their surroundings and driving innovations in localized content in the form of location-based services like mobile ads for local businesses. Google's local news service joins dominant localized news site Topix.net and newcomer EveryBlock in this content area, and many Internet users will benefit from having better access to news in their area.

Google isn't the only major company taking advantage of hyperlocalized content.

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If you've watched a TV commercial or music video lately, you've probably  noticed that a new style has emerged.

That's thanks to companies like California-based Motion Theory, writes reporter Diane Mehta in an article entitled "Loco Motion" in the February 2008 issue of Fast Company magazine. These producers are "reinventing the TV commercial, even the look of video itself, and changing the way advertisers and other clients connect with the public," explains Mehta, who asked Social Technologies' Chris Carbone to weigh in on the trend.

He said the visual-effects trend is about ratcheting up expectations:

"Younger consumers--digital natives--grew up in a world where their baseline was The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings, and Spider Man," he says. "But now that world-class effects are the standard, visuals need to be integrated in the message even more than in the past, and that's true of movies or marketing."

View the entire article.

Image: Motion Theory, Modest Mouse "Dashboard" for Epic Records (www.motiontheory.com)

Steve Jobs’ keynote at the MacWorld convention on January 15^th sparked some online conversation between two of our futurists -- myself (Christopher) and Simeon Spearman. Here is the text of our discussion:

Christopher: I just finished reading the live blog (via Engadget) of Jobs' presentation from this a.m. I thought there were three really interesting ideas: The software upgrade for the iPhone that pinpoints the user’s location; the incorporation of the Touch interface into the MacBook Air; and the remote optical drive.

[The new MacBook Air does not have a CD/DVD ROM drive, rather, via software and wireless, MacBook Air can connect to a computer with a CD-drive and read the disc remotely.]

Simeon: I had live updates of the keynote running in the background as Jobs spoke. The announcements were pretty cool, but I felt like there should have been more to it.

Christopher: The first really pushes forward the concept of location-based services; the second puts us closer to non-physical interfaces for all computers; and the third could be the death knell for optical drives.

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Image: Seth Anderson (Flickr)Over a month's worth of unread New Yorker magazines are sitting on my coffee table at home. I try to make the effort to read the weekly periodical, but I can never seem to keep up with the seemingly unending flow. I’ve even begun to cringe when I open my mailbox and see yet another New Yorker, mocking my lack of time or energy to read each issue cover to cover.

Fortunately, Brijit has the answer to my New Yorker problem, as their website offers 100-word synopses of articles in publications such as The Atlantic, Scientific American, Rolling Stone, Harvard Business Review, Playboy (gee thanks, I knew someone subscribed to it for the articles!) and yes, the New Yorker.

And, unlike the magazines it summarizes, Brijit is free.

This is another manifestation of the time pressure felt across World 1. Now, a simple pleasure such as sitting down to read one’s favorite magazine, newspaper, or book may not seem feasible while also working, commuting, caring for children, exercising, and socializing. As we wrote in GL-2005-44: Top 20 Trend--Time Pressure, this sense of time deficit will affect more and more consumers around the globe as incomes rise and scheduled lives become a necessity. We suggested that tools to help us more effectively manage our time will proliferate, and so we have Brijit and myriad other services popping up.

Will I be using Brijit to speed up my New Yorker processing? Probably not. Even though I may be a month behind, I still prefer doing my own reading.

Couldn't find the pricetag for Radiohead's newest album, In Rainbow? You're not alone. On October 10, the popular British band bypassed its record label, released the album on its own website, and is allowing fans to set their own price. Which means, of course, that the album is basically being offered for free.

After Radiohead came out with the digital download last week, big acts such as Nine Inch Nails, Oasis, and Jamiroquai announced plans to do the same. Granted, getting free music on the Internet is not a novel thing: illegal filesharing has been around for years and up-and-coming new artists often offer free downloads to get their name out. However, Radiohead’s move marks the first time a big-name artist has released an entire album for free and exclusively on the Internet.

It’s a revolutionary idea in the music business. The model, for decades, has involved artists signing with record labels while record labels distribute and promote the artist’s music, therefore wielding creative control over the artist. Radiohead has completely bypassed the traditional system. If enough artists follow suit, Radiohead’s new distribution model could be a complete game changer within the music industry, making record labels essentially obsolete.

Image: Brady Wood (Flickr)

Rapid, bottom-up innovation in media tools and communication cultures are changing the way NGOs must reach out to, inform, and engage advocates, donors, and volunteers, Social Technologies futurist Scott Smith told the audience at UNICEF’s New Media Summit in New York City recently.

“If non-governmental organizations such as UNICEF want to communicate effectively in the digital media era, they need to understand and utilize new media tools,” said Smith, the event’s keynote speaker. “Because of the disruptive nature of these tools, we are seeing the emergence of ‘massively parallel emotion.’ This phenomenon has arisen from the convergence of global connectivity, instant and mobile text messaging, and transparency. The result is that people worldwide can experience major political, social, or cultural events in near-real time—-and almost simultaneously share the emotions they experience.”

Smith pointed to the lightning-fast spread of personal accounts of the Asian tsunami in December 2004 and a more recent earthquake in Mexico. Immediately after each event, people began using text and instant messaging to report the events in detail before the media could.

But NGOs can take advantage of these emerging digital-media flows and the sudden surges of regional or even global awareness they can create. In turn, this heightened awareness can lead to a rise in public attention, interest, and action on behalf of causes. “By using foresight, which is a structured approach to understanding trends, and carefully framing strategic issues and exploring potential implications, UNICEF can provide a strong foundation for containing risks and creating positive outcomes,” he concluded.

Smith suggested UNICEF stay on top of the following media trends:

1. Wiring (and unwiring) the world—-Rapid growth in networked communications, such as the Internet and mobile wireless networks, has given individuals a way of reaching out to each other directly, particularly in the developing world.

2. Shift in technology power—-The rising use of information technology in developing countries such as India and China means these nations will increasingly dictate the design and application of new media technologies around the world.

3. Tech-driven transparency-—Individuals and groups now have far better ability to obtain, understand, and even visualize important information about the world around them. This transparency enables more powerful insight and action.

4. Social communication-—Peer-to-peer networks have reduced the role of hierarchies and intermediaries between individuals and groups. New communities with common interests can now easily and rapidly form across borders.

5. Media fragmentation—-The traditional single-screen household has morphed into one with three or four TVs, PCs, mobile phones, and other new devices.

6. World 0-—People living in all parts of the world come together in digital social environments. These provide new “safe” zones for interaction, communication, and education.

7. Participatory culture—-New media have created new ways to share ideas collaboratively. The exploding use of blogs, one of the foundations of digital collaboration culture, provides an insight into the rate at which individuals are collectively building information networks of their own.

8. Serious play-—Videogames are not just for fun anymore. Relief groups, opposition parties, educators, and governments are using a new genre called “serious games” to spread knowledge and enable activists and stakeholders to test new ways of approaching global and local problems—-and finding solutions.

Participatory media -- the ability of ordinary people to engage with, create, and distribute media -- is an ever-growing trend.

I was reminded this week of a curious variant, which might be called participatory geosensing: deliberately using remote-sensing infrastructure to pursue one's own personal goals.

• A geospatial artist in Washington DC has put a "no war" message on his roof, spelled out in brick. (He will need some pretty high-resolution sensing, as the letters are only 1 or 2 bricks wide.)
• A blogger on the Google Earth blog claims that he has "been laying on my lawn for the last three weeks straight without moving. I hope that Google satellites will take pictures of me and everyone will vote it to be one of the seven wonders of the world," the Washington Post reports.

As for me, I wish to remain invisible at one-meter resolution.

This infectious ditty by Peter Bjorn & John has been a hit around S)T’s worldwide HQ for the past couple of weeks. The catchy song and charming video combined to make it a staff favorite. Interested in learning more about them, I turned to our good friend the Internets and came across this story. I was struck by two things:

First, this song seemed to be a perfect example of how a a lot of hits are being made these days: a band releases song or video on MySpace or YouTube, an adventurous musical director of a hit TV show ("Grey’s Anatomy" in this case) throws it on a soundtrack, and viola—biggest hit of their careers.

But the other thing I was struck by was the overall tone of the article, which to be seemed to be, “Isn’t it amazing that a band has hit it big this way?” The fact that Reuters wrote a story about a band finding success on YouTube reflects the still active disbelief among some in the press and entertainment industry that bands can achieve popularity while eschewing the traditional route of touring, big label contract, major distribution push. Why this comes as a surprise to the media writing about these video sites is confounding, as Peter Bjorn & John is certainly not the first band to achieve popularity this way or be profiled for their clever use of video sites to sidestep the traditional road to stardom.

For all their talk of the power of the Internet (and Time’s Person of the Year cover) it seems that mainstream media, and some music industry folks, are still not grasping the idea that the Internet gift of disintermediation has come to the music industry.

Perhaps because television shows require more production than just releasing a song on the Internet, this disintermediation has not become a clear route to stardom for aspiring writers or actors. Some shows released on video sites such as RocketBoom or Diggnation are beginning to draw significant viewership, but not at the levels of regular television viewing audiences. Instead, these sites pose together different challenges for television involving intellectual property rights and loss of audience share. In the first instance, producers seem to be fighting a rear guard battle, trying to pull their properties that have been uploaded illegally to video sites. Good luck—as one wit has put it, taking information off the Internet is like trying to take smell out of the air.

In the second instance of losing audience share, producers are facing this head-on, forging alliances with video sites in the hopes of cross-marketing programs and driving viewers back to television. How well this will work remains to be seen and many analysts (and producers) are already positing that the Internet will supplant television broadcasting as the main vehicle for filmed programming.

Will consumers bypass traditional television content for amateur-created television content? Not likely. Will consumers receive more and more of their television content from the Internet? As the Magic 8-ball is fond of saying, all signs point to yes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a video to watch.