laurel papworth

Stilgherrian’s links for 23 September 2008 through 25 September 2008, scrubbed up with a wire brush:

• Australia: Twitter statistics | Laurel Papworth: Twitter usage is up 518.12% in Australia, if you believe (1) that website traffic is the relevant metric, and (2) you can possibly measure this stuff to 5 significant figures.
• Wotnews Australian News Search: Wotnews used to be called Plugger, but they’re now associated with Wotif in some way. Wotnews harvests news from over 3500 different sources including mainstream publishers, niche blogs, direct from companies and government bodies as well as from the relentless stream of company announcements coming out of the Australian Stock Exchange.
• Tax Plans (that’s one for you, nineteen for me) | chartjunk: Viveka Weiley’s re-drawing of charts comparing John McCain and Barack Obama’s tax plans. The difference is pretty obvious.
• Text Messages Seen as Dangerously Distracting | NYTimes.com: “The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points” and many other scare-quotes.

Oh, I get it. Social media “guru” Laurel Papworth has to kill time before her Saudi trip gets sorted out. So what does this visionary of society’s future do? She ropes me into a blogging meme. How modern. How avant garde!

How… 2005.

Laurel was tagged three months ago and is only getting to it now. And they’re not even real ropes!

Is that enough slagging-off? Shall I get on with it now?

Actually this will be fun on a Saturday morning. It’s been ages since I’ve done one of these. Here goes…

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I think I might make this a regular feature? Should I just use some automated social bookmarking tool to generate the page?

• Over at New Matilda, Ben Eltham has written a fine summary of The Super Seasprites Saga. He links to an explanation of the sunk cost fallacy which probably contributed to this monumental fuck-up.
• Laurel Papworth’s piece 2020 Summit: Objective Journalists vs Passionate Blogging, which I’m planning to respond to at length some time this weekend.
• A piece from The New Yorker, Scents and Sensibility: What the nose knows, which ponders, amongst other things, why one molecule smells of spearmint when its exact mirror image smells of caraway. (Hat-tip to 3 Quarks Daily.)
• And for a change of pace, try the selection of First Dog on the Moon cartoons which were published in Crikey through January and February.

Four pieces feels about right for today.

A reminder: I’m going to the Australian Computer Society’s Web Technology SIG’s presentation on Web 2.0, in Sydney from 1800 tonight. Apparently the redoubtable Laurel Papworth will be there too, so the presenter from IBM ain’t gonna have an easy time.

I’ll be Twittering it at twitter.com/stilgherrian and writing something afterwards. You don’t need a Twitter account to follow what I’ll say. My Twitterings also appear in the sidebar of my website, but only refreshed every 15 minutes or so.

“Dare to Know!” is the title of chapter 8 of Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947. And the opening words will bring a wriggle of delight to social media evangelists everywhere. (Hi, Laurel!)

The Prussian enlightenment [of the 18th century] was about conversation. It was about a critical, respectful, open-ended dialogue between free and autonomous subjects. Conversation was important because it permitted the sharpening and refinement of judgement. In a famous essay on the nature of enlightenment, the Königsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant declared that:

Enlightenment refers to man’s departure from his self-imposed tutelage. Tutelage means the inability to make use of one’s own reason without the guidance of another. This tutelage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in an intellectual insufficiency, but in a lack of will and courage… Dare to know! [Semper aude!] Have the courage to use your own reason! This is the motto of the Enlightenment!

[...] In the percolation through society of this spirit of critical, confident independence, conversation played an indispensable role. It flourished in the clubs and societies that proliferated in the Prussian lands…

The conversation… also took place in print. One of the distinctive features of the periodical literature of this era was its discursive, dialogical character. Many of the articles printed in the Berlin Monthly (Berlinische Monatsschrift), for example, were in fact letters to the editor from members of the public… The Berlin Monthly was thus above all a forum in print that… was not conceived as fodder for an essentially passive constituency of cultural consumers. It aimed to provide the public with the means of reflecting upon itself and its foremost preoccupations.

In other words, the strength and integrity of the Prussian state came not from the King or the bureaucrats telling everyone how things worked, but from people engaging in an on-going conversation about their own society.

In the age of “emerging social media”, this sounds very familiar…

While poking around the stats as part of my scrag-fight with Laurel Papworth, I found these figures for how many Australian businesses are using broadband.

% of internet-connected businesses with broadband

2003-04	41.5 %
2004-05	62.7 %
2005-06	82.5 %

Mind you…

Broadband… is defined by the ABS as an ‘always on’ Internet connection with an access speed equal to or greater than 256kbps.

Nothing to be proud of.

Statistics on how businesses use the Internet demonstrate how the Web 2.0 digerati are rocketing so far ahead of reality into their self-obsessed digital fantasy-land that they might as well be on Mars.

ABS figures show that fewer than a third of Australian businesses have a “web presence”.

This week the redoubtable Laurel Papworth complained about that:

Well, that sucks… Not much hope for Web 2.0 if 70% of us can’t get our heads around Web 1.0, is there?

Stephen Collins, who I’ve read for a while and chatted with recently, agrees.

I am disappointed. It indicates just how far behind the 8-ball most business in Australia is…

Laurel associates this lack of penetration with the widespread lack of understanding of the power of the Web, and specifically Web 2.0 technologies, amongst Australian business. I’d have to say I agree.

Really? Disappointed? I see steady growth in those “web presence” figures. I’ll show you in a moment. First, though, I need to tell you why I reckon you’re wrong.

“Disappointment” shows a misunderstanding of what constitutes “business”, even in the 21st Century. And there’s still a lot of work to help businesses lay the digital foundations before we start building so many crystal castles.

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One of the biggest mistakes businesses make when thinking about social media is that it’s all about the tools — that if only they choose the right software they’ll be a success. That’s about as sensible as thinking your retail business will be successful if only you buy the right bookkeeping software.

Yesterday a client asked:

My friends at [some business] wish to create a social networking section as part of their site, with home pages or profiles for each user. Do you recommend any third party apps for this or a currently operating system?

No, I don’t recommend the tools until I know what the job is.

That question is like being asked, “I want a motor vehicle, can you recommend one?” Before you could answer you’d need to know the requirements. How many passengers? An answer of “6″ means a people-mover, not a sports car. An answer of “40″ means you need a bus.

Does it have to go off-road? Land Rover time! Does it have to carry 3 tons of bricks? Well, you need a truck, not a car. Do you need to make a social statement with your vehicle? Then maybe you need a Rolls-Royce. Or a Porsche. Or a Ferrari.

Or a packet of Viagra.

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As the sun sets on 2007 — literally, as I took the photo just before I sat down to write — it’s time to reflect on an astounding year. The Snarky Platypus will join ’Pong and me later, and (perhaps) help us put together some predictions for 2008.

This was a watershed year for me, for my household and business, and for Australia. Many of the changes happened late in the year, so we haven’t noticed the effects yet. But as 2008 unfolds I think we’ll look back and see that, yes, 2007 marked a change of direction.

Personally, my understanding of how I fit into my world (and yours) became much clearer.

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