I introduced my colleague Alan to the term ‘Abandonware’ today. As a net-savvy individual, I was surprised he’d not come across it before. But, then again, it’s only really current among gamers.

Abandonware is software that has been given-up by its original developers and publishers. Normally, it applies to old games which fans still love, but which their publishers don’t care about any more.

The spiritual home of abandonware is Home of the Underdogs (beware Dragons and possibly viruses), which, appropriately enough, hasn’t been updated for two years. The site hosts binary files for hundreds of old games, manuals and screenshots.

While some of the content is definitely illegal, according to the letter of the law, it’s also a shrine to those old games that you played as a teenager. On balance, it’s definitely a good thing that it exists. Not just so you can get free w4r3z,  but because it keeps the games and the emotions and memories of those games alive. These games, despite the moniker, are not abandoned, but carefully curated and preserved (if the site owner would get off his arse).

Back to Web 2.0, Alan’s observation, just on the basis of the term was that, “a freemium model endgame is suggested” (I think it’s disrespectful to represent someone’s opinion from a single Twitter message. I do so here only to advance the argument. Sorry, Alan.)

Web 2.0 abandonware already exists, surely. I have no idea how Google Docs, for example, could ever make any money. Annoying Microsoft doesn’t seem like much of a model to me. Open Source is ‘cards on the table’ abandonware in some cases. There are interesting examples - when Movable Type went Open Source was that a form of abandonment?, but if there is a Home of the Underdogs 2.0, it won’t really matter very much.

I can still find a working binary download for Computer Quarterback published in 1979 (don’t bother - it’s shit) nearly 30 years after its publication date on Underdogs. I wonder if someone couldn’t make a fortune by starting a Web 2.0 Underdogs for those projects that were loved, but not by the right people.

I never quote Seth Godin. I find his stuff far too happy-clappy for my comfort zone (ach- another americanism!) Yet here I am: Seth on America choosing Neil Armstrong as their ‘moon landing guy’:

NASA did what many organizations do when picking someone to act as company spokesperson. They avoided risk, played it safe and chose someone who wouldn’t make a ruckus.

What a shame.

Armstrong could have taught the world about science. He could have done work that would have won him a Nobel Peace Prize. He could have had a huge impact on his country and the world. Instead, he mostly disappeared.

Many organizations worry that if they put their clout behind an individual, he or she will gain notoriety and power and eventually double-cross the organization. So, instead, they go for bland.

Bland is a tad harsh, though I wish they’d chosen Buzz for the first man on the moon. He’s got a much cooler name. There’s another reason as well - because I continually get to tease my wife for confusing him with Buzz Lightyear on one occasion. (Buzz Lightyear apparently trained on Lanzarote’s volcanos for his moon trip).

Speaking in my capacity as a has-been journalist, bland won’t get you a headline in a magazine or newspaper. But hang on… Neither will the out-spoken fool.

No journalist is going to publish a story that says ‘Dave Colossus, mega-spokesperson for XCorp, today said they’d be curing cancer within a year using the power of social networking’. Dave Colossus (not his real name) is out of a job within a week, and the fools that did print the story, well, probably they keep their jobs in my experience.

Stick to bland, and true. And bollocks to you, Godin: I’m not sure I’ve come across a better quote in the last forty years than ‘One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind’. If that’s bland (and even if he got it wrong), it’s still pretty magical.

But I still wish it was Buzz.

Antony Mayfield is delighted with Dell’s approach to social media, as represented in this video interview, in particular. Even without that, it’s clear that the company has embraced many of the concepts wholeheartedly through initiatives like IdeaStorm. As Antony the interviewee, Andy Lark, Dell’s head of Global Marketing, points out, the company’s commitment to social tools is pretty thorough:

The social media stuff is probably the most important we do today, from a marketing stand point. The other elements of marketing mix has sort of become more and more transactional and more and more tactical in nature. Social media stuff is much more strategic… Use social media to power the fundamental of the business. That’s what we’re focused on. [Mayfield's transcription - thank you]

Great stuff. And here’s that interview in full:

To be clear, Antony is one of the good guys - I just disagree with his opinion on this one.

The part where I started to become anxious comes late in the piece, at about 4:00. Lark contrasts the approach taken by new media journalists with the old school. BBC journalists apparently now come along with a digital recorder and immediately ask if they can podcast the interview. The old school - regional journalists, he says - turn up with a notepad and pen. That’s a failure on the part of the latter group, according to Lark:

“The content that I’m giving them is the asset, not their translation”.

That’s *not* true. The media is there to question, to analyse and to be sceptical about the ‘asset’ that’s been given to them by Lark. It is certainly not its function to broadcast that ‘asset’ verbatim and without question. That’s what we people who turn up with a notepad and pen and ‘don’t get it’ call an advertisement.

I think we raise a couple of questions here about quite how wonderful 24-hour on-the-moment publishing and releasing to social media sources at the same time as traditional media sources is. If the statements issued by marketing directors are taken as ‘the record’, then we miss out on the opportunity to compare a company’s claims with their financial records, the research that’s been done into their brand value and customer service records, comparisons with competing propositions from rival manufacturers, and the benefits of a broader view. I have nothing against Dell - my current PC is a Dell, and it’s fine.

But, goodness, if I were head of global marketing at any brand, I’m sure that a podcast of my words on a well-trafficked website would be far preferable to an in-depth review of my products or an analysis of my financial performance somewhere else.

The function of journalism is not simply to report or transcribe what powerful figures and institutions want us to. We need to question, analyse and remain continually sceptical, while also remaining neutral. If we can’t do the latter, then declaring our interests immediately.

Taking a little longer to file a story doesn’t mean that you don’t ‘get it’ (a dreadful expression) but might mean that ‘oh yes, we get it alright, and we’re not letting you get away with it!’

Let’s see. Ah. None of them leave web addresses. All of them have hotmail addresses, ones which keep them anonymous.

Yet… all of them have the same IP address. How bizarre! Three people, same IP address within seven minutes!

Author : debiy (IP: 213.52.212.129 , 213.52.212.129) E-mail : garlandsbuzzer@hotmail.com

URI :

Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=213.52.212.129

Author : Caroline (IP: 213.52.212.129 , 213.52.212.129) E-mail : carolinebabegenius1982@hotmail.com

URI :

Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=213.52.212.129

Author : Hayley Davies (IP: 213.52.212.129 , 213.52.212.129) E-mail : hayley2133@hotmail.com

URI :

Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=213.52.212.129

So that new law about Unfair Promotional Practices… how does it go again?

I’d be even more delighted if you were to: (a) book for the event; and (b) help us get the word out.

On getting the word out - grab this badge, stick it on your site and link to www.idesign-london.com - there is a pint in it for you*. I can do you a white version or different sizes if you like. Or - look - here’s the PSD File to *cough* mash-up your own!

The following might be loosely interpreted as marketing talk. You are free to go straight down to the blue button.

Early Bird Rates: Admission to the conference, the exhibition and portfolio clinic is currently available for just £60 (£50 for concessions). This price will rise in August, so don’t delay, book today. drinkapintamilkaday.

idesign 08 will showcase the best and most innovative work in the field and feature keynote speakers at the top of the profession. The programme is designed to be inspirational, informative and challenging. You will be a better interactive designer by the end of the day - or better able to understand the designers who work with you! You’ll also know about new opportunities and your pathway through this new digital world.

This conference is for you if:

• you want to be inspired with new ideas about web, 3D, interactive and mobile.
• you are a design professional who needs to keep abreast of the latest thinking and see best practice.
• you’re passionate about the future of the digital world.
• you want to share ideas and opportunities with like-minded creatives.

Speakers (more to come!):

· Brendan Dawes, Creative Director - MagneticNorth

· Ann Longley, Digital Strategy Director - Media Edge: CIA

· Adrian Shaughnessy, Consultant Creative Director - This is Real Art

· Colin Jenkinson, Design Director - Cogapp

· Ximo Peris, Creative Director - Smoothe

· Simon Waterfall, Creative Director of Poke and president of D&AD - Poke

· Michael Nutley, Editor-in-Chief, NMA - http://www.nma.co.uk

· More information about the speakers and the programme at http://www.idesign-london.com

The event will also host portfolio clinics from London’s top 10 digital agencies, and the digital design day exhibition and seminars.

Booking site:

Notes:

If you wish to make a group booking (five people or more) or believe you might be eligible for a press pass, email michelle.hardiman@nmk.co.uk for more information. Or just leave a comment, and I’ll get back to you.

Concessions are available for students, unemployed, freelancers, not-for-profit companies and charities. And other riff-raff, I expect.

*or simply great karma, for non-pint-drinkers.

Anyway, I was at Media Futures 08 last Friday where one of the best sessions was the opening keynote from Dr. Brian Winston.

He started with a quotation ostensibly* from Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales in the Observer saying that it’s likely there’ll soon be digital revolutions in far-flung places we don’t tend to consider very much, such as Kazakhstan. With internet connections and the Web 2.0 tools that have become available over recent years, Wales says, it’s likely that they’ll be able to propel themselves very quickly through twenty years of technological progress and produce the next crop of internet tycoons.

Nonsense, said Winston. What both Wales and Wikipedia forget is that Kazakhstan has a Stalinist dictatorship. There will need to be a very different sort of revolution before there’s any kind of technological one that’s based on democratising technologies. It’s an example of the way Web 2.0 technophiles seem to find it extremely easy to forget about politics, sociology and history to try to establish the revolutionary impact of the next latest thing. They think technology has the power to change societies, whereas in actual fact, cultural and social conditions need to be met in order for technological advances to exist at all.

Digital itself has a history going back to the 1920s, he argued, which everyone conveniently forgets. And even then, it’s simply a system for encoding things. An equivalent would be the switch from AM to FM radio - and very few people talk about the FM revolution.

We are in a condition where we conveniently forget the years of discovery, exploration and mistakes that lead to whatever is in today’s headlines. We’re also conditioned into accepting the rhetoric of marketing as fact. Web 2.0 favourite theories like ‘the wisdom of crowds’, ‘the hype cycle’ and ‘crossing the chasm’ are actually commercial products, not independent academic studies.

The conditions for the emergence of new technology are cultural, not inherent in those technologies themselves. Edison didn’t ever envisage the gramophone being used to record music, because the likelihood of that use was not culturally probable at that time. The ability to create cheap electric cars has existed for years, but has only been allowed to come to life relatively recently as car companies have reached a point where they want to be viewed as environmentally responsible. And many new technologies - so breathlessly announced in the tech press and the press releases that spawn them as so very new and revolutionary - are based on fairly basic facts about the human race. People like to talk - if that’s via mobile phone, social networks or face-to-face maybe doesn’t make that much difference. We would do it anyway within the limits of whatever means we had available.

When we’re confronted with the latest, greatest, revolutionary product from the web or anywhere else, the proper response ought to be, ’so what?’ It’s likely that there will be no sensible answer to that question, but even if there is, it will probably be about it fulfilling or adding to a social imperative that already exists. Technology, Winston argued, is not going to create new social needs or desires.

_________________

Personally, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, and I think it’s true that society creates technology, not vice-versa.

However, I didn’t used to need to know the day’s news at 7am in the morning. I didn’t used to read hundreds of people’s opinions every day. I didn’t used to hear from my friends and colleagues every day (albeit indirectly through blogs and social networks) and thus feel continuously part of an international professional community. While I could have created a printed fanzine instead of this blog, I probably wouldn’t have been bothered. It’s often remarked that before mobile phones were ubiquitous, you had to turn up to social engagements instead of cancelling. And there was a time when if I wanted to watch Dr. Who, then I had to be sat at home at 5pm on a Saturday. Some of those things are about the increasing demands for communication and information required by a post-industrial society that still needs to make a living, but not all of them.

Mobiles and web things and social networks may have come to exist as a consequence of social and cultural demand, but the consequences of their existence also go beyond what those causes required. There then emerges a two-way process whereby technology both fulfils social needs and then is stretched to create new patterns of behaviour as we tinker and test the new limits of our existence. Another basic fact about humans is that we are tinkerers and testers. Not always all of us, but enough of us to alter the nature of common discourse over time.

*Wales has since repudiated the article quoted in Winston’s talk, which was apparently written by a third party on the basis of a conversation, and has written a new one, which is more moderate in its position regarding developing economies.

“You must be new, welcome to the Internet. Here on the Internet you are required to view any publicly held company as evil and any effort on their part to charge for a service as pure, unadulterated greed preferably attributed to their CEO or other high-ranking executive. Corporations should provide as many possible services for free, regardless of the time, capital, and human resources required to develop and run those services or products. Any efforts of corporations to charge money in voluntary exchange for their services or products is to be likened to highway robbery, extortion, or in the case of particularly large corporations, rape. I hope these guidelines have helped.”

I work closely in partnership with a music business site, MusicTank, and while those guys might seem like dinosaurs to the 2.0 crowd, there is one key issue that they are acutely aware of that always gets brushed over in the digital world. How do artists get paid? The idea of concert revenues or merchandise taking over from direct sales of music is bullshit. People will not buy things they don’t want instead of things they do. The same arguments are true of all content producers. This stuff, these people, these tracks, articles, pictures, whatever need to be paid for.

There’s so much inventory on the web - so many zillions of pages and zillions of users - that advertising isn’t working for publishers any more. So who pays, and how? I don’t really believe any of us know yet.

It’s very beta at present and tracks my contributions at twitter, flickr, del.icio.us, last.fm and updates to my work site (NMK). Facebook is already echoing my tweets and blog posts so I’ll save you the pain and leave that off the list.

Hope to add updates to Upcoming and Ffffound soon as possible - I need to make some custom icons and stuff to do that. Would be cool if I can find a way for it to publish the images from flickr and ffffound. That’s why they say beta, I suppose.

One other potential issue - how can I set up an RSS feed for a single page on Wordpress? Stalkers currently have to visit the site to see what I’m up to. Hmm. WP experts please respond…

I have three invitations to Ffffound, if you like pictures. First come, first served in the comments.