Category: wemedia

Miami V(o)ice(s)


Global Voices team members Lova, Jeremy, Lokman and Jillian.
Not pictured: Amira, Eddie, Georgia, Ivan, Leonard and Solana.

I got back from Miami today after four days of passionate conversations about the authenticity of travel (and travel writing) and whether or not Mates of State actually sing a cover of These Days and what to name our cheese babies. I was also lucky to share breakfast sandwiches, beaches, swimming, a sweet backyard pool and a bright green stuffed ferret that looked more like a jalapeño pepper than an animal with some of the best housemates I’ve ever had south of the Mason-Dixon line.

(I also went to We Media Miami 2009, which you can read about here and here. A huge thanks goes to them for sponsoring part of our costs to attend the conference, which challenged the way I think and communicate about new media as a member of the “Dream Generation.”)

Jeremy wrote earlier about how blessed he feels to be working with Global Voices, and I want to echo his love for the organization and the amazing people that constitute it. I am so happy to have found this community, and jumping back into writing for them has made me happy in a way few things apart from the blogren do.

To my Global Voices housemates: A big giant Florida cheers! And I’m still pulling for the next GV summit to be held in Lawrence, Kansas.

cupcakes and robots: Wednesday at We Media

I’m in Miami this week for the We Media conference, which brings together “leaders and ideas shaping media, business, communication, technology, education and participation in the connected society.”

Among yesterday’s events, which included a video presentation by David Plouffe and a brainstorming session on the future of business, media, education, philanthropy and government (in under two hours, no less), my favorite was something called “Decoding the Culture.”

Led by marketing strategist John Fischer, along with TheKnot.com founder David Liu and Darryl Perkins of the Hip Hop Caucus, Decoding the Culture started with Coca-Cola and cleaning products and ended with teledildonics.

Maybe I should explain.

Fischer’s job is to make generalizations about culture — to look at human desires (like concern for the health of one’s family) and connect them to trends (like the growing interest in organic food), then predict what comes next. After the most beautifully simple slide presentation I’ve ever seen, Fischer encouraged the participants to flip through a stack of old magazines and rip out anything we found that seemed portentous (I should add that he warned us ahead of time that culture-decoding “takes practice”). He asked that we tag each image with a post-it note describing its significance and then paste them all together in a giant collage that would eventually help us complete the statement:

Because [blank] is happening today,
[blank] will happen tomorrow.

My group’s generalization started with a slew of ads emphasizing individual choice and ultra-personalization: coffee pods that come in 40 flavors! Mini cupcakes so you can put together your very own combination of half a dozen flavors! A portable digital photo printer that lets you express your Epsonality©!

And then Nathan James of the Media & Democracy Coalition found this Svedka ad:

That’s right. It’s a hypersexualized female robot handing you a cocktail.

This led us to a discussion of objectification, during which we wondered if robots are allowed to be gendered, whether female robots were the greatest dehumanization of women or whether, by focusing desire on inanimate objects, they represent the highest freedom. Regardless, we agreed that the robot was clearly designed to appeal to a specific desire, and the fact that it was built piece by piece means it is the perfect customization of that desire. Will personalized sexbots be the way that the current waves of individual expression and technology ultimately meet?

Because customized cupcakes are happening today, robot marriages will happen in the future.

I’m not sure if that’s exactly the takeaway Fischer was hoping for, but I think the exercise is still useful. For example: technology use is both increasing and diversifying in Uganda — more people are using more and more services and applications in more and more ways. What does this trend indicate for the future of, say, politics in East Africa? What are the implications for entrepreneurs, for web developers, for ICT companies? I’m not as good at culture forecasting as Fischer (um, clearly), but I kind of wish someone would send me a copy of African Woman so I can keep the creative collage juices flowing.