The Kaiser Rises

TEDx Rhein Main - was good.

2012-02-04T15:59:00.001+01:00

The TEDx Rhein Main, as you can see from the photos above, was a cracking day. Brilliant venue, really well organised and lots of bums on seats. I really enjoyed the day and John Kearon's backside (you had to be there). I think everybody enjoyed themselves.

The best bit of the day, for me at least, was the audience. A good, big audience who had come to learn some stuff and just enjoy the whole thing. If you were there, then well done you.

On a personal note I am really happy with my CM Punk T-Shirt.

Carry on.

TEDx RheinMain - Change of Story Prologue

2012-01-11T16:05:00.001+01:00

Subject to Change. TEDxRheinMain.

2012-01-04T12:06:00.002+01:00

Oh hello there. Yes, a very happy new year etc. I'll be speaking at the TEDxRheinMain on the 2nd of February; maybe you would like to come. Lot's of impressive people speaking about "Subject to Change". I'll be talking about how narratives, characters and audiences are changing and I've put together a little YouTube playlist for those of you who may be coming and interested in a little bit of background information. You can find it here.

Good afternoon.

PROGSTEP.

2011-12-18T12:01:00.000+01:00

THE INANIMATES have been busy with the whistles.

Echoes of the Internet.

2011-12-15T16:53:00.000+01:00

So I launched THE INANIMATES about a week ago and I’m enjoying watching it develop; it’s always fun watching these things grow and entwine themselves into the fabric of the Internet. As I mentioned last week I’m using weavrs again and I promised to talk a little bit about how they fit into the project.

As a band, THE INANIMATES are using the weavrs to inform specific themes, here for example is their weavr for the theme DISTANCES:

They use the weavrs to create stories and build connections between each theme (they’re writing a concept album – I like to think of them as ZTT meets Pink Floyd meets Massive attack). The weavrs have a clever little prosthetic called “whistling” which creates sound files (or whistles) based on how the weavr is set up. They are oddly haunting, like little echoes of the Internet.

THE INANIMATES have been playing around with all of this and released their first rough cut for a DISTANCES prologue (they’re not that happy with it, apparently).

So, we’ve been quietly working away on some things. We’re loving the DISTANCES theme at the moment and so we’ve been playing around with some rough ideas. Chopping, chunking, writing and messing around with the weavr whistles. This is a first rough cut of a possible prologue for DISTANCES; we’re loving the hurdy-gurdy Brecht/Hindemith meets some other stuff – but not much else. Its early days but we thought we’d give you a heads up. Holler. More soon.

That's how I'm building this story on top of the weavrs.

Visit about.me/THEINANIMATES to find out where the band are hanging out.

THE INANIMATES

2011-12-09T16:26:00.001+01:00

It has been a while, ages in fact, since I last created a new character; it’s been a busy year with lot’s to do and I simply didn’t have an idea that seemed to work. That has changed though, and today I am very happy to introduce the new project to you. It’s called THE INANIMATES and where my previous characters were individuals THE INANIMATES are a collective:

"Hello, we are THE INANIMATES and we are working on our first album. There are five of us, each working on our own separate themes: DISTANCES, HOMAGE, MONSTER, WASTED and SORROWS."

The band are using wearvs to influence their work on each of the themes,which I’ll talk about another time (but you all know I love my weavrs). Yes, there will be music.It’s very early days, but you can find the band all over the web and they are already up to a thing or two. Everything is being aggregated here.

It would be smashing if you could follow and get involved.

A year with Otto

2011-11-07T16:39:00.000+01:00

Identity Is Prismatic

2011-10-18T11:31:00.000+02:00

"The portrait of identity online is often painted in black and white," Poole said. "Who you are online is who you are offline." That rosy view of identity is complemented with a similarly oversimplified view of anonymity. People think of anonymity as dark and chaotic, Poole said.

But human identity doesn't work like that online or offline. We present ourselves differently in different contexts, and that's key to our creativity and self-expression. "It's not 'who you share with,' it's 'who you share as,'" Poole told us. "Identity is prismatic."

Read more here. Many thanks to Olaf for allowing me to post the image above.

Try not to be afraid. Me in conversation with a version of myself.

2011-10-16T11:49:00.000+02:00

If you would like to talk to a version of me then you can do so here, here, here, here, here, here, here or here.

If you are new here and have no idea what all of this is about then you might like to read these articles.

Identity in the age of digital reproduction

2011-10-15T14:19:00.001+02:00

If you are new here, you may wish to have a look at these posts.

I'd like to introduce you to the beginnings of the growing army of the army of me. It is an ever growing army of real names - my name. Here are some of me on google+. All on policy. Three real Marcus John Henry Brown's.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/114497068161438955067/posts

https://plus.google.com/u/0/104246502106828528798/posts

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107318488891314715992/posts

I'd like to introduce you to a few versions of me that are currently living on Twitter. They actually live (are being informed) somewhere else but I'll get to that later.

http://twitter.com/#!/MarcusJHBrown

http://twitter.com/#!/MetaMarcus

http://twitter.com/#!/tinmarcusbrown

http://twitter.com/#!/MarcusBrown10Wf

http://twitter.com/#!/MarcusBrown10wm

So with the acception of this blog, I'm beginning to automate myself within the social web. I'm using Philter Phactory's wonderful weavrs.com plattform (none of the technology being used here was developed by any version of me - it was all developed and engineered by The Philter Phactory - many thanks to David and his team) to create this little army. I'm feeding my own persona into the weavrs' system and mapping out my own personal history. The weavrs post, tweet, listen to music, check in to places and learn new skills. I'm currently running a series of 40 year old versions of myself that live in Munich here, here and here, as well a series of 10 year old versions of me living in Woolston (where I grew up in England). Here they are.

http://iamteninwoolston1.weavrs.info/

http://iamteninwoolston2.weavrs.info/

http://iamteninwoolston3.weavrs.info/

http://iamteninwoolston4.weavrs.info/

http://iamteninwoolston5.weavrs.info/

Each version of me has a slightly different state and publishes accordingly. You can ask all the versions of me questions too and we will try our best to answer.

All you have to do is send on of me a tweet or hit the "ask me" button on one of my weavr blogs. I should warn you that all of me are pretty snarky. Oh, and for those of you who think that klout and influence are important; if you think that you are defining your online presence/personality/identity through rankings etc, my army of me have klout scores too:

http://klout.com/MetaMarcus

This is just the beginning. By the time I'm finished it will be impossible to tell the real Marcus John Henry Brown's from the other Marcus John Henry Brown's. I'll keep you up to date. Good afternoon.

The Fool

2011-10-14T17:44:00.000+02:00

"In many esoteric systems of interpretation, the Fool is usually interpreted as the protagonist of a story, and the Major Arcana is the path the Fool takes through the great mysteries of life and the main human archetypes. This path is known traditionally in Tarot as the Fool´s Journey, and is frequently used to introduce the meaning of Major Arcana cards to beginners.

In his Manual of Cartomancy, Grand Orient has a curious suggestion of the office of Mystic Fool, as a part of his process in higher divination. The conventional explanations say that The Fool signifies the flesh, the sensitive life, depicting folly at the most insensate stage. When The Fool appears in a spread, he is a signal to strip down to the irreducible core, and interrogate whether the Querant's self-vision is obscured. It may also be a warning that significant change is coming. Another interpretation of the card is that of taking action where the circumstances are unknown, confronting one's fears, taking risks, and so on."

The Tower

2011-10-14T13:59:00.002+02:00

"... the Tower represents the paradigms constructed by the ego, the sum total of all schema that the mind constructs to understand the universe. The Tower is struck by lightning when reality does not conform to expectation."

http://metamarcus.weavrs.info

"... Others believe that the Tower represents dualism, and the smashing of dualism into its component parts, in preparation for renewal that does not come from reified, entrenched concepts. The Ivory Tower as a parallel image comes to mind, with all its good parts and its bad parts."

http://twitter.com/#!/MetaMarcus

Which reminds me. This is interesting ...

http://plus.google.com/u/0/114497068161438955067/about

It has begun.

But it’s our loss that we can’t

2011-10-13T11:00:00.000+02:00

About 22 years ago I was studying art with a very funny chap called Joel. He had this idea of infiltrating the young conservatives. I’ve always been a little left wing, but Joel was decidedly militant. His idea was to infiltrate, subvert and change from within; he wanted to seed left wing ideas that were packed up in center-right hyperbole. He was convinced that, as long as it sounded like Margret Thatcher had said it, the young conservatives would swallow it, regardless of what the real message was. He had this vision of working up through the ranks of the conservative party, becoming an MP and finally the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A left wing wolf dressed as a conservative sheep.

He never did it.

Hardly a week goes past without me thinking about Joel and his infiltration idea. Seriously, it was 22 years ago, but I think about it all of the time. Every time something annoys me, every time a political party says or does something daft, every time a bank gets away with murder and every time a large tech company tries to change society in a way that only makes sense for the company it’s self – I think of Joel and his infiltration idea.

I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot lately.

You see, Joel saw his infiltration idea as a work of art as well as an action for change or a political statement. The idea was subtle and clever – if it sounded like politics for the audience, then for the audience it would be politics. But he never did it.

I know of only one person who is currently doing something similar. The man is a genius and I respect and envy his work. You may know of others, I don’t. As some of you may have noticed I’ve not launched a new character or project since October of last year, which is partly due to me thoroughly enjoying my new job. It also has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve not really had anything to say about this funny internet world in which we live but that, as of the last couple of weeks, has changed.

I believe that we are living in exciting and dangerous times. I believe that it is time to infiltrate, subvert and change. I believe that it could work. Perhaps it’s my naivety that I think it can be done but I’m going to have a go. I’ll be documenting it here.

Good morning.

Post Plus Post

2011-10-07T16:11:00.001+02:00

So, you know, I left. I liked google plus a lot but the real name policy is such a bloody farce that I decided I couldn’t stay anymore. Which is a shame. Because I really liked it.

I’m hearing rumours that the argument is still going on, it may even be picking up a little bit of momentum. I get emails and things that tell me so, which feels odd – like I’m some kind of dissident or something. I asked people on Diaspora to say hi to people on g+ too, which is really odd and probably silly but I miss them.

That was the thing I liked most about it over on google+. The people. The new people, who funnily enough, were mostly German. There was that Sixtus chap, Kathrin Passig, Markus Angermeier, Christoph Kappes, Torrid Luna and many, many more that I had never heard of before and thoroughly enjoyed following. There were of course a lot of old chums (you know who you are). There was, of course, Herr Breitenbach. There was, of course, Sascha. Many thanks, hello and much love to you all. I'm alright. I'm not dead. There is a life after google+. Logun's run, etc.

So, I’ll be blogging again. I’ll probably be writing more about this kind of stuff for a while. About identity. About the way of the web. About me and probably about you.

Good afternoon.

Peak Sharing

2011-09-26T15:52:00.000+02:00

One of the presumed fundamental rules of this strange thing we call Social Media, is sharing. People share things. That the things people share have become a commodity shouldn’t really surprise anyone and yet (and I include myself here) it not only surprises us it scares us too. The services we’re using increasing encourage us to share more. Yesterday, for example, I had a look at klout.com, a service I have never really fully understood (it thinks I’m influential about Sean Connery and bacon) and klout told me that “oh no, your score dropped a point” and that “you need to share more” stuff.

So I’m sat here thinking that were sharing all of this stuff. More stuff. Lots of stuff. Our stuff becomes data and that data becomes commodity - it becomes the fuel of the social web, something like oil or gas or electricity and that worries us – or, at least, it’s starting to worry us.

That got me thinking. If all of our stuff (pictures, comments, likes, sentiments…) is the fuel of service like Facebook then what would happen if the fuel run out? If we simply stopped sharing. The reason I say this is because a number of us in Germany have either already left (or stopped using) or are considering leaving Facebook and it just seemed to me, much like with the controversial “Peak Oil” theory, that we may be going through a period of Peak Sharing.

What would happen to Facebook if, for one whole day, nobody shared anything at all?

A pound of flesh. Amen Explained by Amen.

2011-09-14T16:00:00.000+02:00

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stategems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.

Why stories are better than campaigns.

2011-09-13T13:02:00.001+02:00

Stories are better than campaigns. They are. They keep your mind ticking over long after the storyteller has left the room, the covers of the book have been closed or the end credits start rolling. You can submerge yourself into a story. You can swamp yourself with a story. You can take a bath in the twists and turns of the tale. You can develop a relationship with the story and its characters – you can love them and you can hate them and once you have entered into this relationship it becomes difficult to negate them. A story has a soul. The soul of any given story gives you the ability to imagine.

Stories can be delicious.

A campaign on the other hand is a replicant. It may look like a story, it may sound like a story but it lacks the empathic nature of the story. A campaign lacks the class, the pedigree and the countenance of a story; it doesn’t have the delicacy nor the poise because it’s trying to sell you something.

A campaign is a narrative whore.

The story doesn’t want anything from you, it makes no demands. A story isn’t trying to sell you anything at all.

Digital Stories and Digital Characters

2011-08-31T16:15:00.000+02:00

I’ve been making little videos in my lunch break. Sat on a roof. The roof of Booming, where I work. I’ve been thinking about digital stories and digital characters. I shall be doing some more, daily, and posting them on my google+ thing. I may collate them here.
Good afternoon.

Character Design in the Digital Age

2011-08-24T10:20:00.000+02:00

This is my presentation from the Immersive Writing Lab, which was a cracking couple of days. Great speakers. Great audience.

Immersive Writing Lab.

2011-08-23T12:26:00.001+02:00

Here are some of the things that I referenced on Saturday at the Immersive Writing Lab. If you were there then I hope you had fun and learned some new things.

Come and say hello to my Otto.

2011-08-23T10:35:00.006+02:00

View Larger Map

This is Otto. I say hello to him on my way to work. This is where I stand when I say hello and take my pictures of him. Now, let’s see if you can find me.

Ah, the drillability of it all.

2011-08-17T15:59:00.002+02:00

This morning I spotted google related, which is a little chrome extension that says it “will help you find more while you browse". There’s a video. Watch it if you can be bothered. I’ve installed the bloody thing and it works. It might come in handy for writing stories and making characters and stuff. The transmedia crowd are probably going crazy over it.

Anyway, this is what it does.

Look, that’s old Tom Waits. I like Tom. I’m on his internet-web-page. The chrome extention trots off and finds more of Tom on the interwebs and gives it to me. Smashing. You get maps, reviews, videos, news and other web stuff. Smashing.

Then I forgot about it because google related is so 7.30 o'clock, and it’s now midafternoon. Yeah, I forgot about it until somebody pointed out a group of lawyers that have gone for cool. Yes, you can listen to The Prodigy on their webpage. Aces. I was just getting down with their awesome beats (I believe that’s what young people call ‘tapping your foot’) when google related kicked in again.

MySpace pages, a wedding photo and, if I am not mistaken, that young lady does appear to be a little tipsy (Larger version of the image can be found here.) Added Information. A little bit of backstory on these lawyers. Cool. Henry Jenkins must be loving the drillability of it all.

Cue google conspiracy theorists, data protection fanatics and the German wing of The Pirate Party (which is all probably the same thing).

Kingdom Come

2011-08-08T12:44:00.000+02:00

This morning, a colleague asked me what had happened in London over the weekend. I didn’t know so I went and had a dig around the Internet. First port of call was BBC news, where I stumbled upon this video clip. It’s about two minutes long and describes the looting that’s been going on. There’s something really rather disturbing about this clip as well as some of the other reports I’ve seen surrounding the riots.

Here's what struck me: “Williams Hill window smashed”, “Vodafone looted”, “Foot Locker looted and set on fire”, “Smashed through the doors of Halfords” and the one I find particularly odd, “Marks and Spencers attacked.”

Good morning, Mr Ballard.

The Fraternity Web.

2011-08-04T15:00:00.003+02:00

There was once a time where diversity of thinking and interests was considered an important thing. Popular thinkers of the day encouraged us to explore new things that we would maybe have never considered thinking about and thinking a little harder about the things we actually know and do. A friend encourages his team and friends to regularly buy a magazine that covers a subject they're not interested in order to find out something new. Back in the halcyon days of blogging this was called being interesting. The pursuit of interesting even spawned a series of conferences and back in 2007 our Internet world seemed to be, well, interesting.

Four years, friends and some circles later, things seem not only to have changed, but have done a complete ~~360~~ 180 on the idea of diversity, fascination and interestingness. It seems to me that, particularly with what’s going on on google+, that diversity of thinking and the skill of actually being interested in something new has faded, making way for a new phase of the web; a place full of speed, quick links, quick likes and a binary scoring system. This new web seems to have turned its back on the skill of thinking for one’s self, in favour of the fraternity.

Surely, I’m not the only one who has noticed this? Fraternity thinking is like herd on Vodka-Redbull; hugely protective, highly organized, fascinatingly dull and staggeringly aggressive to anyone who either questions the central themes of their “circle” or dares to move beyond posting a cheezburger network link and actually thinks for themselves. Borg-Like, deeply suspicious of success and completely void of irony, this new fraternity web does and should worry me. I hope it worries you too.

Manoeuvres in the Dark

2011-08-03T18:44:00.001+02:00

I’ve been sniffing around some of my old haunts like blip.fm and the what not. Part nostalgia, part research it has been interesting to dig around some of these old things to see what’s happened to them. I’ve been having a jolly good look at LinkedIn lately, a platform I never really managed to appropriate for my particular kind of Internet nonsense, when I noticed that I am obviously not the only person around the web who has or is considering a comeback.

I’ve often wondered what young Sam Ismail was up to. You know, after the little vanishing act that followed all of this. Maybe we will never know.

Time to get this back on track.

2011-08-02T15:08:00.002+02:00

Hang on. I need to settle into this new chair; shift my aging old buttocks from left to right and find the sweet spot. I need to stretch, to relax my sagging old shoulders and make ridiculous clockwork movements with my head. When I do, everything goes a crackle and years of chalk buildup that has caked itself around my bones splinters off, causing a great deal of discomfort and grumpiness.

Yes, The Kaiser has returned. I’ve dusted done the old helm of the Internet and taken a silken handkerchief to the soot ridden screens that surround me. I’ve peered in and had a little look and it may not surprise you at all to discover that I’m really rather disappointed. What on earth have you lot been up too? Have you no pride? No shame?

It’s time to get a purchase on all of this again; time for some guidance, for some truth and it is most certainly time for some discipline.

There will be no badges for good behavior.

So, would kindly stop getting your bloody knickers in a twist about klout scores and other such twaddle and pay some attention, so that we may, over time, get all this stuff back on track.

And sit up straight when I’m talking you.

A very good morning, afternoon and evening to one and all.