Internetome on Philip Sheldrake

Why decentralization needs more than cryptonetworks – the Internetome

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Aldous Huxley (1937) regarded the decentralization of industry and government necessary for a better society. Norbert Wiener’s insights (1950) into the dynamics and ethics of humans and large computer systems hinted at the advantages. Marshall McLuhan (1962) anticipated a shift from the centralized mechanical age to the decentralized electronic age, coining the term global village as shorthand for such a welcome outcome. E.F. Schumacher (1973) considered decentralization allied with freedom and one of “the truths revealed by nature’s living processes”. Steven Levy’s hacker ethic (1984) includes the tenet “mistrust authority – promote decentralization”. And Nicholas Negroponte (1995) regards decentralization as one of the four cardinal virtues of the information society (alongside globalization, harmonization and empowerment).

When centralization is mediated by an organization, governmental or corporate, its best interests must be aligned perfectly and continuously with the parties subject to its gravity in the mediating context – otherwise decentralization must be preferred to avoid the appropriation and erosion of those parties’ valuable agency. Importantly, decentralization demands decentralization at every level without exception for any exception would be centralization. By definition.

This post aims to scope the challenge that still lies ahead to secure decentralization even with the rise and rise of cryptonetworks such as Ethereum . For more information about decentralization in general and why it’s important, see Decentralization – a deep cause of causes you care about deeply , written for the World Wide Web Foundation.

A haiku for the prospects of the sociotechnical

Wed, 14 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, at Southampton University, my WAIS colleague Ian Brown challenged me to write a haiku to describe my research interests. Here’s my effort, the first time in a decade of blogging that I’ve posted poetry … and quite possibly the last time too!

we in our biome add data and shake open an Internetome

An open letter to Paul Polman, Unilever – from Enterprise 2.0 Summit, London

Wed, 26 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I’m at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit at the British Academy in London today, courtesy of Kongress Media and Agile Elephant . In conversation with Lee Bryant , Matt Partovi , David Terrar , Damian Corbet , Céline Schillinger , Johan Lange , Janet Parkinson and Anne McCrossan , a common theme is emerging – we need such events as this, and the deep and wide potential of Enterprise 2.0, to extend beyond the inevitable echo chamber of today’s eager community.

The Future of Organization – a video presentation on the major themes and some new provocations

Fri, 23 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to the future of organization, and plenty to be optimistic about. Saying that, like any and all topics worth grappling with, it takes a bit of time to get up to speed on the depth and breadth of things. As a member of the advisory council for the Future of Work community, and part of the steering group for The Responsive Organization community, I know I’m not the only one looking to communicate these ideas effectively.

Mike Grafham and I talked about compiling a three-minute explanatory video, and I failed woefully at such brevity. This 42-minute video presentation aims to provide a relatively speedy immersion in some of the main themes, spanning human rights, complexity science, the death of heuristics, the six influence flows, personal knowledge mastery, social physics, trust, the digital nervous system, Web 3.0, performance and learning, public relations, collective intelligence, sociocracy, Holacracy, podularity, wirearchy, emergent civilzation, self-organization, organized self, socioveillance, the middleware corporate, Bread incorporated, distributed autonomous corporates, and the Mozilla manifesto.

[embed width=“960”]http://www.vimeo.com/96201589[/embed]

The Internetome

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Just going back through some archives and found the definition I developed for the Internetome conference in 2010. Sponsored by Intel , Qualcomm and the Consumer Electronics Association , it was, I believe, the UK’s first all-day Internet of Things conference. The conference website bit the dust some time during my subsequent server migrations, so for posterity, particularly as everyone is talking about the Internet of Things these days …

Marketing and Communications in the Internetome

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been out of circulation but had a crazy week before I left, including chairing the launch of 6UK for the promotion of the new Internet Protocol and running the UK’s first Internet of Things conference, Internetome . Thanks to the Intellect events team for super event management, and to the sponsors Intel, Qualcomm, Consumer Electronics Association, Meanwhile and 6UK.

Here’s my presentation “Marketing and Communications in the Internetome”:

Marketing and Communications in the Internetome

The next big big thing: it's happening now

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Marketing and PR as we know it today have been transformed by two massive technological revolutions. The first was the Web, when the Internet became user-friendly, and its subsequent social morphings. The second was the mobile phone and its current zenith, the smartphone. These are the two giants to which most everything else that’s changed relates.

The vast majority of marketing and PR strengths and weaknesses, and associated opportunities and threats, stem from the Web and from the smartphone. And yet another giant has emerged to which the vast majority of marketing and PR professionals are mostly blind in my experience: the Internet of Things.

Everything is being connected to the Internet. Cars, dishwashers, air conditioning, power supplies, clothes, animals, bottles of whisky, public transport, medicines, joint replacements, your front door, your training shoes and your bicycle. It is happening right now.

If you’re an innovator on the lifecycle / adoption curvy thing, then you were thinking about the Web in 1995, about mobile in 1998, and smartphones in 2005. You started scoping the Internet of Things in 2008.

Now it’s the end of 2010, it’s the time for the early majority to embrace the Internet of Things, and that’s you if you want more of that opportunity to come your way than the competition’s. Join me at Internetome, the Internet of Things Conference , in London, November 10th. Sponsors include Intel, Qualcomm and the Consumer Electronics Association, and my own company.

And as the Internet of Things impacts all aspects of business not just marketing and PR, I’d urge you to get on the front foot and let the rest of your organisation / your clients know. Today.

Hope to see you on the 10th :-)

Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.