Encounter With A City Chic Male

Yesterday I was out with some friends when a person who looked very much like a "City Chic - Male" standard avatar came to our table. He knew one friend of mine, so he sat around for a while.

I think that looking like this will make people with SL experience worldwide look at you with a smile... The same with jeans and white t-shirt combo (clothing set for another standard avatar). Man, better go and edit yourself...

How Online Worlds May Beat Some Bad Things Out of PR (and marketing)

Once I met a British colleague at a dinner table who said that he would like to do the "real thing" from time to time, "not just PR, because PR is about painting things". I felt both sorry for him and angry because this is what most people think of PR. Our profession is flooded with too many persons who have built their careers on polishing what they or their clients "seem to be" and not developing what they "really are". As many of them will not be able to reorient themselves towards different kind of professionalism, they will continue dragging the industry to the depths of disrespect.

And it does not help that you switch from a golden pen to Iphone or toss out the leather couches to replace them with creative office design, since this will again be about form, not about content. It does not help either that you erect your consultancy in Second Life or anywhere else, because there your inability shows even more easily. Online worlds are places where crap is revealed especially fast. Every information can be checked. Bending truth and just seeming someone you are actually not, is not easy any more, although in the beginning you may feel that you can hide your real identity online.

I believe that online environments are leading the attitude change here and the same type of skepticism towards empty brand promises and hollow pr will soon be imported back to the "real life", since the online inhabitants are the front-runners of the culture that wants to see two things in information - relevance and quality.

Of course, I am aware that I may sound as a naive technological determinist here and indeed, there are many obstacles to a larger scale changes in PR. First, the PR people themselves... many of them will continue carrying on practices in ways they have been used to, even though this may eventually damage both the clients interests and their own reputation. But for many it is not easy to change.

Second, the history. Since many things have worked in the past, these old examples are still copied over and over into modern PR and marketing practices. Take the political PR for example, where many leading politicians have not noticed that certain types of spin are getting more counterproductive by the day and you have less and less time to get away with your half-truth. Be it Bill Clinton, George W. Bush from U.S. or a leading politician from Estonia, no big differences there.

Third, the lack of well communicated vision. Half jokingly - have you ever seen a movie with a "good" PR person? Often these guys are worse than evil itself and unfortunately their prototypes deserve it. Start from the China Syndrome, continue with all the modern wagthedogs there are. There was one more or less positively idealistic political campaign lady in the Primary Colors, but she shot herself and Al Pacino character did something good in the end of The People I Know and was killed as well. Ok, the Phone Booth guy was transferred to an arguably better person but a gunman was needed for that. Sometimes I think that this is a self generating system, a wheel that never stops, bad PR practices deserve to be in these movies but then they somehow attract more bad people into the industry.

Fourth, it takes time to form new visions, to put them into practice, to test them, to teach it. The potential of PR requires absolutely new skills and world outlook. It requires understanding that form and content can not be separated. It means that you can no longer only "seem", you also need to "be". It would be wrong to say that being and seeming are exactly same things, but they are inseparable and thus they need to be translated into each other with maximum accuracy. Of course, you may point out many instances in modern world where spin actually works, but then I will probably be able to show you the price of it.

Fifth, of course there are pathways for operating in old ways in online environments too. Audiences can be fooled, search results misled and faked. It is more difficult, but if you really want, then some can survive with this and some may even get rich.

People occasionally turn to me and wonder, how can I claim something like that, being a PR person myself. That is a sad question, because it underlines that people often have no idea what kind of a potential communication industry actually has nor do they know that rather different PR practices can be found across the world. For that reason we have used terms PR 1.0 and PR 2.0 in our Estonian offices to mark the difference (forgive me that they sound a bit stupid, if you have any better ideas, please let me know!).

Yet many progressive PR concepts have been worded already in the eighties, take the principles of symmetric communication by James E. Grunig and his colleagues for example, but I think that we are reaching the time where these are just not nice ideas but a necessity.

And fortunately I know that there are still lots of PR people with new ideals and will to reform the practices and the best news is that I have seen how communication advisory can change the world for better. And there are tens of thousands of people in online environments, both PR people by profession or just smart guys, who have figured out the rules of the game already.

You may argue and this is just a hypothesis, but in marketing the same trend shows with the rising popularity of things that just do not have a brand stamped on, but have the brand built in it. Not to mention the cliche of Apples and Ipods, but have a look at clothes that have no visible labels on them or take for example my Tokyoflash watches that do not need to have any label on it in order to be desirable for me.




Will the importance of logo decline because the unique essence of a product is more important than "seeming"?

Tuning in for Christmas

I am not a big fan of Christmas. Some people might know that I go through Christmas time on autopilot, reading books or playing computer games, sometimes escaping into a snowy retreat with a single goal, just to pass through this period without too much trouble.

But yesterday we bought a Christmas tree together with SL resident Raine Carver and set it up at the balcony of Estonian embassy in Second Life. The tree is like 10 meters high and barely fits in. But well, I have never liked small Christmas trees and I believe that the Foreign Ministry agrees. After that we had fun celebrating the tree together with some other Estonians.

Nuuna Nitely chose to stand on her head and spin like a streetdancer, with her pointed hat it seemed that she is about to drill a hole in the floor. The event felt like a good time.





While shopping for the tree I could not resist posing with some yucky Christmas stuff. Here you go :).

A Modern Oracle, Mr. Head

This is my favorite piece in the virtual Estonian embassy. It is made by the sculptor Seifert Surface, who has never done any figurative sculptures before, only pure abstract forms. It is inspired by Skype (as this little program has something to do with Estonia) andf it tells you fictional stories about the future of technology.

I had to write the stories as i told somewhere before, and this was fun. I hope you find them amusing. Just go to the fourth floor at the Estonian embassy. And while you are at it, be scared by the sneaky cyber war machine!

The embassy slurl.

Whew.

These are some parts of a Skype inspired sculpture, lying near the embassy. The installation will tell you stories from the future. It is a cool thing made by sculptor Seifert Surface, future stories to this object are written by me after we had a brainstorm with two colleagues Coco Jishnu and Tang Republic :). You can see all this on Wednesday already when the embassy is open to the public.

The Embassy Pictures

These are some new pictures made of the embassy with the new Second Life viewer. If you are interested in print quality pictures, let me know by sending an email at daniel@hillandknowlton.ee.

A Kick From Architecture

Some fresh pictures from the opening of a new Princeton building by Scope Cleaver. It is built for the students to hang out and have events. This is the most beautiful piece of architecture by Scope that I have seen this far.

On Feedback

One reason why people turn to (computer) games is an instant feedback in the form of points and levels that is offered in games. As the invisible hands of game architects inch you towards a final solution, you can be sure that whatever you do, you get evaluated.

If it only were so easy in real life! Most people do not get proper daily feedback and although some may even get it, they still do not know, what to do with it. People who get feedback and understand it, advance fast in life and generally are more successful. People without feedback are often left to poverty and solitude. Or sometimes they get it too late or in too serious form, as Titanic got its feedback from an iceberg.



Is any feedback good? Not necessarily, but the more diverse it is, the better you will know yourself and the more information there is for your decisions. In this way you will become feedback-rich. I believe also, that a feedback-rich country or a company has more chances to develop than the one that is not.

Is Estonia feedback-rich at the moment? I am afraid that the answer is "not as much as it could". Politicians tend to be very selective in terms of criticism they want to hear. There are issues like economic development, brain-drain and integration that are not responded to by the government or that are only constrained to certain views and this is exactly how you become feedback poor.

Hard ASCII Moment

Visited a club called Incircle. Pretty hard rocking going on there. And check some guy's ASCII!

Leaving Earth In Lithuania And Then Arriving To Some Important Conclusions

This whole blog was inspired by a lecture Leaving Earth that I prepared for my colleagues and later performed with at several other locations, including the University of Tallinn. And man, this presentation is taking me places! This time I ended up as a futuristic performer at BMW klubas at the Siemens Arena in Vilnius where I was invited by some Lihtuanian friends, especially Zydrunas from TNS.

Well, being sometimes uncomfortable with flying (but not so much after I learned some principles of aerodynamics), I went by car. Especially taking into the account that one or two years ago, one of the previous performers of this event had died in a plane crash just before he could give the lecture. Laugh at me if you want!

The registering system for the lecture resembled e-voting in Estonia (or was even better). People were greeted by the image of the rotating retina of Zydrunas and given space food and vitamin tablets. Later neon colored drinks followed. I was also offered a possibility to wear a shiny space-suit to stress the point of futurism :) but then we decided that the lecture's message will shift too much to science fiction and I still had my business suit to wear. 

But Zydrunas himself took his suit seriously and was having it on as a moderator. The public was amused. 

Actually my point here is a really paradoxical one. It seems that the more I get into the virtuality, the more I get into reality as well. While trying to study Leaving Earth, you suddenly find yourself Arriving Earth, having lot of serious, cool and/or funny experiences.  I believe that this goes very well together with the point of culture. Virtuality and culture as being the same thing and enriching you. And thanks for inviting me! 

Why Monks May Have Been Wrong About Their Bodies

Bodies are important in communication and they will continue to be. There are three important reasons for that. First of all, our mind does not function well without a body. As Antonio Damasio wrote in one of his books, body is the genesis of thought. Or as they say, body is the temple of the mind and you may not be able to have any sound mind without its temple. 

Secondly, the next level of computer interfaces will be much better in transferring bodily communication into virtuality. Which would mean that virtual representations of bodies will change slightly in their meaning, e.g. they will have more connections to physical movements. It will also mean that computer users will become more fit, but I would not like to stress fitness too much since that is also a fashion issue and may mislead us in the search of body's real meaning. 

And thirdly, a thought which I am actually very proud of, it appears that computerized virtual worlds may also start to enrich our bodies, not only degrade as is the common thinking.  It happens by showing what we can be - both through fantasy and training. This idea is against many conventional myths, but believe me, it will happen. Just imagine a teenager, who has become good at Konami Dancemat NOT using this skill in real life. I can not imagine that.

Now, the philosophical-futuristic question again. Can we one day live only virtually? Not impossible, but definitely not in a way it is imagined in the movies where a guy's brain lives in a solution. Probably the sensing and thinking mechanisms that need to be transferred into the virtuality are much larger than just the brain and some major nerve routes. 

The House Party

Meanwhile the house that we own with Rexroth has become a place for spontaneous parties for Estonians in SL. Feel free to visit us at Kilmarten!

Realm of Unrealistic Beauty

Two visitors at the reflexive architecture gallery. This gallery is by far the most beautiful place I have visited in SL recently.

In Bhutan

Haven' t written anything here for a while. Part of the reason is that I was in Bhutan (now in India). For those who know Estonian, it may be worthwile to check out our travel blog. If we talk about virtualities and travelling, then of course, it is a major topic. Take myself for example. I made 655 pictures there, as my camera says, but none of these was made of dog poo or some ugly building. All I did was taking pictures of the bhutanese best sides. The outcome is beautiful, but pretty virtual.

At the same time the important point here is that you can never escape the choices you make and they are never fully real. As someone wrote about this Chinese emperor who wanted a perfect map of China. First he built a small map that was updated daily after disasters or other changes happened. In the end he wanted to make a map as big as China itself...

(That picture was actually made by my travelmate, my camera wire is with the lost baggage.)

Endless Chase

There are some things in life that can never be properly understood, just because the understanding itself changes them immediately. No, I am not talking about quantum physics, but just common reflexivity in everyday life.

A simple example - the moment you understand that you are stupid, makes you less stupid, but when you think that you are smart because of that little intellectual achievement, it will make you more silly again. The moment British bachelors understand that Tallinn is a good place for hanging around, it is not any more. The moment the taxi drivers...

Aint this a stupid post?

Virtual Embassy Notes - a new site

We opened a special site for those who want to track the progress at the Estonian Embassy construction site in Second Life. The Estonian version will follow shortly, this one is in English.

Creating the Embassy

When Sweden erected the Second Life embassy I could never have thought that the ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia would come to our company with the request to coordinate the production of the Estonian embassy in Second Life. But this is exactly what happened in early August. Now I am rather happy to say that the building itself is ready and the ingenious architect Scope Cleaver is continuing his work on the interiors.

I could have told you about the bizarreness of it all. Buying the virtual land, trading lindens, meeting the builders, drafting the concept, getting really nervous while waiting for the island to form... But the project was too experimental at that point, we decided to keep it low profile.

There has been a lot of confusion in the media about which country is really first to establish an embassy in Second Life. Maldives claim to be first. Sweden is often claimed to be the first too and they really are the leaders of virtual diplomacy in my opinion, especially if you look at some innovative approaches (just go and listen to the Wallenberg room).

What will make the Estonian embassy special would be its different focus and the fact that it is "official official" foreign ministry representation (Sweden has a sort of cultural diplomacy aspect with the Swedish Institute being the patron there).

Expect more information soon.

Double Edged Myths II. What About the Hype of Second Life?

"It was that year that the rich showed up," wrote Hemingway in A Moveable Feast. For Second Life "the rich" showed up a year ago or so. They came, had fun, sent out press releases about that and then many of them left.

So. Whom are we really criticizing, when we talk about companies leaving Second Life? The virtual world itself or the hypers? Who is guilty that company PR in Second Life is not creating buzz anymore? Who is to blame that many houses are empty and the brands are not worshiped?

Really, whose problem it is that it is so much more interesting to visit the ones who have understood the logics of virtuality? Like spend some time at Regina Spektor listening loft and have a really good conversation? And who cares about this problem anyway :).

I have observed that these guys who come to Second Life for bubble, get exactly that - a bubble. Those who come for something else, may end up with finding exactly that as well. But yes, probably Linden Labs got carried away by the hype themselves at some point and may now face some justified hickups in publicity.

I believe though, that there are a lot of people and companies who learn to live in such an environment and create valuable content. It just takes more than just relying on your existing asymmetric marketing principles.



"Please...visit my island..."

(Picture: DON KEEFER reprising his Broadway role as Bernard in film version of DEATH OF A SALESMAN, with Fredric March as Willy Loman. Source: www.imdb.com)

The World in Their Minds

In 2004 I was giving a lecture on communication to 15 official looking people. All from rather high public service positions. They paid attention and everything seemed to go well.

In the end one of them came to me and said: "Thank you. Although I must admit, I do not have any clear idea what you were talking about, I got so many thoughts when I was listening to you."

Was it a compliment? It did sound like one. Later I have found out that this kind of a confusion is common in lectures, but there are not so many people ready to accept this. Often people pretend to get your point exactly.

What is the use of lectures then? If your lecture creates a world where people can move on their own, you have done a good job. Just do not forget to give them a compass...

Double Edged Myths. The Cyber War of Estonia.

Was it a script for a Hollywood movie written under the influence of Die Hard 4 or really an account of Estonian Cyber war? Although there were people in Estonia, who found the Wired article Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe brilliant, I think that everyone should think twice.

While it is true that several Estonian sites were under the botnet attack and many were taken down, the magnification of this event may lead to lesser credibility of Estonia on the international arena. While the media may like well selling war metaphors and Estonians themselves may enjoy the pro-Estonian attitude of such articles, we should keep our heads cool and not cry wolf every time some Russian hackers who are misled by Russian state media launch DDoS attacks.

So, thank you, Wired, for being supportive, but please do not take any insult if we find the coverage a little bit of a science fiction. And forgive the media-friendly Estonian politicians for being too eager with war metaphors. War or not, it was not easy for them and to be honest, there were serious lessons for the future of cyber-security to be learned during the hacker attacks.



Estonian prime minister practicing "don't mess with me look" before the next cyber battle. (Just joking).

The Fundamental Joke

When my first life personality was working for the Government in 1997, the Estonian stock exchange crashed through the floor. Several important people kept insisting publicly that "the fundamentals are good" and "there is ACTUALLY no reason for the stock prices to fall". The prices still kept falling, not caring about the fundamentals.

Today the Finance ministry of Estonia announced that "there are no big problems for Estonian economy", but "people are psychological beings and may overreact". That was said in the context of soft landing expectations for Estonian economy (coming down from double digit growth numbers).

Well, dudes...analysts... When do you learn that there are no "fundamentals" in economy? Economy is an agreement, based on mutually useful exchange. And this is why it is as virtual as the whole Second Life business. Economy IS one of the most important virtual spaces. What people say it costs, it costs. What people believe, makes economy tick. The "fundamentals" are just simplifications for all this. Don't be funny, admit it.

Where To Buy Linden Dollars (Not Tradelindens.com)

Sometimes you need to pay for building services in Second Life in Linden dollars and since there is a currency trading limit by Linden Labs which they are reluctant to raise, at least on short notice, you may need to use secondary providers such as Anshe Chung, SLExchange or someone else.

Anshe Chung has rather low limits of its own. SLExchange's account confirm message was lost somewhere in the outer space, so I tried a suspicious looking site tradelindens.com. The good thing seemed to be that the place advertises "15 minute Linden Delivery".

I placed my test-order with not much money to lose. In 3-4 hours there was still no delivery. So I opened the "live chat by Liveperson" window in order to get more information. Got the busy message for some hours. My email to the contact address resulted in response that my order is being "security checked" and delivery should be made in the course of the day.

Did I get my Lindens finally? This is not what happened. Fortunately I got my payment refunded, with the note that my order has been placed "in a 30 day hold by our risk management system." Well, thanks Tradelindens, but it more or less looks that you were not able to deliver the currency or your "risk management" system has really found out something about me that Paypal, Linden Labs, Amazon.com and other sites have clearly not been able to do.

A Discussion

A: "I was thinking that the major difference between virtual worlds and real life is that virtual worlds can be killed by pulling a plug or turning the switch."

B: "Yeah? What about the real world? What about the world from one minute ago? Where can I find it? It is gone as well. Only fading memory, interpretations and fiction are left..."

A: Sighs. "Damn..."

A Note to Sci-Fi Writers

Hey, science fiction writers and other visionaries! I have a small idea for you. When you write about year 2300 or the 31st century, please do not make your characters use great inventions of a moment such as "HD disks" or make them walk in the corridors covered with a hype material that you just may have admired in your study when you wrote your otherwise timeless masterpiece. (Such as "linoleum" in Ursula Le Guin 1970s novel Lathe of Heaven).

I know, it is hard, but just look at some people like Arthur C. Clarke, who has created long respected ideas like a computer without moving parts or "pure travelling intelligence called Vanamonde" or something. And look, in 1992 Neal Stephenson created a metaversum structure in Snow Crash that is rather plausible for users of Second Life today. Or even Jules Verne, who is to some extent still fun to read...

Instead of a HD disk, you could just say "disk", or memory. Instead of linoleum, you could dream any name for a material. A good idea would be not to look at what already exists in the world of today, but what would be logical if there were no technological constraints. Use your imagination, guys! Don't ruin it for young people of 2015. Don't make the possible worlds impossible. Just think of all these poor guys, who have to read sci-fi from 1960s where astronauts are typing away on typemachines.

Some other funny sci-fi ideas: people sending each other sms-type of messages in year 4034. "CN U GET WRD, NO ATCK..." (Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist). Some guy desperately looking for a pay phone on Mars (Somehwere in Ray Bradbury).

Plink Plonk

Must have been the Plink Plonk indie music festival that got me in such mood yesterday...

Silence Is Golden

I believe that they say "silence is golden" because before anything is said, everything is still possible. All the words that can be there. Silence is like a white sheet that our imagination can use as a movie screen. From the moment you say something, it is never completely white any more. It is like these probability waves collapsing.

Civil Society Starts When You Realize That Your Country is Virtual

In real life, I was standing with my colleague on the 20th floor of our office building, looking at a big cruise ship visiting Tallinn harbour. "Can you imagine that all Estonian policemen and all military could be put on this ship and it could sail away?" he said. And he was right. Not only would the forces fit in this ship, they would have plenty of room for a party too.

Countries are virtual. Yes, all of them. Be it USA or be it Albania, they all rest on the same belief that "there is a country". If there was no such belief for example, inside and outside of USA, we would not have USA and even the nuclear weapons would not help here.

Well, be honest you might say, at least part of the belief that there is USA, is supported by the fact that they have weapons! Maybe, but belief is still necessary. With Russia, for example, there is more belief that their nuclear weapons might actually work than there is ground to it, according to some analysts at least.

In Estonian case the belief that "there is a country" is not backed up by its own weapons. It is not relying upon massive industry nor any other feature that could be easily pointed out or that you can really touch. Some say that "it is all based upon our song festivals". Well, great, but in many ways Estonia seems to deny any geopolitical gravity and reason. Our biggest asset seems to be the fact that we hang around at all. And we believe that this is the right thing to do. The world seems to believe in us too.

Take away the belief and there is a prime minister who is just a stressed out man, there are too few civil servants, notoriously bad roads, a small police force and an army that according to general Ants Laaneots could immediately summon 200 men to fight and several thousands only with considerable delay. Put the belief back in and you get one great country with lot of great things to report.

The moral is that not even big countries survive without the right dose of virtuality that is expressed in values and beliefs that its citizens hold dear. Still, it may be easier for a big country to live through a temporary loss of belief than for one of the world's smallest fully functional countries called Estonia.

What is the real difference between advanced and less advanced countries? The more advanced countries tend to understand how fragile and imaginary a country can be. Less advanced countries still believe in their absolute might and the raw power of armies. As a rule, the advanced ones understand also the importance of a civil society, the further development of which is an absolute necessity in case of Estonia. Join the believers!


(The ship that we looked at. Photo from the blog of Chris Brooks.)

Sync, Democracy and Chats

Lately I read Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz. It is about the synchronization mechanisms both in organic and non-organic systems. It also describes the Kuramoto model, which explains perfectly well, why systems suddenly synchronize, by bringing in the order parameter.

The effect is similar to the freezing of water. You have water for all the different temperatures between 0-100C, but suddenly, when you go below zero, it freezes. Similarly the the order parameter has to be in a certain range so that sync can happen.

Now I come back to syncing in chats. I believe that it is totally possible to prove that Kuramoto model works well in both, RL and internet chats and there is some pretty mathematical syncing going on in conversations. I did find also an academic paper by italian scientists that basically shows how opinion changing can be modeled with the help of Kuramoto model.


(Picture: Changing Opinions in a Changing World: A New Perspective in Sociophysics, ALESSANDRO PLUCHINO, VITO LATORA and ANDREA RAPISARDA, 2004)

They show mathematically that more communication increases sync, but they also show that even with good communication tools, in reality the society will remain synced in different groups, not in one single group.


(Picture: same source as previous)

It is important to notice that while sync is vital to the society, absolute social sync or having the same opinion was not found desirable by the scientists as they found that democracy is possible only in an intermediate or partial state of sync.

What interests me are the syncing processes inside these small pockets of society that seem perfectly synced, the small groups? How do they keep in sync? A Skype chat can be a good tool to model that, but I will write about this later.

Reality 2 reality business coming up?

R2r has stood for Real to Reel company, Right to Reply and some technical stuff. Now with virtual worlds looking ways to converge with each other, Anshe Chung launching inter-world financial market and companies looking into ways to link different realities together, we can start talking about reality to reality business or r2r.

The most interesting thing here, is of course linking virtual realities to the real world. Actually this applies to any interface that translates our physical actions into virtuality (including Wii which is a good r2r device).

Sync it out, man!

I do not watch much traditional TV. It is mostly crap. When I do, I find it more bearable with the help of "syncing" - having some Skype chats open with people who are watching the same channel and having a constant stream of comments running freely in this window. It makes even the boring shows much more interesting to follow (especially the mother of all boring shows that everyone still watches - the Eurovision of course).

The more you comment, the more you sync, the better it is. Disclaimer: It does not make sense to read the chat log later since the fun is in the process and context of the moment. An unexpected benefit: Some interesting analysis may evolve from such syncing. And of course, it is pretty entertaining.

There is another idea of doing Second Life wine syncing, with some friends buying the same bottles of wine and then sitting in our gallery at second life and drinking some wine and commenting. Well, good wine and pure communication. If that happens, I will let you know!