Economics » Stand Aside

What’s good with green?

So, what is really good about going green?

The green revolution, global effort to cut back on detrimental exhausts and byproducts by adopting eco-friendly technology, is coming into full swing. With Al Gore’s film, An Inconvient Truth, reaching critical acclaim and being honored with an oscar; much of the country and the world are proposing plans to reduce their "carbon-footprint". A Carbon Footprint is a term used to describe a certain groups negative impact on the environment in the form of carbon emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. More and more business and corporations are promoting "green campaigns" within their business model.

This step is smart, considering the increasing concern for the environment on the parts of their customers. If customers are working to be more eco-friendly, they would LOVE to see the companies they invest in doing the same. In fact in some cases by promoting a brand as an eco-friendly brand, they draw in their original customer base as well as those who recognize that they should support a company who is supporting the environment. One downfall, which most cope with, is usually a slight rise in costs coming from the green transition. It is more expensive to don an environmentally friendly business but an investment now would prove to be smart considering the future of energy consumption.

I speak of energy consumption because I was looking through my BW.com feed and 6 out of 24 articles were about ethanol and other eco-friendly energy sources. Ethanol from corn is becoming quite the fiasco in Washington, as livestock farmers are protesting corn subsidies for ethanol producers. If corn is expensive for livestock farmers to acquire in order to feed their animals, the animals will be expensive for food producers which will in turn increase the prices on beef, chicken, pork, etc. that we buy from the grocery store. Another interesting twist in the ethanol story is that the government has put a tax on sugar ethanol produced in Brazil in order to corner the market in corn ethanol within the U.S. Why can’t we support our environment and energy concerns by buying some of our ethanol from Brazil? Buying from Brazil creates competition in an emerging market. It would force the corn ethanol producers to bottom out their prices and urge the public to transfer to their energy source as opposed to gasoline and other fossil fuels.

A couple quick questions for you all:

1. Should the U.S. follow through with subsidies for corn ethanol producers?
2. If so, how would this affect agriculture within the country?
3. If not, what could we do to promote alternative energy consumption?

Think GREEN!

An Economy of Imagination

When I think about the content of our economy today, I think of Neverland- Peter Pan and TinkerBell flying through the air. I know, it is quite a far out thought but bear with me here. Neverland, a world created by the imagination and ideas of children, is all too similar to where our world is heading.

I am referring to how we make money, how we develop business, how we meet with each other, how we get work done, how we buy music, how we learn, how we communicate, how we live. Yes, that’s right. Virtually. Intuitively. Imaginatively. A world built on imagination where the exchange of ideas is completely and utterly virtual. How cool is that? Interestingly enough, our entire idea of time and space has "been given a run for its money". We can be anywhere and everywhere in mere milliseconds. Science-fiction is becoming more and more reality. Take a look at Star Trek, communication via video and audio displayed on a screen. Teleportation to distances far reaching, i.e. conference calls, virtual business, etc. Now look at Star Wars, communication via holographic projections which are slowly making their way into our world beginning with projection TV’s [now a display of the past] and moving onto 3D projection.

The onset of social media as a prime conduit for the transfer of ideas intensifies innovation. As time and space become things of the past, I would argue that reality is no longer a graspable concept. What is real? What constitutes something being real? Is it merely a physical presence? An observable action? Space is no longer a relevant idea now that I can sit at home in New York, talk with a friend in California, all while completing a job in Ohio. Time is becoming more irrelevant as standing on line for tickets has gone out the window. Christmas shopping hell is now a breeze through paradise. What more need do we have for time? We have all the time in the world to get things done. Time is exponentially reduced each and every day. What is artificial? What is real? Potentially, nothing.

I love this episode of The Simpsons! One of my favorites.

Ok all. That is my other worldly post of the month. I have loved science fiction my entire life. While letting my mind wander during my lunch break at school today, I looked up old sci-fi stories and current science and tech articles. Sparks began to fly in my head as the neurons bounced off of each other in a bevy of realization and thought. We all need to let go of reality sometimes. Music is my outflow. Try it. Check out my LastFM weekly favorites.

Community vs. Self

We crabs in a barrel, you ain’t gettin out until I do first
And that’s why the guns burst
Whatever happened to strenght in numbers?
Some of the greatest minds on the planet are among us
But so many start on strugglin’ and never get saved
Man, Martin must be turnin’ in his grave
Like remind my soul – Akrobatik, Remind My Soul

"Some of the greatest minds on the planet are among us" So true. So very true.

The struggle for power is still ripe in many people. They yearn for the almighty dollar and would do almost anything to attain it. It is true that because of the struggle for power, violence towards other humans was born. Before the notion of violence was ever thought of, we used weapons to hunt for food to sustain our livelihood. Weapons were a tool for living, not a tool for killing. Akrobatik captures this in his inspirational lyrics, the pursuit of peace was lost as an agenda. Taking it back is key. Now with knowledge and community as the forefront of this battle. He says, "Martin must be turnin’ in his grave". Alluding to the peace keeper who tragically departed from this world before his vision was fully realized.

The community is here. We are gathering together, sharing information and ideas on a global scale. The key is in the content. Now that content is being generated by more and more people we can see a multitude of minds coming together to foster knowledge and progress. Blogging is the latest realization of this. Blogging is uniting the greatest thinkers in the world underneath their own unique umbrellas. Each niche is breaking the boundaries between the professional and the layman. Status is taking a bow and making way for content.

I am glad and fortunate to be able to share my ideas and notions with the world. What with the internet being such a perversely global agenda, we can decide its future as well as our own.

Networks as a contradiction to traditional value.

The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell. An extremely good read on the power of word-of-mouth in spreading epidemics, be it brand, product, lifestyle, whatever. I finally finished reading this book. It took me awhile because of school and such.

I came upon a stunning idea during the last chapter. The power of the social network is growing ever more in our society. It is becoming the most valuable channel to which we can connect with people. It first began with phone lines. The telephone made communication the epitomy of ease in a time when it took a physical deliverer sometimes months to confirm a message. Telephony evolved into faxing evolved into sms evolved into cellular telephony and email.

Generally in a capitalistic economy value or price rises as quantity falls and vice versa. This is true with every product or service except the "network". In order for a telephone to have value it must be able to call another telephone. Same with faxes, sms, and emails. We need more and more receivers in order to build the network. As the network grows it becomes more and more valuable. Look at MySpace and Facebook and all of the other social networking platforms. The value in the market for each of these are well into the millions and billions of dollars. As the network grows it becomes more powerful, as corporations are often said to become more powerful with additions. However, one may difference between a giant corporation and a giant network [Although arguably they are one in the same only governed by different rule sets.] is that a giant corporation becomes increasingly unstable and difficult to be managed while the network, managed by its users, is completely stable.

Can multi-million dollar corporations learn from the stable network? Maybe but I highly doubt it. Can I learn from the success of the stable network? OF COURSE! In its inherent contradiction of value I give the network the most value. The network decides what is important and not important, relevant and irrelevant, what I can use and can’t use. Hmm… WHAT I CAN USE? An interesting concept. Let’s see here. First I can use mediums, i.e. video, words, audio, and graphics. That seems to encompass most mediums. I can use feedback and connections to spark conversation. Conversation… hmmm… This could be my tool, my paintbrush, my mouse-click, my pencil. Conversation can help me to outline what really matters to the rest of the world, and adapt my message to the content which is relevant. Now my content is relevant. How to spread it? Let’s go back to my mediums. What I am spreading determines my medium. Do people want to hear my message, see my message, or experience my message? I’ll leave it up to them to decide. I am here to provide and facilitate they are here to filter and facilitate. It’s a two way street. It’s the Main Street of information. The Main Street of the future. "Person to Person communications is much bigger than marketing. It is about making the world ours, again." –David Weinberger via Shel Israel

I know… long post. Lots of words. Thanks for reading though. I’ll try to include pics next time to liven things up a bit. –KP

News, via paper or pixel?

The era of the newspaper seems to be dying out. But I wonder if there is actually any real danger to the life of this industry with the onset of major news being read through an online medium. I wonder if newspapers will become extinct. Many questions arise when trying to decide whether or not the online era will replace the paper era. I ask these questions in light of a documentary that I have been following by PBS Frontline called News War. It is a 4 part series on the forces affecting news media today.

Another focus the documentary accounts is the growing disparity between our government and the press. This is also a major topic which I will make a follow-up post on as soon I can. For now lets focus on what exactly is causing newspapers to retreat and how they can remain as much a part of culture today as they have been for many years past.

First, newspapers need an audience or else they cease to exist indefinitely. The audience one would argue have been those people who want to read the news. People who want to read the news range in age from those just beginning to read to those losing their eyesight. I do not think we can accurately portray a set "class" of society to read newspapers overall. Let us rule out those who do not need, persay a newspaper to read current news. At home we use personal computers, televisions, and radios; the former of the three being the most widely accepted today. When we go to work we have our cellphones, pda’s, laptops, car radios, etc to give us live news updates by the minute. "What if I take the subway where none of those devices can receive a signal?", you ask. Well, my answer to you is to store your news on a pda, cell phone, ipod, or other mobile device with a hard drive before you leave home. At work, we now have access to a network which provides an endless stream of news via the internet and broadcasting. On the way home from work we have similar means as going to work. In our daily lives we have no NEED for a newspaper. Even on vacation there is no need for a newspaper. Increasingly the entire world is becoming networked. Now we can say that the people who NEED newspapers are the people who do not have these conveniences. That right there is a stable audience because there will always be someone who doesn’t have the means or desire to use and acquire these devices. Finally, the rest of the audience would consist of those who want to have a physical paper to read by mere preference. I know people who swear by reading pixel news and I know others who remain faithful to print news. It is similar to the contesting between cable and network news channels. There are some who are true to FOX, there are others true to CNN, there are others true to NBC, there are others true to ABC … you get the point. So there are two areas in which print news will find an audience, those who don’t embrace technology and those who just like to "read the paper".

Now that we have an audience, we can begin selling our paper. Wait! We need content for our paper. [Generally these two, audience and content, go hand-in-hand. They need each other symbiotically and you can't have one before the other.] Content. Hmm… Content entails generation, interpretation, and reproduction. Generation of the content would be the reporter, journalist, discovering what is important "news" by obtaining information from sources and observation. The next step is to interpret the information. Form it into content by giving it foundation, relevancy, and purpose. Finally the information must be reproduced in auser-friendlyfashion.

Now one question… is there any way that content would be abolished or not allowed to function? Looking at the process I do not see any method of destroying content besides allowing a dictatorshiptorestrict and regulatethe method of content. This would abolish the "free" nature of content, not necessarily content itself, implicating not only news"papers" but also news"pixels".

With a content and an audience to view it there will always be an outlet to convey news via paper medium.

Stand Aside

on Marketing, Media, and Technology

What’s good with green?

Archives

My Tweets