The Blog




The Olympics are coming up. The culture show did a great program last night about China. China is going to be all over the news media in the next month. So it's time to take a look at China's role in the next 20 years. So here's a few random thoughts.

China is moving at an incredible pace. They seem to be compressing what happened in the West during 1890-1990 into 1990-2010 So with the benefit of hindsight and this year's technology, they're running at at least 5 times the pace we did. 50% of the world's cement and 50% of the world's construction cranes are in China now. It feels to me like China is in a race to get to a post-industrial economy before they burn out, raw resources become too expensive or they stifle themselves with pollution. Can Gaia sustain this level of growth from 1/6th of the world's population? Can they get from a Feudal model of a few rich and a vast army of poor to a predominantly middle class culture without destroying us all in the process? What does a nation of 1Billion middle class even look like.

I can't think of a single Chinese global brand with the possible exception of The Bank of China. How long before the first Honda or Sony or Toyota appears out of China?

One of the most telling comments on the Culture Show last night was that China felt like the USA. There was the same confidence and arrogance, the same nationalism, the same inward view and the same lack of understanding of why the rest of the world should criticise them.

There's a Starbucks on every corner of every major city in the world. Every one is exactly the same. It's created by a Roman military style, command and control, organisation structure. There's a chinese takeway on every corner of every major city in the world. They're all different but all have the same style. They were created by a hive mind of individuals all acting independently but to a common model. Is this a metaphor for the difference between right wing authoritarians and left wing libertarians? Is there something to be learned there about a fundamental difference of approach between the USA and China?

China has 5000 years of culture to draw on. They also have 2000 years of Western culture to draw on. While the show last night did show a few instances of uniquely Chinese design, the majority looked very derivative. Do we really need a Warhol-esque Mao cartoon in the style of the famous Che poster? Or a Happy-Tree Friends Panda with fangs and dripping blood? Or a Chinese Punk/New-rave/Trance boy band? How long before a major global cultural movement emerges out of China? Because at the moment it seems to be all magpie like remixing, not creating.

in reply:-

Whereas I do find it an eloquent piece, I fail to understand who is the audience of this rather Racist writing. When you note down your observations and fears, may I dare ask who do you represent Mr. Julian?? I don't think we represent any KKK here on the Ecademy. In today's Global Village we do not need segregationist. Rather we should try to assimilate. We must celebrate Modern China instead of trying to cast doubts on their designs or abilities . Taiwan is part of China and the whole world including US, acknowledges this fact but China has never invaded to reoccupy it. They have not been expansionist in their designs or actions. What's the phobia about??

In today's global world there is nothing original anymore. Do you see what is the major segment of Creative IT people working in Silicon Valley?? Do you find all "Original Americans" there? And how would you define Original American then? Why would they reinvent the wheel to create originals whereas what they do seems to be working and they are beating the whole world but at the same time whole world seems to be benefitting from their production economies translated in affordable life-style!

Forgive me for my rather curt response but I felt my responsibility to point out that Ecademy does not represent only one type of people and there must be Chinese members too...
Abdul (Dubai inspires me)
Mangrove Real Estate


Abdul. I'm a Brit not an American. As a Brit I reserve the right to take the piss out of everyone equally including ourselves! wink If there's phobia or racism there, it's unconscious and I apologise unreservedly.

I do think global brands, global cultural movements, global views and global involvement will come out of China. I just don't think its happened yet. Given the pace of change there, I think its going to happen sooner rather than later. In some ways the criticism is the same as we had of Japan in the 50s and 60s; that they can't innovate, only copy. We now know just how wrong that was although at the time there was an element of truth in it.

In today's global world there is nothing original anymore. How very post-modernist of you. smile There's a properly deep History of Art discussion to be had right there. Yes, of course, no art exists in a vacuum and it is always a product of its environment and so to some extent derivative. But we also recognise novelty and judge some art to be derivative and others to be ground breaking and genuinely new. And I would agree with you that way too much of what passes for art now is extremely derivative. I've also no doubt that a BBC documentary on culture in China is inevitably going to find itself interviewing an art world that mirrors its counterpart in the west. The really interesting stuff is probably happening out at the edges and right now it's probably off radar.

In today's global world there is nothing original anymore. How very post-modernist of you. :) There's a properly deep History of Art discussion to be had right there. Yes, of course, no art exists in a vacuum and it is always a product of its environment and so to some extent derivative. But we also recognise novelty and judge some art to be derivative and others to be ground breaking and genuinely new. And I would agree with you that way too much of what passes for art now is extremely derivative. I've also no doubt that a BBC documentary on culture in China is inevitably going to find itself interviewing an art world that mirrors its counterpart in the west. The really interesting stuff is probably happening out at the edges and right now it's probably off radar.




Been thinking a lot recently about the tension in the world today between Right Wing Authoritarianism and Anarcho-Syndicalism or Libertarian Communalism. This partly comes from a view of politics as being (at least) two dimensional. There's the traditional Communal vs Individual or Left-Right split but there's also an Authoritarian vs Libertarian split. The top right Right Wing Authoritarian position is the one that has driven the USA's exceptional performance in the last 100 years or so. But RWAs are extremely dangerous in the long run because they have no self-limiting ethics. They believe in the power of the individual but also in the right of the powerful individual to control what everyone else does for their own benefit. It's very hard to see self interest in the interests of society as a whole from that position.

Another way of looking at this is the Roman military, Command and Control, pyramid structure which has been with us in the West for 2500 years and the hive mind anarchic structures that have been around in the East for 5000 years. A classic example of that is to compare the Starbucks organisation with the lack of organisation of the "Chinese Takeaway" as a concept.

I think the other major driver in social politics is Mammalian Tribes. Man is a tribal animal and tribes are typically driven by the 5-10% who fight for the right to be alpha male and hence control the overall direction of the tribe.

What's interesting is the growth in the last 30 years of structures that are inherently anarchic but have sufficient power behind them to completely change the way the world works. Many of these such as the core protocols of the internet or the open source movement were built via an Anarcho-Syndicalist (P2P) model. But even in these at the micro level you can see mammalian politics at work as it seems to be a requirement to have a benevolent dictatorship at the core. So really they are right wing libertarian in control structure even though a lot of the work is done in a left wing libertarian way.




TuneGlue° | Relationship Explorer
Another cool music mapping tool [from: del.icio.us]

Music via Google
Another nail in the coffin [from: del.icio.us]




Apologies for the outage on the web site this morning. We had both web servers fail at about 10:50 and back up at about 11:25.

We're currently working on trying to diagnose exactly what happened and to prevent it happening again. [from: JB Ecademy]




We will be doing some engineering work this evening (Friday 22nd September) and expect some downtime. We plan this to start at about 6:30pm UK Time and last for about half an hour.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused. [from: JB Ecademy]

We're going to be running the Skypecast of the Ecademy event again tonight.

Details here. Starting at 7:30pm UK time.

Go to that page after 7:30 and follow the instructions to listen in. You'll need your Skype password to join.
[from: JB Ecademy]

Apologies to those of you who have received large numbers of emails from Ecademy containing an "EAP Report".

This report went live at the weekend and should have sent one report each week. A glitch in the code meant that the servers resent a copy every half hour or so. This has now been stopped.

Unfortunately this coincided with a problem with the mail server which meant there was a large backlog of email waiting to go out which included these multiple copies. Consequently we didn't catch the problem quickly enough. Sorting out the mail server and clearing the backlog then released the waiting copies.

The mail server is now delivering mail correctly. There may still be some mail from the backlog going out where remote mail servers were temporarily unavailable.

We're working on finding out why multiple copies of the report were sent to avoid this happening again in the future.

Apologies again for the inconvenience. [from: JB Ecademy]

We had an outage on Friday evening. This was caused by a loss of power to the database server. It took some time to bring the server back up and it's clock was then set back to 2002. All of that has now been sorted. No data has been lost but there may be some records with invalid timestamps which we will attempt to rectify.

While the clock was out a number of background tasks will have sent out emails incorrectly.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused. [from: JB Ecademy]

We had a hardware problem early this morning and again this afternoon around 4 to 5pm that meant that the Ecademy site was running very slowly. We're temporarily sorted this out and are currently investigating the cause to prevent it happening again.

Although this coincided with the new functions and changes going live, it was not actually related.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused. [from: JB Ecademy]

Key websites
- Twitterfeed Entries in an RSS feed copied to a Twitter account
- Twitter4Skype Twitter account updates copied to a Skype chat
- OpenID This page has a list of OpenID providers where you can get an OpenID
- RSS for your Ecademy status http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=status&op=feed&uid=YourEcademyIDNumber
- RSS for your Ecademy contact's status http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=status&op=feed&all=1&uid=YourEcademyIDNumber

Preparation. Get yourself an OpenID.

1. Copy your Ecademy status updates to your Twitter account
- Go to Twitterfeed.
- Log in with an OpenID
- Create a feed entry using your Ecademy status RSS
- Send it to your main Twitter account.
Every update on Ecademy also updates your Twitter

2. Copy your Ecademy Contact's status to a Twitter friend
- Create a dummy Twitter account (eg JBFeeds)
- Add this dummy account as a friend on your main Twitter account
- Go to Twitterfeed.
- Log in with an OpenID
- Create a feed entry using your Ecademy Contact's status RSS
- Send it to your dummy Twitter account. Prefix each tweet with: EC

Now you can see all your Twitter and Ecademy Friend's updates in one place.

3. Display your Ecademy Status on your Facebook profile
- Go to your Facebook profile.
- Add the Facebook Feeds RSS application http://apps.facebook.com/rssbook/
- Add the RSS for your Ecademy status as a feed

Your Ecademy status is now on your Facebook profile.

4. Add feeds from Facebook, Jaiku, Plazes, Ecademy to a Twitter Friend
- Follow on from 2. Seek out the RSS for all the other Status feeds for other services like Facebook, Jaiku, Plazes and add entries in Twitterfeed for them routed to your dummy Twitter user created in 2.
- Add a two letter prefix for each one like FB, EC, JK, PL

Now all your friend's on all your services can update their status and you'll see them all in one place.

5. Route all your Twitter updates to a Skype chat.
- Go here for a tutorial about Twitter to Skype.
1. Add twitter4skype as a contact.
2. Type the following as a single chat message to twitter4skype:

/account (alt+return)
yourtwitteraccountname (alt+return)
yourtwitteraccountpassword (alt+return)
3. The system should return: twitter4skype Registration complete!

All the status updates you've gathered together in 4. appear in this Skype chat. Set Notifications to off for this chat so it doesn't popup every 5 minutes. [from: JB Ecademy]

Here's a challenge.

You're in Thailand.

You have your UK passport.

You have a UK bank account with internet banking and money in the account . You don't have your cheque book with you.

You can get to an Internet cafe.

The ATM has just swallowed your Bank card.

How do you get cash in your hand? [from: JB Ecademy]

I'm going to try to Skypecast the London Event tonight with Don Tapscott for people who cannot attend.

At around 7:30pm (UK time), go to this web address and follow the instructions. You will need your Skype ID and Password. [from: JB Ecademy]

This is a little tricky so pay attention!

Go and get yourself the following:-
- A Twitter Account
- A Facebook account
- An OpenID
- The URL for the RSS from your Ecademy status. This will be something like
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=status&op=feed&uid=9999
Where 9999 is your Ecademy #ID number.

1) Sign in to Twitterfeed with your OpenID.

2) Create an entry in Twitterfeed for your Ecademy Status RSS. Route it to your Twitter account.

3) Add the Twitter application to your Facebook profile.

4) Click on the button at the top of the Twitter application setup where it says "Want Twitter to update your Facebook status? Click here!"

Now when you update your Ecademy status, it will flow though to Twitter and then on to Facebook automatically. [from: JB Ecademy]

Some of you may have noticed that the Skype icons on Ecademy have changed and a lot of them now show a gray question mark. We made a change to the way Skype presence was displayed and these icons are now served direct by Skype's servers. This means that display of whether you're online should be more or less instant rather than delayed by an hour or not at all.

If you want your presence and status to be displayed, then you need to enable it in Skype. Within the Skype program the switch can be found in Tools, Options, Privacy, Privacy settings, and then check the box "Allow my status to be shown on the web". If you can't see the checkbox, click on "Advanced". The default is off, so if your Skype icon shows the gray question mark. you need to change it. [from: JB Ecademy]

There's a virus email doing the rounds that appears to be a message from Ecademy support. It's a Virus or Trojan. At least one copy that we've seen appears to have come from an ADSL broadband line in Chile. The headers are forged and made to look as though it's from a fake Yahoo email address with a fake Yahoo message ID.

Needless to say this is not from Ecademy, and is in no way connected with Ecademy servers, systems or people.

At first glance the message could be taken to be designed to be a malicious attack on Ecademy but I'm inclined to think that it's actually just an example of clever social engineering. It wouldn't surprise me if there are or will be very similar emails apparently about other social networks just as there are already about all the banks.

Ignore it. Don't open it. Delete it.

Julian Bond
Chief Technology Officer
Ecademy [from: JB Ecademy]

Over the last couple of days and again this evening we've had some problems with our database server.

It looks as though a request for an RSS feed was being made very frequently and this particular request was launching a database query that was inefficient and slow. The combination was overloading the database and leading to the site being extremely slow or unavailable.

This particular problem has now been dealt with and should not arise again.

Please accept our apologies for the outage.

Julian Bond
Chief Technology Officer
Ecademy [from: JB Ecademy]

A second virus email has appeared with text about Ecademy, Subject: "ECADEMY will close work in April 2008". It appears to be from info@ecademy.com . Again it has a Yahoo Message-ID although it hasn't been anywhere near Yahoo's servers. The email has an attachment Ecademy_Instructions5164.zip which contains document.exe which may be a Trojan or Virus.

One copy we've seen was sent from a Korean home broadband PC using Outlook Express. This makes it look as though it's being sent by a botnet of infected PCs round the world.

Needless to say this is not from Ecademy, and is in no way connected with Ecademy servers, systems or people.

Ecademy never sends emails with attachments.


Ignore it. Don't open it. Delete it.

Julian Bond
Chief Technology Officer
Ecademy



ps. Here's the text of the email

Hello!
Dear postmaster@ecademy.com members, clients and guests of our portal,
Over the last few years our portal has helped you to organize your business, find new partners and increase sales.
However, all good things end. Many of you know that we have experienced legal problems over the last year. Our competitors from other social
networks are trying to take over our client base.
Our website has been hacked and our database was stolen. After that we were taken to court because of identity theft.
Unfortunately, legal expenses and unfavorable court verdict with following closure of our bank accounts will lead to closure of our website. All
paying members will receive refund starting from March 14th.
Please check attached file for legal information in regards to your account.

Best regards,
The Ecademy Team

Ecademy - The Social Network for Business People

Company Registration:7382702 VAT:718 0377 36
[from: JB Ecademy]

We've now got Yahoo OpenID fully working to log into Ecademy.

1. Go to My Settings, Manage OpenIDs

2. Type in "yahoo.com" into the "Add a new OpenID" field and hit "Sign In"

3. After a moment and perhaps an intermediate screen, you'll be presented with a Yahoo screen asking if you want to log in to Ecademy.com. Click on the "Let Me In" button.

4. You're returned to Ecademy and your Yahoo OpenID is associated with your Ecademy account.

Now when you need to log in to Ecademy, the process is very similar.

1. Go to the login screen at Ecademy. Scroll down to the "Login with OpenID"

2. Type in Yahoo.com and click Sign in.

3. You're redirected to Yahoo asking if it's ok. Click "Let Me In"

4. You're back on the Ecademy home page and logged in. [from: JB Ecademy]

The site maintenance over the last weekend went smoothly and I hope you're enjoying the much increased speed of the Ecademy website. We have two problems as a result.

Some people have been receiving email from the site that is dated December 2007. It seems we had a large queue of email that had been held. When that was copied across, the new email server finally delivered it. If you receive email notifications, particularly about subscription problems, that you weren't expecting then check the date. If the Sent date is very old, then simply discard it.

The main Contacts Search seems to have got out of step and some searches are not returning the data they should. This is currently being dealt with and should improve over the next day or so.

Julian Bond
CTO Ecademy [from: JB Ecademy]

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