Transhumanism: What Geeks Can Learn From Gurus
Robert Tercek – a friend, colleague and futurist – crafted a fascinating how-to on Transhumanism (i.e., “human enhancement”) movement marketing for the recent H+ Summit at Harvard.
Robert’s take was how today’s lifestyle gurus – Oprah (Tercek’s recent role was running digital media for her OWN network), Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins and the like – all drive humanity forward with their respective and well communicated platforms.
Subtitled “Lessons for the Transhumanist Movement from the Self Help Industry,” the talk walked through media/culture’s take on transhumanism: from other political movement comparables to mass-culture film memes – 2001, Blade Runner, T2, X-Men, Gattaca, The Island and Brazil – and into other memes like unfair advantages (steroids), hybrid (larger-than-life animals) and into a self help outline (slide 47 onwards) that suggests humanizing the marketing around Transhumanism, so to speak. Read more >>
The Ten Spot: Nov 5, 2009
Chart: U.S. Virtual Goods Revenue Ready To Explode | SAI
The virtual goods market in the U.S. is ready to take off. Right now, the U.S. only has 28% of the total market. By 2013, the U.S. will make up 41% of the market with $2.5 billion in sales, according to research from Piper Jaffray.
The Decade of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple | Fortune
He’s a visionary, but he’s grounded in reality too, closely monitoring Apple’s various operational and market metrics. He isn’t motivated by money, says friend Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500). The financial results have been nothing short of astounding — for Apple and for Jobs. The company was worth about $5 billion in 2000, just before Jobs unleashed Apple’s groundbreaking “digital lifestyle” strategy, understood at the time by few critics. Today, at about $170 billion, Apple is slightly more valuable than Google.
CollegeHumor May Go to Ben Silverman Venture | Advertising Age
The deal would have Connected Ventures, parent of CollegeHumor and just-launched TV-production arm Notional, folded into Electus. [...] Connected Ventures is at the core of those content efforts, but Mr. Diller is said to lack confidence that the group can effectively monetize the properties it creates. Last week, Mr. Diller said investment in original content would account for “less than 10%” of the $1.8 billion the company will have in cash over the next few years.
One of the biggest questions in the TV biz has been when, and even if, Oprah Winfrey would give up her daytime syndicated talk show to focus on OWN, her long delayed Oprah Winfrey Network in 70 million homes that was supposed to launch in place of the Discovery Health Channel as a joint venture between Winfrey and Discovery Communications. Read more >>
Sabbaticalist: Tom Freston
How’s this for a final (yet not final) corporate act: September 5, 2006, 1,500+ Viacom employees crowded the corporate plaza to wish Tom Freston a goodbye when he was released from his contract by Sumner Redstone. Since that fateful send off, Freston has visited over 30 countries on what some would call a “$60M Sabbatical,” i.e., the amount of severance he received after serving 19 years at Viacom. Add to that, Freston became “non-committal” – not in the typical sense (he still helped causes and companies he admired), but more in the sense that he didn’t need a job as many came calling. He became “The Sabbaticalist.” Read more >>
Who Mentored Obama and Colin Powell?
For National Mentoring Month, President-Elect Obama, Colin Powell and George W. Bush are promoting “mentoring” PSAs featuring the likes of Clint Eastwood, Oprah, Sting, Ray Charles and many other celebrities and politicians.
While we’ve never really noticed it before – maybe it’s the sense of “volunteerism,” a la JFK, that Obama is bringing to the Presidency – but we’ll run and support it either way. January is National Mentoring Month, and Thursday, January 22, 2009 will be the sixth annual Thank Your Mentor Day. Read more >>