The rush into digital everything, as an add-on to the silo of silos - is an organisational mistep. Whereas we need to understand how we as people engage with the world on a daily basis so that organisations and companies can start to develop meaningful and relevant communication strategies for the networked society. You don't need a "digital strategy" you need a blended and engaged one.

1. It’s not about online and offline: it’s about blended reality
alan moore – smlxl january 2010

2. My son Josef wakes up in the morning, goes downstairs and turns on the television.
He might watch Cebeebies, or he might have a go on his Xbox 360. Then his mate Tom calls
on the house phone, they are both playing the same MMORPG. Much to my frustration,
Josef turns on the speakerphone and I can hear the conversation throughout the house.
Like me, my son has a big, loud voice.

3. Then the doorbell goes. More of Josef ’s mates arrive, they decide to play
Call of Duty, Modern Warfare and - of course - there is a big group discussion around the
multiplayer game; strategy and tactics. The BIG CONVERSATION starts to do my head
in, and the sun is shining – I “suggest” they go and play a game of “it” in our back
garden. (BTW – Black Hawk Down is “in”)

4. I look out the window and
see they are climbing up
trees and all over the
pergola – and diving
through the laurel hedge.
The little buggers! I had to
cut the major branches off
three trees last week
because of their exploits.
http://picapixels.tumblr.com/post/111920039/9-jpg
I run into the garden, and
I am having aahem,
A SHIT FIT!!!!!
Sulking they go off to
the skate park…

5. Later that day I call
Josef on his
mobile, asking him
to come home; he
moans and groans
but eventually he
arrives with cuts
and bruises. He
stacked it over the
spine, apparently.
He watches some
Simpsons on TV
and we might play
a game of
basketball then he
moves onto his
computer to watch
some more
YouTube clips.
Before bedtime,
being a cuddly kind
of guy, he gives me
a big cuddle, which
I always enjoy.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/94104313@N00/3058537867

6. But why is this story relevant?

7. nedra and her avatar sheeva weeks
Because Josef ’s world is not one defined by an artificial sense of separation between real and virtual.
According to William Gibson, author, Sci-Fi writer and inventor of the word ‘cyberspace’, there is no
online or offline - there is only blended reality. “One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest
about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real,” he says.

8. “In the future, that will
become literally
impossible. The
distinction between
cyberspace and that,
which isn’t cyberspace,
is going to be
unimaginable. When I
wrote Neuromancer in
1984, cyberspace
already existed for
some people, but they
didn’t spend all their
time there. So
cyberspace was there,
and we were here.”

9. When I was a child, I lived in a linear, disconnected media world of scarcity
not of abundance. All media was structured, inflexible, defined by
production and distribution processes; books were books, TV was TV,
cinema was cinema.

10. And my days as a teenager
were spent worrying whether
to go out or not just in case
I missed a phone call from
Beatrix, the one that made my
heart soar – love left
unrequited through our
inability to connect.

11. The nearest we got to any form of blended reality was the taking of, say,
Ian Fleming’s books and turning them into films. I remember coming
home with my father one evening after seeing a James Bond film,
demanding that he drive home like James Bond, and was crestfallen when
he said that only happened in films.

12. Whereas in Josef ’s
networked world it is when
there is no connectivity that
he struggles. It is when he
cannot simultaneously
toggle between the arterial
life-giving connection to
information, content and
experience, some of which
he co-creates, that he
becomes frustrated:
“Who turned the internet
off ?” he booms, or,
“I’ve run out of credit,” or,
“No one wants to play with
me!”

13. [4]
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Having been fascinated by communication, culture, technology and media for the
best part of a decade, partly by watching my three children adroitly navigate life
through the virtual and the real as an everyday occurrence, Gibson’s observation
seems obvious.

14. Josef, born into in a world of connectivity and media abundance, would as a young child
do the following. He would get me to bring down his box of dinosaurs and put them in
the lounge. Then he would ask me to play the video Jurassic Park. After sitting with me
for about ten minutes, Josef would get his dinosaurs out, and Jurassic Park became the
contextual, audio and emotional backdrop to his play. This went on for hours. Then
other characters were introduced, monsters from a Japanese TV programme, a medieval
castle, modern day fighter planes, and a superhero toy that we bought for a dollar in a car
boot sale in Oxnard, California – to which he seemed strangely attached. I would watch
him, fascinated by this intense form of blended reality recreation. Josef instinctively
knew how to bring different media together to enhance and augment his play.

15. So we have multiple experiences in
reality and virtuality; we will combine
these two realms to augment and
enhance our experiences.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachstern/102336259/in/photostream/

16. So perhaps the first
port of call is the
word ‘digital.’ The
idea that digital is
‘different’ to
analogue is
important, as it
creates a mental
model on which we
frame the world. As
Russell Davies
http://www.woostercollective.com/2009/01/fresh_stuff_from_ludo_in_paris.html
posted on his blog,
Meet the New Schtick,
“there are a lot of
people around now
who have
thoroughly
integrated
‘digitalness’ into
their lives. To the
extent that it makes
as much sense to
define them as
digital as it does to
define them as air
breathing, i.e. it's
true but not useful
or interesting.”
Amen to that.

17. In this blended reality we
http://picapixels.tumblr.com/post/113184408
can also live two different
but converged lives. We can
connect locally - close
physical bonds are
experiences that we
as humans so desperately
need and yet we can also
find fulfilment in
co-creating further
experiences across time and
space via digital
technologies. As I write this
I am sitting in the
Cambridge University
Library; I will go to get
some lunch from the
market square, but I am
also connecting and
collaborating with people as
far away as Japan, the USA,
and Finland. People read my
blog from all over the world
and yet when I get home to
my village just outside of
Cambridge, I will kiss my
wife, hug my son and water
the vegetables. If I had to
choose between either of
these two life stories it
would be half a life.

18. This to me is where the networked society comes into its own - the ability to converge very different types
of networks enhances the human condition and the human experience. It’s neither one nor the other.
Personally the word ‘digital’ frustrates me, it suggests ‘machines that are not part our DNA’. As a
consequence many think ‘digital’ strips us of our very souls, or that digital is not of us, and that digital
does not live in our analog world. Therefore digital becomes but another straight-line component,
another silo in the silos of corporate culture and consumer life.

19. Then another thought struck me
whilst reading Kevin Kelly’s book,
Out of Control: the new biology of
machines. I realised that we are
plugging our analog world into the
networked world. We are marrying
engineering with evolution, adapting
linear systems into something more
complex yet at the same time
repurposing them, reprogramming
them to perform in new, simplified
ways. In the same way that my son
intuitively adapted his physical and
virtual resources into blended play,
Ben Terrett, a friend of Russell Davies,
did the same thing – though not with
dinosaurs and Jurassic Park. Ben,
Tom Taylor and Russell decided to
take stuff from the internet and print
it in a newspaper format after a bit of
research showed them that
humongous newspaper printing
presses would run limited editions of
1,000 copies.

20. This is what is perplexing in terms of communication,
marketing and business; to say you are a digital agency, or a
social media agency, or, to divide up an organisation in terms
of its communications into silos; digital, mobile, social
media et al, means you are only part of the solution. Such a
linear approach to communication to drive commercial
success, thin-sliced specialisms, hide-bound with siloed
profit centers, means that there is no way that an
organisation can develop coherently relevant communication
strategies and execute them. Organisations who are not able
to develop people focused blended reality solutions
misunderstand the context of the world they live in.

21. In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins explores the idea and concept of Transmedia Storytelling
through The Matrix. He explains, “A transmedia story unfolds across multiple platforms, with each new
text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. In the idea form of transmedia
storytelling, each medium does what it does best – so that a story might be introduced into a film, expanded
through television, novels, and comics; its world might be explored through game play or experienced as an
amusement park attraction.”

22. The consequence of such transmedia storytelling is the creation of
deeper context, and a more sustained form of emotional and
intellectual engagement that translates into commercial success.
What the Wachowski brothers recognised was that we experience
the world as a blended reality, and that blended reality also embraces
a more, participatory ‘read write’ culture.

23. http://www.flickr.com/photos/14561328@N05/1512273445
Would not such insight inspire brands and businesses to understand how to truly engage
their customers, audiences, stakeholders? The Matrix is a film, a comic and an online
game; dare I say a great brand? And what do great brands do? They tell great stories, and
they deliver great customer experience and engagement. Companies on one level compete
so aggressively, and must by law maximise shareholder value, but are also hamstrung,
unable to truly innovate. Consequently they hurt themselves financially. The buzz word of
social media now becomes another silo of the marketing silo bucket and the cycle
continues; will next year’s buzzword augmented reality become another silo?

24. The imperative for any
company interested in the
power of communication is to
get to grips with some of
these defining issues of our
time, and I would propose
that being able to be a literate
and able navigator of our
networked and participatory
culture is the means by which
we adapt to not only survive
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28923553@N00/49780117
but thrive in this mass media
fragmented networked
society, rather than rushing
into and thrashing around in
“social media marketing”
then making it another silo.
And why is that?

25. As the economist Herbert Simon explains,
“What information consumes is rather
obvious. It consumes the attention of its
recipients. Hence a wealth of information
creates a poverty of attention... The only
factor becoming scarce in a world of
abundance is human attention.”

26. Markets are conversations, argued Doc Searls, and thriving markets are
(1) based on trust, (2) defined by the fact that we are all traders and participants,
all engaged; intellectually, commercially and emotionally.

27. The gift with a price
The opportunities of the networked society promise much, but we must seek a wider lens with which
to see, and understand the issues highlighted. Organisations must learn to blend their thinking and
execution, and not see whatever it is they do see described as “social media”
as just another add-on.

28. Wassily Kandinsky said that “every work of art is a child of its time”,
and so we must understand that the child of our time is a revolution in which
humanity is renegotiating the power relationships that define: our
relationship to each other, how we make meaning, how we make culture,
who makes that culture and who should profit from it. It also just so happens
that the tools and the weapons of this revolution are communication tools.
There is no going back to the way things used to be, no matter how hard
some try to air-brush reality from – well reality.

29. So, as we de-couple from the
‘Straight Lines’ of our
industrialised world – which
framed all aspects of our
lives – we do need a new
logic to understand this new
one. It must be a logic which
provides a framework for
how we relate to each other,
how we communicate, how
we create more effective and
flexible organisations and
how we create wealth.
Because we are still faced
with the same challenges:
how do we find our
customers, how do we make
our customers sticky, how
can we increase trade with
our customers and serve
those customers whilst at the
same time, reducing the cost
to serve? And finally
how to just get stuff done.

30. My world was a linear,
disconnected world of media
and communication,
whereas Josef only knows a
networked world of blended
reality. He would not
understand the concept of
the phone box,
because he has a phone in
his pocket. If he were able to
see me racing across the road
when I was at college to get
to the phone box ringing in
the street, he would think
that rather strange.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/95843480@N00/132804919

31. In the networked
society
the idea of networked
economics is different
to mass media
economics – and as
Henry Jenkins says,
we are in a period of
transition from a
world of analog
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zephyrance/2865451246/
economics to a world
defined by what we
call blended reality.
There is no offline
and online,
digital vs. analog;
there is only
blended reality.

32. And this picture?
It is from the epic Finnish
song cycle called the
Kalevala. Every Finn knows
this story, and it was
created from many Finnish
folk stories that came from
every part of Finland,
blended into one
extraordinary story.
This is the age of engagement,
where through storytelling
across media platforms we
create deeper context,
deeper context creates
greater meaning, which
correlates with the economics
of attention and how brands,
business and anyone else with a
need to communicate to an
audience of whatever
persuasion can survive and
thrive in the
networked society.

33. Footnote
The Matrix was first released on 31 March 1999
It earned $171 million in North America and over
£250 million in the UK and $463 million
worldwide, and later became the first DVD to sell
more than three million copies in the U.S.

34. How we can help you?
we offer is a series of interventions* that enables the following:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16230215@N08/4066005402

35. [4]
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[1] By fully understanding the logic of the networked society, and how this
fundamentally changes the way business models will succeed, you will be better
equipped to drive business success.
[2] By opening up minds, collectively, to the potential of this new market-place, the
No Straight Lines methodology will help you determine the communication initiatives
appropriate to your company.
[3] By absorbing and understanding the most important ideas that emerge from the
programme you will be able to initiate an action plan for you and your company which
we can help facilitate.

36. *For more information please contact:
Alan Moore
Ping 1: alanm@smlxtralarge.com
Ping 2: +44 7768 364 538
Euan Semple
Ping 1: euan.semple@gmail.com
Ping 2: +44 7515 355 362
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[2]
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