Chris Car

When I was living in Germany, I had a subscription of the fabulous german magazine Brand Eins. By following the magazine for 2 years, it changed my mind not only once. I learned so much from the well-written and critical articles about economy, society and psychology. It was one of my most important sources of inspiration… having a silent cup of coffee on a Saturday morning and reading Brand Eins, gave me an energy boost for the whole next week!
Anyways, when I moved to Montréal I canceled the subscription. I knew that they archive all magazines online but I never had a look at it. Until yesterday… And the force of the magazine sucked me into it, again.

I discovered an excellent article about “success”. You might think “oh my god, another article about success and how to be successful from a self-nominated success guru”. But no, not at all. The article gives a historical overview from the beginning of the industrialized society and the first books written on this subject by people who believed that everyone can be successful - whatever this means. Additionally the relationship between luck and success is covered as well as the term success and its meaning recently - “nowadays success is defined as material success only”.

If you can read german and if you feel like looking behind some values of our society, this article is a must for you. Check it out here.

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The Web 2.0 explanation written by Tim O’Reilly is still one of my regularly consulted references when it comes to explain things.

Link

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An article by Chris Anderson in the current issue of Wired has drawn my attention. He is giving an excellent overview of the history of mass media and how we became fixated in the system of star power. I felt cought after reading the article. I grew up with the system - I am immersed in the system since I am kid.

Now it is time to take a step back and try to reflect and identify the implanted patterns in the mind. Once the patterns are identified, given a name and isolated, work on them, try to remove them from your mind. UNSUBSCRIBE NOW.

Fixated on star power, we follow the absurd lives of A-listers with attention that far exceeds our interest in their work. From superstar athletes to celebrity CEOs, we ascribe disproportionate attention to the very top of the heap. We have been trained, in other words, to see the world through a hit-colored lens.

If it’s not a hit, then it’s a miss. It has failed the economic test and, therefore, never should have been made. This Hollywood mindset is now how we allocate space on store shelves, fill time slots on television, and build radio playlists. It’s all about allocating scarce resources to the most “deserving,” which is to say, the most popular.

Link (Article: The Rise and Fall of the Hit)

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Is it still existing? Or did it ever exist? I think it will have its time, but it may take a while.

Have a look what Wikipedia is saying on Blog fiction

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I believe that today’s famous pop-stars like Madonna, Michael Jackson et. al. are an endangered species. My theory is that these mainstream heroes will die out soon. I don’t believe that there will be such mainstream pop stars anymore.

I see several reasons for this development:

- There is no single marketing machine anymore, ie. MTV, “the music industry”. Instead people have more choices to consume entertainment formats via the web. Therefore “niche entertainment channels” will play a major role in the near future. There will be an endless number of these channels and these channels don’t need a lot of money to be run

- People want to be seen as individuals with an individual style concerning fashion, scene and music. Watching MTV or the like is seen as “uncool”.

- People want to get in close contact to their stars. It is mandatory for a star to communicate with their fan-base via the web.

- People want stars which are authentic, meaning that the stars are expressing their personality, their dreams in their creative productions. Stars who are produced by “the industry” are not interesting anymore, because most of these stars are not authentic. They are more like a product for a target group. And people sense that (after watching MTV for years, the people are well trained now ).

- People are interested in stars which are capable of doing many things on their own: like maintaining their videos online, their photos, the blog, the podcast, etc. etc. The stars of tomorrow are “multimedia stars”: they sing, they perform, they are on video, on podcasts, on blogs, etc. The concept of being a pop-star which is (just) performing and composing music is a concept of the past.

- hm… i am thinking now, maybe there is more to come… any ideas?

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