Once revered by ancient Egyptians as an emblem of grace and poise, cats have once again risen to a position of particular cultural prominence. Riding invisible bicycles, demanding cheeseburgers, and regularly in need of “Halp!”, pictures of cats caught mid-adventure and annotated with grammatically playful captions have emerged as a recent manifestation of the internet meme. Time magazine’s profile of the lolcat phenomenon (”lol” being an acronym for “laugh out loud” used in internet forums) describes internet memes as a form of cultural curiosity that self-replicates across the “collective imagination” of the internet.

A mass of independent people, with different information, skills and outlooks, working together in the right way, can discover, analyse, strategise, coordinate, create and innovate together at scale. We are developing new capabilities to participate and collaborate, to have our say - through blogs and video - but also to listen and learn from others - through wikis and social networks. We have only just begun to explore how this will change how we think, our sense of ourselves and indeed in what mixture this capacity for collective innovation will be good and bad for us.

Our friends are on messenger, Facebook or MySpace, in Second Life or another online game. They could even be around the corner or on their mobile phone. Friendship is the glue that binds the human world together. It exists in our minds and is evident in the actions and efforts that we make with each other. Friendship comes from sharing things with each other, from helping each other, from the way we support each other every day but also in times of crisis

A growing marketplace for ideas, innovations, and uniquely qualified minds is changing the long-standing rules of innovation and talent management. Companies seeking solutions to seemingly insoluble problems can tap the insights of hundreds of thousands of enterprising scientists without having to employ everybody full-time. This shift is changing the way companies invent and develop products and services.
Companies’ turning to external ideagoras for innovations doesn’t mean traditional employees are taking a back seat in the creative process.

Unlike the pub on the corner where you run into the same old folks night after night, in a synthetic world you can run rampant with a pack of global cronies from every corner of the world. From doctors in New York, to students in Mexico City, to a barber from Liverpool, the crowd is diverse, interesting and engaged. Residents of synthetic worlds are global citizens who just might take a break from slaying a dragon to talk about their real life businesses and make real connections.

One Starbucks Coffee is just like any other, right? Since its founding in 1971, the company has grown to over 12,000 stores worldwide, becoming the epitome of global brands. There are over 180 locations in the New York City area alone; 153 of which have wireless internet access provided. However, for a new breed of mobile professionals, choosing a Starbucks is a deliberate, strategic and, sometimes, daily decision.

Many are saying that the next Big Thing - somewhat inevitably termed Web 3.0 - is the arrival of the semantic web. My concern with the semantic web being on the menu for the third course, is that this is a technology-centric vision, at a time when we are only just learning how to be user-centric. Does it not strike anyone else as odd that in the year after Time elevates you, me and us to the lofty heights of person of the year, the chatter about what is next concerns technology, not people?

In Western societies, we are experiencing what could be called a democratic revolution in consumerism: demands for participation are spilling over into the world of business. This new participation society is driven by brand communities, which express themselves in the freedom of online forums: consumers are swapping experiences more and more in brand communities or brand networks, in discussion forums, weblogs or web video services such as YouTube or MySpace.

The real world map shows what we humans have been given to work with. The Web shows what we have chosen to care about.
And that’s exactly what’s so special about the Web place. It is made not out of mountains, oceans, deserts and forests. It is made out of humans caring about things together. That last word is important: “together”. The Web is in fact a new place for us to be humans together. On the Web, we can be together in new ways.

Issue 19 of receiver was designed by students of Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand – School of Design.
Victoria’s Faculty of Architecture and Design Te Wāhanga Waihanga-Hoahoa is a leading centre of Design in New Zealand. The Faculty is based in a radically remodelled former cargo building, an award-winning landmark in central Wellington.

Reynald Drouhin lives and works in Paris.
He is an artist working with digital material (net, picture and video) on the themes of appropriation and document manipulation, making use of the web’s specific characteristics: images‚ search engines, real-time, hacking. He has carried out projects relating to the notion of fragments, real-time visualizations from webcams or image search engines. He has also been working on non-linear video and DVD.