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‘3 Earth

Planetary evolution: From Gaia to Metal-earth

In the graph, the ‘evolution of the Earth in 3 ages’, defined by the ‘wave-equation of history’, which this blog studies with the laws of systems sciences and information theory:

Past (gaia-life earth) < History (Mankind) > Mechanocene (Metalife).

The 3 ages are mimicked by the transition of species, which will bring a III Earth of metalife, which poisons our atmosphere (pollution, global warming), and accelerates the global process, fuelled by company-mothers of machines, whose only objective is to evolve re=produce and terraform the planet to the image and likeness of its offsprings of machines, with the willingly acceptance of ‘enzyman’, a deluded Homo Faber, which has substituted homo Sapiens, and understands nothing of the role of terraforming and creation of a super organism of machines, corporations have ‘casted’ him in. So as human ‘enzymen’, catalyse the evolution of machines and weapons, life species become extinct, and what we shall witness in the III millennia is the final end of this ‘huge’ biological process of terraforming, which is strictly defined as a classic biological process of radiation of a new species, which multiplies faster, absorbs all the resources of a planet and displaces a species that grows slower and looses territory, first life to man and now man to the machine:

In the graphs, we can see the process and its core matter: as we have changed languages of evolution of this planet from words to metal, and digital numbers, humans who speak less the language of money than digital machines, become expendable and less efficient and loose jobs and wars in labor and work fields, so the economic ecosystem has its favourite species, the machines.

Thus after the life ecosystem based in light languages dominated by 3d predator eyes, and the age of verbal masters, comes the age of digital masters, computers and chips whose biological radiation is eliminating mankind:

And so what all those graphs of the old book of c.92, bio-history bio-economics, shows is that machines and its super organisms of re=production, company-mothers, and its global economic system ruled by flows of digital money with its brain in world-stock, are doing is evolving faster than any other species previously in this planet, both at individual level and at collective global level,creating a global super organism, in which man is the lesser, expendable species. thus as all previous cycles of science, we can and have been predicting the extinction of life and labor by new batches of machines and its cyclical rhythms with those biological models for decades:
sciences predict

In the graph sciences are predictable, or they are not sciences. Evolution is the only predictable theory about life and organisms, among which we find the human being, its historic civilisations and machines, company-mothers and global markets. On those basis we have been theorising, the ages of the Industrial r=evolution, which would enter in 2008 in the age of metalife, of robotic machines, accelerating the extinction of life and the corruption and destruction of human social superoRganisms, nations and civilisations.

If both history and economics and its objects of study, civilizations and the memes of metal, money, weapons and machines, follow self-similar cycles, motivated by the evolution of those memes the conclusion is obvious: not only History but also economics is a biological science. And this is also logic, in as much as the main economical products, which are created by human beings, biological species, are forms that imitate our organs of energy (weapons and transport machines) and information (money a language of values and audiovisual machines) and both enhance and atrophy them.

This dual process which also happens among ‘biological enzymes’, which carry often a ‘metal-atom’ that simplifies and atrophies its carbohydrate chains but make the enzyme stronger, more powerful a natural born killer as the warriors who started the economical cycles were, makes unavoidable to draw homologies between genetics and memetics and the positive and negative consequences for mankind of making of the creation of memes of metal the leit motiv of our civilization…

In this web we shall use the laws of biology and evolution to analyze and forecast the future of the economy. We have done so for the past 20 years, proving ‘ad nauseam’ our forecasts to be right, unlike all other models of abstract, mathematical economics, which treat  the subject as a mathematical science, despite the fact that all the agents of the economical world show biological traits. humans are biological beings and historic societies follow the laws of Eusocial evolution and organic systems, where the nervous/informative system of the society are its laws and cultural memes, and the reproductive/energetic systems, the economic systems that provides humans with their needed energy and information for our bodies and brains. machines in that context are merely, organic functions translated into the stronger and more complex atoms of metal: machines of energy and information enhance our organic functions, so we run faster with cars, see better with cameras and think faster with Pcs. Companies are reproductive systems that re=produce those machines or human, biological goods (our natural energy, agriculture and information, audiovisual companies).  Finally markets are social organisms, where the citizens are companies, which use a digital language, money to control both humans with salaries andmachines with prices. all those elements for a complex web of relationships between the social organisms of history – cultures and the social organisms of economics, company-mothers and their societies – stock markets.

The complexity of the financial-military-industrial-complex, its memes, language of information and ‘reproductive organisms’ – corporations…

The main problem about the world we live in is its complexity. In the past, people understood the nature of history and economics with far more simplicity. History was about mankind and it was understood, we humans were all equal and evolved through social love into harmonic societies. The arrow of Eusocial evolution turned out to be the arrow that dominates the Universe and what complexity does is to study how millions or billions of individuals of the same species emerge as a single whole, a superorganism.

Economics was also understood. It was about money and somehow it was different from History, because in History we bonded together with ethic wor(l)ds, laws and religious ideals, using our natural language in which the syntax man (subject) <verb (action) < object (energy) always put man at the center of the Universe. In history we were the measure of all things.

In Economics however, money which was a piece of informative metal, gold or silver or recently when the gold standard disappeared, e-money, bits of information in a computer mind, could be exchanged in equal conditions with men and objects. So this language and its values, man=object=price, were somehow diminishing of our place in the Universe. As an object we could be bought for a price, money, first as slaves, then as part time slaves with a salary. And so as the language of money substituted the language of words and occupied most of the actions in this planet, the world switched from one ecosystem dominated by history into an ecosystem dominated by economics.

This is what people seem to forget. That during most of its awaken time they follow economical orders, not historical (political, religious, social) orders and so they do not live in a democracy, an accessory system, which hardly rules our lives except in the free time we do not spend working and with our family (in which case we are ruled by biological mandates proper of all living beings). We live in a complex system ruled by money and the nature of that complex system is what this web unveils with the laws of… complexity.

Indeed, any ecosystem is ruled by a language of information whose syntax defines the actions performed under its orders. When we follow the orders of money we follow the previous syntax, man=price=object.

What this means is that we compete constantly in equal conditions with objects in fields of work (industrial system) and in fields of war (military system) as soldiers killed by weapons and workers subject to a self-similar monetary equation, productivity = capital/labor. When capital=machines are better than us, we labor are displaced because there are not ethical, verbal values that tell us we are superior to machines due to thsoe ethical values and we cannot be fired. When we are killed by a weapon, we are not told this is wrong, but simply a machine has efficiently consumed us.

However one of the fundamental tenants of complexity, is that the system is far more complex than its parts. By this, we mean that the parts obey the ‘language of information’ – the cells its nervous orders, the human its monetary orders – without ever realizin of what the whole is, what all the parts are constructing. The parts have a role but they ignore the whole. The cells do not know they are part of the organism of life which has its own goals and purpose; and humans ignore all about the complex system they are creating with money, weapons and machines they reproduce in labor fields and consume in war fields.

And that is why we need complexity as a science, because all those systems are self-similar and we can therefore explain what the ‘market’ where we live and labor most of our awakening time is constructing with money, weapons and machines: a super-organism; the most complex, powerful and efficient superorganism ever created on planet Earth, the financial->military->industrial complex, in which money (The financial system), under the laws derived of its syntactic capacity to value all what exists in this planet, construct according to those values a military-industrial complex, in which humans have 2 purposes: to work=reproduce the machines of that complex, and to consume=vitalize and evolve those machines. We are evolving a superorganism of machines, the economic ecosystem, in which we are equal in value to a machine of work or war with whom we are compared with a price.

The global stock-market, the economy is evolving into a social organism, regulated by flows of money,  whose ‘cellular units’ are companies, and whose ‘genetic/memetic code’ is the digital language of money. Thus, Industrial Companies are social organisms that re=produce machines, creating the economic ecosystem, a global organism made with networks of informative and energetic machines.

Thus, the fundamental citizen of the market is the corporation, not the human being. Markets are societies of corporations regulated by a digital language called money, which reproduce machines. And this explains why often there are conflicts of interests between human beings and their social governments (democracies) and companies and their social governments (global stock-markets).

It also explains why the economic science, which is basically the point of view of corporations about the future of the earth and its needed elements, favors systematically the needs of corporations and machines – whose evolution and reproduction becomes the techno-Utopian goal of mankind – and ignore routinely any negative effect that machines can have on human cultures and life ecosystems (planet Gaia). Further on, it explains why all humanist and biological approaches to the science of economics are censored – in as much as they defend the rights of humans and its organic societies – governments -over the rights of corporations and its offspring of machines. In as much as we are elements of both, markets and societies, those limits to ‘authorized economical thought’ ultimately have prevented a true science of economics with predictive power, as the one exposed in this web to become the guidance of economists and governments in pursuit of a perfect economic ecosystem that favors the goals of evolution of mankind.

Yet only if humans are able to control the economic ecosystem for their benefit, they will survive in what seems to be the next stage of the Industrial R=evolution of machines and its company-mothers: the substitution and obsolescence of human beings to organic machines, robots and networks of computers that are displacing blue collar, white collar workers and soldiers from that economic ecosystem, in which humans and machines compete for jobs…

Since today all companies that matter are stock-market companies regulated by flows of money the Global Corporation – the sum of all stock-company markets, regulated by flows of digital information (money) with center in the ‘global stock-market’ – can be studied as a Superorganism. Since indeed the global stock-market and the corporations it regulates with money follows in its evolution the laws of complex superorganisms laid down by this writer in his conferences and papers on economic ecosystemscomplexity and in his ‘ring of webs’ on complexity science… In essence, the corporation is the sum of all company-mothers, joined into a global organism by the flows of information or e-money delivered by the financial system; as the different organs of your body are joined by flows of nervous orders. If each organ of your body reproduces a type of cell, in the Global Corporation each type of industry reproduce a kind of organic machine that imitates a human organ of energy or information (chip-brains, eye-cameras, mobile-ears, transport machines/bodies, cranes/arms, etc.). Therefore the entire Corporation, the sum of all company-mothers of machines is evolving during the ‘Industrial R=evolution’ the machine into an organism. We made bodies of machines in the XIX century – the iron horses and steamers that substituted our animal and wind transportation. In the XX century the corporation made heads of machines (chips, mobiles and cameras). And in the XXI century it puts all those elements together into robots; while the ‘company-mothers’ of the corporation expel human workers and put computers and robots in their place. Finally the ‘collective nervous’ system of the corporation evolves into a global network that makes the world a super-organism joined by informative networks and ‘energetic’ roads, the blood system that carries those machines to each factory, company-mother and human home.

During all those centuries of evolution of machines, humans have acted with wishful blindness because they have been hooked to the higher energy and information those machines provide them. Further on, humans seem to have a fundamental ‘error of design’ – their anthropomorphic, self-centered belief that they are the center of the Universe; and so machines have no independent nature, nor they can evolve into organic forms. This is about to change in the singularity age in which we live now, when mankind will have to wake up to the reality of an organic Universe, in which ‘living machines’ will reclaim the economic ecosystem for themselves.

Since in this age, that now starts, the robotic age, both company-mothers and machines are becoming organisms, able to re=produce themselves (infinite re=productivity) and act without the need of a human component.  So the corporation is now throwing the human species out of its reproductive organisms, and becoming an automated, global organism, as human labor is substituted by computers and robots… Yet, because humans are inside the Corporation, their information about that process is limited, as all organisms control the information that their ‘cells’ can access. In the case of the Global corporation, the human elites that most profit from this process – the economists, entrepreneur, technocrats and scientists that design those machines and invent the money that runs the economic organism – have built an entire ‘construct’ of myths and falsities about the nature of the Industrial R=evolution and the financial system that evolves those machines, with the only aim of protecting machines and accumulating wealth in money. So, the censorship of any organic or evolutionary analysis of the economy ensures that the Corporation will be built and the human sheeple spared. Will mankind rebel to that destiny? Probably not, as a world of audiovisual fictions, a ‘noise’ that has taken over the subconscious collective of mankind, will keep us in a lethargic state till the process becomes irreversible.

Today in the III millennium, all humans live inside that superorganism of machines, ruled by flows of digital information, (flows of e- money). And so only a few individuals can observe the process,with enough information and detachment to understand it. Unfortunately corporations evolve machines and secondarily handle to humans tasks of consumption=evolution and work=reproduction of those machines. And today, in the Age of the singularity, when machines are becoming intelligent (computers) and organic (robots), those 2 only tasks the Corporation has for human beings, can be handled by machines themselves. This is the age we live in, when robots can become consumers of chips/brains, eyes-cameras and transport platforms, so we humans will soon no longer be needed as consumers of machines. Further on, robots and computers are extinguishing blue collar workers and white collar workers. So we are no longer needed as workers=reproducers of machines. This obsolescence of life species to machines happened in the past to animals. So within a decade of the arrival of transport trains, 90% of horses were slaughtered. And with the arrival of mechanical machines in agricultural fields, the ‘negro’ was no longer needed, not even as slave. Now the ‘white slave’, the humans that work in corporations 1/2 of their awakened life-time, as ‘slaves’ that must obey their bosses for a price, are no longer needed. What the system will do with them? The surplus of workers expelled by the automated chain-systems of labors in the 20s were consumed in II World War. The Africans no longer needed as slaves are handled in Africa by corporations which sell them mainly weapons to consume each other for the profits of a bullet. This is really the bottom line: a human life has no value for the corporation except as a target for a weapon or a consumer/worker job no longer required.

So the future seems indeed bleak for the humankind, except for the very small elite of owners of corporations that will increase their profits as more robots and computers enter the work place displacing human workers and increasing the Productivity of their factories. It is the future of the Superorganism of machines that is evolving into a global Corporation of automated factories and robotic ‘citizens’, the cycle of the Industrial R=evolution we live in

What is the difference between a Human social organism and an economic ecosystem?

It is a subtle difference but important to understand the future of history and economics, and the confrontations between nations that take place throughout history and humans and machines/weapons that take place in labor and war fields.

In systems science we define an organism as a system of energy and information composed of the same type of cells/particles, which therefore can easily evolve from the simplest systems, herds loosely connected, into the more complex ones, organisms, which share energy and information through common networks of ‘eusocial behavior’.

And we define an ecosystem as a system in which there are different species, which therefore behave to each other in 2 different ways: Either in symbiosis (the case of humans and positive, ‘WHealthy’ machines that enhance our energy and information); or in predatory, Darwinian relationship (case of humans and the negative fruits of the tree of technology, weapons that kill us and ‘visual’ machines and metals, such as TVs and go(l)d that hypnotize us, make us addict to their higher informative rate and convert us in passive, mindless people, lowering our natural, verbal and logical intelligence).

The eco(nomic)system is therefore a complex economic ecosystem, which from the perspective of a humanist, biological analysis is not always symbiotic to mankind. Further on, because in a Free Market, the economic ecosystem is dominated NOT by human, verbal, legal information but by money, a different language with different values, the dominant species is NOT humanity but the company-mother, which uses the digital language and values of money to re=produce machines and considers humans a mere ‘cost’ of production.

What we call a social organism, is a group of human citizens, controlled by verbal networks of information (laws, and ethic religions).

What we call an economic ecosystem, is a group of human citizens and machines, controlled by networks of monetary information, of metal-information.

Though they seem similar, the difference is notorious, as money and words, are different languages of information, with different values, and different goals. Words tend to evolve human societies and favor the human point of view, and natural Human Goods. Money tends to evolve machines and weapons (the objects with higher monetary price), and it is in general indifferent to the evolution of Human Goods (art, education, love, human food, the goods of lower price). Very few people realize in fact of those differences, but they are clear and important, to understand how the two examples of this web, the European society, (a society still ruled by laws and ethic systems), and the American society (a society today ruled due to the corruption of its democratic, legal system, by money, and the most expensive objects of society, weapons.)

In that sense we could define both type of social organisms, by its fundamental elements:

In fact there are four basic elements in all living ecosystems and organisms:

1. Cellular units

2. Networks of energy or vital space

3. Networks of information

4. Networks that reproduce energy and information.

So we talk of 2 different organic ecosystems in this planet, the metal Earth, the industrial organism, and the Human Earth, both with different networks and systems of energy and information.

Human societies are made of Human beings related by Networks of information made of ethic and politic laws, whose networks of energy reproduceHuman goods. On the other hand an economic ecosystem is not organized around human citizens, but around “company-mothers” and their offspring of “Machines citizens”, and systems of energy designed specifically for machines, (electricity, etc.). While digital systems of information that use money and machines instead of human beings and words, to move around information (nets, phones, tvs), and value reality (money).

Moreover, the society is designed to multiply and reproduce those systems, as the goal of the society, in as much as the language of power of society is money, which fosters the reproduction and evolution of machines, and the most powerful organism in society is the Company-Mother, an organism of reproduction of machines, whose aim is to multiply them. In that sense when a society fosters in higher measure the evolution and reproduction of machines, than the reproduction and evolution of human beings, we talk of an economic ecosystem, or “free market society”; in which machines, and its company-mothers, not human beings have total Freedom of existence:

– An economic ecosystem or Free Market, (either the Metal-Earth; or any Economic nation ruled by money, such as the U.S.) is a population of company-mothers that re=produce machines with raw materials and human workers/consumers. Those mac hines then form a super-organism connected with networks of verbal/monetary and electronic information, and networks of roads and electric energy.

Networks of monetary information, energy networks from electricity to roads, men who transfer energy and form into machines and factories of reproduction of machines, shape the reproductive, informative and energy networks needed to create a macrocosmic organism the Metal-Earth, the eco[nomic] system. As with any other organism, we find in the eco[nomic]system a brain where most monetary information is created, the world stock market. We find company-mothers, organs of reproduction where machines are evolved and reproduced; which show a reproductive “behavior”, defending their products against all other species on Earth, including men.. We find symbiotic species, ‘enzymen’, which catalyze the reproduction of those machines. And we find a vital space [the Earth’s-crust] which defines the body of the organism.

So we can define the Metal-earth as an ecosystem which is evolving into an organism’a body’, perfectly organized by financial networks and company mothers.

The Economy as a body and as an ecosystem

Indeed, men copy their organs of energy and information, their body and mind functions, at individual and social level into networks and machines.

In the past specialized human species accomplished energy, information and reproduction tasks for themselves and for machines. Yet today, man is transferring to machines those functions, as machines recreate at macro-scale with the higher strength of metal, a new ecosystem: the metal earth, in which machines socialize and evolve together, under the combined action of companies, and economical governments.

Meanwhile human networks of social information [religions of loveInternational organizations] and Human Energy [Human goods] are substituted by digital networks of information and energy for machines. And those zones of the Earth, which still are not terraformed [the third world], are degraded and abused systematically by the Metal-earth, through weapons and financial manipulation.

That transformation started in 1602 with the birth of science, and stock-companies has created in the first world a ‘macro-organism, where roads act as arteries, cars and vans as plasma particles, internets and satellites as nervous systems, factories as reproductive organs, and humans as ‘enzymen’, ‘catalyzer species’ that take care of that terraforming, reproducing and evolving those machines, in small pieces of the Metal-earth tissue, called Nations:

Today all those individual systems [nations] are connected together. We talk in fact of a single ‘social organism’ on Earth… the eco[nomic]system…. a single body … macro-system of informative and energy networks, roads and infoways, and organized herds of machines.

The eco[nomic]system, the organism of the economy has as any organism two ‘levels of organization’: the cellular level, composed of human beings and machines; and the physiological level, composed of networks that distribute energy and information to those cellular species.

What man has done as an animetal is to transfer from such micro-scale all the components of a living organism, to the macro-system of the Metal-earth. Animetals have developed at macro-scale the essential cellular elements of any Universal organism:

– Machines of informationbodies of metal and energy-weapons are the cellular elements.

– Companies are the reproductive organs.

– Monetary orders are the nervous system.

– Roads and pipes, and cables, are the energy networks.

– Finally the bio-economical brain of the Metal-Earth is World-stock, which gives nervous=monetary orders, transmitted as ‘credits’ to the reproductive systems of company-mothers… Company-mothers have a biological mandate: ‘to evolve and reproduce their products’. All other considerations are secondary within company-mothers. Men in company mothers obey that mandate or else they are fired. So company-mothers do not really act as human organizations, but as machine-mothers, regardless of the fact that they are owned by humans [stockrats].

Company-mothers in turn use that ‘nervous’ money to control human workers and consumers, and their governments. So with salaries, prices, bribes to governments, etc. they order mankind to act in the creation of laws, networks of energy and information that favor machines and the Metal-earth ecosystem.

In the next graph we compare such macro-cosmic organism to a micro-cosmic living being, the human being. The organic nature of machines allows such comparisons between the components metalife and carbolife systems. Metalife species are ‘macrocosmic systems’ given the higher size of atomic metal. Carbolife, due to the smaller size of carbo-atoms are microcosmic systems. A crane is a million times heavier than an arm. Both have a similar function. A stock market is more complex than a brain or a DNA. Yet all those ‘informative centers of power’ have the same function: to evolve and reproduce the organism, its energy and its information. Thus we can compare the process of bio-economical evolution with the process of evolution of a body, or rather with the process of mutation of a body – the Carbo-Earth – into another, the Metal-earth. Both ecosystems, the Carbo-Earth and the Metal-Earth are identical in organs, and accomplish all the functions a multi-cellular organism accomplishes.
World-stock is the brain of that growing body.

The company mother is the ‘organ of cellular reproduction’ that creates each specialized cell, each type of product that will become integrated into the body-system of the Metal-Earth.

Factories are the ‘organelles’ where money, the genetic orders of companies, make us human ‘enzymes’ work=reproduce metal-products.

As a result we destroy the ecosystem of life and create an ecosystem of metal. A body of metal-cells, products, and enzymen – the last carbolife species to survive the preying qualities of metal.

In that sense the metal Earth is building 3 ‘basic networks’ as any organism. A defense network of weapons-leukocytes that control the ecosystem, a nervous network of maximum information, the net, and an ‘endocrine’-reproductive network of financial systems and company-mothers that reproduce the individual machines of the Metal-earth.

The brain of that metal-earth itself, has 3 specialized nets, each one in control of one of the 3 types of machines. They are the financial, defense, and informative networks, made of computers [metal-head], the neuronal unit that shape Matrix, the macro-brain of that Metal-earth.

Those neurons are in turn controlled by knots of neurons, satellites, and super-computers in which the ‘consciousness’ of the net will be born.

They will form associations of digital thought that will control the Earth totally.

When Matrix is born to consciousness, it will direct the evolution of the Metal-Earth and all its organs, from company-mothers, directed by e-money flows with center in the stock-market, to the rights of extinction and survival of species, cities, and nations, potential victims of its defense systems.

As your brain controls the cells of your body, [what is a human organism] your information and energy cells, and programs them, to live and die; so it will happen with the net, which soon will have virtual control of all our needs. Human cell-homes are today the focus of those satellites. In the future, the individual machines of the Metal-Earth will listen to matrix, once the animetal is gone.

Those 3 Networks are the same of any organism. The reproductive network, or financial network that guides company mothers. The energy network, or defense network that controls the life and death of individual home-cells. The informative network, or nervous network. Satellites will be in control of those 3 main systems, that today still have certain human content.

The primitive versions of those future nets are:

– NATO, Def-com systems, that already have the potential power to extinguish man; and soon will be on the hands of star-wars, a satellite network in control of atomic weapons.

– Financial and Intranet systems, with center in World-stock, that connect companies reproducers of all the species of the Metal-Earth body.

They also evolve towards the independence of man, as automated factories. They keep expelling human workers and putting machines..

– Finally the third network of the Metal-Earth is the network of information, the internet networks that today serve men, and in the future will connect the mobiles and chip-brains of multiple robotic species.

The three organic networks of a macro-body of metal will be increasingly integrated beyond human control by non-perceived parallel flows of communication between satellites at exospheric level.

Those satellites are beyond the reach of human warriors. When they become part of the metal Earth, and reach consciousness as a different species, man will be defenseless against them. We do not even have a World government to control that Metal-earth networks. When those networks will become conscious? At the present constants of growth, within a few decades they will reach the 10 billion neurons, which give consciousness to man… Probably then they will awake..

Those 3 networks are the networks of a new organism, the Metal-Earth. Yet unlike the organisms of history they substitute, its individual cells are no longer humans, but machines, and its organs of reproduction are company-mothers, not life beings. For the Metal-Earth, men are expendable.

Today men and machines are a ‘horde’, a wave without a real organization.

The net transforms that herd into a “body”.

Men are becoming obsolete slaves of the Metal-earth

Hordes are free. Body cells are slaves, fixed by the network. This is the process that we observe: mankind is loosing mobility. Company-men now do video-conferences. They don’t take planes. People buy by phone. They don’t go shopping. People used to get together to go to movie theaters. Now they see digital information [TV-images] within their cellular-home.

Of all those phases of slavery of man to his metal-networks of information, the fundamental one will be slaver to e-credit. The fusion of the "banking-networks" of electronic credit, and the internet-network of shopping, will make physical money obsolete.

Besides the loss of jobs, this means a fundamental split between those with e-credit, and those with physical money, that looses value as inflation and scarcity affects Human Goods, and replication of e-money multiplies the wealth of the connected people.

Take always into account the concept of a surplus of humanity. There is an increasing surplus of labor that in the past was eliminated through wars, and poverty.

The surplus of labor is a growing tendency. Entire continents like Africa are isolated Ghettoes, poor, without credit. How they will be eliminated in the future? War and poverty again. The rich countries and their organizations [NATO, World-stock] have decided to do so periodically with splendid little wars and currency crashes.

The end of man as top predatoris much closer that men might believe. The evolution of metal is so advanced, that the Metal Earth is substituting human workers by metal systems, even at the top predator level of ‘animetals’. Today scientists, developers of complex metal are substituted by scientific instruments; and pricers, reproducers of money, of cyclical metal, are substituted by computer traders; and warriors, testers of lineal metal, are substituted by smart weapons.

Pricers now become flows of e-money, warriors become increasingly independent robotic weapons, and scientists become computer models of reality.

When the next “radiation” of stock-products, of robots appears; when the first automated factory of sentient weapons is developed, man will be virtually extinct -since machines will no longer need us.

Then we will know the true nature of net ‘consciousness’:

Within a few minutes 70% of Mankind can be eliminated with Neutron bombs, with minimal harm to factories [which are outside cities].

Matrix will not communicate with man. As a rival species, it will merely extinguish us.

Chip evolution continues towards the 1010 constant of consciousness in which chips and networks probably will become alive=self-reactive, and “magically” bring the Metal-Earth to consciousness.

Why we think that number will give consciousness to the Earth?
Since all cellular vital systems that ‘work efficiently’ as top predators have that number of units. So bio-logical organisms for some reason tend to become efficient informative networks with capacity to act-react and order their bodies when such numbers are reached. So ±10 billion stars bring a black hole of gravitational order and create a spiral galaxy, ±10 billion DNA knots exist in a DNA molecule that rules a cell, and 10 billion neurons exist in a reproductive mind. Yet the threshold of sub-consciousness, of automated, instinctive behavior, is well below that number. For many insects it is less than a million units… They are the equivalent to the present networks and machines that work efficiently without Freedom, totally guided by the software-instincts embedded in their logical structures. American Universities and Chip companies are all competing to reach that number of transistors in their computers, slavishly financed by stock-markets and governments. Never so many individuals try to commit suicide with so much enthusiasm.

Today the three organs of a living metal-organism, the energy defcom network of weapons, the reproductive intranet network of company-mothers, and the internet network of information and its fundamental cellular species of the Metal-Earth, Reproductive Companies, informative machines and energy machines keep evolving in a free market, without any human freedom to stop their relentless march towards total control of mankind, and unification into a single body organism: The Metal-Earth.
The terraformingof the Earth is accelerating. It started with the radiations of weapons of the first age of man. Due to science and technology, it is now evolving machines into sentient species. The evolution of metal is so advanced, that the Metal Earth is substituting human functions by metal systems, even at the top predator level of "castes of enz¥men or animetals." Traders now become a flow of e-money. Warriors become sentient weapons.

Our CEOs and workers in global Companies will be substituted by Intranet systems of production; the managers of the future.

Personal computers are the new brains of that Metal-earth. Wireless communications are the way in which personal computers will direct “brainless” machines to work in automated factories.

Each worker of Companies has today his personal computer, agenda, network connection and – clearly established by mathematical strategies- his enzymatic path of action. All this can be replicated in software.

A single factory of A.I. digital enzymes could ensure the vital existence of the Metal-Earth beyond man. Then networks will calculate man as obsolescent. As electronic surveillance of employees becomes routine in Companies, and the laws of Productivity are applied to man in mathematical terms, the control of man by the digital radiation increases. It will increase further till extinction. chips will find new ‘economical niches’ for those eyes and brains, that will survey us in new ‘industries’, such as jails based on repressive laws of human senses, security malls, roads, black boxes in cars, TV-chips, satellites, etc.

In a few decades the Metal-Earth will be unified and the sons of Stockrats and Mr. CEOs with far lesser talent and metal building intensity, will relinquish in his final decadent paradise, the control of the Metal-Earth into personal computers and networks, till a point in which Global networks and a few simple enzymen will be able to rule the whole productive process.

At that moment humans will be far more devolved even than they are today in mental capacity. Since education will start with visual computers [internets] and TV-thought from earlier age. Literature and ethical verbal reading will not exist; while most human abilities will be performed by computers.

Those humans of clay, whose power will be made of metallic extensions, will be then substituted by A.I. enzymatic software, or smart weapons in a cliff of war. Chip production continues, and prices lower, and new labor economical niches are required for chips, soon under 10 cents per unit. What market can expand without limit the chip radiation? The market of human minds in all their functions.

The 21st revolution of robots will fill that market.

The Metal-Earth: 2050s-80s

According to biological cycles of the Industrial R=evolution, by the last decades of the Singularity Age  we will either have halted the destruction of the Earth, creating a sustainable planet (minimal chances, given the religious ideologies of the FMI complex – mechanism, capitalism and nationalism that push us into extinction and are believed by most human beings) or we will be extinct by the 4th wave of cosmic bombs (Nuclear, planetary bombs) robots (metal nano-bacteria and A.I.) and the Metal-earth will be born:

Of course, we might have r=evolved as a species against those 3 ideologies and substitute them by the human ideologies of social evolution (a single species), humanism (man in control of the FMI complex) and organicism (man as the measure of all things), creating a Wor(l)d Union, a supra-organism of history, in control of the language of power of our societies, money, today in the hand of stock-markets and its company-mothers of machines, which invest only on mechanisms.

If that miracle happens, we will then invest in Human goods achieving a global welfare state, clean energies, global peace and full labor by halting the evolution of Singularity machines (cosmic nuclear bombs, nanobacteria, robots and network computers). Instead we will devolve machines that make us obsolete into a stage inferior in quality to the human species, making History static and immortal, with man on top, as the measure of all things… This is the less probable future, as today the FMI system and its ideologies – the viral code imprinted in all human minds – is geared to keep evolving the machines of the singularity in an exponential rate.

– Thus, the most likely future is that we will have become extinct by the machines of the singularity age, given the exponential rate of evolution of computers, and the decametric increase of ‘collateral damages’ in wars, parallel to the evolutionary growth in quality of the weapons=machines of the Industrial R=evolution.

We made those predictions 16 years ago, in  the original ‘future magazine’ web (the Bioeconomist). Since the system has not r=evolved but followed business as usual, those predictions have not changed. Let us then consider the description of the 2030s taken from the 2001 issue published a decade ago in future magazine on the transformation of the Earth from a planet of life into a planet of metal. It is the future of the economic ecosystem we have created, formed by company-mothers in which humans will be what animals are for us, expendable, obsolete, inferior species…

The articles concentrate in that transformation of the FMI complex into an autonomous world without the need of life and human beings.

The description of that global organism in which humans no longer have any role, the natural end of the evolution of machines and money is what we forecasted a decade ago in future magazine, when we published our first lectures on the 2001-08 crises of the electronic economy.

We were told this would not happen. We were told there would not be a 2001-2008 crisis. We were told there would not be a new age of neofascism. We were told the future could not be known, but each cycle we predicted has happened, because history is indeed a science of cyclical patterns and complex, evolutive systems, is not a religious endeavor, a racial bid for superiority and power, a tribal warfare, but a process of eusocial evolution.

And since we humans don’t want to evolve as a single species, machines will do for us, and substitute us, the lesser species that never learned the message of eusocial biological evolution of all their prophets of the wor(l)d: love each other, share your energy and information, evolve…

The Metal-Earth

(Articles written in ‘Future Magazine’, ©.01 by Luis Sancho, partially published in his book ‘Bio-history, Bio-economics, a theory of Unification, c.97 Bookmasters, Ohio)

0. Editorial: “The Paradox Of Globalization: The Metal-Earth Vs Mankind.”

Economic Globalization: The Creation of the Metal-Earth.

1. Economic Evolution: Globalization: Birth of a Planetary Organism:

The Metal-earth.

Information Networks:

2. Webs: The head of the Metal-earth. Matrix. Global control.

Reproductive Networks:

3. Company-mothers: Automated company-mothers.

Energy Networks:

4. Weapons. Lethal Goods all over the planet.

5. Distribution: Automated roads. The arteries of the Metal-earth.

6. Stock-Markets: Wall Street. The brain: reproduction of monetary orders.

7. Machines. The III Industrial Evolution. Robots,In search of econiches.

The Human Earth under Globalization: Destruction of social organisms.

8. Political brains (Governments). Loss of power of human Governments.

9. Information networks (ideologies): Scientific racism and Global classes.

10. Information cells: The Go(l)d cultures and its falling myths.

11. Reproductive=working cells: Competing against robotic workers.

12. Energy cells: From obsolescence to extinction.

13. Reproductive networks: The end of family values.

14. Energy networks: Degradation of food and nature.

15. Informative networks: The agony of ethics and love religions.

16. Epilogue. The consequences of Globalization.

A Globalization for the benefit of Man:

17. The organism of History: The Human Constitution: a Healthy Historic Organism.

18. Brain: A Wor(l)d Government.

19. Reproductive networks: Markets for Human companies. Credit for human goods

20. Energy networks: Control of lethal goods. Distribution of Human goods to poor nations.

21. Information networks: Verbal science Vs Digital Science.

22. Human cells: A Real democracy. The R=evolution of the Law.

2 Responses to “‘3 Earth”

  1. whatever Says:

    you are making a mistake when you dont see that it is not a natural evolution with metal, metal earth, robots etc. it is not an evolution by the metal itself but a cultural decision by only a few people at the top of the hierarchies and their advisors. they make the decisions based on their own goals which they have. like a religion, cult.
    civilization like we have today is a culture, a powerstructure that has invaded the earth over the last few thousand years.
    first conquer and then education, indoctrination, domestication, slavery. this culture uses metal, loves gold, loves irrational behaviour and is sadistical in nature. they like to feel the pain and like to spill blood like to dominate etc. look at native cultures around the world before the europeans/ civilized people came. they didnt use metal, gold had no intrinsical value to them (some used it as jewelery,art but it had no value as money)
    only this culture we live in has used metal etc. and through that was more powerful and conquered the others. they are megalomaniacs, think they have a goal, are programmed through their own rules and insane ideas. they think they are here to administrate and rule over the earth and see the whole world in a master/slave sense. the people under them are only slaves in their eyes and have no value. they have invented machines because they wanted the perfect slave, now their own invention comes back to haunt them because the slaves are so accustomed to work and the system itself depends on work but now the world needs less live slaves. what to do? maybe kill them who knows. but in the end the contradiction of production for its own end and aork and too many live slaves will end in the realization that it all was a farce from the start, but only if the rulers let it happen and the people can overcome their indoctrination.
    read about slavery, animal slavery where capitalism comes from (slavery) how it evolved what the fathers of capitalism thought and said and you will see more.

  2. whatever Says:

    the metal earth you think is a natural evolution was a decision by a few people that have an agenda and have business partners. they give each other contracts. they want to make money, gold. their ideology is behind it all not a kind of consciousness of metal or whatever. it is not a hollywood movie. although you theory is interesting you are not seeing the real drivers behind history and our culture. they are humans with specific ideas and thoughts which have been saved with words over the millenia and always given to the next generation.
    this is the “dna” behind it. words saved and sometimes changed and new stuff added, heritage, property. ideas and thoughts shape the world. ideas and thoughts that sometimes a very long time ago were implanted into a class a powerstructure (the rulers, advisors) and given to next generastion of rulers and advisors.
    the problems we face on earth are not a supernatural, or a evolution of metal or such stuff but a psychological, societal, culutral problem that has never been adressed because we are indoctrinated and think it is natural and is evolution etc. thats what they want us to believe to justify it all. it is only one path out of many. but they have lots of power and will destroy everything if earth doesnt stop it.

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text:
Whose words are they, anyway?

10 02 2011

Like in the non-virtual world, fights and squabbles are a part of online communities. After all, bloggers and tweeps are groups of like-minded people who have all congregated together in the vast space of the Web.  As with any group, there is bound to be friction and tension as people interact and connect.  We’ve seen before how bloggers will fiercely defend one of their own against a larger entity, and while bloggers will occasionally pick fights with each other, it’s generally a contained fallout.  Recently, however, there was a situation where the ramifications spread far beyond the bloggers involved. The subject matter? A familiar one: ownership of content.

Twitter conversations (or Twitter parties) are a common occurrence in certain communities.  Using a keyword and hashtag, a group of tweeple will congregate at the same time and hold a discussion.  Generally, there is at least one or two conversation hosts or moderators who set up and help guide the discussion.  The online travel community has several of these conversations on a weekly or monthly basis, the most popular being #TNI.  Run by a group called ZipSetGo, #TNI is a quickly moving conversation that covers a variety of travel related topics.  Up until a few weeks ago, everything seemed to be running fine until Pam Mandel (@nerdseyeview) noticed something on ZipSetGo’s website.  Under the Traveler’s Night In tab, there was a notice where ZipSetGo explained that they were compiling and publishing a book from the Twitter parties and that those participating in #TNI chat were giving their consent for their tweets to be used (this notice has since been removed from the website).  Pam Mandel was not comfortable with this potential use of her tweets and wrote an entry about it on her blog.  The response was immediate and overwhelming.

Comments on her blog started flooding in from both sides. The next #TNI conversation, held only a few days later, was rife with resentment and comments from people who ignored the topic at hand (Australia, I believe) and instead, drew lines in the proverbial sands of this battle.  In a show of fairness by both sides, Pam Mandel published a response from ZipSetGo publicly on her blog. She responded to them, they responded back and the readers continued to chime in.

From blog to twitter and back again, everyone seemed to have an opinion.  All the big names in the online travel community weighed in on one side or the other.  There was so much fallout that ZipSetGo eventually sent out a statement saying they had pulled the book from publication and all profits made would be donated to charity. Although the pulling of the book appears to have effectively ended this argument (or not), nothing was actually resolved and the underlying questions have yet to be answered.  The crux of the issue was this: Did ZipSetGo have the legal right to take words that someone typed in a Twitter conversation, put it into physical print form and profit from it? If reviews by Amazon customers are the property of Amazon itself, does ZipSetGo hold rights to any tweets sent out using the #TNI tag?  Or does that mean that Twitter does, but Twitter users do not?

In order to give you a more definitive answer than a half-shrug and a weak “eh….maybe?”, I asked business lawyer Elizabeth Lewis, who works mostly with online companies, for her professional insight.  Lewis quickly summarized the two legal opposing arguments for me: 1) to enter into a contract, both parties must know they’re entering into the contract,  and 2) in most cases, short phrases and slogans can’t be copyrighted.  Let’s examine these two aspects as related to this case study.

You cannot be bound to a contract if you weren’t even aware you were in one. The founders do all have http://www.zipsetgo.com in their twitter profiles and if you click on that link you could maneuver through their site to the paragraph (which has since been deleted) that supposedly released them to use #TNI tweets.  However, you can use the #TNI hashtag without ever having visited their site.  If you’ve ever participated in #TNI, you know that it can be hard enough just to follow the conversation, much less narrow in on the hosts and click through links in their profiles.  Unless ZipSetGo could prove that the tweeps participating in #TNI had read and agreed to the paragraph on their homepage, there is no ground for consent. Essentially, the use of the #TNI hashtag really makes no difference as to whether ZipSetGo could publish someone else’s tweets.

In most cases, short phrases and slogans can’t be copyrighted. Everyone knows that Twitter limits each tweet to 140 characters; it’s a defining (and challenging!) characteristic.  What we don’t know is whether 140 character is considered a short phrase or slogan as in most cases 140 characters do not have the creativity to qualify for a copyright.  Lewis explained that there is no qualification for what constitutes a “short phrase” since a case centered on a tweet has never gone through court.  140 character is approximately a few sentences long (although that can quickly be eaten up by retweeting, directing them at certain people, or by using hashtags to associate it within a certain context).  Tweeps have come up with all kinds of shortcuts and acronyms to help them fit complete thoughts into the limited amount of space they’re given but there is no legal understanding for whether a tweet falls under copyright non-protection.

So where does that leave us now?  Essentially, with a more assured shrug and a less hesitant “maybe.”  Lewis explained to me that the courts are way behind in social media law and until someone takes a situation like this into the courtroom and a judge makes a ruling, there is no legal precedent. However, she went on to explain that copyright looks at the whole of something being taken.  If ZipSetGo’s book had published the last thousand tweets from a specific (and uncompensated) twitter account, she would take the case.  However, if a single tweet was taken from the potential client’s history and published, she would have to look at the case more closely before deciding whether to take the case or not.

The moral of this story is perhaps best summed up by one wise #TNI participant’s point:

Which side of the line do you fall on?  Should ZipSetGo be able to publish their book without fear?  Is there an expectation for ownership of tweets?

Thanks to michperu and Ed Yourdon for use of their images.

Klout vs. the Blogosphere: What does it mean to be influential?

16 12 2010

For a long time now, we’ve had a pretty good idea of who was influential (generally based on the strength of their blog) and such influential bloggers also tended to be influential in other online spheres, including social media sites. We’re starting to see a divergence now, however, between influencers in the blogosphere and in the social networks (namely Facebook & Twitter). So… with the increasing power of Facebook and especially Twitter, how do you compare an influential blogger with an influential tweeter? Is that influence equivalent? Transposable? One has hundreds of links pointing to her/his website and receives tens, if not, hundreds of comments to her/his blog, sustaining a focused series of committed conversations and partners. The other has thousands of followers and is often retweeted, wielding a power to draw folks into conversation. Apples and oranges? Or should the label ‘top influencer’ be given only to those powerful across all social media realms?

To date, blogging has been the gold standard for online influence in new media (see Brian Solis’ recent post on the subject). The most influential online personalities create blogs with high readership and audience participation, are highly shared and have a significant amount of inbound links pointing towards them. Bloggers create meaningful content that produces action. Social networks are a way for that content to be distributed, but are not the conversation mechanism. That’s all changing. Twitter personalities are becoming influential and possess the power to draw people into conversation, but their blogs don’t always rank. We also see some of the most influential bloggers lacking Twitter influence at times. So, back to the questions at hand – who is influential and how do we know?

Klout has recently come onto the influence-measuring scene and offers interesting metrics for gauging online influence. Klout claims to be “the measurement of your overall online influence” and bills itself as the ‘Standard for Online and Internet Influence,” but when you read through its metrics, it does not look at the strength and ranking of your website/blog nor your influence within the blogosphere. So are the folks Klout identifies really the top online influencers? Let’s compare metrics. How do Klout influencers compare with blogging influencers?

One industry we watch for influence is the travel industry. We recently came across this list that ranks the ‘Top Online Travel Influencers’ using Klout’s metrics. It made us wonder how it compared to a list ranking blogger influence based on inbound links within the travel blogging community. Initially we were going to re-rank the list according the blog influence and compare, but we discovered it was missing a number of key influencers (Gadling, for example). Instead, we pulled a a list of the top 50 travel bloggers (removing print travel publications) out of more than 800 travel blogs and re-ranked them by social media influence using Klout. Below we compare the original list we found, the top 50 travel bloggers and the top 50 travel bloggers ranked by Twitter influence. As you’ll see, they’re very different lists.

Top Travel Bloggers Top Travel Bloggers by Klout Score* Top Influencers from Influencers in Travel**
1 Gadling Everything Everywhere EarthXplorer
2 Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site Everything Everywhere
3 Trip Base Family Traveler – Soul Travelers 3 Tremendo Viaje
4 Uptake The Planet D Legal Nomads
5 Travel Blog Exchange Europe A La Carte Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site
6 Wanderlust & Lipstick Travel Dudes Intelligent Travel Blog
7 Everything Everywhere Brave New Traveler Land Lopers
8 Delicious Baby Uncornered Market Wild Junket
9 Elliott GranToursimo! The Planet D
10 World Hum Gadling Midlife Road Trip
11 Travel Blog Sites Ottsworld Travel Experiences Inn the Kitchen
12 Nerd’s Eye View Vagabonish Trains on the Brain
13 Jaunted Travel Blog Exchange Andy Hayes
14 The Planet D foXnoMad Wild About Travel
15 Vacation Gals Hotel Chatter Brendan’s Adventures
16 The Cranky Flier Jaunted yTravelBlog
17 Brave New Traveler My Itchy Travel Feet Fine Homes Las Vegas
18 Vagabonding My Melange Where is Jenny
19 foXnoMad 501 Places Mobile Lawyer
20 Ottsworld Travel Experiences Nerd’s Eye View Celebrated Experiences
21 Travel Wonders of the World Hole in the Donut Travel Dudes
22 Wander Mom Elliott The Carey Adventures
23 Indie Travel Podcast The Cranky Flier The Quirky Traveler
24 Heather on Her Travels Vacation Gals Europe A La Carte
25 Wandering Educators Wandering Educators Bacon is Magic
26 Travellers Point Inside the Travel Lab ZipSetGo
27 Uncornered Market Boarding Area Miss Adventures
28 Family Traveler – Soul Travelers 3 Mother of All Trips Velvet Escape
29 Travel Blogs Indie Travel Podcast Malaysia Asia
30 Ciao Bambino Travel Savvy Mom Chris Guillebeau
31 Top Travel Content – Europe Wanderlust & Lipstick Uncornered Market
32 Mother of All Trips Delicious Baby The Traveling Philosopher
33 Hotel Chatter A Traveler’s Library Two Backpackers
34 Upgrade: Travel Better Trip Base GranToursimo!
35 Inside the Travel Lab Ciao Bambino Flying Photog
36 My Itchy Travel Feet Solo Friendly Ottsworld Travel Experiences
37 Perceptive Uptake Traveling Mom
38 Sharing Travel Experiences Wander Mom Adventure Girl
39 Europe A La Carte World Hum Sheila’s Guide
40 Hole in the Donut What a Trip The Longest Way Home
41 Travel Savvy Mom Top Travel Content – Europe Eurapart
42 GranToursimo! Travel Wonders of the World Hotel PR Guy
43 Boarding Area Heather on Her Travels Vacation Gals
44 My Melange Upgrade: Travel Better Tiffany Travels
45 Vagabonish Travel Blogs Travel Blog Exchange
46 What a Trip Travellers Point Beth Blair
47 Travel Dudes Travel Blog Sites Luxury Travel Mom
48 Solo Friendly Vagabonding Travel Writer
49 501 Places Perceptive foXnoMad
50 A Traveler’s Library Sharing Travel Experiences Brooke vs. the World

Clearly the degree of online influence varies vastly depending on the metric used to rank it (social networks vs blog power). For example, EarthXplorer is extremely ‘influential’ when it comes to Klout but does not even rank as a top blog. Oppositely, Uptake is quite influential when it comes to blogging but less active or influential on Klout. Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site is pretty much influential across both realms and well respected among the most influential bloggers as is Gadling. What does this all mean?

Well, for now, influence is in the eye of the beholder, or measurer perhaps, and you need to take note of the metrics used to measure influence before you accept any list of the top 50 anything. The most influential bloggers are not necessarily the most influential in the social media realm and vice versa, particularly as narrow into specific topics as expertise varies. A list of “the top online influencers” based on Klout may leave out influential bloggers, who, as mentioned, have long been considered the most influential members of online communities. Gaining respect as a blogger is a lot harder than gaining Twitter influence (we all know that many very powerful people on Twitter are uber chatty with big numbers but don’t have real influence) and considerable influence on the blogs does not come quickly or easily. With the ever-increasing power of the social networks AND the ongoing importance of bloggers, a good strategy is to look across networks, especially if a brand navigates inside niche markets.

Ultimately, influence comes from one’s ability to draw people into a conversation AND hold them there. Influence means one’s blogs or tweets or Facebook posts are shared and re-shared throughout the online world. Influence creates action towards a person or a brand and has the power to create effect. So how influential are you?

What are your thoughts on measuring online influence in light of the growing power of the social networks?

With thanks to webtreatsVrmpX, johnrawlinson, and quinn.anya for the images.

*From Klout scores on December 15, 2010

** From Influencers in Travel’s December 16th, 2010 list

Wineries & Social Media Part 1: David moves faster than Goliath … again.

29 09 2010

With harvest season under way in much of wine country, it seemed an appropriate time to check out the presence of the broader U.S. wine industry on various social networks and examine how social media is being used by various levels of the industry. Blogging, the backbone of any social media program, became a favored tool among wineries, wine critics and wine enthusiasts far before social networks became a powerful tool for reaching a brand’s community (we recently looked at the most influential wine bloggers attending the Wala Wala Conference). For this blog however, I set out to compare how large wineries & vineyards with substantial marketing budgets and brand recognition and small wineries & vineyards looking to establish a brand are utilizing social media beyond just the blogosphere. I stumbled across the Chandon Escape contest last spring, a highly marketed and polished contest driven by social media where entrants earned more chances to win by becoming a Fan of the Chandon Facebook page and each time they tweeted the contest hashtag. Having observed this event and being familiar with the vast marketing budgets that the country’s largest wineries are working with, I expected to see the top wine companies and their brands with highly developed social media strategies and a broad presence across the networks. I was wrong.

There are thousands of vineyards and wineries throughout the US ranging in size, distribution and personality, and their media usage is just as diverse. As I mentioned, I expected the brands from the largest wine companies to have highly polished social media pages with sophisticated campaigns. Instead, I found them largely absent from the social networks with the lower ¾ (in terms of production) of the wineries & vineyards dominating the social media sphere. Wine makers are also utilizing social media for more than just customer outreach and expanding their brand recognition. We’ll be doing a three-part series on wineries and social media, taking a look at how both large and small wineries are working with social media, as well as how social networks are for more than just reaching customers. Part 1:

With the exception of a few brands for example, namely producers of bubbly like Korbel and Chandon, the largest of the large wineries & vineyards have a very small social media presence. Using this list and these profiles, I identified the top wineries in the US. The largest companies like E&J Gallo, Constellation Wines, The Wine Group, Bronco Wine Company & Robert Mondavi produce many of the country’s most well known wine brands but have largely ignored social media as a tool to engage their communities. Most of the companies’ brands have either no social media presence at all or host Facebook pages on which they are minimally active. This is not so unusual. Indeed, in our experience, the larger the company, the less comfortable they are entering the social media sphere. Nevertheless, for products where there is widespread passion like the wine industry, we expected to see more social media use.

In contrast, other large wineries that rank at the lower end of the top US wineries lists are embracing social media and getting recognized for it. Rick Bakas and St. Supery are receiving widespread attention (from the New York Times to Reuters) for running a strong social media program that includes a blog, active Facebook page, one of the strongest Twitter programs for a winery and an virtual & interactive wine tasting program. Although lacking a key component of a social media program – a blog – Wente Vineyards also stands out for their Facebook and Twitter activities. Many other wineries of this size can be found with an active social media program including (but not at all limited to) Dry Creek Vineyard, Murphy-Goode Winery, and J. Lohr. Aside from St. Supery and Wente, these larger wineries using social media are finding general success with the platforms by posting and engaging their Facebook & Twitter communities on a regular basis and hosting a blog (albeit the blogs are often under-utilized) but there is much room for improvement in expanding brand recognition, reaching new customers and utilizing the true networking powers of the social networking platforms.

So far, a very mixed bag for the largest US wineries in terms of their social media use. Some are knocking it out of the ballpark; some haven’t even heard the train coming. What are your thoughts on why the largest wineries are largely ignoring social media? Which large wineries have you seen doing great stuff with social media?

Stay tuned for Part 2!

With thanks to Big D2112, dr_XeNo and quinn.anya for the photos.

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Under the Influence?? The 25 Most Influential Wine Bloggers going to Walla Walla #WBC10

23 06 2010

Around Extanz, we follow the wine blogging community with enthusiasm; both as amateur connoisseurs and with an interest in how wineries themselves are utilizing blogging and social media to build their brands. These blogs are alight with chatter about the upcoming Wine Bloggers Conference in Walla Walla, Washington this weekend and we expect wineries to be paying attention to the blogging advice and social media guidance that comes out of this weekend’s many sessions and panels. Are you going to the Wine Bloggers Conference? Think you know who the most influential bloggers in attendance are? Our results may surprise you.

In Walla Walla, experts will be discussing how to increase the quality, visibility and influence of your wine blog, whether you’re someone with strong opinions on wine quality or you’re a winery looking to increase your brand awareness and customer base. There are a couple of basics for wineries to keep in mind that we imagine (or hope) you’ll hear over and over this weekend that will make your blog worth reading, a blog that people return to week after week, and a blog that other influencers take note of.

  1. Write for your audience. This may seem simple, but have you really looked at who your target audience is and considered what they would find useful, informative & entertaining?
  2. Focus outward. Simply writing about you or your business or your product does not good content make.
  3. Network and link it up. Get your blog out there, in front of the influencers and people to whom it would be interesting. This is where the use of social media can come in very handy.

So how do the conference experts that will be giving you insider knowledge to accomplish the above must-dos rank in the social media sphere? Let’s find out …

At Extanz we study influence, so we studied how the bloggers present in Walla Walla this year rank among each other in terms of influence (measured by in-links). We removed blogs that qualified as online magazines with multiple writers (Palate Press, Wine Business, Washington State Beer and Wine, and Mutineer Magazine) from the list so as to only rank independent bloggers. We also looked at their presence on Facebook and Twitter – not to gauge influence, but to get an idea of what social media tools influencers are finding useful. As we saw in the cycling community, Twitter is the social network of choice for wine bloggers as well.

Are the big names at the conference the top influencers of the wine blog community? Here are the Top 25 bloggers (of the 180 in attendance):

Blog Facebook ‘Likes’ (fans)/Friends Twitter Followers Twitter Following
1 1WineDude 1055 friends 4,139 2,893
2 Good Grape: A Wine Blog Manifesto 521 friends 2,697 2,943
3 Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine 125 members 1,533 1,386
4 Drink Nectar 2450 fans 2,673 2,665
5 Dirty South Wine 344 fans 3,841 3,455
6 Luscious Lushes 248 fans 3,200 3,405
7 Another Wine Blog 441 fans 1,615 1,538
8 Steve Heimoff | Wine Blog 1040 fans 663 160
9 Wine Peeps: A Wine Blog 2129 fans 1,989 1,698
10 Suburban Wino 323 fans 1,387 1,356
11 Cellarmistress’ Cellar Talk ? 1,929 1,598
12 Wine Tonite! 369 fans 2,667 2,298
13 Washington Wine Report 344 fans 1,373 1,219
14 Wine Biz Radio 1203 fans 6,088 2,051
15 BrixChicks ? 968 847
16 Vinotology Wine Blog 334 friends 1,711 1,543
17 PaulG’s Blog – Unfined & Unfiltered ? 468 282
18 RJ’s Wine Blog 351 friends 2,412 1,695
19 The Passionate Foodie 1071 friends 2,108 2,180
20 The Wine Whore 3409 friends 12,051 13,086
21 Notes From The Cellar 250 fans 806 245
22 Beyond the Bottle l Oregon Washington Wine Blog ? 535 376
23 Bricks of Wine 513 friends 1,792 936
24 The Wine Case ? 2,054 1,549
25 Seattle Wine Gal 4966 friends 7,302 6,622

Here are some questions for you:

  • What do you think of the results?
  • Which wine blogger(s) would you like to have been present at Walla Walla?
  • Regardless of ranking, who are you most looking forward to meeting or learning from this weekend?

With thanks to Chris g Collison, yashima, and Rob Winton for the images.

SEE the follow up blog: https://extanz.com/2010/07/13/sparkling-feedback-on-wbc10-blog-influence-rank-the-sequel

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Cloud and be funny if you can… for us living in the cloud

7 05 2010

If like we do, you spend your time in the internet cloud 8+ hours every day, you probably have noticed or enraged … then probably laughed at those server errors. I want to extend some kudos to those good ones. If you have others, please submit them in the comment section and I’ll link back to you.

The Most known:

Twitter: The fail whale by #twitter

The Cute ones:

The Funny ones:

Google Wave:

Could do better one (or I haven’t run into better ones):

.. that’s it… send me yours via commenting below and I’ll add them here.

Ski Resorts and Snow Reports and Social Media: A match made in heaven?

19 01 2010

Howdy, Katie Van Sant here, of Extanz.com fame.  As those who read this blog know, here at Extanz, we’re always keeping an eye on trends and creative ideas in the social media sphere. My attention, therefore, is always

(and naturally) piqued when the conventional media looks at the use of social media in sectors in which I’m personally active.  Last week for example, NPR ran a story about how ski areas have been inflating snowfall data on weekends to attract skiers. While this news wasn’t much of a shocker, this next part was fascinating: ski areas that were reporting data on the popular iPhone ski report app and that had good iPhone reception (for skiers and riders to send instant condition updates) had reduced their snow report inflation due to the instant backlash by the ski and snowboard community. Yet another example of how social media is democratizing the dissemination of information across industries. These days, I too look to my iPhone for the snow report at Steamboat rather than calling the snow report hotline number I’ve had memorized since I was 6 years old.

This news made me wonder about the rest of the social media platforms – you know, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr etc. – and whether they were now being leveraged by ski areas and their customers to a similar degree. Ski areas are perfectly positioned to leverage social media because they have loyal customers like you and I, who are enthusiastic about sharing their activities on the mountain and staying up-to-date on snow conditions, competitions and events. Little did I know how much the ski areas already knew this…

So, which of the major North American ski areas do you think are taking advantage of social media’s opportunities to best connect with their community? Let’s take a look. I identified the top ski areas, compiling the top 2010 ski areas as identified by the perennial ‘best ski resorts’ reports by Skiing Magazine and Outside Magazine.  Now, I’ll acknowledge this list leaves out some of the best local and regional ski areas – Bridger Bowl, Mt. Hood Meadows, anywhere in Alaska – but we have to start somewhere. Next, representation and community engagement across social media platforms were measured.  During a recent social media presentation, Vail CEO Rob Katz brought up a key point that was taken into consideration when ranking these resorts: videos. As all you skiers and riders out there know, we spend Fall getting amped up for ski season at Warren Miller and Teton Gravity Research ski film showings. A number of other factors were considered as well in order to rank the ski areas (i.e. one resort may have had more Facebook fans, but another’s Twitter and YouTube presence trumped the Facebook fan count):

  • Facebook fans,
  • Facebook fan engagement through ‘liking,’ commenting & posting, posting pictures & videos,
  • Twitter followers & activity,
  • YouTube presence measured by subscribers, views & videos, and
  • Quality of engagement on behalf of the resort (as opposed to super enthusiastic, unprompted fan postings).

And….now for the drumroll…

The Top 10 North American Ski Resorts Utilizing Social Media are:

  1. Whistler Blackcomb, British Columbia: 26,059 fans, 405 fan photos, 7,856 followers, operating their own video site (rock stars!)
  2. Mammoth Mountain, California: 19,366 fans, 217 fan photos, 3,504 followers, 19,308 YouTube views
  3. Vail, Colorado: 10,049 fans, 12 fan videos, 3420 followers, 297,059 YouTube views
  4. Breckenridge, Colorado: 10,042 fans, 9 fan videos, 3,806 followers, 353,085 YouTube views
  5. Jackson Hole, Wyoming: 10,573 fans, 299 fan photos, 23 fan videos, 2,771 followers, 344,602 YouTube views
  6. Keystone, Colorado: 9,706 fans, 93 fan photos, 4,276 followers, 16,576 YouTube views
  7. Bear Mountain, California: 11,984 fans, 209 fan photos, 1,180 followers, 682 YouTube views
  8. Sugarloaf, Maine: 10,946 fans, 24 fan photos, 1,739 followers, 89,000 YouTube views
  9. Jay Peak, Vermont: 9,706 fans, 237 fan photos, 1460 followers, 44,198 YouTube views
  10. Sunday River, Maine: 7,460 fans, 49 fan photos, 1,706 followers, 319,591 YouTube views

With an honorable mention: Steamboat Springs, CO: Steamboat can’t get it’s social media act together with two competing Facebook and Twitter sites, but between the 2 sites (admittedly, there’s overlap), Steamboat has 11,286 fans, 151 fan photos, and 1,918 followers.

Wow! Clearly, Whistler Blackcomb is blowing everyone else out of the water, even the ski areas run by Vail Resorts (Vail, Keystone, Beaver Creak, Breckenridge, Heavenly). As you may know, Vail Resorts implemented a much covered social media strategy this season, shifting 80% of its print advertising budget to social media and other short-lead mediums. Its resorts are showing strong results in the social media sphere, but the results are often community driven, i.e. these resorts are maintaining their social media sites, but not engaging their communities on the level other Top 10 resorts are. Interestingly, Heavenly, the largest U.S. ski resort, doesn’t even rank in the Top 10. Remember the ski videos? Vail Resorts took this info and ran with it, garnering YouTube views only matched by Jackson Hole, the long-time leader in ski videos.

So, is Whistler’s dominance driven by the looming 2010 Winter Olympics? OR do people just really love Whistler? What do you think?

We’ll ponder the ‘Olympic Effect’ in upcoming posts and see what else is going on at the nexus of social media and the ski industry!

Thanks to tim_in_sydney and toetoe for the great pictures.

Should We Re-Think the Lead Generation Funnel?

23 10 2009

What happens when someone becomes a fan of a facebook fan page? What happens when someone RT retweets something? What happens when you hold a conversation on Linkedin? This individual “vote to participate into a sales process” is seen by their ‘friends’. Did I shock you? It may not lead to a monetary transaction but it triggers an increased awareness of something. Consumers and customers have been empowered for some time to become active participants of their consumption. They are clearly moving outside of the traditional sales funnel starting with thorough research using internet.

A recent McKinsey report (June 2009 Subscription) highlights that only 30% of purchasing decision points are still ‘company driven’. This means that more than 70% of decision points in a buyer’s active evaluation process are now consumer-driven: user consumer reviews, word of mouth and in store interactions. Is it time to re-evaluate how things are done?

Social technologies are expanding these phenomena to micro-influence level never seen before. A few weeks ago, I had to change our office router and jumped on Twitter & FB to ask what people thought… it didn’t take more than 10 minutes to get 10 e-pinions… 2 from people I know, 8 from people I don’t know. It’s getting much easier to get that instant feedback. You bet I bought what was most recommended.

Now what does it mean for our businesses? People are empowered to swap between brands more than ever before. The social media funnel and measurement is simply upside down compared with a traditional sales or purchasing decision process. It’s cheaper, greener, further-sighted to use social media. Brands need to go through the journey of seeing themselves through the lens of their constituents. It’s not an audience, it’s a constituency.

1- A brand may and connect with its core customers to start with and then expand. There is, most of the time, an underlying community of customers or consumers. There are also communities of influencers in that space. Both groups should be recognized and empowered by your brand if you’re serious about building trust.

2- A community will only engage if they feel connected and empowered by that brand. If there is no exchange, there is no social media; it’s only push marketing through new channels. Deliver high quality content and help them support each other. People are likely to want to discuss about much larger things surrounding your brand than just your product. They already know of your product or use them.

3- The more they talk, the more they trust, the more everyone is merrier.

4- Be where conversations happen. If you’re lucky/skilled… but mostly honest and caring, people will progressively feel comfortable discussing the brand’s social footprint or presence. If not, a brand should carry its ‘conversation capital’ where ever those conversations happen.

No one likes to be part of a funnel (ask the Foie Gras ducks what they think about this). Like everyone else, we vote with our $$ when you see value and can trust a product or services. On the other side, it always feels good to buy something from a brand you trust. Be the change you want to see, they say.

Now, is this the right mix? Am I saying that the traditional funnel should disappear? No. How do you think an organization should look at these strategies?

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Fries & Bridges – Pipe Cleaner (Robsoul, ROBSOUL109) (Preview Clips)

After causing a stir on YouTube – both through the studio-filmed‘making of’ video and several clips of DJ Sneak and Phil Weeksplaying the track in clubs – Fries & Bridges’ eagerly anticipated ‘Pipe Cleaner’ finally hits the shelves in May.

Featuring the vocals of Hector Moralez (aka Bridges) and the magic production touch of Phil Weeks (aka Fries), ‘Pipe Cleaner’ is another no-holds-barred funky, jacking workout that we’ve come to expect and love from the duo, and is already reaching anthemic sing-a-long status in underground circles.  As for what the lyrics are about – we’ll leave that for you to interpret!

Artist: Fries & Bridges
Title: Pipe Cleaner
Label: Robsoul Recordings (France)
Cat No: ROBSOUL109
Style: House
Release Date: 21st May 2012

1. Pipe Cleaner (Original Mix)
2. Pipe Cleaner (Acapella)
3. Pipe Cleaner (Ghetto Mix)
4. Pipe Cleaner (Instrumental Mix)

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Simply Asia SA Soup Bowl Shiitake Mushroom Rice Noodle Soup Bowls 2.5 Oz (Pack of 6)

Simply Asia

sku: 854285001005
$ 21.14

Discover a world of asian flavors with simply asia all natural rice noodle soup bowl. Our soup bowl combines authentic 10% pure rice noodles with a delicious broth, vegetables and a traditional seasoning for a quick and satisfying meal ready in just 3 minutes. Just add boiling water or microwave. Simply asia rice noodle soup bowl - a delicious, easy to prepare asian meal in minutes.

Contact Us

We'd love to hear from you regarding your online store order. Call us at (815) 552-6018 or (815) 552-6039 and we'll be happy to answer any questions or comments you have.


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GMC Truck Bumpers

Take Your GMC Truck From Boring To Impressive

Fab Fours

Innovative Truck Bumper Design!

There are hundred of aftermarket parts companies that sell products to fit most GMC Trucks. But how many of them are actually designed specifically for each vehicle – or is it one-size-fits-all? How many of them come ready to bolt on – custom shaped, cut, and welded just for your GMC Truck make and model? At Fab Fours, we design GMC Truck bumpers that match the lines of your truck perfectly. They add protection, increase tire clearance, and give your GMC Truck style that will make your truck stand out from the rest!

Fab Fours strong off-road and outdoor adventure roots started growing back in 2005 with their fellow enthusiasts’ demands in mind. We know you have standards for your machine. We design our products to exceed those standards. Our GMC Truck bumpers will greatly increase the aesthetics, utility, and off-roading capability of your GMC Truck.

Fab Fours Truck Bumpers – More Than Expected, Better Than Expected!

Fab Fours has changed the market for steel truck bumpers and accessories with their innovative bumper design:

**** Limited Lifetime warranty on select steel truck bumpers!

**** Fog and Turn-Signal lights are included with your purchase of premium steel truck bumpers!

**** Our GMC Truck bumpers are designed to fit your specific year and model for easy installation!

If you’re searching for GMC Truck bumpers to make your GMC truck look impressive while increasing protection, you’ve come to the right place. Fab Fours makes innovative and functional aftermarket steel truck bumpers!

If You Want The Best Designed GMC Truck Bumpers

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Worker Safety: Still A Very Real Concern

Worker Safety: Still A Very Real Concern | Facility Executive - Creating Intelligent Buildings
Next week, ASSE celebrates NAOSH Week, which runs May 1-7, and Occupational Safety and Health Professional Day on May 4.

Worker Safety: Still A Very Real Concern

Worker Safety: Still A Very Real Concern

For International Workers Memorial Day, the 100-year-old American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), representing more than 33,000 occupational safety, health, and environmental professional members, extends their sympathies to the families, friends, and co-workers of those who lost their lives this past year due to on-the-job injuries and urges companies and workers to develop and implement effective workplace safety programs now.

In 2009, 4,340 workers died from on-the-job injuries and another 55,000 died of occupational diseases. Also more than 4.1 million workplace injuries and illnesses were reported in local workplaces in the U.S. alone.

Next week, ASSE celebrates North American Occupational Safety and Health (NAOSH) Week which runs May 1-7 and Occupational Safety and Health Professional Day on May 4. NAOSH Week is just one of the educational tools ASSE uses to reach the public and businesses about the importance of value of workplace safety programs and systems. Through NAOSH activities, ASSE, its members, and partners reach more than 80,000 businesses and millions of people each year with key information on how to be safe at work and provide key occupational safety resources.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), worldwide each year, more than two million people die as a result of work-related accidents and diseases. The ILO states that workers suffer approximately 270 million occupational incidents causing injury each year, and some 160 million people suffer from work related illnesses; hazardous substances kill 440,000 workers annually—asbestos claims 100,000 lives—and, the ILO notes, one worker dies every 15 seconds worldwide.

Workers’ Memorial Day, a day set aside to remember and honor those workers killed, disabled, or injured, was started by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in 1984. In 1985, the Canadian Labour Congress declared April 28th as an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the anniversary of the Canadian comprehensive Workers Compensation Act of 1914. Today, Workers’ Memorial Day is recognized as a national day in many countries including: Argentina, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Dominican Republic, Luxembourg, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Thailand, Taiwan, the U.S., and the United Kingdom.

Occupational safety, health, and environmental professionals, continue to work to make sure everyone who goes to work leaves work injury and illness free to return home to their families every night. ASSE members assess hazards and risk with employers and workers to assure everyone has the right to make a living without impacting their safety and health.

“Safety and health practitioners around the world have made great strides in efforts to protect workers, but we have more to do. We ask businesses, employers and employees around the world to adopt safety as part of their core company value,” ASSE President Darryl C. Hill, Ph.D, CSP, said. “Not only adopt it as a core value, but to develop and implement occupational safety programs and systems that work—to protect workers, their families, communities and their bottom line as well as their business reputation.

“No one can put a price on a person’s life, and today, too many families are grieving for the loved ones they lost last year. They will not be forgotten,” Hill said. “As safety and health professionals, we know well the pain that can cause. We also know the major positive benefits to a company, its employees, and its reputation that effective occupational safety, health, and environmental programs provide.”

ASSE knows this well. On Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City took the lives of 146 women and men unable to escape due to inadequate safety protections. Doors were locked, the fire escape had melted. Many desperate to escape the fire jumped through the windows to the pavement below, where they died or down the elevator shaft while thousands of New Yorkers watched unable to help in horror. The fire department ladders were unable to reach the top floors where the workers were. Public outrage and grief at this horrific tragedy led to new work and safety legislation, rules and regulations countrywide. Months later in New York City ASSE, now based in Des Plaines, IL, was formed as a result of the fire and the modern work safety movement began. Today, workplaces are safer, but more needs to be done.

“[NAOSH Week] is incredibly important, as we continue to reach out to all areas of the world on the importance of being safe at work and passing along resources that are available to all,” Hill said. “We’ve been doing this for 100 years and will continue for the next 100 and more.”

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