As I write about in the book, IBL – Involved But Looking – has become the relationship status a la mode in the world of any. When there are tens of millions of dating opportunities anywhere in the world, who would want to definitely close all doors? Still, there’s a reason why celebrities and rich people date and marry more people, and faster (go back and refresh your memory with Pam Anderson, Ivana Trump, Eddie Murphy and the gang in the happily-ever-after-list posts) – meeting, dating, marrying and divorcing people take time and money.

Though most of us have the money (or will soon, as the GDP keeps running towards the sky, though with a temporary hiccup right now), we still lack the time. One solution I wrote about previously is minidating, like woome.com.

Another one is virtual engagements and marriages.

Last week, a 43-year old Japanese housewife was arrested for murder of her husband. Or rather, the virtual murder of her virtual husband, to be more specific. Her husband in the virtual game “Maple Story” preferred to stay IBL – thinking that would be the beauty of a virtual marriage, it does not stop you from engaging in several others –  and when she found out, she becam furious and managed to, somehow,  log into his account and kill the 33-year old man’s online alter ego. Herself being married IRL (In Real Life, in case you mind is still in the old millennium), she could not stand her virtual husband’s betrayal. 

She now faces a 5,000 dollar fine (that would probably be no problem in the world of any) and 5 years in jail (a bit more of a problem).

This is nothing particular to Japan, in August a woman in Delaware, USA, was charged with planning a kidnapping of the IRL version of her Second Life fiancé to keep him off the IBL track.

Could IBL be the offenders’ new millennium version of the miniskirt? Back in 1900’s, demented rapists would argue that a woman wearing a miniskirt “asked for trouble”. In the new millennium, at least one woman from Japan and and one from the US would argue that being IBL is asking for it, too…

Remember what day tomorrow is?

Stevie Wonder and Pras have finished their Obama support-generating world tours. In his comment on my previous post about them, Martin suggested that, maybe they did not have to go farther than to Tennessee.

 A couple of weeks ago, 2o-year old Tennessee U student David Kernell was indicted and charged with having hacked republican VP candidate Sarah Palin’s private yahoo email account. Not stopping at that, he also published emails and Sarah’s address on 4chan, what could be the world’s largest English-based forum, truly an example of the world of any and Generation In-Charge, where you can find out anything about anyone at anytime, and anyone can spread the word. And, grande finale, he posted the password to Sarah’s email account, so that anyone could gain access.

The VP candidate’s private and professional emails, not all of them very flattering, travelled the world in an instant, and were quickly screendumped and published for posterity on numerous websites (google and be amazed…)

In that same instant, David Kernell (who, incidentally, stem from a long line of Democrats, his father even being a state rep) became a political force of global magnitude, generating six-digit numbers of google hits himself.  

No hard guess that Sarah Palin did NOT want David Kernell. Nor that she could sure use Norwegian socialist leader Jagland’s “chicken man”…

This is no news. Everybody knows about it by now. Last week, Guns n’ Roses’ record company announced that “Chinese Democracy” will be released on November 23rd. The first single was just released, and ask anybody, anywhere, if they’ve heard and they’ll likely nod yes. After all, views of the hundreds of youtube clips already posted count in seven digit numbers. And those who haven’t heard the song have probably at least read the review of the single (which might be more in line with their warp consumption) – which is featured absolutely everywhere.

Two striking observations. One, reviews are rather lukewarm – suggesting that “Chinese Democracy” was indeed the ultimate nextopia album, perfect before it was released. Two, for a song that received such low ratings, the number of listeners is remarkable. Good or bad reviews, they are nothing compared to expectations.

But remember that the album is still not out. Dr. Pepper, most likely certain it would never happen, promised free sodas to all Americans if the album were released this year. Do you think it will actually be Dr. Pepper time on November 23rd?

Here’s another one: True to the nextopia business model, Axl recently suggested that the album slotted for release on November 23rd will be the first in a trilogy. When do you think albums II and III will be out?

In case you only read the reviews:

A few posts back, I wrote about campaign workers Stevie Wonder and Pras travelling the world to generate support for Obama. Not because Swedes, Germans and Slovaks are expected to vote for the nextopian president, but because camp Obama has realized that any Swede, German or Slovak can make or break the public opinion.

Or any Norwegian, for that matter. Martin pointed me to the story about how a Norwegian “chicken man” saved the leader of the country’s socialist party.

In 2002, socialist party leader Thorbjorn Jagland collapsed after the elections went against him and his party. The media were all over him, headlines everywhere screaming out his failure, reporters and newscasts repeating the question whether he will stay on the post, and suggesting he should leave politics altogether. Cameras and microphones followed Jagland all the way from the ballots to the hospital where he was taken in due to exhaustion from the media frenzy.

Then, in front of the cameras outside the hospital, the “chicken man” appears behind the state television reporter in live broadcast. Chanting “first we’re bad, then we’re nice”, he sets not only the reporter but the entire nation off balance. As it turns out, the chicken man is an employee at the state television, too, heading out on a mission not sanctioned by his employer, to save Jagland from the witch hunt.

And the chicken man prevails. Once the news is out, newspapers and newscasts focus on first the chicken man (“who is he?”), then his relation to his employer and his right- or wrong-doing (“can he really do this?”), then his chant (“bad or nice?”), then on media ethics (“how far can we go?”), and then on… completely different stories. By the time the media had turned full circle, everyone had forgotten about socialist party leader Jagland.

A political disaster averted by a chicken race. Instead of complete demise, Jagland recovered and is today the leader of the Norwegian parliament. 

 A Norwegian language course:

So, you wanna see Metallica on their new tour? Raise your hand if you’re clueless as to how to get hold of their playlist, see their new(?) looks, check out their sound, or even consume the entire concert before they come to town!

My guess, your hand is not raised. Living in the world of any, you know how to scan blogs, youtube and other spaces to find out about and consume the band’s every step on their worldwide tour in real time. In an act of trailerism consumption, you’ve probably already seen and heard the band in concert (at least the five-minute minisode version of it) before they come to your local stadium.

Or you didn’t raise your hand because you haven’t embraced the world of any, and are probably too old and weak to get the hand above your head…

So, when the scalpers try to sell the still available tickets on the day of the concert, chances are, those who did not get tickets months ahead have already trailer-consumed the concert anyway. Hence the empty seats.

Lars made a fantastically long and eloquent comment on this matter in response to yesterday’s post, check it out! For example, he remarked that in the cases of the upcoming AC/DC and Metallica concerts, the tickets were released almost immediately after the concert announcements. Why? In the world of any, the local stadium does not solely compete with other local events, but with concert venues anywhere in the world…

But could there be another reason to the early releases? Care to guess? And while you’re at it, what’s your take on the solution ticket vendors have been discussing lately – ticket auctions?

“There’s this new thing called the internet…”:

Remember the time when you could buy a ticket to a concert a few days before the show? Probably not, unless you were born early in the last century? If you were born late in the last century, you might at least remember how one could stand in line for days or hours to get concert tickets.

However, in this century and new millennium, the average waiting time is about 11 minutes. That’s how long it takes for Metallica, AC/DC or whatever music act coming to town to sell out the local stadium.

The world of any concentrates hours and days of standing in line into 11 minutes, as not only the people standing outside the box office compete for the tickets, but anyone, in any corner of the world can buy a seat online. And anyone, anywhere can find out when and where the music act’s new show will be, and anyone can go to see the show, from anywhere. People anywhere can keep themselves updated second-by-second on the artist’s or band’s plans and whereabouts, and anyone can afford to buy a ticket to the concert (the latest reaction from ticket-selling companies to the 11-minute window of ticket-buying opportunity: “the tickets are too cheap”…)

And in the Expectations society, one does not just stumble on an offer to buy tickets once the concert date is approaching. Everyone has been expecting it for months. 

Still, when going to any of these concerts you always spot empty seats. Your take on that?

This fall, Pras of the Fugees has been travelling the world, talking to the local press everywhere. Not to do concerts or to promote a new album. Why, then? For the same reason that Stevie Wonder has been doing concerts across the globe, enticing the audiences not to sing along to his catalog of hits, but to chant O-B-A-M-A!

 Pras and Stevie are just some of the artists travelling the world as campaign workers for Obama, not to mention all the “mothers for”, “students in support of” and “average Joes” giving voice to Obama all over the world.

Some of this work is to convince Americans citizens residing in foreign countries to vote. With Al Gore’s defeat fresh in memory, they know that every single vote counts.

But more importantly, nextopian president Obama’s camp realizes better than anyone before that we live in the world of any. A world where anyone, anywhere has the potential to influence the outcome of the US elections. A world where anyone, anywhere may spread their opinions through blogs and social networks, a world where a Taiwanese may dig up some dirt on a presidential candidate online, sitting on the other side of the globe, and publish it on youtube or myspace for the entire world (as well as American mainstream media) to see, a world where average Jane and Joe may be just as influenced in their decision by Pekka from Finland as by their next-door neighbour. And a world where several candidates in the elections in a small African republic (I cannot remember the country – do you? Please help me if you remember this!) named themselves “Barack Obama”.

…who all contacted me over the course of a couple of weeks to say that they did not enjoy “Creativity (Un)Limited”. Basically, they expected to enjoy it, but found that the potential effects were so profound that they became dead serious.

And I really enjoy the fact that my previous book is now travelling the world to meet with managers, students, and entrepreneurs everywhere and anywhere. Hopefully they will embrace it as much as people did in my native Sweden, where it quickly positioned itself on the bestseller charts.

Creativity (Un)Limited contains new updates with some fascinating studies of the effects of creativity and how to get there, as well as a number of illustrative cases from my experiences of working with the book’s exercises with different companies.

Click the image below and peek inside!

This fall, worried reports have been voiced that China may be losing momentum in the global economy. These reports are based on facts such as the 2008 mid-year statistics showing that the Chinese GDP growth is down to 8 percent.

In case you’re not a GDP junkie like me, I’ll put those 8 percent into perspective. The average GDP growth rate in the world in the last 50 years has been about 2.5 percent. The US growth rate was a bit over 3 percent during the first half of this year. In other words, 8 percent is really hughe. It can be dwarfed only by the even more gigantic expectations the world places on the country.

The fact that an 8 percent GDP growth is able to cause concerns and is viewed by some as slow is a powerful testament to China’s overwhelming expectity status. China is the hot topic in most Western world major corporation board rooms (“we have to find new concepts and unique values, or Chinese companies will take over”), the focus of education developments in universities all over the world (“we’ll start new expensive master’s programs, soon they will be flooded with Chinese super students”), the country is even the foundation for the entire careers of some creativity speakers and management gurus (no names…) travelling around the world spreading the gospel of Chinese ways and the danger of not jumping on the China train.

Is China such a super power? No. It might well be, who knows, but it does certainly not owe its reputation, all the headlines in newspapers and business magazines across the world, the board room discussions, the university development, or the speaker and guru careers, to its present and past. A striking picture, just a few weeks ago it set its first austronauts (or, as the world is adapting to the expectity, most of us has learned that they should be called taikonauts, that’s what they say in China) on a spacewalk. Just four decades or so later than the US and Russian austronauts (sorry, taikonauts) made footprints on the moon in the old millennium. And even a year later than tiny polar bear country Sweden’s Chris “Birdsong” took a space promenade.

“2 Chinese boys”, China’s no. 1 15-microseconds-of-famers. This clip has been viewed 8 million times and counting. They have an entire youtube catalog amassing many million views. The future of pop music..?

Whereas the previous three posts re-named phenomena to better fit with their actual roles in the Expectations society, this one requires no such re-naming.  Myspace needs no adjustment to the Expectations society, it is very much a part of it, even one of its many drivers.

For one, it is the home of famous and infamous blogarazzi. It was on myspace that Burger King employee “Mr. Unstable” Tim Tackett enjoyed his birthday bath in the local branch’s kitchen sink, and where Arlington, Oregon, mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist posted her black lingerie fire truck posing routine, before they both got fired.

But on a lighter note (at least to the people in the spotlight), myspace is also the home of music expectities all over the world. Even “Mr. Unstable” managed to get his misantrophic songs heard. In the last couple of years, the music industry has gravitated towards myspace, where singer, rappers and music groups have posted their music and reached ever increasing numbers of eyes and ears across the globe. Myspace has gone from being a music talent nursery where record companies scout the next idols, to a direct record company competitor, where people prefer to listen to the new talents directly, before they make it big with the record companies. That is, when the talents are still expectities rather than traditional, “have become”, music artists. Everybody wants to have a peak at what’s coming, celebrating the brilliant futures of the next great acts.

No surprise, traditional “have become” music artists turn to myspace as well, striving to achieve expectity status by posting raw cuts and trailers of their coming work.

And turning full circle, this fall now sees the launch of “myspace music” (in cooperation with the major record labels), the direct vendor of expectity music.