How long will the Americans survive?

As readers of this blog know, more than 2.5 hours of TV watching reduces life satisfaction. Researchers have settled with that conclusion, maybe thinking that no one would want to watch excessively more than that, anyway (the average in Europe has been found to be just above 2.5 hrs a day).

Well, maybe we need to probe a bit further, to see if the drop in life satisfaction drops again at a second cut-off. For America’s sake.

A recent report shows that Americans are now up to an average of 5 hrs TV watching per day!

How is that possible, one wonders?

Well, it turns out they do their own version of multitasking – multizapping! They watch TV through a host of different devices at the same time, two TV screens and a computer screen running at the same time in people’s homes. And now TV in the cell phone is picking up speed, especially in people’s homes. That is, people watch TV in their phones not necessarily because they are in motion, with no TV screens available. No, they use them just so they can multizap with an additional device.

Small surprise, then that last month, Blockbuster started video rental to cell phones, any movie available at your call for 3.99 dollars.

Let’s just hope the Americans don’t all become chronically depressed…

Well, are you? Tough enough? To find out what people really think about you?

Join formspring.com and find out. Some 20 million American teenagers have since it started in November, soon double that number globally.

Formspring links to facebook, twitter, or your blog, and allows anyone, anywhere to anonymously ask you any question or make any comment they want. You can disregard the questions and comments, and they are seen by no one but you. But if you answer them, anyone, anywhere can see both the Q and the A.

So far, the millions of posted Q:s have tended to focus on people’s looks, friends, and sexual activities, mostly in not so flattering terms.

This has started quite a debate in the US lately among “responsible adults”. Still, the Q:s tend to be answered, and thus made visible for anyone, anywhere.

It seems like the new millennium Generation Boss is a lot tougher than the yestermillennials: They want to know what people really think about them, but consider only themselves as the true conveyors of their own identities.

Good or bad? The yestermillennials obviously say bad. What do you say?

The other week, Danish media consultant Ditte Okman was fired from her job.

Why? Because she wrote things like “the pope is a pig”, “the queen is as smart as a reality soap contestant”, “the lady in the congress magazine stand is a psycho” on facebook.

Soon enough, everyone knew about it, including her company’s customers, which included the government party.

An obious case of blogarazzi-bummer. Anyone, anywhere, can find out anything you say and do anytime.

An interesting twist to it, Okman defended her actions by saying she wrote the stuff whan she was off duty, and furthermore, the things she wrote were not reflections of her job. Hence, she did nothing wrong as a consultant.

Still, she was fired. Fits really well with my notion that there are no separations anymore between roles and identities such as on/off duty, professional/private, representative/individual.

What do you smart people think?

In the yestermillennium, some people got so fond of their cell phones, they seemed to have them glued to their ears.

In the new millennium, we are not just fond any longer, we cannot imagine living without cell phones (35 percent of Sheraton’s survey respondents prefered bringing the phone before their partner to the bedroom), a decent internet connection (80 percent of Germans say they’d die without it), or their facebook (24 percent of Americans below 35 access even when on the loo).

At this stage, glueing might not be enough? A young Swedish engineer recently operated a rfid chip into his hand, so he’ll never have to be without it. And my friend Ola Ahlvarsson told me yesterday about the next thing after transsexuals - transhumanists, who seek to immerse all tech gadgets imaginable into their bodies. But that’s a story for a future post…

I’ve highlighted a number of examples here before of how the world of any allows anyone to catch a perp. The police might not have the resources to identify and find the person who assaulted you, but you can do some facebooking of your own; go out on facebook, find the person, check his or her status, and send the police right there to book the perp. And, as I’ve shown you here, a number of people have successfully done so, for example, in the US, UK, and Germany.

The same thing was recently about to happen in Sweden. A young man was assaulted and had his jaw crushed. The police were not able to book the perp. But via a friend who witnessed the assault, the young man got a clue to the perp’s identity and was ready to do some perp facebooking. He found the perp on facebook, checked his status, sent the police there, id:d him in a photo confrontation.

But the perp was acquitted in court. Why? The court decided that the victim was prejudiced – he had already checked the perp out on facebook.

Does this mean Swedish perps will never more be sentenced in the world of any – no longer able to stay in the dark, as anyone can learn their identities, they can bask in the sunlight instead and blame and fingerpointing toward them on “just being a really attractive guy on facebook”?

Summer is approaching fast, as is vacation season. I trust that every reader of this blog made their vacation plans long, long, ago – as every reader of this blog knows that the real joys of vacation come before the actual thing.

I’ve mentioned the fascinating fact before – that people tend to make their reservations longer in advance now than a while back, even though the world of any actually allows us to make the reservations shorter in advance than ever before. A beautiful example of the Expecations society, where people barely have time to arrive at the resort and lie down by the pool before they start talking about where to go on their next vacation.

My Dutch research colleagues recently put my notion to the test, surveying vacating consumers before, during and after the trip. Result:

Before: Enjoyment highest
After: Enjoyment lowest

Today it’s raining and it’s cold, and I feel fantastic – I’m going to Disneyland this summer…

A couple of weeks ago, “The Addams Family”, the musical, opened on Broadway. And received really bad reviews.  In the yestermillennium, the show would have been canceled by now, literally buried by the critics. But in this millennium, it’s doing great.

The reason it’s doing so great is that it has adapted its business model wonderfully to the Expectations society:

1. It relied heavily on pre-orders. In other words, it sold fantastically when it was still the best (nextopian) show ever. 

2. It’s not stationed singularly on Broadway. In the spirit of the world of any, anyone, anywhere (at least in the States) should be able to watch the broadway show close to home. Hence, the show stops by all over the place, enabling anyone to see the real thing (which is huge in its own right, regardless of the show’s actual content).

3. It allows people to subscribe to the future. The present show is “the third beta”. Last year saw two beta versions in Chicago and New York, which a lot of people saw. Those shows sold brilliantly, since everyone knew they were a glimpse of the upcoming (nextopian) full version that would come the year after. And of course, now they want to see the “follow up” and learn what happened next, to get their money’s (and interest’s) worth from the betas. I would suspect speculations are now in motion as to whether this version is a beta to be modified, too…

Remember Argleton, the virtual, UK town that only existed on Google maps, but soon became so popular that businesses decided to move there and actually build it. And then, when the recession delayed constructions, generated massive consumer “save Argleton” actions?

Well, in the US, you can go and buy an already IRL existing town instead, turn-key ready. Which is exactly what Maddie and Neil Love did. On the winning end of 112 eBay bidders, they just landed the Washington town of Wauconda for 360, 000 dollars (sold by previous owner Daphne Fletcher, who bought the town for 180,000 in 2007).

The world of any version of Monopoly seems fun, don’t you think?

As you’ve read here before, most of us are IBL:s (Involved But Looking) and IBSA:s (Involved But Looking Around)nowadays. Small surprise, in the world of any, where anyone can hook up anytime, anywhere, with 34 million google hits to “online dating”. Most people are amused by this fact, some are morally offended. British director of public health, Peter Kelly, is outraged.

Analyzing the recent surge in syphilis in the UK, Kelly’s staff found that the areas that were most plagued were also the areas where facebook was used to a substantially greater degree than in the rest of the nation.

According to public health director Kelly, facebook makes it too easy for people to sleep around.

They just can’t help themselves? Maybe, with all the available faces to sit on, there’s no time to put on a condom, just gotta keep the pace and move on to the next friendly face?

It is that time of the year. Aall over the world, universities are going through applications. In the book, I write about the fact that there are so many university options in the world of any that you basically need the know-how and experience of a university degree just to navigate among your seemingly endless future university degree options.

And now the universities have made it even more difficult. They have realized that in the world of any, anyone can apply to any university, anywhere, meaning that everyone applies to every university, everywhere.

I just learned that Duke recieved more then 27,ooo applications. The problem is, not all the applicants intend to enroll with Duke, as they all applied to Harvard, London Business School, and maybe the Stockholm School of Economics, too.

In other words, Duke (and LBS and SSE, too) has no idea which students to accept. Meaning that virtually all students have been put on a waiting list. The same goes for, at least, most other American universities. Probably in Europe, Asia, anywhere too, next year, if not sooner.

So, what should a student do, being on all those waiting lists? No doubt, next year’s applicants will apply to even more universities to safe-guard. Meaning that universities will produce even longer waiting lists.

You’ll have to have a math degree and know all about bayesian pre-posterior probabilities and so on to even know where to apply and when…