I was reading the other day about research that was done several years ago  into the different ways that cultures perceive and recall information.

The simple take away was this:

Asian cultures and Western cultures were compared using photographs where there was important information in both the foreground and the background, but neither of the groups were told. They were shown the photos and asked specific questions about aspects of the pictures’ backgrounds and foregrounds.

The bottom line was that Western people tended to recall the information from the foreground, while the Asian people tended to recall the background information plus the relationship between the background and the foreground.

The point is that different kinds of cultural upbringing causes different processes to be imprinted on the brain. This leads to a quite different way of responding to outside stimuli.  

There are all kinds of separate cultural mores that are at play in the interpretation of signals. Some are based on the racial, religions or environmental cultures that we were born into. Others are based on the environments that we establish ourselves into.

One of the things that I find fascinating is that we get so caught up in the right of the environment that we choose to participate in. So for instance, people of one political persuasion think of themselves as “right” and others thing of them as “wrong”.

It is this certainty of purpose that is so dangerous to the people that we work with. There is absolutely no such thing as certainty any more. And nowhere is that more obvious perhaps than in certain parts of Afghanistan.

I remember being in the country in the 60’s when it was very primitive. But that was a beautiful thing in its own way.

Now, as I understand it, we are waging a war at long distance and working hard to build relationships with the locals. However then our troops go  in and start to pull up the poppy fields that are the principle livelihoods of the locals and that results in them going and joining the Taliban.

Is it therefore any wonder that the locals join the insurrection. Not because they are politically motivated, but purely as a result of their own economic interests.

Similarly we have people who download movies or music or whatever. The content company marginalize them. And what is their only option? To join the insurrection.

The lessons to be learned are that putting might into the landscape and expecting that it will result in the sort of outcome that you would like is not the pragmatic approach.

The pragmatic approach would, in my opinion, mean that you would look at what the ecosystem does when left to its own devices. They you figure out how you can work with that ecosystem and make money.

If you try to change the other, you are not dealing with reality. To change the other, first you have to change yourself….

That is what the content industry needs to get – just like a lot of other industries. First change yourself, then let others change themselves because they have decided that it is a good idea.

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Posted in Main Page by Chris Gilbey No Comments Yet