In polite company of course we don’t call this a shared paranoia but rather the development of a social construction of reality. In small groups, informal relationships of who does what can quite often be well managed through a tacit understanding of each person’s station within the social construct. For much larger groups however we have the idea of laws, charters, governments, and other more formal bureaucratic structures which serve to codify the myriad of ways in which our shared paranoia may potentially manifest itself.

For example

• Smoking marijuana is bad but cigarettes are ok
• Drinking liquor is okay but drinking too much is bad
• Open book exams are okay but bringing notes to an exam may get you expelled
• Killing an individual is a criminal act but killing thousands is good politics
• Giving $100 to Haiti relief is good but helping the out of work person on the local street corner we turn a blind eye to

There are thousands of inconsistencies in the way in which we look at the world based on our assumptions of how we perceive the division of labour. When our precepts in terms of this division is challenged there is a tendency to look upon the situation and being uncontrolled or in a state of anarchy which needs to be righted. More to the point, the anarchy that is felt is one of internal loss of control. If I am focused on Haiti relief then I am not focused on the 1001 other tasks that I need to do as part of my daily routine.  So we give our $100 or $200 or $50 to the Red Cross and sit back to say “my work here is done” so long as the implications of the event doesn’t happen in our own backyard.

The drug trade is unregulated so it scares us. Dealing with problem drinkers is something we turn over to courts and police rather than taking personal responsibility for. We penalize those who are good at finding and manipulating information rather than memorizing it even though both skill sets are equally valid in the application of knowledge. Political leaders of wars are rarely held to account unless you are on the losing side.

All social regulation, whether it be informal social morals or government bureaucracy, is about controlled anarchy rather than controlling anarchy. It is about the removal of the burden of social paranoias through an agreed upon division of labour which provides for a social construction of reality that holds for tomorrow the way it holds today.  The development of tacit social knowledge however has it boundaries which is where the explicit codification of laws, policies, and regulations come into play.

There are two inevitable extremes however that seem to create a destabilizing effect within a society. The first is when government bureaucracy goes beyond the requirements of stabilizing the security of the state and over regulates the society.  The second is when individuals develops an expectation of entitlement to excessive divestment of personal responsibility and accountability as being part of that society.

Both appear to lead to counter-productive purposes. The problem is one of resolving root believes which are fundamental to a functioning society. The Plan Canada for example provide opportunities for people to become a ‘foster parent’ of a child overseas who does not have access to the same quality of basic education, domicile, and sanitation as we have here in Canada. At the same time there are thousands of children living below the poverty line in Canada. How do we justify this? Should we not look after our own first? If we try are we really solving the problem or setting up false expectation?

See the problem? – The root beliefs we each carry establish a justification for what decisions we make on the margin of what we understood to be moral and ethical at the time the decision was made. But you can always find counter-arguments that not only invalidate the decision but will make people very uncomfortable in how they reconcile those decisions in the first place.

I raise this as an example not to point at a single inconsistency but rather as an exemplar of an entire class of moral dilemmas. Excessive government regulation and divestment of personal responsibilities are critical aspects that must be taken into account of a properly functioning society because of the escalating creation of challenges to a society’s justified true beliefs. In other words, once we have crossed a line of over regulation each new piece of legislation, regulation, or policy simply increases the number of core beliefs which are subject to be challenged.

As with any form of communications network, the growth of these points are exponential, not linear, as you add new points to the network. To further complicate things, since personal divestment and bureaucratic regulation are mutually reinforcing, the tendency for a society to reach a breaking point is almost a certainty. The questions therefore become, at what point does the re-organization of the political institutions governing such regulation become inevitable, how do we recognize the signs of the societal collapse before it happens, and is there any way to bring a society back from the brink even if we do recognize the signs?

I would suggest that we may be seeing the initial stages of this happening in various countries around the world. Of course that just may be a sign of my own paranoia of what the near-term future may hold within western culture. The thing about trying to predict the future is that the one person who is right will never be known until after the final cards are dealt. In the case of over regulation of personal liberties and a discussion of where personal accountability lies in the grander scheme of a well functioning society, these are issues which quite often go understated when new restrictions on social development are being considered. So right or wrong, I feel without this discussion occurring we are not doing justice to any new codification of how to control basic anarchistic tendencies within a society.

Case in point. Residents of a virtual world environment called Second Life enjoy a certain amount of anonymity when it comes to revealing who they are. You sign-up for a free profile, select a name, and away you go. This is nothing new or subversive in any way. People have been using alternative identities to tell their stories for hundreds of years. Consider the game dungeons and dragons (the old school one – not the electron versions). People are often known by the characters they choose to represent and assign names of historical or personal importance as part of the role playing experience.

Gamers do this all the time. From XBOX to Playstation to World of Warcraft to Second Life. It is a means of developing confidence in oneself by insulating yourself from looking foolish during the learning and development process. This is a very common psychological phenomena that people are often more at ease with risk taking when they don’t have to put all of themselves on the line.

Then there is the aspect of personal privacy and security. Some people just want to be able to interact with others without having to worry that some nutcase is going to wind up on their front door step. Only once they are comfortable with someone are they willing to go that next step to provide more information. Sound familiar? It should because its something that everyone who has gone to a bar or college has done or experienced at some point in their lives.

The idea of a virtual personae will often times extend beyond the limited circumstances of the role play scenario and cross over into everyday life. Those people who go to work dressed up as Captain Kirk for example. For the most part its harmless. More importantly however it allows us to tell our stories, those narratives that are important to us as individuals, in a ways that are imaginative, unique, and memorable. Everyone has a fish story, but we remember the ones by “Old Man McKinley down the road yonder” because the personae is larger than the individual and in so doing provides a contextual means of connecting with others that just doesn’t happen under ordinary circumstances.

So – back to my case in point. There has been a series of recent terms of service violation reports by some anonymous person (who I’m not about to justify by stating his/her name or website – check Google if you are really that interested) who is searching almost every Facebook profile seeking out Second Life residents for the expressed purpose of having those accounts banned. To be fair the Facebook TOS does have a provision that says people are expected to use their real names in establishing a profile. However this is not the way the service is being used and I would hazard a guess that at least 50% of the profiles on Facebook are bogus if you were to compare birth records.

You don’t need to look at Second Life residents to see this principle in action on Facebook. Look at any number of the applications and groups related to things such as World of Warcraft, Triumph, Plane Crazy, etc. A good percentage of the profiles used are clearly alternates to a main profile or just simply in no way representative of who the person is in real life. This is probably one of the most broken TOS aspects of Facebook imaginable. Nor does Facebook have a mechanism by which people can verify their identity. To say that Second Life residents with profiles on Facebook are corrupting the moral fabric of the online community is akin to suggesting that children watch Saturday morning cartoons are going to grow up to be violent offenders. Is there an influence, sure. Is it corrupting the moral fabric of society, absolutely not because at the end of the day most rational people understand the difference between constructive social interaction regardless of whether you are dealing with Kevin Feenan or Phelan Corrimal.

I would in fact take this one step further. Linden Lab, the developers of Second Life, actually have very strong identity proving processes included as part of their environment. Something Facebook doesn’t have. The likelihood that a hard core Second Life resident has been both age verified and confirmed their identity through an independent 3rd agency is greater than 1 in 3. Beyond this, all educators have to provide proof of having gone through a police background check if they have any intention of working with those under 18 years of age on the teen grid. If there was a true argument to be made that any particular group needed to be the front edge of the wedge for deconstructing the “avatarism of the nation”, Second Life is not it.

So what is driving this move? Fear maybe. Paranoia of what a world might look like where you could be defined not only by your legal name but by the personae you choose to wear in telling your story the way you want to. In point of fact however we are already there. Virtual world environments are simply providing a much more visible look into what lies beneath social norms and values in our society at large whether you are talking about bars, gaming, virtual worlds, social networking platforms, or personal ads. There has always been this undercurrent of people wanting to risk while at the same time not wanting to be hurt in the process.

I would think that anyone who fears what the future holds should really take a very strong look in their own backyard first before using a measuring stick that changes scale based on context. If you are fighting for a fundamental concept of human-social interaction then you can’t eradicate a single symptom and assume you’ve found a cure. You need to understand what it is you are fighting for and then need to realize that fundamental paradigm shifts in social paradigms are not fought on a single battlefield.

Clearly this person doesn’t understand what it is they are fighting for and that is unfortunate because even if they are somehow right, they have already lost the war despite the havoc they are wreaking on the battlefield. They have also lost any potential to open up true dialogue on what their issue is really about. And that I feel diminishes us all regardless of which side of the argument you are on.

Canada’s reaction is a case in point. In Canada it was announced that we would be introducing 40+ full body scanners that can see through clothing. Of course all the kafuffle is about who gets to see those pictures and what happens to them after the fact. As with any new system however the problem is not the new introduction of a technology but rather the longer term implications of what those technological changes may mean. While there are those that believe in the capability of governments and regulation to put in effective controls to manage the long term implication of these technologies there are two very simple facts that regulators tend to ignore when making these types of knee-jerk judgments.

1) Nothing lasts forever, not even taxes. The fact that these types of machines are being introduced at all opens the door to their use in a myriad of applications – everything from boat cruises to high schools. While boarder security may have a better chance of not having the technology abused, eventually somebody’s body parts are going to end up youTube.

2) Sometimes the slippery slope argument is the correct one. Power corrupts. This is a lesson passed down and reinforced throughout history. What makes slippery slope arguments valid is when the introduction of a particular point of view unfairly unbalances the power relationship between those subject to changes in policy verses those for whom the new policy benefits.

For every extreme measure taken by governments and forced on its citizens, the balance of power is shifted away from society and placed in favour of those whom would use that power against us. This is in part due to the fact that a smaller amount of effort is required for each subsequent act of terrorism in order to gain larger influence and restriction of the populations by which they seek to subjugate.

From that standpoint, it doesn’t matter whether a terrorist group is successful or fails in its attempts. So long as they have control over the manipulation of behaviours of government in responding to these types of incidents then they have achieved their aims while the rest of us have to bear the brunt of the fallout of those actions.

The only way to take power back is to move the problem back onto the shoulders of the people that should be accountable for ensuring these types of things don’t happen in the first place – that being the people themselves. The way you fight terrorism is though culture – not force of arms.

Unfortunately that doesn’t get you re-elected because it is a very hard road to take and requires a very broad reach when dealing with issues on a global scale. It also requires a population that is prepared to stand up and take accountability for the culture in which we live by teaching right from wrong, ethics, morals, and not by constantly  trying to abdicate our personal responsibility in this regards to schools and governments.

It is the only way in which to win this battle.

B2B Social Marketing is the perpetuation of social realities as defined by the relationship between a communal demographic and the brand that symbolizes those ideals.

B2C Social Marketing is the perpetuation of social realities as defined by the relationship between a competitive demographicand the brand that symbolizes those ideals.

While the essence of social marketing is the influence over social constructs of reality (i.e. what is justified is true) the essence of defining a difference in B2B and B2C marketing practices is one of the relationship between the firms competing within that market space.

B2B competitive practices require that both parties defining the relationship identify with a common communal consumer base which reinforces a brand to the benefit of both business parties.  The idea is that if the pie is worth $100M separately in combining forces in a shared approach the pie could be worth $150M. It is obviously therefore in the interest of the business parties involved to collaborate. So by increasing the size of the pie every party in the B2B collaboration receives economies of scale while the balance of power remains relatively constant.

B2C competitive practices by contrast assume that while a common consumer base exists, it is more advantageous for the company to pursue exclusionary marketing practices to gain a larger share of a pie that isn’t necessarily increasing in size. In this case the organization that focuses on B2C social networking is seeking domination of a market segment through competitive practices rather than cooperative engagement with key stakeholders inside and out of its value / supply chain.

That is not to say that there aren’t nuances of positioning in-between these two radically different ideological positions in terms of strategy. It is classic game theory. How much of each does an organization need to build into their business strategy in order to remain competitive without giving up their overall percentage of the pie regardless of which approach is the dominant strategy employed.

Its not a question really because only in looking at the overall make-up of the organization’s strategic partnerships can the decision be made. Also those decisions will change as market and social conditions change. Culture leads – marketers follow. While each influences the other to some degree customers ultimately vote with their feet as Apple learned in the 1990s and PC manufacturers are learning today.

Two incidents have stood out for me in the past two weeks which have shown me exactly how important that principle is. The first is contract dealings I have had involving a fairly large IT consulting firm. In this first case a gentleman’s agreement to waive a non-solicitation / non-compete clause. This quid pro quo arrangement between three companies was fine and dandy until the rubber met the road and an actual solicitation was issued stemming from a common belief that this arrangement would be honoured.

The upshot? Threatened legal action and a state of posturing by all concerned. One company trying to bully everyone else. One company turned yellow in doing the right thing for the right reasons. And one company refusing to be bullied. I don’t blame the company in the middle of all of this. Why threaten several tens of millions of dollars in annual business over a single contract worth less than 0.5% of all business being done. But it is for those very reasons that if you can’t be trusted to uphold your word – if your handshake is not worth the same as a signed contract – then what is the point of doing business.

Its not a question really because as much as everyone talks about integrity – integrity is very much a triple edged sword. It depends quite often on our own point of view and how we see the world. Or at least how we would like other people to see it. Who is right is not a question for lawyers or mediators or intermediaries. It is a balancing act of trying to find an equilibrium. Ever tried to find balance in a room with an 800lb gorilla? You need one heck of a long lever.

It is sort of like trying to negotiate with a drunk to get them off booze. They are either willing to do it or not. In the meantime you are told time and time again “tomorrow – if you just wait until tomorrow I’ll get better and then we can all be happy”. How many tomorrows do you wait for it before realising that drunk in the corner isn’t going to change his/her ways until they are left with no other alternatives? No way out – no other way to turn. 10 tomorrows? 50? 100? 500??

Fight or flight. Eventually we all need to face those realities. Bit by bit you compromise (or not) to maintain a relationship doomed to failure (or not). It is at these times you realize exactly who is worth that hand being extended  and who isn’t. Handshakes are great when times are good. Its in those times when times aren’t good, or something’s changed, or a fundamental assumption was proven wrong that you find out if people are willing to go the distance. Not because its necessarily in the best interest of their company or firm but because its the right thing to do.

When you have an 800lb gorilla at the table though that can be hard to do sometimes. So at some point though you need to figure out whether you have a backbone or not. Are you willing to stand up for what is right and not be forced to give up ground once you’ve crossed that personal line in the sand you set for yourself.

Me – I crossed that line last week and truthfully I feel like the weight of the world was taken off my shoulders as soon as I did. There was always this sense of “oh my god – what am I going to be asked to give up this time” and that feeling is now gone. Some people would have taken a bad compromise and counted their blessings. Some would have turned tail and run for the hills. Me? When I’ve reach my fill I fight! And on the important things I will fight all the way to the finish line. Because what is right, and moral, and just will always win out over those people who choose to be that 800lb gorilla bullying everyone else in the schoolyard.

That isn’t to say that there isn’t room to be humbled in realizing that sometimes those handshakes come at the cost of finding out you don’t know everything. I found it funny in a way that this second example came right on the heels of the first. A misrepresentation of what you would think would be “common sense”.

In this second example, a misunderstanding between a sub-contractor and myself ensued owing to differences of experience. See in my world, sub-contractors do not discuss invoices with the client in anyway shape or form. The primary contractor takes the lead and all subsequent procurements flow through the prime contractor. The sub-contracting firm I had arranged to sub out work to however was use to notifying the end client once the prime was about to be billed for a completed unit of work.

As you can see two vastly different models and one that we unfortunately didn’t discuss in advance. You can imagine my horror when I saw what I took to be an infringement on our client relationship. Granted there was a bit more to it than that but the point of the matter is that once an opportunity arose to talk through the situation and the rational behind what was done and why, the situation became easily resolvable. We each had a better understanding of the differences that we took to deem as “common sense” and our relationship today is stronger by far for the experience.

Beyond this however was another issue at play. We valued the total contract drastically under what the work actually took in order to complete. There was no signed contract. There was no memorandum of understanding. There was simply a gentleman’s agreement that we would each do the project for a predetermined amount.

Here was a situation that could have turned truly ugly with lesser people. I don’t mean that in a condescending way. But consider that in this case you have three partners who are willing to honour their agreements based on a handshake, mutual trust, and an ethic that says “I am good to my word”.

I would much rather deal with a single firm that is exemplary of the second example than a hundred firms that are only concerned with the bottom line. When push comes to shove you know exactly where you stand with those that live by the palm and not by the pen. It’s a lesson that those 800lb gorillas have lost in their quest to be the most dominant player on the block. Its how communities are built – through the building of bridges rather than taxing them. And it is how I would much rather conduct my affairs rather than having to second guess every possible scenario, injury, or slight and committing it to paper. Contracts can be manipulated – handshakes backed by action show trust. I don’t know about you but I much prefer my world to that of the 800lb gorilla.

Here is where I have a problem with the science: the corona of a star based on observations of our own sun have been shown to be several millions of degrees higher than the surface temperature (~6000K/10000F). Ignoring the effects of coronal mass ejections for a moment – such radiation on the outside of the planet and a core temperature of 1000F+ from the surface should provide sufficient energy for atmospheric molecules to vaporize off into space , be picked up by the solar winds, and blown off. In short - the planet shouldn’t have an atmosphere that close to the sun’s corona.

What then are we looking at? Most likely the culprit is superheated gas trapped in the magnetosphere of the planet providing the illusion of an atmosphere where none should exist. However even there we have a bit of a problem.

See – for the planet to have a rotation period equal to it orbital period – this would suggest that any internal metallic core had long since stopped spinning. This is in part what accounts for planetary magnetic fields. So if we can infer from the rotation of the planet that its magnetic field is weak then there shouldn’t be a residual atmosphere due to interaction with solar wind.

The other other two mechanisms I can think of that may be responsible for the presence of an atmosphere would be venting of carbon dioxide and methane from within the planet’s core as the planet cooks like being in a microwave oven. The issue with this theory is that for a planet to get this close to its star it is likely that any such residual gas may have leached from the planet surface millions of years ago.

The second mechanism is a combination of gravity and thermal currents that may cause molecules to bind more tightly to the surface of the planet. If so then it may be possible to get a much more accurate read on the size / mass of the planet simply by figuring out at what point the pull of gravity counteracts the vacuum of space considering the amount of heating that needs to occur to heat the planet’s surface temperature to 4000F.

Of course there is another possibility – the one which I found myself drawn to immediately upon reading the article. The science could just be out and out wrong. Personally I hope this isn’t the case as I would like to think that we can identify earth sized planets in other star systems that our children can one day visit. I’m just more than a little disappointed however that those people who purport to be on the cutting edge of this science who just out and out assume that what they are looking at represents an atmosphere without critiquing the possibility that what they are doing is inherently at the cutting edge.

It wouldn’t be the first time that humanity’s exploration of science has shot off on a tangent. Let’s hope that other communications about Kepler will be a bit more considered.