Archive for August, 2009

One of the early uses of the internet was as a networked space for academics to communicate with each other. In the subsequent rush of businesses online with Web 1.0 websites and now with the rise of social media in the form of Web 2.0, it’s easy to overlook what academics are continuing to do in this virtual space.

Back in 2007, I blogged about the Oxford University project that has put online fascimiles of Wilfred Owen’s poetry via the Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive.

Now, the University and the Municipal Library of the city of Rouen in France has created an online archive for the original manucript of Gustav Flaubert’s novel, Madame Bovary, the original desperate housewife.

The site is in French but if you go to the navigation bar on the right and click on “Feuilleter”, you will get a further selection of “Plans et scenarios” and also “Brouillons 1- 6″. Click on any of those subselections and you’ll be given the option to view different parts of the book. Select any of those and a new screen will show you a fascimile of the original handwritten manuscript on the left, with Flaubert’s amendments, and a typesccript version with his strikeout and additional text also shown.

As a literature grad and also a novelist, I find it fascinating to look at writers’ manuscripts - to see their original words and how they may have changed a word or sentence here and there to better convey what they have imagined in their minds. In the British Museum, many years ago, I pored over some pages of the manuscript of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte that were on display in a glass cabinet in the manucript room. It was amazing to see the tiny handwriting and Bronte’s original words as well as the changes she had made. It was frustrating at the same time in that I could view no more than the few pages they had placed on display. The brilliant thing about the online Bovary fascimile is that not only are specialist scholars able to access every page of Flaubert’s manuscript but anyone in the world may do so also - with the assistance of the typescript alongside and without damage to the original.

Often, when I talk with businesses or organisations about blogging and social media, whether in the formal context of a presentation, or informally at a drinks party or over dinner, a common reason why they have not engaged in social media - say they never will - is because it is an open and interactive space and people could leave negative comments about their company/ products/ services on their blog.

In response, I usually explain that the reason that people would usually leave negative feedback publicly is that there is no other recourse easily available to them to express their grievance to the business/ organisation in question. This is usually because access to that organisation’s customer services is non-existent or difficult to find or once it’s found, the layers of bureacracy or telephone press-button options are designed to deter access. In fury and frustration, that customer will want to express themselves in the strongest possible way as much to hurt the company as to obtain redress for their grievance because the inaccessibility has added to their unhappiness and most likely fueled it into rage.

All a customer wants is for your business to show that you care and a simple complaints procedure where you actively address their problem will do more for your company’s reputation in the long term than saving a bit of money on refusing a refund or some form of recompense. Handled right, an aggrieved customer could be transformed into an evangelist for your brand. Handled wrong and you’ve not only made an enemy for life - that enemy will also co-opt many more antogonists into their camp with stories about how badly you treated them.

The other point I usually make is that whether or not your organisation is engaging in social media, your customers will be talking about you online. They may be praising your produce or servicess or they may be badmouthing you to anyone and everyone.

United Airlines found out to their detriment the high cost of not addressing one customer’s problem. He was a musician whose costly, specialist guitar was apparently damaged on a flight he took with them. As his YouTube page explains, he tried to get recompense from them and was passed from pillar to post to no avail. In frustration, he finally wrote a song which he performed on a YouTube video about his bad experience with the airline.

The video became a viral sensation across the internet and has so far had over 4 million viewings. The press (including Chicago Tribune and The Guardian) picked up the story. According to The Guardian, “Days after United Breaks Guitars went viral on Youtube, United changed course and offered compensation, Carroll said. He declined and suggested they donate it to charity.”

How might United Airlines have avoided this PR fiasco? By ensuring that they have a proper and authentic process for dealing with genuine complaints in a timely way. It seems so simple and obvious, doesn’t it?

So for any business, whether or not you have a blog, in today’s connected world, your customers will find a way to badmouth you if they want to - they don’t need to wait for you to create a blog so they can leave negative comments. The answer to dealing with negative feedback online is not avoiding blogging and social media but putting in place an easily accessible and genuine complaints procedure to show your customers that you care. Who knows, if you address their grievance effectively, they might actually be singing your praises instead of singing about how rubbish you are…

~~~

Thanks to Moyra Weston and Michael Spencer for first telling me about this video.

The Futurists were artists who burst onto the 20th century in 1909, led by Italian poet Filippo Marinetti, obsessed with speed, electricity and the new machine age. I went to the exhibition at the Tate Modern the other day and found it fascinating and repellent at the same time. The exhbition shows the sculptures, paintings and written manifestos of the key figures and sets them within the context of Cubism, Vorticism and the Great War. It was repellent to me because the ideology of the movement is repellent. The Futurist Manifesto of Marinetti and his gang seem like the rantings of fascists:

“9. We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.”

Perhaps, it was easy before the First World War to glorify war and machines. But in a world that has known the horror of that war, the Holocaust and other genocides, the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Sept 11, here at the dawn of the 21st century, we are not so certain about glorious war and beautiful ideas that kill. And, of course, as a modern woman who has the right to vote and work and live pretty much as an equal with men in the Western world, the misogyny of the movement raises my hackles.

But the exhibition is also fascinating for giving an insight into what it must have been like to first experience speed and electricity. We take these for granted now, at the dawn of our new century, but in the early years of the last one, cars and electric lights were only just starting to become commonly available.

Night time became full of possibilities with electric lights - cabarets and other entertainments, decorative lights in the street and around buildings made the dark exciting and alluring. The Futurists write about how electric light transforms the human face at night into a myriad of different colours and complexions.

Speed also changed how people experienced the world - streaking past familiar scenes which were previously static, watching the world blur out of the windows of trains and automobiles. The possibilities of technology and machines excited the Futurists. One of them writes about driving his new car, feeling like a modern centaur, part man, part machine.

They tried to convey these experiences on canvas - creating streaks and lines of colour, a blur of light and shade, kaleidoscopes and fragments of dancing and movement. Their sculpture shaped half monstous, half human figures and machine-like objects swirling in motion.

Their most iconic piece, to me, is the sinister cyborg like creature inspired by a drill bit - see first photo. It has inspired a lot of our modern vision - or perhaps nightmare - of androids and cyborgs: machines that were originally created to help humanity but then turning against their creators and becoming efficient killing machines. In particular, see the second photo of a cylon soldier from the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica.

While the Futurists glorified machines and technology without question, we are much more ambivalent. Perhaps because we know now the horror of the First World War - the first war that used machines and technology (tanks, nerve gas, grenades, bombs dropped from planes, machine guns) for mass destruction - which they were still to live through. Yet, even as we carry the burden of our anxiety about technology, it continues to evolve and permeate every part of our lives.

Some philosophers have written that we are all cyborgs already, especially those of us in the so-called First World - we do not wait for the full integration of the human biological with machines to become part human, part machine: we are already there. Think about it. Most areas of our lives are mediated by machines and technology in some way. In order to go anywhere beyond our narrow neighbourhood, we use cars, buses, trains, planes. Our communications with each other are mediated through phones, email, webcams, SMS, instant messaging. Our music lives in electronic form. Our books, newspapers and knowledge are produced via digital technology. Much of business and enterprise rely on computers and the internet. The logistics of moving goods around the world and of our economy depend on computers. Without electricity, we would be lost in a dark, still and silent world.

A hundred years after the Futurists, machines and technology may not be welded to our bodies but we are so dependent on them, they may as well be.

Photo: of cylon figure from slashfilm.com