Love this…

“In Tunisia, protesters escalated calls for the restoration of the country’s suspended constitution. Meanwhile, Egyptians rose in revolt as strikes across the country brought daily life to a half. In Libya, provincial leaders worked feverishly to strengthen their newly independent republic. It was 1919.”

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011.

Why is everyone so angry? Why is grim survivalism the current zeitgeist? To quote a leader in the Financial Times a while back, it might be that “The nice decade (for non-inflationary continuous expansion) may be behind us”.

In other words we are entering a nasty period where western economic anxiety is becoming a catalyst for all kinds of attitudinal and behavioural shifts. For example, the real issue might not be peoples’ anger per se but the increasing number of people and events that provoke this anger. This can range from traffic jams and bad customer service to falling house prices, increasing food and energy costs or someone getting shot in the head in north London.

You can see this anger already in the form of ‘Wrath Lit’ on the shelves of your local bookstore. But is the world really getting more angry or is it simply that mobile communications and social media are making more of us aware of incidences of anger?

Put slightly differently, the way to create an epidemic of something like anger is simply to use the word in politics or the media. Another explanation for the rage trend is that in many societies anger is a badge of honour. It is seen as a virtue. It is the individual being true to themselves and expressing their feelings.

1. Emotionally aware automobiles
2. Roads with no signs or markings
3. Childcare robots
4. Real time car insurance
5. Volunteers that hold your hand during surgery
6. Exercise robots
7. Merging aged care with eraly years education
8. Flat taxation
9. Mind control computer interfaces
10. Vertical agriculture

First it was office mail. Then it was music and photography. Then it was newspapers and books. Now it’s public libraries and post office services. The digital revolution has rapidly created a number of new industries, but it is also slowly destroying – or at the very least challenging the conventions of – a number of very old ones.

Historically, population growth, rising incomes, globalization and the increasing number of individual households and businesses meant more and more people communicating with each other. In short, more people meant more people thinking about things and buying stuff that needed to be delivered from one place to another.

However, more recently, the growth of digitalization, virtualization and mobile communications means that we have witnessed a significant shift away from the physical delivery of paper-based items such as bills, payments, statements, letters, postcards and greeting cards. And it looks as though this shift will accelerate, with magazines, newspapers, movies, games and books all becoming members of a weightless economy, which does not require physical distribution, warehousing or delivery.

But the challenge isn’t restricted to declining volumes of physical mail. The postal industry is also facing rapidly rising transportation costs, regulated pricing, strong unions and the impact of new competitors that are much less restricted by legacy costs such as pensions.

Not looking good is it? But I’m a firm believer that where there’s a big problem there’s also a large opportunity waiting in the wings. Post offices and postal delivery services come from a public service tradition that fits nicely with emergent trends like localism. The Post Office may not be loved, but it’s still largely trusted by its local community.

If everyday life continues to speed up and becomes more virtual and less personal then ‘glocal’ organizations like the post office can bring a certain level of calm – even humanity – to communications. Moreover, the more that communications shift to digital formats and the easier it becomes to send communications without an intermediary the more we will value the cut-through of highly tactile nature of paper based communications.

And let’s not forget either that the predicted death of post offices is dependent upon a number of critical assumptions, all of which can easily be challenged. For example, it is widely assumed that the shift to digital communications is unstoppable. This is indeed the most likely scenario. But it is possible to imagine other worlds where things start to move in the opposite direction.

What if, for example, spam, data security or identity theft become such a problem that people revert to the security of paper based communication and physical delivery for important things? What if the use of email was proven to be more damaging to the environment than paper or what if the sheer volume of internet traffic meant that speeds slow down to the point where people stop using it? Or what if government concerns over censorship mean that a free global internet is eventually replaced by a series of highly regulated national intranets?

Whatever happens nothing is likely to happen overnight, so in the meantime here are a five ways to deliver a first class postal service.

1. Emphasise that post offices are part of the local community and forge relationships with other local community providers (e.g. public libraries), even sharing physical spaces with some to reduce costs.

2. Post offices need to grow non-mail revenues, especially insurance & financial services.

3. Make post offices physical fronts for e-services and provide print on demand for all government forms. Consider relocating some of the services relating to passports, driving licences, car registration and income tax into larger post offices.

4. Turn post offices into business support centres for SMEs and sell a range of office related products ranging from stationery to computer equipment.

5. Instead of focussing on ‘sending services’ why not create revenue streams relating to ‘receiving services’? For example, extend the idea of the PO Box to larger boxes or lockers where online goods can be received and stored. These boxes could even be chilled for food delivery.

The prediction that computers will one day become so small and so cheap that we’ll sprinkle them on almost everything is not taken very seriously by some people. However, news that researchers at the University of Michigan (US) have created a computer measuring one cubic millimetre may change a few minds. The dot-sized machine contains a microprocessor, pressure sensor, battery, solar cell and wireless radio that enables it to transmit data to other dot sized devices.

Everyone is focused on what’s happening. But let’s for a moment consider what isn’t happening. Why aren’t Alastair Campbell and Piers Morgan coming forward with comments on what one would think would be an area of interest? Where is the broad support among Tory MP’s for Cameron? Where is strategy wunderkind Steve Hilton and where on earth is PR supremo Matthew Freud? And are we really supposed to believe that this whole sorry saga is limited to one newspaper in one company in one country? I find it almost inconceivable that the News of The World was the only title doing this.

I´ve cracked it. Got an idea for a new map for 2012. All came about by doing nothing, although music had something to do with it. Hence spent the whole of yesterday with some large sheets of white paper, a couple of pencils and an eraser.

Funny how a few ex-tabloid editors, loud-mouthed journalists and PR people have gone so quiet all of a sudden. Less surprising that the ´favoured daughter` has upset one of the real ones.

Sorry folks, bit manic. Just escaped from two days talking about scenarios with an energy company (my head hasn’t hurt so much in months), trying to buy a house, kids on summer holidays for two months (help!) and a few other fun things like bloods tests down at the local hospital. Oh, and the test chapter on a new book turns out to have a fatal flaw so a re-write is on the cards for Aug 1.

Bottom line – my posts might be a bit rubbish for a few weeks.

PS – News. I think the issue is that Rupert is thinking about his legacy. The red top that he didn’t get rid of is his legacy, which is why she’s still got a job.