Posted September 12th, 2008, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Social Software and The Social Graph| Technology

read below if you want my introduction/thoughts on this video…

This is an interesting presentation. It’s not told quite right for my taste, but it emphasizes how hard it is to see outside the current technology/media paradigm, mostly by showing clips from the early days of TV and computing… The similarities in the language between then and now are pretty stunning.

Very notable for me was a clip of Marshall McCluhan in the 1960′s speaking about how audiences want to feel included in media.  Sound familiar?  

Also touched on is McCluhan’s “Global Village” concept which will surely inspire much near-future reading for me.  The ‘Global Village’ is basically a visionary concept to this day.  

McCluhan, thanks to Peter Hirshberg, will probably become a new teacher of mine.  At this rate, I may have a college level education by the time I’m 40 years old.

Really, I should say that Peter Hirshberg does a really good job in this presentaion compiling a lot for us to chew on in a short amount of time, even if it is all a little bit scatter-brained in my opinion.  My preview notes don’t do justice to the ground covered.  I couldn’t do better.

OH! He even touches on how the late 60′s, counter-culture and LSD may have influenced the birth of Open-Source and Personal Computing!  Interesting stuff. 

Peter Hirshberg is a veteran of old media as well as new, and now, new-new media (now just considered new)… The list of companies he’s been involved with is amazing:

And finally, don’t miss the cameo by James Burke who we all know (or should know) and love from the show Connections (about the history of technology and innovation).  In the presentation, Peter Hirshberg shows a commercial in which Burke is a spokesperson for Apple, promoting “HyperCard,” a predecessor to HTML (HyperCard is not networked).

Hirshberg’s list of companies he’s been involved with is pretty impressive and includes some of my favorites, Technorati and Apple. Copied from his TypePad Bio:

Biography

Peter Hirshberg is a Silicon Valley executive, entrepreneur and marketing innovator who most recently served as president and CEO of Gloss.com, the major multi-brand beauty ecommerce business co-owned by Estee Lauder Companies, Chanel and Clarins. Launched in Fall 2001, Gloss features prestige cosmetic brands including Clinique, MAC, Prescriptives, Estee Lauder, Origins, Bobbi Brown, Stila, Chanel and Clarins.

Hirshberg served as Chairman of Interpacket Networks, the global leader in Internet Via Satellite, before its acquisition by American Tower Corporation in October 2000. From 1996-1999, Hirshberg was founder/CEO of Elemental Software, developer of the award- winning Drumbeat 2000 family of e-business web development software. Backed by Accel partners, AT&T Corporation, and Microsoft, Elemental Software was acquired by Macromedia Incorporated in September 1999.

During a nine-year tenure at Apple Computer, Hirshberg headed Enterprise Marketing, where he grew Apple’s large business and government revenue to $1 billion annually and helped lead the company’s entry into the online service arena. After leaving Apple, Hirshberg’s new-media strategy firm served clients including America Online, Microsoft, NBC Television Network, Estee Lauder, Pacific Bell and Silicon Graphics.

Hirshberg is a founder of Goodmail Systems, a board member of ICTV, and serves on the advisory boards of start-ups Technorati and Informative. He is a Trustee of The Computer History Museum and a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. Peter earned his bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College and his MBA at Wharton.