More on content versus structure.
Image via Notes from the Basement
Several recent news snippets give me a perfect opportunity to weave together a number of themes that have been knocking around in my head and (possibly but don’t count on it) create a little bit of new meaning around a new structure.
First from Paris, the sphere that is supposed to be the absolute measure (against which all others are measured) of the kilogram, has been found to have lost some of its mass. This is literally causing consternation because this is one of several spheres which measure the kilogram. Scientists are unsure whether this sphere is losing mass or if the others have gained mass.
Closer to home, the US dollar has fallen to an historic low against (just about every currency) the Canadian dollar, making the Canadian dollar more valuable for the first time in decades. The fall in value against the Pound or the Euro hurt trade and the financial markets. The fall against the Canadian dollar strikes at national pride.
Finally, the OLPC gang have created, what I think, a brilliant marketing move by offering it’s new laptop for sale for $399 in a “give one, get one” program. For your money, you get a shiny new laptop for yourself, along with a laptop that will be donated to a child in a developing country. Of course, the irony that you are buying a $100 laptop for $200 has not been lost in the blogosphere, nevertheless, it feels like good value to me.
And that gets me to my point (if indeed there is one and if by some small chance you are still reading).
Value is not an absolute – value is referential. This is not new but, what seems new to me is that value is now moving from being in the objects themselves to being in the structures or relationships that join objects. In particular the last example places a value upon the act of doing something that has very little to do with the value of what is physically being done at all.
When it comes to what we do – marketing – it again reinforces for me the importance of how we structure our interactions over what we actually say. This post is essentially a different structure that conveys the same basic point as the last post. However, the purpose of this post wasn’t really to convey that point, but instead to create structure between events I see as connected. Hopefully that’s also its value.
