I got into a pretty heated debate with some friends about my ideas around marketing this week. Intially I came across as being completely anti-marketing which, to a certain degree I am, particularly when marketing starts trying to sell you ‘lifestyle’.

I argued against marketing in favour of alternate currencies and community exchange programs. My problem was that alternate currencies and community exchange programs are not meant to replace marketing and I was at a loss trying to explain the connections between the two.

I’ve read about the ideas but I could not put what I’d read into one cohesive argument. Now if I had a computer and an internet connection I would have been able to pull a couple of sites to help me substanciate my argument but, unplugged from the hivemind, I failed miserably.

And thats just it, the internet is a sort of hivemind, plugging in gives you access to the hive’s cast collective intelligence but you leave all that behind once you’ve disconnected unless you internalize that understanding.

With internet connectivity becoming so massively (well, not so massive here in South Africa yet) widespead, what happens when we dont have to disconnect? What will life be like permanently connected to the hive? AND! What happens when the hive is wired directly to our brains like the good people at Cyberkinetics and Nasa are starting to do?

Well, for one, I don’t think I’ll be loosing are many arguments! :)