The reason for this strange love affair is that no matter how grateful we are for all the wonderful moments Hollywood films deliver, they are also responsible for some of our greatest disappointments. There surely can’t be anyone in the western world that hasn’t been devastated by a Hollywood film that managed to butcher their favourite book, portray their favourite superhero out of character, or even just kill a good story with an insipid, corny finale.

Perhaps it is with some irony then that the Chinese cinema fans who welcomed the arrival of the Hollywood behind the Great Wall are now outraged at the Chinese version of Iron Man 3. The film, a joint production between Disney and China’s DMG entertainment opens with the name of a popular milk drink on the screen, which then becomes a focal point for product placement throughout the film. There is even a Chinese character not seen in the US version that saves Iron Man’s life at the end of the film. In addition to these changes there are also extra scenes in the Chinese version that feature Chinese actors and landmarks.

As a result Chinese fans have taken in numbers to Weibo (the local version of Twitter), to express their dissatisfaction with Hollywood for attempting to capitalize on China’s cinema market. Perhaps the Hollywood grass seemed a little greener over The Wall? Maybe they thought that the US film push into China would finally allow them access to the best films in the world?

But film making is a business, and Hollywood is the biggest business of them all. At the top end of the film making food chain, the Hollywood Blockbuster is all about big budgets in the hope of big returns. The stakes are high, and the enormous potential of the Chinese cinema market is a way to ensure investors get a return.

That the studios put profit ahead of the craft has been an ongoing trend since the 1970s. Awful remakes of classics, sequels that spoil the original release and big name casts in films that stink are more common than they should be. Product placement, blatant merchandising and inappropriate endorsements are now part and parcel of the film industry. For the Chinese fans of cinema upset by the local version of Iron Man 3, perhaps it’s just their first taste of the love hate relationship the rest of the world has with Hollywood.

Watch FiST Chat 118: Hollywood And China Get Cosy for more on this topic.

Well maybe. In the few minutes it took to declare the report false, the US share market plunged around 1% through a cascade of automated trades. To think just 140 characters, from a supposedly trusted source can cause such chaos is as remarkable as the fact that the some (not all of the market) reacted before checking the news from a second source.

In this day and age, technology has completely taken over in our stock markets. So much so many trades are merely algorithms that help move around the 10 billions shares that change hands each day. These programs are actually hooked into newsfeeds and social media so once an unexpected event occurs, many of these pre-programmed trades cause market chaos. And while the market may recover quickly as it did last week, in the turmoil there will be some big winners and even bigger losers.

The problem with twitter as a media platform is that it is an undefined entity that most users simply understand. If it were truly a straightforward person to person social media network (like Facebook), then it would hardly be the media darling it has become. The media love twitter, as do finance professionals and politicians because of its immediacy and reach and so they feel a degree of ownership. As a result they have created laws for it as if it were a traditional media platform so they can control it. Although strangely, these laws don’t seem to apply (or be enforced), for Facebook or Google Plus.

This situation represents another uncomfortable technological nexus for society as demonstrated by the Securities Exchange Commission’s response that they were still determining whether or not the social media attack was illegal. While some of us may smirk at the thought of officials scratching their heads in the aftermath, it’s a clear indication that our modern society is still not properly equipped to deal with these emerging issues. There is no law, no consistent code of ethics, no set of morals and no precedent for how humans should interact with the ‘virtual’ entities that occupy today’s world.

Perhaps until we have a better grip on this issue we might do well to go back to the basics of information and knowledge as taught to us by our parents. You probably wouldn’t act on something a stranger told you on the street without checking with someone you trusted, so why would you trust a single tweet? This time it might have just been a ripple on the share market, but next time it might just be a whole lot worse.

Watch FiST Chat 116: The Dangers Of Bogus Tweets for more on this topic.

Yet contrast this with the evolution of the story via social media and traditional news platforms. The mass of information that overloaded social networks in the moments after the blasts distorted the truth and our understanding of what had actually happened.

There were inaccurate reports of extra bombs, graphic images uploaded without consent and even innocent people accused of this awful crime. In itself this sort of confusion has always gone hand in hand with traumatic events, but the difference used to be that traditional media could filter out the errors. In those days a breaking story would often take hours to check, report and publish. Journalists were trained to communicate with accuracy, clarity and context. That was the value encased in traditional media, and it was why we trusted those news sources to be right.

But the 24 hour media cycle and the need to publish with speed has eroded the accuracy in breaking stories as traditional outlets fight to keep up with the mass of information broadcast by the public. It is an interesting and natural evolution of the news gathering model we’ve discussed on FiST Chat before. The role of the traditional media is no longer to gather the information itself, but to piece together the story in real time. The public now forgives inaccuracy (where once it would have condemned it), in exchange for having a trusted source update and piece the story together as it is verified. This represents a new role for modern media but also one that society still has to fully understand. The Boston Globe must be commended for lowering its paywall in the aftermath, so the Boston community (and the world) could keep up to date with important local developments.

Undoubtedly and tragically, we are likely to see more stories of human tragedy reported like this in the future. So it is very important that people learn that in times like these unfiltered images and posts do not tell the story by themselves. It is also important to remember that a single tweet does not represent the truth either. What we all need to remember is that it takes time for someone to sift through all the data to create an accurate representation of the real story. And that is the reason why, in testing times we will always turn to the professional media sources we can trust.

Watch FiST Chat 115: Citizen Reporting and the Boston Marathon Bombings for more on this topic.

As it turned out the ISPs never developed a business model for Internet calls, as it was far more lucrative to sell ‘phone time’ rather than data. In the fledgling online world this was a sliding doors moment that shaped the next decade of communication as powerfully as Microsoft shaped the world of personal computing.

Had anyone at that time seized the moment and created a ubiquitous platform for real-time Internet communication, today we’d all be connected by one cross platform app not unlike the traditional phone network. After all the foundations were there, email protocol is universal no matter what software you use to access it. Likewise, IRC the first universal online chat facility created in 1988, was based on Internet protocols, and standard client software like the c prompt. An internet phone system based on a similar platform would have worked just as well irrespective of OS or ISP.

But in the late 1990s AOL and Microsoft brought out their respective chat platforms. Ironically Microsoft’s Messenger originally cross supported AOL’s AIM chat but AOL blocked access and in doing so put an end to the days of open and universal access that the original Internet had been built on. From here on internet communications would become strictly peer to peer and this is the reason mobile phones still make ‘calls’ today instead of using dedicated data networks.

Video calls were first released on these platforms at the peak of the dotcom era. Pokey, postage stamp sized images at 15 frames a second on dial up. That said it felt like a major advance in telecommunications, and in reality it was. Then Skype arrived with a new VoIP platform and soon after proper video calls followed, if your bandwidth allowed.

It’s somewhat surprising then that today’s video communications are scarcely better than they we’re ten years ago. Bandwidth and mobile devices are cheap and easy, and apparently there is an app for everything except universal VoIP. Peer to peer means users have to have the same software installed and open to communicate through these channels. For some people in the digital age this is a no-brainer, but for most of us, it’s just a bridge too far especially when the commonplace and familiar universal phone network is always available at hand.

No doubt there are some strange things going on in the world of VoIP currently, especially with the arrival of Google Hangouts. Strange issues with platforms and OS might be a sign that Microsoft are currently trying to lock in its loyal Skype audience to protect its market. Apple tried to build its own castle out of Facetime and failed. Google+ could be everything to everyone if you want to sell your whole internet experience to Google.

And therein stands the elephant in the room. The big tech corps don’t want to hear it, their business models won’t currently allow it, but consumers do not want to be locked into an artificial ecosystem. Technology was meant to make life simple, easier and happier. In the wonderful world of internet capitalism no one should have to pay for their liberty on-line. If mobile phone manufactures can agree on a universal connector, perhaps it’s time for our tech behemoths to stop suing each other, get together and create a single internet communication that works as well as it should.

Watch FiST Chat 114: What’s Wrong With Skype for more on this topic.

There is no question that understanding the brain represents one of the great scientific challenges of all time. But it’s also a very different challenge to some of our other recent scientific achievements. It is not as straight forward as building giant machines to search our universe like CERNs Large Hadron Collider or the Square Kilometre Array Telescope. Nor is it a project with a clear cut aim and conclusion like mapping the expansive DNA strands of the human genome. This sort of project is a combination of ‘how long is a piece of string’ meets searching for a ‘haystack with a needle’ and in many ways represents a poorly optimized mode of scientific investigation.

That aside, it would be lovely to find cures for brain injuries, intellectual disabilities and diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. But is this where this sort of research will really lead? Considering Europe already has its own brain research project, is this a global competition for corporate control of patents on a range of futuristic bio-neural products, or will this information and advantages be freely available to all nations?

It’s hardly paranoia to ask these questions. The amount of money bandied about means that there must be huge financial rewards for this sort of investment. There must also be some sort of ethical discussion about where humanity wants this sort of research to lead. While it is safe to say most of the knowledge will be beneficial, there are bound to be unexpected consequences associated with the new neural technologies.

Take for instance the latest Japanese research that suggests it is now possible to read dreams. This represents a huge step in understanding the workings of the brain and may well lead to uncovering processes by which we can up and download data directly from our minds. The natural next step is then finding a way to read thoughts and memories. Definitely exciting from a scientific perspective, but what if it means scenarios like those presented in the films Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inception are possible? Is humanity ready to deal with this technology? Our current laws can barely deal with Twitter as it is.

Even with or without Obama’s announcement, research in all areas of neuroscience will continue at a rapid pace. Put this together with a range of emerging medical technologies and advances in artificial intelligence, and suddenly we are a lot closer to a brave new world than most people might expect or realize.

While it would be a wonderful (and unlikely) achievement for humans to be able to understand the brain and its workings, research in this field is bound to have profound implications for all of us. The ability to renew and repair our neural tissues is central to breaking the current limits of longevity. The emergence of new drugs or bio-hardware based ‘intelligence’ enhancers will revolutionise our society and change the course of human evolution. Hopefully this will lead to an improved human species, with less of the character failings and a greater sense of community and altruism. And perhaps it might be this generation that is the first generation to leave earth for good and colonize the stars.

Watch FiST Chat 113: We Can Read Your Dreams for more on this topic.

At the same time phones have gone on to become everything cool we wished for our watches. So imagine somewhere in a parallel universe, after creating their ‘blue box’ Woz and Jobs had gone on to design cool digital watches instead of PCs. Ah, just imagine a world still running DOS on desktops, and people with awesome, cool watches that make calls, play music, send emails and surf the net. Phones are still plugged into the walls where they belong.

Maybe Rob Rinehart belongs in this universe. Motivated by an alleged desire to save money on food shopping, limit his food miles and spend time on other pursuits he has reinvented the diet, this time without food. His ‘soylent’ diet consists of a selection of the raw chemicals essential for human nutrition mixed into a liquid than he then consumes instead of food. His claims are wild.

Of course, Rob has yet to release his formula to the public. Typically this either points to a hoax, or more likely a business opportunity. Not that this is anything new in the diet industry, where it is so common it might be standard practice. Technically his diet is only new by name. There are plenty of ‘diet’ shakes and liquid supplements you could buy off the shelf already that would achieve the same effect as Rob’s Soylent. The difference is that Rob has rethought and reinvented the ‘diet’, and like any good story it’s got everyone excited.

This inspirational attempt to change the way we look at food is attracting a lot of attention and of course a lot of critique. Rob has reduced dieting to its basic nutritional components and in effect may have just founded the anti-food movement. Crazy stuff. Just like Apple re-inventing the watch.

Critics attack Rob’s diet on the fact that the chemicals he claims to be using are not bio active, his diet is untested and his Soylent food substitute is dangerous and unhealthy. While his detractors are correct in their questioning of Rob, it’s wrong to dismiss this diet as purely ludicrous when it actually tackles some very important issues well worth the public discussion.

Affluent modern society is suffering an obesity epidemic and a whole host of related diseases due to overconsumption of food. The truth is we could exist more happily and healthily on much less food. With a rising global population, climate concerns and almost 40% of the food produced globally going to waste, is it not time for us to use science to rethink and reinvent a modern diet? Rather than attacking Rob, shouldn’t we be celebrating what his diet stands for?

In understanding, valuing and appreciating nutrition at its most basic level we can all become equipped to make better food choices in our lives. In fact it probably wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the modern western diet was based around a couple of nutritionally balanced diet shakes combined with one normal meal daily. Rob’s has found a novel way to reimagine food. If he is genuine he deserves our congratulations.

Which is more than can be said for attempts to reinvent the watch. While the Pebble is a standout for its crowd sourced origins and original design, most other brands add nothing but an operating system to your wrist. Does anyone really need a watch that connects to Facebook via the phone in your pocket? Let’s face it, if anyone asks me if I’d like an iWatch the answer is yes, about 30 years ago. Today I have everything I need on my phone and when they can work out how to strap it to my wrist I’ll be happy to call it a watch.

Watch FiST Chat 112: Lose Weight Fast With Soylent Green for more on this topic.

Veronica Mars was a short lived (3 seasons) TV series that despite developing a cult following was axed in 2007. Creator Rob Thomas has now used crowdsourcing via the popular site Kickstarter to harness the cult following and turn it into a pledge of well over $4 million. While raising enough to bankroll a full feature length film is a remarkable achievement in itself, the project has now set an unlikely precedent that may end up backfiring on the wider creative community.

By mobilising and coordinating their resources, Veronica Mars fans have taken control of the production process and ensured they will see a film made. But while the crowd sourced supporters of the Veronica Mars campaign will get a script/DVD/t-shirt depending on the level of their contribution (or even a speaking role for $10k plus), they stand to get nothing should the film return a profit at the box office. That said, it’s obvious the Veronica Mars fans couldn’t care less. They just want to see their favourite characters on the silver screen and that’s a fair call.

This is not such a big deal until you consider that Warner Brothers (who wouldn’t risk the money to make it themselves), have already done a deal with Thomas for distribution and merchandise and now stand to make millions with zero risk. No doubt every Hollywood producer will now be tripping over themselves to copy this new model. And if that is the case, then the Kickstarter site has just instantly been elevated to the next ‘big’ online success story.

While this might not instantly revolutionize the Hollywood film business, it will definitely see more films like this being funded by the fans themselves. This may well be a good thing although the unintended downside is if the Hollywood studios get more widely involved in this sort of financing, it will reduce opportunities for genuine creatives to crowd source for original ideas. Nothing ever really changes?

The Reality Drop is an intriguing campaign that is part of The Climate Reality Project. Admirably it aims to recruit and arm online supporters to fight a battle against ‘the vested interests and dark forces’ that deny the existence of climate change. The idea is that by participating in the project you use social media to spread the messages of truth and actively expose and destroy the myth and the lies of climate denial.

Unfortunately despite the best intentions of this project, it effectively turns a good cause into something vaguely sinister. The ability to recruit the online population to have a voice on issues that matter globally is one of the great achievements of the internet. However, Reality Drop merely sets a dangerous precedent on many levels. It treats a serious global issue as if they were a game and entrenches the concept of climate change as a polarised political debate with only one correct point of view. It promotes the notion that by believing in climate change and spreading the word via social media an individual can make a difference without changing their own behaviour. It also uses the same dubious methods that the climate deniers use to force public opinion. And worst of all, if it succeeds it will demonstrate just how easy it is for any interest group to use social media as a propaganda tool.

While social media has already proven its ability to influence public opinion, these campaigns are sophisticated examples of how organisations or groups can use crowd sourcing to promote their cause. Not that this is an issue in itself, but if the current scenarios are anything to go by, this new way of uniting online communities may bring unforeseen and undesirable consequences. Where crowdsourcing public opinion will ultimately take us is difficult to tell, but it may be a case where social media campaigns are right for all the wrong reasons.

Watch FiST Chat 111: The Climate Change Debate Circus for more on this topic.

As the world went dot.com crazy, Web2.0 was there. Tech gurus, business leaders and people with iPods were raving about the future of the web. All these great things that the next generation of browsing would provide for you at your desktop would sweep us into the future. It was going to be incredible, fantastic, amazing.

Did Steve Jobs set out to kill Web2.0? I suspect if we could ask him, he’d say yes, but of course now we’ll never know. So for those of you that haven’t heard the web is dead; no matter how hard you hit that keyboard, or click that mouse. And for good measure, that PC you are banging away on is on the way out too. Things are changing. Again.

For those old enough to remember PowerPoint 1.0, you will know that the internet existed and worked quite well without the browser. There was email, there were chat facilities and there was file sharing all available through what is now your command prompt window. Steve Jobs might also want to claim credit for creating a role for browsers in the online experience through the graphic capacity of the original Macintosh.

But that’s ancient history. Today we have mobile devices. Online is now nothing but channels and locations. Channels are open communications streams, best described as social media. Locations are accessed by apps and can be any online destination, from YouTube, to Wikipedia, to online retail; anywhere You might have once gone with a browser. We happily pay for apps that are software tools, so it’s probably only a matter of time before we pay for access to social media and even some specialist on-line locations.

So did Rupert Murdoch’s pay walls fail? The answer is they did, because the pay wall is as dead as a Web2.0 business plan. Web browsers were always free. Email was free, chat was free, file sharing, genuine or pirated was free. The 2.0 spruikers were always about monetarising the Internet, but it was never going to work, no one could ever sell ‘pay for browse’ to a freeloading online audience.

But things change quickly online. Very quickly indeed. In just the last few years people are now happy to pay for the entertainment, content and software they would have once pirated, because their mobile devices make financial transactions so easy. Monetarising the web is dead, done and dusted, but charging for a mobile online experience is now a happy choice of ecosystem linked to your credit card number.

Facebook is terminal. Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram will morph into something else soon. Google+ is the best kept secret online, possibly still too far ahead of its time. You don’t think twice about buying that app, soon you won’t think twice about purchasing access to a channel or a location either.

Meanwhile the shape of news media is changing. It’s not just about the facts anymore. It’s also about opinion, Your opinion and your right to express it via social media channels. That’s why Time Magazine awarded all of us the prize in 2006.

Newscorp have one of the best news gathering networks on the planet, across both print and broadcast platforms. They are one of the few businesses that can cover the news globally, and distribute it to an audience that (deep down) understands the value of this service. Mobile digital devices allow Newscorp to deliver their content to anyone with a network signal.

When someone at Newscorp finally puts two and two together, they will leave pay walls and Web2.0 behind to make a lot of money charging for access to channels and locations. Inside the app You will be happy to follow the news, read public opinion and post your own comments in a live online forum; a combination of news, Facebook and Twitter. And you will be quite happy to pay for the privilege.

The pay wall is dead. Long live the app!

Watch FiST Chat 110: Future Communications for more on this topic.

The record heatwave may be interpreted in a number of ways, but the most interesting is the fact it has already been predicted. In fact all of the stories this week have probably been predicted in years gone by. Yet despite the fact we all might have been told before, we are surprised when they seem to have snuck up on us.

Starting with Melbourne’s weather, climate models have predicted the increase in temperature for almost half a century now. Not that an extended run of hot weather is proof, but it is a topic of conversation. People living in the Arctic Circle have noted the effects of climate change on their lives over the last decade, while those of us in temperate climate zones have ignored their warnings, because everything seems normal here. But what if the population of Southern Australia were to get a couple of months each year of over 35C? Would they say they never imagined (or predicted), it could happen? Would they complain that they weren’t told?

A lack of predictability is an intriguing concept in our modern world. The remarkable rise of the personal computer and the internet have revolutionised communication and data sharing. Although there might be a lot of fantasy and conspiracy online, there is also a lot of fact, insight and wisdom if you know where to find it. The ability to use the available information to anticipate or create outcomes is tantamount to success nowhere more so than in business.

So when Rupert Murdoch made his original announcement of the paywall it was a decisive decision made on the best advice available. Perhaps extreme, but it was a timely play to enforce the value of Newscorp’s newsgathering content. At the time, in the midst of a rapidly changing media landscape it was one way to protect a classic business model and acknowledge the value of traditional journalism. The change of heart by Murdoch represents a shift in thinking that will reposition his business in the current climate.

Of course the media and entertainment business is in constant flux as the online environment evolves. Who would have thought that we would see Hollywood doing deals to get their movies into China? It’s a great deal for both sides, the Chinese public getting more Hollywood productions while protecting their own industry and Hollywood getting more viewers for their ever increasing budgets. What next, India relaxing censorship and Hollywood v Bollywood in Mumbai?

And finally, all the trends that exist today suggest that a life expectancy of well over 100 is only a matter of time. Yet, more than 50% of respondents in our FiST Chat poll don’t seem too excited by the prospect. Bioprinting organs may well only be a transitory technology until genetic medicine takes over, but the effects this technology will have in the short term is mind blowing. We are on the verge of living to 150 years of age, healthier and happier than ever before. It’s been predicted years ago, it’s now happening and still no one seems ready to listen to the predictions let alone understand the implications.

Things are changing all around us and with ever increasing pace. The issue for modern society is not whether or not we will see these big changes coming, because often we do. The real question is whether or not we are ready to cope with life in the future.

Watch FiST Chat 109: Regenerative Medicine for more on this topic.

In addition to the long standing American, Russian and European space agencies, both China and India are gearing up their programs, as are a raft of privateers such as Dennis Tito and Richard Branson. In the coming decades, we can expect to see the space sector expand from the traditional exploration mission to commercial operations including resources, logistics and tourism. So the chance to become an astronaut working in one of these specialist fields is as real as ever, but what will it take to get the job?

The NASA requirements are a good starting point to base the minimum requirements. A standard degree (with top of the class scores) in Maths, Science or Engineering, plus a minimum of 3 years professional experience (including post graduate studies or teaching qualifications), and of course the ability to pass the all important medical are just the start. Sadly, if you are under 155cm or over 190cm in height, you are automatically excluded, no matter what skills or abilities you might have.

For those that make it through the first selection process, a week long process of personal interviews is the next step. Remember in space no one can hear you scream for help. Astronauts must have the right stuff, physically and mentally to perform at their best at all times and deal with any situation that might arise on their mission. It’s not common knowledge but a significant number of NASA astronauts were scouts as children; it pays to be prepared.

If you make it to this point, you would be considered an ‘astronaut candidate’ but the reality is your training has only just begun. It will still be some years before you can be selected to join the active ‘roster’, with most astronauts usually selected for their first mission in their mid-thirties. Even then there are still no guarantees you will make it into space. Your position on the roster is always determined by the mission skills required, your level of experience and your age.

So right now it might be tough to get a gig in space. But NASA have now announced missions to the asteroid belt by 2025 and there are also loose (changeable?) plans to head back to the Moon and to Mars in this timeframe as well. With space tourism on the brink of reality and the private sector lead by Hollywood and the cashed up tech sector pointing to a future in the heavens, the only way to make these predictions a reality is to train more humans to live and work in space.

The plans are in place and the opportunities are there. If you are young, adventurous and have a strong desire to explore the universe around us, a job in the space corps might be for you. If you think you have the right stuff, it’s time to step forward and venture into space the final frontier, and boldly go where no (hu)man has gone before.

Watch FiST Chat 108: So You Want To Be An Astronaut? for more on this topic.