I know you sit in front of the TV shaking your head over some of what you see and hear, the media has you, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. You know something isn’t right but you can’t stop yourself from wondering what’s so terribly wrong. You know you’re being sold but you can’t help but think everything that is presented before you is a good idea and you must have it. It baffles the mind how easily lead we are as a people, how we just bite the cheese in the trap like the mouse.

We wait for and anticipate the big announcements from some of these huge companies as if they were the Messiah! Silicon Valley can’t wait to tease you with another great technology company making the leap from nobody to something larger than life. It’s everywhere, you can’t escape it, the media has us in the palm of their hands. The Media has you, we are all sheep!

The much anticipated announcement by Apple is a prime example of how the whole world stopped, stood up and paid attention to the moment Apple unvieled the iPad. And now we are inundated with reviews, critics, a bazillion blog posts about what’s good and what’s bad about the iPad. Yes, Apple has developed a new product but why are we so hooked on what happens when the rest of the world is struggling, trying to recover from earth quakes and famine. How is it that we can be distracted by something as trivial as an iPad over these other disasters? I’m already tired of hearing about Apple’s iPad, everyone is trying to break the stories.

It’s simple realy, the Media has us all, the chain around the neck being yanked when they need your attention. It’s attention space selling here on the Internet, TV and what have you. That’s the future of who we will be come, attention freaks trying to make a name for ourselves, building a brand, but we still don’t get it, we can’t keep marketing on the Internet by yelling. We pay attention to Apple because we trust their products and services, we pay attention to Microsoft because we trust their products. The challenge is that it’s not free, it’s time consuming and it distracts us from whats important, the tools are not more important than our lives.

What I’m learning from all of this is, there are fewer visionaries and leaders than there are followers, everyone wants to be out front. The 15 minutes of fame the world is selling you is misleading and unhealthy for most of us. This probably won’t change but, the visionaries will see you and take advantage of your vanity as they do today. I know I’m coming off synical, I’m just trying spread some sanity and help you stay focused on what’s truly important.

The world is changing faster than we can possible imagine, we can’t keep up, some of us sheep will slaughtered in the progress and some of us will become famous sheep. The world of free content, freedom of speach, the freedom to be who we are not will transform business, transform the way we do business and how we continue to function in a connected world. We must move into a place where we are not trapped by the media and big business, we must begin to believe in the impossible, what we can not see yet. Look past the iPad, look past Social Media, look past how to make money blogging, stop and look at how we are moving to an unlimited world.

We must become truly revolutionary, revolution is adopting new behaviour. The things we focus on today must change that behaviour, we must break away from old thinking, we must break away from media as we know it or we will continue to be sheep lead astray. Those who figure out that paying with attention is the new advertising will find themselves out in front of the masses. It’s advertising not @vertising!

The Cloud is where the money is, free content is the new content model, we have to figure out how to monetize around it no matter what the media tells you. Break from old methodology, learn to unlearn, look at new trends that are hard to adopt, look at Social Networking, Content Services, Communication, Money and eLearning. But look with fresh eyes and new thinking. Think about who controls what, who the gate keepers are and which ones we have to remove in the world of free. We are entiring into a world where we all will be mobile, everything will be in handheld devices and everything is and will be on the Cloud.

We are constantly being sold down the river, told a story, distracted by what’s important in life, media must change and you must help re-shape it, re-write the books on copyright to usage rights, develop new ways to monetize around your brand, product or service.  What will the world look like when more than 6% of the worlds population is on the Internet, what happens when countries like China breakout from behind the wall? The winds of change are blowing, are you building a shelter or a windmill?

Media comes to us in many forms, it’s the music industry, it’s newspapers, it’s books, it’s radio, it’s television and now it’s blogs & people. In the end, nothing happens without people, the power is shifting back to the people, the problem is also with the people, how we think and how we act. The new media will be built on trust, are we trustworthy?  The Media’s would have you think you are not smart enough to figure out what they are doing, they talk to you and expect you to follow like sheep. That’s because they are in a state of protectionism, so beware.

The Media has you, we are all sheep!