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Posts from the ‘The Internets’ Category

Jul 9

Clay Shirky on paywalls, cognitive surplus, and humans

“The final thing I’d say about optimism is this. If we took the loopiest, most moonbeam-addled Californian utopian internet bullshit, and held it up against the most cynical, realpolitik-inflected scepticism, the Californian bullshit would still be a better predictor of the future. Which is to say that, if in 1994 you’d wanted to understand what our lives would be like right now, you’d still be better off reading a single copy of Wired magazine published in that year than all of the sceptical literature published ever since.”
– Clay Shirky, from an interview in The Guardian

Jul 8

An Optimistic Investor’s Perspective on Innovation

“Ray Kurzweil maps out an optimistic view of the future with a tremendous amount of data supporting his main thesis — that the rate of innovation is increasing on a geometric scale. This means that innovation is happening faster every day. … The data supports the fact that we’ll see more innovation in the next ten years than we’ve seen in the last one hundred years. If you are an investor or entrepreneur, this is the best time in history to make a fortune and create a better world.”
-  Thomas G. McInerney, in his essay “Why Gold May Be a Bad Investment”

Jul 5

Get cracking, only 10 years to go

“While they acknowledge that use of the internet as a tool for communications can yield both positive and negative effects, a significant majority of technology experts and stakeholders participating in the fourth Future of the Internet survey say it improves social relations and will continue to do so through 2020.”

- From the July 2010 Pew Research Center report, “The Future of Online Socializing”

Jul 1

3 Comments

IBM names Firefox its default browser

“While other browsers have come and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be,” he said. “I think it was Firefox and its growth that reinvigorated the browser market as well as the web. That is, Firefox forced competitors to respond. Their software has gotten better and we have all benefited.”
– Bob Sutor of IBM, as reported by Stephen Shankland for CNET News. Congratulations to Mozilla on this achievement.

Jul 1

Best Corporate Acquisition Video Featuring a Monkey Puppet, Ever

More here on the Woot blog.
H/T: Matt Mullenweg

Jun 24

june musical interlude

I made a couple of CDs this week as farewell roadtrip companions, for two good friends who just departed Oakland to return home to the east coast.

Here are the playlists:

You can find a bunch of this music on Hype Machine. The way I find music these days is to hear it on the radio, or read a review. Then I go to Hype Machine, where you can usually preview new stuff. If you visit the blogs they list that feature the song you’re interested in, they often have lots of good related songs in the same post.

Here’s an example. (Click on the “Read full post” links on each song listing to check out the source blog posts.)

Jun 22

ALT/1977: WE ARE NOT TIME TRAVELERS

ALT/1977
“I’ve learned that there is no greater design element than the anachronism. I’ve learned that the strongest contrast isn’t spatial or tonal but historical. I’ve learned that there’s retro, and then there’s time travel.”
– A lovely imagining of modern tech advertised in a 70s vernacular, via Kottke

Jun 15

From a summary of Paul Graham’s book “Hackers and Painters”

“When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the wrong answers on tests. But when people are bad at open-mindedness, they don’t know it. In fact they tend to think the opposite.”

- Ross Hudgens, “76 Powerful Thoughts from Paul Graham”

Jun 3

Leroy Stick – the man behind @BPGlobalPR

“You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand? Have a respectable brand. Offer a great, innovative product and make responsible, ethical business decisions. Lead the pack! Evolve! Don’t send hundreds of temp workers to the gulf to put on a show for the President. Hire those workers to actually work! Don’t dump toxic dispersant into the ocean just so the surface looks better. Collect the oil and get it out of the water! Don’t tell your employees that they can’t wear respirators while they work because it makes for a bad picture. Take a picture of those employees working safely to fix the problem. Lastly, don’t keep the press and the people trying to help you away from the disaster, open it up so people can see it and help fix it. This isn’t just your disaster, this is a human tragedy. Allow us to mourn so that we can stop being angry.”
– “Leroy Stick – the man behind @BPGlobalPR” via @marshallk and Melissa Shapiro

May 24

Janelle Monae, Suites II and III Cover Art


Janelle Monae, Suites II and III cover art, via 新偶像’s Flickr.

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