abt. quotedIdeal, average and outlier
apropos nützliche unterscheidungen : der weltmeister der nützlichen unterscheidungen ist natürlich seth godin, wie er uns eben wieder erinnert:
It’s easy, for example, to defend high-priced famous colleges if you focus on the ideal situation. The ideal student, getting instruction from the ideal professor and making ideal progress. No one can argue with this.
On the other hand, when we see the outlier (the person who is manipulating the system, or the one who is being harmed by it) it’s easy to generalize in precisely the other direction, deciding that the entire system isn’t worth saving.
And finally, it’s tempting to rely on the average, to boil down populations of people into simple numbers. The problem with this, of course, is that if one foot is in a bucket of ice water and the other is being scalded, on average, you should be comfortable.
The answer is clear.
Today, the answer is clear. The purpose of the magazine is to make as much money as possible. Everything else is in service of that goal.
…
Being clear about what we’re doing and why is the first step in doing it better. If you’re not happy about the honest answer to this question, make substantial changes until you are.
seth godin im haque mode.
(das prob. dabei ist natürlich, dass gerade die unternehmen, behörden und organisationen, die davon tatsächlich am meisten profitieren (und andere profitieren lassen) könnten, sich selbst ohnehin eine glasur verpassen, die die optik einer ebensolchen ‘vision’ oder ‘mission’ simuliert und gerade dadurch die phase des tacheles redens verdrängt)
ReQuoting pt. 36 (The March of Technology Edition) Revisited
So naturally the sociopaths are outraged that their control is being taken away. Newspapers, book publishers, television companies, ad agencies – their businesses are all failing, while Google’s is on the rise.
The thing that’s hard for the sociopaths to get their head around is that this isn’t because one of their rivals has outsmarted them – it’s just the march of technology.
Aaron Swartz via blogoscoped via ReQuoting pt. 36
Uncanny Valley of News
In the era of so-called ‘Big Data’ even your Network identity is a pattern. You aren’t you, you’re someone ‘like’ you.
endlich wieder echovar: The Uncanny Valley of News
Post-Productive POV
productivity is for robots.
apropos POV … kevin kelly legt diesen Gedanken (und den ersten satz von am ende der wurst) schön auf die – dann post-produktive – Ökonomie um: The Post-Productive Economy
ReQuoting pt. 85 (The Big Social Media Edition)
Twitter alters its terms of access to its information, thereby harming the services that built themselves on that information. Which was stupid, because Twitter gets fewer and fewer material benefits from allowing people to use its water. And why would you build a service that relies on a private company’s assets anyway? Facebook changes its terms of access regularly. It’s broken its own Pages system and steadily grows more invasive and desperate. Instagram, now owned by Facebook, just went through its first major change in terms of service. Which went as badly as anyone who’s interacted with Facebook would expect. As Twitter disconnected itself from sharing services like IFTTT, so Instagram disconnected itself from Twitter. Flickr’s experiencing what will probably be a brief renaissance due to having finally built a decent iOS app, but its owners, Yahoo!, are expert in stealing defeat from the jaws of victory. Tumblr seems to me to be spiking in popularity, which coincides neatly with their hiring an advertising sales director away from Groupon, a company described by Techcrunch last year as basically loansharking by any other name.
Warren Ellis via BB über den Übergang von Social Media zur Logik und Verhalten von Big Media und den damit verbundenen Grabenkämpfen.
ReQuoting pt. 84 (The Product Edition)
There was no correlation between how much money users paid and how well they were treated.
…
And just because you pay doesn’t mean you’re not the product.
Powazek via Techdirt über den wenn du nicht bezahlst bist du das produkt kurzsinn.
ReQuoting pt. 83 (The Pain of the Archivist Edition)
There’s no memory at Twitter: everything is fleeting. Though that concept may seem daunting to some (archivists, I feel your pain), it also means the content in my feed is an endless stream of new information, either comments on what is happening right now or thoughts about the future.
Matt Haughey via Kottke
Auffanggesellschaften
Es wird sowieso hässlich – ob mit oder ohne Nachdenken über Zukunft. Also warum nicht Würde und Kreativität bewahren, was nur mit Neuanfängen möglich ist. Auffang- und Beschäftigungsgesellschaften werden wir noch genug erleben…
^ siggi becker in einem plusthread
Civic
The first step is people who care making a product for people who care.
The second step is people who care making a product for people who don’t care.
And the third step, so difficult to avoid, is that the growing organization starts hiring people, not necessarily people who care, to grow their ever-industrializing company. And since they are servicing customers who don’t care, those employees who don’t care can get away with it (for a while).
^ seth godin erklärt in wenigen worten nicht wenig, mitunter auch das dilemma vom ‘sozialen’, weil die verschiedenen interessen gegenläufige serien triggern.
and the Music
und auch eher devoha 3x techdirt und musik:
As we’ve noted time and time again, this whole thing seems short sighted in the extreme. Lyrics sites don’t take away from interest in a song, they only increase it. And, yes, publishers have different interests than the musicians or labels, but it still seems counterproductive to sue and take down sites that were increasing interest in the actual music, as lyrics sites do.
…
The legacy music industry needs long term strategic thinking. And instead it just looks for who it can sue.
^ über die kurzsicht (und ich ergänze: den altersstarrsinn) der musikindustrie, die noch nicht einmal den komplementären wert von lyrics-sites erkennt.
For years, we’ve pointed out that some in the music industry get so obsessed with “stopping piracy” that they miss the fact that their main job should be to increase revenue. They make the huge mistake of assuming that the two things are the same — and that “stopping piracy” automatically leads to “increased revenue.” Yet, almost every time that issue is explored empirically (over time), it doesn’t seem to hold up.
^ über die kurzsicht (und eig. nochmal den altersstarrsinn) der musikindustrie, die sich in das falsche problem verbeisst und dabei alle gelegenheiten verpasst.
So, instead, we get this situation where no one wins. The video has crappy music. The good music providers don’t get paid. How is that a good solution?
^ über takedowns von privaten videos die jeder beteiligten partei (ausser vl. den anwälten) schadet und die auch die tatsächliche gretchenfrage unserer zeit stellt (und eig. nochmal auch über den altersstarrsinn).
and the Academy
the issue isn’t what education of “the very best sort” looks like, but what the whole system looks like.
devoha: Clay Shirky über Udacity und Co
Risse und Brüche
Beobachten kann man aber auch, dass Diskussionen sobald sie ihre begrifflichen und semantischen Kapazitäten erschöpft haben, irgendwann wieder von vorn anfangen. […] das Desinteresse entsteht, weil man nicht angeben kann, ob noch etwas Entscheidendes übersehen wurde; die Wiederholung, weil niemand alles übersehen kann. […] Zwar werden die Risse und Brüche überall bemerkt, doch haben sich die ontologischen Selbstbeschreibungsprogramme der Systeme schon bis an die Grenze ihrer Möglichkeiten soweit ausgedehnt, dass sie auch noch den größten Quatsch unverdrossen thematisieren können, weil vielleicht nur der allergrößte Quatsch eigentlich noch inakzeptabel ist und damit genügend Grund für die Wiederholung der Kritik liefert.
^ kusanowsky über den verlust der angst
Konzept des Tages: The Other Now
enthalten und ausgeführt hier
Regardless of what happens with his second term, Barack Obama’s great victory has already been won: We are all the other now, in some sense. Special interests? That term has no more meaning in the New America. We are all — all of us, every last American, even the whitest of white guys — special interests. And now, normal isn’t white or straight or Christian. There is no normal. That word, too, means less with every moment.
ReQuoting pt. 82 (The Hackalone Edition)
The hackalone is a new kind of hackathon for introverts. All you need are laptops and people to hack on them. Get together, pick ideas (but keep them secret), then begin the hacking (no talking). No teams, no stress, no conflict resolution.
CodeDay Portland via Silicon Florist
ReQuoting pt. 81 (The Apologetic Apology Edition)
This is Apple. They cannot put something on their website?
ein (englischer) Richter via Techdirt
Getting Ourselves Done
There’s never been a better opportunity to step up and make an impact, while we’ve got the chance. This generation, this decade, right now, there are more opportunities to connect and do art than ever before. Maybe even today.
Seth Godin (im haque mode)
ReQuoting pt. 80 (The Cockroach Edition)
Intelligenz und harte Arbeit
die schabe via philoblog via siggibecker
ReQuoting pt. 79 (The Patent Edition)
Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products
The curious imperative
Now that information is ubiquitous, the obligation changes. It’s no longer okay to not know.
…
It never made sense to be proud of being ignorant, but we’re in a new era now. Look it up.