] "Weblogs are so efficient that they destroy the financial
] value of publishing."

I decided to go ahead and simply recommend this guys entire collection of writings. Occaisonally its nice to learn that there is somebody out there who actually does have a clue.

Clay Shirky's Internet Writings

It is not, in fact, very likely that any of you will be able, in the next ten years, to make any direct contribution to the peace or prosperity of Europe. You will be busy finding jobs, getting married, acquiring facts. I am going to do something more old-fashioned than you perhaps expected. I am going to give advice. I am going to issue warnings. Advice and warnings about things which are so perennial that no one calls them "current affairs."

In 1944, C.S. Lewis addressed the students of King's College, University of London with the annual Memorial Lecture.

... It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don't matter, that is much worse.

[ Po Bronson mentions this in _What Should I Do With My Life?_ ]

The Inner Ring, by C.S. Lewis

] "The two fundamental pillars of liberty, without which no
] other rights are secure, remain alive and fairly healthy:
] the separation of powers with the judiciary refusing, so
] far, to defer entirely to the executive branch and the
] freedom of the American people to voice dissent."

This is a fairly even handed look at what has gone on with Civil Liberties in the last year. Its a little wordy, and covers a lot of ground that MemeStreams readers are likely already familiar with, but it offers a reasonable conclusion on the state of things at this time. Which is to say that a lot of bad things have been attempted, but they have not been uniformily successful, and several of the key pillars of what we call freedom are still intact despite some serious challenges.

politechbot.com: Harvey Silverglate on state of civil liberties at end of 2002

] "While this may sound defensible, what about having to
] provide picture evidence of your red nose and bleary eyes
] when you call in sick, or a photo of your mates to your
] partner when you go out for an evening without them."

Any interesting discussion of the potential, and potential dark side, of camera phones.

BBC NEWS | Technology | When every picture tells a story

logickal wrote:

] I'm currently adding to my list of things to add to my library
] in 03, and am accepting suggestions and recommendations. Got
] any?

Some things on my list:

SmartMobs: www.smartmobs.com

Linked: The new science of networks

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom: Cory Doctorow

JLM recommended the new Michael Crichton book, Prey, which is about Nanotech disasters.

And of course I'm trying to keep my reading ahead of the LOTR movies.

RE: Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson

] In other words, e-marketplaces are media as much for
] social interactions as they are for financial
] transactions. That is, who you are and what you're doing
] are as important as what you want to buy or what you want
] to sell. It's no accident that eBay is still around and
] making money for both itself and its, ahem, community of
] auctioneers. Your reputation on eBay can--and often
] does--matter far more than what you are attempting to
] either buy or sell.
]
] "Reputation marks the spot where technology and
] cooperation converge," Rheingold writes. "The most
] long-lasting social effects of technology always go
] beyond the quantitative efficiency of doing old things
] more quickly or more cheaply. The most profoundly
] transformative potential of connecting human social
] proclivities to the efficiency of information
] technologies is the chance to do new things together, the
] potential for cooperating on scales and in ways never
] before possible."

Preferential Attachment and the Rising Meme

"If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; if you just think of, detail by detail, what you have to do next, it is a wonderful dream even though the end is a long way off, for there are about five thousand steps to be taken before we realize it; and start taking the first ten, and stay making twenty after, it is amazing how quickly you get through those five thousand steps. Rather, I should say, through the four thousand nine hundred and ninety. The last ten steps you never seem to work out. But you keep on coming nearer to giving the world something well worth having."

-- Edwin H. Land to Polaroid employees, 23 December 1942

Edwin Land, on the path to success

Gibson fans will not be disappointed.

The book goes on sale February 3, 2003. Man, this is going to be one hell of a year for sci-fi!

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson

] "The Bush administration, under fire for its handling of
] the economy, has quietly killed off a Labor Department
] program that tracked mass layoffs by U.S. companies.
]
] The statistic, which had been issued monthly and was closely
] watched by hard-hit Silicon Valley, served as a pulse
] reading of corporate America's financial health."

Shooting the messenger: Report on layoffs killed

Some very interesting graphs of the social network on MemeStreams.

Visualizing MemeStreams