| |
| compos mentis. Concision. Media. Clarity. Memes. Context. Melange. Confluence. Mishmash. Conflation. Mellifluous. Conviviality. Miscellany. Confelicity. Milieu. Cogent. Minty. Concoction. |
|
NEC: Networks, Economics & Culture - A New Mailing List |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Society |
11:07 pm EDT, Apr 8, 2002 |
Clay Shirky's mail distribution list for his writings on networks, economics, and culture, and pointers to other interesting work. Frequency is roughly every other week. Excerpts: The first issue is devoted to the question of communities, audiences, and scale: what effects can we expect to see from growth in the size of online groups, given that the internet supports both broadcast and communal patterns of communication? ... What follows is ... an exploration of one basic but important effect: Audiences scale, communities don't. ... What shape will the blogosphere take? The blogosphere is already resolving itself into a power law distribution ... [which] recreates all the difficulties the original web users had in locating content ... What shape will the blogosphere take? Will blogdex and daypop be enough, or will readers flock towards trusted meta-blogs that filter and organize, or will other models of collaborative filtering arise? NEC: Networks, Economics & Culture - A New Mailing List |
|
'Where did the music go?' by Jaron Lanier |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Music |
9:49 pm EDT, Apr 8, 2002 |
Jaron Lanier: "I'm 41 now so I've decided I need to develop my grumpy side. So here's a rant about the sorry state of pop music." I'm not going to include a bunch of excerpts for this one, because I want everyone to read the whole thing start to finish. It will only take a few minutes; like most good rants, it's short, direct, and thought provoking. 'Where did the music go?' by Jaron Lanier |
|
Status As A Valued Resource, by B.A. Huberman [PDF] |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
8:31 pm EDT, Apr 8, 2002 |
Abstract: While the striving for status has long been recognized in animals and in humans, the role of status in their utility calculations has not been clarified. Specifically, the debate has not been settled whether people pursue status as a means to achieve power and resources or as an (emotional) goal in itself. We present results [which] show that people regard status as a valued resource in itself, rather than a means to an end. Subjects valued status independently of any monetary consequence and were willing to trade-off some material gain in order to obtain it. This result was stable across cultures from Hong Kong, Turkey, the US, and Germany. Moreover, the amount of money that participants were willing to trade off against status corresponded to the power distance index of the respective culture. The power distance index of a culture has been shown to be correlated with the importance and acceptance of status symbols in that culture. Finally, the amount of status seeking observed was different among men and women, an intriguing observation that deserves further work. Status As A Valued Resource, by B.A. Huberman [PDF] |
|
A Recommender System based on the Immune Network [PDF] |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Technology |
8:26 pm EDT, Apr 8, 2002 |
The immune system is a complex biological system with a highly distributed, adaptive and self-organising nature. This paper presents an artificial immune system (AIS) that exploits some of these characteristics and is applied to the task of film recommendation by collaborative filtering (CF). An AIS built on two central aspects of the biological immune system will be an ideal candidate: Antigen - antibody interaction for matching and antibody - antibody interaction for diversity. Computational results are presented in support of this conjecture and compared to those found by other CF techniques. A Recommender System based on the Immune Network [PDF] |
|
Kirchmedia Files for Insolvency |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Economics |
6:22 am EDT, Apr 8, 2002 |
KirchMedia, the core rights business of indebted media group Kirch and parent of Germany's biggest commercial broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1, filed for insolvency on Monday. The move ends weeks of fruitless rescue efforts by Rupert Murdoch and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But the banks ... decided an attempt to avoid insolvency was futile. An insolvency filing by KirchMedia could bring down the whole Kirch empire. Kirchmedia Files for Insolvency |
|
Bondholders Set to Take Over NTL |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Economics |
6:19 am EDT, Apr 8, 2002 |
NTL, the British cable company that is restructuring $17B in debt, is close to a deal that would have bondholders take control of the company. ... NTL, which is incorporated in New York with most of its operations in Britain, is expected to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. ... Last week, NTL missed a $96 million interest payment ... NTL has a 30-day grace period in which to decide whether or not to make the interest payment. Bondholders Set to Take Over NTL |
|
Google's Toughest Search Is for a Business Model |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Economics |
6:15 am EDT, Apr 8, 2002 |
...[Google] spent nothing to advertise their site and cut very few deals with other sites. ... Silicon Valley's hottest private company, one deluged with 1,000 résumés a day. .... has its share of challenges. ... the leader in searching Web pages, but a tiny force in advertising ... But the bigger question is whether Google has the scale to capture a viable share of the search advertising market. In other words, can Google create a business model even remotely as good as its technology? Analyst: "The days of investing in Web sites we love are over. People rave about Google. But as a business, it will take an awful lot for them to catch up to [competitors]." Founders: if they devote themselves to improving technology, users and advertisers will follow. "We have pride that we are building a service that is really important to the world and really successful for the long term." ... The company is so infatuated with its technical prowess and sense of destiny that it has developed a reputation as being difficult to deal with. "Serge and Larry are very blunt and very cocky. They honestly believe they can do a better job than other people, and they don't have any hesitation in saying that." Google's CEO: "I think you need to win, but you are better off winning softly." ... The biggest challenge is balancing Google's increasing popularity with the needs and demands of the sites for which it provides search technology. ... But Google does not yet appear to have sufficient clout with some of the bigger sites. "At the end of the day, Google is becoming more of a competitor to Microsoft and MSN. We want to work with partners who don't compete with us." "You have to be careful if you start to smoke your own stuff and believe you are the only one who can build a great search engine." Google's Toughest Search Is for a Business Model |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Economics |
8:14 am EST, Apr 6, 2002 |
US telcos are spending up to $30B to upgrade their networks for high-speed data communications, even though they're still uncertain who will pay to use it. ... "3G" [has been an] economic nightmare for the European telcos that spent $200B on spectrum licenses and now have no money left to actually build their networks. ... US carriers already facing financial difficulties: unable to raise capital; struggling to handle network maintenance. ... A Verizon executive: "I'll be honest: I don't know what the market demand will be for the products and services offered with 3G." ... "Some people are never going to use data." ... ... growing skepticism ... over whether it makes good business sense to spend money on services that enable people to e-mail photos from cell phones, or to design business presentations on a laptop in a moving vehicle. ... "People aren't going to go dish out $700 for a new phone, unless it's really compelling." ... "What am I going to use it for?" 3G, or Not to Be? |
|
Nortel Stock Plunges After Debt Downgrade |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Economics |
8:07 am EST, Apr 6, 2002 |
The markets punished Nortel on Friday, driving it down 11% to its lowest level in 6-1/2 years after a credit rating cut. Market players who have watched the nosedive of the stock that was once the bellwether of Canadian markets wondered how much lower the telecommunications equipment maker can plunge. A trader: "It's a company under attack. How low does it go? Who the hell knows. It is definitely under attack and it will probably stay that way for a while." On Thursday, Moody's cut Nortel's credit rating to junk status ... Going ... down? Nortel Stock Plunges After Debt Downgrade |
|
|
|---|
| Topic: Economics |
4:32 pm EST, Apr 5, 2002 |
NTT, Japan's largest telco, will post an annual loss of about $6.5B, the largest ever by a Japanese company other than a bank. Charges taken by NTT subsidiaries because of the plummeting values of their overseas investments are mainly responsible for the loss. NTT will write off more than $15B on its investments in AT&T Wireless , KPN Mobile, Verio, and others. ... With the huge loss, NTT joins other telecommunications companies whose balance sheets have been decreased in the last 18 months. NTT DoCoMo is one of NTT's hardest hit units. Its investments have so fallen in value ... DoCoMo will probably post its first loss [ever]. ... DoCoMo is Japan's largest company by market cap, twice the value of NTT. NTT Expects $6.5B Loss |
|
