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| There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs. |
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| Topic: Society |
12:41 pm EDT, May 7, 2005 |
Are Americans suffering from an undue sense of entitlement? Somebody said to me the other day that the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement. You can always count on Thomas Friedman for a good turn of phrase. (Note that if you're actually going to read this article, make sure you start at the beginning ... this URL is for page 2!) Why the World Is Flat |
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Everything Bad Is Good for You |
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| Topic: Media |
10:56 am EDT, May 7, 2005 |
With the same winning combination of personal revelation and friendly scientific explanation he displayed in last year's Mind Wide Open, Steven Johnson shatters the conventional wisdom about pop culture as pabulum*, showing how video games, television shows and movies have become increasingly complex. Johnson lays out a strong case that what we do for fun is just as educational in its way as what we study in the classroom. I had drifted away from Johnson's blog in recent months, and so I didn't even know that his new book was due in May. But with the benefit of prominent placement at Barnes and Noble, the book promptly found its way into my library. Frequent readers of MemeStreams will be generally familiar with many of the issues that Johnson threads together in "Everything Bad", but the book connects them in an interesting way to make what some will see as a contrarian argument about the state of today's media. Johnson also offers up some unique gems, as well; his quantitative structural analysis of one-hour television dramas is my favorite such example. Although it's being marketed as a book, this is really more of an extended essay. It's structured like an essay, and I believe it is meant to be read like one; I finished it the same evening I bought it. Ample end notes provide support to the argument and serve to send readers off on interesting tangents after Johnson's has made his case. I expect that stevenberlinjohnson.com will be the site of some worthy discussion threads in the days and weeks to come. Recommended. P.S. Johnson will be in Los Angeles on Tuesday, May 10 at Vromans Bookstore, before moving on to San Francisco for Wednesday and Thursday. * pabulum, n. something (as writing or speech) that is insipid, simplistic, or bland Everything Bad Is Good for You |
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| Topic: Society |
8:51 am EDT, May 6, 2005 |
The most important thing you can learn in this era of heightened global competition is how to learn. Being really good at "learning how to learn" will be an enormous asset in an era of rapid change and innovation, when new jobs will be phased in and old ones phased out faster than ever. Of course, this should be completely obvious by now, but apparently a lot of people still don't get it. In today's flat world, Intel can be a totally successful company without ever hiring another American. Tuning in to Jon Stewart |
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| Topic: War on Terrorism |
2:42 am EDT, May 6, 2005 |
In 1995 Microsoft released the font Comic Sans originally designed for comic book style talk bubbles containing informational help text. Since that time the typeface has been used in countless contexts from restaurant signage to college exams to medical information. These widespread abuses of printed type threaten to erode the very foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are built. While we recognize the font may be appropriate in a few specific instances, our position is that the only effective means of ending this epidemic of abuse is to completely ban Comic Sans. I am on the front lines in this war ... ban comic sans |
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Black Arts, by Thomas Powers |
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| Topic: Surveillance |
9:04 am EDT, May 5, 2005 |
About the failure everyone now agrees. But what was the problem? And what should be done to make us safe? It wasn't respect for the Constitution that kept the NSA from reading the "Tomorrow is zero hour" message until the day after the disaster. It was lack of translators. To meet that kind of problem, the Comint professionals have a default solution: more. Not just more Arab linguists but more of everything -- more analysts, more polygraph examiners and security guards, more freedom to listen in on more people, more listening posts, more coverage, more secrecy. Is more what we really need? In my opinion not. But running spies is not the NSA's job. Listening is, and more listening is what the NSA knows how to organize, more is what Congress is ready to support and fund, more is what the President wants, and more is what we are going to get. Black Arts, by Thomas Powers |
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Paying on the Highway to Get Out of First Gear |
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| Topic: High Tech Developments |
11:28 am EDT, Apr 30, 2005 |
Social engineering is merging with traffic engineering, creating new technologies that charge people a variable toll based on how many cars are on the road -- known as congestion pricing -- or reduce toll rates for high occupancy to encourage car-pooling. It is shaping up as one of the biggest philosophical changes in transportation policy since the toll-free interstate highway system was created under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. Paying on the Highway to Get Out of First Gear |
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Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought |
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| Topic: High Tech Developments |
9:13 am EDT, Apr 25, 2005 |
fMRI is the new polygraph. Have you hacked code for it? The advance, reported today, shows that the scanners may be better able than previously supposed to probe the border between conscious and unconscious thought and even, in certain circumstances, to read people's state of mind. Perhaps you've thought about hacking fMRI, even if you didn't realize it. Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought |
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When the Entire Game Is Too Much |
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| Topic: Sports |
9:01 am EDT, Apr 25, 2005 |
Demand has far exceeded expectations. "We believed subscriptions had potential. But the pace has been much faster than I'd imagined." The future is here. Do you subscribe to it? When the Entire Game Is Too Much |
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D-Lib Magazine, April 2005: Personalized Information Organization |
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| Topic: Knowledge Management |
8:32 pm EDT, Apr 16, 2005 |
The increasing availability of digital materials on the Internet, along with automated services such as search engines, has made it possible for people to discover and access more information, by themselves, minute for minute, than ever before. In addition, the Web is enabling the creation of personalized -- yet networked -- collections of materials and services that in some ways resemble library special collections. In this issue of D-Lib Magazine, you will find a two-part article on social bookmarking tools that enable just such personalized, networked collections. Worth noting is the strong grass roots aspect to Connotea and the other social bookmarking tools. Individuals who are not information professionals are organizing and categorizing large amounts of external information both for their own use and for use by others. This is a potentially significant change. Until recently classification of information was a top-down, structured process. Now, much like the increasing customization of goods and services available to us (think of an entire life's music collection available as single songs on a device the size of a pocket pack of tissue), the power of computer networks has put a powerful organizational capability in the hands of ordinary information consumers. Will it work? Will this create a level of personalized information organization different but of equal or even greater importance to that created by the information professionals? At this time, Connotea and the other social bookmarking tools are still very much works-in-progress, and it will be interesting to watch as they develop. Stay tuned. D-Lib Magazine, April 2005: Personalized Information Organization |
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Korea in the Era of a Rising China |
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| Topic: International Relations |
12:09 pm EDT, Apr 14, 2005 |
Can Korea maintain its market position in both Chinese and world markets as China becomes more competitive in many industries where Korea currently has a relative advantage? This study develops a simple model of the Korean economy and four alternative S&T strategies that Korea could follow and shows how those strategies may affect Korean prosperity, explicitly considering the many uncertainties that Korea confronts. Korea in the Era of a Rising China |
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