September 2012
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Looking forward to the Post-Facebook Social...
You really have to watch out for any feelings of wistful nostalgia that may creep into your contemplative moments. That’s a sure sign of getting old. It’s such a cliche to look back and believe it was better when we still had [blank], or before there was [blank]. And yet. And yet… I wonder if it isn’t worse to suffer under a strong conviction that positive transformation...
August 2012
1 post
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In Defense of Apple and Skeuomorphism in Software...
A skeuomorph is something that’s deliberately designed to resemble something else. The word skeuomorph, though still generally pretty obscure, has probably been used more in the last two years than in all the time in history before then. [[MORE]]
It’s not that skeuomorphism is new. The most relatable example of an old skeuomorph is probably those automobile hubcaps with spokes on them...
July 2012
1 post
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NBC, the Olympics, Advertising and Evil
One good thing about persistent evils is that they are instructive. We can generally rely that human ingenuity will continue to exert itself against the things that irritate us. Years pass, the enemy changes form, reinvents itself. But, given enough time, and a little luck, sometimes we win, and even evils of long standing fall asunder. It helps, also, if occasionally evil rears its head nice and...
May 2012
3 posts
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Don't let the Facebook IPO scandal distract you...
Readers of this blog may have by now appreciated that I like to venture into territories about which I know very little, armed only with common sense and intuition. Now, I’m no investment banker, but this whole hullaballoo over the Facebook IPO seems rather, to me, to have missed the point that Facebook is still a great investment at IPO. [[MORE]]
Sure, it sucks that information about the...
The Social Video App Race is just getting started
Ever since Facebook bought Instagram, there’s been a sudden shift in attention to the video app space. We observe the suddenly conspicuous absence of an app based on video that is as successful inside Facebook as Instagram. A couple of companies have embraced the self-description (we are the) “Instagram for Video”, but have perhaps taken the comparison too much to...
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Will somebody please disrupt Poetry already
A few weeks back I wrote about Artists, Gatekeepers and Disruption. The theme of that piece was how individual artists, empowered by new online tools, have been able to circumvent the old, “Gatekeeper” distribution models in entertainment — the Movies, Music and Books. What put that theme in my head in the first place was trying to understand why Poetry, specifically, still seems...
April 2012
5 posts
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American Inequality: Resistance may be Futile
The subject of American Inequality is almost too hot to handle right now with any objectivity. It has that same volatile quality of so many American issues, like abortion. The moral core of the subject is expected to be self-evident. People are expected to choose a side as a matter of moral reflex, rather than intellectual deliberation.
The result is a contentious debate between two seemingly...
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The Independent Artist & the Tyranny of the...
A Report on the Uneven Progress of Disruption in Digital Entertainment
This is ultimately not about Race at all, but that’s where it began.
I still had The State of Race in America on the brain this morning when I followed the #stateofrace hashtag on Twitter to this video of Spike Lee. Spike, as it happened, was appearing on a panel at the Aspen Institute called “The State of Race...
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The State of Race in America & Barack Obama's 2nd...
Now that Mitt Romney has been selected as the face of Republican candidacy for November, it feels like a good opportunity to take a Big Picture look at the upcoming contest and the operative factors.
Disappointed as we may feel by it, it’s already clear that Race will be a factor, and that it will be used in divisive ways in the Campaign Conversation. Behold, also how the mere...
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Facebook Buys a Big Slice of the Social Data Set:...
Facebook’s purchase of Instagram for a billion dollars makes it clear that pictures, and the sharing behaviors we attach to them, are an incredibly important and valuable slice of the social data set. [[MORE]]
If your mission as an organization is to know as much as possible about as many people as possible, it behooves you to have all the world’s photo uploads. ‘Nuff said....
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The Mathematics of Responsibility
It is generally accepted that we are all responsible for our actions.
Except for when we’re kids, that is.
When you are a minor, you are absolved of at least partial responsibility for what you do. The young get breaks, lighter sentences, second chances and are afforded a number of institutionalized clemencies they won’t get when they’re grown up. It feels instinctively correct that children...
March 2012
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Stone Soup
Once upon a time in Eastern Europe there was a band of gypsies who’s thing it was to go house to house whenever they were hungry and hadn’t any means. They’d ring a random doorbell and ask whomever answered for a pot to cook in and a stone.[[MORE]]
“That’s all we need for soup.” they’d say and smile.
Incredulous, and eager to be entertained, the people in the house would usually produce a pot, a...
