The premise of this series is to work out a new way of looking at our changing world» Part of the reason we’ve had so much difficulty making sense of the complex events of the past decade is that our ways of thinking — specifically, the metaphors, analogies, and images we resort to — have [...]
December 2009
2009 was my first full year of regular and earnest blogging. I’m usually surprised by which posts do poorly and which ones are successful. Sometimes I’m not really happy with something but I hit “Publish” anyways and people love it. Sometimes I put hours of extra work trying to popularize something and it vanishes. Here [...]
On the surface the Copenhagen summit was about cutting carbon emissions, but the situation reminds me of Robin Hanson’s well known countrarian notion that politics is not about policy: Civics teachers talk as if politics is about policy, that politics is our system for choosing policies to deal with common problems. But as Tyler Cowen suggests, real [...]
Some thoughts culminating out of the last post about how open standards emerge… a recent post by fellow Londoner Bill Wittur on some open government basics… the latest post on the Google blog defining their notion of openness… and a book I perused a couple days ago by Beth Noveck on open collaborative government. There’s no way I [...]
The natural inclination right now for geeks of a certain type is to start dreaming up new standards bodies, or how they can participate in the Open Web Foundation to make a Super Awesome Twitter API Evolution Committee. Here’s my recommendation: Don’t. Don’t do any of that shit, and don’t run off to make membership [...]
Nonfiction: What Would Google Do?, Jeff Jarvis It’s focused on media but the message is essential for anyone who’s work or life relies on the use of information. Chances are that means you…. It could be called a “new economy” book but it isn’t about the future. It’s about the economy we have now. The [...]
Continuing the series… Trying to understand human motivation and behaviour, a few years ago I finally came across this article: Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence, by Robert White (1959). According to the current APA abstract: Theories of motivation built upon primary drives cannot account for playful and exploratory behavior. The new motivational concept of “competence” [...]
Interesting clip from a longer film based on The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H. Whyte (probably better-know for his monumental book, The Organization Man). I’m sure some of it is outdated (e.g. nothing about skateboarders… or, MOUNTAIN BIKES!) but most of the observations about human behaviour and interaction I’m sure hold true. Even [...]
