Reflecting on last weekend’s talk on creativity I worried that probably emphasized the “open” aspect of the creative cycle at the expense of the “closed” aspect. My gist seemed to be, “Don’t worry about anything… try everything, and fantastic creations will magically appear.” Given the circumstances, I’m happy I erred that way rather than the other. We [...]
Tagged as:
benjamin franklin,
bruce mau,
complexity,
creativity,
dennis dutton,
digital media,
discovery,
electricity,
epistemology,
evolution,
generativity,
history,
paradigms,
poetry,
pragmatism,
progress,
revolutions,
social media,
theory,
think21st,
thomas kuhn
Few people would disagree that as more brands & memes vie for our attention, the simple act of communicating has become an accelerating arms race. We shouldn’t necessarily complain. Not more than a decade ago it would have been impossible for most of us to get any kind of public attention for our products or [...]
Tagged as:
attention,
cultural evolution,
development,
generativity,
history,
learning,
open/conceptual,
politics,
public relations,
public sphere,
social media,
web
I’ve been meaning to do one of these Open Yale Courses online for a while. I’d love to watch Robert Shiller’s course in financial markets (I think Shiller is great but I’m undecided how much I can really tolerate hearing about financial markets…) You can also view Paul Bloom’s introduction to psychology. I haven’t looked at many [...]
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ancient greece,
democracy,
greece,
history,
ideas,
learning,
philosophy
The book project has evolved from the “world-turned-upside-down” concept to a more general, but better-organized, case for blogging — by which I mean any kind of social, citizen-driven media. [Update: Seconds after publishing I realized what a profound understatement that is... I guess I'll just leave it to readers to figure out exactly what it's [...]
Tagged as:
autobibliography,
blogging,
book,
history,
personal,
writing
I’m working on trying to select and organize some of my best posts into a book I’ll publish through Lulu. If you have any you like — or stuck in your mind at least — or if you’ve been reading without ever commenting, now’s the time to say something. The working title is “The World Turned [...]
Tagged as:
blogging,
change,
history,
journalism,
social media,
writing
Yesterday I noticed a couple of announcements for London social media events in the fall: a Twitter 101 TechAlliance Breakfast Club on October 14 starring @billdeys, @ericablonde, and @titusferguson a social media [un]conference for the arts community promoted by @adamcaplan, @titusferguson, and @billdeys (from what I understand at this early stage — let me know if I [...]
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a2bb,
agora,
athens,
blogging,
blogosphere,
democracy,
digital democracy,
digital media,
from the agora to the blogosphere and beyond,
history,
open democracy,
philosophy,
plato,
politics,
social media,
society
At HarvardBusiness.org, Tammy Erickson writes, Future leaders in all spheres will have to contend with a world with finite limits, no easy answers, and the sobering realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts. Perhaps the biggest change from the past: leaders will have to listen and respond to diverse points [...]
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education,
generation x,
generations,
generativity,
historical reason,
history,
leadership,
learning,
perception,
philosophy of history
Another bit of a ramble (I love where it ends up), starting with this Time Q&A: TIME: How difficult was it to chart a history of a massive and diverse thing like blogging? Rosenberg: This is a phenomenon that starts small, then diversifies, then explodes at a certain point. At the small phase, it’s not that [...]
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blogging,
careers,
cultural evolution,
digital media,
evolution,
higher education,
history,
progress,
social media,
technology,
trends
The news sure spread fast. It interrupted broadcasts and seemed to consume Twitter — as much as it can be consumed by any single event. Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices reported, according to his metric, that 15% of all posts on the service mentioned Michael Jackson. By comparison, he never saw Iran or Swine Flu [...]
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change,
cultural evolution,
culture,
demographics,
generations,
history,
imagination,
immortality,
meaning,
michael jackson,
narrative,
paradigms,
pop culture,
significance,
twitter
As a journalist, I cannot say that what I have read and seen today is the whole story: everything is too piecemeal, too unconfirmable, too one-sided. But experiencing the raw feed of history has been chilling. As we try to carve out the truth from the speculation and relentlessly repeated reports of outrage, the overall [...]
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crisis,
history,
iran,
journalism,
real-time web,
web,
writing
I’m glad I got more to keep the hipster topic going because it’s way more fun than anything else I blog about. Richard Florida points to a familiar article about “blipsters” — “black hipsters.” Which is funny, now that I think of it, because the original hipsters were known as [correction: I meant, later known as] “white [...]
Tagged as:
hipsters,
history
by Brian on 05-16-2009
in media
Above all the claims about the need to save journalism, about it being essential to our society, etc, this fact seems to be missed: the more essential journalism is supposed to be, the more continuously prevalent it should appear throughout history. How much historical continuity is there? Where did journalism really come from? What is [...]
Tagged as:
cultural evolution,
evolution,
history,
journalism,
media,
practices,
professions,
twitter
