Steven Johnson has an excellent column in the New York Times, on the iPhone and the mixed merits of open and closed platforms. He begins with a reference to Jonathan Zittrain’s work on “generativity,” (familiar to readers of this blog) i.e. “the ability of a self-contained system to provide an independent ability to create, generate [...]
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Yesterday I read a really interesting story about a project to develop a new tool for researchers at the massive CERN laboratory (the folks who made that gigantic particle accelerator in Switzerland) to collaborate and share expertise more effectively. It’s a great complement to what John Seely Brown and John Hagel recently wrote about growing [...]
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Generativity: maybe the most important word we’ll use in the next 10 years. It applies to all aspects of the challenges we face: social, technological, cultural, intellectual, economic. There’s a big article in the newest Atlantic that got me thinking about it: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America: If it persists much longer, this [...]
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Did anyone really think Apple wants us replace our iPhones or MacBooks? I actually think it hits my sweet spot better than either its bigger or smaller cousins. It won’t replace my other stuff, but I definitely picture this as my primary device. Apart from a couple of hours I spend writing every day, most [...]
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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 [...]
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Metaphors aren’t just literary devices, they affect our intuition and reasoning in ways we’re barely aware of. Which isn’t to say they’re bad; they’re essential — that’s the point. By calling Metaphors We Live By a “landmark” in the previous post, I wasn’t trying to be dramatic, I was simply trying to provide better information [...]
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Looking at the news, everyone in London seems to be very excited about the CARGO HUB PLAN: Ottawa and the city will unveil big bucks to help London become an international air cargo gateway Whether or not this plan makes solid business sense in the near term is not my concern [clarification: I should say, [...]
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After the Google Wave announcement in May I went in to work all excited to share the awesomeness with my colleagues — one of whom caught me off-guard by asking, “Ok, so what good is that?“ My first thought was, “Hmmm, obviously I didn’t stress how awesome it’s going to be.” Then I realized maybe we’re [...]
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Generativity is one of the core concepts I keep coming back to. I think it’s at least as important as “sustainability” and we shouldn’t think about one without thinking about the other. Recently I noticed Tim O’Reilly mention it with new (to me) associations in a TechCrunch post about Gov 2.0: The government may build [...]
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Props to TechAlliance and BIOTECanada for booking Adam Bly to speak at the launch of National Biotechnology Week. I’m very grateful to have attended; I came away rejuvenated with energy and ideas… Bly made the case we need to reorient “our collective ideology, our collective imagination,” towards science — towards “Big Science.” Some of his remarks [...]
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by OpenConceptual on 07-22-2009
in concepts
We’ve been hearing for years about “T-shaped people” (with deep knowledge and competence in one or two areas, crossed with wide knowledge across many domains); Microsoft’s Bill Buxton recently wrote about “I-shaped people”: These have their feet firmly planted in the mud of the practical world, and yet stretch far enough to stick their head [...]
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iPad: Setting the Table for Tablets
by Brian on 01-28-2010
in commentary,media,web
Did anyone really think Apple wants us replace our iPhones or MacBooks? I actually think it hits my sweet spot better than either its bigger or smaller cousins. It won’t replace my other stuff, but I definitely picture this as my primary device. Apart from a couple of hours I spend writing every day, most [...]
Tagged as: apple, change, culture, design, gadgets, innovation, ipad, publishing, strategy, technology