relationships

Bob Lefsetz wonders whether Cee-Lo’s “F**k You” is going to be another here-today-gone-tomorrow novelty. He uses the song as a jump-off to appeal for music with more staying-power and quality. His point of comparison is the popular series of TED talks: These TED talkers didn’t start yesterday, most have spent years dedicated to their field, to [...]

It’s amazing how much insight and inspiration can come from babies, as I was reminded after visiting my seven week-old nephew yesterday. Most of time we were there we listened to “the baby’s music” which is supposed to make him happy (I’m a baby-newbie so forgive me if I’m embarrassing myself), but it made the [...]

Voting is Contagious

by Brian on 07-05-2010

in canada,civics,london,media

The gist of Connected, the excellent book about the power of social networks, is that the most important factor in whether a person will do something — e.g. donate to charity, gain weight, steal a car, or simply smile — is whether the people around them are doing it too. It isn’t true of everything, [...]

A recent tweet reminded me of Clay Shirky’s excellent observation: Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Kevin Kelly called it The Shirky Principle, using the example of unions to illustrate: Unions were a brilliant solution to the problem of capital management which tended to exploit uncapitalized workers. But [...]

Hashtag Debate in London

by Brian on 01-13-2010

in london,web

• Don’t take it too seriously. There will never be consensus. Ultimately everything is decided by what people use. Debate about what we should use will just go on and on forever. • Sometimes the stupidest ideas (sometimes starting as jokes and accidents) turn out to be the most popular and effective. Think of LOLcats [...]

Creative Relationships

by Brian on 11-28-2009

in art,creativity,education

Jotted this down just before falling asleep last night: As opposed to someone who thinks along conventional lines, someone who is genuinely creative constantly and actively looks for potential complementarity in everyone they meet — not just asking “who is this person and “what have they done,” but digging deeper to ask “what potential is there [...]

Another Look at LDNbeta

by LDNbeta on 08-30-2009

in a2bb,civics,london

No I haven’t forgot about the little endeavour I launched in May: I started thinking we need someplace to just try stuff. If it works, then great: we can replicate it on our own sites or even develop something more permanent, public, and professional. If it doesn’t work, then that’s ok too: without actually losing [...]

Relationships Everywhere!

by OpenConceptual on 07-22-2009

in concepts

As maybe one of the most marked turns in the history of mainstream military strategy, Thomas Friedman quotes a US officer in Afghanistan saying, “We don’t count enemy killed in action anymore.” Friedman elaborates: Early in both Iraq and Afghanistan our troops did body counts, à la Vietnam. But the big change came when the officers [...]