The Technium: The Unabomber Was Right
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/the_unabomber_w.php

I want to read this article...it looks fascinating.

Ted Kaczynski, the convicted bomber who blew up dozens of technophilic professionals, was right about one thing: technology has its own agenda. The technium is not, as most people think, a series of individual artifacts and gadgets for sale. Rather, Kaczynski, speaking as the Unabomber, argued that technology is a dynamic holistic system. It is not mere hardware; rather it is more akin to an organism; it seeks and grabs resources for its own expansion; it transcends human actions and desires. I think Kaczynski was right about these claims. In his own words the Unabomber says: "The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity.”

The ultimate problem is that the paradise the Kaczynski is offering, the solution to civilization so to speak, is the tiny, smoky, dingy, smelly wooden prison cell that absolutely nobody else wants to dwell in. It is a paradise billions are fleeing from. Civilization has its problems but in almost every way it is better than the Unabomber’s shack.

The Cult of Done Manifesto 1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. 2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. 6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you're done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done. 12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done. 13. Done is the engine of more.

ts as done. So do mistakes.

Hi

Outlines some themes of cloud computing, challenges to openness, and some principles for meeting them.

While the details are still debated, the broad outlines of tomorrow's media are becoming clearer. Consumers must pay for more of what they read; publishers and the media buyers who purchase advertising must be given technologies that will make online display ads more competitive with the keyword ads that search firms sell. Some of the things that must be done cannot be done by the media itself; it won't be easy, and it might not happen, but it can be done.

By the publisher of Technology Review If media companies can't earn money, and everyone is a journalist, it follows that "amateurs" (Shirky) and "sources" (Winer) will be part of a "decentralized" media (Winer), whose stories will be distributed by "excitable 14-year-olds" (Shirky). This is all folly and ignorance. Shirky, Winer, and other evangelists know nothing about the business of media. Below is my prescription for saving magazines and newspapers.

If media companies can't earn money, and everyone is a journalist, it follows that "amateurs" (Shirky) and "sources" (Winer) will be part of a "decentralized" media (Winer), whose stories will be distributed by "excitable 14-year-olds" (Shirky). This is all folly and ignorance. Shirky, Winer, and other evangelists know nothing about the business of media.

great manifesto for selling development projects and building an IT shop

Win without pitching

"Dear Old People Who Run the World, My generation would like to break up with you. Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences. ... What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s. Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government."

This may be the most accurate description of my generation I've seen, ever

to read

Small is beautiful, at least in economy...

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government.

attention economy

Making something "free" is obviously an allocation strategy. "Free" attracts attention. Making things brief is an allocation strategy as well. The problem is that free isn't sustainable, and that brief is underpriced. We need a Ronald Reagan of attention, someone to inspire us away from the fight over smaller and smaller pieces of the attention pie. Someone who will inspire us to make the attention pie bigger.

facilitate understanding and aid cognition

Le but de la visualisation est de donner un aperçu, pas des images, disait déjà Ben Shneiderman en 1999. Manuel Lima propose plusieurs critères à son manifeste qui découlent de ce constat : La forme suit la fonction, l'intéractivité comme clef, la puissance de la naration...

Infoviz is becoming more and more popular and, just as anything growing popular, also controversial. Here's a list with some good points on good information visualization.

A challenge to journalism

Innovation: it's the ultimate source of advantage, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the economic ring. Innovation is what every organization should be ruthlessly pursuing, right? Wrong. I'd like to advance a hypothesis: awesomeness is the new innovation.

"Let's summarize. What is awesomeness? Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That's a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics. I've talked to many boardrooms about awesomeness. Beancounters feel challenged and threatened by it, because it feels fuzzy and imprecise. Yet, it's anything but. Gen M knows "awesomeness" when we see it — that's why its part of our vernacular. It's a precise concept, with meaning, depth, and resonance."

Let's face it. "Innovation" feels like a relic of the industrial era. And it just might be the case that instead of chasing innovation, we should be innovating innovation — that innovation needs innovation. Why? When we examine the economics of innovation, three reasons emerge.

I am a fan of the physical act of writing before committing goals to the digital medium.

Internet Manifesto

Mercedes Bunz: Its 17 declarations on the future of journalism in the age of the internet have been discussed worldwide

l exchange superior to that of 20th century mass media: when in doubt, the "generation Wikipedia" is capable of appraising the credibility of a source, tracking news back to its original source, researching it, checking it and assessing it — alone or as part of a group effort. Journalists who snub this and are unwilling to respect these skills are not taken seriously by internet users.

Bruce Sterling's Manifesto for a new Millennium

STILL NEED TO READ

"She was certainly not the first person I’d heard this from. I hear this almost everywhere I go where there are people talking about social media, and I feel that it is time that I rise up against it. In fact, I did, right there and then. I grabbed the microphone from her grasp and said, 'I am not a brand' ... Some people don’t get it. They don’t get that the internet is a conversation."

Some people don’t get it. They don’t get that the internet is a conversation. They think the message only goes one way—out. Things must be shouted. Things must be thrust in your face. Things must be sold.

The Internet is about conversation, not about branding or selling.

RT @peteashton The most important thing you will read about Social Media this week: http://bit.ly/ckRInQ – Andrew Dubber (dubber) http://twitter.com/dubber/statuses/16814698958

Author on social media.

The internet is made of people. People matter. This includes you. Stop trying to sell everything about yourself to everyone.

anti-branding manifesto

// I am not saying that it is a bad or dishonest thing to try to sell your work. It is not. What I am saying is that I am tired of the rush to *commodify* everything, to turn everything into products, including people. I don’t want a brand, because a brand limits me. A brand says I will churn out the same thing over and over. Which I won’t, because I am weird. // i cry with laughter and i love her ♥♥♥