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I made a graphic that shows how I think information moves through our society today. At the top is the discovery, on its way to becoming common knowledge at the bottom it has to move through several phases. Each phase is an ecological niche that is occupied by a different species. Each creature on the list feeds off of information and uses it for energy to do work. Without information it dies. Take any topic and you can trace its path through the information ecosystem. Global Climate Change, Health Care, Peak Oil, Asbestos concerns, Water on the moon, [ continue reading How information moves in today’s society ] “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky I think this observation is brilliant. It reminds me of the clarity of the Peter Principle, which says that a person in an organization will be promoted to the level of their incompetence. At which point their past achievements will prevent them from being fired, but their incompetence at this new level will prevent them from being promoted again, so they stagnate in their incompetence. The Shirky Principle declares that complex solutions (like a company, or an industry) can become [ continue reading The Shirky Principle; ‘Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution’. ] 31 August 2010
 |  | category: advice, prognosticators, the state we're in, thinkers, writing  | comment 
90% of everything we write and say comes from only 7000 words – try to increase the words in use by adopting and using a dying word. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» Save The Words: .)
Waxy’s got a reprint from John Hodgman’s Twitter feed yesterday, a 140-char-at-a-time masterful rip into the most odious of Internet jargon: “Meh.” hodgman: Did I ever tell you people how much I hate the word “meh“? Nothing announces “I have missed the point” more than that word. hodgman: It is the essence of blinkered Internet malcontentism. And a rejection of joy. Also: 12 hive mehs in the replies SO FAR hodgman: By definition, it may mean disinterest (although simple silence would be a more damning and sincere response, in that case) hodgman: But in use, it almost [ continue reading John Hodgman explains what’s wrong with “Meh” – Boing Boing ] Flocking behavior is the behavior exhibited when a group of birds, called a flock, are foraging or in flight. There are parallels with the shoalingbehavior of fish, the swarming behavior of insects, and herd behavior of land animals. Computer simulations and mathematical models which have been developed to emulate the flocking behaviors of birds can generally be applied also to the “flocking” behavior of other species. As a result, the term “flocking” is sometimes applied, in computer science, [ continue reading Flocking (behavior) ] 21 July 2010
| | category: bloody quotations, scofflaws, tolerated crime and hypocrites, writing | comments are closed
From the website: "Here's a bunch of words that, by themselves, have a handful of meanings. Because of this flexibility, they can be instrumental in titles for… songs/poems/stories/etc. The most flexible words are at the top of the list." [via Milena] (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» bookofjoe Ambiguous Words: .) This is a list of British words not widely used in the United States. BLIMEY! via List of British words not widely used in the United States – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
I’d love to see a coastal library set up a permanent book exchange like this. Has it been done? [pic from baddogwhiskas] (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» Walking Paper Beach IKEA Ad Evokes Library Vibe: .)
Frances writes, “Those are evidently a bunch of plastic rocks. They work hard to create “realistic” “terrain”, but those things ain’t cheap!” (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks something rocky: .) I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin. The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing– there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London. [ continue reading Gin, Television, and Social Surplus – Here Comes Everybody ] 19 May 2010
| | category: prognosticators, the state we're in, time, world of work, writing | one comment - (comments are closed) The Greatness of Simplicity From Self Control, Its Kingship and Majesty by William George Jordan, 1905 No character can be simple unless it is based on truth—unless it is lived in harmony with one’s own conscience and ideals. Simplicity is the pure white light of a life lived from within. It is destroyed by any attempt to live in harmony with public opinion. Public opinion is a conscience owned by a syndicate,—where the individual is merely a stockholder. But the individual has a conscience of which he is sole proprietor. Adjusting his life to his [ continue reading The Greatness of Simplicity ] MORE INFO HERE If you’re ready to think of your blog as a business (one of the hot topics over onThird Tribe Marketing), one way to do that is to start thinking of your blog content as the core of a distribution flow. In the little drawing to the left, I’ve put your subject matter at the heart of your system, and then have recommended you look at your blog, other products, education, and partnerships as the four areas you might consider. Note how I’ve moved your blog off to a branch and not to the heart of the drawing. Let’s [ continue reading /build-ecosystems-for-your-content/ ] From Dweebist. (Thanks, Christina!) (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» Boing Boing Fun with punctuation: .) “I’m surprised that no one’s mentioned yet that the reductive quality of the figurative-narrative line-space matrix threatens to penetrate the eloquence of these pieces.” click here via PIXMAVEN – The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator. I have often said I don’t ‘get’ Facebook. I think if I have something to say or share I post it to a blog. If one links your blog to your Facebook or Twitter people get snitty about overposting or ask why one finds some things interesting and request read-throughs; but they still send endless Facebook.app quizzes or pics of their forearm and gurning face beside an inebriated friend’s face. I do not know why people give their work and possessions to Facebook with no understanding of the ownership, copyright or privacy issues that this may bring to them [ continue reading The AP Is Using Twitter To Send People To Facebook. Wait. What? ] All of this rings true to me. Unfortunately it was at this point – about five minutes ago – that I realised the time. I’ve spent so long catching up with everything I missed from the past week or so that six hours have passed. It’s dawn in San Francisco, a matter of minutes before my deadline, and I still haven’t written a word, let alone 1300. That’s the other annoying thing about skipping a week: it takes you another week just to catch up. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» TechCrunch NSFW: Playing catch-up… Or ceci n’est pas [ continue reading NSFW: Playing catch-up… Or ceci n’est pas une column ] 22 February 2010
| | category: advice, the new 'priest class', the state we're in, world of work, writing | comments are closed The world is going free! everyone need shovels and shovels need replacing but you can only hand over your gold once. In October Newsday (a Long Island daily paper that was sold for $650 million) began charging for online access. The price is $5 per week. In three months 35 people have subscribed. The web site redesign and relaunch cost the Dolans $4 million, according to Mr. Jimenez. With those 35 people, they’ve grossed about $9,000. In that time, without question, web traffic has begun to plummet, and, certainly, advertising will follow as well. After Three Months, [ continue reading After 3 months, Newsday’s web site gets 35 subscribers ] 28 January 2010
| | category: Gallery of the bleedin' obvious, Nerds, advice, facebook, one world, prognosticators, the state we're in, world of work, writing | comments are closed “The honest heart that’s free frae a’ intended fraud or guile. However fortune kick the ba’, Has ay some cause to smile.”
So I get email from a good former student, applying for a job and asking for a recommendation. “Sure”, I say, “Tell me what you think I should say.” I then get a draft letter back in which the student has described their work and fitness for the job in terms so superlative it would make an Assistant Brand Manager blush. So I write my letter, looking over the student’s self-assessment and toning it down so that it sounds like it’s coming from a person and not a PR department, and send it off. And then, as I [ continue reading A Rant About Women « Clay Shirky ]
The Bihar provincial government in India announced recently that it intended to restore George Orwell’s birthplace, in the town of Motihari, and open it as a museum. Doesn’t hurt to be reminded that Orwell was a child of the Raj ‘ as was Kipling, whose birthplace, in Mumbai (Bombay), is already a museum ‘ but it’s hard to imagine that the Orwell bungalow will become much of an attraction. Orwell spent a mere year there, his first, and Motihari, on the Nepalese border, is one of the remotest places in India. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE -> Where [ continue reading Where Baby Orwell Lived – NYTimes.com ]
I accidentally came across an interesting comment by Charley Forness on how he uses his moleskine notebooks: The first thing I do is number all the pages and put a Table of Contents in back. The TOC is more or less a way of documenting the truly good stuff I might want to reference in the future. So, not everything gets logged in the TOC. If I’m whining again in a journal entry about why I’m not independently wealthy, that typically won’t make it into the TOC. I also add a couple of Big Goals pages, before the [ continue reading How to use a notebook, perhaps ]
1. You should pay for your own hosting. 2. You should write your own biography, not delegate it to invisible masses on Wikipedia. 3. You should write other people’s biographies, from your point of view. Or at least tell true stories about them, which can be assembled by others into alternate views. 4. Sign your name to all your writing. Use your real name, the one on your driver’s license, tax returns, passport, draft card. 5. If you care about a subject, write a definitive piece on it that reflects your point of view, [ continue reading Corporate media is the problem. (Scripting News) ] Godwin’s Law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies)[1][2] is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990 which has become an Internet adage. It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”[3][2] Godwin’s Law is often cited in online discussions as a deterrent against the use of arguments in the widespread reductio ad Hitlerum form. The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, [ continue reading Godwin’s law ] “What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher. What we can’t understand we call nonsense. What we can’t read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables. There is only the inevitable.” Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk I read the attached piece and thought about what it is to be on the wheel and the, several, times when I have asked people to, “put me back on my bike”. When my Dad was dying I sat with him in a tiny corner-room with him in the Countess of Chester hospital which, at that time, was only slightly more caring to geriatrics than Dr Shipman (I have put away my anger with them but if your mum or dad live near there …). From his window in the small room I could see clear to [ continue reading My friend is dying, but still he rides ] CHURCHES IMPOSE SWINE FLU BAN via HACKNEY GAZETTE. We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. 2 November 2009
| tagged as: happiness | | category: advice, bloody quotations, writing | comments are closed In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story: Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. Start as close to the end as possible. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading [ continue reading Kurt Vonnegut and his rules for characters ] |
 
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