July 2009
56 posts
Old Media, New Media and Where the Rubber Meets... →
It is really interesting that so many truth’s about new and old media (that many of us have expressed before) are surfacing now, when it’s (arguable) past midnight for the traditional media.
infoneernet:
Analog (old) media is all about managing scarcity by controlling distribution, the net effect of which is to enable publishers to price access to their “toll roads” as they see...
City libraries shut out of broadband stimulus... →
This touches upon an important key question for public libraries: Is it really their role to be a public provider of Internet access and bridge the digital divide?
What is happening in times of crisis is usually that everything is being reduced to its core, and now comes difficult times for these public activities which has flourished and widened its scope due to inner creativity and need for...
Wealthy Chicago Suburb Prepares To Cut One-Third... →
The financial crisis are now, not unexpectedly, starting to hit public services budgets like e g the libraries. No is the time for public libraries to show their real value for the community and not just rely on peoples warm feelings and their past importance.
infoneernet:
The affluent Chicago suburb of Oak Brook has long relied on significant tax revenues from its large mall in lieu of...
1 Million Books (freely available) →
This is important that quite a lot of books available. It if course matters which titles we are talking about, but also that number in relation to the total of about 65 million books being published in the world (http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info/print.html).
It is when the (1) right titles are available (2) and the total number of those relevant books are available for...
The truth about Google and the news →
It is important to see this difference:
infoneernet:
The frustration of newspaperfolk at their lack of a successful online business model is understandable. But those who blame Google are just lashing out blindly. Here’s why it doesn’t make sense:
Google is not a newspaper. Google does not compete with newspapers. Google is not even a content company.
What does Google do? It organizes the...
WE ARE ALL WRITERS NOW | More Intelligent Life →
Bo Dahlbom, my professor in Informatics, argued (and still do I suppose) that we are heading toward the Talk Society. I have never disagreed strongly with that, but always thought it was an over simplification. This post connects writing to the recent development of social media which puts the discussion in a different light. Writing seems to be more in fashion than ever, but it is a different...
Should Copyright Be Abolished On Academic Work? |... →
Things are rolling on and the absurd situation of copyright protection of public research is drawing more attention. To remove copyright from academic work is an interesting way of solving this problem of inaccessibility and hindering of researchers collaboration. But if it is pursued it will create an opening in the protective veil of copyright. Suddenly we will have a place to see how a...
e-Reader Market To Explode: Credit Suisse →
infoneernet:
E-readers are on track to penetrate about a third of the U.S. adult book-reading population in five years, up from only 1 percent penetration in 2008, according to a study published today by Credit Suisse.
The installed base of e-readers could soar from 1 million in 2008 to 32 million in 2014, the report stated. Credit Suisse expects about 4 million e-readers will be in use in the...
The Nichepaper Manifesto - Umair Haque -... →
I don’t always agree with Umair Haque, and sometimes I think his writing are quick and dirty work without deeper though (I am definitely not innocent here!!) but this post is really good and have a clear point: Nichepapers are tomorrows Newspapers!
Nichepapers aren’t a new product, service, or business model. They are a new institution. They’re a living example of the...
Harvard Business IdeaCast 155: Leadership in a... →
Listen to this podcast (by just clicking on it)! The podcast is a companion to an article by the same name and describes why leaders should change their traditional behavior due to the uncertain world we live in now and will continue to live in for some decades.
This is an echo of what I have been saying for many years (even if it is sloppy and shallow). What is really interesting and why I post...
Mourning the Death of Handwriting →
infoneernet:
nerdology:
Great article from Time Magazine about the death of handwriting:
People born after 1980 tend to have a distinctive style of handwriting: a little bit sloppy, a little bit childish and almost never in cursive. The knee-jerk explanation is that computers are responsible for our increasingly illegible scrawl…
Really good read if you’ve got the time. I can say that my...
“Here’s what you buy when you buy a Kindle book. You buy the right to display a...”
– Kindle and the future of reading (via azspot) (via infoneernet)
Why is it hard to "unlearn" an incorrect fact?:... →
You can overcome proactive interference by consistent (even silent) correction, especially when you space rehearsals over time. But it takes some conscious practice. We have to identify (or be told) when we have just made an error so that we can correct it immediately. Our inability to do so is typically the cause of the error’s persistence.
This immediately throws my mind into how organizations...
A new era for innovations - Paul Saffo →
I agree with Paul when he say that
we are now on the cusp of “the creator economy.”
That sounds nice, but what is difficult to grasp is the vast consequences this will have on our society which is, since hundreds of years, being built up as a producer/consumer society.
We as strategists, theorists, futurists (or what we call ourselves) have been very bad in explaining what we see as...
Eyes Wide Open: Embracing Uncertainty through... →
Good article about Scenario Planning with experience taken from e g World Economic Forum projects.
Derrick Philippe Gosselin, who until recently was group senior vice president at French energy concern GDF Suez ends the article by
“The discussion of going from point A to point B is not the right one,” he says. With more and more companies operating in turbulent environments,...
BBC NEWS | UK | Education | 'Virtual schools'... →
Think about the scenario where a lot of schools are temporarily closed down for some time after summer because of the increased threat of e g swine flu.
New plans and methods based on using digital networks will be quickly put in place to create virtual class rooms. Pupils will have to work for themselves at home under supervision of just the parents and some virtual teacher somewhere and then...
BBC NEWS | Technology | Artificial brain '10 years... →
These kinds of statements are interesting and thought provoking and usually wrong and it follows some fundamental logic of technology - it takes longer time than you think.
But there are factors arguing for it. Computing power - which is a key resource in this project - is still increasing exponentially and is projected to do so for some time. And if new computing technologies are emerging (e g...
Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline predicts swine flu... →
I can’t find anything to say about this…
Media Infusion . Four Weeks to a Flatter Us | PBS →
Why not a 4-week course for “flattening” teachers so they can understand and participate in the emerging flat world - in order to actually assist the learning process of today’s children for the world of tomorrow? Instead of trying to shape them in yesterday’s form!!
Read this good post with proposal of content and literature.
Week 1: What is Crowdsourcing
Week 2: Get to...
Your Future in 5 Easy Steps: Wired Guide to... →
When Wired has a Peter Schwartz assisted article with a DIY guide to scenario planning on a personal level you know something is going on and the interest is on the way to increase!
Click on the link and learn for your self!
The Oil Drum | Is Peak Oil Real? A List of... →
An interesting list of countries that have decreased their oil productions since the 1970:s, i e have passed peak oil? Well, regardless the era of cheap oil is really over.
The evidence of the demise of the cheap oil era has become insurmountable. In the face of the highest oil prices on record, the great majority of the world’s oil producers were incapable of taking advantage and producing...
WatchMedia&Internet How Teenagers Consume Media
This is a wonderful report from Morgan Stanley which is actually written by a 15 yr old intern! Cool!! Especially since it is wonderfully simple and stright forward!
There are several issues that immediately jump out from the piece. Teenagers are consuming more media, but in entirely different ways and are almost certainly not prepared to pay for it....
Start-ups: building from the (under)ground up… «... →
Lawrence Wilkinson about sewers, software and other infrastructures:
What’s true of sewers and software is true of most infrastructure: finding the balance between lean expediency and investment in future capacity is a real trick.
This is really entering into an interesting discussion about sustainable, resilient and sound development of both businesses and infrastructure. How can we rewire our...
Why Chrome OS doesn't matter--or does it? | The... →
There’s a story here but it’s not about displacing Microsoft.
Rather, I see Chrome OS as reflecting a change in the client and the way we access applications. To the degree that Chrome OS further illuminates and, by doing so, accelerates such change it may indeed be important in its own right. However, this is largely a change that’s happening with or without Google—and...
Unboxed - Crowdsourcing Works, When It’s Focused -... →
An article about Wisdom of Crowds, Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation that sees that we are actually seeing about vast different models emerging from the fact that communication technology is connecting millions of individuals.
It also point to a recent article by Tom Malone on the subject.
The article ends with some important words that is well worth thinking about:
OPENING the corporate doors...
Emerging Science of Learning to re-shape teaching... →
Yes, Marina is right, learning is about the be revolutionized, no question about it. What has been slowing it down is both the strong tradition of how teaching should be done together with the political and institutional inertia for backing out and unlearn that characterize our society.
I see a couple of uncertainties around this development, i e how this revolution will play out:
Will...
EATR: A Robot That'll Forage Its Own Fuel | Design... →
The distribution problem of fuel is, together with distribution of food, one of the greatest challenges for traditional warfare. Even if we rapidly are heading into new generations of warfare quickly, ground based traditional warfare will most likely continue to play a role.
A vehicle that will manage to provide fuel for itself by taking biofuel from the environment might be a really important...
AppleInsider | Apple's iPhone "wrecking" the cell... →
The question wasn’t if new technology will break the telecom industry, but which innovation should be instrumental. Will it be the iPhone?
The Desktop Manufacturing Revolution | Open The... →
Yes, objects are print-outs. If you look at it in a slightly different way this is really an important insight.
Maybe not for you as an individual but for the relations between institutions and countries in our production oriented world. The difficult thing has for a couple of hundred years been to manufacture things that we need in a certain quality and to a certain price. The gradual success...
Is your city prepared for a home-made nuke? -... →
Is this really a relevant question? Yes, it really is!! For every day each individual on this planet is increasing it’s capacity to make impact on it’s surrounding. It is part due to technology and part to increased knowledge of how things works.
If this increase in power had been just destructive power we had called it an arms race, but this is much more complex than that. Most of...
WatchMashable Mind Map: What is the Future of Blogging?
Here you can participate in a discussion about the future of blogging by adding your thoughts to one single mindmap on the subject which is hosted by Mindmeister.
Interesting concept for discussing issues about the future openly and collaboratively.
To me it resonates with Jamais Cascio’s really interesting idea on Open Source Scenario...
FT.com / Comment / Analysis - In search of the... →
This is a link to an article if ft.com fleshing out four scenarios about the future of
how economic events could unfold – and how the two central banks [European Central Bank and US Federal Reserve] would be likely to react.
Scenario one: Steady as she goes – inflation and interest rates low
Scenario two: The only way is up – recovery faster than expected
Scenario three: Back to the pump –...
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Are You Ready to Manage in an Irrational World? —... →
Interesting sign when HBS is writing about a possible paradigmatic sign in management
human behavior is much less rational than has been assumed
this renders much of conventional teaching in fields such as economics and management obsolete, and
it makes suspect much of what we do as managers
…
Things become much more complex in the world of irrationality. Much of traditional economics...
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Hi! Managers: Navigating a turbulent economy -... →
Another short article arguing for and explaining some of the values of scenario planning.
During these past few months, chief executives have been preoccupied with fire-fighting short-term operating issues to preserve cash flow. Survival has been the name of the game. Scenario planning can help organisations deal with these short-term challenges, as well as to pivot quickly to gain longer-term...
Pendulum Is Swinging Back on 'Scenario Planning' -... →
Use of scenario planning rose following the 2001 attacks, to about 70% of executives surveyed by consultants Bain & Co. in 2002, up from 30% in 1999. Since then, Bain’s surveys have found fewer executives using the tool, though the consulting firm expects heightened interest this year, because of the recession.
“It’s sort of like flood insurance,” says Michael...
The Year The Newspaper Died →
Preethi Dumpala has collected information that underscores the tsunami that hit the newspaper industry this year. At least in the US, but I wonder if Europe is so far behind? Even if we have a longer and more culturally embedded newspaper habits, can it really stand a steep decline in ad-money, and a similar decline in circulation numbers? The problem is further that newspaper finance are strained...
Tech Is Too Cheap to Meter: It's Time to Manage... →
Even if I don’t agree totally with Chris Anderson I must also emphasize his point that the relation between scarcity and abundance is rapidly changing, and has been since some time.
What is happening is that technology change the value equations for almost everybody on the planet. This means that some of the fundamental prerequisites for making business or managing any institution or...
FuturePundit: 1999 Oil Production Model Pretty... →
So far Duncan and Youngquist’s predictions on peak dates have achieved pretty decent accuracy given the quality of data they had to work with to make their predictions. If their predictions continue to be even half as accurate we are in deep trouble.
File-Sharing and Copyright — HBS Working Knowledge →
Interesting to read research that take the discussion about copyright into a level where the design of the current copyright regulation is discussed.
