communication. community. cognition.
Let’s face it. Catapults and Trebuchets are just plain cool.
There’s something visceral about launching large items great distances. That’s the easy part, though. The hard part is hitting your targets.
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We’re in the midst of a fundamental generational shift in the way we think about property. Those of “us” on the fuddy-duddy side of the equation have been trying to understand what Ownership and Copyright will mean as technology progresses, but we may have been asking the wrong question all along. [Read more...]
(The audio is still here, I have moved it to the bottom.)
Several people are prodding me to write a book. I probably have several in me that I don’t yet know are there – along with the ones I know are there but I’ve been too lazy to extrude.
Fortunately, I’ve had enough going on in my life to keep me busy, or at least give me the excuse not to crack down and just do it. But is that the only reason? Or is there something more fundamental going on with regards to what we consider a book? And will it matter? [Read more...]
…even if they aren’t already aware of it.
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I was conducting a presentation skills seminar for a group of engineers, and I was using one of my favorite exercises. Tell me a story in a sentence. Now tell it again in 30 seconds. Now tell it in 90 seconds. (It also works with children, sometimes to disastrous effect.)
In this case, we were preparing these engineers to go into high schools and middle schools, to get children fired up about math, science and engineering careers. Before you can get others fired up, you have to figure out what lights your fire. There was one young man in the back who didn’t know he had a spark… [Read more...]
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There will be a theme for the next week or so. Disruption and Adjustment.
Before last week I had never heard of Ryu Murakami, but he’s at the center of an interesting case that may amplify the tremors of technology.
From Robert McCrum in the Guardian:
Earlier this month, in a manoeuvre I predict will soon be seen as a watershed, the admired contemporary Japanese writer Ryu Murakami announced that he was publishing his new book, A Singing Whale, in partnership with Apple, as an iPad download, turning his back on his regular Japanese publisher, Kodansha. The book will also include video content set to music composed by Oscar-winning Ryuichi Sakamoto.
So is there now a way to break a contract by shifting platforms? [Read more...]
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Sam is a friend of mine from college. He sent me a rant the other day.
I think most news outlets WAAAYYY overvalue their internet video content. For the record: I HATE IT. I never willingly click on a news video. Ever.
I’m looking for information, not some ****-***-slow-to-load or streaming content barfed on me by some D-list talking head du jour. I want to click and read in two seconds, not wait ten or thirty seconds or more for some stupid intro to the actual information (or worse, a 15-30 second ad before the “story”). And I don’t want to disable all of my advertisement/malware blocks to see the stupid video.
Anyway, I’m just bitching because I accidentally clicked through to what I hoped was an article, but was just a stupid ******* video I did not want to wait to load. I’m an old fart, back from when people would actually read things and think through the information, and not just glaze over video content of the quick and easy and meaningless version.
If ever there were a case of the customer being right, this would be it. [Read more...]
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This may be the single stupidest thing I have ever seen on television. And I used to work in television news, so that’s saying something.
An Oklahoma City television station entertained a piece during the July ratings period about “I-Dosing.” Apparently, school officials are warning parents about a new danger, audio files that your children can download, and can make them high.
Watch the piece, then we’ll talk about how many flavors of dumb they’ve crammed into this Whitman’s Sampler of Stupidity: [Read more...]
