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January 6, 2004 |
Bruce Sterling interviews. Two exciting and thought-provoking Bruce Sterling interviews are online today: an hour-long MP3 of an interview with Massive Change on the University of Toronto's CIUT radio and a long interview on the future of everything with Mike "Godwin's Law" Godwin in the libertarian mag, "Reason."... ... ... reason: Blogging seems to have taken a place in the culture that used to be occupied by fanzines, and maybe by the science fiction magazines. ... Sterling: It had its apotheosis in... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]
11:04:16 PM 
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nixMoneyMachine-sticking it to the status quo!
this new category, came about as a direct result of my disgust with a recent headline about Microsoft releasing a product which has been called an iPod Killer! Fuck it, I have had with this kind of BS, where monopolies that don't have an innovative fiber in their being, watch the market and wade in after an innovator like Apple creates it out of nothing, and then ends up losing it, just because of the monoolie's sheer size and money reserves!
Microsoft did this against the Mac, then against Netscape! Do we as consumers have to keep supporting greedy monopolies!
I remember when Mosaic first came out and for me the Internet was a place where the little guy could innovate and create a decent living, and in some cases create fortunes based upon creativity, hard work and luck! The iPod Killer headline is so cynical, and it assumes that the only thing the consumer cares about is money, and that the only thing the producer concerns themselves with is money too!
Well how bout this, why don't we come up with some truly innovative business models that put the power in the hands of the content producer, and in the process create cheaper content, get more people producing digital content, and get more developing nations into the digital economy as well!
Accoring to Robert Young found of Red Hat:
"You can't compete with a monopoly by playing the game by the monopolist's rules."
Well fuck the old models, the old rules and the old approach to operating systems, software and digital content!
I have just had it with this bullshit, and this is what nixMoneyMachine is about, proposing new economic models to stick it to the status quo!
Stay tuned!
11:16:36 AM
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Michael Moore endorses file-sharing of his movies. Here's a wild video of Michael Moore at a Q&A session, being asked if he minds people on file-sharing networks passing around rips of his movies. His answer, in a nutshell: "Share away!"... ... ... I don't agree with copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it...as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labor... ... I make these movies and books and TV shows because I want things to change, and so the more people who ge... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]
10:49:00 AM
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Memo to the New Head of the MPAA. Trading movies digitally still isn't easy, but Hollywood has a lot less time to act than it thinks. Here's some advice to help it avoid the fate of the music industry. By Wired magazine's Chris Anderson. [Wired News]
10:46:58 AM
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Mac Founders Push for New Ideas. The crew that put together the first Mac is celebrating its 20th birthday, but some are disappointed over the apparent lack of innovation in personal computers. By Daniel Terdiman. [Wired News]
10:46:11 AM
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Fun in Davos.
My goal this year is to have fun in Davos. This will be my fourth World Economic Forum Annual Meeting and the third time that I will be attending it in Davos, Switzerland. (One year, it was in New York.) This year's meeting will be January 21-25. The meetings are always very interesting and I meet lots of people, but I don't usually have much of what I would call "fun". I don't know enough people and I get a little tired of meeting important person after important person who says, "so, what do you do?" It's very humbling to go to a conference where just about everyone is more important than you and has NO IDEA who you are, but it's tiring. The other problem is that for some reason, there is always a screw-up in my invitation and I end up registering the very last minute. There are never enough hotel rooms to go around so I always get stuck with the most inconvenient hotel room and find myself stomping through blizzards in a suit. This year is the same. At least I didn't end up in "hotel igloo" which is where people who end up not getting a room go.
I usually have fun at conferences by picking a few "conference buddies" to hang out with and share notes with. I'm hoping that this year a few of my GLT and Social Entrepreneur friends will be there who I can hang out with.
I will be speaking at two sessions. I will be participating in a discussion with the Club of Media Leaders -- a community of 30 editors in chief from leading global news outlets and topic will be "Rethinking the Net -- Internet Media Strategy, Wireless, Bloggers and Others" from 10.45 to 12.00 on the 21st of January. On Thursday the 22nd of January I will be on a panel titled Will Mainstream Media Co-opt Blogs and the Internet? which will be open to the general audience. If you're planning on coming to either of these, let me know so I can feel like at least someone else there knows what I'm talking about.
In any event, if you're going to be in Davos for the meeting and can/want to hang out, please drop me an email or post a comment here.
Now if only Google will direct people searching for "Fun in Davos" to this entry, we'll be all set. :-p
UPDATE: PLEASE stop sending me 419 Fraud mail. (I set up the email address above just for this entry and it is getting spammed by 419 Fraud email.) By Joichi Ito joi_nospam_@nospam_ito.com. [Joi Ito's Web]
10:40:19 AM
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Smiling makes you happy.
An interesting theory that facial expressions affect blood-flow to the brain and are not just results of emotions. The assertion is that these blood-flows affect our emotions. So SMILE! :-)
Zajonc, R. B., Emotion and Facial Efference: A Theory Reclaimed, Scince, 1985, 288, 15-2
He also asserted that elation follows the smile, not the opposite. The blood flow changes caused by contracting the facial muscles in the smile alter cerebral blood flow and cause an emotional change. He extends this reasoning to account for all kinds of other bizarre facial habits associated with emotions -- wrinkled forheads, rubbing one's eyes, hand on forehead, pulling earlobes, licking lips, etc.
Via Jonas By Joichi Ito joi_nospam_@nospam_ito.com. [Joi Ito's Web]
10:35:22 AM
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You remind me of those people who said they'd never get cell phones.
I remember when everyone shouted into their cell phones and thought that their batteries drained faster when they made long distance phones. I remember when people (who now have cell phones) swore to me that they'd never have a cell phone. I remember when cell phones looked more like military radios. I think it's fine to gripe about technology, but I would warn those people who swear they'll never use a technology. Technology evolves and so do social norms.
We've been having a dialog recently about the relationship between social norms and technology. I think this is part of the same dialog. New technologies disrupt our habits and our norms and what we feel comfortable with. I am an early adopter type who uses every technology possible and I try to wrap my life around it all. Some people try the technology and point out the tensions. Some people ignore the technology. Technology evolves along with the social norms. When it works well, we end up with a technology that contributes to society in some way and becomes a seamless part of our social norms. When it doesn't work well it either damages society or does not integrate and is discarded.
Being the techno-utopian optimist that I am, I think that writing off Skype and IM as annoying is a big mistake. They are what military radios were to the cell phones of today. I think it's important to take what David Weinberger and danah have to say about the tensions they create and thinking about how to make presence more granular, how to make it easier to manage the emission of your presence information and control access to you. What DOES free VoIP really mean? Can it be a background thing that allows us to continue to focus on our work instead of being an interruption? I am very excited by IM and VoIP and think that the tensions and the annoyances they are creating is a good a reason as any to dive into the privacy, identity, presence and interop issues that we've been talking about for so long. The more annoying it becomes, the more people will care about these issues. By Joichi Ito joi_nospam_@nospam_ito.com. [Joi Ito's Web]
10:33:28 AM
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I gotta say that this title, about a Microsoft iPod Killer for me is depressing, in that wherever there is a market created by a true innovator like Apple, that Microsoft is able to through its sheer size and market dominance, steal that market away from the ture innovator!
Think Mac vs Windows, think Internet browser, Mosaic then Netscape.
The only ray of hope I can see on the horizon is Open Source Business Models, that create new opportunities for innovators!
Microsoft's iPod-Killer: Portable Media Center?. securitas writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop reports on what's billed as an iPod-killer: the Microsoft Portable Media Center line of digital ... [Slashdot]
10:30:43 AM
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Michael Moore endorses file-sharing of his movies. Here's a wild video of Michael Moore at a Q&A session, being asked if he minds people on file-sharing networks passing around rips of his movies. His answer, in a nutshell: "Share away!"
I don't agree with copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it...as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labor...
I make these movies and books and TV shows because I want things to change, and so the more people who get to see them, the better. 5.4MB DivX Link (Thanks, Kolano!) [Boing Boing Blog]
9:43:04 AM
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© Copyright 2004 Ted Ritzer.
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