Internet « 800 CEO Read

September 17, 2012

Future Perfect

Filed under: Big Ideas,Blog,Global Business,Internet,Technology — Michael @ 1:35 pm

Optimism is a terrific force. But it can be difficult to tap into this force when you’re confronted with information that indicates a steady decline in quality of life, punctuated daily by ‘newsworthy’ events involving such things as global economic demise or a rash of senseless and unexpected murders across one’s country. My spouse and I were recently reassessing our budget due to some changes in healthcare costs and I became depressed over the outcome. I needed a reminder that no, everything around me is not sliding down into the abyss of poverty and social chaos. It’s fortune, then, that led me to Steven Johnson’s new book, Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age.

As the subtitle promises, this book is indeed a case for progress. It provides several cases, actually, in which Johnson’s “Peer Progressive” archetype creates an environment for progress, and then real progress happens. The peer progressive is such an appealing thought even just in theory. Johnson builds the idea from a fundamental crisis of centralized intelligence and power, posed by the economist Friedrich Hayek, who Johnson quotes:

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form, but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.

Johnson uses as his primary example of the dysfunctional centralized network the French railway system, the Legrand Star. France had high hopes for The Legrand Star, but as Johnson recounts, the system failed France in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war, due to the line’s inability to transport from one remote location to another. Everything had to be routed through one line, which formed a transportation bottleneck during a time of great need. Throughout Future Perfect, the Legrand Star becomes a household name, a synonym for the bottleneck. Johnson contrasts this failure with more recent examples of success. The peer progressive model for success is built upon a distributed network, a web or net in which no single point holds or wields an unbalanced amount of power or ability. In the peer progressive world, all members are equally eligible nodes and all contribute to the success of the network.

Peer progressive culture is most alive today via a distributed network that we all use daily: the internet. Both the creation and the operation of the internet reek of peer progressives. One such example of an internet-facilitated network cited by Johnson in Future Perfect is Kickstarter. As of today, Kickstarter has helped fund over 29,000 projects, providing over $300 million to project leaders. The site has quickly become both a tool for the distributed network of creative individuals and a noteworthy source of revenue for the company’s creators. Johnson talks about Kickstarter’s structure:

Both the ideas and the funding come from the edges of the network; the service itself just supplies the software that makes these connections possible. The donors decide which projects deserve support. There are no experts, no leaders, no bureaucrats—only peers. New creative ideas don’t need to win over an elite group of powerful individuals huddled in a conference room, and they don’t need to win over a mass audience. All they need is an informal cluster of supporters, each contributing a relatively small amount of money. [...] Interesting, provocative, polished, ambitious ideas get funding; boring or trivial or spammy ones don’t.

The thrill that Johnson experiences from witnessing the success of Kickstarter both as a company and as a facilitator to the distributed network is well-communicated—I feel that thrill too. (Optimism, yes! He even writes, “How novel is the Kickstarter crowdfunding approach?”) Johnson gives a portrait of possibility for the future of capitalism, not as an extension of what it is now (a bloated, unbalanced network that is essentially a series of Legrand Stars), but as a true capitalism in which future demands come from the people, the members of the distributed network, rather than from some centralized arbiter who lacks Hayek’s ‘knowledge of circumstance’.

The most exciting part of Johnson’s message, though, comes in imagining where else the peer progressive model can have application. Imagine all of the broken systems, both in the private and public sectors. Many of them are built upon centralized networks. Now imagine how wonderful these systems would be if they were operated as distributed networks. The internet is young, and it has already demonstrated an ability to solve problems of bureaucracy by distributing the power of creation to its network (goodbye World Book, hello Wikipedia). The future might not be perfect, but it appears quite a bit brighter through the lens of the peer progressive.

Comments (1)

June 7, 2012

Tubes

Filed under: Book Reviews,Internet,Technology — dylan @ 5:30 pm

“They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet.
And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on.
It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand,
those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in,
it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube , enormous amounts of material.”

—The late Senator Ted Stevens, of Alaska

Senator Stevens caught a lot of flack for that comment, made in an attempt to argue against an amendment on net neutrality. And while I still find his, or any, argument against net neutrality somewhat wrongheaded, Wired correspondent Andrew Blum reports in his new book, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, that Stevens probably didn’t deserve the amount of tech condescension he received. Blum describes why in the prologue:

I have now spent the better part of two years on the trail of the Internets physical infrastructure, following [the wire from my backyard]. I have confirmed with my own eyes that the Internet is many things, in many places. But one thing it most certainly is, nearly everywhere, is, in fact, a series of tubes. There are tubes beneath the ocean that connect London to New York. Tubes that connect Google and Facebook. There are buildings filled with tubes, and hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and railroad tracks, beside which lie buried tubes. Everything you do online travels through a tube. Inside those tubes (by and large) are glass fibers. Inside those glass fibers is light. Encoded in that light is, increasingly, us.

I’ve just started this book, but so far the journey is fascinating (not only, yet not hurt by, the fact that he begins in Milwaukee at Kubin-Nicholson print shop). Part technological exploration and part travelogue, Blum takes the reader on a physical tour of the internet, transferring our understanding of it from “a landscape of the mind” to a real geography. It’s an important understanding to have, I think, as it reconnects the digital world ever more to the physical—something I think we forget when we’re able to push a button on a screen and have a box arrive at our doorstep the next day. Just as it’s important to know where the food that ends up on our plate comes from, I think it’s just as important to know how information ends up on our computer screens, and where it comes from. Blum explains his journey there:

The Internet has a seemingly infinite number of edges, but a shockingly small number of centers. At its surface, this book recounts my journey to those centers, to the Internet’s most important places. I visited giant data warehouses, but many other types of places as well: the labyrinthine digital agoras where networks meet, the undersea cables that connect continents, and the signal-haunted buildings where glass fibers fill copper tubes built for the telegraph. Unless you’re one of the small tribe of network engineers who often served as my guides, this is certainly not the Internet you know. But it is most certainly the Internet you use. If you have received an email or loaded a web page already today—indeed, if you are receiving an email or loading a web page (or a book) right now—I can guarantee that you are touching these very real places. I can admit that the Internet is a strange landscape, but I insist that it is a landscape nonetheless—a “netscape,” I’d call it, if that word weren’t already taken. For all the breathless talk of the supreme placelesssness of our new digital age, when you pull back the curtain, the networks of the Internet are as fixed in real, physical places as any railroad or telephone system ever was.

I love this book so far, and if you’re interested in taking a really unique tour of the world of technology, and a tour of that technology as it exists throughout the physical world, I think you will, too.

Comments (1)

May 21, 2012

KnowledgeBlocks

Filed under: Ask 8cr!,Big Ideas,Book Reviews,Careers,Entrepreneurship,General Business,General Management,InBubbleWrap,Innovation,Internet,Leadership,Personal Development,Publishing Industry,Small Business,Technology,The Company,Thought Leaders,Training and Development — 800-CEO-READ @ 3:34 pm

We’re very pleased to announce the official opening of KnowledgeBlocks, a subscription-based service and online resource that gives readers access to quality content and business resources, a way to save, organize, and customize the information that is important to them, and engages business authors and thought leaders to help solve business problems and build new knowledge.

Among the key features of the site, subscribers have access to the following:

Explorations: Every month we publish three business book explorations that examine a narrow subject within a broader business topic. Each begins with a featured book and then branches out in unexpected directions, introducing you to author insights via podcast or interview, other related must-reads, curated links, and brief analyses that will help you build your business knowledge.
Thinkers-in-Residence: This key feature of the site offers authors the opportunity to connect directly to a dedicated audience via webinar and a stand-alone page of author-contributed material such as Q&As, blocks, and featured books.

Giveaways: Continuing the weekly book giveaway tradition of our inBubbleWrap program, we will put the latest releases in the hands of a smart, dedicated, interested and influential business audience.

The site is being administered and curated by the immensely talented and capable Sally Haldorson, who has been with the company for 14 years and was the editor of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, giving her a wealth of knowledge on the business genre that is hard to top.

We hope to see you over there.

Comments Off

March 27, 2012

Net Smart

Filed under: Big Ideas,Innovation,Internet — dylan @ 5:00 pm

Regular readers of this blog know that we’re very interested (or at least I’m very interested) in how the internet is changing not only how we socialize, shop, and work, but how we think and function as human beings—individually, culturally, and as a society. Going back to 2007 when Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur went up against David Weinberger’s Everything Is Miscellaneous, and continuing through last year when Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows was released around the time of Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus, we’ve been fortunate that publishers have put out books by great thinkers that take opposing sides of the issue that we can compare and contrast. It always sparks a lively conversation.

So, when Jack brought me a book he received from MIT Press today by Howard Rheingold, author of Tools for Thought, The Virtual Community, and Smart Mobs, I was thrilled.

His new book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, doesn’t take sides in the debate. It is a book about overall digital literacy and the skills necessary to navigate our increasingly digital world, and he covers a lot of ground—from mastering personal attention to crap detection 101 (“How to Find What you Need to Know, and How to Decide If It’s True”), from mastering participatory skills and using collective intelligence to the uses and limitations of social networks and how to use all of this to make you smarter individually, Rheingold has really got it covered. He is also both practical and prophetic (a rare combination) and the book is written for everyone—both in its philosophy and implementation. The philosophy of the book keeps it interesting, the tools he provides keep it immediately relevant and applicable.

First up, as to not scare you away, I’ll give you a taste of the practical side:

Who Needs to Read This Book, and Why?

[...]

Adults who are Adept at using online tools and networks, but face challenges of time and attention management, and seek a balance between their physical and virtual environments
Intelligent but perhaps less knowledgeable and fearful and fearful parents of young people who are going online for the first time, or spending more and more time online
Young people who are immersed in the digital “hanging out, messing around, and geeking out” online that is such an important part of youth culture today, but are ready to learn deeper, broader ways of using social media productively and collaboratively
People who are old enough to remember the world before it was webbed, and are simultaneously puzzled, attracted, and fearful about new media
Businesspeople who want their employees to be net smart with each other inside their enterprise as well as social media literate when dealing with customers—net smarts within enterprises are different from social marketing competencies
Educators who want to help students connect old and and new

While we’re waiting for research to provide more definitive evidence about what our media practices are really dong to our minds and social relationships, I think we can all benefit from adopting some of the rules of thumb discovered by mindful digital media users.

In that last sentence is the key to the overall philosophy of the book—mindfulness. Rheingold explains how the way we use technology in its infancy shapes the development and implementation of that technology and, therefore, the course of humanity itself. So it’s incumbent upon us to use emerging technologies as mindfully as possible.

Pontificating on the present moment and how it fits into the long arch of history, he writes:

I don’t believe that technology itself, a fixed human nature, or the powers that be wholly determine who ends up in control and who ends up being controlled by others when a communication medium is adopted. But I recognize that that powers eventually emerge that try to close gates, meter resources, and lock down liberties. I’m enough of an optimist to persist in believing that this hasn’t happened quite yet, despite real advances in the direction of control by governments and corporations around the world. Right now (and for a limited time), we who use the Web have an opportunity to wield the architecture of participation to defend our freedom to create and consume digital media according to our own agendas. Or by not acting in our own interests, we can let others shape the future.

If I am correct that informed actions might still influence the outcome, declaring that technology is alone will solve social problems caused by the use of technology is dangerously naive; at the same time, it is dangerously nihilistic to dismiss all the mental and social tools that microchips make possible as irredeemably destructive. People’s actions influenced the ways print media shaped the cultural evolution of the past five hundred years. The early users of the telephone insisted on using it to socialize, not as the broadcast medium envisioned by the first telephone companies. Just as people in previous eras appropriated printing presses and telephones in was that the inventors and vendors of the enabling technologies never imagined, the shape of the social, economic, political, and mental infosphere now emerging from the combination of inexpensive computers, mobile communication devices, and global digital networks is not yet fully hardened, and thus can still be influenced by the actions of literate populations. We’re in a period where the cutting edge of change has moved from the technology to the literacies made possible by the technology.

Five hundred years ago, Gutenberg presses did not immediately enable people to overthrow monarchies, drive the Protestant Reformation, and invent science as a collective enterprise. The interval between the technological advance of print and the social revolutions it triggered was required for literacy to spread. Print, a technology that leverages the power of the human mind by making possible mass distribution of written documents, required decades for the intellectual skill of decoding those printed pages to spread through populations. The sheer scarcity of painstakingly crafted manuscripts (the word manuscript literally means “written by hand”) had constrained literacy for thousands of years. Thirty thousand pen-and-ink books existed in Europe in Johannes Gutenberg’s lifetime, but more than ten million printed books became available within fifty years of his invention. The sudden abundance of printed material meant that the mental know-how that had been reservedfor elites for millenia abruptly became available to anybody who was able to put in the effort to learn to read. For decades and centuries after Gutenberg, newly literate populations began to learn what to do with the new media of their time, and then they started to foment the Reformation, institute political self-governance, and systematize the discovery of knowledge.

Digital literacies can leverage the Web’s architecture of participation, just as the spread of reading skills amplified collective intelligence five centuries ago. Today’s digital literacies can make the difference between being empowered or manipulated, serene or frenetic. Most important, as people who are trying to get along day to day in a hyperscale, warp-speed civilization that seems so often to be beyond anyone’s control, digital literacy is something powerful we can learn as well as exercise for ourselves and each other. [...]

When enough people become proficient at these skills, then healthy new economies, politics, societies, and cultures can emerge. If these literacies do not spread through the population, we could end up drowning ourselves in torrents of misinformation, disinformation, advertising, spam, porn, noise, and trivia.

That may be too black and white, and being a professor, Rheingold probably uses a few more words than he really needs to (check out the length of these excerpts compared to the ones we usually post), but he has a lot to teach us, knows how to do so, and his professorial tangents entertain as they educate. As someone who often struggles getting comfortable with how digital technology and media fits into my life, this is a great read, a welcome resource and an important addition to the growing number of books on my shelf about the internet and the human condition.

Comments Off

September 13, 2011

Public Parts

Filed under: Blog,Internet — Jon @ 10:23 am

Here’s a perfect example: we’re online, I’m writing a blog post, and you have the option to comment back, to which I also can comment back. We can share information and thoughts more freely than ever. Ideas spread, and connections are made.

But the more often that happens, and to what degree, has some concerned about how much about ourselves we’re revealing, and who’s using that information in ways we’d rather not have it used. Jeff Jarvis is not one of those people. In fact, Jarvis sees these transactions as evidence that the world is improving in a variety of ways.

That said, he also understands that social media is a complicated tool, and one that works better with everyone on the same page. From Facebook’s privacy setting debacles, German concerns over the Google street view car, and more, the fear of privacy hearkens to the invention of the camera or printing press. It’s his new book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live, that was written to calm the fear and focus on the positive aspects of the technology that has become so involved in many of our lives.

Regarding this effect on our lives, and the business we do, he states,

Relationships will come to be worth more than corporate secrets (for what is the value of keeping a mediocre dress design under wraps when by sharing it you can learn what customers really want?). Relationships may be more telling about a company’s prospects than quarterly income (for relationships build real long-term value and create a true barrier to entry for others). Brands equal relationships. This is what Mark Zuckerberg is saying when he argues that every product and all business will be social. “Get on the bus,” he advises.

In essence, the sharing will be fundamental to our business, not something to fear. Gary Vaynerchuk has certainly been blowing the same trumpet for more than a few years now, and he’s not the only one. Whatever your take on privacy issues and how you use (or don’t use) social media, one thing is apparent, that it is less an issue of ‘if’ to deal with it, and more an issue of ‘how.’ To that end, Jarvis has written a helpful guide, filled with interviews, insights, stories, and examples of how share in the best ways possible, without validating the fears that so many still seem to have.

Comments Off

March 23, 2011

Pre Commerce

Filed under: Advertising,Blog,Internet — Jon @ 2:09 am

It may be no surprise to you that the internet has changed your business, but with the rise in social media, those changes will continue, and will reveal great opportunities for those who are paying attention.

Bob Pearson, chief technology and media officer at WCG, has written a book called Pre-Commerce: How Companies and Customers Are Transforming Business Together, describing those changes and how leaders can apply the right knowledge to take advantage of the opportunities they bring.

To further describe some of the ideas contained within the book, I sent Mr. Pearson the following questions:

How can companies impact social buying decisions without turning it into another form of advertising?

Bob Pearson: Consumers are most often looking to their peers to consult on buying decisions, not advertisers. Peer influence is driven by the sharing of knowledge between people who have mutual respect for each other. The best advertising in the world is simply a catalyst to get that conversation started. It doesn’t lead to respect. A company’s goal should be to become a relevant peer in conversations related to buying decisions, so they can have the most potential impact. This requires a new approach to outreach.

How are some companies honoring their ambassadors?

BP: The best way to honor an ambassador is with recognition and respect, not a tchotchke. It is much more impactful to receive a thank you than a pen. Don’t you agree?

What happens when negative social feedback is overwhelming? How can a company (or just an employee) manage it properly?

BP: Rome wasn’t built in a day. Companies of all sizes need to take one step at a time. There is no easy fix to decrease negative share of conversation. The best way is to identify why customers are unhappy and then help solve their problems one at a time. If you find a solution that applies to many people, share it online, since 95% of your customers will not call you each year for customer service. They will search, talk with friends or do nothing. They don’t see as great a need to contact you directly as they did a few years ago. However, if they realize you are trying to help them online in their communities, they will appreciate it greatly. Think about it….would you rather have someone visit you or make you find them?

Is it possible for companies to make direct correlations between social activity and sales?

BP: Yes. Online behavior lends itself to quantitative analysis. If you know how to measure behavior online, you will start to see if what you are doing will lead people to make a purchase or other decision. Other decisions include doing nothing, which is also an outcome.

What impact does this new focus do for traditional forms of marketing?

BP: The entire marketing mix is evolving. All of the communications, psychology and business models we learned in school still apply, although the marketplace has changed externally. As a result, the way we market is evolving. For example, if you can see if an advertising campaign is working in 24 hours via online behavior, would you still lock in a three month media buy? You wouldn’t today, but you might have done this a few years ago without blinking an eye.

—

Whether your company is active in social media practices or needs to get a better understanding of what’s involved, this book is a helpful guide to improving your business. There are new ways to develop influence beyond traditional advertising and this book shows you how to participate, and with the best practices known today.

Comments Off

March 15, 2011

The Filter Bubble exclusive offer

Filed under: Blog,Internet,New Releases — Jon @ 3:35 am

Are you getting the information you need or is it being hidden from you?

This is the question examined in Eli Pariser’s new book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You. Most sites on the web have begun using your online history as cues to narrow down what you will see in the future. As they fine-tune their algorithms and personalize the content they provide, we will increasingly each live in our own, unique information universe, our own “filter bubble.” We’ll receive news that is familiar, pleasant, and confirms our beliefs—and since the filters are invisible, we won’t know what is being hidden from us.

**We are offering a special opportunity for up to 50 people to join Eli Pariser on an exclusive Skype chat, where he’ll provide a 50 minute talk, including Q&A, with your group. As a bonus, 50 copies of his book, The Filter Bubble, will be provided. Please contact Jon (at) 800ceoread.com if you are interested in hosting this event for your group. Limited sessions available.

Comments Off

November 18, 2010

Program or Be Programmed

Filed under: Big Ideas,Blog,Information Technology,Internet,Interviews,Technology — Jon @ 2:00 pm

Douglas Rushkoff follows his full size, largely distributed Life, Inc. with an indie distributed, smaller book called Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. The biggest difference though, is not the size or distribution — but that it may be his most powerful writing yet.

As technology increases, so does our willingness to be involved in it. I, for one, will never forget the first time my cell phone rang in public. This was the mid to late 90s. My wife began working at a new company selling large wireless phones. The company promised they would be “the next big thing.” But as an early adopter, when that phone rang and people realized what I had, it was more embarrassing than popular. Now, nearly everyone has one. How has this technology, for instance, changed how we think and work? From there, what about the internet and computers? What about media? Are we controlling the choices we make, or are we swept along with things?

These kinds of questions are the starting points of Rushkoff’s book. And his thoughts on these questions are profound, analyzing the situation via both current sociological insight, and ancient principles. It’s an important read.

Use this brief Q&A we exchanged today as reference, and be sure to pick up the book.

The attraction to technology is largely based on how we perceive it makes our lives easier. What do you see as the fundamental issue with that perception?

Technology creates more choice. Sometimes this is great, but sometimes it’s unnecessary or forced. Call-waiting is great, sure. But it forces a person to make a choice between the conversation he is having and the possibility of the other one he *could* be having. That’s great for medical emergencies, I suppose. But it puts the current conversation into a less fixed space, always under potential threat.

And all this increased choice would be fine if we were really allowed to choose. Can we choose not to answer emails from the boss or a client after office hours? Sometimes not. So life gets more complex, and often less fun. It’s definitely great for everyone else to be tied to these technologies. Everyone except ourselves.

The real attraction to these technologies, I feel, is the social possibility. We hardly experience it anymore, but there is still a great social potential with these tools.

With the internet, Nicholas Carr sees human cognition diminishing, while Clay Shirky sees a surplus. What are your thoughts about what computers are doing to our brains?

I care much less about what computers are doing to our brains than what we are doing to one another’s brains *through* computers. Computers are biased in certain ways, but it’s people and the programs they make that are either improving or rotting our brains.

So I think Shirky and Carr are both wrong, both too techno-determinist. In the short run, Carr is more right: we are using these tools to make ourselves simpler and stupider, while our machines become more intelligent and more complex. We immediately fill up Shirky’s “cognitive surplus” with more meaningless data processing. People do not have more time to think, and if a moment does arise, you can be sure Google Corp will be there to absorb it.

The answer, of course, is for people to begin to use these tools intentionally. But that would mean understanding what the tools can do and what they have been programmed to do. That’s why I wrote my book. Businesses are failing, schools are declining, even banks are going bust because they don’t understand the very basics of digital technology and culture. So I wrote a mercifully short 140 page book to get them over that hump. The few who do spend the hour to read it will experience all of this a whole lot differently. But it really takes that full hour. I couldn’t take people through it in less time -
but most feel they can’t afford even the hour – not without more of a guarantee that they’ll make a bunch of money within 90 days of closing the cover.

How is communicating with someone across the globe via technology “not real?” If the information exchanged is satisfactory, what’s missing?

Well I don’t know that it’s not real. It’s just not in person. So sex, for example (at least for me) works way better in person than over the net. Something about having the other person’s body within arm’s reach makes the act more intimate and more physical.

The same is true of other kinds of communication. 93% of human communication is non-verbal. 7% is the words. So most online forums really just recreate the sensation of Aspergers’, where we can’t process any social cues, and can’t determine the context of remarks. And even in video, we can’t really see what’s going on. Has their breathing moved into sync with my own? Are their irises getting bigger or smaller? Are they mirroring my posture? All of the subtle cues that tell us – our highly evolved brains – whether we are gaining or losing rapport are muted.

So sure, exchange data. How many cartons of widgets do we need to send to Utica? But don’t think you’re actually connecting the way you can in real life.

People used to rebel against “the system.” Is that even possible anymore?

Sure it is. Just don’t make every choice they’re offering. Pick none of the above. Try that for just a day or two and you’ll know what it is to be a rebel.

Short of becoming full blown programmers, what are some basic steps individuals can take to be more involved in how they use technology?

Yes of course. That’s why I wrote the book. I think that if people learn the ten very basic biases of digital media, they will be in a great position to use it intentionally rather than passively or haphazardly. Just learn the biases – is it biased towards close up or far away? What does it do to scale? How about openness? Once you understand these, you don’t really have to know how to program the machines. Then you can get on with programming society.

Comments (1)

November 17, 2010

The Master Switch & Internet Openness

Filed under: Big Ideas,Internet,Technology,Thought Leaders — Jack @ 2:13 pm

It seems that every year when the “best of” lists start coming out, there is one title that makes me slap my forehead in a “huh? I never heard of that book” moment. Actually, I love that feeling. The idea that I can still be surprised in an area where I am supposed to excel is fun. The book this year was The Master Switch, The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu from Alfred A. Knopf.

The author relates how, historically, new information has started out as “open” and that, as it grows, it becomes “closed” by either monopoly or cartel. Examples like the telephone and radio are used to support the author’s claims, and here is why this is a concern:

“This oscillation of information industries between open and closed is so typical a phenomenon that I have given it a name “the Cycle.” And to understand why it occurs, we must discover how industries that traffic in information are naturally and historically different from those based on other commodities.

Such understanding, I submit, is far from an academic concern. For if the Cycle is not merely a pattern but an inevitability, the fact that the Internet, more than any technological wonder before it, has truly become the fabric of our lives means we are sooner or later in for a very jarring turn of history’s wheel. Though it’s a cliché to say so, we do have an information-based economy and society. Our past is one of far less reliance on information than we experience today, and that lesser reliance was served by several information industries at once. Our future, however, is almost certain to be an intensification of our present reality; greater and greater information dependence in every matter of life and work, and all that needed information increasingly traveling a single network we call the Internet. If the Internet, whose present openness has become a way of life, should prove as much a subject to the Cycle as every other information network before it, the practical consequences will be staggering. And already there are signs that the good old day of a completely open network are ending.”

Comments Off

September 25, 2009

Our Blog – Accredited Online

Filed under: General Business,General Management,Internet,The Company — dylan @ 8:39 am

Jack copied me on his response to a message he received recently, writing “For an email out of the blue, this is a good one.” The message came from Adrienne Carlson, who runs the Accredited Online PHD University blog. She had written Jack to let him know that she included us in her recent post, 100 Awesome Blogs for Every Kind of Book Lover.

It’s a great list, with suggestions in a wide variety of genres—from business to comic books, from sites where you can sell your books to podcasts. If you have even a fleeting interest in books, you will want to check the list to see if you’re missing anything. I know my RSS list grew after just a cursory glance, and will likely grow even more when I find the time to dig in deeper.

We’d like to thank Adrienne Carlson for including us. It’s humbling and flattering to be put in such company.

Here is the direct link to that post:
http://accreditedonlinephduniversities.com/100-awesome-blogs-for-every-kind-of-book-lover/

Comments Off

Older Posts »