The single silliest cliche I’ve heard about India is that it is a “land of contradictions.” Every travel book, outsourcing guide, and opinion on globalization repeats this cliche. Empty-headed Indians repeat it too. Land of striking contrasts, perhaps. Contradictions, no. At least no more than you’d expect from a country of that size, with that much history and entropy in its civilization-ware. In particular, India is no more a land of contradictions than, say, China or the European Union. The problem is, there are very few lenses through which non-Indians (especially Europeans and Americans; I think the Chinese and Middle Eastern worlds understand us well enough) can comprehend the India underneath the apparent contradictions. Two of those lenses are Bollywood and Cricket. I flipped a coin and decided to start with Bollywood. Cricket might come later. So here is one of the many contradiction-busting themes that hold India together — the Campbellesque metaphor of “life as a journey,” viewed through the lens of Bollywood songwriting.
Guest Post on VentureBeat on the iPad
I have a guest post up on VentureBeat.com, Why Apple’s design approach may not work with the iPad. I haven’t written about innovation in a while, so for those of you who like my old posts on that subject, you’ll probably enjoy this.
In Arthur Hailey’s 1971 novel, Wheels, the hero has an epiphany while looking at the Apollo Lunar Module: “Ugly is Beautiful.” Watching the iPad launch coverage, I realized that Apple limits its innovation potential by never building anything ugly. “Ugly is beautiful” isn’t just an epigram. It has substance as an innovation design principle. There are theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that revolutionary products are, by necessity, ugly-beautiful (as an effect, not a cause: a technology is not revolutionary simply because it is ugly).
Do head on over and comment. This was written with my work hat on, as part of the general tech scene conversation-joining blogging I am doing as part of trailmeme.com promotion. Sometimes you get to mix work and play…
Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich
Temptation is a dangerous thing. Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich could have been the thoughtful and definitive polemic against runaway optimism and positive thinking that America sorely needs today. Yet, by succumbing to the temptation to politicize a malaise that affects both the Left and the Right, Ehrenreich has managed to reduce a potential trigger for a “Realism Revolution” into what too many will dismiss as yet another shrill, leftist screed. It isn’t that. Okay, it is a bit. But it is well worth reading, even if you have to summon up all your patience and reading skill to tease apart the valuable, ideology-neutral thread in the narrative from the noise.
The Genealogy of the Gervais Principle
| Series Home | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | ebook |
One reason I have delayed posting the next part in the Gervais Principle series is that as expectations have grown, I have gotten more wary about shooting from the hip. Especially because the remaining ideas in the hopper (there’s enough for two more posts before I call the main series complete) will likely be even more controversial than the first two. So one of the things I have been doing is testing the foundations laid in the first two posts more rigorously. So here goes, a (very pictorial) survey of the ancestry of the MacLeod hierarchy and the Gervais Principle. This is not Part III. It is another side trip. Not many new ideas here, but genealogy should prove interesting for at least some of you. A sense of history is a necessary (though unfortunately not sufficient) requirement for effective sociopathy. For those who came in late, this post will make no sense to you. Read The Gervais Principle and The Gervais Principle II before you tackle this one.
The Misanthrope’s Guide to the End of the World
To diagnose somebody’s worldview, the single most effective test is to ask about their end-of-the-world opinions. You find out whether they have tragic or idealistic worldviews. You learn about their morality. You find out whether they are self-centric, ethnocentric, anthropocentric, bio-centric, enviro-centric or cosmos-centric. You get at how they ride the tension between individualism and collectivism. Attitudes towards grit and survival shine through. You get a read on their views of politics, technology, globalization, religion and mysticism. You find out whether misanthropy or empathy rules their heads and hearts. Their ability to transcend the varied dichotomies involved gives you a read on their intelligence. Perhaps most important of all, you find out about their sense of humor. So here is an introduction to the End of the World. Popcorn not included.
Impro by Keith Johnstone
Once every four or five years, I find a book that is a genuine life-changer. Impro by Keith Johnstone
The Ribbonfarm Posterous
A few weeks ago, I started playing around with Posterous, the clever young easy-blogging service.
I hereby present: the Ribbonfarm Posterous.
While I am still a dedicated WordPress guy, Posterous is proof that innovating on one vector to a ridiculous extreme can get you to fertile new territory. At first I thought Posterous occupied a “miniblogging” niche between microblogging and blogging, but I quickly realized it is primarily an “email attachment” blogging model, and not about a specific length. You can just email the service with any sort of media attachment/inline URL and it does amazingly clever things with your raw material (make slideshows automatically, embed videos, etc.). There’s also a neat bookmarklet for real easy quick-blogging.
I figured it would be the perfect way to scratch an itch I’ve had for a while: how to share stuff that interests me, where I don’t add a lot of my own commentary, but it still has more of a “publishing” feel than Twitter links, Facebook or social bookmarking (which to me seem “personal”).
Please subscribe if you are interested in one or more of the following types of content:
- More frequent and shorter stuff: likely derivative/reblogs, but hopefully not just “Awesome!” as the default comment
- Input to ribbonfarm: stuff that sparks posts here, usually months later
- Sorta personal stuff: mainly vacation photos, brief travel thought
I am doing this mainly to park high-frequency/low-effort/short/derivative thoughts somewhere without ‘drowning this blog, which I want to reserve for feature-length original stuff. Partly also inspired by the format of eclectic reblogs like kottke.org, which I really enjoy.
And of course, send me stuff you think I should post there.
Note to Garry Tan: I have a feature request, I’d like one-click “summary post” capability so I can post a roundup of my recent posterous posts here on ribbonfarm at a set day/time every week. Republishing everything here defeats the purpose of separation :)
“Up in the Air” and the Future of Work
“Up in the Air” (based on a Walter Kirn novel
review analysis on ribbonfarm. I am avoiding spoilers, so my take is going to seem incomplete, but if you’ve seen the movie, you should be able to fill in the blanks, based on the ending.
Conceptual Metaphors (Mashable), Gervais Principle (Fugitive Philosophy)
Heads up on two posts that should interest ribbonfarm readers. The first is a guest post by me on Mashable, and the other is a post by Tobias C. Van Veen on the Gervais Principle. I keep meaning to do a big roundup of all the blogosphere reactions (there’s several pretty good ones) to GP, but haven’t had time. But this one was worth pointing out, since it adds some new ideas.
Drive by Dan Pink
At the heart of Dan Pink’s new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
The major contribution of Drive is in elevating what ought to be a basic axiom of business from the level of Twain-ian (and Drucker-ian) opinion, to the level of scientific, not-optional, fact. The “Aha!” element of the book isn’t this bald fact (which isn’t surprising in isolation), but in pointing out the gap between “what science knows and what business does.” The marginal status of the body of research in psychology is no excuse: major business thinkers from Drucker onwards have been saying the same thing for decades. Yet, nearly all businesses run on carrot-and-stick motivational architectures.
