We dramatize the weather to the point that it becomes news, so we are startled on the rare occasion when it does merit non-ritual attention. The usual adjectives, “bitter” and “brutal,” do not do the present cold justice. This cold deserves the ultimate icy adjective: deathly. This is a cold that that does not assault us or need to. We merely need to encounter it, even at its most quiescent, and it shuts us down quietly and without ceremony.
Predictions 2010 (on Silicon Angle)
January 4, 2010 By
Silicon Angle ran a guest post by me while I was on vacation (written with my work hat on, and with input from my team). My five predictions for Web technology are:
- The rise of the long form
- The Cambrian explosion of devices
- The “Website” will dissolve into the real-time Web
- The quality/quantity chasm will deepen
- Social filtering will start to displace search as the primary driver of monetizable content
Click on to read the details. Shortened URL for the original post for your C&P pleasure: http://bit.ly/92RDT8
Of course, my predictions are a function of my personal and professional biases/interests/agendas, but still, I do believe them. I think there really are forces making these 5 things happen. Thoughts?
2009 Roundup, 2010 Preview
January 2, 2010 By
Time for the third annual ribbonfarm review/preview post. For you old-timers who haven’t been keeping up, and the newbies who discovered this blog late in the year, this should be a useful post. I summarize 19 notable posts, review the numbers, point out the trends and highlights, and provide a preview of 2010. So here goes. Let’s start by noting that in 2009, ribbonfarm acquired a mascot: Skeletor the junkyard cat.
Work-Life Balance: Juggling, Spinning or Surfing? (Rerun)
December 27, 2009 By
More rerun fun. About a year ago, I was doing a lot more highly visual posts. This one is one of my personal favorites. Good fodder for end-of- the-year work-life musing.
Work-Life Balance: Juggling, Spinning or Surfing?
So which metaphor do you prefer?
How to Make New Year’s Calibrations (Rerun)
December 22, 2009 By
Last year, I wrote a New-Year themed article that got to be quite popular. It suggested that you should make New Year’s calibrations before you attempt to make resolutions.
So I thought I’d pipeline and rerun it while I am out on vacation. So here you go:
How to Make New Year’s Calibrations (Dec 15, 2008)
Happy Calibrating!
The Right and Left Brains of Enterprise 2.0
December 16, 2009 By
As some of you know, I occasionally (very occasionally in recent times) guest post over at the Enterprise 2.0 blog. I just posted a combo-pack review of two recent books there: Andrew McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0 and Fraser/Dutta’s Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom.
Click on over and read. There are also a few links scattered in the piece, to my older E 2.0 theme articles. At some point I’ll make an E2.0 trail, but for now, you might also enjoy this trail on the “Enterprise 2.0: What A Crock” debate that has recently been brewing (start reading or go to the Trail Map)
I’ll be out on vacation for the next couple of weeks, so I won’t be posting new material till January. If I have time, I might set up a couple of “rerun” posts on older popular pieces before I leave.
Happy Holidays!
Random Promotions and the Gervais Principle
December 13, 2009 By
The New York Times has a section in the most recent magazine called the Ninth Annual Year in Ideas. Divya Manian (@nimbupani) alerted me to the second idea in the business section: random promotions.
In 1969, the Canadian psychologist Laurence J. Peter posited the “Peter Principle”…Eventually the entire economy becomes like the paper company Dunder Mifflin in “The Office” — clogged with incompetence…Is there any way to avoid this trap? Yes, by promoting people at random.
It’s a short piece, and is based on organizational dynamics simulations by a trio of Italian scientists. Go check it out. It is an intriguing thought: that random promotions might break the Peter Principle. Do they break or validate the Gervais Principle?
Social Objects: Notes on Knitting in America
December 7, 2009 By
I recently bought a classic, cherry-finish River City hourglass
I’ve wondered for years about how people connect over particular elements of their environment, ranging from water coolers and YouTube videos to parrots. We are currently in the thick of social object season: turkeys, Christmas trees, mistletoe.
Social objects are a complex idea. We need a theory that can provide a conceptual framework and vocabulary, suggest conjectures that might become laws, and distinguish between social objects and related but distinct creatures such as memes, social signals, brands and ritual objects. A good theory should also shed light on specific questions, such as “why have so many hip young American women taken up knitting in recent years?”
I am finally beginning to see the outlines of such a general theory. The first useful inference I have been able to derive is this: when communities digitize, social objects replace walls. I call this the first law of social objects. Let’s work our way up to that. (before more people yell at me… yes, this is an early beta stab at a new theme, so apologies for the length and looseness of editing).
Pricing in Pay-It-Forward and Gift Economies
December 1, 2009 By
Thanks to this site lurching up a notch in traffic and visits, with a corresponding lurch-up in various revenue streams (coffee, Amazon Affiliate sales, Google AdSense), an interesting set of economics questions has been on my radar. Over the last two months, ribbonfarm.com made a few hundred dollars (mainly due to the Gervais Principle articles). That’s still pretty much a rounding error in relative terms, compared to my real job, but in absolute terms, it is actually worth thinking about. Here is the main question: what percentage of revenue should someone like me devote to contributions to all the fantastic open-source infrastructure that makes this blog possible? So far, I’ve behaved pretty randomly. Last month, I donated $20 to the guy (Ankesh Kothari) behind the “Buy me a beer” plugin (which you see on this site as “Buy me a coffee”). I also donated another $20 to Wikipedia. But I’d like to think about this more systematically, and figure out how much to contribute, how, and who gets it. Here are my opening thoughts.
Morality, Compassion and the Sociopath
November 21, 2009 By
Again, the response to the Gervais Principle II seems to require a response to key themes that have emerged. There are several that I am going to touch upon in the next part, and some I am not touching, ever, but one deserves note and a serious response, since I hadn’t planned on addressing it. This is the question of good and evil. For those of you who want the elevator-pitch version, the short position is this: my entire thesis is amoral; there are good and evil sociopaths; more sociopaths is a good thing; the clueless and losers are exactly as likely to engage in evil behaviors as sociopaths. Details follow. Keep in mind that this is a very rough sketch, and a sidebar to the main series that I really don’t want to pursue too far.
