The Rhetoric of the Hyperlink

July 1, 2009 By

The hyperlink is the most elemental of the bundle of ideas that we call the Web. If the  bit is the quark of information, the hyperlink is the hydrogen molecule. It shapes the microstructure of information today.  Surprisingly though, it is nearly as mysterious now as it was back in July 1945, when Vannevar Bush first proposed the idea in his Atlantic Monthly article, As We May Think. July 4th will mark the second anniversary of Ribbonfarm (I started on July 4th, 2007), and to celebrate, I am going to tell you everything I’ve learned so far about the hyperlink. That is the lens through which I tend to look at more traditional macro-level blog-introspection topics, such as “how to make money blogging,” and “will blogs replace newspapers?” So with a “Happy Second Birthday, Ribbonfarm!” and a “Happy 64th Birthday, Hyperlink,” let’s go explore the hyperlink.

Image from Wikipedia, free license

Image from Wikipedia, free license

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Zen and the Art of Google Wave Mechanics

June 7, 2009 By

Much of the discussion around Google Wave so far has been down-in-the-weeds prosaic and business-like. So I decided to seek out physicist turned Zen Master, Roshi Tsu Nami, and historian of technology, Prof. Sophius Trie, in order to get to some deeper insights. Here is the transcript of our conversation. Warning: all three of us are ridiculously enamored of tech-geek-mysticism references, but I hope you can follow our thinking.

Me: What is Google Wave?

Roshi Tsu Nami: 47.

Me: 47? Ha ha! Don’t you mean 42?

Roshi Tsu Nami: Yes, I was referring to the Hitchhiker’s Guide, but I do mean 47, not 42. Google Wave is the ultimate answer, to life-streaming, universal communications and everything. But it is about 10% wrong.

Me: Clever. I don’t suppose I get to look smart in this dialogue. I expect I should ask next: what is the actual question?

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The Hunter-Gatherer Theory of Markets and Shopping

May 28, 2009 By

The idea that men hate shopping while women love it is probably the most defensible among all gender stereotypes. Economics would be very different if Adam Smith had been Eve Smith. Male-driven economics is largely about the stuff the seller wants, money. This is by definition as featureless and abstract as possible. On the buying side though, there is a great deal of complexity, variety, and delight in leisurely and nuanced selection. Let me offer a speculative evolutionary origin myth: all economic activity derives from the original two: hunting and gathering. Men did most of the former, women did most of the latter.  That gives us the starting point for telling the tale of this evolution of real, physical markets. The ones where we actually shop.

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Coworking: “I’m Outta Here” by Jones, Sundsted and Bacigalupo

April 15, 2009 By

I’m Outta Here: How coworking is making the office obsolete by Drew Jones, Todd Sundstead and Tony Bacigalupo is a curious counter-cultural book about the emerging future-of-work movement called “coworking.” Ostensibly, the movement is about practical workday logistics for the new rootless worker, whether he/she is a virtual traditional employee or a free agent, looking for ways to avoid going nuts working alone at home. The movement is about building ‘Spaces’ like this one, CitizenSpace in San Francisco (Creative Commons picture, taken from their website):

citizenspace

Dig beyond this surface value proposition though,  and there is a very definite philosophy at work within the movement. A philosophy anchored by an uneasy mix of primary-colored, bubblgum communitarian values, economic bets, and ideas about the business of making a living and living a life. The philosophy has a lot of potential, but also some limiting self-perceptions which could end up being fatal flaws. Can it cross the chasm, and go from being a marginal counter-cultural trend to a mainstream model of work? At the moment, I would offer 3:1 odds against, barring some critical re-engineering of the movement’s DNA.

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The Slash Effect

March 31, 2009 By

My reading tends to be very random-access; sometimes it takes me years before I figure out the most rewarding perspective with which to read a book. I bought and began browsing Marci Alboher’s (@heymarci) oddball career-guide,  One Person/Multiple Careers several months ago, when she blogged about ribbonfarm.com in the New York Times. But though something about the book was intriguing me, it wasn’t till about a month ago that I found the right perspective. So here is a review/summary, with a couple of editorial thoughts for you to ponder.

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The Tragedy of Wiio’s Law

March 26, 2009 By

The game-break is to 1:1 interpersonal relationships what the “Aha!” moment is to individual introspection. The rare moment, shortly after meeting for the first time, when two people experience a sudden, uncontracted moment of connection, shared meaning and resonance. A moment that breaks through normal social defenses.  I call it uncontracted, because I mean the kind of moment that occurs when there isn’t an obvious subtext of sexual tension, or a potential buy/sell transaction, limiting behavior to the boundaries of an informal social contract. The best examples are the ones that happen between people who aren’t trying to sleep with, or sell to each other (at least not right then). I call it a game-break, because you momentarily stop playing social games and realize with a shock that there is some part of an actual person on the other side that perfectly matches a part of you that you thought was unique. A moment that elevates human contact from the level of colliding billiard balls to the level of electricity or chemistry.  It is the moment when a relationship can be born. Our fundamental nature as a social species rests on the anatomy of this moment. Here is a picture: lowered masks, a spark breaking through invisible shells.

gamebreak

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Fools and their Money Metaphors

March 2, 2009 By

This has always puzzled me: why do people with similar backgrounds and intellects vary so widely in their effectiveness in dealing with money? One guy goes to work straight out of college, saves strategically, quits and starts his own SAP consultancy in 5 years, and is worth a few million by age 30. Another gets an MBA, gets sucked into a high-class lifestyle of expensive suits and dinners, and ends up with a BMW and barely $50,000 saved by age 30. And yet another, for reasons obscure even to himself (ahem!) goes off into a PhD program, and emerges, blinking at the harsh sunlight, at age 30, with exactly $0. Last weekend, I finally began to understand. Here is the secret: depending on your direct experience of the money you manage, you think about it with different metaphors. Your metaphors, not your financial or mathematical acumen, determine the outcome of your dealings with money.

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The Solemn Whimsies of Larry Morris

February 21, 2009 By

I haven’t done a blog post about art since I wrote about Amy Lin’s “Dot Art.” I stumbled upon Larry Morris’ metal sculptures at the same place, the Torpedo Factory in Old Town, Alexandria. Here is an example, titled “Meditation.”

lmorrismeditation

"Meditation" by Larry Morris (used with permission)

So what’s interesting about this sculpture, other than the fact that it instantly brings a smile to your face? Where Amy’s art is inspired Outsider Art, Morris’ is clearly a good deal more informed by the mainstream art world, and admits a lot more interpretation. Pondering Morris’ pieces led me to an interesting idea I call “solemn whimsy.”  The pieces may look like sculptural gags welded with a straight face, but you can definitely find more than just laughs in his pieces. Once I had the solemn whimsy concept clarified in my head, one other good example occurred to me: Demetri Martin’s new sketch comedy show, Important Things (brilliant, but uneven).

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The Training of the Organization Man

February 17, 2009 By

Recap: In the first two parts of this series, I introduced William Whyte’s 1956 classic, The Organization Man within a modern context, and covered the governing ideology that led to the rise of this worker archetype. Last time we learned how the collectivist corporate values — togetherness and belongingness — bolstered by a culture of ‘scientism,’ created the main pathologies of Organiztion Man culture, such as blind conformity, unjustified belief in ‘team’ creativity, an anti-leadership culture, and extreme risk aversion.

In this post, I’ll cover Part II, The Training of Organization Man (Chapters 6-10). The theme in this section is Whyte’s big worry: that through a pathological pair of complementary dysfunctions in universities and businesses, perfect-storm conditions were emerging (remember, this is the 50s) that would lead to a takeover of the business world by Organization Men.  Were Whyte’s fears justified? Did the Organization Man truly die with Apple’s 1984 ad, or has he merely taken on a new and more subtle guise? Let’s find out.

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Health and the Happy Hamster

February 10, 2009 By

Two months into my new work-from-home lifestyle, it hit me: having my elliptical machine right in my office is not making it easier to be healthy. It is just locking me more securely into an approach to health that does not work.  Like Robin Williams, I feel exactly like a caged hamster. One particularly lousy-body-day a couple of weeks ago, watching the Discovery channel for inspiration, realization dawned: we are an ape species that evolved into perfection outwitting and killing huge mammoths. And then we got too clever for our own good and turned ourselves into caged hamsters.  Thinking got us into this mess, and only thinking can get us out. Hamsters of the world, follow me to freedom. I don’t have my blockbuster fitness DVD idea yet, but I’ve got a few attitude-fixing principles that I’ve been trying out, and they seem to be working.

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