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The Restless Mind

Disambiguating the ambiguous

A Tin DrumNovember 28

Roger Ebert joins the growing rank of journalists bemoaning the death of the newspaper industry, curiously linking it to the glut of celebrity culture. The internets and movies? I had to comment.

Roger, you’re mixing the death of a business model (a temporary situation) with the age-old complaint that there aren’t enough critical thinkers among us. Both are true. Together, however, they are false; there is no relationship.

The sacking of film critics or the rise of 500-word limits are just further symptoms of the death of regional monopolies and the struggle newspapers face to remain relevant (or noticed) as information and conversation shift to the grid. Now, while IT IS sad to see a fairly nuanced form factor like newspapers (and all their editorial grit) disappear, what is bothersome to you is that the new landscape has not yet sorted itself out. It’s unreliable and mixes high and low, good and bad—with abundance and without relevance.�

Is the link economy the key to innovation in “traditional” business?September 17

Summary: American innovation is stumbling, reports BusinessWeek. Yet P&G reports that 10 years of innovation have doubled their sales to $80b. How? By operating in an analogue equivalent to the “link economy.”

BusinessWeek’s Chief Economist Mike Mandel recently penned “Can America Invent Its Way Back?” and highlighted that while the US spends on R&D, it doesn’t get its bang for its buck:

“Since 2000, the nation’s public and private sectors have poured almost $5 trillion into research and development and higher education, the key contributors to innovation. Nevertheless, employment in most technologically advanced industries has stagnated or even fallen. The number of domestic jobs in the computer and electronics sector continues to plunge while pharmaceutical and biotech companies lay off as many workers as they hire. And even the industry category that includes Google (GOOG)—Internet publishing and Web search portals—has

Data portability, the Potter parable, 21st century demand mechanics, and zombie attacksMay 20

Summary: Want to understand data portability and the fuss between Facebook and Google’s Friend Connect? Watch the river.

A few months ago Wired ran an article on Gavin Potter, a retired British consultant who was out to crack the Netflix challenge and pocket a million bucks.

While the interview focused on Potter’s use of psychology in contrast to the usual algorithmic glue that solves complex sorting issues, a side comment jumped out and has stuck with me since:

“The 20th century was about sorting out supply,” Potter says. “The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand.”

I’ve been thinking about that quote in relation to the recent noise about data

Raves, Clay Shirky, and interaction surplusApril 30

If you’re a Clay Shirky fan you’re probably aware that he’s published a new book called Here Comes Everybody, a collection of observations and examples on how the Internet is enabling group action in fundamentally transformative ways.

Shirky spoke at O’Reilly’s Web2.0 conference last week and spun a thread from his text on “cognitive surplus.” (Text here. Video here.) His thesis is that in order to grapple with a particularly stressful stretch of time, society engages in some mind-numbing activity that, by consequence, creates a cognitive surplus. Eventually, this surplus overflows and new forms of value are created. He cites post-industrial revolution Londoners blanking out with gin, only to then build many of the modern institutions we cherish today, and post-WWII Americans sitting slack-jawed watching I Love Lucy and Gilligan’s Island, but now using the Internet to produce Wikipedia and, to a lesser order, lolcats.

A lot of folks dissed Shirky for his optimistic view of the grid and his pessimistic take on television. But I think the contrast is more for entertainment. His core argument makes perfect se

The design of everyday relationshipsApril 14

Khoi Vinh, art director of The New York Times online, was recently interviewed by design chronicler Stephen Heller. Vinh, always thoughtful, is bang on with this comment about the shift from “designing inward to outward:”

We’re entering a new era of design where the brands and experiences we create are no longer closely held, highly controlled cathedrals, but rather bazaars of commerce and conversation. Historically, graphic design has been a discipline that deals in control, in creating carefully managed, organized experiences that are then distributed to people to be consumed in whole. Digital media has upended that equation, and now—yes—the audience is an active participant in the process of design.

In fact, the process is now a conversation between designers and users.

That last sentence reminded me of MIT Professor Donald Schön’s observation that design is a “conversation with materials.” In many ways users have become “materials” as much as participants. We not only engage them explicitly through interaction design to create discrete features, but also in aggregate as social systems and platforms amplify their implicit actions to create value.

Flickr’s a good example of both these kinds of “conversations.” Their perp