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| Wednesday, August 23, 2006 |
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O the inhumanity 
| | The first time I visited Google, way back, they had a TV in the lobby running a vertical scroll of searches — samples from the torrent of actual searches happening in real time. Most were word strings, or combinations of words meant to narrow down a result. The guy showing me around said something like, "That's the cleaned up version. The real thing is so X-rated it's scary." |
| | So I just took a look at weblogs.com's home page, which scrolls Recently Updated Weblogs... And I'm trying to guess how many are splogs. The answer appears to be: most. |
| | Of course, splogs are all robots pouring out updates by the barrel. As Ian Kallen pointed out to me awhile ago, they are obviously not human. You can tell by names like "Airplane cake" and "new york hotels information" and "Attorney dealer litigation securities wyoming" and "Free Pda Software". These kinds of faux blogs are being created by the zillions, creating links to each other by zillions times X, and creating posts with those links by X zillion more. All to game some advertising money. |
| | Does God care MORE about protecting marriage than helping relieve extreme poverty and exploitation? Does God care MORE about praying in schools or teaching creationism than he does about the growing numbers of people cast into prison and forgotten by society? Are school vouchers closer to the heart of God than the starving people worldwide? |
| | So the weblogs.com stream is still a good place to fish. But the fish are swimming in chum. |
| | Makes me appreciate how much work the search engines do to sieve dead bait from live fish. Can't be easy. |
Modeled on airlines
| | Verizon Communications, Inc. announced a new service package for its wireless and residential customers that would charge them widely varying, but always high, fees every month depending how the communications giant feels at the time. "Our Charge-At-Whim packages offer the same mediocre quality and insufferable level of customer service you¹ve come to expect," a Verizon spokesman said Tuesday. "But it adds an unjustified, arbitrary and, if you¹ll allow us to boast, frankly unjustifiable method of determining just how much you¹ll pay for them." |
Yes
| | Frederic asks, Is there really a point in denying that there is an A-list? Good question. I answer in his comments section. |
| | I say all this because it's clear to me--and probably to Tom Friedman, too--that the flat new world isn't big on fitting. Here we reward differences. We value uniqueness, creativity, innovation, initiative, resourcefulness. Every patch to the software in the server that brings you this essay was created by somebody different, with something different to contribute. Yes, a meritocracy is involved. But I can assure you it has nothing to do with grades or IQ tests. It has to do with quality of code and with the virtues that produce it, only some of which are fostered in school. |
| | In the flat new world, educational opportunities are limitless, even without help from school, government, churches or business. Much of what you need to know about pretty much everything is out there on the Web somewhere--especially if you're a technologist. Yes, the Web isn't everywhere. But it's in all the flat places, and the flatness is spreading, fast. Which is another of Tom's points. |
| | Of course, the average and the dumb are still plentiful, no doubt about it. But try this concept on for size: most of them were made that way. They were shaped in large measure by school systems that have had, from the dawn of the industrial age, a main purpose: to produce employees for boxed positions in corporate org charts that take the shape of pyramids, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. The many supporting the few. We may have needed a caste system that made each of us a ranked product--and we still call ourselves that--of an education. There were few alternatives in the industrial age, aside from farming and other relatively solitary occupations. But there are plenty of alternatives now, as many as there are individuals with access to broadband. |
| | The flat world is different. The flat world really does reward individuality, creativity, freedom, initiative. Tom says that too, but he also seems to think school can solve the problem when, in fact, school may be a big part of the problem. And not only in the US. Other countries may have better educational systems than we have in the US, but those countries also produce plenty of intellects whose self-education is far more helpful than whatever they obtain from school. And the ability to self-educate is essential in the flat new world. |
| | As Tom puts it in his book, "once the world has been flattened and the new forms of collaboration made available to more and more people, the winners will be those who learn the habits, processes and skills most quickly..." |
| | Some of that section got quoted in the second edition of The World Is Flat. Not because I was trolling for recognition, or anything self-serving like that. But rather because I made some points that advanced on points Tom made -- and that he could carry forward as well. |
| | We're building a new world here: one where rank matters less than whatever goods you bring to whatever you contribute to. And how you grow on the job. To me, at least, that's what blogging is about. |
Leveration
Going mobile
| | Using xFruits (and help from Craig Burton), I just created that little mobile link to the left there. Experimenting right now. Seeing how this works. (Isn't yet, but ... we'll see.) |
discuss
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