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Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Quote du jour 2 
| | "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man." — George Bernard Shaw |
| | Not sure I ever heard that before. Sounds familiar. But Chris Heuer just brought it up in the "Economics of Free" discussion. And it sank in. |
Quote du jour
| | The business of the valley is not publishing. It is not advertising. It is not retailing. It is not pet food. It is cool packages of technology that thrill people with empowerment and novelty. |
| | That's why I was thrilled to find myself living here in 1985, and why I still miss it when I'm gone (which is most of the time). |
| | By the way, advertising was a big part of the bubble that burst in '00. And it's a bigger part of the current bubble. |
| | Too much of the "smart" money these days is chasing advertising, as if it's the only business model worth having. |
| | Worse, it's woefully inefficient. Even with all its accountability. |
| | Worse still, one company dominates the whole business. That's not healthy. |
| | We need to imagine A Better Way. Then make it happen. |
Making progress. Literally.
| | For moving discussions forward, nothing beats Open Space. We've been using it (or variations on it) in the Internet Identity Workshops, and the forward motion is tectonic every time. |
| | Today in San Francisco there's another one: Supernova 2007 Open Space. There is no agenda other than the one attendees set. There are no panels, no keynotes. Just self-forming groups that meet for an hour or so apiece with the purpose of actually getting somewhere with whatever they're talking about. |
| | I want to talk about VRM, naturally. I'm also bringing along a Nokia N800, which I think may be the first blank-slate device on which we can breadboard toward a new breed of media recorder/player: one that can record and play podcasts, audio and video streams, play FM radio with data embedded in it, and provide buy-button that allows listeners to send money to artists and intermediators on a voluntary and non-coercive basis. (And tell DRM to screw off.) |
Discussing discussion
| | The first writing I ever did on sexism in this weblog was related to Doc Searls yes beloved, gentle Doc Searls. Doc Searls is a nice man, and yes, he does reference and link to womenmore than a lot of other guys. But he'll never get into a discussion with a woman. He will never debate a woman. In close to seven years of off and on reading of his site, I've never seen him actually have a truly engaged discussion with a woman. To this day, I don't know if it's because he doesn't respect us, professionally. Or if it's because he doesn't know how to have such a discussion without coming across as bully or being abusive. By not engaging with women, though, he does us more harm than if he wrote that we're all skanky bitches. |
| | Read the whole thing. As usual, Shelley brings up some things I agree with, some things I don't. Is it worth discussing them? This is a serious question. |
| | What is a "truly engaged discussion" between blogs anyway? I think I've had more than a few, with both men and women. I also think there are fewer of those in general as the years go on. At least in blogs. Seems I've seen jumping-to-conclusions and piling-on increase over the years, perhaps just because the population of the blogosphere has increased. But maybe I'm just jaded, wrong, or both. |
| | Anyway, here's the best summary I can find of the sexism matter Shelley refers to in that post. Seems to me "engaged discussion" happened there. |
| | But maybe not. Through our back-and-forth Shelley and I came to different conclusions. I thought that "sexism" was a "lousy word" and made a case for it. She didn't buy it. |
| | And here we are, almost five years later, at Round Two. |
| | [Later...] My sister just pointed me to the comments under Shelley's post. Interesting discussion there, between Seth Finkelstein, Shelley and others. One that sticks out for me, by Shelley: Damn, I read that comment thread and we used to have fun back then. What the hell happened? |
| | Michael Bernstein replies, The stakes got higher. And the 'new blog smell' wore off. Good an answer as any. |
There are responses to this message:Re: Tuesday, June 19, 2007, Stephen Lewis, 6/20/07; 5:29:41 PM Discussing discussion, Trudy W. Schuett, 6/20/07; 7:14:49 AM Re: Monday, June 16, 2007, Jim Bursch, 6/19/07; 3:53:41 PM Where's the Tech?, Andrew Leyden, 6/19/07; 1:05:09 PM
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