Facebook will be launching a major redesign of their profiles in the near future. As always, users are flipping out. I think that Facebook has figured out precisely what they need to do to avoid becoming another MySpace.
From the late 1990's up to the Facebook/MySpace battle, we saw the launch of dozens of social networks, most long forgotten (remember Bolt.com? Don't worry. No one does). MySpace was the first one to really take the world by storm because its focus was on the profiles and direct interpersonal behavior. Social networks before MySpace had generally focused on creating group areas, games, and chat rooms. MySpace took what people had been doing on Geocities for years and systematized it.
But like all of the other social networks, MySpace got boring. It stayed the same, and I think that's why people ditched it. People have moved from network to network for the same reason that they change clothing. They like change. They might complain when it is forced upon them, but that constant updating is the only thing keeping them from jumping to an upstart competitor.
Analysts have been falling all over themselves in attempts at illuminating the drivers behind Facebook's rise and MySpace's fall, but I think that it's easy. It had absolutely nothing to do with the functional aspects of the service, it was entirely in the personality of the service. MySpace was glittery chaos, while on Facebook, no matter how trashy or horrible a person is, their profile is neat, trim, and organized. The whole service feels more professional.
But Facebook, I think, was a transitional service from the chaos of Geocities and MySpace to something more refined. Now that that role has been fulfilled, Facebook is in very dangerous territory. Facebook is explicitly aware of this situation, though, which is something MySpace certainly was not. Their frequent updates, strict image control, and constant refining of the user experience keeps them safe. Their personality remains refined, youthful, high-tech, and integral to a web-based life.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 2011
What Does It Mean For Something to Exist?
I've discussed this one before, but my thoughts have evolved to the point of needing a new post. What is existence? What does it mean to exist? The study of this nonsense is known as Ontology and it's officially a branch of metaphysics. It's not a question many people ask, because, why bother? I do ask the question because it bears on many other areas of inquiry, including very important areas such as epistemology.
I would recommend reading the Wikipedia entry on Ontology, as it will help explain the various areas of study and thus provide you with the foundation to criticize my ideas.
Basically, in discussing being, we have three aspects of existence that play different roles: intuition, sensory experience, and language. They are of equal importance.
First and foremost, existence is linguistic. "To exist," are simply words and the meaning of those words is how they are used.
I think that language is fundamentally representative. It always represents something to the user of those words. Even words such as "oh shit," represent internal states. The word itself evolved from external usage between people, but it is used to represent something internal. For example, "I am scared" represents to the user an internal state that is inaccessible to those hearing the word. From the listener's perspective, the phrase "I am scared" represents a series of behaviors: hiding, cowering, sweating, etc.
As would be expected based on this model, I think that most words are a mixture of internal and external representations. I also think that this very mixture is the reason why the term existence is so contentious and hard to nail down. In conversation, our intended use frequently vacillates between an internal sense of what the word means and the external reality to which it must be tied when being spoken.
I think that existence has two types, real existence and metaphysical existence. I use the term metaphysical when referring to a concept that seems true yet is outside our ability to know.
For example, I climb a ladder, place a ball on top of a book shelf, and then get down. I can no longer see the ball, detect any shadows, or in any way know that the ball is there. For the sake of this argument, you shall be an omniscient third person, and the ball is actually on the book shelf. From my perspective on the ground, does the ball still exist?
Yes and no, and this is the root of our problems with the word. In reality, it does not exist. It only exists when I sense it, and even then, it only exists insofar as I am sensing it.
Continuing the example, let's say that I see the ball. Does the ball have texture? Metaphysically yes, but realistically, no. Let's say that I am touching the ball (*giggle*) with my eyes closed. Does the ball have color? Metaphysically yes, realistically, no.
This segues into the final element of the gestalt of our conception of existence: intuition. Intuitively, the ball is still on the book shelf. This intuition is called object permanence and it is something that we learn at a very young age. This intuition becomes one of the underlying principles upon which the framework of a human perspective on the world is built. Basically, the rule states that "there are things that exist that I do not currently sense."
For example, "there exists a planet that is covered entirely with frozen methane, under which is a liquid sea of methane where bizarre life forms swim about". This statement is either true or false. We can never know if it is false, and we only know if it is true if we find the planet. We then use intuition to say that the statement was always true. It was metaphysically true, which is completely useless. The complete intuitive concept is that "there are things that do and do not exist which I do not currently sense."
This sense is entirely internal. It is ineffable. I cannot explain the intuitive sensation about the existence of things outside of sensation, but this is identical to being unable to explain the sensation of hunger or the color red. But like we want to use red as though we are communicating our internal state, we are driven to use the term "exist" in the intuitive metaphysical sense. Other people accept this nebulous usage because (assuming the existence of other minds and their similarity to my own) we all have the same intuitive sense of things existing outside our sensory sphere.
These things do not exist! There is no way that they exist. They might eventually exist once we sense them, but they do not when in a Schrödinger's cat state of indeterminate existence. Truly, the famous cat thought experiment was created specifically as physicists dealt with the ramifications of understanding that things do not exist until we sense them.
Thus, the intuitive sense of things existing separate from sense or language is explained as a wavefunction of probability in modern physics. The wave collapses into a determined state (exist/not exist) only upon an observation. This is the nature of reality. Nothing exists unless I am sensing it, and even then it only exists insofar as I am sensing it, be it with sight, hearing, smell, or touch. Beyond that is intuition about the nature of reality that we learn as a child. Beyond that intuition is a word that means only how we use it, and we can only possibly use it to describe things to which all users of the word have access, namely, empirical reality.
I would recommend reading the Wikipedia entry on Ontology, as it will help explain the various areas of study and thus provide you with the foundation to criticize my ideas.
Basically, in discussing being, we have three aspects of existence that play different roles: intuition, sensory experience, and language. They are of equal importance.
First and foremost, existence is linguistic. "To exist," are simply words and the meaning of those words is how they are used.
I think that language is fundamentally representative. It always represents something to the user of those words. Even words such as "oh shit," represent internal states. The word itself evolved from external usage between people, but it is used to represent something internal. For example, "I am scared" represents to the user an internal state that is inaccessible to those hearing the word. From the listener's perspective, the phrase "I am scared" represents a series of behaviors: hiding, cowering, sweating, etc.
As would be expected based on this model, I think that most words are a mixture of internal and external representations. I also think that this very mixture is the reason why the term existence is so contentious and hard to nail down. In conversation, our intended use frequently vacillates between an internal sense of what the word means and the external reality to which it must be tied when being spoken.
I think that existence has two types, real existence and metaphysical existence. I use the term metaphysical when referring to a concept that seems true yet is outside our ability to know.
For example, I climb a ladder, place a ball on top of a book shelf, and then get down. I can no longer see the ball, detect any shadows, or in any way know that the ball is there. For the sake of this argument, you shall be an omniscient third person, and the ball is actually on the book shelf. From my perspective on the ground, does the ball still exist?
Yes and no, and this is the root of our problems with the word. In reality, it does not exist. It only exists when I sense it, and even then, it only exists insofar as I am sensing it.
Continuing the example, let's say that I see the ball. Does the ball have texture? Metaphysically yes, but realistically, no. Let's say that I am touching the ball (*giggle*) with my eyes closed. Does the ball have color? Metaphysically yes, realistically, no.
This segues into the final element of the gestalt of our conception of existence: intuition. Intuitively, the ball is still on the book shelf. This intuition is called object permanence and it is something that we learn at a very young age. This intuition becomes one of the underlying principles upon which the framework of a human perspective on the world is built. Basically, the rule states that "there are things that exist that I do not currently sense."
For example, "there exists a planet that is covered entirely with frozen methane, under which is a liquid sea of methane where bizarre life forms swim about". This statement is either true or false. We can never know if it is false, and we only know if it is true if we find the planet. We then use intuition to say that the statement was always true. It was metaphysically true, which is completely useless. The complete intuitive concept is that "there are things that do and do not exist which I do not currently sense."
This sense is entirely internal. It is ineffable. I cannot explain the intuitive sensation about the existence of things outside of sensation, but this is identical to being unable to explain the sensation of hunger or the color red. But like we want to use red as though we are communicating our internal state, we are driven to use the term "exist" in the intuitive metaphysical sense. Other people accept this nebulous usage because (assuming the existence of other minds and their similarity to my own) we all have the same intuitive sense of things existing outside our sensory sphere.
These things do not exist! There is no way that they exist. They might eventually exist once we sense them, but they do not when in a Schrödinger's cat state of indeterminate existence. Truly, the famous cat thought experiment was created specifically as physicists dealt with the ramifications of understanding that things do not exist until we sense them.
Thus, the intuitive sense of things existing separate from sense or language is explained as a wavefunction of probability in modern physics. The wave collapses into a determined state (exist/not exist) only upon an observation. This is the nature of reality. Nothing exists unless I am sensing it, and even then it only exists insofar as I am sensing it, be it with sight, hearing, smell, or touch. Beyond that is intuition about the nature of reality that we learn as a child. Beyond that intuition is a word that means only how we use it, and we can only possibly use it to describe things to which all users of the word have access, namely, empirical reality.
Excitement For Windows 8
I want a tablet. I think that they are unbelievably cool. But, at the same time, I can't bring myself to buy a big cell phone. I already have one of those, and its screen is over 4". That IS a tablet. Cell phones are also a fantastic toy, because like a computer, it is a toy with legitimate uses beyond being simply a toy. It's very easy to rationalize the purchase of a bad-ass cell phone. It is not similarly easy to rationalize the purchase of what amounts to a more-bigger cell phone.
But Windows 8 makes this prospect different. The boot time on Win8 appears to be nearing the instant-on nature of current tablets, although will likely never actually get there, and having a tablet mode or something similar would allow Win8 to extend the battery life to something beyond the few hours possible on most super-lite laptops. Moreover, since the OS is the same, I will be able to do actual work on a Win8 tablet.
It also prevents ridiculous artificial restrictions on tablets. For example, various tablets try to market themselves as nearly-computers, but most of the media websites that would be best-suited to the tablets: Hulu, Spotify, etc.; are blocked by the media companies. It turns tablets for the majority of people into glorified e-readers.
Granted, I think many of the problems with tablets has to do with the app development. There's very little heavy-hitting software available for cell phones or tablets, and I'm perpetually puzzled as to why. Android and iOS are HUGE markets. There should be tons of things for power-users, yet the bulk of the market is dominated by super-small little developers. Is it raging arrogance on the part of the big companies? Is it something about the phone/tablet market? What?!
Regardless, Win8 eliminate all of these issues, at least for me. I'm not saying that I would ever get a tablet. I might opt for a super-thin laptop. But at least this makes what is arguably one of the coolest things to be perfected, like, ever, a reasonable option.
But Windows 8 makes this prospect different. The boot time on Win8 appears to be nearing the instant-on nature of current tablets, although will likely never actually get there, and having a tablet mode or something similar would allow Win8 to extend the battery life to something beyond the few hours possible on most super-lite laptops. Moreover, since the OS is the same, I will be able to do actual work on a Win8 tablet.
It also prevents ridiculous artificial restrictions on tablets. For example, various tablets try to market themselves as nearly-computers, but most of the media websites that would be best-suited to the tablets: Hulu, Spotify, etc.; are blocked by the media companies. It turns tablets for the majority of people into glorified e-readers.
Granted, I think many of the problems with tablets has to do with the app development. There's very little heavy-hitting software available for cell phones or tablets, and I'm perpetually puzzled as to why. Android and iOS are HUGE markets. There should be tons of things for power-users, yet the bulk of the market is dominated by super-small little developers. Is it raging arrogance on the part of the big companies? Is it something about the phone/tablet market? What?!
Regardless, Win8 eliminate all of these issues, at least for me. I'm not saying that I would ever get a tablet. I might opt for a super-thin laptop. But at least this makes what is arguably one of the coolest things to be perfected, like, ever, a reasonable option.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
X-Men First Class And My Issues With Comic Book Movies
I just saw X-Men First Class. I liked it. It was well-directed, stylish, and some truly excellent performances. But I would never watch it again.
A great review of a movie explains perfectly why the critic did or didn't like said movie. For example, Roger Ebert's review of Dark City made me go back and watch it again, and it is now one of my favorite sci-fi's. My partner, Danielle, ruined the movie Aladdin for me by asking where the hell the narrator/salesman from the beginning of the film went.
Likewise, a great review, by whom I've forgotten, for the first X-Men ruined the film for me and further drove home the importance of keeping comic book worlds and the real world separated. Basically, the whole use of mutation as an analogy for racial undertones and bigotry is just amazingly stupid. Fear and hatred of black or Asian people is wrong because they're just people, they just look slightly different. Fear and hatred of someone who can level whole cities with their mind is very, very legitimate. Even mutants should be terrified of other mutants.
As it is with X-Men First Class. They place the movie during the early 1960's and have the X-Men stop World War III by being the actual reason the Cuban Missile Crisis didn't come to guns. First problem, this opens up a metric-crap-ton of historical inconsistencies, but disregarding those, there are issues on the story's own terms.
For example, people don't know about mutants? How did WWII even happen? You're telling me that not ONE of the people that the Nazi's massacred wasn't a mature mutant? There are just now, spontaneously, millions of mutants? And ALL of them are in hiding? No. I'm sorry. Some of them would turn into superheroes and some into supervillains. And that logical requirement works just fine in comic books, because that's what comic books are: heroes and villains.
It is impossible to shoehorn in comic book logic (I refer to as a cause-&-effect system) into real-world logic. It was the reason why I found both new Batman films insufferable. Batman Begins took itself gravely seriously, and its climax centered around a microwave gun that magically doesn't effect the 80% of the human body that is water. It was stupid.
First Class isn't that stupid, but every second of the movie has logical issues with its setup, logical issues that I just couldn't get past to fully enjoy the film.
I think the reason why my favorite recent comic book film is Iron Man is that the director, Jon Favreau, understands the nature of comic book movies perfectly. When interviewed about the upcoming Avengers film, he said he didn't envy the producers of that film since they had to try to merge the technological world of Iron Man with the magical world of Thor. He said that comic book movies have to operate in their own worlds, disconnected from others, for them to work. Why so few directors understand this is beyond me.
It's not just comic book films, though. It's all of Hollywood. When critics refer to jarring shifts in tone, usually in a derogatory sense, they're frequently referring to shifts in cause & effect. For example, a movie that was borderline unwatchable for me at times was the 2008 film Hamlet 2. There were scenes of slapstick C&E, scenes of real-world C&E, scenes of uplifting teen drama, Saturday Night Live, and genuine attempts at pathos. None of these can live together in a film.
As a filmmaker, you must know precisely in which universe of cause & effect your movie is going to live. All characters must then follow that system. You can't decide that you want some drama, and suddenly have everything shift to a dramatic system in hopes of wringing out a tear or two. You'll end up like Family Guy, which, regardless of its quite genuine humor and inventiveness, is horribly written.
As a writer, this is difficult, which is probably why so few do it. You must think out the complex network of effects that any event in your story would have within the world that you've chosen. This is the reason why so many super-dramas are very tightly scripted. They only write a few characters, and what they do, who they are, and where they live is highly limited. It allows the writer freedom to concentrate on the characters about which they actually care, and not have to worry about potential inconsistencies and plot holes involving hypothetical outside variables.
Unfortunately for those lazy writers that don't want to do go through the trouble, this is what makes good writing. Without it, you may as well not bother. Stop clogging up the gears of movie production with your shitty scripts and make room for story tellers who have something worthwhile to say.
A great review of a movie explains perfectly why the critic did or didn't like said movie. For example, Roger Ebert's review of Dark City made me go back and watch it again, and it is now one of my favorite sci-fi's. My partner, Danielle, ruined the movie Aladdin for me by asking where the hell the narrator/salesman from the beginning of the film went.
Likewise, a great review, by whom I've forgotten, for the first X-Men ruined the film for me and further drove home the importance of keeping comic book worlds and the real world separated. Basically, the whole use of mutation as an analogy for racial undertones and bigotry is just amazingly stupid. Fear and hatred of black or Asian people is wrong because they're just people, they just look slightly different. Fear and hatred of someone who can level whole cities with their mind is very, very legitimate. Even mutants should be terrified of other mutants.
As it is with X-Men First Class. They place the movie during the early 1960's and have the X-Men stop World War III by being the actual reason the Cuban Missile Crisis didn't come to guns. First problem, this opens up a metric-crap-ton of historical inconsistencies, but disregarding those, there are issues on the story's own terms.
For example, people don't know about mutants? How did WWII even happen? You're telling me that not ONE of the people that the Nazi's massacred wasn't a mature mutant? There are just now, spontaneously, millions of mutants? And ALL of them are in hiding? No. I'm sorry. Some of them would turn into superheroes and some into supervillains. And that logical requirement works just fine in comic books, because that's what comic books are: heroes and villains.
It is impossible to shoehorn in comic book logic (I refer to as a cause-&-effect system) into real-world logic. It was the reason why I found both new Batman films insufferable. Batman Begins took itself gravely seriously, and its climax centered around a microwave gun that magically doesn't effect the 80% of the human body that is water. It was stupid.
First Class isn't that stupid, but every second of the movie has logical issues with its setup, logical issues that I just couldn't get past to fully enjoy the film.
I think the reason why my favorite recent comic book film is Iron Man is that the director, Jon Favreau, understands the nature of comic book movies perfectly. When interviewed about the upcoming Avengers film, he said he didn't envy the producers of that film since they had to try to merge the technological world of Iron Man with the magical world of Thor. He said that comic book movies have to operate in their own worlds, disconnected from others, for them to work. Why so few directors understand this is beyond me.
It's not just comic book films, though. It's all of Hollywood. When critics refer to jarring shifts in tone, usually in a derogatory sense, they're frequently referring to shifts in cause & effect. For example, a movie that was borderline unwatchable for me at times was the 2008 film Hamlet 2. There were scenes of slapstick C&E, scenes of real-world C&E, scenes of uplifting teen drama, Saturday Night Live, and genuine attempts at pathos. None of these can live together in a film.
As a filmmaker, you must know precisely in which universe of cause & effect your movie is going to live. All characters must then follow that system. You can't decide that you want some drama, and suddenly have everything shift to a dramatic system in hopes of wringing out a tear or two. You'll end up like Family Guy, which, regardless of its quite genuine humor and inventiveness, is horribly written.
As a writer, this is difficult, which is probably why so few do it. You must think out the complex network of effects that any event in your story would have within the world that you've chosen. This is the reason why so many super-dramas are very tightly scripted. They only write a few characters, and what they do, who they are, and where they live is highly limited. It allows the writer freedom to concentrate on the characters about which they actually care, and not have to worry about potential inconsistencies and plot holes involving hypothetical outside variables.
Unfortunately for those lazy writers that don't want to do go through the trouble, this is what makes good writing. Without it, you may as well not bother. Stop clogging up the gears of movie production with your shitty scripts and make room for story tellers who have something worthwhile to say.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Netflix Subscribers Abandon The Service.
I find the large exodus of customers from Netflix following its price increase to be of immense interest. I've been ranting for over the past ten years that media is actually worth very little. What has been valuable has always been the medium by which the media is transmitted. Television shows weren't valuable, television itself was.
In this day and age of nearly limitless claims on our attention, no company can safely say that their media is so valuable that people would seek it out. Obviously, that is not the case. Take, for example, me. I pirate. I pirate just about anything that I want to see, which is very, very little. I haven't "stolen" a movie for over a year. The few movies that I have watched I've done so through my Netflix account. Piracy isn't the issue, it's something else.
We can argue about what's causing this, but that's an academic issue. People are, for whatever reason, assigning an ever-decreasing value to movies and television. But even I had no idea how far that had gone. The huge drop in subscribers confirms that it is much further along than I think anyone had initially assumed.
When you think about it, the price increase was actually rather small. As a function of percentage, yes, the increase was very large. But in absolute numbers, it was small. Most people are paying an extra eight dollars per month. If we place the average American household income at $50,000, that means that for 70% of American families, that increase is almost invisible in the grand scheme of their budget.
Yet, still, we are seeing an ever-growing customer loss. While those in the media industry would like to believe otherwise, I think that this confirms what basic economics would tell them: the value of media is approaching zero. ECON-101 will tell anyone that the cost of something will drop to the marginal cost of producing a copy of that thing. With data such as movies and music, that marginal cost is, near as makes no difference, zero.
Netflix is unfolding as a massive economics experiment, one that doesn't bode well for the traditionally modeled media companies.
In this day and age of nearly limitless claims on our attention, no company can safely say that their media is so valuable that people would seek it out. Obviously, that is not the case. Take, for example, me. I pirate. I pirate just about anything that I want to see, which is very, very little. I haven't "stolen" a movie for over a year. The few movies that I have watched I've done so through my Netflix account. Piracy isn't the issue, it's something else.
We can argue about what's causing this, but that's an academic issue. People are, for whatever reason, assigning an ever-decreasing value to movies and television. But even I had no idea how far that had gone. The huge drop in subscribers confirms that it is much further along than I think anyone had initially assumed.
When you think about it, the price increase was actually rather small. As a function of percentage, yes, the increase was very large. But in absolute numbers, it was small. Most people are paying an extra eight dollars per month. If we place the average American household income at $50,000, that means that for 70% of American families, that increase is almost invisible in the grand scheme of their budget.
Yet, still, we are seeing an ever-growing customer loss. While those in the media industry would like to believe otherwise, I think that this confirms what basic economics would tell them: the value of media is approaching zero. ECON-101 will tell anyone that the cost of something will drop to the marginal cost of producing a copy of that thing. With data such as movies and music, that marginal cost is, near as makes no difference, zero.
Netflix is unfolding as a massive economics experiment, one that doesn't bode well for the traditionally modeled media companies.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Bartz Fired And Yahoo! For SALE?!
Carol Bartz has been fired from Yahoo!. I liked Bartz. I had high hopes. Understandably, then, this is a bit of a disappointment.
I think that Bartz should be somewhat happy about her performance, even though she was eventually fired. She was brought on as a kick-ass manager and she did kick-ass manager things. She trimmed about a metric ton of fat from the company, jettisoning winning properties like Geocities. But she also failed to bring in a clear vision for the company. Was Yahoo services? Was it content? Was it web-applications? Yahoo! does all of these things in a very disconnected way.
Yahoo!'s services are great. I like Yahoo! Mail, I love MyYahoo!, but that's where the goodness ends and the mediocrity begins. Yahoo!'s apps are terrible. They bought Konfabulator for widgets... and did nothing with it. Yahoo! Connected televisions are slow and buggy, and even if they weren't, customers seem to be less than thrilled.
Yahoo!'s content is hopelessly hosed. They want to dance the line between inert and edgy, trying to be cool while not insulting anyone, thus appearing hip only to people over the age of 65. In the age of websites like Gizmodo, Engadget, and countless smaller sites that will not mince words, the old maxim of "insult no one," forced upon mass media by the FCC, fails miserably. Instead of realizing that the world is growing up, and thus daring to use naughty words, Yahoo! has been left behind, stuck in the same weird, existential hell in which other Internet old guard like Cnet are trapped.
For evidence of this shift, go to Alexa.com. The audience for Yahoo! is basically flat for all age groups except for 65+, which is highly positive. Same with Cnet. Compare this to a youthful website such as Gizmodo. It is essentially not read by anyone over the age of 40. Even the New York Times is younger than Yahoo!'s audience. Yahoo! cannot pretend to be hip, it has to actually be hip. And being hip means pissing people off.
Regardless, listing the ways that Yahoo! has failed achieves little. It's how Yahoo! can still succeed. They are the fourth largest website on Earth. They are third in the US, behind only Google and Facebook. They have massive reach. They have four major resources that I see: MyYahoo!, Flickr, Yahoo! Pulse, and Mail/Messenger. They have two minor resources, Finance and search.
Yahoo! needs to start with their major portal, MyYahoo!, and generate as much value as possible for the end user. Value comes from integrating all of their tools as easily as possible onto a single page. Facebook, Flickr, Pulse, eBay, news, live video. Integrate Yahoo! shopping into the home page as a service and sell it on the back end as a product, just like Google's search revenue. Don't rely on companies to develop MyYahoo! content, do it yourself. Make it graphical and compelling. Hell, sell the development of MyYahoo! content.
Use Flash and HTML5 to make content boxes dynamic. It allows people to visit other sites and read news without leaving their portal page, which keeps them on your services longer. It also gives you significantly more vibrant versions of mail, messenger, and video.
Fuck your own services! If customers are using other things, let them use them. Develop high quality YouTube, GMail, and MSN boxes. Do EVERYTHING that you can with others' products. Do this because no matter how much you do, you will be able to do more with your own. Always develop, always innovate. If you are not releasing a major update once per year, you're dying.
The goal is to turn the MyYahoo! page into an "app" that people leave on for all of the time that they are at the computer. Facebook is already this for many people for social reasons. Yahoo! can become the flipside of the coin, being the portal through which people find things to share via the social connections.
Flickr is still the premier place for pro photographers. The service has stagnated almost entirely with no updates whatsoever for months, and no major updates for years. Design Flickr Apps, push Flickr integration with digital picture frames, and push Flickr onto cameras. Flickr is integrated absolutely nowhere else in Yahoo!. WTF?! You want Flickr everywhere. Make it easy to do whatever the hell a user could ever want. They still, STILL, do not have an Android app. That is pathetic.
Yahoo! Pulse will be great once they integrate it into MyYahoo!. Until then, it's a wan rejoinder to Facebook and does little to attract people to Yahoo!.
Mail and messenger are still strong platforms for communication. Again, with better integration between Yahoo!'s other services, it encourages users to use Yahoo!.
Finally, Yahoo! cannot succeed with the detached, mathematical advertising of Google. Google does it better and will win. Instead, Yahoo! needs to follow the lead of Gawker media, where they heavily integrate ads into the overall experience. Yahoo! needs to work closely with advertising partners to develop compelling pieces that are both prominent but not intrusive. The era of the ad-blocker is coming, and soon no one will see any ads ever.
Make ads a choice. Make them desirable. Think about all of the ads that are viewed willingly on Youtube. For example, have a list of "See This Week's Fliers." Companies buy a spot on the list and can also buy a "featured" position that is always at the top. The remaining list is sortable by most popular, most recent, or by category. People click on it and a big, Yahoo! designed (or customer, just so long as it looks good) flier made from ANYTHING OTHER THAN PDF appears through which the user can peruse. This provides excellent advertising data and reveals user engagement. Integrate the same user-optional advertising all throughout the site.
Finally, some of Yahoo!'s content is good. Finance has good user engagement and a decent reputation. Sadly, they are doing little with this. Other financial websites like MarketWatch and Bloomberg are blowing Yahoo! out of the water. The same goes for Yahoo!'s OMG! and Shine pages.
Basically, I think that Yahoo! should ditch the branded names scheme and create entirely new .com addresses. For example, AOL has TMZ for gossip. It is a standalone entity owned by AOL. Yahoo! needs to do this with ALL of their content immediately. Build other brands that you can then integrate into your parent brand. Don't try to grow the parent brand beyond its boundaries. OMG! and Shine are already entrenched and have good readerships, but they need much more. They need to start spewing content. Gadgets, clothing, politics, cars, environment, science. If they're not producing original content, they need to partner with someone who does.
Yahoo! can grow, but it will require significant investment in new, productive talent.
I think that Bartz should be somewhat happy about her performance, even though she was eventually fired. She was brought on as a kick-ass manager and she did kick-ass manager things. She trimmed about a metric ton of fat from the company, jettisoning winning properties like Geocities. But she also failed to bring in a clear vision for the company. Was Yahoo services? Was it content? Was it web-applications? Yahoo! does all of these things in a very disconnected way.
Yahoo!'s services are great. I like Yahoo! Mail, I love MyYahoo!, but that's where the goodness ends and the mediocrity begins. Yahoo!'s apps are terrible. They bought Konfabulator for widgets... and did nothing with it. Yahoo! Connected televisions are slow and buggy, and even if they weren't, customers seem to be less than thrilled.
Yahoo!'s content is hopelessly hosed. They want to dance the line between inert and edgy, trying to be cool while not insulting anyone, thus appearing hip only to people over the age of 65. In the age of websites like Gizmodo, Engadget, and countless smaller sites that will not mince words, the old maxim of "insult no one," forced upon mass media by the FCC, fails miserably. Instead of realizing that the world is growing up, and thus daring to use naughty words, Yahoo! has been left behind, stuck in the same weird, existential hell in which other Internet old guard like Cnet are trapped.
For evidence of this shift, go to Alexa.com. The audience for Yahoo! is basically flat for all age groups except for 65+, which is highly positive. Same with Cnet. Compare this to a youthful website such as Gizmodo. It is essentially not read by anyone over the age of 40. Even the New York Times is younger than Yahoo!'s audience. Yahoo! cannot pretend to be hip, it has to actually be hip. And being hip means pissing people off.
Regardless, listing the ways that Yahoo! has failed achieves little. It's how Yahoo! can still succeed. They are the fourth largest website on Earth. They are third in the US, behind only Google and Facebook. They have massive reach. They have four major resources that I see: MyYahoo!, Flickr, Yahoo! Pulse, and Mail/Messenger. They have two minor resources, Finance and search.
Yahoo! needs to start with their major portal, MyYahoo!, and generate as much value as possible for the end user. Value comes from integrating all of their tools as easily as possible onto a single page. Facebook, Flickr, Pulse, eBay, news, live video. Integrate Yahoo! shopping into the home page as a service and sell it on the back end as a product, just like Google's search revenue. Don't rely on companies to develop MyYahoo! content, do it yourself. Make it graphical and compelling. Hell, sell the development of MyYahoo! content.
Use Flash and HTML5 to make content boxes dynamic. It allows people to visit other sites and read news without leaving their portal page, which keeps them on your services longer. It also gives you significantly more vibrant versions of mail, messenger, and video.
Fuck your own services! If customers are using other things, let them use them. Develop high quality YouTube, GMail, and MSN boxes. Do EVERYTHING that you can with others' products. Do this because no matter how much you do, you will be able to do more with your own. Always develop, always innovate. If you are not releasing a major update once per year, you're dying.
The goal is to turn the MyYahoo! page into an "app" that people leave on for all of the time that they are at the computer. Facebook is already this for many people for social reasons. Yahoo! can become the flipside of the coin, being the portal through which people find things to share via the social connections.
Flickr is still the premier place for pro photographers. The service has stagnated almost entirely with no updates whatsoever for months, and no major updates for years. Design Flickr Apps, push Flickr integration with digital picture frames, and push Flickr onto cameras. Flickr is integrated absolutely nowhere else in Yahoo!. WTF?! You want Flickr everywhere. Make it easy to do whatever the hell a user could ever want. They still, STILL, do not have an Android app. That is pathetic.
Yahoo! Pulse will be great once they integrate it into MyYahoo!. Until then, it's a wan rejoinder to Facebook and does little to attract people to Yahoo!.
Mail and messenger are still strong platforms for communication. Again, with better integration between Yahoo!'s other services, it encourages users to use Yahoo!.
Finally, Yahoo! cannot succeed with the detached, mathematical advertising of Google. Google does it better and will win. Instead, Yahoo! needs to follow the lead of Gawker media, where they heavily integrate ads into the overall experience. Yahoo! needs to work closely with advertising partners to develop compelling pieces that are both prominent but not intrusive. The era of the ad-blocker is coming, and soon no one will see any ads ever.
Make ads a choice. Make them desirable. Think about all of the ads that are viewed willingly on Youtube. For example, have a list of "See This Week's Fliers." Companies buy a spot on the list and can also buy a "featured" position that is always at the top. The remaining list is sortable by most popular, most recent, or by category. People click on it and a big, Yahoo! designed (or customer, just so long as it looks good) flier made from ANYTHING OTHER THAN PDF appears through which the user can peruse. This provides excellent advertising data and reveals user engagement. Integrate the same user-optional advertising all throughout the site.
Finally, some of Yahoo!'s content is good. Finance has good user engagement and a decent reputation. Sadly, they are doing little with this. Other financial websites like MarketWatch and Bloomberg are blowing Yahoo! out of the water. The same goes for Yahoo!'s OMG! and Shine pages.
Basically, I think that Yahoo! should ditch the branded names scheme and create entirely new .com addresses. For example, AOL has TMZ for gossip. It is a standalone entity owned by AOL. Yahoo! needs to do this with ALL of their content immediately. Build other brands that you can then integrate into your parent brand. Don't try to grow the parent brand beyond its boundaries. OMG! and Shine are already entrenched and have good readerships, but they need much more. They need to start spewing content. Gadgets, clothing, politics, cars, environment, science. If they're not producing original content, they need to partner with someone who does.
Yahoo! can grow, but it will require significant investment in new, productive talent.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Is The Uncontacted Amazon Tribe Dead?
If so, perhaps this will make us finally, FINALLY, FINALLY, realize that our drug laws are mind-meltingly stupid.
Do you want to know who killed that tribe? We did. Because we're trying to stop something that will never be stopped, and in doing so have created a massive, multi-billion-dollar market for drugs that makes these barbarous monsters unbelievably wealthy. We make the game so profitable for them that we have whole towns being wiped out in Mexico, and people who aren't even aware of the outside world are being killed for something that they can't possibly understand.
WE KILLED THEM. Legalize drugs! Legalize all of them! Pull the rug out from under this ridiculous industry! Don't do it for taxes, or because you simply can't afford the police anymore. Legalize the drugs because it's everyone's right to ingest whatever they damn well feel like! The pursuit of happiness does not restrict chemical happiness! And it never will, whether we try to do that or not.
People do drugs. We love nicotine, and caffeine, and alcohol just as we love cocaine, meth, and heroin. People will always do them whether we want them to or not. We will not stop them. Ever. Are the people that do drugs stupid? You're darn-tootin' they are! But that doesn't matter. I think people who drink are stupid, and smoke, and eat McDonalds. But that doesn't stop them from having every right to continue on drinkin', smokin', and gettin' fat.
Legalize drugs. Stop the bloodshed that is happening on our streets between drug gangs. Stop the wholesale slaughter of people in Mexico, and stop the deaths of people who are about as innocent as can be found on planet Earth. This is in the power of the Western World. No one else.
Do you want to know who killed that tribe? We did. Because we're trying to stop something that will never be stopped, and in doing so have created a massive, multi-billion-dollar market for drugs that makes these barbarous monsters unbelievably wealthy. We make the game so profitable for them that we have whole towns being wiped out in Mexico, and people who aren't even aware of the outside world are being killed for something that they can't possibly understand.
WE KILLED THEM. Legalize drugs! Legalize all of them! Pull the rug out from under this ridiculous industry! Don't do it for taxes, or because you simply can't afford the police anymore. Legalize the drugs because it's everyone's right to ingest whatever they damn well feel like! The pursuit of happiness does not restrict chemical happiness! And it never will, whether we try to do that or not.
People do drugs. We love nicotine, and caffeine, and alcohol just as we love cocaine, meth, and heroin. People will always do them whether we want them to or not. We will not stop them. Ever. Are the people that do drugs stupid? You're darn-tootin' they are! But that doesn't matter. I think people who drink are stupid, and smoke, and eat McDonalds. But that doesn't stop them from having every right to continue on drinkin', smokin', and gettin' fat.
Legalize drugs. Stop the bloodshed that is happening on our streets between drug gangs. Stop the wholesale slaughter of people in Mexico, and stop the deaths of people who are about as innocent as can be found on planet Earth. This is in the power of the Western World. No one else.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Misogyny, Misandry, And The Blended Penis.
UPDATE: I feel better, especially considering the hate that I have received from the "Men's Rights" movement, that the Southern Poverty Law Center has published a report on the hateful misogyny contained therein. When I wrote and posted this, all I was responding to was The Amazing Atheist. I wasn't even aware that this "movement" existed. Well, I'm sure as hell aware of it now, seeing as the group took a movement all over the comments section of my video. When something like the SPLC is on your side, you feel vindicated. /UPDATE
The amazing atheist recently posted a video attacking the CBS show The Talk, where they laugh over a man getting his penis cut off and thrown into a garbage disposal. First off, let's address the fact that their laughing about it is rather disturbing, especially being a man who is more that slightly attached to his penis.
That said, his response is wrong on one level, and at best misdirected on others.
First, he is flat-out wrong in his association of feminism with this. Men and women, who more than smack of misogyny, equate misandry, of which there is plenty in our society, with feminism. This is resolutely not the case.
I read Jezebel a lot. I also read lots of other blogs written by level-headed, intelligent people. Feministe, Feministing, and a variety of other sites that deal with gender and society. If these are representative of feminism in the world today, then he is wrong, and if he can't take feminism seriously, if he can't take the drive for absolute equality of women seriously, then he is nothing more than another stupid white guy who can't look past his own perspective.
Is there misandry? Of course. There's tons of it. Cosmo magazine is a great example, with its subtly misandristic portrayal of men as only animals in need of sexual placating. But all of the misandry in the world pales, PALES, in comparison to the amount of misogyny out there, especially in regards to the violent nature of the misogyny. If you feel that I need to make a list of examples of misogyny, you need to read more news.
For example, JUST as I was writing this, Kotaku, the gaming blog that is actually the sister website of Jezebel, wrote of a large LAN party celebrating the release of Battlefield 3, a video game. They banned women because their presence causes the men to act up. Put yourself in the shoes of the female gamers who wanted to attend, or those who attended the previous year, thus motivating this absurd regulation. You can appreciate the urge to portray men as chimpanzees.
He uses an example from Forensic Files where a woman killed her husband, but doesn't give us all of the details. The woman shot her husband in the head with a shotgun while he slept, and claimed that he had been beating her. Has he never seen Burning Bed? It's a viable defense. And it's not a viable defense for emotional reasons, there are reams of psychological research data describing the state of mind people can come to be in when living in an abusive household. He uses this as a counter example, but it fails.
He fails to take his OWN words into consideration when saying that women are treated differently. He talks about how every show is the husband killing the wife, and I watch the same shows, it's true, and then a episode is of the wife killing the husband. Doesn't that make any intelligent person think that, if all other cases are one way, and this one is another way, that there might be something different about it?
Especially considering that the episodes of that very show that involve women, which I've seen and I'm sure so as he, where the women's motivations are black as pitch, the women never do what he described. They poison, which is very popular, or they hire someone else.
Women do not physically abuse men. Even with recent research showing that female on male abuse is higher than originally thought, it is still a tiny fraction of the abuse of male on female.
He also mentions a case in Russia that may or may not be true of a woman who beat up a man who was trying to rob her store, cuffed him, and kept him as a sex slave for three days. He talks about the reaction to her behavior, with people creating her a Facebook fan page. Well, I have another case that is definitely true. The Russian “Black Widow.” A woman who was charged with drugging and raping ten men in 2009. I find the reaction of the men interesting. If this had been a man, the response from women would have been universal, “That is horrible. I can't imagine being in her shoes.”
But instead, the response from men was frequently “Why can't I find women like that?!” One of the men even refused to press charges because he liked it and only wished he hadn't been drugged. But even here, there were many obviously misadristic women nearly calling for the beatification of the Black Widow. Their words dripped with hatred. This is not feminism. Not in the very slightest. You would never hear these words from actual feminists like those on Jezebel. But EVEN THEN, the situation is not equal.
Misandry and misogyny are different. Absolutely. They are not different because one is right and the other wrong. They are both equally wrong. But they are different in the behaviors caused by them. The Amazing Atheist fails to notice that men raping women happens all of the time, but women raping men makes international news because it is so very rare.
That is not to say that female-male rape doesn't exist. Truly, women can be sexually aggressive as is found in statistics of sexual coercion between lesbians. But my likelihood of being raped by a woman, in ANY setting, is about as low as winning the lottery. My chances of being raped by another man, on the other hand, are much higher. This is probably the root of misandristic threads in gay culture and the fact that in your average gay club, every man in the building is watching their drink like a hawk.
The Amazing Atheist and the women on The Talk talk about cutting off the penis as identical to the breasts and clitoris. No. Wrong again. As my partner Danielle pointed out very succinctly, the penis can be a weapon, and it is a weapon that is widely used by millions of men every year when they rape. Women simply do not have a counterpart to the penis.
Even the very video to which the Amazing Atheist linked stands as a testament to misogyny, and this is again something that he doesn't discuss. It was posted by some absurd “Manhood Academy,” which references “getting your balls back.” Because in this blatantly, horribly sexist and misogynistic world, masculinity is something that women can take away, because masculinity exists only vis a vis women.
If a man is attacking you for being a bad person, even if you aren't, you call that person an asshole. Nothing else. He's just an asshole. But if women do it, you're being stripped of your masculinity. Because here, masculinity is a reciprocal construct that exists to put women in their place. If women are not in their place, masculinity has been “stripped.” Masculinity is directly associated with sex.
That “Manhood Academy's” website lists this, and I quote”Manhood Academy is the first worldwide male educational center specifically designed to train men like you in social competence. And best of all—our content is ABSOLUTELY FREE. Whether it's going on your first date, saving a troubled relationship, addressing your wife's 'bitch' behavior, making new friends, or standing up for yourself in this emasculating feminist environment, our goal is to teach you how to conduct satisfying social interactions.”
Notice how in their list of things that they can help you do, of the five items that emasculate you, four are directly associated with women. Funny how that is. That is because in this view, women are not people. They are “women.” Something that is somehow fundamentally different and separate from men.
The content of the video is just that, but you cannot avoid recognizing that the people who saw fit to post this video online are just as bad as those they attack.
So why are people not getting up in arms, like the Amazing Atheist demands? Because women doing this is so damned rare. Rape of men is not a pestilence on society. Men might fear mugging, but women on the street fear abduction, rape, murder, AND mugging. It is a predatory world out there, and it is just plain stupid to argue otherwise. How many serial killers killed men? How often do women form gun-toting gangs? How often do women form small armies that are paid with the rape and pillage of wherever their leader sends them? Do you have any examples? I do not. I do have examples of the men doing it, like when the Red Army raped every German woman they came across during the fall of Berlin. Again, you can appreciate the urge to portray men as chimpanzees.
If I met any misandristic women, I would just as soon run for the hills from their toxic nonsense as I would from misogynistic men. They are equally large assholes in a purely intellectual sense. But something tells me that those same women would not go off and rape, beat, and molest. The men do. I do not feel threatened by misandry, but women do and should feel threatened by misogyny.
It's not that men don't have the right to get up in arms, it's that they have no reason. Sexism doesn't affect them systemically. Men, for all intents and purposes, rule the world. As women reach higher positions of power in the future, this will likely need addressing, and I may become to feel threatened by misandry, but it doesn't today.
Women and those damned angry feminists get up in arms precisely because the pissed off men who follow stupid shit like Manhood Academy are so ready to put women back into their “place.” The definition of manhood for these people is having women under control. Religion wants them back in the kitchen. Society wants them sexualized and put up for decoration.
Angry men the world over want those bitches down. Look at the scummy social underbelly of France that has been revealed with the Strauss-Kahn case in New York. Or the governmental representatives in Australia who keep meowing at female representatives. This is a seething, toxic undercurrent to our social zeitgeist. And because of that, misogyny and misandry are, and will remain for the perceivable future, different. Logically identical, but practically very, very, terribly, violently different.
UPDATE: Because of the direction that the comments on this site and YouTube have taken, I want to focus on a good example of what shows up on real feminist websites. Misandry is not feminism. Real, level-headed feminists write about gender in general, and freedom, and apple pie, and the American way, and all that good stuff!
Once Again, Men Can Be Raped Too (Jezebel.com)
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Apple Blows The Doors Off Earnings
Apple's profit just continues to rise, and I see it as a grand endorsement of what it means to operate a company based on a philosophy. Obviously, Apple's philosophy has mutated over the years. They started as a company that was so open, they included circuitry maps in their first computers. Today, they are a company almost defined by its famous secrecy and security measures.
I don't think that the security measures are necessary. Even if companies knew precisely what Apple was doing, they would still fail to copy it. They would fail because it is not the ideas that are valuable, it is Apple itself. It is the machine and the philosophy that produce the ideas.
For example, look at the iPhone. Apple was KGB-like secretive about its production, but why? After it was released, the rest of the market did... nothing. Nokia did not and has not responded. It took Google years to match Apple's quality and conception. It was the idea, it was the company.
Apple doesn't need lawsuits. They don't need secrecy. I think that it is painfully obvious that other companies, being run by idiots who have no philosophy, wouldn't know what to do with the information even if Apple made daily reports as to precisely what was happening behind the brushed aluminum curtain.
A good counter-example is Microsoft. Microsoft is one of the two software giants in the tech world, and they have been floundering badly in recent years. I argue that it is because their philosophy, which was tacit, has become depricated. Apple has an explicit philosophy that is discussed at length by Steve Jobs whenever he is given a chance. He wants things to be beautiful and magical. They must do what they do and do it perfectly. It's one of the reasons why Apple's products sometimes have features missing. If they didn't integrate perfectly, they were left on the cutting room floor.
That tacit philosophy that I mentioned at Microsoft, as opposed to Apple's explicit one, was a philosophy of geekiness. They wanted to take what the geeks had and give it to the entire world. And that worked wonders. The 1990's was, in my mind, the golden age of geekdom.
In 1995, we saw the release of Windows 95, which was really the culmination of Microsoft's philosophy. It was still very DOS-y, and allowed the geeks to fuck around to their hearts' content, but was also user-friendly. If you clicked on something, it ran.
But from that point forward, Microsoft's philosophy became ever-more outdated. Geek stuff got pushed further into the background. It stopped being about numbers and more about refinement and experience. It became Apple's time with the release of the iMac.
Apple has nothing to worry about. Microsoft is now trying to copy the gross aspects of Apple, just as other companies are doing, but without the core philosophy, they are failing and will continue to fail.
I wish that I could like Apple. I wish that I could buy their stuff. But I just can't get on board, and I hate other companies for failing to do what Apple does. I WANT what Apple has, but I refuse to be caged. I refuse to buy into a closed ecosystem.
I don't think that the security measures are necessary. Even if companies knew precisely what Apple was doing, they would still fail to copy it. They would fail because it is not the ideas that are valuable, it is Apple itself. It is the machine and the philosophy that produce the ideas.
For example, look at the iPhone. Apple was KGB-like secretive about its production, but why? After it was released, the rest of the market did... nothing. Nokia did not and has not responded. It took Google years to match Apple's quality and conception. It was the idea, it was the company.
Apple doesn't need lawsuits. They don't need secrecy. I think that it is painfully obvious that other companies, being run by idiots who have no philosophy, wouldn't know what to do with the information even if Apple made daily reports as to precisely what was happening behind the brushed aluminum curtain.
A good counter-example is Microsoft. Microsoft is one of the two software giants in the tech world, and they have been floundering badly in recent years. I argue that it is because their philosophy, which was tacit, has become depricated. Apple has an explicit philosophy that is discussed at length by Steve Jobs whenever he is given a chance. He wants things to be beautiful and magical. They must do what they do and do it perfectly. It's one of the reasons why Apple's products sometimes have features missing. If they didn't integrate perfectly, they were left on the cutting room floor.
That tacit philosophy that I mentioned at Microsoft, as opposed to Apple's explicit one, was a philosophy of geekiness. They wanted to take what the geeks had and give it to the entire world. And that worked wonders. The 1990's was, in my mind, the golden age of geekdom.
In 1995, we saw the release of Windows 95, which was really the culmination of Microsoft's philosophy. It was still very DOS-y, and allowed the geeks to fuck around to their hearts' content, but was also user-friendly. If you clicked on something, it ran.
But from that point forward, Microsoft's philosophy became ever-more outdated. Geek stuff got pushed further into the background. It stopped being about numbers and more about refinement and experience. It became Apple's time with the release of the iMac.
Apple has nothing to worry about. Microsoft is now trying to copy the gross aspects of Apple, just as other companies are doing, but without the core philosophy, they are failing and will continue to fail.
I wish that I could like Apple. I wish that I could buy their stuff. But I just can't get on board, and I hate other companies for failing to do what Apple does. I WANT what Apple has, but I refuse to be caged. I refuse to buy into a closed ecosystem.
Morals Don't Exist
Morals don't exist
I hate morals. They don't exist.
How do I know that they don't exist? Point to one.
If you do think they exist, how do they exist? If morals are objective, such as from God, why should we listen to God? Why is what he says right?
I hate morals because there are no answers to these questions. Philosophers have tried for thousands of years and have failed every time. The best we have is utilitarianism, and even that is riddled with problems.
Don't even get me started on Mere Christianity. Christian apologists love to attack the simplistic philosophy of Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, but then hold up their own facile piece of philosophical garbage as something special. I won't go into a blow-by-blow deconstruction of it here, but as I've said before, if you think that it holds up, you really need to read more books.
The reason why I hate morality the most is precisely because it's so nebulous.
What does it mean? Right and wrong? What do those mean?
Since all words must come from something external, when I describe something as morally right or wrong, what do I mean.
I argue that, especially in religious usage, morally wrong means that elicits a disgust response. Even a mild one.
We can use the word to elicit disgust responses from stimuli that would have never done so if we hadn't relied on such a poorly defined concept. We can use words with such a massive amount of wiggle room, that we can apply them to situations and then use the word to manipulate other people to have similar responses.
Obviously, we do have some fundamental issues that seem inborn. So in that sense, an inner sense of right and wrong does exist. Cross-cultural studies showing similar determinations about hypothetical situations proves this, but that is an incredibly primal response. It has to be if it's shared by all people.
These primal responses are notoriously difficult to explain or tie down with words because the sensations in all likelihood predate the formation of language. We can safely recognize these sensations, but when applying words to them that have a whole bevy of subtle connotations, we have to be careful. Otherwise, we can use language to manipulate these deep feelings and totally fuck with our, and other people's, worlds.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
RIM's Bad Strategy
There is an article over at The New York Times discussing how RIM might find salvation in the smartphone market by cozying up with carriers. Basically, the carriers are worried about Google and Apple having so much control over the cell industry and they want a counterbalance.
Unfortunately, doubling down with the carriers is the worst idea. RIM has been cozier and better served by the carriers than any other company in the past decade, which is precisely why they're in the shitter.
The carriers are lazy. They have an oligopoly in the United States and only really care about squeezing as much money from customers as possible. They are expanding their networks more slowly than their European or Asian counterparts, they're services are slower, and they cost more. What the carriers are concerned about, if Apple and Google have their way, is that they will lose the ability to squeeze money from customers when they become what's known in industry-speak as a dumb pipe. Basically, the company is nothing but the channel through which services run.
This is actually an enormously profitable place to be, but it's not romantic and it's very hard to be a rip-off, which is what the cell companies want to be. As such, the cell companies want the status quo to change as little as possible. RIM was attached to these corpses more tightly than any other company. If your company is tied to another company that wants to keep the status quo, there is no motivation to change and innovate. This state of affairs was as much responsible for RIM's current state as any internal problems the company might be having.
It was also directly responsible for a company like Apple, being lead by a legendary boardroom bully, being able to shove its way in and completely upset the old business model.
Unfortunately, doubling down with the carriers is the worst idea. RIM has been cozier and better served by the carriers than any other company in the past decade, which is precisely why they're in the shitter.
The carriers are lazy. They have an oligopoly in the United States and only really care about squeezing as much money from customers as possible. They are expanding their networks more slowly than their European or Asian counterparts, they're services are slower, and they cost more. What the carriers are concerned about, if Apple and Google have their way, is that they will lose the ability to squeeze money from customers when they become what's known in industry-speak as a dumb pipe. Basically, the company is nothing but the channel through which services run.
This is actually an enormously profitable place to be, but it's not romantic and it's very hard to be a rip-off, which is what the cell companies want to be. As such, the cell companies want the status quo to change as little as possible. RIM was attached to these corpses more tightly than any other company. If your company is tied to another company that wants to keep the status quo, there is no motivation to change and innovate. This state of affairs was as much responsible for RIM's current state as any internal problems the company might be having.
It was also directly responsible for a company like Apple, being lead by a legendary boardroom bully, being able to shove its way in and completely upset the old business model.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Reading Rainbow Flashmob
Levar Burton is organizing a Reading Rainbow Flashmob, in an attempt to raise awareness of our illiterate children.
Maybe I shouldn't say that our children are illiterate, certainly they're not. Our kids today are smarter and more capable of multiple, complex tasks than generations previously. Combined with websites, texting, chat, and school, kids today probably read more words per day than any other demographic.
The problem is that kids aren't reading books, and as this study shows, reading stories expands one's sense of self. It makes a person more than they were before! By incorporating different narratives and ideas, we are able to reprogram ourselves. We can make ourselves better.
With an expanded sense of self, nationality and group identity becomes less important. Just imagine if White Supremacists read more books. Maybe they'd stop thinking in ridiculous in-group/out-group terms like the pack of chimps that they are.
But instead of encouraging and expressing reasons to read, we're trying to convince kids to simply know how to read. In our moronic quest to be "better" than Eastern schools, or to cater to the head-aching stupidity that is No Child Left Behind, we're neglecting to explain WHY to our children.
Maybe I shouldn't say that our children are illiterate, certainly they're not. Our kids today are smarter and more capable of multiple, complex tasks than generations previously. Combined with websites, texting, chat, and school, kids today probably read more words per day than any other demographic.
The problem is that kids aren't reading books, and as this study shows, reading stories expands one's sense of self. It makes a person more than they were before! By incorporating different narratives and ideas, we are able to reprogram ourselves. We can make ourselves better.
With an expanded sense of self, nationality and group identity becomes less important. Just imagine if White Supremacists read more books. Maybe they'd stop thinking in ridiculous in-group/out-group terms like the pack of chimps that they are.
But instead of encouraging and expressing reasons to read, we're trying to convince kids to simply know how to read. In our moronic quest to be "better" than Eastern schools, or to cater to the head-aching stupidity that is No Child Left Behind, we're neglecting to explain WHY to our children.
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