Showing posts with label David Gelernter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Gelernter. Show all posts

Friday, June 19, 2009

JP Rangaswami, Utterly Confused Of Calcutta (2)


JP Rangaswami, Utterly Confused Of Calcutta

I talked about my round one investors pulling out in February. Okay, it is not as bad as I make it sound. There is a possibility all of them might come back by the end of summer. Keeping fingers crossed.

JP is also the guy who introduced me to David, virtually speaking: David Gelernter: Manifesto. It was a mind blowing experience to me.
  • Facebook and the Enterprise: Part 6: Musing about Role-driven Induction
  • Facebook and the Enterprise: Part 7: Communities Facebook is not a “social networking” site. It is a community of communities. Now this is potentially of immense value in an enterprise
  • Facebook and Bloomberg how “addictive” communications can made significant business impact
  • musing about facebook and enfranchisement The pressure group, all 14,000 of them, became visible and vocal. Via Facebook. And Cadbury’s listened.
  • Continuing to muse about Facebook and enfranchisement a small proportion of the populace are sufficiently risk-hungry, open-minded, bored, curious or just plain nosy enough to get involved in anything and everything.....I’ve had the privilege of being able to watch “Enterprise 2.0″, as it now gets called, experimented with, made a fad off, written off, subverted, faced off to and rounded up by lynch mobs a few times now...... After Facebook entered the enterprise scene, everything changed. ...... The organisation structures and management styles and financial processes and HR policies were all descended from the Assembly Line Ape. And the knowledge worker didn’t fit that evolutionary process. ........ these marauding smart mobs made it into the enterprise. Much worse, they’ve found allies inside the enterprise walls. Even worse than that, they’ve found allies amongst their customers and their partners and their supply chains. ........ it’s turned up in a nonhierarchical beyond-the-firewall way, and this scares many people. ........ The 21st century Trades Union movement for knowledge workers. ........ No longer held hostage by a single trade or profession or company, switching roles between employee and partner and customer. ........ In the meantime, do tell me why I’m wrong, why this post is so much horseshit, why you disagree.
  • Social software is political science in executable form social software is a much larger category than things like groupware or online communities..... de-coupling groups in space and time ..... the internet has ushered in a host of new social patterns, from the mailing list to the chat room to the weblog. ........ A group of people interacting with one another will exhibit behaviors that cannot be predicted by examining the individuals in isolation
  • Maybe it’s because I’m a Calcuttan….. In its simplest sense, a collaborative act is a bit like making a baby. It takes two people with somewhat different characteristics and abilities to produce one. ......... most examples of social software tended to fail in the past, because there was more effort expended on creating and maintaining the complex barriers and walls that exemplified the guts and innards of the institution.
  • Fire And Rain and Sholay I’m one of those soppy sentimental guys who loves the “soft” rock that oozed out of the late Sixties into the Seventies, part folk-rock part acoustic-ish harder stuff......... [Isn't it nice when you get to that age when your tastes are genuinely your own?] ......... They’re re-making Sholay. ...... Sholay is the highest-grossing Bollywood film ever, and one of the few (maybe 50) that I’ve actually seen. ....... I can remember actually queueing in the rain for cinema tickets only once in my life (with Gary Martin, in Calcutta). The film I was queueing for? Sholay…. translated as Fire. In the Rain. Fire And Rain.
  • No, but I think my secretary does This is what some captain of industry is meant to have said when asked if he used Facebook. ..... I’ve heard this precise phrase twice before. The first time, it was in the mid 1980s and the question was about PCs. The next time around, it was in the early 1990s and the question was about e-mail.
  • Thinking about Citizendium and Wikipedia: Part 1 I must be Confused...... Experts can be bought, often just for the price of a little ego-stroking. Experts don’t like admitting they’re wrong. The worst kind of groupthink is when a bunch of experts get together. Experts have more to lose, like their status. Which is why they fight so hard to retain it.
  • The Maker State: From self-buttering toasters to social software in the enterprise the madness of hiring intelligent people and then carefully draining every last drop of intelligence from them
  • Little orphan albums My father’s lifetime was contained in one job. I will probably have seven. My children will probably have seven —- but in parallel, not like my sequential efforts. ........... In my father’s time a musician belonged to one band. In my lifetime musicians belonged to seven. My children will see musicians belonging to seven bands at the same time.
  • Facebook and the Enterprise: Part 8: Musing about signals the “recipes” for the best companies start with “First get good people”. ....... People use all kinds of signals to communicate. From keeping doors open to shutting them. From answering e-mails promptly and diligently, all the way to “deleting them unread”. From being early for a meeting to not turning up. From giving their attention to not giving their attention. From listening to not-listening. ............ There’s something non-threatening, something non-invasive about the way we can signal to people using social software.
  • Musing about 21st century irritations and concerns and the Because Effect
  • A Saturday stroll musing about advertising
  • Continuing to muse about advertising
  • Musing about open access publishing and economics-of-abundance and DRM by looking up a word or phrase first in Wikipedia, I seem to be able to establish “baseline” information about the topic quickly and cheaply ......... Almost 3000 journals already use the new system: instead of charging people for access to journals, they charge researchers to publish in them. ....... The articles are then made available for free online ....... possibilities of using virtual worlds as means to a very specific end, that of empowering disenfranchised people.
  • They don’t all use the same physics What’s possible in one virtual world may not be possible in another - unlike the real world, they don’t all use the same physics.
  • London calling: Musing about crowdsourcing a case where the crowd will always beat the computer, where it was actually quite difficult to write a program to compile the list.
  • A bug’s life It’s been a very long time since I wrote any code at all.
  • None of the above
  • Just pick one: Musing about toothpaste in Calcutta and its effect on enterprise information For the first twenty-three years of my life, I’d never known a home other than Calcutta. I’d visited other cities, sure, but never actually lived anywhere else. And I’d never left the country. .......... The culture shock I experienced wasn’t big and immediate and in-your-face, it felt more like a disjointed series of very small events over a long time. ........ One place I felt distinctly uncomfortable was the supermarket. I could not conceive of a whole aisle containing things to do with something like dental care. ........... the Facebook series (now on Part 9), the Wikipedia series (now on Part 2) and the Opensource series (as yet unpublished).
  • Pottering about on copyright and Calcutta “We had no clue that we had to seek permission from the author,” Santanu Biswas, secretary of FD Block Puja Committee of Salt Lake, the community group which designed and paid for artists to make the tent. ...... [Mr Biswas, there will always be a house for you wherever I live.]
  • Seeing is believing: macro microscope photographs of snow crystals Some of us are passionate about our faith and our beliefs. Some of us are passionate about science and things scientific. Some of us are passionate about both. (I belong to this category). ..... these photographs. ....... I’ve had a childlike interest in science all my life, and I guess I’ve striven to have a childlike faith as well. ........ “taken aback” is too weak;”fascinated” does not do it justice. “Entranced” is not enough. Neither is “spellbound”. Even the vernacular “gobsmacked” is woefully inadequate.
  • Musing about “laziness” Some people get called lazy because you see them lounging around at work, chatting to people, occasionally even smiling. Dare I mention it, even laughing out loud. Some of these “lazy” people get a lot of “work” done, if you measure work in outcomes rather than in perceived effort. .............. many times the (exclusive) troubleshooters are the ones that cause the problem in the first place, be it a hard-coded value, duplication of code or a large complex method only they can understand.
  • The Becuase Effect (sic)
  • On toilet paper and cultural differences I used to think I’ve been a foreigner all my life. My father was born in Calcutta. So was I. But we “came” from the south of India, we were Tamils ........... Neither Calcutta, nor its Calcuttans, made me feel a foreigner; I made myself feel that way. .......... A foreigner at home. A foreigner away. A foreigner everywhere. ......... when I started seeing different cultures. I began to feel comfortable everywhere. ....... visit over 50 countries, and felt at home in all of them. ...... I was a native. Everywhere. ...... a native of Calcutta, of Liverpool, of London, of Dublin, and of Windsor: the five places I’ve lived in. ......... Years ago, when I used to market and sell offshore software services, I tended to open sales pitches with a simple cultural point. I said “The English and the Indian cultures can sometimes be seen to be separated by something as thin as toilet paper. The Indians think the English are dirty, because they use toilet paper .............. this post
  • Facebook and the Enterprise: Part 9a: Meandering around with ecosystems Where I work, we’ve been going through the laborious process of bringing together our network, process, product and IT skills into one coherent “converged” unit. ....... every enterprise is a community ....... The entire opensource movement is an example of the value generated by open ecosystems. ...... When I started working in software, everything was proprietary and siloed. Way back in 1980, there was already a well-established offshore software industry. But it wasn’t much use. .......... [By the way, ten years ago, who would have believed that the day would come when Apple would be worth more than IBM? Other than Steve, of course :-). ......... the firewall was designed to form a perimeter around an enterprise, a thou-shalt-not-pass barrier with intensive checks ....... This will change. This must change. The overlapping communities model that is emerging requires it to change. ........... People will belong to multiple communities, those multiple communities will overlap in many and varied ways. Innovation will blossom at the edges of the communities, as professions collide, as the distinctions between some of the professions continue to blur. ........... The concept of the firewall will continue, but perhaps it will become more personal. Like identity. Like authentication and permissioning. ........ In addition to being nourished by information, the ecosystem thrives on an alternate source of energy. The interactions between the people. ....... a set of rights as well as duties. Liberty, not licence.
  • Stuff I’m reading, part 142857 0.142857 (recurring) is the decimal representation of 1/7 .... 2/7 is 0.285714, 3/7 is 0.428571, and so on. The same six digits, gently moving around. Circulating. ...... 14 plus 28 plus 57 equals 99. 142 plus 857 equals 999. 1 plus 4 plus 2 etc etc equals 9
  • Musing about music and politics Gracenote maps
  • Musing about openness and security “most murders are committed by people known by the victim, so it’s best not to know anyone” ....... First we take living things and make abject skeletons out of them. Then we carefully build cupboards around the newly formed skeletons. And then we wonder why we have skeletons in cupboards.
  • But Miss, they’re not listening to me I learn from the behaviour of “fresh” graduates. In fact I learn quite a bit from observing what babies do. All this does not stop me from learning in other, more traditional, ways. ..... switch from hierarchical to networked ...... in a networked society, everyone is a peer
  • Learning from my children, part 97 we are going to see Generation M using things like Facebook creatively and differently, using the functionality in ways we do not expect. More importantly, using the functionality in ways that may not have been designed for, yet remain possible.
  • I’m a Believer in the 21st century, product-driven advertising is fundamentally flawed
  • Musing about Kurt Vonnegut and writing software A Man Without A Country
  • Meandering around as a result of strange Facebook status messages Facebook is a multidimensional conversation
  • More musings about what makes Facebook different “organic gardening”, this concept of having shared interests beyond work, but at work ....... there is a critical link between relationships and privacy
  • Chewing over jhal moori and chicken tikka masala When I came to the UK in 1980, there were many things I had to get used to, and many things I got wrong ...... the scariest thing I had to overcome, in the context of culture shock, was this: getting used to Western cuisine ........ What I hadn’t been prepared for was the way people here cooked Indian cuisine. That hurt. It really hurt. ........ I was expected to order the “curry” on the menu. Which meant saying a little prayer and then manfully working through meat with apples and raisins, with a bit of stale curry powder thrown in, and if you were lucky, a large dollop of turmeric for colouring (which had the salutary effect of killing all other tastes for a short while). ................... even good Nepali fare.
  • Cricket: The Sound and Numbers Game VVS Laxman scored his 112 all in ones and fours. .... 111/1, 222/2, 333/3, 444/4, 555/5. ....... For those of you who don’t follow cricket, all I can say is it’s never too late.
  • Enterprise Blue Zero Using any device, anytime, anywhere, with whatever modality of communications best suits purpose. Collaboratively filtered, rated and ranked. Learning and teaching.
Jobsworth


Larry Ellison
Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures
Bad Time To Start A Company?
The Big Money Is Not In Blogging
New York City: Transformed Forever?
Reimagining The Office
David Gelernter: Manifesto
The United States Of Entrepreneurs
Spamming Om Malik
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
That StartUp Mentality (2)
That StartUp Mentality





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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures


Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase


Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures young companies with truly awesome potential ...... finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. We'll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven't thought of yet. ........ times are tough, but great ideas come when they will ...... the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the "next big thing," and we'll be working hard to find them ...... If you think you have the next big idea
http://jyoticonnect.googlepages.com
Google Ventures seeks to discover and grow great companies - we believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. ....... We invest anywhere from seed to mezzanine stage and embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the garage to global relevance. ..... we're out to build great companies, period.
http://jyoticonnect.googlepages.com
First and foremost, we're looking for entrepreneurs who are tackling problems in creative and innovative ways. ..... amounts ranging from seed funding to tens of millions of dollars
Distributed Search
Wolfram Apha Is Cool
Google Falling Behind Twitter?
Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android
Hitting Number 4 For Google Search Results on Cupcake Android
Donut Android: Windows 95, Android 2009?
Cupcake Android Delay Reason: Donut Android
Bad Time To Start A Company?
Google Is Working On Search
Ggoats
New York City: Transformed Forever?
Reimagining The Office
Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity
David Gelernter: Manifesto
Stephen Hawking Has Taken Sick
The United States Of Entrepreneurs
Spamming Om Malik
My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
That StartUp Mentality (2)
That StartUp Mentality
Five Years Of Gmail: What Would Gsus Do?
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
NY Tech MeetUp Mailing List Web 5.0 Controversy
Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb
Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition
Craig Silverstein











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Monday, May 18, 2009

Bad Time To Start A Company?


The economy is in a bad shape. Banks are not lending like they used to. Investors are cranky. Venture capitalists are nervous. The unemployment rate is high and going higher. If you have a tech startup in mind, is this a time to lay low? Or is this precisely the time to barge forth?

I am going to argue now rather than two years earlier is the right time to embark on a truly ambitious company. Microsoft got launched during the stagflation of the late 70s, as did Apple, and Oracle. Companies launched during the 30s went on to define an era. This is good time. All you need is fire in your belly. Only don't let angels and investors blackmail you.

The Big Money Is Not In Blogging
Cisco's Big Dreams: A Clash Of Titans?
What If The Plateau Lasts Nine Months?
Mideast Peace: Tech Industry Style
Job Hunting And 2.0
Brands Will Still Matter
New York City: Transformed Forever?
Reimagining The Office
Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity
Peter Thiel: Primitive Mind In The Tech Sector
David Gelernter: Manifesto

The United States Of Entrepreneurs
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
That StartUp Mentality (2)
That StartUp Mentality



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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

What If The Plateau Lasts Nine Months?

.

Jumping from the Kawarau Bridge in Queenstown,...Image via Wikipedia


That Plateau Feeling
Job Hunting And 2.0
New York City: Transformed Forever?
Reimagining The Office
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity
David Gelernter: Manifesto
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
Sites That Pay You To Blog

That Plateau Feeling?

I blogged about it: That Plateau Feeling. But have we really hit the plateau phase? Or are we still in the bungee jump phase? It is possible for the financial markets to hit the plateau phase, and for the job markets to still be in the bungee jump phase. Usually the financial sector recovers first.

Budget

Cut expenses mercilessly. This is for personal and family budgets.

Work

Even if it is a much lower paying job. Can't eat into savings too much, and not forever.

Reinvent

We live in a day and age when people will have several careers, not jobs but careers, over a lifetime. Reinvent yourself.

Focus On Personal Growth: Prepare For Takeoff

There is the bungee jump phase. That, by definition, can not last forever even if it lasts longer than anticipated. Then there in the plateau phase. Then there is the takeoff phase. The plateau phase is the time to prepare for the takeoff phase.

The Best Things In Life Are Free



Really. Life slowing down is not all bad news. In many ways it is good news. A slower life is time to discover people, relationships, hobbies. It is time to catch up on books you always wanted to read. It is time to hone on skills that you think you will need once it is time to takeoff.

This perhaps is good time to smell the roses.

That 90-10 Rule

If 10% of the people are unemployed, 90% are still working. But then there are pockets of 22% unemployment rates. And that is not even taking into account the chronic unemployment in the inner cities, and other underserved areas. That is not taking into account the permanent poverty in much of the world.

That Plateau Feeling?

What if America and the world hit a new plateau of lower paying jobs across the board? That would not be a happy plateau. Personally I don't think that is where we are headed. But then I am counting on the political leadership to deliver. (30 Points Down In The Polls) The financial markets will be regulated, and made sane. This economy will be restructured.

Time To Make Big Fortunes

The most trailblazing of companies have been founded in the most depressing of times. This time that is going to be extra true.

Globoeconomics: Name Of The Game
A Single Global Currency, A Global New Deal, A Global Economic Council
A Brighter Future Ahead
Needed: A New Global Financial Architecture
Stimulus: Make It A Trillion
Stimulus: Size Matters
Global Finance, Global Terrorism, Global Warming
'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where --' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.



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Sunday, May 10, 2009

Brands Will Still Matter


I am as excited about the social web as anyone. But I think sometimes we draw off the mark conclusions as to what the social web is going to do to various market traditions. The market is the invisible hand. It is like that magnetic force that so fascinated child Einstein. The web does not displace the invisible hand, or many of its fundamentals. If anything, the web makes it even more invisible - if that is possible - and more handy. The web makes it more invisible by making possible transparencies that could not have been imagined before. JP is in London - or at least most of the time when he is not jet set - and when he goes for a cup of tea, I get to know like I were sitting next to him. That is amazing transparency, if you think about it.

Brands will still matter, but just like the invisible hand will become even more invisible, brands will become much more alive. The staying power of brands that deserve greater staying power will be enhanced. Brand names that deserve to sink will sink and fast. It will become less possible to prop up brand names through dishonest marketing techniques. In a world thick with the social web, sizzle and buzz will go to those who will deserve sizzle and buzz. The power will shift much more to the individual, and is that a bad thing? Is that not what we wanted all along? But it will not be any one individual. It will be individuals across the board. It will be the masses come alive. But not your faceless masses of demographic research or focus groups. It will be masses of people interacting with close and not so close friends.



A great gift of the social web will be the possibility of many, many niche brands. For someone like me who was born in one country - India - and grew up in another - Nepal - and has been in a third 10,000 miles away for over a decade now - America - the web is the only place where someone can see me whole. Is that amazing or is that amazing?

Facebook Faceoff Firefox
Stand Up Comedy: Thinking On Your Feet: 2.0
Is Reading Socializing?
New York City: Transformed Forever?
Reimagining The Office
Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?
Define Social Media
The Stream, The Lifestream, The Mindstream
David Gelernter: Manifesto
Blogging: Monkey Business?
Content Is Queen
Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter
Blogging = Learning + Teaching + Churning + Entertaining
The United States Of Entrepreneurs
My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing
Blogging Several Times A Day
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World



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Sunday, May 03, 2009

Is Reading Socializing?


Reimagining The Office
Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity
Define Social Media
Peter Thiel: Primitive Mind In The Tech Sector
The Stream, The Lifestream, The Mindstream
David Gelernter: Manifesto
Blogging: Monkey Business?
Content Is Queen
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing

Strictly speaking, not. Reading is not socializing. Status updates are not the same as saying hello in person. 2.0 socializing is make-do.



One consistent theme at this blog has been that the human is at the center of computing. Face time not only matters, but is central to the equation. But when I say face time, I don't mean just the caricature of it. As in, don't look at the screen, look at me. I mean group dynamics, I mean the larger human affairs, I mean staying in tune with the big political developments of the day.

But where 2.0 is indispensable is that although 5.0 is key and central, that 5.0 can not stand alone. (Web 5.0: Face Time) You need a rich 2.0 environment to give that 5.0 the best possible shape.




Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal
Pakistan Is Where The Fight Is, The Fight Is Not Military
Barack's 100 Days:Cool In The Face Of Big Challenges
Genocide/Ethnic Cleansing Of Sri Lanka Tamils



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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Stream, The Lifestream, The Mindstream


Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden.
My words echo

Thus, in your mind.


T. S. Eliot,
The Four Quartets



I have been thinking about David's manifesto, (David Gelernter: Manifesto) and some of my recent online socializing, and some of my readings. I read this article below online only a few days before I read David's manifesto. The manifesto talks of the lifestream concept. This article does not spell out the word, but I think it talks of the mindstream concept. It can be thought of as futuristic.
The Harvard Crimson :: Opinion :: My Disconnected Life .... Over the past several years, I’ve lost my cell phone more times than I care to admit. My friends consider me—endearingly, I hope—a clumsy, irresponsible fool. They shake their heads when I admit that voicemails have gone unheard .... To make matters worse, I am also notoriously bad with e-mails. Days can go by as I “forget” to check my mail; if my laptop’s charger isn’t nearby, that’s often reason enough to take a stroll instead of peruse my inbox. ...... Irresponsibility has allowed me to disconnect, and I am all the more happy for it. ...... It’s difficult to imagine life at Harvard without the Internet, cell phones, e-mail, instant messengers, and every other connectivity device. The proliferation of Blackberrys, Treos, and most recently, Moto Qs, have made our umbilical cords wireless, feeding off our addiction to mother e-mail. But life before these blessed, though burdensome, conveniences did exist. Without daily doses of Dems-talk, Throp-talk, Newstalk, and innumerable other e-lists, it feels as though we would never be informed of campus’ most important (and, alas, unimportant) debates. Procrastination would become more creative, and we would certainly be ignorant of the uncouthly candor that is brought about by impersonal conversation. ...... Without class e-mail lists, we would actually have to attend lecture to find out when our next assignment was due. Consulting teaching fellows about a troublesome paper would require face-to-face interaction in office hours, rather than the mundane chore of firing off an e-mail. Perhaps even classes would be fairer as compiling 40-page study guides that offer delinquent students the opportunity to sneak by with a B-plus would be much more challenging to coordinate. Keystroke, click, send—the Harvard soundtrack. ....... But what a liberating relief to be unreachable for a while. Friends often joke about the strange sensation that overtakes them when they suddenly drop their cell phone in the river or leave it stranded in a bar bathroom; just like that, they become a ghost for a day before reconnecting at T-Mobile. For those few pre-millennium hours, the world is a little less imposing. For a second, we are relieved of the obligation to be accounted for at every moment, to be responsive to everyone.......... It is during these hours that I realize—all too often, in my case—that it can be nice to take refuge in my own solitude. Uninterrupted by the pressure of constant phone-checking or e-mailing, we are forced to breathe and think and rest. As it stands, it seems unnatural to want to be out of the loop for a bit; people seem unnerved if I explain that I went “missing” for a while because my phone was dead. From what precisely I was missing is unclear; I was enjoying myself by myself. ......... we under-appreciate the virtue of taking time for ourselves. We no longer get away without a look of concern if we aren’t sitting in Lamont with our laptops, refreshing our inboxes, texting our friends, answering our phones, or seeming to care that—for a minute—we were walking around thinking alone. ......... It has become so expected to be in touch and online that sometimes it seems the only reasonable explanation for a prolonged disconnect is a little bit of irresponsibility. ........ I just want to be alone for a while.
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1643658620

David Gelernter: Manifesto
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Jeff Jarvis: Bold Restructuring
Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb
Silicon City
Entrepreneurs: Spikes
Web 5.0: Face Time
Search: Much Is Lacking
A Web 3.0 Manifesto
Dell, HP, Apple
The Next Search Engine
Memo To Bill Gates
Google's To Do List Keeps Growing
Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds
Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity

The human mind can be considered the last frontier of human knowledge. We know less about the human brain than about any other piece of real estate in the universe. And the internet might be our best "telescope" yet into that human mind. If the mind expresses itself enough, maybe we will start seeing patterns, perhaps we will understand better.

But the mind might not achieve its best performance if permanently at the beck and call of the primitive gadgets at our disposal, a cellphone's ring, or the inbox' deluge. Mindnumbing keyboarding at some point is glorified slave labor. It is perhaps a shallow friendship that gets measured by if you replied to my last email or not.

Thinking is more important than reading. Technology does not change that. The mind, so, is more important than the web. The webstream, the interweb lifestream necessarily has to be respectful of the mindstream. Some mindstreams respond best to solitude, some to music, some to silence, some to intense socializing, some to the web, some to reading, writing. To each his or her own.


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