March 2012
20 posts
2 tags
“We are piloting a new startup carshare company called Unify (signup at...”
– Interesting take on car sharing. Rather than rent out your car (a la RelayRides) or rent a new car by the hour (a la ZipCar), buy shares of an actual car, like you would with a time share or a jet.
Seems less flexible a model than the others (potential for conflicts among shareholders). But I...
5 tags
Solving Problems The Internet Way
The Internet works differently than most other things we’re used to. 20th century humans are accustomed to hierarchy, control and scarcity. The Internet, by contrast, is distributed open, and abundant. That difference is fundamental — it not only empowers what’s possible on the Internet (which we increasingly understand), but it also informs how we need to go about solving...
Continuations: Choosing Our Information-Based... →
continuations:
We are at a perilous fork in history where many of the choices that we are making now and in the coming years will determine whether we are headed towards an information-based utopia or dystopia. It is not any single choice that matters but rather their cumulative effect and how these choices…
“So the next time you see a piece of legislation that has an impact on an open...”
– Brad
“Ever wanted to connect your Legos and Tinkertoys together? Now you can — and...”
–
The Free Universal Construction Kit | F.A.T.
Awesome. /via @sdp
“If you’re a busy person, you’re probably not that concerned with tracking local...”
– It’s 2012, do you know where your public meetings are? | OpenPlans
OpenPlans launches MeetingMatters.org, a crowd-editable directory of public meetings. They are right - meetings are important and they do matter. But public meetings, in their current form, aren’t super compatible with...
Loud Power and Quiet Power
I think about the Internet’s quiet power in terms of production — the ability to make things of lasting value, together. For instance, the ability of the Stack Exchange sites to surface the best answers to hard questions, or the OpenStreetMap community’s response to the haiti earthquake, or the way that the Peer-to-Patent program lets collaborators on the Internet help build a...
“I’m starting to wonder if this is a fundamental limit to attention-based...”
– …My heart’s in Accra » Unpacking Kony 2012
In-depth critique by Ethan Zuckerman of the Kony 2012 viral advocacy campaign (50mm views on youtube this week). Worth considering as we move to the next phase of Internet advocacy, post SOPA/PIPA.
WatchYes.
(via Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government | Video on TED.com)
Producing & Consuming →
Clay’s writing has been equally inspirational for me — if reading is eating, then writing is exercise. I am going to try to do this too.
lilly:
In some of my thinking lately about living more intentionally, one of the themes has been the difference between being a producer and being a consumer.
(Honestly, I think the word “consumer” is outmoded given the fact that most of our...
What we mean when we talk about Networks
I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about networks. By networks, I mean groups of people, connected to one another via the Internet, who are able to do things and solve problems together by way of their direct connections to one another.
As seemingly obvious as that definition may be, it’s worth focusing on for a second, because I actually don’t think...
“We are going to go from green versus gold to green equals gold,” says Moody....”
– Tom Friedman
Tumblr Staff: As we previewed a bit in the past... →
staff:
As we previewed a bit in the past week, we’ve been hard at work updating Tumblr’s policies, rewriting the three primary legal and policy documents that underlie your use of Tumblr: our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Community Guidelines (formerly “Content Policy”).
We’re really…
Open governance. Policies w revisions on github. Nice work, @tumblr.
WatchIt’s friday at the Media Lab. That means 4pm tea. Apparently there is a custom of making a video inviting people to tea. This is Nathan’s. It is so geekalicious here.
“The goals of any honest and enlightened patron [are] namely the nurturing of...”
– Art historian Francis V. O’Connor, 1971. This quote comes up in Tyler Cowen’s excellent Good & Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding. Cowen argues persuasively that the United States tax code is the world’s largest funder of the arts. Highly recommended. (via yancey)
“Welcome to the mutually incompatible, silo-based, platform-dependent and...”
– How the e-book landscape is becoming a walled garden — Tech News and Analysis 