September 6th, 2010

Careers for the 21st Century0
JR posted in Uncategorized on February 3rd, 2009

I will sometimes be asked for advice about what type of career someone going to college should be looking toward.  Why this happens, I haven’t the slightest idea.  My own career has not been terribly diverse, but I do have a wide-ranging set of interests and knowledge.

Regardless, Art Carden at Stepcase Lifehack has a very well-thought out article about 21st Century Opportunities.

With five broad areas of opportunity, I think he has correctly identified some of the broad themes for the economy of the next 20 years.  Beyond 20 years, the outlook is not as clear.  Because of the accelerating impact of technology, some immediate careers will change greatly.  For instance, he states that Product Design will have a clear value as the cost of manufacturing goods declines.  What he misses is that with the decline of production cost, there will become a corresponding rise in the era of mass customization.  While Design will continue to be of value, there may not be the big “wins” of Design in the past.  Instead, we may have a series of rapidly changing “fads” in design.  While the classic Eames chair will still have value, someone could get their chair personalized to their own specific body and comfort. Later, they would want another.

Ownership in the digital age0
JR posted in Uncategorized on January 23rd, 2009

Great article by Kevin Kelly at The Technium about ownership in the digital age.  His contention is that ownership can be substituted with ease of access.  If one can as easily (or more easily) access a digital good (music, ebook, video), is there any need to ‘own’ that good?

This is an interesting thought and he makes some persuasive points. 

The value of networks0
JR posted in Uncategorized on May 16th, 2008

It has long been an Internet truism that there are very strong “network effects” present on the Internet. They have been playing out prior to and since the creation of the Internet itself.

By network effects, I’m speaking about the exponential increase in value that a communications medium gains as more people use it. We saw this very clearly in the pre-commercial Internet era with the multiple separate e-mail services like Compuserve, The Source and even BBS services like Exec-PC and The Well. Each allowed you to easily communicate with other users on the service. Communicating outside that service was initially impossible, and then became merely very difficult.

It was when the interconnections became trivial with the commoditization of the Internet that e-mail became a valuable business (and personal) tool and usage exploded.

This repeats over and over again. Part of AOL’s longevity and success was the “all my friends are there” argument from family members.

The current battles between differing social networks like MySpace, Facebook and a host of other small fry are just another echo of this continuing process. Just like with AOL before it, much of the attraction of one service over another are your own friends that are already present on one system or another. Not that you can’t communicate across the borders between them, but like with the early e-mail, it is more difficult and more limited in what can be exchanged.

The latest element of the competition is about how you can get some of that information out of a service and allow it to appear elsewhere. Projects and services to enable this are are going by a number of different names. Data Availabilit (from MySpace), Facebook Connect and Friend Connect (from Google). Each is claiming to be more open than the other, but all are ultimately about keeping users inside their “walled garden” so the company can keep harvesting more information about you and selling access to you as their real product (they are, after all ‘advertising supported’).

Mike Arrington at Techchrunch, has a good opinion piece about the questions revolving around Data Portability. Mostly he is responding to a post from Robert Scoble about Google’s ability to get that data from their Facebook to their own system. Mike makes a strong case that your information (postings, addresses, friends lists, etc.) on those social network sites should be under your own control and you should be free to allow it to go to other sites (apologies if that is a horrible simplification of his position).

Robert replied making the point that someone’s friends list isn’t just their own, but the joint possession of the individual participants. A consideration should be that members of your friends list may not want to appear elsewhere. He further points out that there is an inherent conflict in what Mike was wanting. Mike wants to take information with him, but it conflicts with the desire of others to keep control of their own information.

All the conversation and argument are really talking about the network effect and ways to make it better without losing control of the information that is shared. In many ways, both Mike and Robert are correct. The real value is in controlling the sharing of the information. We ultimately want the user to be in control of that information. Whether this is by some federated system that neutrally distributes this information or by some other means, the network value will greatly increase for the company that figures out how to do this without placing a burden on their users.

Law to Limit Tracking of Clicks0
JR posted in Uncategorized on March 20th, 2008

According to the New York Times, Richard Brodsky of the New York Assembly has proposed a bill that would forbid Web companies from using personal information (including clicks) for advertising to them without consent.

He states that this is in response to constituents’ concerns raised with the Google/DoubleClick deal. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is encouraging him in going forward with this bill (though we’ll have to see how their tune changes of the Yahoo deal goes through).

This strikes at the heart of the current means of monetizing web services. While I can’t say that I like being tracked, so far a combination of AdBlock and respect for the sites has worked well enough for me.

Walking robot0
JR posted in Uncategorized on March 17th, 2008

Remarkable video at Gizmodo showing the Boston Dynamics “BigDog” walking robot. Particularly amazing is the way that it recovers from disturbances or bad leg placement. Take a look about 1/2 way through the video to see it brought to its knees by a slip on ice and it still recovers.

Gizmodo response to prank fallout0
JR posted in Uncategorized on January 14th, 2008

I thought that Gizmodo was going to keep quiet about their prank at the Consumer Electronic Show.  After all, what would they have to gain with any sort of apology.  At best, it would appear to be self-serving and insincere.  At worst, an apology would to be part of the prank itself and just another way of getting more attention for their web site.

I had thought that they were wise in keeping their mouths shut and letting the whole thing blow over.

But they couldn’t leave the matter alone.  Today Gizmodo responded and appeared to claim that they shouldn’t be ashamed of what they did.  They point to notable jokers in the tech industry like Apple founder Steve Wozniak.

But more amazing, they claim some moral high ground because they are not in a position of overly respecting the companies they cover.  They point out part of what they do is turning a skeptical eye on the claims of those same companies.  If they were to censor themselves because they were concerned about losing favor from a company, they would lose any respect and reliability as a news source.

They also use an ad hominen attack to blame those who have accepted gifts from companies (paid junkets to Japan by Nikon was their example) or who do advertising work for the companies they cover.  No doubt that those other journalists who have misbehaved should be
called on it, but this does not excuse the bad manners of the part of
Gizmodo’s reporter.

They then go on to point to their own excellent coverage when given an opportunity to interview Bill Gates at the show.  They felt that their interview was good journalism on a par with any other medium.  I do note, however, that they did not first hit Bill Gates with a pie and then expect him to sit down for their interview.

The prank was a rude thing to do and the CES management was fully in its rights to bar that reporter from future events.  Complaining “can’t you take a joke”, which is essentially what the article is claiming, is only an excuse for what is obvious misbehavior.  Though you can’t kowtow to the companies you cover, or engage in any form of thinly disguised payola, you do have to treat the subjects of your articles with respect.  This was clearly not done by the prankster.

The only way to respond to such juvenile behavior is with the traditional admonishment: “Just grow up and act like an adult.”

Maturity in the Blogging community0
JR posted in Uncategorized on January 11th, 2008

I don’t know why I didn’t comment on the Gizmodo prank at the Consumer Electronic Show.  It seemed like a cute irreverant bit if behavior by some young people.

However, from the broader Blogging community standpoint, it was a black eye.  John Biggs at Crunchgear has a much better response.  This wasn’t something to be proud of nor should we honor those who participated in the prank.  This may well have damaged the hard-won respect that other bloggers have spent so much effort establishing.

I don’t think that the damage is irreparable, but there will be consequences that we will see play out over the next year.

Hello world!0
JR posted in Uncategorized on April 7th, 2005

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