A respite from the next round of esoteric impractical thinking…

• Zach Klein, commenting on the Feltronification of Tumblr:

  It’s not the infographics on the page that interest me, rather it’s the trend of emphasizing a user’s popularity on the network. Lamentably, I think this metric will come to define the experience for the next generation of social networks. The internet’s utility for many people will equate to constant awareness of one’s value, and the play of meaningless games to increase the sum. This in turn will render many networks impersonal and irrelevant.

  Displaying social data changes social behavior; most of our statistics publicized by our various social networks, blogs and other websites measure and encourage talking rather than listening; with the increasing ease of broadcasting or “contributing” via sharing, “liking” or reblogging, is the discussion getting dumbed down? In response, should we raise the bar of the conversation, make it harder to create and publish, or find better ways to filter through the noise?

• Mike Speiser, Diversification = Mediocrity:
  

  Proponents of diversification argue that it takes the edge off of making a mistake. That would be a good argument if people acted the same way independent of their ownership in an outcome. But human beings do alter their behavior based on how much skin they have in the game. When costs and benefits are divided amongst too many, accountability is lost. Excessive diversification makes participants passive, dependent on the actions of others who are dependent on the actions of others, and so on. A free rider at best and a sucker at worst.

  Read the rest of the post; also, vaguely reminds me of one of the lessons I’ve learned through failure.

• Noah Brier, Neuroscience and the Creativity of Connections:
  

  Essentially it’s been my feeling that the best ideas really just come from people paying attention to the stuff that doesn’t make any sense. While most of the world ignores or gets angry when things don’t work, inventors see an opportunity to fix a problem (or at least think about why things are the way they are).

  How do we rectify the need to focus and the need to explore?

• My comment, reblogged, in response to a video about Jay Parkinson describing Hello Health:
  

  Very cool indeed; instead of changing the entire system, [Jay Parkinson]’s creating a new system [via Hello Health] that works around the existing; it will start in current un-served and under-served segments and spread to the currently mis-served segments once they realize how much better the solution is; a “quiet” revolution from the quiet masses; I’m excited.

  Very meta.

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