Month: August 2011

Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku

As part of my ongoing self-education – so as to not be a total moron while writing "What We Hath Wrought" – this past weekend I read "Physics of the Future" by Michio Kaku. I was excited to read the book, because Kaku is a well regarded physicist, and…

science-book-physics-of-the-future-michio-kaku.jpeg

As part of my ongoing self-education – so as to not be a total moron while writing “What We Hath Wrought” – this past weekend I read “Physics of the Future” by Michio Kaku.

I was excited to read the book, because Kaku is a well regarded physicist, and that’s a field that I know will inform what’s possible, technologically, thirty or so years from now. I will admit I did not read the reviews of the book before hitting “purchase” on my Kindle. The topic alone made it worth my time, and the book was on the NYT bestseller list for five weeks, after all. Turns out, the book was worth the time….but perhaps I should have read the reviews so my expectations were more properly set.

Read More
3 Comments on Physics of the Future, by Michio Kaku

SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date on the latest from BattelleMedia.com

We Need An Identity Re-Aggregator (That We Control)

The subject of "owning your own domain" has been covered to death in our industry, with excellent posts from Anil Dash and others (Fred) explaining the importance of having your own place on the web. I've also weighed in on the importance of "The Independent Web," where creators have…

FINGERPRINT.jpeg

The subject of “owning your own domain” has been covered to death in our industry, with excellent posts from Anil Dash and others (Fred) explaining the importance of having your own place on the web. I’ve also weighed in on the importance of “The Independent Web,” where creators have control, as opposed to the Dependent Web, where platforms ultimately control how your words, data, and expression are leveraged.

But not everyone gravitates toward having their own, independent site – at least not initially. Even those who do have sites don’t necessarily see those sites as the best place to express themselves. I was reminded of this reading a Quora thread over the weekend entitled “What’s it like to have your film flop at the box office?” (The subtitle of the thread is hilarious: “Don’t they know how bad it is before it comes out?”)

Read More
10 Comments on We Need An Identity Re-Aggregator (That We Control)

With Tech, We Are Not Where We Want To Be (Or, This Cake Ain’t Baked)

Last week I finished reading Sherry Turkle's "Alone Together", and while I have various disagreements with the work (I typed in more than 70 notes on my Kindle, even with that terribly tiny keyboard), I still found myself nodding in agreement more than I thought I would. In her…

alonetogethercover.jpg

Last week I finished reading Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together“, and while I have various disagreements with the work (I typed in more than 70 notes on my Kindle, even with that terribly tiny keyboard), I still found myself nodding in agreement more than I thought I would.

In her book, Turkle explores our relationship with technology, in particular what she calls “sociable robots” (toys like the Aibo or My Real Baby), as well as with email, IM, and shared virtual spaces like Second Life and Facebook.

Read More
4 Comments on With Tech, We Are Not Where We Want To Be (Or, This Cake Ain’t Baked)

More on Twitter’s Great Opportunity/Problem

In the comments on this previous post, I promised I'd respond with another post, as my commenting system is archaic (something I'm fixing soon). The comments were varied and interesting, and fell into a few buckets. I also have a few more of my own thoughts to toss out there,…

Itwitter-bird.pngn the comments on this previous post, I promised I’d respond with another post, as my commenting system is archaic (something I’m fixing soon). The comments were varied and interesting, and fell into a few buckets. I also have a few more of my own thoughts to toss out there, given what I’ve heard from you all, as well as some thinking I’ve done in the past day or so.

First, a few of my own thoughts. I wrote the post quickly, but have been thinking about the signal to noise problem, and how solving it addresses Twitter’s advertising scale issues, for a long, long time. More than a year, in fact. I’m not sure why I finally got around to writing that piece on Friday, but I’m glad I did.

What I didn’t get into is some details about how massive the solving of this problem really is. Twitter is more than the sum of its 200 million tweets, it’s also a massive consumer of the web itself. Many of those tweets have within them URLs pointing to the “rest of the web” (an old figure put the percent at 25, I’d wager it’s higher now). Even if it were just 25%, that’s 50 million URLs a day to process, and growing. It’s a very important signal, but it means that Twitter is, in essence, also a web search engine, a directory, and a massive discovery engine. It’s not trivial to unpack, dedupe, analyze, contextualize, crawl, and digest 50 million URLs a day. But if Twitter is going to really exploit its potential, that’s exactly what it has to do.

Read More
3 Comments on More on Twitter’s Great Opportunity/Problem

The Future of The Internet (And How to Stop It) – A Dialog with Jonathan Zittrain Updating His 2008 Book

(image charlie rose) As I prepare for writing my next book (#WWHW), I've been reading a lot. You've seen my review of The Information, and In the Plex, and The Next 100 Years. I've been reading more than that, but those made it to a post so far. I'm…

segment_9081_460x345.jpeg

(image charlie rose) As I prepare for writing my next book (#WWHW), I’ve been reading a lot. You’ve seen my review of The Information, and In the Plex, and The Next 100 Years. I’ve been reading more than that, but those made it to a post so far.

I’m almost done with Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together, with which I have an itch to quibble, not to mention some fiction that I think is informing to the work I’m doing. I expect the pace of my reading to pick up considerably through the Fall, so expect more posts like this one.

Read More
4 Comments on The Future of The Internet (And How to Stop It) – A Dialog with Jonathan Zittrain Updating His 2008 Book

Twitter and the Ultimate Algorithm: Signal Over Noise (With Major Business Model Implications)

Note: I wrote this post without contacting anyone at Twitter. I do know a lot of folks there, and as regular readers know, have a lot of respect for them and the company. But I wanted to write this as a "Thinking Out Loud" post, rather than a reported article….

Note: I wrote this post without contacting anyone at Twitter. I do know a lot of folks there, and as regular readers know, have a lot of respect for them and the company. But I wanted to write this as a “Thinking Out Loud” post, rather than a reported article. There’s a big difference – in this piece, I am positing an idea. It’s entirely possible my lack of reporting will make me look like an uninformed boob. In the reported piece I’d posit the idea privately, get a response, and then report what I was told. Given I’m supposedly on a break this week, and I’ve wanted to get this idea out there for some time, I figured I’d just do so. I honestly have no idea if Twitter is actually working on the ideas I posit below. If you have more knowledge than me, please post in the comments, or ping me privately. Thanks! twitter issue.png

—-

I find Twitter to be one of the most interesting companies in our industry, and not simply because of its meteoric growth, celebrity usage, founder drama, or mind-blowing financings. To me what makes Twitter fascinating is the data the company sits atop, and the dramatic tension of whether the company can figure out how to leverage that data in a way that will insure it a place in the pantheon of long-term winners – companies like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. I don’t have enough knowledge to make that call, but I can say this: Twitter certainly has a good shot at it.

Read More
42 Comments on Twitter and the Ultimate Algorithm: Signal Over Noise (With Major Business Model Implications)

Who Am I, According to Google Ads? Who Am I, According to the Web? Who Do I Want to Be?

Over on Hacker News, I noticed this headline: See what Google knows about you. Now that's a pretty compelling promise, so I clicked. It took me to this page: Ah, the Google ad preferences page. It's been a while since I've visited this place. It gives you a limited but…

Over on Hacker News, I noticed this headline: See what Google knows about you. Now that’s a pretty compelling promise, so I clicked. It took me to this page:

Goog Ad pref main.png

Ah, the Google ad preferences page. It’s been a while since I’ve visited this place. It gives you a limited but nonetheless interesting overview of the various categories and demographic information Google believes reflect your interests (and in a way, your identity, or “who you are” in the eyes of an advertising client). This is all based on a cookie Google places on your browser.

Read More
8 Comments on Who Am I, According to Google Ads? Who Am I, According to the Web? Who Do I Want to Be?

Who Will Be Here One Generation From Now?

(image) I just re-read my post explaining What We Hath Wrought, the book I am currently working on. (Yes, I know that's a dangling participle, Mom). And it strikes me I might ask you all this question: Which company do you think will be around, and let me add…

crystal-ball-2.jpg (image) I just re-read my post explaining What We Hath Wrought, the book I am currently working on. (Yes, I know that’s a dangling participle, Mom). And it strikes me I might ask you all this question: Which company do you think will be around, and let me add – around and thriving – one generation from now?

I could install a widget and let you vote for a company, but that’s the easy way out. I’m looking for folks willing to take the time to name a company in the comments or maybe on Twitter (#wwhw), and defend why you think, when my kids grow up, that company will still be a dominant force in our culture. In a month or so, I’ll have redone the site, and added Disqus, but for now, it’s hard to comment, and hard to follow them. Sorry about that. But stay old school with me for a minute, and help me with this, will ya?

I’ll throw out a few names to get you started. And after you all answer, I’ll give you my gut feel:

Read More
13 Comments on Who Will Be Here One Generation From Now?