Monthly Archives: December 2010

A toast to common genius

Although I appreciate being called “smart” (as Hugh MacCleod kindly does here), that adjective has always troubled me, no matter what, or to whom, it’s applied. Two reasons: 1) because I believe smartness is a far more common quality than … Continue reading

Posted in Ideas, Life, School | 7 Comments

Solved Science Theater 2010

This morning, while freezing my way down 8th Avenue to Piccolo on 40th to pick up a couple of cappuccinos, I paused outside the New York Times building to admire its stark modern lobby as KNX radio delivered the latest … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Blogging, Broadcasting, Events, Journalism, Links, music, problems, Quote, Technology, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Internet doesn’t do this

The above, in order (1,2,3) is what I went through this morning when I searched for “emancipay” on Twitter. Not knocking Twitter here. I am knocking the fact that we haven’t come up with the open Internet-based (rather than silo-based) … Continue reading

Posted in Berkman, Blogging, News, Places, problems | 8 Comments

How about a Mensch Index?

From Wikipedia (as of the 8 December 2010 edit): Mensch (Yiddish: מענטש mentsh; German: Mensch, for “human being”) means “a person of integrity and honor”.[1] The opposite of a mensch is an unmensch (meaning: an utterly cruel or evil person). … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging | 5 Comments

Curing High School

So I’m in the midst of my first encounter with PeerIndex, which I found through this Petervan’s Blog post. I’d been pointed to PeerIndex before, and to other services like it, and have always found them aversive. But this time the … Continue reading

Posted in Berkman, Blogging, Business, Future, history, infrastructure, Links, Live Web, problems, Research, Technology, VRM | 10 Comments

Jay Rosen and the Watchdog Web

I have to say what nearly fifty thousand Twitter followers already know: nobody does a better job of following and writing about what’s going on in journalism than Jay Rosen. The dude just nails it, over and over and over … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Journalism, Links, Live Web, Uncategorized | 12 Comments

FreedomLeaks

We’ll start with four essential posts on the Wikileaks matter. First is Iran and the Bomb, by Hedrik Hertzberg, It’s this week’s Talk of the Town in The New Yorker. Here’s the pull quote: Perhaps the two biggest secrets that the … Continue reading

Posted in Business, Future, infrastructure, Journalism, Places, Politics, problems, Technology, VRM | 7 Comments

Some context on privacy

Searches: privacy: 1,390,000,000 privacy+policy: 3,400,000,000 results “privacy policy”: 837,000,000 results So if you’re looking for something about privacy that’s not a site with a privacy policy, you’re also looking at a high haystack/needle ratio. Just saying. Not sure what else … Continue reading

Posted in Business, problems, Research, Strange stuff, Technology, VRM | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What does cognitive science say about privacy and the Net?

Here’s what one dictionary says: World English Dictionary privacy (ˈpraɪvəsɪ, ˈprɪvəsɪ) — n 1. the condition of being private or withdrawn; seclusion 2. the condition of being secret; secrecy 3. philosophy the condition of being necessarily restricted to a single … Continue reading

Posted in Ideas, MIT, News, Research, Science, Technology, VRM | 9 Comments

Some context on privacy

Searches: privacy: 1,390,000,000 privacy+policy: 3,400,000,000 results “privacy policy”: 837,000,000 results So if you’re looking for something about privacy that’s not a site with a privacy policy, you’re looking at a high haystack/needle ratio. Just saying.

Posted in Business, problems, VRM | 1 Comment