Author: fms

Philip Slater: Author and Playwright: “Political analysts have been impressed lately by the polarization of the American public between ‘reds’ and ‘blues’. Eighty percent of our population has declared itself impervious to persuasion. Why has this happened? Why have political positions hardened while the pragmatic center has shrunk?

While the media speak of the new importance of ‘moral values’, as if this were some recent fashion trend that had just burst upon the scene, this ‘red/blue’ division is rooted in major historical changes–changes that are welcomed by half of our nation, appalling to the other half. Furthermore, this division is not simply an American phenomenon, but a global one, rooted in the most revolutionary cultural shift in the history of our species.”

MediaShift . Reading List | PBS: “Want to learn more? This list of books, blogs, and websites will enlighten you, and give you even more insight into the digital media revolution. We will update it regularly. Use our Feedback page to send in suggestions.”

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An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise. Many-to-Many:: “erhaps the greatest competency Socialtext has gained over the past three years is fostering adoption of social software. Adoption matters most for IT to have value. It should be obvious that if only a third of a company uses a portal, then the value proposition of that portal is two thirds less than it’s potential. But for social software, value is almost wholy generated by the contributions of the group and imposed adoption is marked for failure. Suw Charman has been working with Socialtext on site at Dresdner Klienwort Wasserstein and has spearheaded the creation of the following practice documentation. I believe this will be a critical contribution for enterprise practices, so do read on…

An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise

Experience has shown that simply installing a wiki or blog (referred to collectively as ‘social software’) and making it available to users is not enough to encourage widespread adoption. Instead, active steps need to be taken to both foster use amongst key members of the community and to provide easily accessible support.

There are two ways to go about encouraging adoption of social software: fostering grassroots behaviours which develop organically from the bottom-up; or via top-down instruction. In general, the former is more desirable, as it will become self-sustaining over time – people become convinced of the tools’ usefulness, demonstrate that to colleagues, and help develop usage in an ad hoc, social way in line with their actual needs.” more =>

the significance of MySpace. Many-to-Many:: “While MySpace has skyrocketed to success beyond any of the other social technologies on the web, too few folks in the industry talk about it, participate in it or otherwise pay attention to it…. mostly because it’s particularly populated by teens, musicians and other folks who are nowhere near connected to the tech industry. Much of what’s discussed is the culture of fear put forward by the mass media. This is quite unfortunate because there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on there.

At AAAS this week, i had the opportunity to present the first phase of my findings in a talk called Identity Production in a Networked Culture. If you want insight into what teens are doing on MySpace and why, check it out.”

Below is opening of a useful piece by Clay Shirking talking about Power Law dynamics:

Shirky: Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality: “A persistent theme among people writing about the social aspects of weblogging is to note (and usually lament) the rise of an A-list, a small set of webloggers who account for a majority of the traffic in the weblog world. This complaint follows a common pattern we’ve seen with MUDs, BBSes, and online communities like Echo and the WELL. A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on.

Prior to recent theoretical work on social networks, the usual explanations invoked individual behaviors: some members of the community had sold out, the spirit of the early days was being diluted by the newcomers, et cetera. We now know that these explanations are wrong, or at least beside the point. What matters is this: Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality.”

The Artful Manager: To be of use

While searching for something else, I stumbled onto a great (as usual) 2004 keynote by Ben Cameron of Theatre Communications Group (you can find the keynote here), which led me to a wonderful poem by Marge Piercy that Ben invokes in his comments.

A favorite passage:

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

Me too, although I’ll admit to being a parlor general a bit too often. Read the poem and roll up your sleeves.

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Television Disrupted – The Transition from Network to Networked TV by Shelly Palmer

Television Disrupted The Transition from Network to Networked Television, follows the money and the technology that enables it. The book also looks at the business rules and legal issues that are having a huge impact on the future. File sharing, copyright laws, geographical form factors, temporal windows and much more.

During the next few years, everything we know about the business of television is going to change – Television Disrupted The Transition from Network to Networked Television will serve as a guidebook and roadmap for the foreseeable future.

Wi-Fi Networking News: What’s in a Municipal Network?: “Most municipal networks that are being bid out combine several kinds of networks and several kinds of services: The coverage and criticism of municipally authorized and bid networks often focuses strictly on Wi-Fi. That’s just one element. Most municipal networks comprise six separate components.”

Wi-Fi Networking News: What’s in a Municipal Network?: “Most municipal networks that are being bid out combine several kinds of networks and several kinds of services: The coverage and criticism of municipally authorized and bid networks often focuses strictly on Wi-Fi. That’s just one element. Most municipal networks comprise six separate components. . . .