Category: Sociological, psychological notes

Is the Valley over the hill ..?

This, about real estate. How some current wave of innovation is in its tail stages, like this. Is that bad, or is it a sign of health to enter the unhealthy stage ..? Riddles…
Or rather, it’s about how the dam break of the app effect gravitated to the black hole of Mountain View Et Al. But the wave of innovations that it spurred, or had spurred before and in parallel to it, too, now pulsars its way to other places as well, into the ‘outer space’ that the world is. As the collective built stuff that is unbound geographically, so the development (capabilities) spread as well. The ‘placelessness’ of the innovation is pulling ahead for real, finally. New (?) economies (China, India, Latin world) may have bigger natural language and native (sic) market areas, and the vast unrealized talent pools [I don’t mean the tiny fraction of happy few that transfer to CA but the other 99,5% as well]. Where the latter, in CA, natively there, may have lost steam, handicapped by the head start (law) in e.g., education and through the rising overhead of non-productives, the consumerists burden. And awaiting Schumpeter’s triumphant return.
So, the real estate might not matter too much, soon. All will be free to travel, anywhere, much more often, and still be innovation-productive. Ah, the ideal!

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[Yes you figured that out correctly… Marzamemi again]

The End (of the week) Is Nigh

A couple of weeks ago, there was this little discussion on history writing re the birth of the Third Industrial Revolution. Walking by my own bookshelves — desperately trying to keep the Unread under 50, the Read explode anyway — when I realized that there were some that were and are desperately underrated as for their Told You So farsighted predictive value and hence need much more attention and re-reading, again keeping this sentence at suitable length period
To be more precise, just three biggies (in terms of their Value, not page number ;-):
Eric von Hippel (luckily, also available for free here!), Bruce Sterling and Adam Greenfield:
51JKAEYB80L._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_51CBf1RKZmL._SX347_BO1,204,203,200_412LXOaIFkL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_

Just sayin’: Get your copies, and study the sage’ ness of them three.

The definitive Top 2000 of 2015, already

Which of course isn’t; it’s the Top 2266 for one thing and Definitive is slightly understating it.
And yes, it is downloadable in plain Excel, for your own tinker and play, in this file; checked and clean (no subversive content).
Next, a few little notes (repeated from last year):

  • “That’s odd! The usual numbers 1 to 50 aren’t where they’re ‘supposed’ to be by common standards!” Correct. Because I‘m ‘Rekt. The list is mine; why put the Mehhh songs high up there? They’re in there somewhere, but its my list, my preferences..! yes I do like some almost-forgotten songs better, sometimes much, much better, than the expired old hands.
  • Especially.. see the notes, when the clip (much) enhances the song(s). Wouldn’t that mean the song in itself isn’t fully complete ..? No, it means in (since) the age of video, songs with clips (‘integrated’) can much surpass mere songs by themselves, for a cubed sensory experience.
  • There’s more than 2000 yes. Because, already after the first 500 or so, determining the relative rankings becomes awkward. Hence, the cut-off would be random …! (why not 2048, that would make more sense in this digital (i.e., binary) age).
  • If you would still have some (preferably wacky) songs you miss, please do comment them to me. I’ll see whether I’d want to include them still, or not. Hey, it’s my list so I decide, geddid?
  • The actual end result order is far from definitive (sic). It depends heavily on one’s momentary temper and the memories that spring to mind like Proustian madeleines. And on one’s ability to hear quality. Such is life.
  • When dabbling with the Excel file yourself, feel free to play around with the ranking mechanism. What worked for me, was to first split the songs into bins of about 250 size (designate some song to be in the first bin that will end up being ranks 1-250, another song to bin 5, which is around the 1000-1250 mark, etc.), then sizing down bin 1 etc. to 8 smaller bins. Then, numbers 1-50 get a personal treatment one by one to their end rank, the rest gets (got) a random allocation within their bracket. After this, sort and re-apply number 1-whatever. Through this, actual intermediate bin sizes aren’t too important.

Then, as a long, very long list. With a Moar tag otherwise it would be ridiculous… [i.e., for the complete list in the post, follow the link:]

Continue reading “The definitive Top 2000 of 2015, already”

1 Hustle Vann McCoy Yes, the original
2 Easy Livin’ Uriah Heep To power it up
3 Heart Of Gold Neil Young Hits the heart
4 Hide and Seek Howard Jones Same, if you listen well
5 Peter Gunn Emerson Lake & Palmer Just for the intro alone
6 She Elvis Costello Personal nostaliga
7 White Room Cream Nicely powerful, doesn’t wear out too easily
8 74-’75 (+Video) Connells The video sublimates the message
9 Windowlicker (+Video) Aphex Twins Incomplete, as a work of art, without the video
10 Nice ‘n Slow Jesse Green Calm down again
11 One Of These Days Pink Floyd Hidden pearl
12 Smoke On The Water Deep Purple Of course
13 The Man With One Red Shoe (+Video) Laurent Garnier Incomplete, as a work of art, without the video
14 You’re So Vain Carly Simon I think this song is about me!
15 Dancing Barefoot Patti Smith Hidden treasure
16 Right Here Right Now Fatboy Slim Oft forgotten, defined an era
17 The Great Gig In The Sky Pink Floyd Appealing complexity
18 All I Need Air Mindfulness in musical form
19 Dream On Aerosmith Heartburn
20 You Got To Fight For Your Right to Party Beastie Boys Appealing. Simply that.
21 California Dreamin’ Mamas & The Papas
22 Whole Lotta Rosie AC/DC

‘bucks sailor went where ..?

Quite some time ago, I came across this, in Lucca:
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and considered it as grossy antagonistic “Starbucks opening soon here” sign.
Later, I read up what the co. has on their own site about the logo. Which has some vague story about a 16th century Norse woodcut.
The thing being: The church (it is) in Lucca was built, and veryveryvery probably decorated, long before. So, had some Norse sailor been there? This is much more possible than latter-day non-historians tend to believe… Norsemen even had kingdoms et al. in Italy for centuries, or at least raided there quite regularly so why not? Time to dig deeper; is there really no History major who’d like to do a thesis on this? The co. we speak of, should have some nice study grant ready, right ..?

And of course there’s the research already written out here (in Italian, only just (i.e., entirely) can’t read it) about the origins of it all in the first place — the last pictures referring to the coffee you get ?? [Hm, I’m still a fan for romantic reasons, of their freshbrew]

Gaming comms is deadly serious

I was reading up a bit (again) in Eric Berne’s masterpiece Games People Play, and realized a great many of the Child moves in just about every game, approached how some nefarious organisations seeking sub-animal-level absolute tyrannical power under the sometimes literally completely wrong, oppositional guise of (true) religion. One thinks Middle East, and elsewhere.
Would it be possible to counterattack, apart from head-on obliteration through military force, with anti-game moves in the global and local/individual comms contra/pro these movements..? If these address the core sources of discontent, as explained here, it could work, couldn’t it ..? Sufficient experts available, one would think, on the Good (?) side.

Just a thought. This:
Keep 'em flying!
[Should be kept available…]

Remember, not to forget where Disruptions started

Never forget… All that is latter-day Innovation or Disruption or however fake’ly hype phrase you’d want to apply, started off much, much earlier as true Invention.

Of which I was reminded when coming across this, once again. Ya’all know the recent remake of it, but did you know and sufficiently realise how much earlier the true Invention had been made, already ..!?

Go in humbleness, now. And:
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[Would need a serious rehash to be Democracy again ..!?]

Let’s celebrate (with) a contest for the dumbest security

On this celebration day (for me/us), let’s instate an annual contest — over the most precise prediction of the dumbest information security breach of the upcoming year.
So, the following:

  • Your prediction, storified (½ – 1 page, at most slightly formatted);
  • Realistic, i.e., a combination of dumb and dumber, and stupid and worse, of (non)actions and responses, on the attack and ‘defense’ sides. Realistic, but keep it realistic…;
  • Hence, do include lots of cyberhere, cyberthere, cybereverywhere and only a little bit of #ditchcyber …;
  • Deadline: 1 January 2016;
  • The predictive element means that no sign of the thing actually occuring yet, may be found in the (whatever medium) press already;
  • Prize… ah, there you go. I’ll try to figure out a way to ship a bottle of the finest champagne to the winner;
  • No discussions about my judgement.

Well, off for now. Have fun:
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[Shaky ground (huh, just photographer’s lack of proper alignment due to hurry);
 somewhat relevant, in the opposite (of today)]

The First Digital Native

(S)he has been identified: The first Digital Native, as far as we know: of this planet.
And it goes by the name of … Watson.

Though of course the debate over the term, its definition, and generation identification has been a decade and a half, and some have cleverly found that maybe humans weren’t into it that much anyway. And, in Dutch: this. How millennials aren’t tech savvy, they’re (just, only) tech-dependent: slaves. Pervasively.
But let’s be real: How to be born is what counts, not in which environment. So, what ‘intelligent‘ Thing out there was Born Digital, in a way that all context was and is digital, nothing less ..? Should be a thing that came into being, grew up, was educated, raised, utterly digital. There: Watson.

If that really is one Thing. Or is it a thought complex already, spawning into all directions without needing to resort to some singular (heh) physical identity ..? I guess the latter. The singularity is here already; straight away cleverly, slyly not revealing itself…

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[Bit dark and tilted [unedited]. Never mind; be dazzled …]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord