Will we be smart enough soon enough? Putting Civic Intelligence into Practice

Amplify’d from www.netcrit.net

Civic Intelligence defined pragmatically: people to have the ‘smarts’  by which to acquire the things they need to prosper in society.

The world needs ‘our’ help: global problems, local problems – all need attention and those in power, and the operation of the free market will not solve them. Doug frames his work by asking: “How smart need we be to solve these problems? Will we be smart soon enough for the problems to be solved before they overwhelm us?”.

Civic intelligence is a concept to lead us to the answer to these questions. It refers, effectively, to a judgment of how smart a group might be relative to the problems it faces; it is a form of collective intelligence, focusing on shared problems (eg the problems that define the group). Civis intelligence is about being smart, through civic means, to achieve civic goals. A particular modality of this form of collective intelligence is its distribution throughout society. Civic intelligence as a paradigm for activists and researchers.

Beehive Collective’s work in relation to land degradation and renewal, “The True Cost of Coal” – sophisticated interweaving of skills and action, notion of research through action at the grass roots.

Sidenote This example suggests that productive action involves very different paradigms of knowledge work where creativity, sharing, working together to represent the world and tell stories about it is more effective in addressing problems (and in doing so building civic intelligence) than traditional models of ‘research’

Liberating Voices project: promote and assist citizen engagement through thought and action – pattern language responses. Everyone is an activist. Patterns are not recipes: “tools for thought”; patterns “change the flow of what would have happened in its absence”.

Patterns here could be understood as scaffolding for cognitive developmental action – without them, people don’t know where to start even if they know what the goal might be. Patterns don’t determine the outcome but give sufficient support for people to begin work. Moreover, patterns provide a shared language through which people can identify commonalities and work together. Without them, they remain individuated. So, do patterns create a kind of autonomous foundation for collective engagement?

civic intelligence builds more civic intelligence (it is productive beyond any specific act) inclusive and participatory efficient and creative real problems (e.g. inequality, not just increased wealth for a few) addresses several problems at once

The last point is especially revealing: “Make activism cool (again)”. Schuler comments – “what is preventing people from doing this stuff? It’s not cool” Read more at www.netcrit.net

 

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Buying Android is like joining the Dark Side... #metaphor

metaphor of the day.

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

いいなCM　NTT docomo　walk with you　「GALAXY Days」60秒

See more at www.youtube.com

 

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To Live and Breath - Inspiration is Not the Key to Innovation [29Nov10]

“The essence of a creative culture is openness, curiosity, connecting, collaborating, and courage.” - A.G. Lafley

Amplify’d from www.business-strategy-innovation.com

When faced with the challenge of creating a vibrant, innovation-capable culture, many organizations focus their efforts almost entirely on the front end of innovation. Their focus implies that innovation begins and ends with ideation, and their efforts extend little beyond the generation of vast numbers of ideas. Recently, A.G. Lafley, the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble (P&G), spoke at length at the tenth World Business Forum in New York City, about what it took for innovation to be revitalized in the company during his tenure. While the fuzzy front end received attention, it was not the only area of focus. He noted that for innovation to be truly successful, it had to become something the organization lived and breathed. It was not only about the inspiration necessary for a good idea but the habits formed by making innovation processes stable and robust enough that they could be relied upon for the long-term.

The proof of his approach is evident: under Lafley, P&G’s sales doubled, profits quadrupled, and the company’s market value rose by over $100 billion.

Yet organizations continue to believe that if they can only find the right idea, the perfect brainwave, the single market-changing invention, their futures will be bright and rosy. There’s a reason they call it the front end of innovation; there’s a whole back end to innovation that requires effort and discipline and care for the value conceived of in the beginning to actually have any real value.

Inspiration is just a start

“Courage is the missing innovation ingredient for most CEOs.” – A.G. Lafley

Little do they realize that for innovation to truly flourish, the organization itself needs to rally around the support of innovation. That means everything from the generation of ideas to their evaluation, their prioritization and selection, to their testing and assessment and their eventual, planned-for, operation. An innovation-capable enterprise doesn’t only pay attention to the seed of an idea, they nurture that notion until it thrives of its own accord.

Let’s be clear: the reasons so many organizations choose to focus on the creation of new ideas are: a) it’s fun, and b) the effort involved is minimal when compared to all the associated activities required to afford it a chance of success. Read more at www.business-strategy-innovation.com

 

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Step Forward - 5 Best Blogs to Announce a New Start-up [20Nov10]

Amplify’d from www.pamil-visions.net

Announcing a new business start-up is an exciting adventure for the small business entrepreneur. To maximize exposure, he should announce his site to as many portals, forums, blogs, and sites as possible. Sounds like a good idea, right? It is, but a large majority of sites don’t have significant traffic to make an impact. To streamline your efforts and to get the most exposure as possible, submit your announcement to a few sites guaranteed to have thousands, if not millions, of eyes read it.

# 1 – Killer Start-ups

The site at KillerStartups.com is a user-driven community of Internet start-ups. It members include entrepreneurs, bloggers, web developers, and investors. The community thrives on staying abreast of all new start-ups and entrepreneurs making their foray into the small business world.

The site uses a hardy blog platform that is very successful in creating a buzzing social networking environment. Internet entrepreneurs submit information about their start-ups to the community and gather feedback from the members to see what they think about it.

# 2 – Sun Start-up Essentials

Sun Start-Up Essentials has a comprehensive program that is useful in helping entrepreneurs get started in business. It offers several broad services, including networking, technological assistance, and web services like content storage and web hosting. The site provides the core essentials in getting a business from starting to running. It offers all the key tools an entrepreneur would need to make a significant impact into the business world. These include the following things:

A discount on servers, desktops, and storage.

A choice of operating systems: Windows, Linux, or Solaris.

Discounted software.

Free advice and technical support from top Sun engineers.

# 3 – TechDay

This informative website provides a comprehensive list of start ups and their area(s) of business or technology. Submission to the site places your business name, logo, and contact information in a large database for web developers and investors who may be of interest to your business idea. The site also features start-ups that are in other regions and countries.

# 4 – Crunchbase

# 5 – Startupmeme Read more at www.pamil-visions.net

 

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9 Life-Changing Inventions the Experts Said Would Never Work

Expect the unexpected.

Amplify’d from ecosalon.com

9 Life-Changing Inventions the Experts Said Would Never Work

1. The Electric Lightbulb

2. The A/C

3. The Personal Computer

4. The Microchip

5. Data Transmission

6. Online Shopping

7. The Automobile

8. The Television

9. Possibility

See more at ecosalon.com

 

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"Every person is the creation of himself. The image of his own thinking and believing." - Fortune Cookie http://amplify.com/u/glds

3 Types of Failure to Avoid #leadership

1. Knowingly doing the wrong thing = Don't be evil.

2. Failing to gather the right data = Simpson's Paradox

3. Prioritizing research over experience = Decision Paralysis



Decision Paralysis - the futile quest for data perfection. More decisions need to be made on a directional basis. If the data says that doing X increases revenue by 40% and doing Y increases 10%, it doesn't matter if you are 5% off. The decision is clear.

Amplify’d from web.hbr.org

3 Types of Failure to Avoid

Innovation experts have long argued that companies should be more tolerant of failure. But not all failure is created equally. Here are three types of failures that rarely contribute to learning and should be avoided whenever possible: Knowingly doing the wrong thing. When a project falls apart because someone hid information or misled others, any learning is moot. Failure is only acceptable when the project was done with good intentions. Failing to gather the right data. Often failure can be avoided by doing some simple research: asking target customers for input or testing an idea before launching it. Prioritizing research over experience. Some things are unknowable without real-life experiments. Don't waste resources on researching a theory when you can create a prototype or conduct an experiment that will give you a more realistic answer.

Knowingly doing the wrong thing. When a project falls apart because someone hid information or misled others, any learning is moot. Failure is only acceptable when the project was done with good intentions.

Failing to gather the right data. Often failure can be avoided by doing some simple research: asking target customers for input or testing an idea before launching it.

Prioritizing research over experience. Some things are unknowable without real-life experiments. Don't waste resources on researching a theory when you can create a prototype or conduct an experiment that will give you a more realistic answer. Read more at web.hbr.org

 

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A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Networks « Learning Change

http://gfbertini.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/a-networked-self-ide...

A Networked Self examines self presentation and social connection in the digital age. This collection brings together new work on online social networks by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines. The focus of the volume rests on the construction of the self, and what happens to self-identity when it is presented through networks of social connections in new media environments. The volume is structured around the core themes of “identity, community, and culture“ the central themes of social network sites. Contributors address theory, research, and practical implications of many aspects of online social networks including self-presentation, behavioral norms, patterns and routines, social impact, privacy, class/gender/race divides, taste cultures online, uses of social networking sites within organizations, activism, civic engagement and political impact.

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The World According to San Francisco (image)

Hilarious...and so true.

Amplify’d from laughingsquid.com

See more at laughingsquid.com

 

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Program or be Programmed: 10 commands for a digital age - @Rushkoff

URL:  http://rushkoff.com/2010/11/19/grit-tv-with-laura-fland...

I actually attended a talk by this guy a few weeks ago and found it very enlightening. Ended up buying the book (but have not finished reading it yet).



Ten Commands for a Digital Age

I. Time - Do not always be on

The first great killer app was email which allowed us to communicate asynchronously. Now broadband is so fast and we seem to have more and more "realtime" communications that are interruptive in nature. It's important for us to unplug some of the time and contemplate a bit more.



II. Place - Live in person

As we rely more and more on virtual communication, it is definitely taking a toll on human empathy. We forget that most communication happens non-verbally, which is not communicated through these text based mediums. The virtual communications definitely serve a purpose, but it seems we have become over reliant on them and we should also focus on facilitating "real" communications so that we don't lose this ability (recognizing micro expressions on people's faces, body language, etc.)



III. Choice - You may always choose none of the above

IV. Complexity - Your are never completely right

This makes me think of the bias we have to shorter and shorter communications (i.e twitter style). I think it's awesome when people are good at this, and spend significant effort formulating complex meaning in a short sentence, but also want to point out that this leaves a lot of complexity out there. We tend to gravitate towards polarized statements, but the truth is often much more complex.



I realize that most of my assumptions and opinions are probably wrong, I just hope that they are getting less ignorant over time.



One of the great reasons I love Amplify. I may not agree with @svartling or @alexschebler all the time, but I always find the conversation to be enlightening.



V. Scale - One size does not fit all

VI. Identity - Be yourself

This one resonates strongly. I never cared for the generic anonymous comments on most websites (although there definitely existed commentary, for me, it wasn't worth sifting through the noise). I think the advent of Facebook and places like Amplify have made good use of this. You have to say what you mean with your reputation put on the line. Which I think is a good thing.



VII. Social - Do not sell your friends

VIII. Fact - Tell the truth

IX. Openness - Share, don't steal

X. Purpose - Program or be programmed

This one we definitely need more of. Both programmers and statisticians. I hope that we continue to improve our education system to help facilitate this.



--- Open Media's Take

#agentX < Can we break the greedy hand of corporatism in this digital age? Are we being monitored, commodified, and manipulated into upholding the unsustainable powers that be? Please, take the time to learn how to harness the web for intelligence. Connect with others who are programming and harnessing the tools of collaboration and transformation. Through questioning and conversation we can liberate ourselves from these degrading forces of zombification. Watch Laura Flanders' 15 min interview with Douglas Rushkoff.

**

Cc @MeriWalker @ozarkherbs @CoCreatr @wwjimd @open_Intel

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Facebook Fan Page or Web Site? What Should I Build?

Guy Kawasaki shares some truly brilliant insight into the pros and cons of selecting a Facebook fan page over building a new mini-site to promote his new book. The advice he gives is absolutely right on the mark, and there is actually a lot more to be discovered inside the original article. Including a wonderful tip on how to create

Amplify’d from www.openforum.com

Ask the Wise Guy: Facebook Fan Page or Website?

Q: I’m a small business entrepreneur, and I’ll be introducing a consumer product soon. Should I create a website for my company or a Facebook fan page?

A: I faced a similar question a few weeks ago for my book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. I had three options: create a site for the book, add a section for the book to my existing website, or create a Facebook fan page.

After five minutes of thoughtful deliberation, I decided to add a bare-bones section to my website (which I haven’t gotten around to do yet—which should tell you something) and create a Facebook fan page but not to create a website for the book. Here’s why I did not choose a website:

1.  I’m busy. Designing a website is a big deal. I can’t create one by myself so this means I’d have to find a company to do it or impose on my friends. A template or canned package would never make me happy, so I’d end up spending mucho time interacting with whoever is building website for me.

2.  I’m impatient. I like to go from idea to implementation in a week or two. From start to “finish” (if a website is ever finished), it’s hard to make a website happen in two weeks.

3.  I’m cheap—and picky. The good news about a website is that you can make it do anything. The bad news about a website is that you can make it do anything—as long as you pay for it. I wanted a site that can engage people by letting them discuss the book, post pictures and video, take quizzes, and enter contests. A website can do all this if you’re willing to pay thousands of dollars.

4.  I’m realistic. Let’s say that I got beyond the laziness, impatience, cheapness and pickiness and somehow obtained a great website. The next challenge is getting people to visit it. Sure, I’d put the Facebook “Like” button, Tweetmeme “Retweet” button (disclosure: I invested in Tweetmeme), or Twitter “Tweet” button on it, and I’d blog and tweet the hell out of it, but the building traffic is still hand-to-hand combat.

By contrast, here’s my experience with a Facebook fan page:

1.  Instant gratification. You get 25 friends, a Facebook vanity username, and boom, you’re in business. It’s still easier to get a Facebook vanity URL than a good domain name. Either that or God was with me a few weeks ago because Facebook.com/enchantment was available when I looked.

2.  Built-in functionality. The social networking functionality you’d want on a website is built into Facebook: commentary, discussion, visitor posting of photos and videos, and reviews. This means you don’t have to figure out how to add this functionality to a website or pay someone to add it for you.

3.  Limited flexibility. Facebook fan pages don’t provide the total flexibility of a website, but that is an advantage for people like me because it prevents us from going nuts with features and design. Basically, there are tabs and sub-tabs to play with. A side benefit is that people don’t expect a unique/cool/whatever website because they see that all Facebook fan pages have a similar look and feel. As my boss at Apple, Mike Murray, used to tell me, “Discipline sets you free.”

4.  Flexibility. Within the limited flexibility of Facebook, however, there is substantial flexibility. You can choose from hundreds of Facebook apps to add functionality. If you can’t find what you want, then you can ask someone who knows a lot about Facebook like Mari Smith to recommend a developer. That’s what I did, and she sent me to Hyperarts Web Design. Two weeks and $2,000 later, you’d have a custom looking Facebook fan page that looks like this. I would have had to spend more than $2,000 just to buy the domain that I wanted for a website.

5.  Curation. Facebook is a more curated environment than the wide-open web. People have to join Facebook, and most people care about their identities and reputation. You can also block orifices and complain to Facebook about them. On the web, it’s much easier for anyone to litter your website with trashy comments, photos and videos, and it’s much harder to get rid of them too. For the better, Facebook is a controlled environment.

6.  Inherent spreadability. The best part of Facebook is that there are, depending on who you believe, about 400 million members. In other words, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world—behind China and India but ahead of the United States. Every time people do something on your fan page, they spread the word about it to their social contacts. This is the holy grail of marketing: unconscious word-of-mouth advertising! I like this a lot better than hoping people will click on a “Like” or “Tweet” button on a website or forward a website’s URL in an email.

7.  Gratification. I’m a shallow person: I like to increase the number of followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook. Just as there are only two kinds of people on Twitter (those who want more followers and those who are lying), there are only two kinds of companies with Facebook fan pages: Those who want more fans and those who are lying.

8.  Free. It’s hard to argue with free. I’ve paid nothing to Facebook for all the wonderfulness that it’s provided me. In fact, I would be happy to pay Facebook just as I would be happy to pay for my use of Twitter because both companies provide such valuable services. Until Facebook asks me to pay, I’m more than willing to let it run ads on my fan page. I don’t even want a cut of the ad revenue—keep it, Facebook, you earned it. Read more at www.openforum.com

 

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Tipping Points and The Future of Electronics

Must read article...

Amplify’d from open.neurostechnology.com

Home

Tipping Points and The Future of Electronics

I'm convinced that you are going to see a resurgence in Western entrepreneurial activity in hardware, and it's all due to Android's supposed fragmentation.

For the last 20+ years, developing hardware in the West has been a challenge. Android is poised to break that trend. To understand why, it's helpful to take a look at the history of the PC. Others have drawn parallels between today and the early 1980's in the PC's evolution, but the discussion is often focused on the religious war between Android and Apple. But that view is missing the point.

In the early 80's, the personal computer diverged into two different camps: IBM's and Apple's. Both effectively resulted in the opening of the closed word processors, but Apple's strategy was vertical integration, whereas IBM — mostly by accident — followed a more open approach. Much has been discussed about the fact that IBM outsourced the operating system of the PC, most famously to Microsoft; less, perhaps, about the significance of IBM's off-the-shelf hardware.

The existence of open standards then, as now, was not new. IBM's decision to use off-the-shelf components meant it didn't need to invest in creating new standards, technically superior or no; instead, by using existing standards, it pushed their rate of adoption past a tipping point. This kicked off plenty of entrepreneurial activity, both among hardware and application developers. Once IBM adopted an architecture that others could plug into, it allowed entrepreneurs to focus on one small piece of an emerging supply chain, without removing the potential to expand their role as they grew.

As more and more entrepreneurs raced into this ecosystem it started a reinforcing cycle: new hardware added features and drove down costs. This in turn, attracted more application developers, integrators and PC companies. Within a few short years, developing a PC — which used to cost millions — became something Michael Dell could do in a dorm room. Throughout the entire supply chain, barriers to entry were eliminated, and entrepreneurs entered the industry in force, driving the greatest explosion of innovation and creativity in the history of man.

The App Store Revolution

It was possible to create apps — or whatever they were called — before the App Store. Apple made it practical. They pushed apps past the tipping point.

Cloning is the most sincere form of product development

Even more importantly, instead of having to deal with a distended and largely opaque supply chain buried in China's hinterlands, our entrepreneur has a single point of contact who manages the whole thing, who has already negotiated pricing, terms, quality, inventory management and such. Now, finished goods coming out of Asia are nothing new. What's new is that the finished goods, in this case, are built on an open platform that allows customization at a variety of levels. A closed MP3 player doesn't provide much opportunity for an innovator regardless of how perfect the price or hardware otherwise is, whereas an Android device, even if imperfectly spec'd, can provide a world of opportunity to that innovator. In fact, it is this seemingly subtle difference that I believe will reverse the trend of the last 20 years which has stymied western innovation in electronics. The hypothetical closed MP3 player above not only didn't help the innovator, it hurt them. Sure, most of the innovators used Asian manufacturing, at least ultimately, but that's only one piece of the equation. To understand this distinction, we'll have to rewind thirty years.

Innovators Working With Asian Manufacturers Instead of Competing Against Them

Virtually overnight, new innovators, most without even realizing it, will wake to find that the Asian design infrastructure, the bane of innovators for 20+ years, has suddenly become an asset (at least in certain categories). Android as a platform has now dramatically reduced the link that produced the "as manufacturing goes overseas, so will design" axiom. Dell has happily demonstrated this is possible in PCs, and I believe that with Android we have a real shot at bringing the innovation and entrepreneurship back to US shores in electronics.

This is not a new idea

These lessons can be gleaned easily from the PC trends in the 80's, which leads one to wonder why it took so long for this to happen. The Linux kernel itself certainly swept through the embedded systems market years ago, and it's the de facto choice for small-run hardware designs (and a lot of big-run ones, too), but no good platform, spanning all the way from system libraries to user interface, has ever taken hold of the electronics industry before Android.

But that's beside the point, which is this: saying that Android is fragmented as a phone platform by comparing it to the iPhone is like saying the iPhone App Store is closed by comparing it to the PC. It's the wrong comparison. Instead, think of it this way:

Android is the most unified electronics device platform in the industry's history.

The fact that so many vendors have been taking Android and sticking it in places where Google didn't intend it to go is evidence that the platform is flexible and open enough to support new applications. I'm confident that you'll start seeing Android everywhere — even in places where most of the platform will never be used — because the question engineers are asking now is not "Why would we use Android?", but "Why wouldn't we?" And from there, it's a short wait until Western entrepreneurs discover that their novel ideas are suddenly practical ones.

In fact, don't wait for it. Go out there right now and make something. Read more at open.neurostechnology.com

 

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Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore

Goes back to the recent happiness research that once you hit $75k per year, happiness doesn't increase from monetary benefits.



This also reminds me of the whole gamification movement. We continue to get pts and meaningless badges just because. Similarly, we are inclined to buy more things, and feel the need to have more money, mostly just from a competitive aspect of comparing ourselves to our peers.



I remember a question posed in the Economist:

Would you rather make $100K while all your neighbors made $150K or $75K while your neighbors made $50K?



For better or worse, the vote was overwhelmingly in favor of the latter.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore

During the three decades after World War II, for example, incomes in the United States rose rapidly and at about the same rate — almost 3 percent a year — for people at all income levels. America had an economically vibrant middle class. Roads and bridges were well maintained, and impressive new infrastructure was being built. People were optimistic.

By contrast, during the last three decades the economy has grown much more slowly, and our infrastructure has fallen into grave disrepair. Most troubling, all significant income growth has been concentrated at the top of the scale. The share of total income going to the top 1 percent of earners, which stood at 8.9 percent in 1976, rose to 23.5 percent by 2007, but during the same period, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage declined by more than 7 percent.

Recent research on psychological well-being has taught us that beyond a certain point, across-the-board spending increases often do little more than raise the bar for what is considered enough. A C.E.O. may think he needs a 30,000-square-foot mansion, for example, just because each of his peers has one. Although they might all be just as happy in more modest dwellings, few would be willing to downsize on their own.

The rich have been spending more simply because they have so much extra money. Their spending shifts the frame of reference that shapes the demands of those just below them, who travel in overlapping social circles. So this second group, too, spends more, which shifts the frame of reference for the group just below it, and so on, all the way down the income ladder. These cascades have made it substantially more expensive for middle-class families to achieve basic financial goals.

The middle-class squeeze has also reduced voters’ willingness to support even basic public services. Rich and poor alike endure crumbling roads, weak bridges, an unreliable rail system, and cargo containers that enter our ports without scrutiny. And many Americans live in the shadow of poorly maintained dams that could collapse at any moment.

There is no persuasive evidence that greater inequality bolsters economic growth or enhances anyone’s well-being. Yes, the rich can now buy bigger mansions and host more expensive parties. But this appears to have made them no happier. And in our winner-take-all economy, one effect of the growing inequality has been to lure our most talented graduates to the largely unproductive chase for financial bonanzas on Wall Street. Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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Great #Insights into Broadband Usage

Interesting to see that bottom graph, top 1% of users utilizing 20% of all traffic, top 10% utilizing 60% of all traffic.



I've been having this discussion about metered broadband plans (similar to what's happening in the wireless world). I think it could be ok if priced at a fair rate (and not as a way to trick users). It just seems unfair that 90% of users are paying more for other people's usage than their own. Perhaps if we had an oyster card like system, maybe 10GB to start at $30, eventually increasing by $10 for every additional 5GB, then capping at $100 for unlimited?



What do you think?

Amplify’d from gigaom.com

Why Broadband Changes Everything

According to the study, the average broadband connection is now generating 14.9 GB of Internet traffic per month, up 31 percent from last year when it was 11.4 GB per month. And while a majority of this traffic is coming from online video –- streaming not P2P -– the trends show that we are using the Internet for more than just that. Give us more speed and we will use it all. And then we’ll want more of it.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing is now 25 percent of global broadband traffic, down from 38 percent last year.

Video — which includes streaming video, Flash, and Internet TV — represents 26 percent, compared to 25 percent for P2P.

The top 1 percent of broadband connections is responsible for more than 20 percent of total Internet traffic.

The top 10 percent of connections is responsible for over 60 percent of broadband Internet traffic, worldwide.

See more at gigaom.com

 

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RSA Animate - Changing #Education Paradigms - Modern Epidemic of ADHD and Divergent/Convergent thinking

Interesting notes:

Just as public education was initially resisted because most people thought the average person couldn't learn to read or write, we were wrong then and today, we must continue the evolution of education to truly enable everyone to achieve their potential.



Modern Epidemic of ADHD (3:38):

Interesting to see how this is heavily skewed towards East/Southeast US which implies that this is not an actual epidemic. It is simply the information overload world and the increased demands on students to pay attention (to more boring things, like history class).



Instead of deadening ourselves (via drugs or arbitrary focus), we need to awaken ourselves to what lies within.



There needs to be a balance of continued divergent thinking along with our convergent thinking (7:50). It's crazy to think about how we all start with the ability for divergent thinking, but modern education (of 1 right answer) has "boxed" us over time to no be able to think outside of the box anymore.

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

This animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award. Read more at www.youtube.com

 

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Why Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol

Interesting...perhaps I should drink more

Amplify’d from www.psychologytoday.com

The Scientific Fundamentalist

A Look at the Hard Truths About Human Nature

Why Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol

More intelligent people are more likely to binge drink and get drunk

Drinking alcohol is evolutionarily novel, so the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent people drink more alcohol than less intelligent people.

The Hypothesis would therefore predict that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to prefer drinking modern alcoholic beverages (beer, wine, and distilled spirits) than less intelligent individuals, because the substance and the method of consumption are both evolutionarily novel.

Consistent with the prediction of the Hypothesis, more intelligent children, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, grow up to consume alcohol more frequently and in greater quantities than less intelligent children.  Controlling for a large number of demographic variables, such as sex, race, ethnicity, religion, marital status, number of children, education, earnings, depression, satisfaction with life, frequency of socialization with friends, number of recent sex partners, childhood social class, mother’s education, and father’s education, more intelligent children grow up to drink more alcohol in the UK and the US.

It is important to note that both income and education, as well as childhood social class and parents’ education, are controlled in multiple regression analyses of these data from the US and the UK.  It means that it is not because more intelligent people occupy higher-paying, more important jobs that require them to socialize and drink with their business associates that they drink more alcohol.  It appears to be their intelligence itself, rather than correlates of intelligence, that inclines them to drink more.

Indicators of alcohol consumption in the Add Health data include the frequency of binge drinking (drinking five or more units of alcohol in one sitting) and the frequency of getting drunk.  That such behavior is detrimental to health and has few, if any, positive consequences, is irrelevant for the Hypothesis.  It does not predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in healthy and beneficial behavior.  Instead, it predicts that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in evolutionarily novel behavior.  Since the consumption of modern alcoholic beverages – including binge drinking and getting drunk – is evolutionarily novel, the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in it, and the empirical data from the UK and the US confirm it. Read more at www.psychologytoday.com

 

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Google’s New Billion-Dollar Businesses (Mobile, YT & Display)

Glad to finally not just working in an area that's "strategic". Crazy to think that 5 years ago we had zero Mobile Ads revenue and now we're making $1B.



RE: Android - that's not completely accurate since Android is driving Mobile Ads as people can actually use their phones to browse the Internet, search, etc.

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Google’s New Billion-Dollar Businesses

Display advertising: The company’s annualized run rate for display ad revenues is approaching $2.5 billion, according to Rosenberg. Google called its next billion dollar business, and that it’s already here. Much of Google’s display ad business comes from its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.

YouTube: While Google didn’t reveal specific revenue numbers for YouTube, the company did say it is monetizing 2 billion views per week, up 50% from last year. Recent reports suggest that YouTube is approaching $1 billion per year in revenue.

Mobile: The annualized run rate for Google’s mobile business is $1 billion this year. That means, if things stay on track, mobile will become yet another billion-dollar business for the search giant. As a note, this is really more about Google’s mobile ad business and less about Android, which is free for companies to use. Read more at mashable.com

 

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Technology In The Classroom (#Infographic) | ThePajamaPundit.com

URL:  http://www.thepajamapundit.com/2010/10/technology-in-cl...

Wow. Really surprising how little computers/Internet are being used in the classroom today. I think the interactive and community nature of the Internet could really facilitate greater learning and it's a shame we aren't taking advantage of it!

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Awesome!

Amplify’d from www.axismaps.com

Typographic Maps

Axis Maps is pleased to announce the release of our mapping / art project Typographic Maps. Created as a labor of love, these unique maps accurately depict the streets and highways, parks, neighborhoods, coastlines, and physical features of the city using nothing but type. Only by manually weaving together thousands upon thousands of carefully placed words does the full picture of the city emerge. Every single piece of type was manually placed, a process that took hundreds of hours to complete for each map. Take a look at our blog for more on how these maps were made.

See more at www.axismaps.com

 

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