For centuries information was scarce, and the heavy demand for news, culture, art, and other "idea-laden" goods made them expensive. We now live in a topsy-turvy world of information abundance, where a glut of ideas is chasing an increasingly limited supply of demand, in the form of time or attention.
But when everyone is so busy creating, who has time to consume any of it? In an economy where what is scarce is attention, the spoils will go to the artist who is best able to command it.
Profound as it may be, the Internet revolution still pales in comparison to that earlier revolution that first brought screens in millions of homes: the TV revolution. Americans still spend more of their non-sleep, non-work time on watching TV than on any other activity. And now the immovable object (the couch potato) and the irresistible force (the business-model destroying Internet) are colliding.
Bing Travel just saved me $100 on plane tickets by telling me to wait 2 days. We totally wrote a winner there...
As only a data-mining giant like Google can do, it began analyzing performance reviews, feedback surveys and nominations for top-manager awards. They correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints.And came up with the same conclusions everyone else has known for decades.
"In the Google context, we'd always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you," Mr. Bock says. "Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible."Managers need to be good at management and have people skills? Who woulda thunk?
The former FCC chairman who fifty years ago called television a "vast wasteland" proposes a strategy for protecting public interest in the world of the Internet.
"There seems to be a disconnect between what the Fed is saying and what people are experiencing when they fill up their gas tanks or read about rising food prices around the world."Gas just hit $4.00 a gallon at a few of the gas stations I pass daily. Not necessarily a sign of inflation, but it doesn't make me feel good.
Speaking of average...
In a series of studies using humor, grammar, and logic, researchers Justin Kruger and David Dunning demonstrated that people who score the lowest in actual skill rankings tend to drastically overestimate their abilities.
Most programmers have only a vague notion of how competent they are at what they do for a living.
When you don't compete, per se, what drives you to be better?
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My Spitfire through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy skills
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I have trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
There is a masculine heart and a feminine heart, which in their own ways reflect or portray to the world God's heart. God meant something when he meant man.
— John Eldredge, Wild at Heart