Clipmarks | JICWyllie's Metaknowledge collection

Pondering the Endgame

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 18:50:08 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

I feel that the biggest loss of all has been perpetrated by the insidious repackaging and promotion of negative values by presenting them as positive attributes.

Rights”, are foisted upon us with no mention of the accompanying responsibilities (see Entitlement below).

"Empowerment", is in reality selfishness.

"Liberation", is in reality sanctioned irresponsibility.

"Independence", is in reality denial of the individual as a part of the society.

"Entitlement", is in reality the disconnection of reward from effort or accomplishment.

"Self Worth", is in reality egotism.

Obfuscation of the difference between "quality of life" and "standard of living" completely ignores the very real emotional and spiritual needs of a society and the individual.

* The trivial is exalted as important and anything of depth is ignored or met with vacuous stares. Dysfunctional behaviour is celebrated.

True, healthy values have been palmed and replaced with false, unhealthy ones.

Tags: politics, i-marketing, i-distortion

The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:50:22 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

the best stories—those retold through generations and translated into other languages—do more than simply present a believable picture. These tales captivate their audience, whose emotions can be inextricably tied to those of the story’s characters. Such immersion is a state psychologists call “narrative transport.”

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

people who perform better on tests of empathy, or the capacity to perceive another person’s emotions, become more easily transported regardless of the story.

Empathy is part of the larger ability humans have to put themselves in another person’s shoes: we can attribute mental states—awareness, intent—to another entity. Theory of mind, as this trait is known, is crucial to social interaction and communal living—and to understanding stories.

promotes social cohesion among groups and serves as a valuable method to pass on knowledge to future generations

stories have an important effect on individuals as well—the imaginary world may serve as a proving ground for vital social skills

Tags: culture, stories, i-research

OPEC 2.0

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:06:01 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

AMERICANS today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.

Like energy, bandwidth is an essential economic input.

A future possibility is to buy your own fiber, the way you might buy a solar panel for your home.

The solution is to relax the overregulation of the airwaves and allow use of the wasted spaces. Anyone, so long as he or she complies with a few basic rules to avoid interference, could try to build a better Wi-Fi and become a broadband billionaire. These wireless entrepreneurs could one day liberate us from wires, cables and rising prices.

Americans are as addicted to bandwidth as they are to oil. The first step is facing the problem.

Tags: technology, internet, i-bandwidth, i-prices, i-policy, i-deregulation

Biomimicry - "Innovation Inspired By Nature"

Tue, 27 May 2008 13:59:53 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: peakenergy.blogspot.com

Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a relatively new science that studies the designs nature has evolved through millions of years of trial and error and then imitates these to solve problems in a sustainable way.

The biomimicry community has developed the following design principles:

• Waste = Food
• Self-assemble, from the ground up
• Evolve solutions, don't plan them
• Relentlessly adjust to the here & now
• Cooperate and compete, not just one or the other
• Diversify to fill every niche
• Gather energy and materials efficiently
• Optimize the system rather than maximizing components
• The whole is greater than the sum of its parts -- design for swarm
• Use minimal energy and materials
• "Don't foul your nest"
• Organize fractally

• Chemical reactions should be in water at normal temperature and pressure

"Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, a mistress above all masters, are laboring in vain." - Leonardo Da Vinci

Yahoo Sale Could Be Bad for Minnows

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:02:55 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The legions of high-tech entrepreneurs who have set up camp here with clever ideas, a willingness to scramble for financing and the energy to weather round-the-clock days have typically tethered their dreams to a singular outcome: getting fabulously rich by selling to one of the three Internet giants, Microsoft, Google or Yahoo.

But if Microsoft’s takeover bid for Yahoo succeeds, that calculus becomes more harrowing because of a simple reality: the field of large, lushly endowed suitors will narrow by one. And that is a fact sure to jangle nerves already strained by growing fears of an economic recession.

“Field of Dreams” start-ups,

believed that if they built popular online services, advertisers would inevitably come.

“There’s been a suspension of belief” at Internet companies without a proven way to earn money “that the market is going to let you off the hook,

Tags: online search, i-advertising, i-takeover, i-consequences

Social network sites slow Google

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:17:11 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: The problem with social networking is that it lacks purpose. Now constructive collaboration will be something else. As I have said many times to Eric and Adam, Clipmarks is missing a trick, here. Constructive collaboration is what our Open Intelligence site will be all about. What we will be saying to Google is that if you have to search for it, then it is already too late.

Clip Source: www.ft.com

The search company also reported an unexpectedly sharp slowdown in the number of “clicks” people make on its online adverts, contributing to the nervousness on Wall Street about underlying demand for its core advertising services.

Google on Thursday blamed the difficulty of making money from placing adverts on social networking sites for holding back its growth in the latest quarter, contributing to a 9 per cent slump in its shares in after-hours trading.

“We have found that social networks are not monetising as well as we were expecting,” said George Reyes, chief financial officer, as Google reported its earnings for the final quarter of last year.

Tags: metaknowledge, social networking, i-profits, i-decrease, i-consequences

Fox News Is in for a Very Rough 2008

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:04:11 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

The point is that Fox News years ago made an obvious decision to appeal almost exclusively to Republican viewers. The good news then for Fox News was that it succeeded. The bad news now for Fox News is that it succeeded.

Meaning, when the GOP catches a cold, everybody at Fox News gets sick.

In the past, Fox News would have absolutely owned that night of coverage, as conservative news junkies flocked to their home team -- Fox News -- to see the results. But no more. CNN grabbed nearly just as many prime-time viewers for the Republican South Carolina returns as did Fox News.

Tags: media, tv news, i-ratings, i-decrease

IkeWiki a Semantic Wiki

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 14:07:52 GMT

clipped by: ccharlebois

Clip Source: ikewiki.salzburgresearch.at

Welcome to IkeWiki - the Semantic Wiki for Knowledge Engineers

IkeWiki is a new kind of Wiki (a Semantic Wiki ) developed by SalzburgResearch that allows users to annotate pages and links between pages with semantic annotations. Such annotations are useful because they give machines a certain amount of "understanding" of the content that goes beyond merely displaying the page. This information can then e.g. be used for context-specific presentation of pages, advanced querying, consistency verification or drawing conclusions.

Although IkeWiki looks and behaves like Wikipedia/MediaWiki in many aspects, it is a complete rewrite, and the system design significantly differs from other Wikis. IkeWiki makes full use of Semantic Web technologies like RDF(S) and OWL using the Jena RDF store.

Tags: ikewiki, opensource, wiki, rdf

the 1% bit of profitability in searching for information

Mon, 28 May 2007 06:42:18 GMT

clipped by: hjharris
clipper's remarks: A fascinating bit of deduction – the implications upon revenue streams all points to the profitability collating and finding information

Clip Source: dondodge.typepad.com

Why 1% of search market share is worth over $1 Billion

So, Google did 10.1 billion search queries in the US in the first quarter of 2007. Now lets look at Google revenues of $3.66 Billion for the first quarter of 2007. The simple math is $3.66B in revenue divided by 10.1B search queries equals $0.36 per search. But, that would be comparing US searches to total revenue, so we need to do a little more math gymnastics.

Each 1% of search market share is worth over $100M in revenues - Here is the math. There were 7.3 billion searches performed in March of 2007. One percent of that is 73 million searches times $0.12 revenue per search or $8.76M per month. That translates to $105.1M in annualized revenue.

So now we all understand why Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Ask, and a host of others are fighting hard for every 1% of search market share. The search business generates huge revenues and profits...even for competitors with just a small market share.

Tags: long tail

Golden ratio

Thu, 24 May 2007 15:07:30 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: This is the ratio which makes Georgian architecture so magical. Some say Pythagorus was a magician. The real magus.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Construction of a golden rectangle:
1. Construct a unit square.
2. Draw a line from the midpoint of one side to an opposite corner.
3. Use that line as the radius to draw an arc that defines the long dimension of the rectangle.

In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller. The golden ratio is approximately 1.6180339887.

Tags: metaknowledge, golden mean

A rant against Web 2.0

Wed, 09 May 2007 18:23:52 GMT

clipped by: hjharris
clipper's remarks: Andrew Keen argues that we need an elite, without it we are doomed !
Ummm, the calling for an elite, "requiring an authoritative voice",I say, be careful what you wish for. (did not someone try it, leading to WW2) The computer is the instrument of the modern state, it is also the tool for freedom from the dictator.

Clip Source: www.weeklystandard.com

SO WHAT, exactly, is the Web 2.0 movement?

a series of ethical assumptions about media, culture, and technology.

It worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer.

It suggests that everyone--even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us--can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves. Web 2.0 "empowers" our creativity, it "democratizes" media, it "levels the playing field" between experts and amateurs. The enemy of Web 2.0 is "elitist" traditional media.

we can all become citizen journalists, citizen videographers, citizen musicians.

Just as Marx seduced a generation of European idealists with his fantasy of self-realization in a communist utopia, so the Web 2.0 cult of creative self-realization has seduced everyone in Silicon Valley.

The consequences of Web 2.0 are inherently dangerous for the vitality of culture and the arts.

Another word for narcissism is "personalization."

the creeping narcissism

Tags: web 2.0