Before the Internet, most professional occupations required a large body of knowledge, accumulated over years or even decades of experience. But now, anyone with good critical thinking skills and the ability to focus on the important information can retrieve it on demand from the Internet, rather than her own memory. On the other hand, those with wandering minds, who might once have been able to focus by isolating themselves with their work, now often cannot work without the Internet, which simultaneously furnishes a panoply of unrelated information — whether about their friends’ doings, celebrity news, limericks, or millions of other sources of distraction. The bottom line is that how well an employee can focus might now be more important than how knowledgeable he is. Knowledge was once an internal property of a person, and focus on the task at hand could be imposed externally, but with the Internet, knowledge can be supplied externally, but focus must be forced internally.
Yes. And yes, I encountered this while browsing for something more interesting that what I should be doing. And please, let me know if someone is selling NEW! Improved Focus. I want it.
I love the idea of creating a public foursquare multi-stop experience. Badges / updates could then get you access to a private event with people who’ve shared that experience.
Lost Generation is a palindrome video that reads the same backwards as forward, but has a totally different meaning. The video was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled “u @ 50″ by AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause.
I’d love to see this in context of investment in bands/albums that didn’t recoup their investments. How that system came to prominence, other competing strategies and how those investment decisions were made probably maintains relevance. The “invest in a vast array of possibilities to make money off a few” is an interesting model that is being bandied about for the energy crisis, and in another field, seems to be working pretty well for terrorists.
What can be learned from how this model worked and didn’t is a whole lot more interesting than making fun of a moribund industry. But, yeah, it’s still sorta fun to laugh at them.