Reputations
Regarding reputation-building on the Internet, Clive Thompson writes approvingly that
network algorithms do not favor the cagey or secretive. They favor the prolific, the outgoing, the shameless.
Said another way, network algorithms do not favour the quiet or the reflective. They favour the loud-mouthed, the self-promoting, the flashy.
O brave new world that has such algorithms in it.
Believe the Opposite: Radical Opacity
I’m afraid Clive Thompson has jumped the shark. From being a witty journalist at the interesting This Magazine he now fits right in at the boring Wired Magazine. On the way he seems to have lost his sense of irony (maybe they don’t let you bring irony into Silicon Valley?) and his cynicism. As a result, he has also lost the plot. Come back Mr. Thompson!
His March 2007 article in Wired Magazine called The See-Through CEO coined the phrase Radical Transparency. Like other Silicon Valley catch phrases, it has that air of youthful rebellion, it is self-consciously ignorant of history (who needs history when all the interesting things are happening right now), and – most important of all – it imparts a feel-good sense of anti-corporate attitude to your next venture funding proposal or business plan. Because like other Silicon Valley catch phrases, Radical Transparency has about as much to do with rebellion as riding a mountain bike.
Here are some snatches from the article, and some recent events in the real world, mainly as reported by The Register – which has thankfully managed to keep its senses of both … Continue reading
The liberation mythology of the internet
Nicholas Carr of Rough Type has been reading David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous, and is disappointed. But in his disappointment he coins a phrase I really like: "the liberation mythology of the Internet".
I only reached the bottom of page nine, at which point I crashed into this passage about music:
For decades we’ve been buying albums. We thought it was for artistic reasons, but it was really because the economics of the physical world required it: Bundling songs into long-playing albums lowered the production, marketing, and distribution costs because there were fewer records to make, ship, shelve, categorize, alphabetize, and inventory. As soon as music went digital, we learned that the natural unit of music is the track. Thus was iTunes born, a miscellaneous pile of 3.5 million songs from a thousand record labels. Anyone can offer music there without first having to get the permission of a record executive.
"… the natural unit of music is the track"? Well, roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.
There’s a lot going on in that brief passage, and almost all of it is wrong. Weinberger does do a good job, though, of condensing into a few … Continue reading
Pain is Good
It’s been an enjoyable day.
First Alex Tabarrok threw my book against the wall and promised to kick me in the shins if I venture near George Mason University – and sent my Amazon.com ranking up to number 3634.
Now Brad DeLong offers to "throw one of my two copies out my sixth-floor office window and to trap
Tom Slee in the Evans Hall middle south elevator for no less than
thirty minutes" – and sends it up to 2,460.
Thanks to both of them. I think.
A response to Alex Tabarrok
At Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok has posted a fine review of No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: I’ll be keeping this paragraph somewhere to cheer me up when I’m feeling gloomy:
Slee’s book is the best of the anti-market books: it is well written, serious, and knowledgeable about economics. In fact, I regard Slee’s book as an excellent primer on asymmetric information, free riding, externalities, herding, coordination problems and identity – Economics 301 for all those budding young Ezra Klein’s of the world who think that Economics 101 isn’t quite right.
Very nice. But coming from his libertarian point of view, it’s not surprising he has some criticisms. Let’s skip right past the lesser ones to the Most Serious Of All:
The chapter on power is terrible, I did throw the book against the wall. Perhaps in order to prepare us to welcome government as the deliverer of our true preferences, Slee wants to diminish the distinction between liberty and coercion. But a true liberal should never write things like this:
…the formal structure of democracy and free markets is not enough to rule out exploitation and plunder – characteristics usually associated with repressive regimes.
If … Continue reading
42,334
That’s my book’s Amazon.com number right now.
It’s the lowest (best) I’ve seen it in the year since publication, which is pretty encouraging. Usually it’s up in the 100,000 to 500,000 range, but a series of about three purchases this week knocked it down.
Yes, I still check it far too much.
