I don't really know why. She's not even that attractive, she just looks like she'd be one of those freaks who is delightfully messed in the head from an eating disorder.
Apparently sowing discarded Oreo wrappers together will save the world. No really, the processes to do it will scale and all you really need are ideas and brands. Think The Gods Must Be Crazy except on a massive world-wide scale.
Vinod is speaking at Google about various topics related to technology, energy and environmentalism. But, it is mostly about evaluating promising technologies in terms of how well they scale.
Everyone watch this....
... otherwise you'll hear me use the term "black swan" from here on out and have no idea what I'm talking about.
That's Simon Winchester who wrote a biography of Joseph Needham, who may have been the catalyst of restarting China's development after their Universities and intellectually culture had been cut off from the rest of the world.
If you're still not sure who you'll be supporting yet, the appearances that Barack Obama and John McCain made at Google early in the election season (before they were their party's nominees) are actually very good. Watch a little bit of both of them, if you're still uncertain, watch all two hours; find out where you're voting and go tomorrow.
I'm voting for the candidate that knows the most about sorting algorithms.
Ted Nelson has spent most of his life working to create and popularize Project Xanadu. I get scared sometimes of falling in to a trap like that.
Larry Page said kind of the secret of Google was being able to do a lot of things quickly and then knowing when you have a winner. The Buddha said: if you cling, you will suffer. Adam Carolla said (when leaving Loveline): I don't suspect Ill like my next job as much as I liked Loveline but it's not always about doing what's easiest or what you enjoy the most. Change is often times sad but rarely bad. In the big picture a life without change is a stagnant one.
So, what have I learned? Sakyamuni Buddha = Larry Page = Adam Carolla.
That's Steve Wozniak (the co-founder of Apple) discussing his biography (autobiography?) iWoz. I like him because he's smart, honest, clever, generous, passionate about what he does, and still kind of sticks it to the man.
Watching it made me feel a little better about the world.
I'm not sure if I believe you can get mono from staying up late and writing code, though. Sure, it will knock the shit out of your immune system and make you more susceptible to whatever you're around. But it seems like wherever it is you'd be writing designing the logic for breakout is about as far from mono sources as you can get.
That's a presentation from John Zimmerman, and it just broke my head. He approaches market and product development from what he calls an identity construction perspective. In his presentation he mentions the quote from Fight Club ("You are not your job. You are not the money in your bank account. You are not the car you drive. You are not how much money is in your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis.") as kind of an opposite of what he what his perspective is -- that people extend their identities by what they "have."
Here's a little bit of identity construction: on the surface John Zimmerman is a pefect example of someone with a philosophy and ethics that I shouldn't like. I mean, if I had to think of a person who embodied the stereotypical postmodernist it would be him. Generally, I'm not a fan of that brand of sociology, but for reasons I think are very practical. I agree with Michael Albert that theories should be measured by their abilities to: predict, guide, or explain. My experience with postmodernism is that it his has very little ability to predict or guide (even when it claims to) and that it spends most of it's time trying to explain, but I don't feel that it's explanations are... good. In the sense that they're not parsimonious.
Despite that, his argument is compelling and I'm finding that the more I try to refute it, the more it seems to me that it does predict and guide (though I wouldn't say it explains). His framework isn't bloated, and it not over-simplified.
Having said all of that, for as much as I believe Zimmerman is genuine in his desire to create products that benefit people in a meaningful way, there are still the nagging problems of consumerism that I believe are related to his domain -- particuarly if we're talking about identity. If identity is what we (us humans) have, we have a lot more than possessions and jobs. We have hobbies. We have relationships (friends, mothers, fathers, pets, etc). We also have emotions. We have wants and desires. We have experiences. We have our physical and mental health. As I understand it part of Zimmerman's point is that creating products and services to enhance/facilitate/help those things are also markets. So, if we can come up with clever products to help people do those things and we can make money doing it, isn't that great?
Think about all of the instituions currently in the market to improve other people's relationships, physical health, mental health, etc. How many of them really have a deep concern for the well-being of their "customers?" I think the majority of them are institutions like 1-900-psychics, Scientologists, Christians, Objectivists and fad diet gurus. Are institutions like those are more concerned with advancing their dogma and the conditions that keep money flowing in their direction, or helping people? I think the the answer is pretty clear. If markets are so efficent when it comes to solutions to your personal problems, why is it that there's so many institutions like those rising to the top?
Maybe another way of stating the problem I have is this: even though what he says about identity construction appears correct and is part of a good framework, there doesn't seem to be a set of core values behind what Zimmerman is advocating other than to be good at getting people to buy stuff. It seems myopic, like he's missing "the big picture."
That's is a lecture from professor Marshall Van Alstyne. If you watch it you'll notice his lack of chest hair. If that bothers you, you can close your eyes and picture him as the millionare from Gilligan's Island (because they have the exact same accent). I don't mean to disparage him because he's brillant and this sounds like a great idea. But... you know... te-he!
His argument (as I understand it, and I don't completely) is that adaptive spam filters will never be perfect (which I believe) and can be gamed. He has a solution using the Coase Theorem, signaling and screening (from information economics), a trust system with email address (like user ratings on ebay), in which each email is represented as a transaction in "Attention Bonds."
Unfortunately, the site for the journal publishing the paper this talk is based on doesn't support CiteULike's automatic import standards. But, the manual (ugly and broke) entry for it on CiteULike is currently tagged by 322 people. Those of you who use CiteULike know that's fucking insane.
Watching the videos of the lectures given by Monique Maddy and Vinod Khosla on Learning to Love Africa (based on the book of the same title) and Biofuels, respectively, one thing imparticular struck me -- a vibe of general distrust in the ability government institutions to solve pressing social problems and the belief that the private sector has a better chance of making headway on them. If I heard that opinion expressed anywhere outside of Google, I would have immediately dismissed it as greenwash. Google, however, generally does live up to their motto of "do no evil." They've earned my attention.
Many progressives can't think outside of the "government should take care of this box." It's so entrenched in their minds that, in my experience, I'll often get ignored whenever I pitch ideas that don't involve government as part of a solution. In fact, more than ignored, in the stereotypical knee-jerk liberal way they'll associate me with people who believe we should rely more on faith-based programs or want to bring Lockheed-Martin in to privatize schools.
A couple of decades ago, it made sense to pin our hopes on the federal government as a positive instrument for social change. In the sixties and seventies -- pressured by the civil rights movement, the nascent feminist movement and a still-muscular labor movement -- the federal government expanded both its economic protections and its guarantees of civil liberties. We gained, in little more than a decade, Medicare and Medicaid, workplace safety and environmental regulations, cost-of-living increases in Social Security and laws against race- and sex-based discrimination, as well as the right to birth control and abortion.
...
But surely today, after nearly two decades of conservative national governance, Reagan through Clinton, we can no longer let progressivism be understood as the defense of government -- this government anyway -- against the antigovernment forces of the right. The federal government of 1997 is a very different creature from that of, say, 1977 -- more egregiously corrupt and sycophantic toward wealth, more glaringly repressive and even less responsive to the needs of low- and middle-income people. By setting ourselves up as the defenders of government (or, colloquially speaking, "big government") against the neo-anarchists of the right, progressives have boxed themselves into a pragmatically and morally untenable position.
At the time I had simialr feelings about the Clinton administration, but in retrospect it was wrong of me (and other progressives) to expect them to fall on the sword and enact the kind of wide-sweeping radical reforms we dreamed of. That would have ensured they would be replaced in 1996. More disappointingly, if you read her entire essay, the solutions she suggests aren't very innovative and still rely heavily on the government to make social changes.
What I'm hoping is that this is the beginning of a change in the attitude of "educated progressives." Too often progressives get mired in academic esoterica, criticizing instead of innovating, and ignoring the advice of John F. Kennedy.
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."
With as big as his nose is, his superior intelligence, and his goofy sense of humor (purple cows?), his high level of interest in his family, how much money he has, and that he hates cats, I'm pretty sure he's got to be a jew -- but I've been wrong about that before. Will Seth be thrown down the well? You are party of the mystery.
If you don't watch his lecture, but you finish reading this post, then I want to hip you to the most important piece of information from his presentation.
Technology doesn't sell products. Technology gives you a shot at marketing.
After reading that, you should be substaintially closer to achieving enlightenment.
His blog is syndicated on livejournal (seth_godin), if you want to add it to your friends list.
Probably my third biggest regret in life (I'm not meticlous about ranking them, but third is a good estimate) is getting involved in the Nader/LaDuke 2000 campaign. I was painfully reminded of this again today while watching an "Unseen Al Gore Campaign Video" from 2000 (watch it: Part 1, Part 2), and was even more painfully reminded of if when I watched former National Economic Adviser to President Clinton, Gene Speriling, giving a lecture at the Googleplex on his book The Pro-Growth Progressive.
I've said it before, but I can't emphasize the point enough, if I live to be 100 I'll probably never see another American president better than Bill Clinton... Though, I'd imagine Hillary would come close. I'm also very impressed with Joe Biden, who has actually announced he'll run... which, you know, is an important step towards becoming president.
There is such an astonding concentration of good information in these videos... that.... that.... it's fucking astonding.
I have a hard time getting to sleep without something to keep my attention. When I'm in a dark quiet room my mind tends to turn in on itself and it starts thinking about all the things it's been too busy to think about, or avoiding thinking about, while I was deliberately being conscious. Especially when I'm depressed, like the last day or so. Depression is relentless negative rumination.
Though, I also listen to and/or watch videos from the Googleplex during periods of deliberate consciousness (most people would call this "during the day", but I don't always work like that).
I used to listen to radicalradio or mp3s from radio4all and streams from shoutcast a lot, like the random Loveline stream... and I still do. But I'm much happier listening to audio from google video (and maybe glancing at the video infrequently). I think I'm going to try and write an entry for each video that I watch, you know, as a review, because you can't post comments on google video.
I'm never disappointed with any lecture from the Googleplex. Even the one I'm watching now, "Verbatim" from Erim McKean. Erim is a dictionary "author" (editor and lexicographer). I picked it mostly because I couldn't really imagine what she would be talking about based on the title.
The woman (and Google employee?) who introduced Erim said she met her through a shared interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Immediately, I knew that she would be introducing a linguist (before I read the video description, even). When there's a woman in academia who likes Buffy The Vampire Slayer there's only a handful of likely options for what they do.
Linguistics
Sociology (including Women's Studies and Cultural Anthropology)
Computer Science
Some kind of Math/Science/Engineering that isn't Computer Science. Though this catagory seems broad, it probably contains less than 5% of the women in academia who like Buffy The Vampire Slayer
I was tempted to put Philosophy and Dance in the list. But, while the personalities can be similar I don't think they're likely to watch Buffy so much.
To put it another way, she reminds me a lot of dither. You know, the kind of person that gets all worked up about things like the Front Matter in Dictionaries and people who use words like "irregardless." It's cute. :)
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seth_godin), if you want to add it to your friends list. 
