Category Archives: Quotable & Notes

“The Future of Work”

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Chris Brogan thinks work will be more and more modular, mobile, cause-balanced, smaller/bigger, and goal-aligned.

“Many of us will start using “project” as the unit of measurement of work. Meaning, a job won’t be a job any more, but a collection of projects, sometimes with the same employer and sometimes not. We will all work a bit more like Hollywood’s film industry, gathering the right team for the right project, and having more than one “picture” in the works at all time. This will require a lot more self-organizing and a lot more self-discipline, but people who define work around the unit of “project” instead of the unit of “job” will definitely have a better chance of succeeding.”

Brogan notes that “management styles are still based around “butt in chair” metrics.” While you might just be hoping to have a job in the future, this short –but insightful post– is worth a read if you want a peek at what things will be like in the future.

Memory is fiction

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A recurring theme in some of my recent reading has been the nature of subjective time. Among other insights, that the past and the future are delusions, created by the mind. This is a little easier to grasp for the future. Any ideas we have about what is going to happen is clearly fiction. But the past feels more “real.” It happened. I remember it. But that’s fiction as well.

“A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it. The more you remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes. The larger moral of the experiment is that memory is a ceaseless process, not a repository of inert information. It shows us that every time we remember anything, the neuronal structure of the memory is delicately transformed, or reconsolidated.” — The Frontal Cortex

This reminds me of the scene in Blade Runner when Rachel discovers her memories are implanted. A disturbing thought because (for most of us) we ARE our memories.

But if that’s not really so, if our memories are fiction, who are we? Probably not who we think.

Scott Adams: Cloud Government

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“The new government will be Internet based and require no actual politicians per se, except for the President. Citizens will vote for the laws they want, as often as they want, by Internet. Actually, voting is too strong a term. Think of it as a rolling opinion poll. There’s no need for elections when the preferences of the people are continuously monitored in real time.”

Dave Winer’s advice to Keith Olbermann

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This post doesn’t depend on knowing who Dave Winer or Keith Olbermann is (are?). It’s about media and brand. My favorite part of Mr. Winer’s advice:

“…the future of communication is not about the bottleneck that MSNBC and their competitors control. I don’t think you really need them. Unless of course you need to make $5 million a year, in which case you probably do need them. But if what you’re interested in is power to influence public opinion, and becoming more relevant over time, not more niched over time — if being influential is what you’re about, they really did you a favor.

So here’s what I recommend. Borrow a page from Conan O’Brien’s playbook, and use the social network to communicate with your fans.

Get a video camera and put it in your living room or den at home. Hit Record. Sit down in front of the camera and rant for 15 minutes. You can do that, I’m sure. Then without any production at all, upload it to YouTube and send the link around on Twitter. The first time you do it, it will be the most watched video of the day. Far more people will see it than used to see you on MSNBC, or O’Reilly or Beck or any of them. Depending on how fresh and interesting it is, and how real it is, and how compelling you really are (I know that’s a lot of “depends”) there won’t be much of a dropoff on Day 2 and 3 and so on. Now you’ve got your own network. And no one can shut you down. And you’ll have a lot more people watching you.”

Leo Laporte has done such an amazing job of this. Same for Arianna Huffington, and I’m sure there are others that don’t come to mind. Begs the question: Who owns the Keith Olbermann brand? MSNBC/Comcast? Or Keith Olbermann? Who owns your brand? Have you established a brand? What is it and where can I find it?

“The Viral Me”

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In The Viral Me (GQ), Devin Friedman heads to Silicon Valley for a closer look at social networking. Don’t let the length of this piece scare you off, it’s worth the read. A few of my favorite ideas:

“Your smartphone is now, or will be, your basic interface with the world.”
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“I think old people like me (I’m 38) often do this stuff (social media) to feel like the world hasn’t yet left them behind, but we don’t have any natural hunger for it. It’s kind of like androids having sex: We know we’re supposed to do it, but we’re not really sure why. Meanwhile, and infuriatingly, we know that humans just like to bone.”
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“(Silicon Valley) might be the last place in America where people are this optimistic. The last place in America where people aren’t longing for a vague past when we were the shit.”
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“Flood the social layer with information you want out there about yourself.”

“If you’re confused by the term social layer, think of the word layer as meaning “lens.” The social layer is one lens you can look through to see the content of the Internet. Who you’re connected to, what they’re connected to, what they like and don’t like.”
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“More and more people are going to have careers where they move from one thing to another fairly publicly. And what people are really investing in is your track record. Your brand. What you do and what you say and what you think are just as important as your skills.”
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“An open society isn’t one where people have access to the real you. It is simply providing access to the identity you very carefully construct for human consumption.”
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“I believe that more people are going to work for themselves, and more people are going to do what they’re passionate about. … What we’re talking about is monetizing passion. Monetizing authority.”

I can’t wait for people my age to get the fuck out of the way. Die, retire, whatever. Admit that you don’t get it and probably won’t get and make room for the bright young men and women who live the ideas expressed in this article.