Snow Crash: CIC database

Posted on by

From Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, published in 1976. 22 years before Google; 29 years before YouTube; 32 years before the Bail Out/Melt Down.

“The business is a simple one. Hiro gets information. It may be gossip, videotape, audiotape, a fragment of a computer disk, a xerox of a document. It can even be a joke based on the latest highly publicized disaster.

He uploads it to the CIC database — the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word “congress” means. And even the word “library is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old one. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeros. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering.

Millions of other CIC stringers are uploading millions of other fragments at the same time. CIC’s clients, mostly large corporations and Sovereigns, rifle through the Library looking for useful information, and if they find a use for something that Hiro put into it, Hiro gets paid.”

Should your company blog?

Posted on by

Matt Dickman (Techno//Marketer) is Vice President, Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland, Ohio, and he says the answer to the question above depends on how you answer the following questions (Hint: the answer has to be ‘yes’):

  1. Are you listening to your online community? – Are you spending a minimum of two hours a day searching, reading Google alerts or using a monitoring tool like Radian6?
  2. Do you have something unique to say?
    – How will you differentiate yourself from other blogs and other
    companies? This could be your people, the information you publish or
    other forms of thought leadership.
  3. Are you willing and able to say it? – Can you talk about your industry and are you willing to put it out there?
  4. Are you willing to be challenged and criticized? – This goes with the turf. You have to be able to facilitate conversation in a respectful manner to grow a community.
  5. Are you willing and able to dedicate the resources to succeed?
    – People always underestimate this one. A good rule for this to succeed
    is to have one person dedicated to the success of your strategy for a
    minimum of 4 hours per day (2 hours of which is listening and
    commenting). That is one half of a full time person’s week. Have
    staffing plans in place as you grow and start realizing your success.

Matt has even provided a decision tree to help his more visual clients with these questions.

The two hour committment referenced in #1 sounds like a lot but I really don’t know how a company could get the most out their blog without the primary blogger investing that much time. You can’t be a naturalist if you don’t go in the forrest. Thanks to David for finding and sharing.

Box Turtle

Posted on by

We see lots of adult Box Turtles in our neighborhood but rarely (never?) see the babies. Rick Thom –long time employee of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources– lives just down the hill from us and called a couple of days ago to report finding one of the little guys. Video runs 3 1/2 min.

Death by manure spreader

Posted on by

I came across a story submitted to one of our networks yesterday, about an 81-year-old man was killed when he became caught in the manure spreader he was operating. This just struck me as a bad way to go.

Which started me thinking about “good” ways and “bad” ways. When was the last time you heard or read a story about someone dying in their sleep? Okay, that probably isn’t much of story.

Or about some old guy dying in flagrante delicto, which I think means “in the saddle.” I assume those stories are hard to report. And the deceased is usually found alone in a hotel room with his shoes on the wrong feet.

While there are few “good” ways to go, some are just a damn site worse than others. So I’ve set up a little blog where we can post these stores and be glad they weren’t about us.

If you spot one of these, please send them my way (Steve Mays at Gmail.com) with “Bad Way” in the subject line. Let me know if I can use your name.

I’ve registered BadWaytoGo.com but it isn’t hot yet.

Credit card debt

Posted on by

Grapes_01

According to George Will (on ABC’s This Week), Americans have 105 billion credit cards (9 per card holder); $12,000 in average credit card debt per household; household debt is 139% of household income and no concept of deferred gratification.

9/29/20: Birth of commercial radio

Posted on by
Reply

Thanks to the folks at Wired for reminding us today is the anniversary of the birth of commercial radio.

“In 1922, 30 radio stations were in operation in the United States, and 100,000 consumer radios were sold. Just a year later, 556 stations were on the air and half-a-million receivers were sold. Radio was on its way, and the commercial broadcast model would reign essentially unchallenged for eight decades until the advent of satellite radio and podcasts.”

My dad was a radio guy and so was I for a number of years. I am really glad I didn’t miss it.

Personalized Medicine of the Future

Posted on by
Reply

“When you walk into a superstore, you would drop a sample of blood or saliva on a BlackBerry-type device. When you’re done shopping for groceries, the store would present you with a printout of your ailments and a bag of personalized medication. That medication would also contain digestible computer chips, which would relay real-time reports on your body’s fluctuations.” washingtonpost.com

G. Steven Burrill addressing AdvaMed 2008, a medical technology industry conference in Washington last week, spoke about the upcoming era of personalized medicine.

RealScoop Tells You When Politicians, Celebrities Are Lying

Posted on by

“Dubbed the Believability Meter, RealScoop’s analysis technology analyzes over 100 vocal elements of the human voice and performs over 1,000 calculations per second to find out if a politician or celebrity is telling the truth. On Tuesday, RealScoop will cover the Vice Presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, putting each one’s statements to its Believability test.” [Link]

Deadwood kidney stone scene

Posted on by

Back in 2005 I posted a link to a clip from the HBO series, Deadwood. In this episode Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) is sick as a dog from a kidney stone. So sick he cannot speak. Doc Cochran is about to surgically remove the stone (which could kill Al) but at the last minute, they opt to let Al try to pass the stone, with help from Johnny, Dan and Trixie.

Bonus clip: I’m thinking of putting this on my answering machine (6 seconds)

Excellent interview with David Milch (The New Language of the Old West)