Posted by enkerli on August 30, 2006
Posted in Cluetrain Manifesto, Communities, Creative Commons, Empowerment, YouTube, activism, advocacy, alimentation, amateurs, cluetrain, community-building, consumption, craft, creation, creativity, cultural capital, digital lifestyle, food and society, friendship, geek crowd, globalization, groupthink, hegemony, humanism, information, innovation, intellectual property, knowledge, metaphors, mindshare, moral enterpreneurs, movies, music distribution, music industry, music scenes, musicking, online privacy, online publishing, open-source, openness, optimism, participatory culture, popular culture, product and process, recording industry, social dynamics, social network, social networks, social publishing, specialists, stereotypes, tasting, technology, trusting people | No Comments »
Posted by enkerli on June 20, 2006
First encountered the notion of the Medici effect through this interview with Frans Johansson in Ubiquity, a journal frequently mentioned on the Humanist Discussion Group.
A recent article about important changes coming from simple ideas made me post a short blog entry about changes from simple ideas. Interestingly enough, Johansson himself posted a comment to that entry.
This is in fact a frequent stream of thought, for me. In both business and academia, we tend to live through ideas. Specific ideas. Especially those which can generate money or research projects. An important dimension of the “Medici Effect” seems to be that simple ideas can lead to great accomplishments. Another important dimension is that ideas are both generated in and implemented by groups. Some social contexts seem especially conducive to new ideas. This perspective is well-known enough that even Denys Arcand’s Invasions Barbares had something to say about it.
There’s a lot of directions one could take to talk about innovation from that point. Among the possible threads: artistic creativity, personal innovation, sense of discovery, the economies of ideas, ideas come from the people, “intellectual property,” fluid/organic innovation, boundless ideas, innovation through links between ideas, Lavoisier on ideas (nothing is created or lost, everything is transformed, including ideas), and so on and so forth.
My personal feeling is that the very concept of innovation has become something of a “core value” for a number of people, especially in industrialized society. The type of “newer is better” view of “progress” in both society and technology.
In my mind, the best thing to do is simply to bring ideas together, a “shock of ideas” («le choc des idées»). Hence the long list of tags… 
Posted in Academia, Communities, Creative Commons, Empowerment, Learning, aesthetics, alter-globalization, amateurs, art, college life, commodities, consumerism, creation, creativity, cultural capital, development, development strategies, economics, experimentation, globalization, grassroots, humanism, hype, individualism, innovation, intellectual property, interdisciplinarity, ivory tower, knowledge, knowledge management, knowledge people, market economy, memes, mindshare, naïve, politics, popular culture, prestige, product and process, productivity, professionals, ramblings, research, science, social capital, social change, social networks, specialists, success in life, technology, writing | No Comments »
Posted by enkerli on April 27, 2006
Posted in New York Times, commodities, consumption, hype, innovation, intellectual property, literature, mindshare, popular culture, product and process, readership, teenagers, trusting people, writing | No Comments »
Posted by enkerli on March 14, 2006
An older Open Source episode on Google Print
Seems to me, a large part of the discussion had to about two distinct and fairly incompatible “worldviews,” or more precisely in this case, two ways to see the realities of information and knowledge. Both are certainly legitimate, accurate, understandable, and logical. But they do clash. Pretty much a culture clash. And both are typical of the United States, in this very case, with frequent mentions of U.S. symbols and themes.
Not criticism but observations. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in information, knowledge, knowledge people, librarians | No Comments »
