the gap between a leader’s personal values and the values he or she promotes at work is so extreme, Pruzan said, that leaders have unconsciously developed a modern form of schizophrenia, threatening the health of both the leader and the organization.

"Personally, I'm delighted to see this development, for four reasons.
I think it's great that people have translated the wiki into Chinese, which makes it accessible to more people.
It's a sign of success-- you only get cloned if you're making something people want.
Competition is good.
What starts as clones may eventually become real innovation and improvements. Remember that our licence requires that any derivative designs must also be open source. Think how great would it be if a Chinese team created a better design than ours. Then we could turn the tables and produce their design, translating the documentation into English and making them available to a market outside China. Everybody wins! (Hey, a guy can dream ;-) )"

Digital technologies and on-line platforms are essential to the way we work and live. Interestingly, they are defined by algorithms which are not neutral. Kevin discusses how they define new social norms and how our culture is affected by the possibilities embedded in the software we use.

The uncanny similarity among the three designs — the painstakingly protracted approaches to the galleries — underscores the challenges the architects faced when trying to preserve the essence of these museums while making room for the cafes, bookstores, event spaces and education departments that have become regular features of the contemporary museum experience.

But there is something else behind the uniformity of these plans as well. What were once eccentric creations have become polite and well behaved. Gorgeously crafted, they are about reinforcing the existing cultural consensus — not rebelling against it.

^ why the advertising world is literally the root of all evil

"Elyssa Warkentin characterizes the culture and assumptions behind such advertisements as showing "contempt ... for women both as consumers and as females"."

Interesting post/comment thread on why businesses are often closed or "translucent" rather than transparent. Not everyone involved is interested in making a big announcement, don't want to be a "hot startup" just want to put their heads down and work "tending their own garden", "translucency == storytelling"—sharing finished ideas (rather than process?) is more convincing (and profitable?), dealing with "undisclosed conflicts", helpful private exchanges over email.

VC industry has a really complicated relationship with access to information. Another post (forget where) pointed out that it's truly a social undertaking. Everyone wants to be first, based on speculation. While it would be fun to have open/leaked access to these kinds of communications (I'm sure it would tell a different story) "openness" can't really apply here in the way it can to journalism. the point of journalism is to tell stories. The point of VC is to grow companies. One requires exposé, the other requires discretion.

Fred Wilson:
"At Union Square Ventures, we pride ourselves on our transparency and openness. Wednesday's Airbnb post and Paul Graham's followup posting of our email thread on that opportunity is a good example of where being open benefits everyone involved, from Airbnb, to Y Combinator, to Union Square Ventures, and mostly to entrepreneurs out there who have always been curious what really goes on.

But there are plenty of times when we are not open. If an entrepreneur comes in and pitches us on an investment, we don't blog about it. We have all sorts of things going on in our portfolio right now that we'd love to talk about but obviously we can't and won't. And when we make an investment that the people involved decide should be kept quiet, we are fully capable of doing that."

Fred and the Airbnb founders have generously agreed to let me publish this email exchange (with one sentence redacted about something that's strategically important to Airbnb and not an important part of the conversation). It's an interesting illustration of an element of the startup ecosystem that few except the participants ever see: investors trying to convince one another to invest in their portfolio companies. Hundreds if not thousands of conversations of this type are happening now, but if one has ever been published, I haven't seen it. The Airbnbs themselves never even saw these emails at the time.

Maintaining an orderly, peaceful, safe, and productive society will increasingly depend on maintaining trust in information systems. However, trust cannot be realized by technology alone. The notion of trust extends far beyond the narrow technical realms of information security. Engineering trustworthy systems requires an understanding of human psychology. It requires effective public policies and laws and must work within those policies and laws. It requires the right business models and incentives. And often, one needs all of these elements working in harmony. But the reality we witness today is different. Engineers work primarily with technical specifications to build information systems, and their success is often measured by purely technical metrics. This approach, by itself, does not address the broader issues that contribute to trust. To build a successful technology-enabled society, the entire cyber security paradigm must be re-examined and integrated with broader issues.

CRISSP combines security technology strengths with experts in psychology, law, public policy, and business from NYU. The goal of this center is to build new approaches to security and privacy that recognize that technology alone cannot provide the information security and privacy needed in today’s interconnected world. The center is founded by Anindya Ghose (NYU Stern), Ramesh Karri (NYU Poly), Nasir Memon (NYU Poly), Helen Nissenbaum (NYU Steinhardt), and Rae Zimmerman (NYU Wagner).

spoiler: it's not good

From the wonderful FAQ on UbuWeb

Quaquaversal:

Q: When did UbuWeb Start?
A: UbuWeb was founded in November of 1996, initially as a repository for visual, concrete and, later, sound poetry. Over the years, UbuWeb has embraced all forms of the avant-garde and beyond. Its parameters continue to expand in all directions.

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There is no giftshop:

Q: How do I purchase something from your site?
A: You can't. Nothing is for sale on UbuWeb. It's all free. We know it's a hard idea to get used to, but there's no lush gift shop waiting for you at the end of this museum.

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Stance on copyright:

Q: What is your policy concerning posting copyrighted material?
A: If it's out of print, we feel it's fair game. Or if something is in print, yet absurdly priced or insanely hard to procure, we'll take a chance on it. But if it's in print and available to all, we won't touch it. The last thing we'd want to do is to take the meager amount of money out of the pockets of those releasing generally poorly-selling materials of the avant-garde. UbuWeb functions as a distribution center for hard-to-find, out-of-print and obscure materials, transferred digitally to the web. Our scanning, say, an historical concrete poem in no way detracts from the physical value of that object in the real world; in fact, it probably enhances it. Either way, we don't care: Ebay is full of wonderful physical artifacts, most of them worth a lot of money.

Should something return to print, we will remove it from our site immediately. Also, should an artist find their material posted on UbuWeb without permission and wants it removed, please let us know. However, most of the time, we find artists are thrilled to find their work cared for and displayed in a sympathetic context. As always, we welcome more work from existing artists on site.

Let's face it, if we had to get permission from everyone on UbuWeb, there would be no UbuWeb.

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We're not here for that:

Q: How do I download MP3s?
A: There are thousands of resources on the web to learn how to do this. That's not what we're here for.

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An archive not a blog:

Q: Why isn't new content posted every day?
A: UbuWeb is an archive, not a blog. It has accumulated slowly and steadily and shall continue to far into the future.

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As if to say, "you come to us:"

Q: I'd like to receive notices of UbuWeb updates. How do I do this?
A: UbuWeb refuses to advertise or promote itself. Most of all, we detest the idea of filling inboxes with more unwanted material. A few times a year, we post our updates to select mailing lists; that's what they're for, aren't they? For UbuWeb updates, best to just keep checking back on the homepage, where notices of all new content appears.

The Met has created its first app, to accompany the guitar show. It is embarking on the daunting task of wiring its huge building for Wi-Fi, he said, so that patrons will eventually be able to read and watch videos about art museumwide on their phones and tablet computers. And it is venturing as never before into the rapidly evolving field of what museum administrators call “visitor engagement”: a social science aimed at trying to reach every patron, from the first-timer to the seasoned scholar.

VCs need founders as much as startups need cash

Must all businesses be diagonal charts heading towards infinity? Read @AnilDash on the expanded field for mom & pops:

On an otherwise-normal Monday morning in August, Andrew Mason storms down a hallway at Groupon’s Chicago HQ, angrier than any of his employees have ever seen him. “Running with the Devil” blares from behind the door of a studio apartment with which the fastest-growing company in history shares a floor, and Van Halen’s power chords are disrupting operations.