In 2006, the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier published an incisive, groundbreaking and highly controversial essay about “digital Maoism” — about the downside of online collectivism, and the enshrinement by Web 2.0 enthusiasts of the “wisdom of the crowd.” In that manifesto Mr. Lanier argued that design (or ratification) by committee often does not result in the best product, and that the new collectivist ethos — embodied by everything from Wikipedia to “American Idol” to Google searches — diminishes the importance and uniqueness of the individual voice, and that the “hive mind” can easily lead to mob rule.

What international agreement produced 10 times the climate benefits of Kyoto and could produce several times more greenhouse gas reductions than any post-2012 climate agreement? The answer: the Montreal protocol, which Kofi Annan described as “perhaps the most successful international agreement to date”. Because a new climate agreement is unlikely to emerge in Copenhagen in December, it is time to look for possible interim alternative ideas in the Montreal protocol, which supporters call the best kept secret in the war against climate change.

Google CEO says privacy doesn't matter. Google blacklists CNet for violating CEO's privacy.

At the end of July I declared my intention to quit the iPhone and AT&T, port my mobile phone number to Google Voice and use any mobile device that I pleased (or lots of them at once) in the future. Like others, I will no longer blindly follow all things Apple. Today I’m pleased to report a status update on those efforts: complete. I am no longer a member of the Cult of iPhone.

research also seems to support Ms. Boyd’s contention that social media “mirrors and magnifies” our social divisions, rather than removes them. “We can use technology as a tool to connect with people, but we can’t assume that it will eliminate all of the serious issues we have to face in this country,” Ms. Boyd said at PDF. “Pervasive social stratification is being reified in a new era.

What is more important, the rights of the mass, or the rights of the individual. In the western world we tend to assume an inverse relationship between individual rights and social control. More social control leads to less individual rights and vice versa. Marshall suggests that individual rights may be less important than the ‘greater cause’ of being able to provide more value to users if data is freely accessible.

The world of the classroom is so unlike anything the real world has to offer – with the exception of other classrooms – that kids can excel at school only to find themselves utterly lost in the real world. Some people think this is the result of failed schooling, but a few of us suspect otherwise. We suspect that this sense of displacement and confusion is actually the result of schooling that succeeds in its most basic unwritten objective: to keep you dependent, timid, worried, nervous, compliant, and afraid of the World. To keep you waiting. To keep you manageable. To keep you helpless. To keep you small. Educated, confident, creative people are dangerous to the status quo, dangerous to a centralized economy, dangerous to a centralized system of command and control. Those in power don’t want you educated. They want you schooled.

Seemingly, the culture of “open” has infused even the most conservative and blood-thirsty organizations with companies falling over each other to claim the mantle of being the most open of them all. So we won, right? I wouldn’t say that. In fact, I think it’s now when the hard work begins.

The Chosen One is a girl. Wrap your brain around that one. The Chosen One has always been a girl, and always will be a girl. And not just any girl: A silver-tongued, adorable blonde girl in a mini dress and mall-rat makeup, with a D average and the irreversible brand of “Troublemaker.” She saves the world a lot. You got a problem with that? Since Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer came crashing into mainstream television, there have been two kinds of people: Those who will defend this television show to the death, and those who just don’t get it and wouldn’t be caught dead watching it. I am one of the former, but in a peaceful, Ghandi sort of way. It’s ok if you don’t love Buffy like I love Buffy. I’m not here to beat you over the head for your woeful ignorance. Rather, my goal in the next few paragraphs is to lead you gently by the hand. I want to refute a few of the arguments for not watching Buffy, and introduce you to a few of the reasons why you should.

A friend commented recently that she doesn't understand why people put up with such poor sound quality for phone calls on cell phones, and particularly iPhones. "I can hardly hear the person talking to me," she said. "I don't think smart phones are making any improvement to the quality of the phone call," she added. "Is it not important anymore?" She wondered why people accepted such poor quality, and so did Jonathan Berger, but a lot of people just don't hear it the same way.

After a year of watching adults engage in devastating recklessness in the financial markets and depressing fecklessness in the global climate talks, it’s refreshing to know that the world keeps minting idealistic young people who are not waiting for governments to act, but are starting their own projects and driving innovation.

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Dropbox is certainly a promising technology—in many ways, what iDisk should have been—but it currently has some serious problems. It does not support Mac resource forks, extended attributes, or packages. Worse, it does not tell you that it doesn’t support these features. It just silently throws away those parts of your files. Until this is fixed, it should only be used by technical users who are sure that these limitations will not cause problems for them.

I wrote a post back in April called ‘Should I Be Worried About Piracy?‘, to which my answer was, in a nutshell, “no”. This was meant to be a bit of a controversial post, though at the time I didn’t get much of the flak that I was bracing myself for. So I figured that most people saw the sense of it. I even had some good feedback about it elsewhere. But today, I received a passionate and very angry comment on that post - and it highlights some important issues and it raises some things that are both emotionally charged and based in the world of real, day-to-day economics.

People are calling Google Chrome a "Web Operating System" and a "Cloud Operating System". Some are even calling it a Windows killer. I think it's time to nip this horseshit in the bud, before it gets out of hand.

Woot! Today I get to be among the very first to share with you the planet’s newest camera: the much-anticipated Nikon D90. You may have been attuned to all the recent leaks, buzz and rumors of a new Nikon camera coming soon, but I can assure you, this here ain’t no rumor. It’s the real deal and I know so because my crew and I spent several weeks testing and experimenting with this gem months in advance of today’s release, and our efforts make up the launch campaign.

The Kodak Zi6 is a handheld, flash-memory-based video camera. You press the power button, wait about a second for it to start up, then hit the record button. Hit the record button again and the video is saved. Just plug it into a USB port and drag the video files to the desktop.

Shirky distils his observations of passive and interactive activities into a general principle: "It’s better to do something than to do nothing." But Stephenson makes the case that both activities have their place. Sometimes switching off your brain and w

Too many people think cloning cells for the fight against disease is the same thing as creating Frankenstein's monster. Too many people think evolution is the idea that people are descended from apes. And too many people think that genetic modification of

“Digital Piracy fulfilled the lacks of an old and slow distribution system“.

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--ri

Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. "They make it loud to get [listeners'] attention," Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applyi

Head's argument is much like that of David Noble in Forces of Production: we had a choice about how to use new technology. We could use it to turn employees into ever-more-skilled craftspeople, allowing them to be more effective and creative in their jobs

We don't need 'leadership' or 'leaders'. What we need is experimenters.The way to create working models that work better than the dysfunctional ones we have now, in a complex system where no one is in control and no one has the answers, is to try things.

“Common sense tells me that the maximum penalty for transmitting an MP3 file should not be over 1000-fold the maximum penalty of shoplifting a CD from a store.”

Isn’t claiming your identity by expressing it in the real or virtual world the best way to protect your identity?

Henk Blanken vervolgt zijn blogserie over de transitie van massamedia-consument naar infoclan-consument. We maken deel uit van netwerken, en zijn minder makkelijk te bereiken door de steeds bredere media-markt.

Now that the dust has settled on ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,'' Stephen King reflects on why no review did it justice, and whether kids (and their grown-ups) will ever read the same way again

Digital photography materials were not a minor change, they transformed the art of photography.

Uitleg waarom Linux bijna altijd beter is (dan Windows).

Cyberspace can be made safer from the chaos and crime that threaten to overwhelm it. But most recipes for security and order come at a very steep price: the loss of the Internet’s creative potency.

Until the development of water and wind power, humanity burned carbon-based fuels like wood and coal to power our civilization. These very same fuels are now polluting the air and water with heavy metals, ozone pollution, and acid rain.

Web 2.0 heeft de prosumer voortgebracht, de producent en consument ineen. Ook bewees het dat de menigte slimmer en sneller kan zijn dan professionals en bedrijven. Haar encyclopedieën, besturingssystemen en media zijn vaak betrouwbaarder, innovatiever en

Ber betoogt dat het goed zou zijn als meer mensen zouden begrijpen hoe internet e.d. werkt, en wat het belang van open source software op dit gebied is.

Om Malik discusses open source search and Wikia's effort in that area. The acquisition of Grub is the first step on the road to a viable open source search engine.

De Zomaargasten aflevering over 'Copyright op internet' - door Marco Raaphorst e.a.

Ollywomp.us Nokia N800 category.

The blogosphere is going full tilt on a privacy report that says that Google is worst in its approach to privacy.

"It's a bad privacy day for Google, with Privacy International first accusing the company of having the worst privacy performance of any internet service company in a study it has just released and then accusing Google of conducting a smear campaign again

There's an inverse correlation between the regulation of speech and the freedom of a society. Trying to filter the internet is ridiculous and dangerous.

The implications of Google Maps' Street View are interesting. It's probably all legal, but it can be considered an invasion of privacy by a recognizable person. (One step further: imagine Google Earth offering more detailed zoom levels...)

Mooie column van Joost Steins Bisschop over de Amerikaanse platenindustrie en hun omgang met Pandora.