Pinboard: bookmarks for vikasa tagged 'culture'

The Social Graph is Neither (Pinboard Blog)

There's no way to take a time-out from our social life and describe it to a computer without social consequences. At the very least, the fact that I have an exquisitely maintained and categorized contact list telegraphs the fact that I'm the kind of schlub who would spend hours gardening a contact list, instead of going out and being an awesome guy. The social graph wants to turn us back into third graders, laboriously spelling out just who is our fifth-best-friend. But there's a reason we stopped doing that kind of thing in third grade!

You might almost think that the whole scheme had been cooked up by a bunch of hyperintelligent but hopelessly socially naive people, and you would not be wrong. Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender. Our industry abounds in people for whom social interaction has always been more of a puzzle to be reverse-engineered than a good time to be had, and the result is these vaguely Martian protocols.

culture design facebook social graph rant technology computer model geeky
yesterday by vikasa

copy to mine

A Man. A Woman. Just Friends? - NYTimes.com

We have trouble, in our culture, with any love that isn’t based on sex or blood. We understand romantic relationships, and we understand family, and that’s about all we seem to understand.

We have trouble with mentorship, the asymmetric love of master and apprentice, professor and student, guide and guided; we have trouble with comradeship, the bond that comes from shared, intense work; and we have trouble with friendship, at least of the intimate kind. When we imagine those relationships, we seem to have to sexualize them.

human culture sociology sexuality friendship
7 weeks ago by vikasa

copy to mine

Rands In Repose: Hacking is Important

A healthy product company is, confusingly, one at odds with itself. There is a healthy part which is attempting to normalize and to create predictability, and there needs to be another part that is tasked with building something new that is going to disrupt and eventually destroy that normality.

business culture development hacking programming creativity enterpreneur
11 weeks ago by vikasa

copy to mine

Those Fabulous Confabs

TED talks
the engine of TED’s success—eighteen-minute nerd-bomb disquisitions—flies in the face of what is commonly understood about the Internet’s viewing habits: Shorter is better. Dumber is better.

culture intellectual zeitgeist evolution history
march 2012 by vikasa

copy to mine

How Harvard is failing its students « mathbabe

If you took away tests and grading systems, these kids would be desperately unhappy, because that’s how they’ve been trained all their lives to think about their self-worth.

You need to take a leap of faith that your native talents and desires will end you up at a reasonable and interesting place. Actually you don’t ever have to decide that, you could just keep doing what you think looks good to other people and pleases your parents or friends, without regard to whether it fulfills you at all. That’s kind of what’s happening I think with the 36% of the Princeton undergrads going to finance.

college ivy league education purpose culture psychology harvard princeton social service wall street via:cshalizi
february 2012 by vikasa

copy to mine