Steve Mays @smays@mastodon.technology

"Journalists are just sharecroppers on Facebook’s giant farm."

My favorite line from the recent WIRED article about FB

“Every word ever said, whether heard by a hundred listeners or none, far from having vanished into the air, leaves its indelible mark, the complete record of human utterance being encrypted by the laws of motion and capable, in theory, of being recovered — given enough computing power.” (pg 376)

— The Information (James Gleick)

http://www.smays.com/2011/04/the-information/

June 20, 1994 – Paid $1,700 for a used Toshiba notebook computer. Base price was $1,400 plus $300 for a fax/modem PCMCIA card.

It was a heavy mother but I was in heaven.

I was browsing through some old Day-Timers (calendars) and came across this from 1994:

April 26 – A meeting with some folks at MOREnet and the University of Missouri J-School. My first look at a web browser (Mosaic).

The Offline Social Network
https://youtu.be/VeP7AFwqHcQ

Remember when you saw the term "New Media" everywhere? I can't recall the last time I came across that.

“If we don’t improve our youth’s chances for a better life, we will one day hand this country over to a generation that does not want it.”

-- 2030: The real story of what happens to America (Albert Brooks)

“There are two types of people in the world. One type is people-oriented. When they make conversation, it is about people — what people are doing, what someone said, how someone feels. The other group is idea-oriented. When they make conversation, they talk about ideas and concepts and objects. Idea people are boring, even to other idea people.”

-- God's Debris

“What’s actually happening is this: we’re realizing that the industrial revolution is fading. The 80 year long run that brought ever-increasing productivity (and along with it, well-paying jobs for an ever-expanding middle class) is ending.”

“The promise that you can get paid really well to do precisely what your boss instructs you to do is now a dream, no longer a reality.”

-- Seth Godin

https://seths.blog/2011/04/the-realization-is-here/

“Everyone knows one of those self righteous Facebook abstainers. Social media luddites. Pushing aside modern society in favor of a purer lifestyle, devoid of pokes, tags, and feeds. Except really, these people aren’t defending anything except antisocial, extremely annoying behavior. And if you’re one of them—you need to stop.”

— From a snotty little 2011 article by Sam Biddle (“If You’re Not On Facebook, It’s Time to Get Over Yourself.”)

http://ca.gizmodo.com/5792570/if-youre-not-on-facebook-its-time-to-get-over-yourself

Wonder if Sam still feels the same.

How is that each musical era can sound not only different from the previous era, but from ALL previous eras? Will we have a period that repeats some earlier period?

If not, does this mean that it will get more and more difficult to create a completely fresh sound? How different will music sound to these disturbingly large ears in 30 years?

“The state will fight back, of course. They will improve their controls on secrets, raise surveillance and punishment of possible leakers, try to negotiate multilateral media controls. […] Assange has claimed, when the history of statecraft of the era is written, that it will be divided into pre- and post-WikiLeaks periods. This claim is grandiose and premature; it is not, however, obviously wrong.”

Clay Shirky on Wikileaks (2011)

A standing reminder to the 250 people who are (potentially) exposed to the things I share here:

If I... over-toot? ... please tell me. I do try to space them out but tend to be the guy who just gonna have one beer.

“The new government will be Internet based and require no actual politicians per se, except for the President. Citizens will vote for the laws they want, as often as they want, by Internet. Actually, voting is too strong a term. Think of it as a rolling opinion poll. There’s no need for elections when the preferences of the people are continuously monitored in real time.”

-- Scott Adams

https://blog.dilbert.com/2011/01/31/cloud-government/

I like the sound of this.

Ran out of characters and didn't want to break in two. From a post by Scott Adams.

https://blog.dilbert.com/2010/12/01/impractical-solutions-to-intractable-problems/

“Our current system, which features massive traditional advertising aimed primarily at older voters, would become obsolete. With online voting, the avg age of voters would shift dramatically lower. The young are less susceptible to advertising because they use technology […] to avoid ads. And they avoid traditional print media altogether.  When big advertising budgets become less effective, special interests become less powerful because their money can’t help politicians get elected.”

“If the Internet was walking around in public, it would look and act a lot like Julian Assange. The Internet is about his age, and it doesn’t have any more care for the delicacies of profit, propriety and hierarchy than he does.”

The Blast Shack (Bruce Sterling on WikiLeaks) 2010

“I think old people like me often do this stuff (social media) to feel like the world hasn’t yet left them behind, but we don’t have any natural hunger for it. It’s kind of like androids having sex: We know we’re supposed to do it, but we’re not really sure why. Meanwhile, and infuriatingly, we know that humans just like to bone.”

— The Viral Me (Devin Friedman)

This is the best explanation of "shit posting" I've found.

"...that’s what SMS is for me. The technology goes away and with Twitter the technology goes away. It’s so easy to follow anything you’re interested in. It’s so easy to tweet from wherever you are.”

— Twitter founder Jack Dorsey on Charlie Rose (2011)

https://youtu.be/oY59wZdCDo0