Category Archives: ideas

Kevin Kelly writes on something that is getting a fair amount of attention: the new book by Duncan Watts (Six Degrees). Watts critiques another book by Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point), and Kevin Kelly does a good job of commenting on it.

My problem with all this analysis is the use of metaphors. Using metaphors of disease or forest fires helps model and understand the characteristic of certain activities (e.g. the success of failure of certain forms of communications), but they are just that, models. And limited ones at that. It’s good that Watts has shown the limits of Gladwell’s metaphor. But I suspect his metaphor is just as limited.

Over at techdirt.com is a very concise argument on why giving up your privacy doesn’t make you more secure. Key quote:

“Confiscating shaving cream and nail files at the airport doesn’t make anyone safer. Neither does creating a national ID card, because terrorists rely on surprise, not anonymity. The fundamental issue is that real security involves focusing resources on identifying and stopping the tiny fraction of the population that is engaged in criminal and terrorist acts. The vast majority of people pose no threat to anyone, and it’s a waste of resources to monitor them. “

See Techdirt: If You’re Watching Everyone, You’re Watching No One for the entire article.

James Fallows over at the Atlantic.com reviews and recommends: “A Flat World, A Level Playing Field, a Small World After All, or None of the Above?” by Edward Leamer of UCLA. There is a link to the article, as well as a summation of it, as well as a critique of Friedman. Quote:

* When I asked Friedman on the show why he said on virtually every page of the book that the world was “flat,” when he knew very well all the reasons it wasn’t, he disarmingly said: In the columnist game, you don’t sell things 51-49. You decide what you think is right, and you push that all the way. So, he could have more accurately said that the world is “flattening,” but that wouldn’t have had the ooomph.

For more, see James Fallows (September 07, 2007) – Golden Oldies: the world is not flat

Technology Review has an article on Holland and what it is doing in coming to terms with the affects of Global Warming, since it will be affected sooner than anyone. See Part I: Saving Holland

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