This destruction of value is what makes weblogs so important. We want a world where global publishing is effortless. We want a world where you don't have to ask for help or permission to write out loud. However, when we get that world we face the paradox of oxygen and gold. Oxygen is more vital to human life than gold, but because air is abundant, oxygen is free. Weblogs make writing as abundant as air, with the same effect on price. Prior to the web, people paid for most of the words they read. Now, for a large and growing number of us, most of the words we read cost us nothing.
L'unica ricompensa possibile è quella di far parte della conversazione. O forse scrivere un libro sui weblog...
Bernie DeKoven ha una bella pagina con una specie di tassametro che ti permette di calcolare il costo di una riunione, secondo per secondo. Molto istruttivo.
Se vuoi approfondire trovi anche un sacco di links utili sull'argomento, e uno studio dell'Università della California del sud a Los Angeles che ne 1993 ha scoperto quanto segue:
The average meeting takes place in the company conference room at 11 in the morning and lasts an hour and 30 minutes.
It is attended by nine people -- two managers, four co-workers, two subordinates and one outsider -- who have received two hour prior notification
It has no written agenda, and its purported purpose is complete only 50% of the time.
A quarter of meeting participants complain they waste between 11 and 25 percent of the time discussing irrelevant issues
A full third of them feel pressured to publicly espouse opinions with which they privately disagree
Another third feel they have minimal or no influence on the discussion
Although 36% of meetings result in a "complete" resolution of the topic at hand, participants considered only one percent of those conclusions to be particularly creative.
A whopping 63% of meeting attendees feel that underlying issues outside the scope of the official agenda are the real subjects under discussion.
Senior executives spend 53% of their time in meetings, at an average rate of $320 per person hour.
Allora tutto sommato non fanno male le società giapponesi a tenere le loro riunioni di sera, davanti a un bicchiere di birra, parlando del più e del meno. E' così che raggiungono le decisioni importanti.
Ti giro uno snippet dalla Langa List molto inquietante:
Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows CD. To my astonishment and distress he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned it on. I was upset because the CD had become precious to me, but he said 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.'
After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold and it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, in lines finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:
'No,' he said, 'but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says"
'One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them, One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...."
"As I write this, the year is 2000, and the Internet is a battleground of intellectual property disputes. Some people would like you to believe that, without proper financial incentives, music, literature, and computer software would disappear. After all, who would make music if they can’t make money on it? Who would write? Who would program? I know the answer. The answer is that musicians will make music, not because they can make money, but because musicians are the people who can’t not make music. Writers will write because they can’t not write. I’ve been programming for 16 years, writing free software for 8. I can’t imagine not doing this. If you can imagine yourself not doing what you’re doing, do something else. Do whatever it is that you can’t not do."
Concerto inaugurale della stagione delle Serate Musicali, ieri sera a Milano con il violoncellista Yo-Yo Ma (Stradivari Davydov-DuPre del 1712) Ma e il Silkroad Ensemble, composto da:
Gevorg Dabaghyan, duduk Joel Fan, pianoforte Jaime gonzalez, oboe Joseph Gramley, percussione He Cui, sheng Colin Jacobsen, violino Jihun Kim, Kayagum e voce Shane Shanahan, percussione Wu Man, pipa
Il programma:
J. del Enzina: Levanta Pascual, Levanta (1492) Jia da Qun: The Prospect of Colored Desert (2000) Vache Sharafyan: The sun, the Wine and the Wind of Time (1998) Jee-Young Kim: Tryst (2001) M. Ravel: Trio per violino, violoncello e pianoforte in la minore (1914)
Insomma, hai capito che non si trattava di un concerto qualsiasi, anche solo per l'ensemble di strumenti e per i brani proposti.
Poi mi piace molto l'idea di un progetto ampio, multiculturale, che impegna la vita di questi artisti per un lungo periodo e per un lungo percorso; non quindi girando per le sale da concerto del mondo secondo un calendario prefissato dalle agenzie molti anni fa, in un rito forse un poco stanco, un poco ripetitivo.
Poi sono bravissimi, tecnicamente mirabolanti: Wu Man con la sua pipa, liuto cinese dal manico corto (primi riferimenti all'epoca della dinastia Tang), ha fatto cose... che non si vedono neanche sugli anelli di Orione.
E Dabaghyan con il duduk? un suono malioso che avevo già sentito usare da Peter Gabriel in alcuni suoi pezzi molto "atmosferici", se mi passi il termine.
Il Ravel finale, dopo tutta la musica orientale, diventava molto più chiaro e comprensibile.
Infine un bis con il gruppo al completo, con una danza Turca molto ritmata, allegra e decisamente ballabile. Morale: mi sono divertito come un matto.
Devo scappare al corso di difesa personale (oggi la prima lezione). Se torno vivo ti racconterò del fantastico concerto di ieri sera. A proposito, sai cos'è questo?
Voglio completare una citazione di Halley. Dal secondo atto de "Il dissoluto punito ossia il Don Giovanni":
Don Giovanni: Lasciar le donne! Pazzo! Lasciar le donne? Sai ch'elle per me Son necessarie più del pan che mangio, Più dell'aria che spiro!
Leporello: E avete core D'ingannarle poi tutte?
Don Giovanni: E' tutto amore. Chi a una sola è fedele Verso l'altre è crudele; Io, che in me sento Sì esteso sentimento, Vo' bene a tutte quante: Le donne, poi che calcolar non sanno, Il mio buon natural chiamano inganno.
Lorenzo Da Ponte (Ceneda 1749, New York 1838) doveva essere un uomo ben interessante.
"I can't take the noise anymore. I have a case of tinnitus that is worsened by computer fan noise. A loud fan, or one that emits dog whistle sounds, turns an annoying tone into squealing brakes."
Ti consiglio un articolo di Jonathan Freedland su Community of Minds che traccia un parallelo tra l'imperialismo americano di oggi e l'impero romano di ieri. Ma lo sapevi che c'è una presenza militare americana, piccola o grande che sia, in 132 stati membri dell'ONU? Ad esempio:
Rebellions against the empire were a permanent fixture, with barbarians constantly pressing at the borders. Some accounts suggest that the rebels were not always fundamentally anti-Roman; they merely wanted to share in the privileges and affluence of Roman life. If that has a familiar ring, consider this: several of the enemies who rose up against Rome are thought to have been men previously nurtured by the empire to serve as pliant allies. Need one mention former US protege Saddam Hussein or one-time CIA trainee Osama bin Laden?
Rome even had its own 9/11 moment. In the 80s BC, Hellenistic king Mithridates called on his followers to kill all Roman citizens in their midst, naming a specific day for the slaughter. They heeded the call - and killed 80,000 Romans in local communities across Greece. "The Romans were incredibly shocked by this," says ancient historian Jeremy Paterson of Newcastle University. "It's a little bit like the statements in so many of the American newspapers since September 11: 'Why are we hated so much?'
feed blog
