Rich Karlgaard suggests that the Iowa primary results were, to a significant extent, a matter of rhetorical style.
David Foster
Selected 2007 Posts
I’ve been going through my 2007 posts to select the best ones for a year-end summary. Here’s the first batch, encompassing the categories Education, Management/Leadership/Business, and Markets/International Trade.
Sometimes it Takes a Marxist
…to really appreciate capitalism.
(link via Five Feet of Fury)
More Media Disintermediation?
Last month, Marc Andreessen suggested that the Hollywood writers’ strike…and the response of the studios to that strike…will accelerate a structural shift in the industry–specifically, a move toward a Silicon-Valley-like model in which the creators of the product–the talent–have strong ownership interests in the companies. (Link via Newmark’s Door.)
A couple of days ago, the Los Angeles Times ran this headline:
Striking writers in talks to launch Web start-ups
Dozens are turning to venture capitalists, seeking to bypass Hollywood and reach viewers directly online
Metaphors, Interfaces, and Thought Processes
My post today is inspired by In the Beginning was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson, a strange little book that will probably be found in the “computers” section of your local bookstore. While the book does deal with human interfaces to computer systems, its deeper subject is the impact of media and metaphors on thought processes and on work.
Stephenson contrasts the explicit word-based interface with the graphical or sensorial interface. The first (which I’ll call the textual interface) can be found in a basic UNIX system or in an old-style PC DOS system or timesharing terminal. The second (the sensorial interface) can be found in Windows and Mac systems and in their respective application programs.
As a very different example of a sensorial interface, Stephenson uses something he saw at Disney World–a hypothetical stone-by-stone reconstruction of a ruin in the jungles of India. It is supposed to have been built by a local rajah in the sixteenth century, but since fallen into disrepair.