/notes

(via Apple’s Massive Numbers And Some Context | TechCrunch)

• Apple’s profit of $13.1 billion was equal to theirrevenue in Q4 2010, as Jordan Golson notes. To be clear, that was just a year and a quarter ago. That’s how quickly Apple is growing.
• Apple’s profits for the last quarter exceed Google’s entire revenue for the last quarter, as Farhad Manjoo points out. And it’s not even close ($13 billion to $10.6 billion). Think about that for a second.

• The iTunes Store alone generated 50 percent more revenue than all of Yahoo did last quarter, as Jordan Golson notes.

The top-level goal for most people is to convince others they are the individuals they want to be, whether that includes being happy, attractive, smart, fun or anything else.

— 

Mark Hendrickson on social networks | The Uphill Battle Of Social Event Sharing: A Post-Mortem for Plancast   (via courtenaybird)

Whoa, that’s something to chew on.

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

— 

- Theodore Parker

Often misattributed to Martin Luther King, who often quoted this.

Obama has the view. Here’s to delivering on it in his 2nd term.

huffing stain and clear coat - more fun that I remembered.

zachklein:

I met a guy named John Crockett. This is his business card.

I’m tempted to say This is the future of business cards. But that’s silly. Business cards already seem anachronistic. 

However, this strikes me as the future of self-actualization. I think people more often will understand and describe themselves as sets of granular expertises. Organizations that help people accredit themselves will usher this movement, I think.

The big question for universities going forward is this: Can control of credentialing last for long without control of knowledge? If a great many people learn from Sebastian Thrun and Udacity how to create a search engine, and if some of those are very good search engines, might not the most successful students simply point to their work as a sufficient indicator of their coding chops? Who needs a credential when they can use a simple URL to show potential employers not just what they’re capable of but what they have already achieved?

— The Great Unbundling of the University - Alan Jacobs - Technology - The Atlantic (via infoneer-pulse)

He’s [Romney’s] not going to pay more than the law requires, and I don’t fault him for that in the least. But I do fault a law that allows him and me earning enormous sums to pay overall federal taxes at a rate that’s about half what the average person in my office pays.

— Buffett Blames Congress for Romney’s 15% Rate - Bloomberg (via tedr)

Social Cities of Tomorrow conference text. By Michiel de Lange & Martijn de Waal →

radarqnet:

Excerpts from Social Cities of Tomorrow conference text by Michiel de Lange & Martijn de Waal.

Note: The bolds are mine.

—

Can digital technologies enable citizens to act on collectively shared issues?

(…)

We see three promising interrelated developments where urban technologies may be used to create livable and lively cities.

1. Data-commons

Sensing technologies and networked urban media create vast amounts of data about a wide range of urban processes and practices. These data can become a valuable resource, a platform on top of which new services and infrastructures can be built. We will explore how these new resources can be harvested and opened up, and turned into useful information and applications that are available to everyone. Furthermore, we will investigate how these datasets can be used to bring out, visualise and manage collective issues.

2. Sense of place and a feeling of ‘ownership’

To engage people with communally shared issues, it is essential that people envision themselves as part of the urban fabric, and understand that their individual actions make a difference to the common good. They also need to trust other urbanites to act accordingly. How can digital media be employed to foster a shared sense of belonging and responsibility, and a feeling that indeed the city is ‘ours’ to take and shape? We will explore how digital tools for story-telling, urban games, data visualisations and interactive media facades can help foster a sense of place and a sense of ‘ownership’.

3. DIY urban design & networked publics

‘Networked publics’ are groups of people that use social media and other digital technologies to organise themselves around collective goals or issues. In online culture, networks of ‘professional amateurs’ create ‘user generated content’ or take part in ‘citizen science’ projects. Think of open source software or Wikipedia as successful examples. Can we port these principles from online culture, like self-organisation and collective action, to urban life in order to make it more ‘social’ as well? We will look at the ways in which new media technologies can be employed to involve citizens in designing their own city, and to include them in governing urban issues. We will explore how these technologies can be used to create and manage publics around common pool resources, varying from car sharing to urban gardening.

(…)

The event Social Cities of Tomorrow is also intended as an alternative to the increasingly popular idea of ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ cities.

I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill, and you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I’ve taken the red pill, and I’ve seen Wonderland.

— Tenured Professor Departs Stanford, Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up - The Chronicle of Higher Education (via davemorin)