Been blogging for nearly three months now.  Time to comment on the metablogging going on.  My essay on the subject is entitled Manufactured Serendipity. [Sam Ruby's Radio Weblog]

Serendipity is all about making fortunate discoveries by accident.  You can't automate accidental discoveries, but you can manufacture the conditions in which such events are more likely to occur.

One of many insights in this essay about the social consequences of the blogging phenomenon. Grassroots initiatives can be immensely powerful agents for organizational change. Strategist Gary Hamel, founder of consulting firm Strategos, has shifted his attention to tapping into the broad organization to find innovation instead of the conventional approach to strategy making, which tends to limit itself to the executive suite. Couple that approach with an organization rife with weblogs and k-logs and you have the fixings for the next wave of strategic innovation. Leveraging the internet for something more than shopping.

Actually, manufactured serendipity might be a bit misleading. It's more organic than that. I'd opt for cultivating serendipity.

10:04:41 PM •  • comment  

Glad to see you figured it out. And, thanks for the tiny XML icon (), Marc. Remember to update your older pages too, at some point. You can do this with Radio->Publish in the GUI app.

[Jon's Radio]

Thanks to both Jon and Marc - I've now added that nifty little XML icon to my channelroll. Jon also spent time helping me debug my script a few days ago. More evidence of the emergence of critical mass

9:03:19 PM •  • comment  

Copyright-holding corporations are pushing new laws and computer-crippling technologies in their war on piracy. But can anything keep geeks from copying the music and movies they crave?

[Privacy Digest]

A very nice summary of the current state of debate in the battle between the entertainment industry and their customers. This is one predictable result of the fantasy that the primary obligation of management is to shareholders. Without customers there's no way to generate any returns, much less maximize them.

8:47:06 PM •  • comment  

Epeus' epigone: "Turing's Universal Machine means that you cannot have a software or hardware protection scheme that is secure. Whatever scheme you come up with can be simulated by another computer. The computer industry are not opposing your bill because they want to encourage copying, or because they are bloody-minded, they are not opposing you because of your self serving rhetoric about rewarding artists (remember Peggy Lee, Michael?), they are opposing you because what you want is provably impossible. You can only succeed by making all Turing machines illegal."

Originally found this courtesy of Doc Searles but it bears more explicit attention. If you insist on remaining ignorant of the technology then you will ultimately be made to look foolish by those who do understand it. The problem is with the pain and suffering you will create in the interim.

What continues to puzzle me most is that we've been through this with software copy protection and we've been through it with audio cassettes and with the VCR.

Organizations, like people, are most plastic and open to learning when they are young.  Age brings hardening of the categories and it's made worse by success.

1:45:25 PM •  • comment