Anti-Kool-Aid Roundup
The latest readings for the Wonderful Web World (or, why I've just wasted my time again, and need to stop doing it):
Failing Web 2.0 stars pray for copyright abolition (Andrew Orlowski)
Exhibit One is a deadpan report in the Financial Times, bylined to Chris Nuttall and Richard Waters. It's titled, "Web 2.0 fails to produce cash".
This could be the least-surprising headline of this (or any) year. Dog Bites Man rarely makes the news. As we predicted years ago, Web 2.0 was only ever a rhetorical bubble, designed to boost a clutch of no-hope investments into the arms of an acquirer. For a handful of others - mostly pundits - it was a lifeline from a dead-end media job into gurudom. It didn't take a genius to work that out.
Perhaps You Should Examine Your Colon! (Jeneane Sessum)
Okay. Look. I can't take it anymore.
How many times in the last 7 years have we been through the women-free TOP LISTS OF BLOGGING. Or the penis-only MOST IMPORTANT CONFERENCE IN TECHNOLOGY events?
How small stories become big news (John F. Harris)
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in cyberblather | on May 28, 2008 11:56 PM (Infothought permalink)As leaders of a new publication, Politico's senior editors and I are relentlessly focused on audience traffic. The way to build traffic on the Web is to get links from other websites. ... There are probably a dozen websites with a heavy political emphasis whose links are sought by all for the traffic those links drive.
Copyright abolition?
Now there's a concept I haven't heard for a long time...
Apparently, the Northern California chapter of the US Copyright Society is advertising in its spring newsletter an event on June 26th by Professor Lawrence Lessig entitled “The Growing Copyright Abolitionist Movement, and How You Can Help Stop It”.
http://www.csusa.org/pubs/newsletter/spring_2008_Newsletter.pdf
I expect to be hearing 'copyright abolition' mentioned ever more frequently over the coming years.
insert(tongue, cheek);
Remember, geeks are perfectly rational and would never succumb to such base impulses as sexism. Any shortage of women in IT fields, or in lists like the ones Jeanne cites, must be entirely due to some other factor. They probably have some biological predisposition to seek other jobs.