Print or Digital?

This video interview and article about the print-oriented Economist succeeding where Time and Newsweek have been failing by trying to be print and digital, is a discussion-sparking conversation.


You might also want to read this older article that tells the story of The Atlantic and offers insights about what survival might look like for print publications who are trying to dance in a digital ballroom.

Travel and Learning

While travelling through England, Ireland and Scotland the past two weeks, I had a lot of time to reflect on the historical density that seems to be part of the European experience. It isn't that other places lack such historical density, but rather that our/my particular prejudices and cultural legacy reflected in my education has predisposed me to notice things that I've studied in books, heard talked about in lectures and discussed with friends and colleagues.

Having written academically on 5th-7th century Ireland, it was particularly compelling to see and even pick up artifacts at the British Museum from this era and to see in tangible forms what I had mostly encountered through words or pictures. Holding a stone axe head or a small carved figurine somehow folded time in a way that erased a strictly linear accounting of passing years. Later, while touring Edinburgh Castle, I was fortunate enough to be able to weild a claymore, something that wasn't on any official bucket list but which, when opportunity presented itself, seemed like something I'd always wanted to do. Artifacts fire the imagination. The more we know about what surrounds those artifacts, the richer the imaginative ponderings. I was also struck by the reasonable cost of galleries and museums in the UK - usually free. The only barrier to visiting and taking part in the mezmerizing collections is personal initiative. I like that.

1-9-90 and Social Media

Brian passed along this piece about branding that included the statistic about relative levels of participation in various social technologies. Originating in the book Groundswell, the argument is that 1% of your users will post content, 9% will comment, and 90% will simply browse without leaving any active trace other than the now ubiquitous digital ghost trails. This generalization may be of use in trying to decide how to prioritize various website architectural questions.

Here's a video of the author.

Twitter Dashboard

Here's something kind of interesting. You can enter any two terms in the fields and then see what is showing up in Tweets. After you enter your two terms you can hit the "GO" button and see where things are at in the Twitter world.

Useful? Waste of time?

Talking about Ingenuity Arts with Bas de Baar

Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science

I look with envy on this institutionally-priced set of reference books. I've looked through the index and overviews and it looks to be a very useful set. Published by Springer, the Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science includes hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and images to support the text. I've queried the McMaster University library to see if they will be getting a set. Hopefully they will.

New book: Complexity and Sustainability

This looks like an interesting read. Has anyone seen it or read it? The editors are Norberg and Cumming. There's one piece by Buzz Holling and many of the other contributors appear to be affiliated with the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Thanks to the FourCultures blog and the recommendation.