Unthinkable Futures

Unthinkable Futures

* Computer screens (both CRT and flat screens) are found to be dangerous to the health. Working at a computer is viewed as a toxic job. 

I used to work at a management consaltancy (Sifo Management Group – SMG – folded in 2003) specializing in scenario planning. Scenario planning was born in Silicon Valley and Eno/Kelly were often part of the creative team. In this article Kelly re-publishes an excercise in challanging probabilities:

This list of unthinkable futures — probabilities we tend to dismiss without thinking — was published 15 years ago in the Summer, 1993  issue of Whole Earth Review. Our intent was less  to correctly predict the future (thus the silliness) and more to predict how unpredictable the actual future would be. 

“Improbability is still a strong bias to overcome.” Yes, it is. The key to making good scenarios, and thus making the entire scenario process worthwhile. According to my own limited experience. One day, I’ll work this area again.

Too much data ruins the investigation, every time.

Cory Doctorow: Big Brother is not watching | Technology | guardian.co.uk
Too much data ruins the investigation, every time.

Yep. Så är det. Medan hela världen “jag har inget att dölja” rusar vidare på väg ned i det svarta hålet. 

Vitt? Svart? Grått! Balans. Lagom. Kontroll. Transparens. Ge polisen och den militära underrättelsetjänsten bättre resurser att göra riktigt grävande arbete där det är motiverat istället för att fylla alla databaser from here to hell med mer och mer brus.

Rain, blessed rain!

It is raining in my neck of the woods. Sweden, and partcularly the Stockholm region, saw the highest temperatures of all Europe for a sistained multi-week-period. Forest fires are raging all over the country and, on a smaller scale, lawns are dead dry.

But it started raining just now. A viscious downpour! Great. I work from the home office today and had to take a break to position water collecion barrels properly to accumulate every last drop. Badly needed for this aspiring gardener ;-)

Official Google Blog: Introduction to Google Search Quality

Official Google Blog: Introduction to Google Search Quality

I’ve been a little involved with the Search Engine Optimiztion (SEO) industry lately. Many have heard of and ‘know about’ PageRank and think ‘it is is’ in terms of being displayed high in the Google search results pages. It is not, and the post above begins to unwrap the way Google (and other search engine companies) work to ensure we get the results we want… At least that’s what they claim is their goal, and the only goal. Hm. I actually believe they’re sincere in this. Only I (and every other searcher out there) need to understand what are ‘results’ and what is paid advertising on the results pages. Different actors vary in thel lavel of clarity here. Plus, and that’s the raison d’etre for this post, we need to understand and manage settings for language, domain and more as illustrated by the quote below:

The most famous part of our ranking algorithm is PageRank, an algorithm developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google. PageRank is still in use today, but it is now a part of a much larger system. Other parts include language models (the ability to handle phrases, synonyms, diacritics, spelling mistakes, and so on), query models (it’s not just the language, it’s how people use it today), time models (some queries are best answered with a 30-minutes old page, and some are better answered with a page that stood the test of time), and personalized models (not all people want the same thing).

It IS important weather you use google.se or google.com.  Timing is also important. Some sites are valued (by google!) because of their freshness, others because they’ve been around for a long long time.

PageRank is important, but it is only a small part of why a certain site is important and valued by google at different points in time, for diffenent search contexts.

TidBITS Opinion: No, David Pogue, Ebook Piracy is Not a Given

TidBITS Opinion: No, David Pogue, Ebook Piracy is Not a Given

This is a follow-up to my muddled explanatory powers of the earlier post about “Rip it, Burn it or Buy it!”. Adam explains better than I’ve seen before the likely mechanisms of digital delivery of electronic goods, and how it helps many businesses. He gives us many of the techniques he uses to sell (to date) more than 400.000 copies of DRM free mac books with almost no illicit sharing.

…”Why are his books being shared illicitly whereas ours are not? Certainly, some of it has to do with us providing an easy, inexpensive way for interested readers to purchase the electronic versions they want, and all the little things we do to discourage rampant copying undoubtedly help as well”

Thanks Adam – a great read!