Weblog

Clay Shirky on the Cognitive Surplus

I came across this via a recent post on Jeremy Zawodny's blog, and found it fascinating.

I've been meaning to post something about this for a while, ideally accompanied by insightful and witty commentary. But that didn't happen so I figured I'd let Clay's presentation, from this year's Web 2.0 Expo, speak for itself.

In short, by the term Cognitive Surplus, Clay is referring to the huge amount of spare time and spare brain power that you guys have. That cognitive surplus has so far been swallowed up by the cultural black hole of TV, but little by little people are turning away from TV, and towards more interactive media, specifically the 'net. The upshot of all of this is that we might just be in the throes of something that rivals the industrial revolution in its significance.

I think he may well be right. You make up your own mind.

The Get Up Kids are The Greatest Band That Ever Existed

The Get Up Kids are the greatest band that ever existed. To prove this, I would like to draw your attention to some very early live footage. Firstly, here is a magnificent basement performance of "Off the Wagon":

It's like drinking when you're walking in a circle. And here are those pimply teenagers once again, covering "Disconnected", by Face to Face:

Five years later, Adrianne Verhoeven joins TGUK on stage midway through "Anne Arbour". Look how far they had come:

Stay tuned for further proof that The Get Up Kids are the greatest band that ever existed.

Herding Cats

For as long as anyone can remember, the term "herding cats" has been used as an analogy for the challenges involved in managing developers. The implication being, of course, that developers tend to be smart, wilful, single-minded folks. Personal experience suggests this is often the case.

The analogy was reflected in the title of a book named "Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers who Lead Programmers", written by the impressively named J. Hank Rainwater. I mention it because this is a decent read for anyone who develops, or who works with developers - whether in a management capacity or not. It's not in the same league as "The Pragmatic Programmer", but I'm getting off the point now.

So anyway, I came across this video via Yahoo MySQL guru Jeremy Zawodny's blog. It's so slickly made that you're not surprised when it turns out to be an ad for a big expensive professional services company. But I liked it.