3D Printing – World of Possibilities

I am amazed at 3D printing technology, it seems almost not believable. But it is here and will grow…our kids may all have 3D printers as central to any home workshop. And while it opens up incredible opportunities, it will also lead to questions around our consumer desire for getting exactly what we want and the implications for what that means (maybe more belief in the idea that the thing will make us happy if only it….). But that is worth the benefit to be able to bring design and creation tools into our everyday lives and hopefully for people/companies to create products locally that would otherwise not be available. Thinking here of making something in the less developed parts of the world that otherwise defies cost and shipping practicalities.

http://on.recode.net/1negEYb

A butterfly flaps its wings on Twitter, and a vaccine map goes viral

Really interesting investigation to source the origin of a viral story. And also interesting to think about how experts and media outlets and citizens help to spread the word on an important story, one that was otherwise left alone in the ether for the last two years. Media is motivated to drive eyeballs to content, a journalist sees something interesting from an expert who she trusts and puts it into circulation and then it goes from there. It speaks to the “internet of things” really working, enabling social activity to flourish.

Skeptical Software Tools

If you follow the problem of vaccine denialism (like most skeptics do) and are on social media, you probably saw a cool interactive global map of disease outbreaks this week. It was created by the Council on Foreign Relations – there’s a picture of it here and a link below the fold.  

Just in the last week it was posted by many major websites including Kottke.org, Mother Jones, L.A. Times, The Verge, Wired, The Atlantic Wire and even Forbes. And of course all those posts – and the direct link to the map – were being wildly passed around on social media.

Whenever I see something like this going viral, I dig a little bit before I retweet or repost it.  Sometimes there’s a better version of the post to link, or the one you saw didn’t attribute it to the original author correctly. I like to make sure…

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Infrastructure Investment

http://qz.com/173492

Interesting post from two economists about the need to invest in infrastructure, primarily to benefit future growth in GDP. Their discussion of creating a capital budget seems like it could help to create a paradigm shift in the political bickering over the deficit. And I like the idea on our “stock of knowledge”, though it seems difficult to measure and therefore ripe for mistakes and abuse.

NYTimes: The Flood Next Time

NYTimes: The Flood Next Time
http://nyti.ms/1cWz4rd

So what do you do if you live at or near the east coast? Should your next house be on higher ground? I will check to see if there is a regional forecast that includes Long Island Sound, Cape Cod Bay and Nantucket.

Have American Parents Got It All Backwards?

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3202328

Lots to consider here for how we raise our children. I try to foster some risk taking, but definitely pull them away from things that are probably just fine for them to navigate on their own.

Rebanding Strategy

Nice, brief video on what strategy should mean, and how to think about corporate strategy….is has to be the animating force, who are we and why does it matter

Good read on putting some context to Obama

Andrew Sullivan: Obama’s Long Game

Good context by Andrew Sullivan in framing Obama and his policies relative to both right and left demagoguery in this election cycle. I have my serious doubts about Obama, after supporting him in 2008, but this article has me rethinking things a bit. At the least, it makes me realize how much the constant barrage of messaging actually does take hold in our brains and shapes opinion. It takes a real effort to clear out the noise and get down to basic facts in order to get grounded in a view.

 

Spotify’s Daniel Ek: The Most Important Man In Music – Forbes

Spotify’s Daniel Ek: The Most Important Man In Music – Forbes.

Interesting article on the vision, risk tolerance and perseverance of starting a major media company.

 

“From trailing clouds of glory…”

Eamon crawled into our bed a couple of nights ago at around 10pm. He was still awake after having laid in his bed for a long while. He was giddy at the surprise we had at his still being awake, and contented to curl up next to me. After a few minutes, he began to ask me questions. “Did Jesus die? Will you get old and die like Papau Sharpe? Was Jesus old when he died?” Well, a lot on his mind. I answered yes, that we all die someday. With Jesus it was a little different because he died to show us all that he loved us and that he would rise again to go to Heaven where Papau Sharpe is now. I told him that most of us grow for a long time, sort of like a tree that starts small and then grows very tall and then someday it dies after it has lived a long life. He let me know that sometimes a tree is cut down. Well, right you are, and that tree cut down or left to fall in the forest will start new lives with its bark turning to dirt, with insects living in its trunk, etc. The analogy was the best that I could come up with on short notice. Sort of some mixing of Christian and Eastern theology behind my comments, but that is fine for now I guess, and reflects my own meandering thoughts on those topics.

Then he said, sadly and matter of factly, “I don’t want you to die.” And I said that I don’t necessarily want to die either, but that it would be a long time anyway and he would (hopefully) be older than I am now when it happened, so not something to get too worried about now. And he thought about that future for a bit and then said, still with a sober tone, “I want to be put in the same place as you and Mommy and Luke when I die.” Wow. Makes me cry again as I write this. The fear at being away from us is at the very core of the fear that I, and maybe many others, have regarding the concept of death.

Not long ago, Eamon talked about death in very unemotional terms, like his younger brother still does. People, animals, fish, etc all die. Nothing much to talk about. “People die there,” I hear from the back as we pass a cemetery. But this is literally the awakening of Eamon’s realization of the broader implications behind these realities. And he showed fear, a fear that a lot of us know and have not overcome. I think that Eamon has lots of innocence left at his not yet 5 years of age, but I just got the first taste of a loss of his innocence. There is not much that I can do to change any of this, but I do hope that I might be able to guide him (and myself) through coming to some peace with these facts of life.

The other side of the story

It is nearly impossible to know through traditional media sources what is happening on the ground in places that we can not see. This opinion piece by an Iranian film maker gives a rebuke to American politicians for not doing simple things to assist in Iranian democracy, like supporting Voice of America broadcasting to give yearning democracies information and inspiration that they need. We read mostly about the sanctions, etc., but are closed off to the paradigmatic shift of fueling the revolution in Iran. I am sure that these things have been considered by the President and State Department, and it would not surprise me to hear that activities in this vein do take place. But as a citizen and reader of the newspaper, I am reminded of just how difficult it is to get other sides of the story. Twitter and other forms of social media really can be powerful in opening up these other sides, but I feel that they are too one-off in nature as to be almost cloaking the discovery of any broader truths as the minutiae can overwhelm the senses. This is, of course, is the value that traditional media sources provide, to aggregate concepts and points of view as well as to provide editorial value to a topic. So, the key is for various new media platforms and sources of news to actually be brought to bear in a way that might enter into the mainstream conversation – – the audience reach is still much larger in traditional media sources, and likely will be until a sufficiently competent manner to aggregate and editorialize non-traditional sources is achieved.

From WSJ.com.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf: How the West Can Help Iran’s Green Movement

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704312104575298363129163620.html