Autore: Gaspar Torriero

Peter Merholz commenta Shirky e approva, ma non su tutto: l’ossigeno sarà gratis, ma l’aria pulita ha pure un costo. E inoltre, “Weblogs, and The Web in general, are clumsy and undesirable media for providing readers with any kind of lengthy thesis.” Insomma, la parola scritta in forma di libro ha ancora un futuro.

Per finire, quando Shirky scrive che la maggior parte del testo scritto che legge oggi è gratis, dimentica il costo dell’harware e della connessione, che non è irrilevante per tutti.

Ieri per la prima volta tenevo un corso di Excel avanzato su Apple Macintosh, e per un attimo mi sono sentito totalmente perso senza il tasto destro del mouse. Poi ho trovato il CTRL+CLIC, e la vita mi ha sorriso di nuovo.

Clay Shirky ti spiega con parole semplici ma efficaci perché non puoi sperare di cavare soldi da un weblog:

This destruction of value is what makes weblogs so important. We want a world where global publishing is effortless. We want a world where you don’t have to ask for help or permission to write out loud. However, when we get that world we face the paradox of oxygen and gold. Oxygen is more vital to human life than gold, but because air is abundant, oxygen is free. Weblogs make writing as abundant as air, with the same effect on price. Prior to the web, people paid for most of the words they read. Now, for a large and growing number of us, most of the words we read cost us nothing.

L’unica ricompensa possibile è quella di far parte della conversazione. O forse scrivere un libro sui weblog…

Bernie DeKoven ha una bella pagina con una specie di tassametro che ti permette di calcolare il costo di una riunione, secondo per secondo. Molto istruttivo.

Se vuoi approfondire trovi anche un sacco di links utili sull’argomento, e uno studio dell’Università della California del sud a Los Angeles che ne 1993 ha scoperto quanto segue:

• The average meeting takes place in the company conference room at 11 in the morning and lasts an hour and 30 minutes.
• It is attended by nine people — two managers, four co-workers, two subordinates and one outsider — who have received two hour prior notification
• It has no written agenda, and its purported purpose is complete only 50% of the time.
• A quarter of meeting participants complain they waste between 11 and 25 percent of the time discussing irrelevant issues
• A full third of them feel pressured to publicly espouse opinions with which they privately disagree
• Another third feel they have minimal or no influence on the discussion
• Although 36% of meetings result in a “complete” resolution of the topic at hand, participants considered only one percent of those conclusions to be particularly creative.
• A whopping 63% of meeting attendees feel that underlying issues outside the scope of the official agenda are the real subjects under discussion.
• Senior executives spend 53% of their time in meetings, at an average rate of $320 per person hour.

Allora tutto sommato non fanno male le società giapponesi a tenere le loro riunioni di sera, davanti a un bicchiere di birra, parlando del più e del meno. E’ così che raggiungono le decisioni importanti.

Ti giro uno snippet dalla Langa List molto inquietante:

Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows CD. To my astonishment and distress he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned it on. I was upset because the CD had become precious to me, but he said ‘Do not worry, it is unharmed.’

After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said ‘Take a close look at it.’ To my surprise the CD was quite cold and it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, in lines finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C652074

68656D20616C6C2C204F6E65204F53

20746F2066696E64207468656D2C0D0A

4F6E65204F5320746F206272696E67

207468656D20616C6C20616E6420696E

20746865206461726B6E6573732062

696E64207468656D

‘I cannot read the fiery letters,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says”

‘One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,

One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them….”