Digital Privacy
Thirteen years ago, if you asked a layperson what the Internet was, there was a good chance they would point you to the Yahoo! homepage. Back in those days, lots of people used to type web addresses into Yahoo!'s search box and find the site they wanted in the results. I'm willing to bet if you did that now, a lot of non-tech-savvy people would take you to Facebook. Maybe Google. The term Facebook seems...
Nothing (and Everything) to Lose
I realized this morning as I was furiously pounding away on the code for a personal project that I'm in the very fortunate position of not having anything to lose. I'm an individual, flying by night, and since the work I do on my own time doesn't bring in money I depend on, I can push the envelope, break things, and the consequences are minimal because I have nothing to lose. Contrast that with an...
Open CourseWare
If you're interested in seeing what goes on in the lecture halls of MIT, you can browse a healthy portion of their curriculum online, for free, at their Open CourseWare site. MIT charges tens of thousands of dollars for their students to attend their classes and hear those lectures, so the fact that the put it all online, free of charge, for anyone to see, is a little surprising. But from a business perspective, it...
Random
Let's say you have a large set of truly random, widely distributed numbers. What portion of them, if you counted it up, would start with the digit 1? How about 2? 3? Most people intuitively say it's 1 in 9, an equal share of probability, for each one. In reality, this isn't what ends up happening. In a large random sampling of numbers, each has roughly a 30% chance of starting with 1. (Or, another...
Quick-Draw
Two ways you can demonstrate know-how on a job interview when someone asks you a question about how you would solve a problem: 1. You can quickly offer up the first answer that pops into your head. 2. Ask any important clarifying questions related to the problem, then offer your solution. In my experience, people who are truly masters of their own domain are inclined more towards the second approach. It's naive to jump right...
"Go For It"
I was at a wedding last August. Most of the people I knew there were from high school. I had a pretty good time catching up with everyone, but it was pretty standard: people talked about their jobs, the good and bad. I was happy to hear way more good news from people than bad. Later in the evening, I ran into one friend and met his wife. She mentioned to me that she had...
Angry Birds
I got started playing the game "Angry Birds" yesterday. I downloaded it initially out of curiosity and, like so many popular things, I stuck around for a while because I was trying to figure out why exactly why it was so popular. It's not a bad game...it's a time suck, but well worth the $1 it cost me. The reason it's popular, I think, is because it's easy. I'm not saying the game is without...
Pass the Kool-Aid
I swear allegiance to very little in this world. I've spent enough time in the company of people who seem caught up in something they believe in to want to avoid falling into that trap myself. Some people really, really love Apple products, for example. I don't dislike Apple products, but I'm not, as they say, going to drink the Kool-Aid. It really didn't matter if tomorrow I got a job working at Apple. I'm...
Vector
Technology is a medium. It's a vector through which ideas can spread. For the last few hundred years, this has been the role of technology. Self-interest has driven its uprise, supported by people driven to share something with others. First it was books, then the telegraph, then the radio, television, and then the Internet. This has led to a great democratization of information. The same information is available to almost everyone, on a scale that's...
Innovation and the Obvious
In the world of inventors, "innovation" is the key term. The assembly line was an innovation that transformed the automobile industry. The Internet, a distributed network of computers spitting hypertext documents at one another, was a massive innovation in telecommunications. Big jumps aside, a lot of innovations don't really happen by completely inventing or reinventing an entire new system or infrastructure. They happen by tweaking what already exists. DVD players were a whole different kind...