Greg Linch's Commonplace Book

Oh, hello there. Welcome, interweb traveler. Here's where I share interesting and inspiring links. I hope you enjoy!

The underlying theme or premise of a lot of my work is that people have a hard time acknowledging the operating system on which they’re functioning. So the (doctoral) dissertation is really looking at social currency as the unacknowledged economic operating system of our time. And corporations as kind of the ideal software to run on that operating system. People accept the premises, the laws and rules, of that OS as if it were nature, as if it were the world. When it’s not the world it’s a playing field, it’s a construction of people. “That’s really what, I guess, as a media theorist the main thing I’ve been trying to get across to people. Whether I’ve been talking about culture, or religion or anything else. That we accept a set of assumptions, we accept these creations, these rules as if they were nature. But they’re not, they’re a system, a construction.

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The Future Is a Faded Song: Douglas Rushkoff on the Groundbreaking “ADD” < PopMatters

Interesting commentary on real-world “operating systems”

Apache was not created to host subversion but in those early days its main value proposition for developers, not companies, was removing barriers to entry. Those barriers no longer exist but the ASF is determined to preserve the problem they had been solving rather than turning to their core values and re-structuring the organization to promote their ethos in a changed world.

The problem here is less about git and more about the chasm between Apache and the new culture of open source.

for me the definition of an artist is “to animate the magic inherent in the world.” The world already has magic in it. The role of an artist is to galvanize it, to rally it. And to genuinely connect with people, stir a response and leave them a bit transformed.

I didn’t have to think of myself as a visual artist to be an artist. Being an artist was a way of looking at the world, of being in the world, and interacting and influencing the world. I could look at problems, I could look at situations, I could look at the wonder of the universe with an artist’s mind.

when somebody tries to measure something intangible—like the value of content—it’s impossible to come up with an exact number. So, people assume content is immeasurable.

Luckily, most scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians say exact measurement is a myth. To them, the goal of measurement is to reduce uncertainty. Get this: it’s impossible to eliminate uncertainty all together—all measurement is based on assumptions. That means, when measuring content value, you don’t have to come up with precise numbers. You just need to provide enough information that your stakeholders feel comfortable making a decision. Think estimates, not exacts.

Learning code is not about numbers and mathematics. It’s more like architecture, where you are presented with a puzzle problem such as “How do we get all these cars from this highway to that one without having to build a bridge across this river or putting an overpass next to the hospital?

CNBC-ized news emphasizes speed over depth, immediacy over context, internal metrics (e.g. earnings) over external costs (say, predatory lending and its aftermath, or income inequality and its roots). It is about insiderism, incrementalism, and scoopism. It tethers itself to the daily flow of corporate and government announcements (e.g. deals) and avoids the harder job of exploring systemic problems. Its definition of what is and isn’t a business-news story is as narrow as its definition of who is and isn’t a business-news source.

If you’re a tech company or a marketer, your goal is to be the first thing people do when they start their day. If you’re an artist, a leader or someone seeking to make a difference, the first thing you do should be to lay tracks to accomplish your goals, not to hear how others have reacted/responded/insisted to what happened yesterday.