Everyone is trying to persuade me that decline in newspaper readership is making society at large more dis-informed. I don’t think so. Perhaps if you are not a proficient user of available tools (and I am not) you may find yourself wasting important amounts of time trying to retrieve information from irrelevant sources. But it’s fair to say that in the information age we are all struggling with relevance.

I try to find the explanation to this, rather, in the principles of entropy. Entropy assumes that nature tends from order to disorder in isolated systems. Let’s say your throw a pile of books on the ground, disorder is more likely to occur.

A more precise way to characterize entropy is to say that it is a measure of the “multiplicity” associated with the state of the objects. If a given state can be accomplished in many more ways, then it is more probable than one which can be accomplished in only a few ways

The above is a time-arrow vision of entropy. But here is another take on it as disorder, illustration included, thanks to hyper-physics

For a glass of water the number of molecules is astronomical. The jumble of ice chips may look more disordered in comparison to the glass of water which looks uniform and homogeneous. But the ice chips place limits on the number of ways the molecules can be arranged. The water molecules in the glass of water can be arranged in many more ways; they have greater “multiplicity” and therefore greater entropy

More on sister topic information entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, a key to grasping entropy

eMarketer predicts that spending on online rich media and video ads will account for nearly one-fifth of all online ad spending by 2012, up from 9.7% of all online ad spending in 2007.

Check out the IABs draft video ad format guidelines and best practices, released April 2008. More coming out on May 5th.

British artist and sculptor Henry Moore (1898 - 1986) introduced a particular form of modernism to art in the United Kingdom. He is particularly well known for his reclining female figures. Moore was born in Castleford, Yorkshire, the son of a mine engineer. He became notoriously acclaimed in the international scene as a sculptor for his large scale abstract bronze and marble figures which can be seen in significant public enclaves worldwide. Moore’s figures are normally characteristic for piercing and hollow spaces which are reminiscent of the hilly landscape of Yorkshire. Most of the wealth he made from these large scale commissions in his later years was endowed to his Foundation.

There is a quote of Moore’s which I particularly enjoy and I find condensates how I understand his work:

There are universal shapes to which everyone is subconsciously conditioned and to which they can respond if their conscious control does not shut them off

More about Henry Moore’s work and style here and in this tribute page to the artist.

Portrait of the artist in his studio in the mid 1960s via britannica. Reclining figure from sculpture.net. The Three Piece Reclining Figure: Draped in Kew Gardens via rwapplewannabe

We already know it. Internet takes young adults away from newspaper titles and newspaper titles do not recover them in their online resources. “Among young adults, 27% said they read national newspapers less since they started using the Internet compared to a 14% drop by the general population“

Oopps… where did they go?

Probability indicates that the large media groups will still own the information space, but it’s the brands, the means of access to information and the sources of credibility (traditionally the national dailies) that change.

Some days ago I read that Google and New York Times have built a layer on Google Earth (get a last upgrade; enable ‘geographic web’), so you can see what’s being written about in the New York Times via the earth map. This access still relies on the brand equity and credibility of the Times as a medium, but it provides yet another step towards non-conventional access channels to credible information. 

My questions are: Are a the same few monster media corporations still going to dominate the information space? Will they engulf all the new and upcoming diverse forms of creating and distributing media and consolidate it? What does credible mean to the current young adults? How do you create credibility in the new media space (not just UG ratings)?

In the image Orson Welles as Citizen Kane (William Randolph Hearst) via snd

If you are in as dreamy a situation as Apple, with wads of cash, a great looking balance sheet and no debt, you might as well follow Steve Jobs’ wise counsel. This is what Michael Roberto of Conversation Starter quoted him as telling in Fortune magazine (is this meta quoting…?):

“In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that’s exactly what we did. And it worked. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this time”

Jobs was referring to previous recessionist environments and of course, to the current one. As Roberto reflects in his post on the matter, in a recession there are a number of good actions to take, namely:

Invest in research and development for the next shinny times

Analyze and know your competitors’ Aquilles heels and act upon them in a clever way (think on the fringes; be a parallel thinker?)

Identify critical suppliers and distributors and identify the risk associated to them in the economic environment and how it could affect you

Think carefully about your talent needs and be very careful so you don’t send the most talented people to you competitor’s den

Erica Abi Wright, also known as Erikah Badu, was born in Dallas in February 1971. She’s an R&B and hip-hop singer and writer. She is often compared to Billie Holiday for her “musical sensibilities”, Wikipedia dixit.

I like her. I would normally think this is too commercial, but there is something in her neo soul stream, this so-called alternative or underground hip-hop, that resounds. Her father had left the home when she was growing up, but when she chose the artistic name Badu, he wrote her: “Badu in Arabic means truth and light, good choice kid”.

Not sure if this video reminds me of Carmen Miranda, Billie Holiday or Chaka Kahn meets Grace Jones. I like Erykah Badu anyway, I discovered it last week.

Images of the unforgettable Carmen Miranda; Grace Jones in the cover of Nighclubbing album courtesy of this Canadian site; Chaka Khan way back when. In the video the song Bag Lady. Cool colours and instrumentation.

Cool. I was there when they made this video (I mean I saw the filmaker with his tripod and his Sony HC7 camera on the tram to Kabatas). It starts on the Starbucks near Kabatas and gives nice views of Istanbul from there to Galata, including a ride on the funicular. I think they had a great time making it and I keep remembering Jim Jarmush ;-)

Paradise Lost is an epic poem writen by John Milton in blank verse in the XVIIC and originally published in 1667 in 10 books. It’s about the Judeo-Christian story of the fall of man, the temptation of Adam and Eve and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Couple of other videos by the same author here and here. The Pink Panther vs Skeleton Man trailer is very surreal and quite funny. I love the Brazil soundtrack and the way Pink Panther manages to keep standing in the corridor with so much dignity ;-)

eMarketer predicts that this year online advertising will grow to nearly $25.9 billion and account for 8.8% of total US ad spending. I know some media players in much more underdeveloped markets who are making this proportion too. Awesome.

Syntegrity is a formal model presented by British theorist Anthony Stafford Beer in 1990. Now a trademark, it is “a form of non-hierarchical problem solving that can be used in a small team of 10 to 42 people. It is a business consultation product that is licensed as a basis model for solving problems in a team environment”. From synergistic tensegrity

Another good description is this one: “a future-oriented approach to the design of democratic management in the sense of the heterarchical-participative type of organization. It is a holographic model for organizing processes of communication, in particular for the (self-) management of social systems. Based on the structure of polyhedra it is especially suitable for realizing team-oriented structures as well as for supporting processes of planning, knowledge generation and innovation in turbulent environments”.

But the really amazing thing that I read recently is that Beer is the brainchild of Project Cybersyn, an attempt by Chile’s Socialist government under Salvador Allende to achieve a real-time, computer controlled planned economy of sorts. The year was 1971.

“A network of about 500 telex machines linking the country from north to south supported all this. A single computer center in Santiago controlled them, using principles of cybernetics. Its futurist design offered the hope of a more participative and less bureaucratic society. The project had the participation of a multidisciplinary group of national and international scientists. Their task was to build a system for distributed decision-making supported by relevant information. But their efforts were interrupted by the coup d’etat of 1973“

Photos from top to bottom: Stafford Beer from The Very Secret Plan; Salvador Allende from Axisglobe; CyberSyn operations room view (futuristic chair design for data reading and analytics)

I really liked this tip list on how to save costs and other clever tricks to use when running a start up, provided by Jason Calacanis. Definitely enjoyed point 11 about seeking talented workaholics when managing a start up.

Verbatim:

“Fire people who are not workaholics.don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you’re not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.“

Infact, I think it’s fair to say that also in large companies, in new projects, you need to abide by some similar set of rules in taking talent from outside or handpicking it from other divisions. It’s critical to ignite and steer certain projects within the corporation at large and if you don’t infuse innovative projects with individuals who also have a true entrepreneurial edge and a desire to outdo themselves, you may never lift to even the design phase.