…it is exactly at the edge that the need to get better faster has the most urgency. Incumbents at the core - which is the place where most of the resources, especially people and money, are concentrated, and where old ways of thinking and acting still hold sway - have many fewer incentives to figure out the world, or to discover new ways of doing things, or to find new information. They’re on top, and they’re ready to keep doing what got them there. But simply accessing or attracting static resources no longer cuts it. Accessing and attracting have little value unless they are coupled with a third set of practices that focus on driving participation in, and sometimes orchestration of, someone we call “creation spaces” - environments that effectively integrate teams within a broader learning ecology so that performance improvement accelerates as more participants join.

— The Power of Pull

Cyber War - The Next Threat To National Security And What To Do About It, by Richard Clarke.


Clear, concise, and, as the events of 2011 unfolded, increasingly prescient.

Like crazy football moms who bring the drinks and snacks, do chain duty, act as spotters for the coach and scout the competition, venture capitalists are crazy fans on the sideline who hopefully contribute a lot more than money. But at the end of the day, we don’t run the companies. We are active board members who provide guidance and add value through our networks, but the team has to walk through every door we open, and execute on the plan. We do yell and scream loudly from the sidelines though. 

-Niloofar Howe, Confessions of a One-time Reluctant Football Mom

This rant on the future of interaction was excellent.  Lamented the sense that most “future visions” being touted in concept videos today are neither very futuristic nor visionary. Instead, they just expand on the current ‘pictures under glass’ metaphor for interaction.  

Senseq offers a new technology to bring tactile feel front and center, and by doing so breaks through the dominant pictures under glass concept. Check it out.  Fascinating with tons of applications.   

Creates another dimension of interaction and experience. 

A ‘Cambrian Explosion’ needs more than just sheer numbers - it needs tremendous diversity and variety.  While there are certainly signs of diversification,  the more remarkable aspect of today’s environment seems to have more to do with how many startups there are and not how many different startups there are.  

From The Cambrian Explosion of Startups: 

The sheer number of new startups forming and getting funded these days is dizzying. It’s never been easier to start a company to harness new technologies and turn them into products. Traditional venture capital may not even be able to keep up with it. We are at the beginnings of what may very well become a Cambrian Explosion of startups, which will have implications well beyond the technology industry to the entire economy.

Tuned into a cyber security discussion today with Richard Clarke who shared insights into what he calls the CHEW (Crime Hacktivisim Espionage and War) of cyber security. The talk was hosted by Veracode where Mr. Clarke is a recent addition to their Board. Some highlights below:

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Someone needs to declare war on latency.  Latency of all kinds, not just network delays but app switching, page rendering, UI element activation, etc. Both Fire and iPad2 have 1GHz dual-core processors and ample RAM.  They should be able to achieve a much higher level of responsiveness.  I had high hopes for Silk and thought a browser with optimized server-side elements could lead to a lightening fast user experience.  Such a shame to match advanced network-side tech with crummy device/software performance.  Defeats the purpose. 

bijan:

“Most problematic, though, the Fire does not have anything like the polish or speed of an iPad. You feel that $200 price tag with every swipe of your finger. Animations are sluggish and jerky — even the page turns that you’d think would be the pride of the Kindle team. Taps sometimes don’t register. There are no progress or “wait” indicators, so you frequently don’t know if the machine has even registered your touch commands. The momentum of the animations hasn’t been calculated right, so the whole thing feels ornery”

—

The Fire Aside, Amazon’s Lower-Priced Kindles Also Shine - NYTimes.com

fuck. bummer. 

futuresagency:

Click image to display full graph. (via Jonathan MacDonald)