Loving San Diego’s La Jolla Shores
I went surfing with the guys this morning before work for the first time this summer and it was perfection. 4 ft, perfect, consistent A-frame waves - 71 degree bathwater - cloudless sky. Being out in the water at La Jolla shores and looking back on the green hills and the beach and being in the water with people laughing and hanging out before work reminded me of exactly why we moved out here — this is what southern California is all about. What a great way to start the day. I’m loving summer in San Diego.
The Open Library Aims For Free eBooks For All
The Internet Archive (the one that brought us the Wayback Machine) wants to provide free access to a comprehensive selection of books online through a project called the Open Library. Right now the library’s collection is far from extensive, but the idea is promising, and the Internet Archive is a determined archiver, so here’s hoping the project continues to improve (their new demo site looks cool).
Shift Happens
During one of our firm meetings covering how globalization will impact our firm and our jobs over the next decade, this video was presented and it sparked some pretty interesting debate and discussion on how rising countries like China and India could potentially impact the way we do our jobs, how important education is and how everyone is in a race to the top. This video - Shift Happens - is a must see if you’re interested in globalization- it’s had over a million views on YouTube in the last few months, which, in itself, shows you how fast information travels.
Gaming In Cyberspace: How Interactive Entertainment Is Changing Communication & Identity On The Net
It’s been over 2 years now since my masters thesis was published in the Georgetown Library, but I’m finding that it’s relevance is only increasing. When I was doing my research back in 2004-2005, Massively Multi-player Online Gaming Communities were a very new phenomenon - even online social networking giants like Facebook and MySpace were just starting to establish their base communities. Virtual gaming communities like Blizzard’s World Of War Craft and SecondLife since have seen an exponential leap in their popularity and online social significance. Both of these communities, along with several others, have recently been the subject of scrutiny by popular publishers like The New York Times, Business 2.0, Wired and MSNBC. And, as the focus on the social and commercial significance of online communities intensifies with large publishers and businesses, I’ve been receiving more and more emails from online-goers and researchers requesting copies of my thesis, so I’ve included a link to it below. Thanks, by the way, to those of you who have shown an on-going support for my work - I’ve enjoyed talking to each and every one of you. I wish you all luck in your academic endeavors. And, please, stop by this site frequently for updates - I’ll be posting more articles on Gaming In Cyberspace in the future!
You can download a copy of my thesis here - Gaming In Cyberspace: How Interactive Entertainment Is Changing Communication & Identity On The Net. Happy Reading!
Abstract of Gaming In Cyberspace: How Interactive Entertainment Is Changing Communication & Identity On The Net:
Currently, several million people around the globe have accounts in the virtual worlds of massively multiplayer online video games. The overall population of these virtual worlds has grown rapidly since 1996. This thesis offers an insight into interaction forms available in massively multiplayer online games by analyzing their communicative and social aspects.
The thesis aims to provide a deeper understanding of how virtual environments may be used in the future to overcome the limitations of current text-based communication, which are classified by a reduced set of intuitive non-verbal cues. The work is conducted using conceptual analysis, by applying a theoretical model that translates the perceivable interaction forms that human beings use in face-to-face interaction in the real world to virtual worlds.
This thesis will argue that that the richness of interaction within computer-mediated environments (CMEs) varies depending on the available medium, and that CMEs structure the processes of identity presentation and communication in significant ways. Additionally, it argues that the number of channels (e.g. speech, gesture or posture) and their dynamics (e.g. the simultaneous use of multiple channels) affect the overall level of richness of communication that takes place between users within computer-mediated environments that support communication. Finally, it will argue that the increased range of communicative channels that support interaction within massively multiplayer online video games can be used to overcome the limitations of current text-based communication in cyberspace, and that, as virtual worlds become an increasingly common phenomenon, they will influence the processes by which internet users communicate and present their identities online in the future.
On the Counterproductive Nature and Irrelevance of Blame
I wish more people in the business world would get how they create negative, counterproductive atmospheres when mistakes are made and blame is casually thrown around as a bi-product of scorched-egos. The following short, taken from my recent reading of What Happy People Know - How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life For the Better (pg 174), illustrates clearly why Blame is pointless, especially in a team atmosphere. On the whole, the fact that Blame is rarely, if ever, productive is an important lesson we’d all benefit from…
“Imagine that you’re in a canoe with a friend and there’s a fork in the river. Your friend convinces you to take the channel on the right. Next thing you know, you hear the roar of a waterfall. What do you do?
Do you start yelling at your friend? Of course not! It’s counterproductive. You paddle like hell for shore.
Let’s say you make it. Now do you start screaming? That’s what a lot of people would do. But why?
You’ve paid your tuition — a brush with disaster — so learn the lesson: Blame solves nothing. It’s counterproductive. Irrelevant.”
- Dan Baker, Ph. D, Director of the Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch.
Be Skeptical. There’s Always At Least Two Sides To Every Story.
As an African proverb says, “Until lions have their historians, all tales of hunting will glorify the hunter.”
Aristotle’s Challenge:
Last night I had a hankering to revisit a book that I read in Grad School called Emotional Intelligence - Why It can Matter more than IQ. For the emotionally aware, it’s a great read, albeit a little tough going given all the neuro-psychology lingo, but it’s pretty damn intriguing. After pulling it out of the pile I’ve made in the hallway to my bedroom, and blowing the dust off the cover that’s accumulated since I’ve moved to San Diego, I opened to the first page and the first line of the book is Aristotle’s Challenge in bold italics…..
ARISTOTLE’S CHALLENGE:
Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - this is not so easy. – Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics.
It hit me just as hard reading it for the 50th time as it did the first. Ponder that for a second. I think you’ll agree that it captures one of life’s greatest challenges elegantly. What makes it so profound is that it’s been a good 2000 years since these words were written and it’s still just as true today as it was the day he wrote it.
The Importance of Fostering the Habit of Self-Teaching
If I had one wish, it would be that I could learn at an incredible rate. The fulfillment of that one wish would solve so much, so fast. It would be incredibly gratifying to be able to fly through a dense book in 5 to 10 minutes and retain it all — or consume an entire section of Barnes & Noble in less than a day. I’ve found myself wishing that more and more since I left school. Nowadays, a lot of projects that I take on for fun in my free time — coding a website using a new programming language or learning a new software platform, for example — can literally take months of reading and research just to get to the point where I’m technically proficient or knowledgeable enough to make any headway. Metaphorically speaking, it can be frustrating sometimes to have to crawl before you can run - but it can be so rewarding to take those first few big strides. Which brings me to the main point I wanted to make…
It’s so important to grow up with a positive attitude towards reading, towards school, and especially towards your ability to grow by teaching yourself about the things that interest you the most. I was lucky enough to have parents and mentors growing up who meaningfully stressed the virtue of intellect and academic discourse and the value of reading for personal growth. Many of my peers, especially in early childhood, weren’t as lucky as I was. Fostering the habit of self-teaching and a love of learning is easily one of the most important things a parent, mentor or teacher can do for a child, men-tee or student. More often than not, nowadays, the message that results from mentoring relationships is being delivered improperly at all levels - grades are ends in themselves, the degree is what is important and passing is acceptable if it gets you the certification. Nurturing habits that produce a desire to educate one’s self and entertain new interests is fundamental to living a fulfilling life — The result is an endless spring of inspiration and confidence. Teaching yourself things gives a unique sense of ownership and appreciation for information and it’s sources (especially people) — your command over subject matter becomes even more of a point of individuality and pride. The bottom line is that fostering a habit of self-teaching is more than just “teaching a man how to fish”, it’s “teaching a man to want to teach himself how to fish.” The difference can be powerful over a life time.
An Exceprt From An Essay By Einstein: “The World As I See It”
What strikes me most about Einstein’s writings (this one in particular) is how very humble he seems. For a man who has been deservedly named the greatest thinker of our time (and arguably of all time) he stresses his individuality in principal only and always makes reference to kinship, his need to give back and his endless dependence on others. I have included an excerpt of Einstein’s essay “The World As I See It” for my readers who are not familiar with Einstein’s writings. It shows, if only briefly, a window in to the soul of a very great, and very gentle human being…
“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving…
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts — possessions, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible.
My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a ‘lone traveler’ and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude…
My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality… The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor… This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.”
Footnote: The text above is only an excerpt of the full text of Albert Einstein’s copyrighted essay, “The World As I See It” . The excerpt above was taken directly from an online exhibit at www.aip.org - The Center for History and Physics. I have included it here, with a footnote as websites have a tendency to evaporate and I want this blog to retain it’s full text beyond aip.org’s exhibition, who’s links are likely to change. For those of you who wish to read it, Einstein’s essay was originally published in “Forum and Century,” vol. 84, pp. 193-194, the thirteenth in the Forum series, Living Philosophies. It is also included in Living Philosophies (pp. 3-7) New York: Simon Schuster, 1931. For a more recent source, you can also find a copy of it in A. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, based on Mein Weltbild, edited by Carl Seelig, New York: Bonzana Books, 1954 (pp. 8-11).
How I found Brad Feld and went “Lijit”
Although Brad Feld doesnt know me, he’s had a significant impact on my life (and free time) these past few weeks. As with all 6-degrees-of-separation stories, Brad came into my life through someone else - In this case, my fiance, Julie. Jules’ daily life is consumed in Venture Capital and I’ll be the first to admit that she has a much cooler job than I do. Her job makes for great after-work conversation, and a fantastic residual benefit I get from her day-to-day is that I get to hear out about a ton of exciting new startups and pre-funded technologies months before they ever hit the public’s radar. Every now and again, she’ll come home after a long day of meetings and presentations super-excited about a new technology or product that her firm’s considering funding, itching to share her news about the next-greatest medical breakthrough or internet startup. A little over a month ago she had one of those days - she had just met Brad Feld. Ever since that night I’ve been a Feld fan, and I read his blogs, Feld Thoughts and AskTheVC , regularly. Brad’s the Managing Director at the Foundry Group, and currently serves on the board of directors of a number of private companies, including ePartners, Gold Systems, Judy’s Book, NewsGator, Rally Software, and StillSecure. One of his group’s most recent successes is Feedburner, which was recently acquired by Google.
One of Brad’s newest projects is a company called Lijit, which is still gathering momentum. Last week Lijit announced that they had raised a $3.3 million financing. If you aren’t familiar with Lijit, it’s the search box widget in the far right column of my site with the “My Content” icons. The Lijit widget is free to publishers, and cake to install - just a cut and paste of couple of lines of java. I found that it had one very minor bug when it comes to WordPress 2.2.1, which is my platform of choice, but the formatting problem I was having was fixed almost immediately thanks to Lijit’s customer service, which is literally the best of any company I’ve ever experienced on or off the web — I’d also like to clarify that I’m not prone to sweeping statements like that - I have been emailing back and forth with Tara Anderson at Lijit weekly and her friendly replies hit my inbox before I close my browser every single time. Just to show you how awesome she is, here’s an excerpt from one of her rapid responses yesterday when I had a minor formatting issue
Hi Steffan,
I agree that this is a very weird problem. When did you first notice it?” Our developers are in a meeting right now but as soon as they’re out, I’m grabbing one of them (forcefully) and making them investigate this issue. I will get back to you as soon as I have an answer for you. Things are really good here and thanks for asking. Hope to have this issue of yours resolved quickly and easily….
Tara
And this was a formatting issue — That’s customer service. There must be something magic in the water up in Boulder. In any case, what excites me about Lijit is that it gives publishers and bloggers the ability to customize searches on their sites to include all the content that they publish - that’s including your bookmarking services like del.icio.us, digg, and reddit; your YouTube and Flickr accounts as well as your social networks like MySpace, Linkedin, Twitter and MyBlogLog. Especially for bloggers, who publish across multiple blogs and who are active taggers and social networkers, this means a much richer, customizable search that they can provide on their sites - which translates into increased value for readers. The ability to build customized searches based on a network of content represents a significant improvement on traditional site search. Not only does it give publishers an easier way to cross-promote mulitple sites, but it allows for a much richer interaction between publishers and readers in real time. I’ll be following my experiences with Lijit closely in this blog, but, for now, if you’d like to read more on about it, a great starting place is Brad’s recent post I’m Feeling Lijit.
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