A world where all utterances are putatively available makes “he said, she said” journalism an increasingly irresponsible form, less a way of balancing reasonable debate and more a way of evading the responsibility for informing the public. Seeking truth and reporting it is becoming less about finding consensus, which there is simply less of in the world, and more about publicly sorting the relevant actors from the irrelevant ones. They can no longer fall back on “experts,” as if every professor or researcher is equally trustworthy.
Shirky: ‘We are indeed less willing to agree on what constitutes truth’ | Poynter. (via)

Source: poynter.org

We can’t move past that attitude without moving past that business model, too.

Let’s reconsider our “users” – Marco.org

sometimes it pains me how much jack wants to be steve jobs (see:  those weird-ass collars) and has a bro crush on howie.  you never saw steve jobs dealing in the hypothetical though, without doing something.  blog posts don’t change the world.

marco takes a more practical approach.

Source: marco.org

The Internet is the opportunity of our generation, and we’ve barely begun to tap its potential. One of the goals of Brooklyn Beta is to remind you of this. This room is full of some of the best web developers, designers, and entrepreneurs we have, but being the best is not good enough. We’re not living up to our potential, and I want us to feel guilty. I want us to feel the burden of our responsibility.

Chris Shiflett (via swissmiss | Lessons from Brooklyn Beta)

still trying to “unpack” the weekend and, like tina, the burden of responsibility is likely what i’m recognizing.

or name this movie:

“You know, Mudd, you really do have…POTENTIAL.”

Source: swiss-miss.com

One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.
Alain de Botton, of course (via wearethedigitalkids)
That’s the other sort of tragedy. I mean that in the real sense of the word. If you have children exposed to ancient fossils of creatures, and you try to convince them that there’s some extraordinary conspiracy by a deity to dupe you—that you can’t trust anything you think, you can’t trust your own common sense—that is not in our best interest for our society.
Bill Nye

Source: Fast Company

The familiarity of Starbucks is designed to sustain your routines anywhere, rather than shelter you from strangeness. If Starbucks is your home, every local environment is a foreign zone. You are not particularly intimidated by the foreign (at some level, there is no such thing as “foreign” anymore), but aren’t particularly tempted to engage it either. Starbucks has more in common with the global network of American military bases than it does with civilian cultural outposts of Americanization. Geography matters less than whether you are on base or off base.

Cloud Mouse, Metro Mouse

This is brilliant. The example of Starbucks as an example of functional familiarity is perfect for anyone who has ever freelanced in an urban environment, but the article itself offers so much more.

This piece looks at the behavioural frameworks that we develop around our lives and work, and how that translates into our interaction with the world on the whole.

Design your campaigns and materials for integration into existing routines, for this feeling of functional familiarity. Something to think about.

(via attentionindustry)

(via attentionindustry)

Our 20s are the defining decade of adulthood. 80% of life’s most defining moments take place by about age 35. 2/3 of lifetime wage growth happens during the first ten years of a career. More than half of Americans are married or are dating or living with their future partner by age 30. Personality can change more during our 20s than at any other decade in life. Female fertility peaks at 28. The brain caps off its last major growth spurt. When it comes to adult development, 30 is not the new 20. Even if you do nothing, not making choices is a choice all the same. Don’t be defined by what you didn’t know or didn’t do.

Thirty Is Not The New Twenty: Why Your 20s Matter | Experts’ Corner | Big Think

whoa.

(via peterwknox)

if anyone asks me, “how’s it going?”  i now have an answer.

(via peterwknox)

Twitter also prominently displays the total tweets I’ve made and accounts I’m following (7,199 and 679 respectively). I’m not not sure what these really tell anyone – they’s certainly be a poor method of evaluating whether to follow me or not. Just because computers are good at adding up, it doesn’t mean we should display numbers everywhere.
Frankie Roberto: The problem with numbers. (via blech)

get with this.

(via slantback)

Source: frankieroberto.com