@stoweboyd: Only 22% polled by WorldAtWork say companies treat #telework as a right, almost half say it’s unavailable, and 28% say it is a reward
Technology’s disruption of traditional forms of media has led many to believe that independent, thoughtful media institutions are on the decline and that there are not enough readers to support serious reporting and analysis.
But in 1914 the founders of The New Republic chose to strike out and pursue their vision in spite of the prevailing opinions of their time. They saw a need for a magazine of informed opinion and insightful, thorough reporting.
I share their vision. It seems that today too many media institutions chase superficial metrics of online virality at the expense of investing in rigorous reporting and analysis of the most important stories of our time. When few people are investing in media institutions with such bold aims as “enlightenment to the problems of the nation,” I believe we must.
Many of us get our news from social networks, blogs, and daily aggregators. The web has introduced a competitive, and some might argue hostile, landscape for long, in-depth, resource-intensive journalism. But as we’ve seen with the rise of tablets and mobile reading devices, it is an ever-shifting landscape―one that I believe now offers opportunities to reinvigorate the forms of journalism that examine the challenges of our time in all their complexity. Although the method of delivery of important ideas has undergone drastic change over the past 15 years, the hunger for them has not dissipated.
In the next era of The New Republic, we will aggressively adapt to the newest information technologies without sacrificing our commitment to serious journalism. We will look to tell the most important stories in politics and the arts and provide the type of rigorous analysis that The New Republic has been known for. We will ask pressing questions of our leaders, share groundbreaking new ideas, and shed new light on the state of politics and culture.
The New Republic has been and will remain a journal of progressive values, but it will above all aim to appeal to independent thinkers on the left and the right who search for fresh ideas and a deeper understanding of the challenges our world faces.
A Letter To TNR Readers From Chris Hughes - Chris Hughes via The New Republic
Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, and Obama advisor, has purchased the majority stake in The New Republic, and has some very smart things to say about the role of long-format wiring in the context of open social discourse ins our increasingly liquid media world.
I may have to subscribe.
(via underpaidgenius)
Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg signed into law what he termed “the most ambitious and comprehensive open data legislation in the country.”
The Mayor remarked:
“If we’re going to continue leading the country in innovation and transparency, we’re going to have to make sure that all New Yorkers have access to the data that drives our City. Across City government, agencies use data to develop policy, implement programs, and track performance ― and each month, our Administration shares more and more of this data with the public at large, catalyzing the creativity, intellect, and enterprising spirit of computer programmers to build tools that help us all improve our lives.”Read more on NYC.gov?
This is great news, and will lead to unexpected innovation.
(via fred-wilson)
The140Film - the movie the internet wrote
I am happy to announce the start of the140film project. ?What you see above is the first two lines of a movie that twitter will write one tweet at a time. When it’s all written?Derek?and I will produce exactly what is on the page… er… internet.
Here’s how it works:
- Read the two current lines of the movie featured at the top of the page.
- Read submissions by other people in the stream of tweets on the page. Vote for the line you like best by retweeting any tweet or write your own and use #the140film. The?first?tweet to get?25 retweets?will become the next line in the film and move to the featured spot at the top of the page.
- Once we reach 140 lines the movie will be written… and then Derek and I will start production.
I’m really excited to see the movie you guys will write! Head on over to the site and start retweeting and writing.
This is cool as hell. I will have watch this movie, built from a distributed screenplay.
There are no autonomous individ?uals without an autonomous society, and the autonomy of society requires deliberate and perpetually deliberated self-constitution, something that may be only a shared accomplishment of its mem?bers.
Coworking conference (Taken with instagram)
74% of coworking space operators have other jobs.
Google Is Distorting The Google+ Numbers
When asked, Google executives say Google+ has 50M sign ups, and 100M active users over a 30 day period. But they are stretching things a bit, to be generous:
Nick Bilton via NY Times
Although these numbers sound impressive, the catch is that Google Plus-enhanced properties include YouTube, the Android Marketplace and Google.com, the company’s flagship search?engine. Yet Google contends that these numbers illustrate that more than 100 million people have signed up for a Google Plus account and are now actively engaging with Google Plus-related products across the company.
In a view from outside the company, a report released last month by ComScore, the market research firm, says Google Plus users spend about three minutes a month on the social network. By comparison, ComScore says that people spend an average 405 minutes a month on Facebook, the service Google Plus is trying to displace.
Google may be trying to plusify all of its properties, but unless people start acting like there is a real, deep, rich social experience in there, it’s just not going to displace anything.
You create a fearful culture where you spend a lot of time looking at where you screwed up.
From honeybee swarms we’ve learned that groups can reliably make good decisions in a timely matter as long as they seek diversity of knowledge. By studying termite mounds we’ve seen how even small contributions to a shared project can create something useful. Finally, flocks of starlings have shown us how, without direction from a single leader, members of a group can coordinate their behavior with amazing precision simply by paying attention to their nearest neighbor.
caro:
A map of Airbnb properties in San Francisco in 2008 versus today, from its Global Growth infographic.
Social anthropologist, clairvoyant, postfuturist.
