News and Analysis

The Originality/Unoriginality Barrier: Gradual Evolution.

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(Not done writing about originality yet.  Regular poster Serdar noted that my ideas addressing originality suggested that highly original people can and should address using their ideas via gradual evolution, and that gradual evolution of media was an ideal. I want to address that).

I've been writing a lot about originality in media lately.  This is entirely understandable because originality is a big topic in media – in an age of remakes and the shockingly innovative it's going to be something prominent in people's minds.  It's also an important subject because people feel very passionate about it – as I noted there are many psychological/cultural factors to a love of originality.

My conclusions actually were that originality is actually not a prime driver in media consumption – socializabitility is.  People's interests in media were often heavily influenced by what they can share with and enjoy with others.  Originality, in turn, was most important when it helped with that social factor.

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Superheroes and Sex Appeal

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A friend of mine recently discussed the new Green Lantern trailer.  Sure he was enthused about the movie, the effects, the scope, but he was also enthused about Ryan Reynolds.  The enthusiasm my friend felt for Ryan Reynolds was an admixture; he felt Reynolds was both charming and looked great in his underwear.  My friend is not the only person to comment on a level of sex appeal in the Green Lantern Trailer, leaving me to the conclusions that this is both intentional and that Mr. Reynolds is someone who will make more of us feel inadequate in our underwear in the years to come.

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News Of The Day 1/28/2011

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MAJOR NEWS:
For those of you not following, Egypt has been largely or mostly taken off the internet – an analysis is here. The massive Techememe roundup is here. This is huge and is something all of us need to follow – geeks and nongeeks, progeeks and regular.

  • The sheer human factor
  • It is historical.
  • It will affect government and technical policies all over the world.
  • It will likely result in snake-oil solutions and scams we need to watch.

Twitter has already stated it's support for free speech

Demographics/Demogeekness:
How social structure relates to success – an interesting post that also suggests just why Silicon Valley did better than other areas. This article focuses too much on the "Midwestern attitude" (which I actually think isn't as prominent as the author thinks), but the overall picture is fascinating, focusing on social clusters. Frankly, I think the social clusters ARE a big success because being in Silicon Valley, it definitely is A) a culture, and B) surprisingly connection dense – which you can experience quite differently being an outsider.

Economics/Geekonomics:
At the Davros meeting Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan says banks should be allowed to fail. I think a lot of the world's financial elite are feeling the heat if he says something like this.

Publishing:
Ebooks outselling paperbacks at Amazon? I'm in no way surprised.

Technology:
Did Steve Jobs out Japan Japan? A fascinating analysis (plus some analysis of Sony that is compelling).

Adobe versus Apple? Not when cash is on the line, so Creative Suite 5.5 is going to have iOS, Android, and other development tools.

Video Games:
Sounds like the NGP has interested people in the gaming industry.

– Steven Savage