It’s been weeks since I’ve found the time to ruminate on the ol’ front porch. This afternoon I finally found a little time. I’ve kept a running list of articles, ideas and mentions that amused or intrigued me. Here are a few of them:

Real-Time Internet Snapshots: A technology without an application?

WIRED recently ran this article highlighting efforts to provide ‘real time’ snapshots of the Internet’s consciousness. The focus was on making the point that search is inherently about indexed information and therefore the past. However sites like Twitter are much more about reflecting the present (sometimes in every mundane detail). This website is a nice case in point. It shows trending topics in Twitter plotted on a geographic map. Admittedly, it is interesting. However, I can’t for the life of me see a meaningful application of this technology.

Real-time data is useful in some places – GPS navigation, day trading on the stock market – but most of the information on Twitter isn’t really useful in real time. Sure, Twitter has helped make a mess of the news industry with its ability to break news faster and from an eye-witness perspective. But all this talk of Twitter-search seems overblown to me.

Information of the type tracked by Twitter is most useful in comparison to previous information. This allows for meaningful trendline plotting and potentially (after some time) predictive modeling. But the real time information itself isn’t especially insightful in the majority of instances.

Interestingly, as I was looking for an image to accompany this bit, I noticed how much an actual snapshot of the Internet looks like a nervous system. Perhaps one use for this technology is to detect ‘pain’ in the Internet’s nervous system. Maybe it has security uses. Philip K Dick would’ve been inspired.

Penny Auctions

This article in the economist struck my fancy. I’d never heard of ‘penny auctions’ before and having read the model, I felt guilty for seeing the genius of it. After all, in addition to be very smart, it could be seen as pretty evil, especially in a culture like ours.

The concept works this way: I put an item at an unresistably low price (let’s say a $100 iPhone with a starting price of $2). I let the bidding begin. Any number of people can bid and they can bid any number they want (“$3, do I see $4?”). But each time they bid it costs them 25¢. Well, if I can get enough people to bid enough times, one lucky winner gets the iPhone very, very cheap while I make money from hundreds or thousands of bidders. At 25¢ per bid I could take it big bucks.

The concept plays on the same ‘hey, it could happen’ mentality that fuels lottery mania and it strikes me a brilliant and predatory at the same time. Interestingly, my favorite t-shirt website Threadless uses a similar (and arguably less evil) model with a crowd-sourcing slant. Any number of artists can submit shirt ideas. The site’s community picks favorites. Those favorites go into limited production. The winning artist makes money for the design, Threadless makes money on the production run, and the chosen design is vetted by the community giving it a better than average chance of being a hot seller. Smart thinking.

Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick Two.

When I was a freelance writer I would often be called in on projects with crazy timelines. As a freelancer you’re sometimes the go-to guy when the person before you couldn’t nail it or the project sat in limbo too long and now, holy shit, it’s due tomorrow.

I would often use the ‘Good. Fast. Cheap.’ triangle in helping desperate clients understand why buying my time on short notice with a fast turnaround, usually meant either an elevated rate or some lower-end writing. Usually my clients were willing to pay extra to get good work.

Quality (or ‘good’) has always seemed the most important piece of that triangle to me. Therefore, this article in WIRED struck me as counterintuitive. As it turns out, ‘good’ is becoming less the driver of technology than is fast and cheap.

Digital systems are inherently cheap distribution channels. As it turns out, convenience is a bigger incentive that quality. Musicians lament the tonal sacrifices of MP3 formatting versus the fuller sound of AIFF. The Fling camera, intentionally manufactured with downmarket parts and fewer features, is the fastest growing category in camcorder sales. Even our video viewing standards are dropping. We’re more and more content with YouTube, staying home from movie theaters and watching more programming online (despite poor production values).

This got me to thinking, what does an emphasis on ‘fast’ and ‘cheap’ mean to other industries? It leads to fast food in the food industry. That’s cheap and quick. And maybe even tastes good. But its no good for us.

It also leads to brand-sanctioned or sponsored viral videos in the advertising industry. This is also fast and cheap (at least when compared to hiring an ad agency). Good. Well. The jury is out there.

The legal industry offers off the shelf boilerplate contracts to solve legal issues which is cheap and fast and perhaps ‘good enough’ in some instances.

What then about medicine?  Construction? Insurance? Automotive?

Interesting to think about.