The murmur of the snarkmatrix…

Jennifer § Two songs from The Muppet Movie / 2021-02-12 15:53:34
A few notes on daily blogging § Stock and flow / 2017-11-20 19:52:47
El Stock y Flujo de nuestro negocio. – redmasiva § Stock and flow / 2017-03-27 17:35:13
Meet the Attendees – edcampoc § The generative web event / 2017-02-27 10:18:17
Does Your Digital Business Support a Lifestyle You Love? § Stock and flow / 2017-02-09 18:15:22
Daniel § Stock and flow / 2017-02-06 23:47:51
Kanye West, media cyborg – MacDara Conroy § Kanye West, media cyborg / 2017-01-18 10:53:08
Inventing a game – MacDara Conroy § Inventing a game / 2017-01-18 10:52:33
Losing my religion | Mathew Lowry § Stock and flow / 2016-07-11 08:26:59
Facebook is wrong, text is deathless – Sitegreek !nfotech § Towards A Theory of Secondary Literacy / 2016-06-20 16:42:52

Change Blindness
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Although this is not the “coolest psychology experiment ever,” as billed, it’s pretty freaky all the same. It makes me wonder what other giant glaring things we fail to perceive on a daily basis.

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Hot Diggity
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If ever a post were truly worthy of the “Media Galaxy” category, it’s this: tons upon tons of quality copyrighted media, for free, for now.

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Boxing Day Surprise
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Heeeeey, my paper just got sold. Howard, does this mean I don’t get to post on Etaoin Shrdlu anymore?

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The Tag Stops Here
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Er, Robin, Will tagged us with this ‘5 Things You Didn’t Know About Me’ meme last week. We don’t really have a protocol for this stuff on Snarkmarket. Hmm.

OK, how’s this? I will throw an unspecified number of things about myself into the comments as I come up with them. If you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged. Feel free to jump in the comments and add stuff about yourselves as well, or do so on your own blog and link back to it here. And if you, gentle reader, have no interest in trivia about the lives of me, Robin, or any of your fellow Snarkmarket readers, consider yourself unmolested.

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links for 2006-12-25
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The Intelligence Pyramid
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More thought provocations via Khoi Vinh. In this interview with Science of Shopping author Paco Underhill, he drops this nugget:

I think of knowledge as a pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid is data; the next layer of the pyramid is information; the next layer of the pyramid is intelligence; and the top of the pyramid is wisdom. I like to tell my clients that we’re in the business of giving them intelligence and wisdom, and if they want to collect data, or if they want to collect information and process it themselves, that’s their business.

Of course, this pyramid is hardly Underhill’s invention, but I like that he specializes. I’d swap “knowledge” with “intelligence,” as I have. Totally an aesthetic thing, I just think “intelligence” is a word more suited to apply to the whole structure. Pure data can be characterized, in the CIA sense, as “intelligence,” while “knowledge” is a trickier fit. I like this explanation of the four concepts.

I’d say journalism suffers from not articulating these concepts as decisively as Underhill does. When asked what we’re “in the business of” giving to folks, most journalists would probably shrug and say, “Journalism.” Which is absolutely not a separate plank on the intelligence pyramid, our overinflated egos notwithstanding. (Some would answer “stories,” which I think is a less-than-artful way of dodging the question.) If you squint your eyes a little bit, you could might imagine journalism’s version of this pyramid as Underhill’s version, split into two halves — the “objective” half (data and information), and the “subjective” half (knowledge and wisdom). Squint a little bit more, and you might even see how these concepts form your average newspaper — data and information being the substance of the reporting and presenting process, and knowledge and wisdom being fodder for news analyses, commentaries and editorials.

But I’ve seen reporters recoil at the notion that the foundation for all their work is gathering data. And while most journalists seem to be content with providing mere “information” for a time, 90% of them seem to harbor secret ambitions to impart “wisdom.” It would be worth saying, I think, that actually gathering data is a noble end in itself, as is providing information. It would also be worth giving more journalists access throughout their careers to the fields of knowledge- and wisdom-dispensing. (I.e. Rather more clear subjectivity added to the “objectivity” soup.)

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Intellectually Acceptable Comics
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Khoi Vinh’s pretty astute observation about the ubiquitous Chris Ware:

In spite of his many and frequent innovations, Ware

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Illustrator Discovery Engine
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At Patchbox, artists can submit a link and an 80 x 80px thumbnail, and you can look at samples of a bunch of different styles of graphic art all at once. (MetaFilterrific.)

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My Father's Suitcase
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Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel lecture, reprinted in The New Yorker, rocks:

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is. When I speak of writing, the image that comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or a literary tradition; it is the person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and, alone, turns inward. Amid his shadows, he builds a new world with words.

(BTW, Io, Saturnalia!)

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Car Salesmen
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‘Sometimes, the truth of a stereotype can make it all the more wonderful.’ (Via. And don’t stop there.)

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