“We don’t often talk about love at gatherings like this; it seems too squishy.” — Clay Shirky, in a speech at Supernova ’07 that really is quite pleasant. Filled with fun nuggets. (Joho!)
James Fallows on two-tiered stock structure in media ownership:
The only justification for “Class B” shares giving special voting power to the Sulzberger family at the Times, the Graham family at the Post, and the Bancroft family at the Journal is the assumption that the families will weigh other factors in deciding how the news operation should be run.
That is: other potentially non-economic factors.
Of course, Class B shares aren’t just an old-school thing. Guess which other company uses them to give super-votes — and, potentially, the power to defy the market — to founders and top executives?
Google.
Noah Millman on the temperamental difference between liberals and progressives over at the new American Scene. I interpret it thusly: Liberals like poetry; progressives like science fiction.
Nearly a week without posts! Yikes! Don’t worry — I have a huge backlog of noteworthy items. In the meantime, meditate on this.
I love this: Young legal scholar and blogger James Grimmelman (who I ran into at that Regulating Search conference back in the day) loved Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows so much that he is starting a short-term blog of Potter ruminations. (Be careful with that link! We are talking about a blog specifically predicated on spoilers!) It’s terrific and I am totally going to hang out there.
Via Fimoc: trailer for Wes Anderon’s new movie, The Darjeeling Limited. If this follows the pattern established by previous Wes Anderson movies (Bottle Rocket: hated it; Rushmore: loved it; Royal Tenenbaums: hated it; Life Aquatic: loved it)… I will hate it.
But that’s okay, because the next one is The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is based on a Roald Dahl book, and I would hate to hate that.
Good stuff on Errol Morris’s New York Times blog. (Given the reaction of those three nouns — Errol Morris, New York Times, and blog — in my brain, I suddenly feel kinda like the target of one of those precision laser-guided munitions… except it’s a blog, not a bomb, and I’m me, not a suspicious-looking chemical plant.)
Because it is TimesSelect, I will not tease you with a provocative blockquote. I will say: If you have access to the NYT’s restricted garden of delights, the comments are as good as the blog post.
Update: Well, on second thought, I guess Vulture is right that Morris is not actually a very good blogger as such.
Google has committed to bid for wireless spectrum — as much to influence the direction of the market as to, you know, own spectrum (or so it seems).
And, good news: The direction they want to push it is towards openness.
These days, I find myself less worried about Google’s techno-titanic mastery of all data and more excited about its potential as a force for change in public policy and markets. I’m actually really glad they’re getting into that game.