Coexistence Journal

SOPA makes much more sense if you look at the debate as big companies unwilling to accept change versus the innovative companies and startups that embrace change. And if we accept that startups are created to find new ways to create value for consumers, the debate is actually between the financial interests of “big content” shareholders versus consumer interests at large.

If you take a look at many of the largest backers of SOPA or PIPA — the Business of Software Alliance, Comcast, Electronic Arts, Ford, L’Oreal, Scholastic, Sony, Disney — you’ll see that they represent a wide range of businesses. Some are technology companies, some are content companies, some are historic innovators, and some are not. But one characteristic is the same across all of SOPA’s supporters — they all have an interest in preserving the status quo. If there is meaningful innovation by startups in content creation and delivery, the supporters of SOPA and PIPA are poised to lose.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/01/the_real_sopa_battle_innovators.html?cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-technology-_-technology011912&referral=00208&utm_source=newsletter_technology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=technology11912

To make a seawater antenna, the current probe (an electrical coil roughly the size and shape of a large doughnut) is attached to a radio’s antenna jack. When salt water is squirted through the hole in the middle of the probe, signals are transferred to the water stream by electromagnetic induction. The aerial can be adjusted to the frequency of those signals by lengthening or shortening the spout. To fashion antennae for short-wave radio, for example, spouts between 18 and 24 metres high are about right. To increase bandwidth, and thus transmit more data, such as a video, all you need do is thicken the spout. And the system is economical. The probe consumes less electricity than three incandescent desk lamps.

http://www.economist.com/node/18007506?fsrc=nlw%7Cpub%7C1-18-2012%7Cpublishers

There is nothing particularly magical about moving things with thoughts. Human beings perform the feat every time they move a limb, or breathe, by sending electrical impulses to appropriate muscles. If these electrical signals could be detected and interpreted, the argument goes, there is in principle no reason why they could not be used to steer objects other than the thinker’s own body. Indeed, over the past two decades brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) which use electrodes implanted in the skull have enabled paralysed patients to control computer cursors, robotic arms and wheelchairs.

http://www.economist.com/node/21527030?fsrc=nlw%7Cpub%7C1-18-2012%7Cpublishers

LENIN is said to have sneered that a capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him. The quote may be spurious, but it contains a grain of truth. Capitalists quite often invent the technology that destroys their own business.

Eastman Kodak is a picture-perfect example. It built one of the first digital cameras in 1975. That technology, followed by the development of smartphones that double as cameras, has battered Kodak’s old film- and camera-making business almost to death.

http://www.economist.com/node/21542796?fsrc=nlw|hig|1-12-2012|editors_highlights

In 2000, only 20 percent of mortgages were going to multiple mortgage holders and 75 percent of those were for second houses. By 2006, 35 percent of mortgages were multiples and more than 5 percent of all loans were going to people with four or more mortgages. What’s more, the trend was especially pronounced in what we now know to have been the prime bubble states of California, Florida, and Nevada. By 2006, at least 25 percent of mortgages in these states were going to people who already owned one home, and a further 20 percent went to people with at least two.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/01/how_small_time_house_flippers_made_the_housing_bubble_much_much_worse_.html?wpisrc=newsletter_slatest

Patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are having trouble finding anyone to fill their prescriptions for drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin. Meanwhile, there is concern that a growing number of college students are using the stimulants to get high and stay up all night, even if they don’t really have ADHD.

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/01/01/adderall_shortage_patients_can_t_find_adhd_drugs.html?from=rss/&wpisrc=newsletter_slatest

Humans, it turns out, are impressionable, emotional and irrational. We buy things we don’t need, often at arbitrary prices and for silly reasons. Studies show that when a store plays soothing music, shoppers will linger for longer and often spend more. If customers are in a good mood, they are more susceptible to persuasion. We believe price tends to indicate the value of things, not the other way around. And many people will squander valuable time to get something free.

http://www.economist.com/node/21541706?fsrc=nlw%7Cnewe%7C1-2-2012%7Cnew_on_the_economist

One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread.

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Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else. They might use their research skills to look harder at the lot of the disposable academic.

http://www.economist.com/node/17723223?fsrc=scn/tw/te/mp/thedisposableacademic

Facebook [is] impacting the lives of hundreds of young businesspeople… [B]ehind all the liking, commenting, sharing, and posting, there were strong hints of jealousy, anxiety, and, in one case, depression. Said one interviewee about a Facebook friend, “Although he’s my best friend, I kind-of despise his updates.” Said another “Now, Facebook IS my work day.” As I dug deeper, I discovered disturbing by-products of Facebook’s rapid ascension — three new, distressing ways in which the social media giant is fundamentally altering our daily sense of well-being in both our personal and work lives.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/facebook_is_making_us_miserabl.html?cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-technology-_-technology122011&referral=00208&utm_source=newsletter_technology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=technology122011

I’d say that in about half of my business conversations, I have almost no idea what other people are saying to me. The language of internet business models has made the problem even worse. When I was younger, if I didn’t understand what people were saying, I thought I was stupid. Now I realize that if it’s to people’s benefit that I understand them but I don’t, then they’re the ones who are stupid.

There are at least five strains of this epidemic.

http://blogs.hbr.org/pallotta/2011/12/i-dont-understand-what-anyone.html?cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-weekly_hotlist-_-hotlist121211&referral=00202&utm_source=newsletter_weekly_hotlist&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=hotlist121211

When false priorities are mistaken for true priorities, some blocking is bound to occur. You’ll feel resistance when you try to move forward on priorities that seem to make logical sense but which don’t connect with your true desires. No matter how hard you push against that resistance or what techniques you try to use to get past it, it will still be present. That’s because your mistake was further upstream. Your priorities weren’t aligned with your true desires.

When you realize you’re in a blocking situation, give yourself some time to pause and reflect. Even if you didn’t explicitly write down your priorities, what do your thoughts tell you about what’s most important to you?

If it’s convenient for you, jot down a quick list of your top mental priorities. Maybe you’ll come up with something like this:

1. Making more money
2. Improving my overall health and fitness
3. Spending time with my significant other
4. Being more focused and productive at work
5. Learning new skills

But if you were to actually look at your actions as an objective observer might do, you may see that you’ve been prioritizing your day very differently in practice:

1. Communication (email, texting, phone calls)
2. Social networking
3. Consuming information (blogs, news, videos, etc)
4. Doing urgent work
5. Being entertained

These aren’t complete lists, but I think you get the idea — your mental prioritization and your real world actions are not in sync.

If you discover something like this, don’t panic. It’s quite common for people to have two lists that are clearly not aligned. Fortunately this is a fixable problem.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/11/why-logic-always-fails-you/

The physics of a flywheel is pretty basic. Take a disk that is free to rotate. Apply torque and it spins, gaining momentum in the process. Once the initial torque is taken away, the wheel will keep going. Some momentum is subsequently lost to friction on the bearings and to air resistance. Whatever remains can be put to work, powering whatever gubbins is connected to it.

[M]odern flywheels are increasingly being made of carbon fibre, a material much stronger than steel. This lets them whirr at over 60,000rpm without falling apart…Road tests have shown that, thanks to modern materials and clever design, a flywheel as small as a hockey puck can reduce fuel consumption by more than one-fifth.

http://www.economist.com/node/21540386

DURING the second world war a new term of abuse entered the English language. To call someone “a little Hitler” meant he was a menial functionary who employed what power he had in order to annoy and frustrate others for his own gratification. From nightclub bouncers to the squaddies at Abu Ghraib prison who tormented their prisoners for fun, little Hitlers plague the world. The phenomenon has not, though, hitherto been subject to scientific investigation.

Nathanael Fast of the University of Southern California has changed that. He observed that lots of psychological experiments have been done on the effects of status and lots on the effects of power. But few, if any, have been done on both combined. He and his colleagues Nir Halevy of Stanford University and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University, in Chicago, set out to correct this. In particular they wanted to see if it is circumstances that create little Hitlers or, rather, whether people of that type simply gravitate into jobs which allow them to behave badly. Their results have just been published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

http://www.economist.com/node/21530945

Suggestion: Skip to slide 40

The tech world has endlessly debated what went wrong with HP. Is it just the passage of time? It is hard to reach old age in Silicon Valley: your technology goes stale, and young bruisers such as Google and Apple kick away your zimmer frame. Or is it HP’s dysfunctional board (which the eloquent Mr Perkins describes as “the worst board in the history of business”)? Apparently, HP hired Mr Apotheker without his ever meeting the full board.

Perhaps. But a resurgent IBM has just celebrated its 100th birthday, and the HP board has been remade several times in the past decade. There is a third possibility: that HP has fallen victim to the cult of the corporate saviour. It keeps reaching outside its ranks to hire a superstar as CEO. This is something HP never did during its glory days. And it never seems to work.

http://www.economist.com/node/21530953?fsrc=nlw|mgt|10-5-2011|management_thinking

[H]ormones drive investment decisions to a far greater extent than economists or bank executives realise. When traders are on a winning streak, their testosterone levels surge, sparking such euphoria that they underestimate risk. When they are acutely stressed, the adrenal cortex produces a flood of cortisol, a hormone that can make them overly fearful and risk-averse.

http://www.economist.com/node/21530111?fsrc=nlw|mgt|09-28-11|management_thinking

Marketers milk science for insights. Studies show that music can affect people’s behaviour: shoppers in American department stores who are exposed to piped tunes with a slow tempo spend 18% longer in the store and make 17% more purchases than those who shop in silence. Marketers routinely track shoppers as they make their way around supermarkets and listen in on their conversations at the counter. They also take willing subjects and observe their reactions as they gawp at products.

http://www.economist.com/node/21530076?fsrc=nlw|mgt|09-28-11|management_thinking

http://www.economist.com/node/21529014?fsrc=nlw|edh|09-15-11|editors_highlights