SilliconValley.com
Growing up wired
In the coming weeks, the first wave in a generation of teens unlike any other will graduate from Silicon Valley high schools: The vast majority of them will remember an adolescence lived to an astonishing degree on the Internet. These teens, some of whom have been online nearly a decade, are among the Internet's first natives, at home in the wired world to a degree their parents may never wholly understand.
maandag 19 mei 2003
zaterdag 17 mei 2003
Washington Post
Middle Schoolers, Letting Their Fingers Do the Talking
A shy 10-year-old girl who has trouble talking face-to-face with other kids has dozens of online friends and spends hours every day sending them instant messages. A 10-year-old boy communicates with his cousins across the country through regular IMs, never even considering a phone call. An 11-year-old girl, looking for a friend to take to the movies, goes first to the computer to see who's free, and only later -- reluctantly -- agrees to pick up the phone to find someone. Parents of children this age say they have been waiting for their preteens to talk over the phone line and buzz away, but it's not happening and it looks as if it may not happen at all. The land line, it seems, is just so last century.
Middle Schoolers, Letting Their Fingers Do the Talking
A shy 10-year-old girl who has trouble talking face-to-face with other kids has dozens of online friends and spends hours every day sending them instant messages. A 10-year-old boy communicates with his cousins across the country through regular IMs, never even considering a phone call. An 11-year-old girl, looking for a friend to take to the movies, goes first to the computer to see who's free, and only later -- reluctantly -- agrees to pick up the phone to find someone. Parents of children this age say they have been waiting for their preteens to talk over the phone line and buzz away, but it's not happening and it looks as if it may not happen at all. The land line, it seems, is just so last century.
The New York Times
Film Rentals, Downloaded to Your PC
Decades ago, a Mad magazine cartoonist, Dave Berg, offered a vision of how the Soviet Union might win the cold war. Here in America, a never-ending succession of labor-saving devices - escalators, cars, remote controls and so on - had already created the most sedentary society on earth. All the Soviets had to do was wait until we evolved into living Weebles, complete with tippy, round bases and vestigial leg sprouts. Then they would just knock us over with the butts of their rifles.
Film Rentals, Downloaded to Your PC
Decades ago, a Mad magazine cartoonist, Dave Berg, offered a vision of how the Soviet Union might win the cold war. Here in America, a never-ending succession of labor-saving devices - escalators, cars, remote controls and so on - had already created the most sedentary society on earth. All the Soviets had to do was wait until we evolved into living Weebles, complete with tippy, round bases and vestigial leg sprouts. Then they would just knock us over with the butts of their rifles.
SilliconValley.com
How cell phones are changing our social habits
We're ruder. We're later. We're more spontaneous, less hamstrung by geography and at least semi-willing to accept rules of conduct created by children. Mobile phones may be smaller than ever, but they're changing us in big ways. Context, a Baltimore company that uses anthropologists to study consumer trends, says as much in its latest study of cell phone users, a report called ``The Mobiles.''
How cell phones are changing our social habits
We're ruder. We're later. We're more spontaneous, less hamstrung by geography and at least semi-willing to accept rules of conduct created by children. Mobile phones may be smaller than ever, but they're changing us in big ways. Context, a Baltimore company that uses anthropologists to study consumer trends, says as much in its latest study of cell phone users, a report called ``The Mobiles.''
vrijdag 9 mei 2003
Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet
Customer-owned Networks: ZapMail and the Telecommunications Industry
To understand what's going to happen to the telephone companies this year thanks to WiFi (otherwise known as 802.11b) and Voice over IP (VoIP) you only need to know one story: ZapMail. The story goes like this. In 1984, flush from the success of their overnight delivery business, Federal Express announced a new service called ZapMail, which guaranteed document delivery in 2 hours. They built this service not by replacing their planes with rockets, but with fax machines. This was CEO Fred Smith's next big idea after the original delivery business. Putting a fax machine in every FedEx office would radically reconfigure the center of their network, thus slashing costs: toner would replace jet fuel, bike messenger's hourly rates would replace pilot's salaries, and so on. With a much less expensive network, FedEx could attract customers with a discount on regular delivery rates, but with the dramatically lower costs, profit margins would be huge compared to actually moving packages point to point. Lower prices, higher margins, and to top it all off, the customer would get their documents in 2 hours instead of 24. What's not to love? Abject failure was not to love, as it turned out. Two years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, FedEx pulled the plug on ZapMail, allowing it to vanish without a trace. And the story of ZapMail's collapse holds a crucial lesson for the telephone companies today.
Customer-owned Networks: ZapMail and the Telecommunications Industry
To understand what's going to happen to the telephone companies this year thanks to WiFi (otherwise known as 802.11b) and Voice over IP (VoIP) you only need to know one story: ZapMail. The story goes like this. In 1984, flush from the success of their overnight delivery business, Federal Express announced a new service called ZapMail, which guaranteed document delivery in 2 hours. They built this service not by replacing their planes with rockets, but with fax machines. This was CEO Fred Smith's next big idea after the original delivery business. Putting a fax machine in every FedEx office would radically reconfigure the center of their network, thus slashing costs: toner would replace jet fuel, bike messenger's hourly rates would replace pilot's salaries, and so on. With a much less expensive network, FedEx could attract customers with a discount on regular delivery rates, but with the dramatically lower costs, profit margins would be huge compared to actually moving packages point to point. Lower prices, higher margins, and to top it all off, the customer would get their documents in 2 hours instead of 24. What's not to love? Abject failure was not to love, as it turned out. Two years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, FedEx pulled the plug on ZapMail, allowing it to vanish without a trace. And the story of ZapMail's collapse holds a crucial lesson for the telephone companies today.
donderdag 8 mei 2003
Wired
Blogger: Catch Me If You Can
A mysterious weblog purporting to be the journal of an anonymous heiress on the run from her wealthy family appears to be a hoax. But the site and offline elements supporting it are so elaborate and so well executed that many bloggers suspect the whole thing just might be true. The Flight Risk weblog tells the incredible story of Isabella V., a wealthy young woman who claims she went into hiding in early March to avoid an arranged marriage.
Blogger: Catch Me If You Can
A mysterious weblog purporting to be the journal of an anonymous heiress on the run from her wealthy family appears to be a hoax. But the site and offline elements supporting it are so elaborate and so well executed that many bloggers suspect the whole thing just might be true. The Flight Risk weblog tells the incredible story of Isabella V., a wealthy young woman who claims she went into hiding in early March to avoid an arranged marriage.
Salon
Your TV is watching you
Advertisers want to use new technology to monitor your every click -- and prevent you from tuning out their ads. And don't even think of trying to escape. Several years ago, Predictive Networks, a software company based in Cambridge, Mass., set out to determine what it could tell about a person based on how he or she used a television remote control.
Your TV is watching you
Advertisers want to use new technology to monitor your every click -- and prevent you from tuning out their ads. And don't even think of trying to escape. Several years ago, Predictive Networks, a software company based in Cambridge, Mass., set out to determine what it could tell about a person based on how he or she used a television remote control.
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