Music, Technology, Art, Economy

“ Evolution trumps design. Many interesting unsolved problems in computer science, nanotech, and synthetic biology require construction of complex systems. Evolutionary algorithms are a powerful alternative to traditional design, blossoming first in neural networks and now in microbial engineering. Near-term trend: year or two, components of microbial engineering products will involve some form of evolution. Design for evolution. Has been used in neural networks. In microbial work, cripple a microbe, so it can do the one thing it does better and better. To make industrial chemicals. Applied to analog circuit design. In the future, artificial intelligence.

—

Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : At The Churchill Club: The Top 10 Tech Trends

I think he’s talking about creating algorithms and processes that evolve of their own volition…I’ll have to x-ref this with Ray Kurzweil…

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“

Vinod Knosla: The mobile phone will be a mainstream personal computer. With built in projector. Authentication. Credit cards on SIM cards. ID cards, passports, drivers licenses. Any information you need. Khosla says he keeps pictures of his passport electronically on his phone. He says people will be less likely to carry their laptops.

Come near a computer, and physical hard drive will be yours, including half-sent email message you left at home. Lose the phone, and all the information is on the network. Imagine what you want to do, and it should be available anytime.

Projectors in cell phones in next two years. More than one camera per cell phone; high priority for Texas Instruments. Critical ingredient is high speed networks, which we will have in next 2-3 years.

Jurvetson says the trends are already playing out, other than the projector piece, particularly in Europe, where cell phones are 8% of credit card payments.

— Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : At The Churchill Club: The Top 10 Tech Trends

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» The surprising popularity of Bach's complex, esoteric The Art of Fugue. - By Jan Swafford - Slate Magazine

I cannot recommend the writing of Jan Swafford highly enough. He is one of the only people who writes about music that is a) a practitioner, b) extremely knowledgeable in an academic way, and c) never falls into the trap of “dancing about architecture.”

On top of all that, he single handedly got me back into classical music (which I flirted with for a while in high school). His almanac The Vintage Guide To Classical Music is one of the most fun and educational reads about music (up there with Last Night A DJ Saved My Life) and his biography of my hero Charles Ives, although it can test your patience (like most biographies of 19th century figures), also emphasizes all the right things.

Aside: Charles Ives is a hero because he a) was a child musical prodigy, taught by his dad, b) blew off music to become an entrepreneur, where he made millions (in 1920 dollars) selling insurance, and c) returned to music to write some of the most complex, progressive, and beautiful music ever, arguably on par with Beethoven and Stravinsky.

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someecards.com | ecards for when you care enough to hit send

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» Here Come the Geo-Smart Apps: Yahoo! Opens Location Database to Developers

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“

Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. “I trust him,” Seifert replied.

According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama’s face on Seifert’s T-shirt and said: “He’s a half-breed and he’s a Muslim. How can you trust that?”

—

Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause - washingtonpost.com

A quick reality check [especially for my friends that are native Californians]…

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“

brands thrived on how difficult it was for people to get information. Logos, spokespersons and slogans combined to give consumers a way to make choices. But now, the Internet has turned that on its head.

“The entire economic rationale for brands is gone,” Haque said in an interview. “Interaction is too easy now for brands to have power.”

— These Brands Build Community

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Michel Gondry Entertained For Days By New Cardboard Box | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

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» The Ultimate Twitter Revenue Model - ReadWriteWeb

This is so wrong, it’s painful.

As I have written here ad nauseam, communications tools like Twitter are reinventing the media ether that connects producers and consumers (or services and users). Twitter is revolutionary because it drives down interaction costs (nee “transaction costs”) and accelerates serendipity.

Interstitial advertising increases interaction costs and kills Net-enabled social connections dead.

Luckily, Twitter (and, I suspect, their investors) have already figured this out:

At launch, visitors to Twitter.jp will see media from two clients. One is a new book about Twitter being released in Japan, another is an automotive news service built on Twitter and sponsored by Toyota.

The revolution is in reinventing what marketing actually is, not cramming in a marginally less awful version of the status quo. Toyota and Twitter are on some serious next-gen shit with this. Imagine: a company creating an advertising channel that is opt-in and actually creates some value for it’s customers. As John Hagel has said:

The long trajectory that will shape the advertising business is the move from random interception to targeting intention to seeking attention and ultimately to attracting attention

Interstitial (“targeted,” “relevant”) ads like the ones suggested by the author I linked to above may create some incremental revenue with an only marginal negative impact on interaction costs. However, that is clearly not the “ultimate revenue model.”

Twitter is already giving traditional marketing “the business.”

The future is now.

[thanks to Umair Haque for teaching me all this]

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Edward Tufte

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“ what Twitter does for us all of the time: it accelerates serendipity.

—

::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon — a blog by Tara Hunt

Best explanation of Twitter yet. Much more exciting than the inevitable mundanity of “what are you doing”

;-)

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» New Music Economy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Who are the clowns that are writing this entry?

FAIL

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» Free Online Course Materials | MIT OpenCourseWare

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» Xobni: Our Path from ‘Wrong Product’ to Killer App - GigaOM

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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

John Hagel tells you everything you need to know about the future. Well, not really. But he asks a lot of thought-provoking questions…

If you find yourself wondering “what are the institutional architectures that are going to be required in a world where there is no equilibrium [i.e. stable technology standards]?”, strap yourself in.

(email me for the full quality MP3)

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