A Perfect Mess
Forever StampsI will be speaking on Ira Flatow’ NPR show Talk of the Nation: Science Friday tomorrow. Times in your area can be determined here.
The greatest pleasure of hosting this blog has been all the incredibly rich commentary and insight from readers. Please call into NPR to continue the conversation on the radio.
6 Responses to “Talk of the Nation”
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Don’t you mean Ira Flatow? I assume you’re on Science Friday?
Thanks for the correction Jeff. I get my Ira’s mixed up a lot. My apologies to the many great Ira’s out there. Regards, John
Hi John, I listened to the podcast of your interview with Ira from my home in Sydney Australia. Absolutely great to learn about you and your work on simplicity.
Ever since graduating with a Psychology degree in the 70’s I’ve always remembered the information reduction models in cognitive processing, and applied it to my work.
Did you ever hear of Stafford Beer? He taught me “Managerial Cybernetics” at Manchester Business School. It’s about designing management systems that counter complexity by designing variety-handling processes into them. The aim is to design things so that managers don’t get overwhelmed by all the complexity of information and problems they encounter. Ie to design systems which simplify things.
Not too easy to explain, but it’s powerful stuff. Have a look at the following profile if you are interested:
www.marketingminds.com.au/features/gurus.html#Beer
Paul
Thank you for pointing out Prof Beer’s work, Paul. It sounds entirely relevant. Best wishes, John
Hey John, I just heard about you and your work on Talk of the Nation… probably one of the better episodes that I’ve heard in a while. I think that developers of new technologies often dillute their products in an attempt to break through into the lens of the media. There is an evolution happening with web2.0 technologies where each new product is building upon prior technologies. Some companies mistakingly do this by just trying to load on more new wizbang features, instead of improving the core competancy of the original product. This attempt to appeal to the media ends up distracting the company from making the process for the consumer simpler and more intuitive. A company that resisted this trend is Google. Search had been around a long time, and was pretty much disregarded by the industry as they had moved on to other things. Google instead focused on perfecting one of the most fundamental aspects of the web, and people natural adopted it because it removed all the distractions.
I’m currently working on a community blogging / social-political website called VocalNation.net that is seeking to similarly improve another core aspect of the web: collaborative thought and the exchange of ideas. Following google’s lead, VocalNation.net is hoping to do this not through piles of overloaded features, but instead through tried and true conventions (combining a blog-style posting format, social networking style profile pages, and a democratic rating system). I’m hoping that some of people reading this will be willing to try it out and help me take it too the next state of refinement.
Anyway, best of luck with your work. I support what you’re doing.
Hello Tony, I once posted the evolution of Yahoo! versus Google here. Just tried out your Vocalnation community. Feels like democracy. Best regards, John