Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine)

In addition to reading the article (which is good), I recommend that everyone watch this to get the perspective of various thinkers on the topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOoHRircmhM&feature=player_embedded

It starts getting especially interesting around 1:00:00 when Cowen and Ford start talking. A few things:

- The idea of "personal shoppers" being a growth area seems dubious. With recommendation and predictive desire systems getting better all the time, I think this is probably a no-go.

- Nannies might be a growth area for a few decades, but decent AI will likely obviate the need for these as well. I'd give this one 50-50 odds over the next 4-6 decades.

- Basically everyone on that panel endorsed the guaranteed income. The fact that people from so many different perspectives had their policy prescription converge to that is really striking.

- This also brings us back to the "how do we occupy the unemployed masses?" question yet again. Arts and leisure activities will likely not need much support from society, as they will just happen. Sports might (stadiums, etc.) Other things we'll probably be looking at will be extremely powerful, long-lasting, side-effect-free (or tolerable side effect having) drugs. That road of course leads to wireheading, but I think that denying that as a possibility now is extremely naive.

A cultural shift will be required, as several people in the video make clear. Having one's self worth (and respect of one's peers/society) be…

Interesting to compare this 'unprecedented jobs boom' with forecasts made in 2011:
https://buzzmachine.com/2011/08/05/the-jobless-future/

Jeff Jarvis said, "We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future."

Alfons wrote: "This is an unprecedented time in history, been a long time coming, but never the less, a not if but when phenomenon. I have been thinking, writing and talking about this for over 40 years, and was roundly ridiculed every step of the way. I told you so! Nice to see many people finally catching on. Socialism is the only way to mitigate the situation, there is no solution as far as I can see."

Roland wrote: "today, global labor arbitrage moves meaningful work to India/China... increases in computational power, robotics, etc, reduce the amount of white collar and blue collar work in total...all western nations, esp ones which don't export raw materials, will have major declines in living standards. How to stop it? ... In ten years, it'll be virtually unstoppable"

I wonder how these people feel about their past statements.

How about organizing a summit to disrupt the USPS?

I got involved in the question of the future of postal, oddly, because of my book, What Would Google Do? [sorry for the plug], when postal execs asked what the USPS would be if Google ran it. Hmmm. You guys could help answer that.

A consultant in the industry organized an event in DC, PostalVision 2020, and we had Vint Cerf come keynote. I'd like the next phase to focus on how to disrupt postal entirely.

First class will die and with it its subsidy for media and other mail. Parcels will take off but the private sector can handle that. (If we need to guarantee universal service, that can be done with subsidies -- a la, phones -- better than by owning the infrastructure). There are entrepreneurial ventures such as Manilla aiming to disrupt physical bill delivery..... It's an area ripe for innovation and investment.

A few of my earlier posts:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/05/18/why-do-we-need-a-postal-service/
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/03/23/post-postal/

Completely agree. I only read the post. I didn't check out the guy's dating site because I'm in a relationship and I'm still working on trying to make it more open.

The one habit I think still needs to be taught to people on dating sites is the value of publicness and openness. About two years ago I got my mom to sign up for OkCupid (a few years after her divorce) and the biggest problem I encountered was her reluctance to be open. People are afraid to put any identifying information or any information that deviates from the public image they maintain at work and in social circles. This basically sets themselves up for failure because connecting with the right people for you really is dependent on both parties being open enough to find real connections. Jeff Jarvis I think has given one of the best talks on the value of openness. If you've never seen it, definitely check it out.

[0] http://buzzmachine.com/2010/04/22/privacy-publicness-penises/

Skimmer is an experiment that simply re-packaged the content of the times. There are lots of problems with contemporary news design that skimmer didn't even try to address:

• The article is a fundamentally bad unit of news for the internet. http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/05/28/the-article-as-luxury-or-byproduct/

• Customization is one thing, but being able to choose from a dozen different layouts is a sign that none of them are likely right. Good design is about what's left out, not overflowing options.

• The complete lack of social/comments/human interaction is distrubing

I found a podcast site that linked to the mp3 of each episode but it still directed towards the CBC, meaning it still didn't work. Just shot them (CBC) an email about putting it up again for streaming. Luckily, while it was up, I was able to listen to the entire thing around 10 times. Yes, I found it that interesting.

Below is the link I used to originally find out about the radio series.

"Confusing a public with the public"
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/05/08/confusing-a-public-with-the-public/