iinet's October 2007 news features an article on the web at work. Does access to the web reduce productivity?
Well, it does and it doesn't, according to iiNews readers. Certainly it can increase productivity, eg by facilitating communication, but it can also be a real distraction as people use it for non-work purposes.
However, banning applications such as Facebook isn't going to help, the report concludes. Better to see excessive use of Facebook etc as an issue of a "more complex problem of employee morale, motivation and supervision" and implement guidelines for their use, rather than ban them altogether. "One thing seems to be pretty certain, if employee morale is low then banning one thing will simply redirect the problem somewhere else."
Monday, October 22, 2007
So just what is Second Life?
There's a really good article on Second Life in the Aust Financial Review, Friday 20 April, Review section pages 6 and 7. Where it is now, where it might go, does it have a future ...
[This was originally posted on my Multa blog, so it's not really recently read. There was one comment, "This is one of the few articles written by someone who actually uses Second Life and understands the culture - instead of "I created an avatar this afternoon and found it a puzzling place", which is what you often get."]
[This was originally posted on my Multa blog, so it's not really recently read. There was one comment, "This is one of the few articles written by someone who actually uses Second Life and understands the culture - instead of "I created an avatar this afternoon and found it a puzzling place", which is what you often get."]
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Drought Stress
There's nothing about 23 Things, Web 2.0, Library 2.0, or anything related in this article written by Maureen Scott and published in the Review section of the AFR on Friday 19 October on pages 1 and 2.
Maureen and her husband Bruce live on Moothandella. In case you don't know (I didn't!), it's located 43km east of Windorah in the Channel Country of SW Queensland.
She talks about how she came to be living on the property that has been in her husband's family for a long time - there's even a family cemetery adjacent to the main homestead.
She then goes on to describe the impact that the drought has had on the way they run the property and their business. It's not easy. There are some pluses, but there are also minuses. And Moothandella means a lot to the family.
She talks about what they might have to do if the drought continues, including the possibility that they will have to sell up and leave.
She concludes by saying, "I don't want to get to retirement age and regret trying to hang on for sentiment's sake, realising that we don't have enough to retire with or anything left to pass on to the girls [their daughters]. On the other hand, a decision to leave may be more beneficial financially, but the ghosts of time may haunt our conscience and also lead to regrets. Only time will tell."
As I said, nothing to do with 23 Things etc, but aren't I lucky that I can find time to think about 23 Things etc without something like this hanging over my head?
Maureen and her husband Bruce live on Moothandella. In case you don't know (I didn't!), it's located 43km east of Windorah in the Channel Country of SW Queensland.
She talks about how she came to be living on the property that has been in her husband's family for a long time - there's even a family cemetery adjacent to the main homestead.
She then goes on to describe the impact that the drought has had on the way they run the property and their business. It's not easy. There are some pluses, but there are also minuses. And Moothandella means a lot to the family.
She talks about what they might have to do if the drought continues, including the possibility that they will have to sell up and leave.
She concludes by saying, "I don't want to get to retirement age and regret trying to hang on for sentiment's sake, realising that we don't have enough to retire with or anything left to pass on to the girls [their daughters]. On the other hand, a decision to leave may be more beneficial financially, but the ghosts of time may haunt our conscience and also lead to regrets. Only time will tell."
As I said, nothing to do with 23 Things etc, but aren't I lucky that I can find time to think about 23 Things etc without something like this hanging over my head?
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
And another book review
This one was broadcast on the ABC's Radio National 'The Book Show'. It's another look, by Simon Cooper this time, at Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur. The reviewer is ambivalent - it's good in patches and not so good in patches. Nvertheless, Cooper concludes by saying that the 'fate of culture in an information age is an important question'.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
The Promise of Parallel Universes
This article was published in the journal Science, Volume 317, in the 7 September 2007 issue. It's on pages 1341-1343, and is written by Greg Miller.
There is a downside, he feels, to virtual worlds such as Second Life - they may allow people to try out different identities and behaviours, but there's also much potential for devous manipulation.
However, he also reports, they also provide valuable and cost-effective opportunities to research group behaviour. He also reports that "other researchers have begun toying with virtual worlds as settings for experiments that could not pass muster with ethical review boards if done with real people, yet which have the potential to provide valuable insights into human behaviour".
There is a downside, he feels, to virtual worlds such as Second Life - they may allow people to try out different identities and behaviours, but there's also much potential for devous manipulation.
However, he also reports, they also provide valuable and cost-effective opportunities to research group behaviour. He also reports that "other researchers have begun toying with virtual worlds as settings for experiments that could not pass muster with ethical review boards if done with real people, yet which have the potential to provide valuable insights into human behaviour".
Book reviews!
That's right, reviews of plain old fashioned print on paper! Though maybe these books are or will be also available electronically.
The 3 books are:
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture and Assaulting our Economy, by Andrew Keen.
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams.
The Book is Dead (Long Live the Book), by Sherman Young.
The first set of reviews was written by Helen Razer in the Australian Literary Review on 5 September 2007. Before discussing the individual books, Helen Razer gives a warts and all outline of Web 2.0; how it's so easy for any and all of us to create and publish content and how this is used both for fun and for business. She also discusses Kevin Rudd's and John Howard's ventures into Web 2.0 - and she feels the former has handled it better than the latter.
The 3 books are:
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture and Assaulting our Economy, by Andrew Keen.
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams.
The Book is Dead (Long Live the Book), by Sherman Young.
The first set of reviews was written by Helen Razer in the Australian Literary Review on 5 September 2007. Before discussing the individual books, Helen Razer gives a warts and all outline of Web 2.0; how it's so easy for any and all of us to create and publish content and how this is used both for fun and for business. She also discusses Kevin Rudd's and John Howard's ventures into Web 2.0 - and she feels the former has handled it better than the latter.
Keen, author of the first book , does not like Web 2.0: he feels it will "poison the culture, encourage intellectual property theft, and completely undo the literary canon". Web 2.0, he says, "is a haven for dingbats". The reviewer feels this book is good, in patches only.
Tapscott and Williams posit enthusiastically, that the collaborative nature of wikis, especially Wikipedia (which does have its uses, the reviewer admits) will be great for business.
Young's book "attempts to situate Web 2.0 culture in the context of postmodern literacy" and, according to the reviewer, his attempts are welcome.
Not long after I'd read this article I discovered another review of Keen's book, this one written by Gideon Haigh, in the September 2007 issue of The Monthly. Haigh's review is titled, " Let a Thousand Weeds Bloom". Keen, it seems, is concerned about the impact of the great mass of user-generated content, much if it trivial, on the main stream media (MSM) and its standards (varying in degree) of quality thoughtful content. Haigh's final paragraph starts, " Keen has written a mediocre book whose rich subject nonetheless makes it worth your time."
The October 2007 issue of The Monthly has a brief review of Young's book, written by Chris Womersley, and he takes a different tack. Young is enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by the internet for book publishing. "Literature will live on in a different form, read on a device that is yet to be perfected." However, the reviewer is skeptical about Young's assertions that, technically, "texting on a mobile is writing" ("barely", says Womersley), and that "writing is, thanks to the ease of uploading digital content, inseparable from publishing".
Would I read these books? I guess I should read all, to better understand the various points of view - if only I had time. So many books, so little time ....
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