Jump Into The Stream

 

Fascinating Techcrunch article envisioning a future where streams of data are critical, not the current ponds of pages.  Jump Into The Stream  A couple of thoughts:

• Reminds me of Heraclitus, who said, “You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.”  Streams are ever-changing and the most beautiful streams will be sought after.  
• Reminds me of Clay Shirky’s comment:  “we don’t have information overload, we have filter failure.”  Streams are a way of getting us to filters.  Pick quality streams and you’re on your way to quality data. 
• Finally, I am reminded that streams and filters are only important in the context of knowing what is important.  This gets at the heart of what is news and, more importantly, what is it that we want to enter our consciousness.  News is not the only thing that healthy and happy adults focus upon:  they focus on their values and their beliefs, their family and friends, their hopes and dreams.  If I have choice over the things that enter my consciousness, then I’m going to pick things that are additive to my values, beliefs, relationships, hopes and dreams.  My point is that we can get all the cool streams and filters for news, but there is a place, somewhere is this fast paced internet world, for the things that each of us has chosen, in our lifetime, to be fundamentally important.  I’m thinking about my favorite books, my goals for the upcoming year, my approach to my most important relationships, my guiding philosophy, my faith.  Streams can overwhelm the consciousness.  I think that people are craving the filters that Clay Shirky is talking about, as well as tools that will help them enhance the most important things in their life.  Sometime in the next five years, I predict a shift towards use of the internet towards helping each of us focus upon the fundamentally important things in each of our lives. 
• Jump Into The Stream

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Marshmallow Measurement

Tell a kid he can have two marshmallows if he waits for a few minutes, or one right now. What will he do? More importantly, what is different between the kids who wait and the ones who don’t? About 210 points in SAT scores. See the fascinating article in The New Yorker.

Happiness is Love. Full stop.

I was going to put this post on my personal blog, but realized it fit in nicely with the data and emotion concept I have been writing about.  Although data will win, it is relationships which lead to happiness which leads to love.  I’m headed to my 25th year college reunion in a couple weeks and, like the Vailliant study featured in the Atlantic, I will get to participate in and witness the amazing texture of the span of people’s lives.  So hard to predict what works and what doesn’t in the realm of relationships.  Some people need more relationships to be happy and some people can be happy as a loner.  I do think that doing something for your work that you love to do is another important part of happiness.  But what are the best relationships based upon?  Trust, shared interests, shared heritage, shared appreciation…but perhaps also some differences that make for being better together:  caution and adventure, ambition and complacency…this subject is vast.

Op-Ed Columnist – They Had It Made – NYTimes.com

George Vailliant

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Wolfram-Alpha: New Search Service Aims to Answer Tough Questions – NYTimes.com

“Mr. Wolfram’s service does not search through Web pages, and it will not help with movie times or camera shopping. Instead it computes the answers to queries using enormous collections of data the company has amassed. It can quickly spit out facts like the average body mass index of a 40-year-old male, whether the Eiffel Tower is taller than Seattle’s Space Needle, and whether it is high tide in Miami right now.”

New Search Service Aims to Answer Tough Questions – NYTimes.com

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It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.

I totally agree with Clay Shirky.  See him here:

http://blip.tv/file/1277460

Schools, Data and the Bully Pulpit

It’s nice to see charter schools promoted, but the David Brooks editorial points out how a subject like education is still subject to the whims of emotion and the bully pulpit.  Brooks was contacted by a scientist friend who conducted a study and was amazed to find that Geoffrey Canada’s middle school, Promise Academy, did indeed have better results, scientifically proven.  That’s wonderful, but nowhere does Brooks point out that one of the most important initiatives of the Harlem Children’s Zone was the concept of the “Conveyor Belt,” which included care about child’s life from before they were born all the way to middle school.  One of Canada’s greatest achievements, highlighted in the book called Whatever It Takes, is Baby College, a program for educating expectant Harlem parents in how to raise productive members of society.  Also missing from the Brooks editorial was any mention of the other charter schools systems (multiple schools under one management system) that have achieved better results, scientifically proven.  To see a list of charter schools and their results, visit either www.edreform.org or www.greatschools.org. 

All of this reminds me of the emotional and scientific nature of life.  In the end, data and science will win out.  My favorite book of late on this subject is The Black Swan.  But in the short term, emotions often win first.  Another favorite book of late on this subject is Made To Stick.  Ideas that win and stick are not always the best ideas.  I am fascinated that it is the emotional, “Made To Stick” concepts that continue to sell good ideas, not The Black Swan, rely-on-the-data approach.  Brooks editorial may propel Promise Academy and Harlem Children’s Zone to a new level of public appreciation, but only because of his bully pulpit, not because of his scientific and objective assessment of our educational system.  What must happen to truly propel education (and other social causes) is the implementation of a systematic, data-driven assessment of all schools (and other social causes) that makes it clear which organizations are performing better.  Op-Ed Columnist – The Harlem Miracle – NYTimes.com

The Four Bears

Great chart showing how far we off from a depression.  Calculated Risk: Stock Market Update

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Burger Data!

Reminds me of the Economist Big Mac Index.  In this NYT article, a bunch of guys get together monthly and rank hamburger joints in the greater NYC area.  Look at the photo:  can’t tell if these guys are more interested in the data or the burger (actually, the burgers are gone, so there’s nothing left but data and a few extra pounds).  Gotta love it.  (Note:  Data360 could easily be the platform for anyone like these guys who want to track and display data.)  Wanted – Best Burger in New York City – NYTimes.com

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The Map Scroll: Is Part of the United States in the Third World?

The Map Scroll: Is Part of the United States in the Third World?

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Calculated Risk: Fact Checking Bernanke on Real Estate

Calculated Risk: Fact Checking Bernanke on Real Estate

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