Why we struggle with Data Overload

I just found Linda Stone's writing on the back of a Henry Jenkins article. Boy is she smart. This article's so great I'm just going to rip it. She quotes Dee Hock, the Founder of Visa and his definition of how information evolves. She then uses it to describe how technology is evolving us, how we’re evolving technology and how both are evolving culture.
  • Noise becomes data when it has a cognitive pattern.
  • Data becomes information when assembled into a coherent whole, which can be related to other information.
  • Information becomes knowledge when integrated with other information in a form useful for making decisions and determining actions.
  • Knowledge becomes understanding when related to other knowledge in a manner useful in anticipating, judging and acting.
  • Understanding becomes wisdom when informed by purpose, ethics, principles, memory and projection.
Further, she maps this evolution to a timeline:
  • 1945-1965 - Noise to Data
  • 1965-1985 - Data to Information
  • 1985-2005 - Information to Knowledge
  • 2005-2025 - Knowledge to Understanding
  • 2025-2045 - Understanding to Wisdom
Today, we are Knowledge Workers evolving into Understanding Workers. Understanding Workers use technology to anticipate, judge and act. Think about it. This is what we’re doing with FitBit, Quantified Self, 23andMe.com, Facebook, and so many other technologies of this era.
As we move into an Era of Conscious Computing, we’ll also be moving deeper into Understanding and closer toward Wisdom.

Data gets a bad rep sometimes but as we all know, in the right hands it can be pretty amazing...
 

2010 in Numbers

People throw around way too many meaningless stats about the internet. Here's some good ones from Royal Pingdom which are worth a look. Essentially: Email's still huge. Most of the internet doesn't speak English. People really love sharing photos...

  • 107 trillion emails were sent last year (294 billion a day). Of those, 89% were spam.
  • There are 1.97 billion internet users in the world (up 14% on last year). Asia has 825 million, Europe has 475 million, North America has 266 million.
  • There are 152 million blogs. There were 25 billion tweets sent. Lady Gaga had 7.7 million Twitter followers. Facebook had 600 million members. And 20 milion Facebook apps were installed a day.
  • Internet Explorer's still the leading web browser worldwide with a 47% marketshare. Chrome has burst in with 14.9%.
  • 3000 photos a minute are uploaded to Flickr. Three billion photos a month are uploaded to Facebook. 
The best holiday stat came from Mashable. Over New Year's weekend records were broken when we uploaded 750 million photos to Facebook. Wow. 
 

Steve Jobs pitches the iPad on Dragon's Den

YouTube comments never let me down, I think I'm denisrenelara's biggest new fan... 

... what is this?

i dont get it.. when was Steve Jobs in England?

This is a spoof you idiot lol

Money & the Cult of the Amateur

 

Fortune magazine ran a round-up of all the analysts who predicted seven key figures prior to Apple posting their Q1 2011 results. In one corner you had the analysts from Goldman Sachs, Piper Jaffray and Citigroup. In the other, amateur blogger analysts.

The amateurs blew the pros out of the water.  

'The bottom 20 spots were all held by professionals working for the banks and brokerage houses. Taken as a whole, the numbers they sent their paying clients were off by a margin (9.04%) more than twice as big as those generated by the guys who do it for free (3.94%).'

Of course, one swallow does not make a summer. It's too early to tell whether they'll consistently outperform Wall Street but given the freedom of information online, the lines between amateurs (who do stuff for the love of it) and pros (paid) are definitely blurring. 

Passion + Data + Insight = Win 

"Sometimes, I wish we were all amateurs again. I'd play for nothing. Ab-so-lute-ly free. But that's not the system." Dan Marino. 

I'm still trying to work out how significant this is but I get the feeling it's a pretty big deal. 

 

11 tech & media trends for brands in 2011

From the excellent Dan Calladine, some ideas for brands in the coming months... 

The world is changing rapidly and media is at the heart of these changes. Changes predicted a few years ago have happened, including mobile ‘arriving’, the ubiquity of social media and online video; in the light of this 2011 will be a year of consolidating on these gains and refining techniques in the new landscape.

1 – Monetisation 

Facebook will start to make lots and lots of money.  Facebook say they’ve only really made enough ‘to keep the lights on’ so far, but once they really start the money will come flooding in. Through deals with partners like Paypal they can take a percentage of transactions, and with more and more things sold on the site, this will soon amount to billions. Other media owners will do longer term and deeper deals with brands on more of a revenue share model – for example a permanent position on the site paid for by a share of sales, rather than by impressions or clicks.

Entertainment companies will continue to prosper, but the big winners will be companies that take micropayments – for example a small amount to download an extra level of a game, or sell a virtual item that makes the game easier, like the tractors in Farmville. Mobile game companies like Rovio have made millions from downloads of games like Angry Birds for less than €1. However at the same time a few big, expensive blockbusters like Call of Duty will also break records.

Implications for brands – Think about what you have that can be sold, and the ways in which you sell.  Can you sell directly, or through channels like Facebook and the app stores?  Do deals to make sure that you sell in the best environments.

2 - More Advertising

Read More

A Pale Blue Dot

"For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness."

From Carl Sagan's, A Pale Blue Dot. 

The Sartorialist

Video following street fashion blogger, the Sartorialist out on the hunt for photos. The intensity with which he observes the city around him is pretty crazy. 

We often think of looking as quite a passive process that just happens but it takes a surprising amount of energy to really study something and see what others miss (reminds me how tiring life-drawing was when I tried it). 

One of my favourite posts on The Sartorialist, Millionaire or Homeless? The bizarre world of fashion. 

Life-cycle of a T-Shirt

T-shirts are the closest most of us get to collecting art & design. This is how Nick Foster categorised his when trying to streamline his collection. 

 

How to be popular on Facebook

Spoiler: Talk about TV, music and movies, don't moan about work or sleep...
Facebook and Google are currently building up the world's largest amount of raw data on humanity; what we like, what we share and how we feel. Ironically neither company's particularly well known for sharing what we share with them but Facebook has recently released some data based on 1 million status updates. It's a fascinating look at how the older, the younger and the more 'people' use it. Here are some of the major findings. 

 

Young people swear more than older people
Older people have hung onto the dying art of occasionally talking about people other than themselves.
Popular people are more likely to talk about stuff like TV and movies
Less popular people are more likely to mention work and sleep
People write about very different topics depending on the time of day
The emotional content of status updates also changes wildly depending on the time of day
Updates with more positive words receive more likes
We tend to stick with those who are like us and use similar language

 

You can read more about the findings on Facebook’s own blog post about the data: What’s on your mind?

 

iSPEC

It's 4 years old but still worth a look. Video made by TRON Legacy director, Joseph Kosinski, which reportedly got him the TRON job. An immersive look at what it could feel like to be navigate your way around your favourite films.

So what film does he choose? Kubrick's The Shining of course.    

10 Facebook Myths Busted

Great presentation from Soap Creative covering brands on Facebook. Key thoughts: 

Facebook only works as part of a broader digital mix. SEO and CRM may be less sexy, however don’t overlook old, hardworking mediums. Also:

Why would someone want to become a Fan? What do you wish to get out of the page? Is the level of investment justified? Are you willing to cop criticism, backlashes or setbacks on the chin? Do you have a media budget to attract fans (or a cross-promotion strategy)? Facebook offers many brands great opportunities - but it’s not one-size-fits-all solution. 

 

Amazon's best-selling product of all time?

In just five months, the new Kindle has replaced 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' as best-selling item in Amazon's history and it doesn't even seem to be affecting tablet sales. "We're seeing that many of the people who are buying Kindles also own an LCD tablet. Customers report using their LCD tablets for games, movies, and web browsing and their Kindles for reading sessions."

Great price, strong product. I love the buy once, read anywhere concept too. Brilliant stuff.

It's not just technology, they sold so many pairs of jeans that if you folded each pair and stacked them on top of each other, the height would be the equivalent of Mt. Everest. On their peak day, they sold 158 items per second.