The Rise of the New Groupthink : “Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.”
The Amazing Discussion That Led to the Wikipedia Blackout : “At Wikipedia, one of the corest of core values is Neutral Point of View, contributors’ collective goal of “representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources.”… So! The decision to make English Wikipedia dark tomorrow — to go from no POV to whoa, POV — wasn’t one that Wikipedians took lightly. It was, on the contrary, like almost everything that happens on Wikipedia, the result of extensive deliberation and debate. It was agonized over. Like, agonized.”
Young, in Love and Sharing Everything, Including a Password : “Young couples have long signaled their devotion to each other by various means — the gift of a letterman jacket, or an exchange of class rings or ID bracelets. Best friends share locker combinations. The digital era has given rise to a more intimate custom. It has become fashionable for young people to express their affection for each other by sharing their passwords to e-mail, Facebook and other accounts. Boyfriends and girlfriends sometimes even create identical passwords, and let each other read their private e-mails and texts.”
Pinterest Works Better Than Google+ : “Let’s be grown up about this. Pinterest is an app for sharing lists of scrumptious-looking stuff. It’s not for girls or guys, it’s for people who like looking at things. The story I’ve heard is that it was designed for architects and designers and “then brides found it.” This is why, my sources explain, it tends toward the jewelry-and-table-settings end of the spectrum.”
The Year in Review at Kickstarter : “Darling of the crowdfunders, Kickstarter released its stats for the past year, and there is a lot of data to digest. The total number of projects is more than double from last year, the success rates for funding them is up slightly, and the total dollars pledged is close to a $100 million, which is more than triple what was pledged last year.”
