|
| Wired has an amazing piece on a writer trying to disappear in the digital age and a group of amateur and professional investigators working together to track him down (and claim the $5000 bounty) while using tools such as Twitter, Facebook apps, and chat rooms. I won't spoil the details, but the article does an amazing job highlighting how a group of loosely connected individuals collaborating over the web can achieve a common mission of tracking down a single person in the US. While whole setup was an experiment, I can imagine how the same process can be used to track down violent criminals and runaways. Instead of having one or two detectives trying to track down a suspect, let's have hundreds of volunteers with different skill sets trying to find the him/her. The police would instead then have to act as an information broker, making sure the volunteers get the best available information and create a platform for them to collaborate (which Wired did a good job of doing). I don't think every crime could be solved this way, but the high profile cases that draw attention could easily attract enough people to support the investigation.
Of course this is all more easily said than done. In reality, I'm sure there are multiple legal and organizational hurdles that would prevent such things from being viable. The legal system was designed well before the internet and it's one of the slowest changing things in the world.
Nevertheless, there are some crowdsourcing activities going on in similar fields, like the crowdsourced border patrol.
| | |
| This is one of the best recruiting e-mails I've received:
-----------------------
Sushi, I don't know what I like more : your name, where you went (are going to) College or your group photo on your website. If you ever drag yourself away from Palo Alto would you consider working in NYC? I deal with an amazing S/W firm/Hedge fund located in Soho NYC. they look for extremely bright, well educated people to train in High Frequency trading development. Maybe I can get your whole crew to come to NYC. Best work environment and pay structure I've ever seen. Please call and or email your resume and everyone in the picture too! Have a great day. Pass the Toro!
-----------------------
I received this in my gmail account the other day from a recruiter at a technical recruiting company in New York City. I've received many recruiting e-mails in the past, mostly for entry level positions outlandishly embellished by generic superlatives. They were all generic, impersonal, and absolutely forgettable.
This one is different. It's short, personal, and memorable.
You can create a carefully crafted e-mail in several hours and send it out to thousand people, but that doesn't mean you should. In an age where communication is frictionless and people are bombarded with e-mails, a short and surprisingly personal e-mail can go a lot further than just another cold e-mail.
Of course, if every recruiter did this, people will quickly tune their cognitive filters and this would become ineffective. It's not easy trying to continually differentiate yourself. But for now, I think this recruiter has a competitive advantage going on that not many of us have caught onto.
(If this is the most innovative recruiting letter I've received, the weirdest definitely goes to the one I received through Skype)
| | |
| Most of my friends in my age group have Facebook accounts, which is not surprising. However, those that don't are no longer apathetic. They are adamant about not having an account, citing reason such as privacy or aspirations to run for public office. People are no longer indifferent about Facebook. They either subscribe to it or protest against it. Everyone knows about it, everyone cares about it, everyone take sides on it. Have we seen this in the past?
Did you ever have the friend who refused to get a cellphone because of (insert some reason here)? How about a friend that doesn't own a television because X?
This is common any time there is a mass adoption of a new paradigm. Some people refused to use the internet or e-mail for some self justified reason before finally accepting it as an integral part of the modern lifestyle (or some still refuse it and get called Luddites). Some still refuse to buy any made in China products even though it's now mainstream. Even when phones lines were first being laid out, some people refused to install it in their homes because they didn't want to be disrupted in their homes (see first few minutes of "Goodfellas"). I'm sure automobiles faced similar resistance before becoming the dominant transportation paradigm.
So has Facebook joined the ranks of basic plumbing, running water, and electricity?
Probably not yet. After all, I am in the demographic that is most likely to use Facebook, and I'm sure there are plenty of people in the US or world who have never heard of Facebook. However, if the trend continues, Facebook very well may become the next basic necessity of life.
Just for comparison, number in the world:
Facebook accounts: >300,000
Cars: >600,000
Phone lines: 1,263,367,600
Televisions: 1,416,338,245
Internet users: 1,668,870,408
Mobile phones in use: 4,100,000
People with electricity: 4,100,00
(In trying to discover how many people in the world used Social Networking Service, I found out that QQ is most popular in the world, although almost entirely in China)
| | |
| Think of some designers. Do you own any of their products?
Look at the things around you. Do you know who designed them?
We don't own the things created by designers we know, and don't know the designers who created the things we own.
There are exceptions. I know Philippe Starck designed my watch and Jonathan Ive was involved in the laptop which I'm using, but that's all I can come up with.
| | |
| Because we send so many e-mails, we design and create software that is easier to sort, search, and digest e-mails. Because e-mails are becoming easier to process, we send more and more e-mails. Classic Catch-22.
So what can we do about it?
Is Google Wave a step towards fixing this or another technology that continues this path of over communication and information overload?
Maybe we should be looking for social fixes instead of technological solutions.
| | |
|
