Nicholas Carr

I keep saying this to anyone who will listen — I doubt very much that he's interested in running for anything. As CEO of Facebook, if he's not as powerful as a US president yet, he very well might be in 5 or 10 years. He hinted in his globalization "manifesto"[1] that he wants Facebook to become what the UN could not be. I recommend everyone read it in full, as well as some critical commentaries.[2][3][4] If anything, it's much scarier to think he sees this as a necessary part of his job as Facebook CEO. [1] https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-communi… [2] https://medium.com/@CharlieBeckett/facebook-grappling-with-political-r… [3] http://www.roughtype.com/?p=7651 [4] https://stratechery.com/2017/manifestos-and-monopolies/

Let me recommend Carr's take on the manifest: http://www.roughtype.com/?p=7651

Why do you insist on picking the most unlikely interpretations of whatever someone is saying? :-) What I meant was that people will still write even if not getting paid, not that they actively prefer not getting paid for their writing and putting it on the web for free. And when there's tons of supply (as there will be if people write regardless of demand), prices go down, meaning that very few people actually will get paid. Here's another way to look at it, if you're still not following: http://www.roughtype.com/?p=1220

Nicholas Carr wrote a great piece on this exact topic. You might like it. It looks like his site is struggling so I'll include an archive.org link too. Here are his last three paragraphs: "There’s something bigger going on here, and I confess that I’m still a little fuzzy about it. Silicon Valley seems to have a good deal of trouble appreciating, or even understanding, what I’ll term informal experience. It’s only when driving is formalized — removed from everyday life, transferred to a specialized facility, performed under a strict set of rules, and understood as a self-contained recreational event — that it can be conceived of as being pleasurable. When it’s not a recreational routine, when it’s performed out in the world, as part of everyday life, then driving, in the Valley view, can only be understood within the context of another formalized realm of experience: that of productive busyness. Every experience has to be cleanly defined, has to be categorized. There’s a place and a time for recreation, and there’s a place and a time for productivity. "This discomfort with the informal, with experience that is psychologically unbounded, that flits between and beyond categories, can be felt in a lot of the Valley’s consumer goods and services. Many personal apps and gadgets have the effect, or at least the intended effect, of formalizing informal activities. Once you strap on a Fitbit, you transform what might have been a pleasant walk in the park into a program of…

Two observations: 1. As much as the reading on an electronic device is "convenient," there is also the problem that the same electronic device can be used to check your email, read hacker news, and do other procrastination activity. This availability of "other things to do" has a terrible effect on the attention span of the reader. 2. Also, I don't like phrasing the debate print VS. eBook. A book is an informational product, distilled knowledge organized by an author for his/her readers. The information is the product, not its physical(or digital) manifestations. As far as I'm concerned it should be print AND eBook, so that the readers can enjoy the same material as they find more convenient. This is the approach I follow with my math textbook (http://minireference.com/#book_details): people who purchase the printed version get the PDF for free. Okay, three things. This article reminded me of a previous study on digital books at the UC system of schools: http://www.roughtype.com/?p=2922 TL;DR students are not ready to switch to fully digital.

That existed sort of largely outside the public sphere. There was a digital dual in those old times. Now, there is no digital dual. https://www.roughtype.com/?p=2090 And worse here, the very worst have figured out how to keep making reality pay attention to the absolute garbage misery show. A newsgroup dust-up might have caught some small coverage, but the way the troll-forces of the world have mobilized and radicalized their shitizens at scale, and the stochastic terror they have focused on creating: it keeps the rest of reality all too glued to the sick farce programming the aggressor forces against the world anti-campaign on.

This advice goes back to previous generations of web entrepreneurs, way back to 2015 or earlier: https://www.roughtype.com/?p=634 " It’s a sharecropping system, but the sharecroppers are generally happy because their interest lies in self-expression or socializing, not in making money, and, besides, the economic value of each of their individual contributions is trivial. "

It's sometimes described as 'digital sharecropping'[0]. Depending on your reason for participating you may get some economic benefit (perhaps as share or exposure for your business) while the platform both takes the bulk of any profits and completely controls the relationship. Or you may get nothing, of course, other than some magic Internet points and a faintly tarnished sense of fun. [0]: https://www.roughtype.com/?p=634

The idea to create a visual prompt to remind us of the fact that an original context may differ from the way in which an excerpt is being used is a compelling solution to Nicholas Carr's 'context collapse' [1]. Another interesting approach is through the Webmention [2]. These are ways to promote the augmentative - and relational - thinking Engelbart promoted. To this conversation I would also add the question of how to make interrelational writing sustainable. [1] http://www.roughtype.com/?p=8724 [2] https://indieweb.org/webmention

"Digital Sharecropping" is Nicholas Carr's term. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/connecticut-tax-i… http://www.roughtype.com/?p=634

Full text of 'IT Doesn't Matter" http://www.roughtype.com/?p=644 List of reactions compiled by the author http://www.nicholascarr.com/?page_id=99

The author responds to Morozov's disastrously wrong-heaeded calls for ideological purity in tech critique here - http://www.roughtype.com/?p=5764 It's easy to agree - http://www.metareader.org/post/a-litmus-test-for-humanistic-technology…

It seems to be an extreme case of digital sharecropping. http://www.roughtype.com/?p=1600

The paper http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.0638 EDIT: Originally I submitted this write-up http://www.roughtype.com/?p=2841 by Nicholas Carr. It must have been later changed (by the mods?) to a direct link to the arxiv paper.

You might also be interested in Nicholas Carr's blog, he writes about similar things. I think it is worth following it, if only as a contrast to the tech-utopianism of HN: http://www.roughtype.com/index.php

> Why should I work to benefit their service if they're hoarding the resulting data and not making it available to me or people like me in the future? This I believe is generally called "digital sharecropping" https://www.roughtype.com/?p=634 > What’s being concentrated, in other words, is not content but the economic value of content. MySpace, Facebook, and many other businesses have realized that they can give away the tools of production but maintain ownership over the resulting products. One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few. It’s a sharecropping system, but the sharecroppers are generally happy because their interest lies in self-expression or socializing, not in making money, and, besides, the economic value of each of their individual contributions is trivial. It’s only by aggregating those contributions on a massive scale – on a web scale – that the business becomes lucrative.

"Although I certainly believe that any member of our highly digital society should be familiar with how these platforms work, universal code literacy won’t solve our employment crisis any more than the universal ability to read and write would result in a full-employment economy of book publishing." I read the article. I have seen similar arguments made by Nicholas Carr in "Peak Code" (http://www.roughtype.com/?p=5594) Perhaps learning to code and universal code literacy (for now, lets not argue exactly what literacy means) may, or may not save individual jobs. I sense as software development as a discipline matures, at the level of the firm, software developer wages as percent of a software project's budget, may shrink. At a macro level, software development as percent of GNP may rise but the software developer employment may look like the numbers involved in manufacturing, or farming. The point I feel Ruskoff misses is that coding literacy may not save an individual's job. Or having a sizable chunk of the U.S economy (or any sophisticated modern economy's) GDP coming from software development. However a critical mass of the population programming, like universal literacy, will most likely translate into vast productivity gains and ability to create new opportunities. An example. The idea behind "software carpentry"http://software-carpentry.org) is about teaching scientists just enough programming, so they can write tools be productive at their main activities, instead of…

This is good for Wikipedia, and nice of Google, but I'm also reminded of Nicholas Carr's observation: The next thing to be said is: what we seem to have here is evidence of a fundamental failure of the Web as an information-delivery service. Three things have happened, in a blink of history's eye: (1) a single medium, the Web, has come to dominate the storage and supply of information, (2) a single search engine, Google, has come to dominate the navigation of that medium, and (3) a single information source, Wikipedia, has come to dominate the results served up by that search engine. Even if you adore the Web, Google, and Wikipedia - and I admit there's much to adore - you have to wonder if the transformation of the Net from a radically heterogeneous information source to a radically homogeneous one is a good thing. Is culture best served by an information triumvirate? (From <http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/01/all_hail_the_in.php>.)

That fundamental problem is very difficult to solve. http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/03/situational_ove.php

Clickable link http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/07/mcluhan_at_100.php

That's the really contentious part of the claim. There's evidence that these games may make you better at performing certain tasks - but there's very little that video games make you generally smarter. Nicholas Carr has written a nice piece on this http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/04/grand_theft_att.php

Related: Jaron Lanier's point (as reported by Nick Carr) that if Facebook had existed in the old days maybe Robert Zimmerman could never have become Bob Dylan. http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2010/05/facebooks_ident.php

The article starts by mentioning Nick Carr, who recently wrote a book about how the Internet is ruining our mind/attention span. Steven Pinker disagrees[1]. (Which Carr tries to rebut[2]) I'm always a bit scared about the large influence a few pop-sci titles have, especially the ones that aren't even written by scientists. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11Pinker.html?_r=1 [2]: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2010/06/steven_pinker_a.php

"In 2005, he(Eric Schmidt) threw a legendary hissy fit when CNET's Elinor Mills, in an article about privacy, published some details about his residence, his finances, and his politics that she had uncovered through Google searches. Google infamously cut off all contact with CNET for a couple of months. Schmidt didn't seem so casual about the value of privacy when his own was at stake." http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2010/01/other_peoples_p.php

No way to know for sure, but it most likely occurred because of this: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/05/for_whom_the_go.php

You see Nick Carr's response? http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/04/the_big_company.php

here is the link to the "IT doesn't matter" article that is mentioned. i hadn't read it before and found it quite interesting.. http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/01/it_doesnt_matte.php

As Firefox gains in popularity and the ever popular AdBlock Plus being a regular fixture for installations I wonder if anyone has done any research or speculation into what effect this will have on the internet free with ads based revenue that so many people have built their success around. So to get off my own butt and google it I found a few articles that talk about the same issue (http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/09/adblock_plus_th.php, http://www.hhcc.com/?p=450) but nothing seems to really go very deep. It is always "users are too small a population to worry" but it is always a good idea to start thinking now on this before it becomes a problem.

Regarding the future of communities while they grow and "technical tweaks", eBay recently adjusted its policies to improve its community quality, restricting sellers from leaving negative feedback to buyers: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/02/crowd_control.php

Wow, looks like Nicholas Carr picked up on the launch: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/10/mugr_from_faceb.php