Every number is special. Every one. Even you, 64, my little lowest-number-with-seven-divisors. And especially you, 6014, my little square formed by 3 squares that overlap by 1 digit.

[Tags: numbers ]

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Last night I met a guy who I disliked after only a few minutes of conversation. That’s unusual for me. I wanted to get out of his presence, which is also unusual. Weirdest of all, couldn’t figure out why I didn’t like him. There was nothing wrong with him. If you asked me, I wouldn’t be able to come up with a single explanatory factor.

Only after I’d politely exempted myself from his presence did I realize why I didn’t like him: For whatever psychological reason, I found myself becoming competitive, trying to impress him. In his presence, I was an a-hole.

It was me, not him. And it makes me wonder how often the people I don’t like I don’t like because I don’t like who I am with them.

[Tags: miscellaneous ]

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I’m talking tomorrow at ROFLcon, a conference about Web fame, celebrity and culture. I’m supposed to be talking in a general way about Web fame. Then I’m leading a panel composed of men (yup) who are Web famous: Kyle Macdonald (One Red Paperclip), Joe Mathelete (Joe Mathelete Explains Marmaduke), Ian Spector (Chuck Norris Facts), Andy Ochiltree (JibJab.com), Andrew Baron (Rocketboom), Alex Tew (The Million Dollar Homepage)

Here’s a sketch of what I’m thinking of saying:

Fame has been a property of the broadcast (= one-to-many) system. Fame is based on the math of many people knowing you, so many that you can’t know them. But it’s not just math, of course. It’s also economics. The broadcast economy has a fiduciary interest in building and maintaining the famous. They’re “bankable.”

Because of this scarcity and the fact that the one-to-manyness of the relationship means the knowing is one-way, the famous become a special class of person: mythic and not fully real. They are not like us, even ontologically. Fame is a type of alienation.

Outside of the broadcast system, fame looks different. This is a type of do-it-yourself fame, not only in that we often want human fingerprints on the shiny surfaces we’re watching, but also because we create fame through passing around links … occasionally for mean and nasty reasons. Kids sitting around watching YouTubes with one another are like kids telling jokes: That reminds me of this one; if you liked that one, you’ll love this one. And the content itself fuels public conversations in multiple media. This is P2P fame.

There’s a long tail of fame, although I suspect the elbow isn’t quite as sharp as in the classic Shirky power law curve for links to blogs. At the top of the head of the curve, fame operates much as it does in the broadcast media, although frequently there’s some postmodern irony involved. In the long tail, though, you can be famous to a few people. Sure, much of it’s crap, but the point about an age of abundance is that we get an abundance of crap and of goodness. We get fame in every variety, including anonymous fame, fame that mimics broadcast fame, fame that mocks, fame that does both, fame for what is stupid, brilliant, nonce, eternal, clever, ignorant, blunt, nuanced, amateur, professional, mean, noble … just like us. It’s more of everything.

But most of all, it’s ours.

* * *

[ROFLcon will be live-streamed here. [Tags: roflcon2008 web_culture fame celebrity ]

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Steve Pepper is calling for a demonstration against Norway’s flaky acceptance of Open XML as an ISO standard, AKA Caving in to Microsoft. Here’s a list of the “irregularities” of the process.

[Tags: iso open_xml microsoft steve_pepper norway ]

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Don’t miss Ethan Zuckerman’s live blogging of TED. Ethan makes live-blogging read like edited blogging.

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From the NY Times article on Prince Harry being withdrawn from combat:

As a result, the chief of the defense staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, decided “to withdraw Prince Harry from Afghanistan immediately,” the ministry said.

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The NY Times:

“To make connecting with third-party software easier, Microsoft will publish on its Web site key software blueprints, known as application program interfaces, pertaining to its high-volume products used by other Microsoft merchandise.”

API’s explained as software blueprints? Seems like a stretch to me, but I don’t have a better metaphor in mind…

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I just published the Feb 04, 2008 issue of my (free) newsletter:

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I hadn’t seen a picture of Jenna Bush’s fiance until just now:

You wouldn’t think an Oedipal/Elektra complex would be heritable…

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As we we’ve continued to talk about citizen journalism and citizen media, I’ve come to think there may be a class of citizen journalism that could be an important part of the new ecosystem: Accidental journalism. Or possibly it should be called incidental journalism. Or may be accidental/incidental coverage. Anyway, the idea is that journalism may come to rely on coverage of events by cialis 20mg citizens who are writing them up not to provide coverage but for their own more personal reasons.

This has already happened at times. Will it become an important and semi-reliable part of the ecosystem? I dunno. Maybe.

[Tags: journalism citizens_journalism ]

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