Per qualche giorno si è parlato della lettera annuale di Jeff Bezos agli azionisti. È una tradizione della comunicazione dei grandi capi di grandi aziende, una forma di narcisismo ma anche di valore e utilità, se vengono dette cose sensate (pensate a Warren Buffet). Ora, quella di Bezos è notevole, così come è notevole l’uomo, che preferisco al papà di Tesla Elon Musk. Ma la stampa si è concentrata sulla velocità del processo decisionale, con l’idea delle decisioni da prendere quando hai il 70% delle informazioni anziché aspettare il 90% (perché sarà già tardi).

Bello, ma a me ha colpito più l’idea del “disagree and commit”.

Money quote:

“Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.

Note what this example is not: it’s not me thinking to myself “well, these guys are wrong and missing the point, but this isn’t worth me chasing.” It’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, a chance for the team to weigh my view, and a quick, sincere commitment to go their way. And given that this team has already brought home 11 Emmys, 6 Golden Globes, and 3 Oscars, I’m just glad they let me in the room at all!”

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312517120198/d373368dex991.htm

Fine del mondo? Secondo la Nasa no. Però sai mai te che l’asteroide all’improvviso non avesse scartato

Money quote:

“NASA is confident the world will not be destroyed by a large asteroid that will pass Earth on Wednesday. The asteroid is expected to be 1.1 million miles away, or about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon.

The pass is the closest heavenly encounter since asteroid Toutatis, a 3.1-mile space rock, flew by 13 years ago. That asteroid came within four lunar distances from Earth.”

http://www.chron.com/local/article/Large-asteroid-to-whiz-by-Earth-Wednesday-11080347.php

Ma un Chromebook può diventare una piattaforma per sviluppatori? C’è chi sta cominciando a pensarci sul serio. Il tema è interessante. Ecco una delle prime tracce che ho trovato in rete.

Money quote: “These days my on-the-go work involves getting small bits and pieces wrapped up on my commute. My near-instant-on ASUS Chromebook Flip is perfect for this, and the operating system gets out of my way in seconds.”

https://headmelted.com/coding-on-a-chromebook-84335cce96c8

Oltre alle fake news c’è un altro problema: la media bubble. Che a sua volta ne incapsula un altro: la distorsione praticamente involontaria dei giornalisti nel vedere il mondo, che si traduce in una rappresentazione sui giornali e in televisione alquanto distorta. Una distorsione dettata da problemi di censo, di appartenenza, di collocazione geografica. Da noi si direbbe: di Kasta. In America ne fanno un discorso più scientifico.

Interessante lettura tra i ponti.

Money quote: “But journalistic groupthink is a symptom, not a cause. And when it comes to the cause, there’s another, blunter way to think about the question than screaming “bias” and “conspiracy,” or counting D’s and R’s. That’s to ask a simple question about the map. Where do journalists work, and how much has that changed in recent years? To determine this, my colleague Tucker Doherty excavated labor statistics and cross-referenced them against voting patterns and Census data to figure out just what the American media landscape looks like, and how much it has changed.”

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/25/media-bubble-real-journalism-jobs-east-coast-215048

Voi non meditate, vero? Io non medito. Nessuno medita, tranne pochi tizi che effettivamente meditano. O pregano. O qualcosa del genere. Peccato però perché meditare fa bene alla salute. Ed esiste un’alternativa. Leggere.

La premessa di questo pezzo è alquanto interessante, ma lo è di più l’autrice del pezzo: Gina Pell. Poi ci torneremo. Intanto, un assaggio di come una mente cartesiana affronta il problema: bisogna leggere per stare bene e rilassare il cervello. Ma se non c’è tempo? Beh, ecco la spiegazione.

Money quote: “No time to read? As Merovingian, the best character in Matrix Reloaded, said, “If we do not ever take time, how can we ever have time?” I write a newsletter so my business is content. My free time is frittered away online and keeping up with what’s on the tube. Once I reallocated those hours, I realized I could read roughly 300 pages of fiction per night (non-fiction takes me longer). What really helps is to set a goal of something you want to learn or accomplish. A decade ago, I wanted to understand what Pulitzer-winning fiction was made of so I read all prize winners from 1948–2006. I was a casual reader back then so it took me three years to finish. My next goal is to read the 25 Books to Help You Understand America in 2016 from Penguin Random House by January 21, 2017. Surely, you have books you’ve been meaning to get around to. Make a list.”

https://medium.com/the-what/cant-meditate-read-this-8c26c8ccc407

Una riflessione, a mio avviso fin troppo lunga e “creativa” oltre che disorganizzata, sul perché superata una certa età cambia il nostro rapporto con la musica. Sembra il mio pezzo su Microsoft House…

Money quote: “But why should I care? Why should any of us care? Maybe it’s about the fear of becoming what we’ve always loathed: someone reflexively and guiltlessly willing to serve up a load of things-were-better-in-my-day, one of the most facile and benighted of all declarations. If you take pride in regarding yourself as culturally current, always willing to indulge the best of everything wherever it’s found, such taste blockages can be pretty frustrating, even embarrassing. And that hoary old consolation for the erectile dysfunction of the slightly older – ‘It happens to everyone’ – is no consolation at all.”

https://aeon.co/essays/why-do-your-musical-tastes-get-frozen-over-in-your-twenties

Sulla scomparsa del sassofono nella musica pop contemporanea (almeno negli Usa) dove invece era essenziale.

Money quote: “There’s no song in the Top 40 right now with a saxophone solo. There’s hardly a defined saxophone part on any of those songs at all, which is incredible because for most of American popular music’s history, the saxophone was the backbone of making a song a hit.”

https://theoutline.com/post/1409/saxophones-in-american-pop-music-historyq

Donald Trump e il suo segretario alla Difesa. Un rapporto che sta funzionando parecchio bene (anche per questo a quanto pare non ne sentiamo mai parlare)

Money quote: “As President Trump nears the 100-day benchmark, it’s a good moment to examine the relationship that has evolved between the mercurial and inexperienced commander in chief and his unflappable defense secretary, Jim Mattis.

It’s an unlikely partnership, but so far it mostly seems to work. Trump may have relatively few domestic-policy accomplishments to show after three months, but he can take credit for selecting a generally solid national-security team and for listening to its advice.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/mattis-and-trump-the-odd-couple-that-works/2017/04/25/5e01adf0-29ef-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html

WhatsApp è insicuro? In molti si sono espressi più volte sull’argomento, con posizioni diverse più o meno fondate. Chi dice cose sensate?

Basterebbe leggere i blog degli esperti per sapere come stanno le cose, ma è difficile capire le parti tecniche, occorre inoltre sapere chi sono gli esperti credibili e fare comunque un lavoro che un semplice lettore che vuole informarsi raramente ha tempo e competenze per fare. Per questo esistono i giornalisti. E le testate sono autorevoli proprio quando sanno fare bene questo lavoro, al di là degli scoop e delle notizie del giorno.

Ecco perché la postura adottata dal Guardian rispetto alla presunta insicurezza di WhatsApp è inspiegabile. E produce conseguenze nel mondo reale (pensate agli oppositori ai regimi autoritari e dittatoriali). Per questo, se come pare il Guardian sta scrivendo sciocchezze, questo dovrebbe avere conseguenze anche sulla sua credibilità.

Leggendo qui potete farvi un’idea.

Money quote:

"Dear Guardian Editors,

You recently published a story with the alarming headline “WhatsApp backdoor allows snooping on encrypted messages.” This story included the phrasing “security loophole”.

Unfortunately, your story was the equivalent of putting “VACCINES KILL PEOPLE” in a blaring headline over a poorly contextualized piece. While it is true that in a few cases, vaccines kill people through rare and unfortunate side effects, they also save millions of lives.

You would have no problem understanding why “Vaccines Kill People” would be a problem headline for a story, especially given the context of anti-vaccination movements. But your series of stories on WhatsApp does the same disservice and perpetrates a similar public health threat against secure communications.

The behavior described in your article is not a backdoor in WhatsApp."

http://technosociology.org/?page_id=1687

Com'è romantica l'idea di andare a vivere in un camper. Lo racconta il New Yorker

Money quote: "King and Smith, who are thirty-two and thirty-one, respectively, had grown up watching “Saturday Night Live” sketches in which a sweaty, frantic Chris Farley character ranted, “I am thirty-five years old, I am divorced, and I live in a van down by the river!” But, the way Huntington described it, living in a vehicle sounded not pathetic but romantic. “I remember coming home and telling my mom, ‘I have something to tell you,’ ” King said. “She thought I was going to say we were getting married or having a baby. But I said, ‘We’re going to live in a van.’ ”"

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/24/vanlife-the-bohemian-social-media-movement

L'ossessione per la felicità. Una cosa recente, nasce nel Settecento e continua fino ad oggi soprattutto nell'edonismo materialista americano. Ecco un articolo illuminante, una specie di bigino per l'orientamento del pastore afghano appena conquistato alla libertà di mercato, che voglia capire quel senso di vuota depressione che segue l'acquisto di otto paia di scarpe da ginnastica (che non sono scarpe ma cultura, come dice una mia amica) da sommare alle altre otto paia già comprate.

Ecco la storia della felicità. Rabbrividite pure.

Money quote: "And yet the logic of the revolution in human expectations worked in a countervailing sense, encouraging the belief that happiness was not something we earned, but something we deserved."

https://qz.com/958677/happiness-a-history-author-darrin-m-mcmahon-explains-when-the-idea-of-happiness-was-invented/

Arriva la Coca-Cola con le fibre. In Giappone, perlomeno

Money quote: "Most of Coca-Cola's reformulations have created successful new beverage brands simply by cutting sugar or calories from pre-existing drinks. For example, the company reported that the revamped Coca-Cola Zero Sugar experienced double-digit growth in the last quarter, after growing 9% by volume in 2016"

http://www.businessinsider.com/coca-cola-with-fiber-reveals-soda-revamp-2017-4?IR=T

Come ha scoperto anche Donald Trump quando glielo ha spiegato il presidente cinese Xi, la storia della Corea è un po' più complicata di come ce la raccontiamo. Non solo per la secolare tradizione e il regno, etc etc, ma anche solo per quello che è successo prima della rivoluzione. Ad esempio, mezzo secolo di presenza americana (tra gli altri) per evangelizzare i nativi.

Money quote: "This long-lost mission, almost unknown even to Korea experts on both sides of the Pacific, was part of a pre-Second World War American Christian presence in Korea that achieved its greatest success in Pyongyang. The current capital was then the home of the largest Christian community in Korea and the center of the Presbyterian Church in Asia."

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-pyongyang-missionaries-north-korea

Dal momento che viviamo nella snack culture, ecco lo spuntino di classicità quotidiana: leniamo le ferite del mal di vivere con un ardito paragone che sposti il bilancino della contemproaneità verso l'esperienza degli antichi saggi. Insomma, daje di Seneca e d'Epicuro...

Money quote: "Both the Stoics and the Epicureans valued the practice of virtue and the pleasures of life. The difference was one of priorities: the Epicureans, for instance, withdrew from political life because it was bound to cause pain (consider the recent US elections and you might sympathise). The Stoics, by contrast, would never trade moral rectitude for either the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain"

https://aeon.co/classics/massimo-pigliucci-on-senecas-stoic-philosophy-of-happiness

Siri è diventata attrice e recita i “Lego Batman - Il film”

Non è uscito sui giornali italiani ma nel film animato è stata per la prima volta scritturata una voce artificiale nel ruolo di se stessa. Dopo aver vinto il casting con Alexa di Amazon, Cortana di Microsoft e con quella di Google, è stata scritturata come assistente virtuale di Batman in Lego. È da giocare sull’ironia e la leggerezza, secondo me. Come Gallery, le voci di computer nella storia del cinema (da Hal 9000 in giù fino a C3P8 e R2D2 di Guerre Stellari)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2017/02/17/hello-siri-please-tell-us-about-your-feature-film-debut-in-lego-batman-movie/?utm_term=.77c359560235

Poesia. Poesia. Poesia. Voi quante poesie leggete? E quali? E quando? Qui, Roberto Corsi apre pian piano un nuovo cassetto della sua produzione...

Money quote: “psst… psst… sono filtrati titoli della prossima raccolta (quello della seconda sezione dovrebbe muovere a “risatazza immonda” (cit.) chi conosce le vicissitudini di questo blog) e un pugno di liriche.”

https://robertocorsi.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/corsileaks-inediti-su-imperfetta-ellisse/

Surreale intervento sulla Harvard Business Review del "vecchio" imprenditore del settore alberghiero (52 anni) assunto da AirBnB per portare esperienza e saggezza. Un'ode a se stesso piena di luoghi comuni e di una certa, abbondante misura di ego.

Money quote: "First, I quickly learned that I needed to strategically forget part of my historical work identity. The company didn’t need two CEOs, or me pontificating wisdom from the elder’s pulpit. More than anything, I listened and watched intently, with as little judgment or ego as possible. I imagined myself as a cultural anthropologist, intrigued and fascinated by this new habitat. Part of my job was to just observe. Often I would leave a meeting and discreetly ask one of my fellow leaders, who might be two decades younger than I was, if they were open to some private feedback on how to read the emotions in the room, or the motivations of a particular engineer, a little more effectively"

https://hbr.org/2017/04/i-joined-airbnb-at-52-and-heres-what-i-learned-about-age-wisdom-and-the-tech-industry

La propaganda nazista era talmente ben organizzata che si preoccupava anche di fornire giochi da tavolo ai fanciulli. Giochi di conquista e di sterminio, ovviamente.

Money quote: "Kenneth Rendell, the museum’s founder, says that Nazi power derived partly from such shrewd product design. Manufacturers applied symbols of anti-Semitism and death to toys, along with all manner of other household furnishings, from Christmas ornaments to lightbulb filaments. The racist objects, even if they never directly incited heinous acts, would have inured the owners to the prospect of violence all around them"

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nazi-board-games-wwii

Articolo molto "basico" su come la tecnologia abbia cambiato la vita agli imprenditori. Poi parla un giornalista, ma va bene lo stesso. Da mandare ai vecchi nonni.

Money quote: "As a freelance journalist, I’ve always worked from home. Previously though, I had to borrow the work laptop, plug it into a modem and connect to the network via Remote Desktop. Now most places, I just jump on WiFi on my tablet, laptop or phone. All of which I can make notes on, or record interviews with. Using the cloud I can backup and protect my data, and collaborate with team members anywhere in the world"

https://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/how-technology-has-transformed-entrepreneurs-lives-last-10-years

Il videogioco che tratta il problema della morte e dell'elaborazione del lutto. Interessante.

Money quote: ""We try to set the table and let players experience [death] for themselves," says creative director Ian Dallas when I ask about the team's approach. "Players already bring so much heaviness on their own that there's no need for us to add any. It would be redundant. Also, the less we suggest how we want or expect players to feel, the more room we open up for them to consider their own family history.""

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a-video-game-that-finally-engages-with-death-and-succeeds