Good article at The Age about our misconceptions of amateurs vs. professionals. “Amateur, properly speaking, means lover. Amo, amas, amat-eur. The amateur does it for love. Professional, on the other hand, which used to imply membership of a profession or guild with its own, protected skill set and enforced ethical code, now means, simply, paid. Chook breeding, fishing, rocket science: what amateurs do for love, professionals do for money.
And yet we, whose ethical standards show direct lineage from the ancient texts of the Harvard Business School, presume the dollar differential to mean that professionals do it better. That anyone worth having is worth paying - handsomely. And, conversely, that if you don’t pay, only fools and incompetents will come to your door. Pay peanuts, get monkeys, all that.
The evidence, however, is otherwise. It’s not just the great list of history-shaping amateur scientists, from Gregor Mendel to Michael Faraday to Arthur C. Clarke (who in 1945 first proposed the use of geostationary satellites as communications devices). And not just Telstra, sharing $50 million a year between its top eight execs and still unable to send you a bill that makes sense, with or without legal advice. The professional soldier differs little from the mercenary. The professional politician is simply someone who has never experienced anything else, anything real. The professional footballer plays for Australia this week, France next. No worries. What did we expect?”
An interesting take on the monopolisation of Olympics coverage, near the end of the article too:
“Imagine if the Olympic spirit applied. If potential Olympic broadcasters, like Olympic athletes, had to prove performance. How would performance be measured? Could we apply, perhaps, a learned panel, as in gymnastics? What if commentary had to be fair, smart or insightful? If meanness and jingoism were banned? If advertising had to be clever, chic or public-spirited? What then?”
Your advertising for your company and products gets in my way. I try and block you out. Every time I see you, I wince internally and automatically shut you out. You can scream louder and I’ll get angrier and hate you even more and tell people about how much I hate you and continue to do so until you change or you die.
Unless you help me or others achieve something, I don’t want to hear about it. I like to achieve, but you are forcing things down my throat. If your product/service is good, I will use it. Work on that basis and everything else will follow.
Do good things. Do beneficial things for the community and our earth. Don’t do these things just so that you can pretend to be something or so that you can sell some shit product to me. I want to give my hard earnt to someone who cares and to someone who I entrust to go forth and do bigger and better things. Fuck your marketing department. Marketing is bullshit. I did it at uni and all I took was that it was a way of fucking over people and making them feel good about the process. This is a de-evolutionary way of thinking. Join us in the new century and stop acting like wankers.
Yes i’m pissed off. Yes, your kind will not survive. Yes, it will happen soon. Fuck you for fucking me over.
Harsh, but see through the anger and realise the truth.
Why do I have to enter in such strange things as .com and http:// when using this internet thing. I just want to type in what i’m after and to be presented with the information immediately. I don’t have time to search through unreliable search results.
The issues:
Ambiguity. Computers need to understand the full parameters of what i’m looking for. Computers are more intelligent than us, no doubt, but they don’t understand our intelligence, therefore they are stupid or in reality we are stupid, because we can’t use them properly yet.
Independence of information. Who decides what is appropriate information for me. Google currently do and they are a big company that is potentially the same as Microsoft, McDonalds, Coca Cola and all of the other disgraceful companies except they are either not like those companies or are like those companies but are more discreet about it and have grasped the need for big business to empower their users (or pretend to empower their users). This is a complex issue. Governments could control it, but I don’t trust my government either.
Nice app coming out of the team of Mozilla, Ubiquity. Allows you to quickly and easily mash up information from all across the web (watch the demo for a better understanding):
Nice viral by EA sports. Youtube video response to a game glitch post by a customer:
