The need for more insight into the present

Om Malik makes an excellent point on the need to contemplate the present as it’s happening. So much of our collective present is chunked up into tweet-sized analysis that we may be losing the essence of the times we live in.  Anyway, his post is worth reading:

As an avid reader, I am often amazed how much of our written materials are about the past (or the near past) and the future (and the near future) but never about the present.. Is present too boring?. Or is too real?. Or is it too incomplete to merit a careful and long deliberation..

Source: We need more books about the present

 

 

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

An excellent video on WV’s classic ad campaign from the ’60s

Simple, and to the point…

 

The advertising that Volkswagen ran in American magazines and newspapers in the 1960s was legendary, perhaps the greatest ad campaign ever.. This is a great little documentary about how the ads came about — pitching “a Nazi car in a Jewish town”..

Source: Those great 1960s Volkswagen ads

Mobile web and native are different, but both are important

This is an excellent post on why web and native apps equally important

In other words. The Web is for audience reach and native apps are for rich experiences. Both are strategic. Both are valuable. So when it comes to mobile, it’s not Web vs. Native. It’s both.

Source: LukeW | Mobile Web vs. Native Apps or Why You Want Both

 

Photo by William Hook on Unsplash

Website bloat is a real issue

Websites have gotten increasingly bloated. So much of this bloat is hidden to the user, and is tied to surveillance technology. This post does a great job of explaining the problem:

Let’s preserve the web as the hypertext medium it is, the only thing of its kind in the world, and not turn it into another medium for consumption, like we have so many examples of already.Let’s commit to the idea that as computers get faster, and as networks get faster, the web should also get faster.Let’s not allow the panicked dinosaurs of online publishing to trample us as they stampede away from the meteor. Instead, let’s hide in our holes and watch nature take its beautiful course.Most importantly, let’s break the back of the online surveillance establishment that threatens not just our livelihood, but our liberty. Not only here in Australia, but in America, Europe, the UK—in every free country where the idea of permanent, total surveillance sounded like bad science fiction even ten years ago.

Source: The Website Obesity Crisis

As usual, read the whole thing.

 

Photo by Ben Kolde on Unsplash

Satoshi Nakamoto and the invention of a new currency

Satoshi Nakamoto drew from the history of cryptocurrencies since David Chaum’s seminal blinding formula in the 1980s.  He postulated that the flaw with existing approaches to cryptocurrencies was that a single powerful attacker could undermine and destroy the system.  In order to to defeat the powerful attacker, Satoshi decentralised the control of the cryptocurrency over an open set of participants, designed a consensus algorithm to align the interests of the majority to find agreement, and thus overcome byzantine actions by minority parties.

Source: What Satoshi Did | Coinscrum

 

These series of blog posts are worth reading in their entirety.

 

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Link: The Math Wizards Who Rule Murky World of Programmatic Buying | Digital – Advertising Age

The future of advertising — one where terms like “automation” and “big data” are more than jargon sprinkled into PowerPoints — may be in the hands of 20-somethings like Mr. Banilevi. Just 23 years old, the Northwestern economics graduate uses eight software programs to buy millions of digital ads each week, plucking them from a pool of trillions without ever speaking to an actual person. If harnessed effectively, that kind of power can deliver smarter, more efficient media buys. If not, it can lead to million-dollar screwups.

Imagine the efficiencies to be gained if the ‘targets’ of those ads (individuals) were active participants in this marketplace.

Source: The Math Wizards Who Rule Murky World of Programmatic Buying | Digital – Advertising Age

H/T: Found in my tweet stream, but I can’t remember who tweeted it.

 

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash