The Web Is Not Authoritative! (Really?)

Since nothing on the Web is authoritative, it’s up to you to consult enough sources so that you can make up your own mind.  This is the end of spoon-fed orthodoxy and infallible institutions, and the rise of messy mosaics of information that require — and reward — investigation.
—    Chris Anderson
From his book: “The Long Tail“
[It requires effort and thought – there is NO hope for humanity!    —    KMAB]
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Not Another Barren Corner

The main risk with blogs is the distraction of too many leads to pursue, not too few.  Anyone who is reading online and not enlarging their cultural perspective has either found some remarkably barren corner of the blog world or needs a refresher course in the meaning of hyperlinks.
—    Chris Anderson
From his book:  “The Long Tail“
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Just Asking

Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than one that simply accepts what it’s told from a narrow range of experts and institutions.
—    Chris Anderson
From his book:  “The Long Tail“
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Ya Think?

Although the decline of mainstream cultural institutions may result in some people turning to echo chambers of like-minded view, I suspect that over time the power of human curiosity combined with near-infinite access to information will tend to make most people more open-minded, not less.
—  Chris Anderson
From his book:  “The Long Tail“
[Boy, is this guy an optimist!!!  —  KMAB]
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Say It, But Please Don’t Make Me Listen

But punk rock changed the game.  Punk rock said: “Okay, you have your guitar, but you don’t have to do it right.  You can do it wrong!  It doesn’t matter one bit if you’re a skilled musician, it just matters if you have something to say.”
—    Chris Anderson
Quoted from his book:   “The Long Tail“
[I always thought I didn’t like punk rock because I was getting old.  I didn’t realize it was because they REALLY were just bad (unskilled) musicians.  It doesn’t matter if you’re not a great musician.  It does matter (to me, anyway) if you’re not even trying to get better.  Say what you’ve got to say, be a poet, writer, speaker…   —    KMAB]
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And The “Market” Isn’t Always Right

Finally it’s worth noting that economics, for all its charms, doesn’t have the answer to everything.  Many phenomena are simply left to other disciplines, from psychology to physics, or left without an academic theory at all.  Abundance, like growth itself, is a force that is changing our world in ways that we experience every day, whether we have an equation to describe it or not.
—    Chris Anderson
From his book:  “The Long Tail“
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Which Is Which

 

The problem is that we have a hard time putting rare events in context.  In any given population there will be a few people who are tremendously rich.  Some are smart and some are lucky and we really can’t tell which is which.
—    Chris Anderson
From his book:  “The Long Tail“
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Reducing Goods To Data

The overwhelming trend of our age is to take products that were once delivered as physical goods, find ways to turn them into data, and stream them into your home.
—    Chris Anderson
Quoted from his book:  “The Long Tail“
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Long Live The King!

In a world of infinite choice, context — not content — is king.
—    Rob Reid
Quoted from:  “The Long Tail“
Written by:   Chris Anderson
[If the customer can’t find you, it doesn’t matter how good what you’re selling (or its price) is.    —    KMAB]
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The Big Sin

The big sin in exposure culture is not copying, but instead, failure to properly attribute authorship.
—    Tim Wu
Columbia University law professor
Quoted from:   “The Long Tail“
Written by:  Chris Anderson
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The Power Of Good

What makes Wikipedia really extraordinary is that it improves over time, organically healing itself as if its huge and growing army of tenders were an immune system, ever vigilant and quick to respond to anything that threatens the organism.  And like a biological system, it evolves, selecting for traits that help it stay one step ahead of the predators and pathogens in its ecosystem.
—    Chris Anderson
Quoted from his book:   “The Long Tail“
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But Do You Want To?

It’s one thing to see a movie or listen to music and to think “genius” — that some gifted person and exalted apparatus has put together this unique work of art we appreciate.  However, once you know what’s behind the curtain, you begin to realize that it could be you.  It is when the tools of production are transparent that we are inspired to create.  When people understand how great work is made, they’re more likely to want to do it themselves.
—    Chris Anderson
From his book:  “The Long Tail“
[It could be you, but do you want to?   —   KMAB]
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Opportunity

Talent is not universal, but it’s widely spread:  Give enough people the capacity to create, and inevitably gems will emerge.
—    Chris Anderson
From his book:  “The Long Tail“
[This is why I’ve always favored the PC over the mainframe and the PC over Apple: give the tools to the masses of people and the Mozart’s will emerge.  Restrict opportunity by monopoly (Apple) or access (mainframe) and we never reach the potential of human creativity.  We are more likely to find Mozart with 7 billion people typing on 7 billion PCs than we are with 7 billion people constrained by the use of only limited access on a single mainframe.  Yes, we will have more drudge to filter in order to find the Mozart, but in the end, they will emerge.    —    KMAB]
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Look First, Not Last

The advantage of probabilistic systems is that they benefit from the wisdom of the crowd and as a result can scale nicely both in breadth and depth.  But because they do this by sacrificing absolute certainty on the microscale, you need to take any single result with a grain of salt.  Wikipedia should be the first source of information, not the last.  It should be a site for information exploration, not the definitive source of facts.
—    Chris Anderson
From his book:  “The Long Tail“
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Not Always

Once upon a time, talent eventually made its way to the tools of production; now it’s the other way around.
—    Chris Anderson
From his book:  “The Long Tail“
[We can only hope this is (and remains) true…    —    KMAB]
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