MediaReview

John Battelle's Searchblog: Thinking About Google and The Turning Point: "In seven short years, Google has gone from a geeky startup with one good idea into an agenda-shaping player responsible for navigating complex relationships with world governments, the personal privacy of millions, major trade organizations, and hundreds of thousands of businesses small and large. It's an extraordinary weight to bear, it seems to me. It's the kind of position that requires a balanced mixture of leadership, will, and diplomacy. There's very little room for the go-it-alone mentality which got the company to where it stands today. Can the company shift its culture and avoid the fate which ultimately hobbled Microsoft? That, more than anything else, will define the next chapter in the company's fascinating story."

The American Enterprise: Live with TAE: Robert Kaplan: "In the early 1960s, I remember hearing my truck-driving father talk about the “Establishment”—people like Averil Harriman, John McCloy, Charles Bolin, George Tannin. Even though these people were very liberal, they saw themselves as Americans. Today’s similar figures wouldn’t see themselves in the same light, because they so often socialize and cross paths with people from other countries.



So the American elite exists less and less as an institution, while the global elite exists more and more. Today’s media elites, for example, care more about the thoughts and writings of their “esteemed” colleagues in Britain or France than their counterparts at the Chicago Tribune or the Omaha World Herald. "

Why Mexico and not the Flying Dutchman?
(Blogging the World Cup is going to be so much fun!)
World Football News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "Hosts Germany and champions Brazil were named in the top eight seeded teams for the World Cup draw on Tuesday along with England, Spain, Mexico, France, Argentina and Italy."

Dave Winer on the need to "determine what authority means in the age of Internet scholarship."
Scripting News: 12/2/2005: "Every fact in there must be considered partisan, written by someone with a confict of interest. Further, we need to determine what authority means in the age of Internet scholarship. And we need to take a step back and ask if we really want the participants in history to write and rewrite the history. Isn't there a place in this century for historians, non-participants who observe and report on the events?"

TCS: Tech Central Station - Game Off?: "The real case against video games, however, is more than simply a difference of opinion about a new media form pitting old against young. Since the time of Socrates, new forms of expression and art have been met with skepticism, but the skeptics have never divided neatly along age lines. With video games, the critics' case centers around three specific worries: that the games are in some sense addictive; that they retard the development of skills, particularly social skills, in the young and lead to their atrophy in the not so young; and that they encourage violence."

Vodkapundit - Challenging Stage: "Here's an interesting little blurb about a talk by Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari and basically intented video games back in the 1970's. This bit in particular caught my eye:

In 1982, he tells us, there were 44 million gamers. Today, there are 18 million. Where’d they all go? “Complexity lost the casual gamer,” he says."

Micro Persuasion: Wikipedia is the Next Google: "History is about to repeat itself. A successor to Google's throne is waiting in the wings - it's Wikipedia, King Disruptor III. Like its predecessors, Wikipedia is powerful because it provides access to largely accurate information that can be hard to find. This king, however, is unlike any other because it operates in a completely democratic way. It's run by the people, without any grand financial ambitions. This doesn't mean its rule will be perceived solely as a benevolent one, however.

Already, Wikipedia instills a deeper fear than either Google or Microsoft did when they were at such a young age. It's the emerging king."