Sixian

The de-centralization of timekeeping brought about by digital media harkens back to a much older style of measuring time. Before the invention of the telegraph, there was no way to instantaneously synchronize timekeeping devices across long distances. No time zones, no universal standard against which clock towers could be evaluated for accuracy.... See more

These network effect winners, these new big firms, have power in a way we haven’t seen before, because their power also comes from us using them, not just from something that they do. 

But what does that mean?

It's all dependent on human context. This is what we're starting to see with del.icio.us, with Flickr, with systems that are allowing for and aggregating tags. The signal benefit of these systems is that they don't recreate the structured, hierarchical categorization so often forced onto us by our physical systems. Instead, we're dealing with a... See more

What is an  Enterprise Gateway Marketplace (EGM)? EGMs are a variant on the traditional 2-sided marketplace model. They are marketplaces tailored to help big enterprises (2,000+ employees) on the demand side coordinate with 1,000s of outside vendors on the supply side. To do this, EGMs have to solve unique workflow and compliance challenges on both... See more

Historical Inflection Points

Citizens will embrace the network economy and not cling to the scale effect economy of the industrial world, so our governments shouldn’t either. The scale economy will not go away, but it’s going to become a smaller part of life and the economy, like agriculture did in the industrial era.

Oral histories, like publications, bind people. After a conversation, all parties maintain ownership of what transpired, and they continue to hold ties to one another.