Dogs Jumping Through Laser Beams

Monday’s Media Guardian was guest edited by ‘the man who also invented the internet’ Vint Cerf, who it turns out is friends with Biz Stone which leads me to believe I must change my name to something like Slab Barf in order to garner some serious ‘web/app founder/inventor’ attention. I won’t repeat the editorial on Tell Me The Future, but for any self-respecting creative technologist it’s a must read. One line critique: mobile internet, developing world.

There is also an interview with Kevin Rose, Digg founder (’really just an experiment that took off’). He talks about Digg in the future, about how it will learn and be able to make story recommendations based on a user’s history and interests. Great, so given the Digg cabal tend to favour stories featuring Pikachu’s vagina, we can be assured of a varied and informative inbox. Mass media in the hands of the masses can still produce a mass of crap and better targeted crap is not the solution. Digg is a marvel, but one that leans towards the banal.

Another staggering statistic from GooTube billionaire Chad Hurley is that ‘8 hours of video are uploaded to You Tube every minute‘. Given that statistic and the fact that You Tube is but one of many video community sites, how can we ever discover new and interesting video content? Despite, or perhaps because of social aggregation sites like Digg we still need an editorial voice to filter the crap - yup channels, not based on algorithms, but based on objective aggregation. Channels shaped by community and refined by an editor(s).

Curation not Creation is the mantra and to prove it, herewith Kevin’s favourite video, Dogs Jumping Through Laser Beams:

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