Tag: culture

  • Link: The new tech effecting culture outline

    The trajectory of books about new technologies follows a similar pattern: first, hype; then, backlash; then, finally, a more considered view of what it might actually be good for. Yup. Checks out. Original source: The new tech effecting culture outline

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  • Link: How to have a good conversation

    What is conversation for anyway?  I don’t even recommend being charming, or trying to be charming, unless a work situation is forcing you to do so.  Let yourself be sullen when the mood beckons.  Feel free to let eye contact lapse.  Don’t repeat back what you’ve heard.  Say something surprising.  Be willing to go meta. …

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  • Link: Unknown Unknowns: The Problem of Hypocognition

    “Consider this: how well can you discern different shades of blue? If you speak Russian, Greek, Turkish, Korean or Japanese, your chances are much better than if you speak English. The former groups have two distinctive linguistic representations of blue. In Russian, for example, dark blue (sinii) and light blue (goluboi) are as distinct as…

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  • Link: Bulls**t Jobs (Part 1 of ∞)

    “It’s too soon to have a good sample size. But it seems to usually work. I think it works because there is nobody at Mr. Smith’s workplace – maybe nobody in the entire world – who cares whether Mr. Smith brings a chair into work. Somebody wrote up a procedure for employees using special chairs,…

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  • Link: The Book Is a Time Machine

    Books as information tool and lifestyle are complex. “Displayed books gesture forward and backward to acts of reading and rereading; of purchasing, posing, moving, and unpacking; of passing time and dropping into its folds.” Original source: The Book Is a Time Machine

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  • Link: The still-coherent culture that is the United States

    Social stuff: ‘Maybe this is the most important result: since 1976 there has not been much divergence between liberal and conservative attitudes toward civil liberties or law enforcement. The divergence on government spending is noticeable but not enormous (see p.39). the divergence on “Marriage, Sex, Abortion” is quite large. In another words, the true polarization…

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  • Link: Post-Authenticity and the Ironic Truths of Meme Culture

    ‘What is changing, I argue, are the cultural formats people are using for discussion — the carrier waves for this signal. This is where “authenticity” isn’t a useful claim any more, having been wholly co-opted and commodified into its opposite. Culture and the way we communicate — shaped by media affordances — have become more complex, ironic, and multi-layered than that.…

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  • Link: The End of Enterprise IT, ING org. structure

    “They chose to adopt an organizational structure in which small teams – ING calls them squads – accept end-to-end responsibility for a consumer-focused mission. Squads are expected to make their own decisions based on a shared purpose, the insight of their members, and rapid feedback from their work. Squads are grouped into tribes of perhaps…

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  • Link: Avengers: Infinity War: Marvel’s Superhero Hair Is Full of Secrets

    “To put it in a nutshell, the shorter the hair, the more precarious a character’s relationship with traditional femininity.” Original source: Avengers: Infinity War: Marvel’s Superhero Hair Is Full of Secrets

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  • Link: Jeff Bezos admits Amazon has ‘the weirdest meeting culture you will ever encounter’, Business Insider

    In the letter, he explained that writing a brilliant, long memo requires the writer to understand the subject well. It also requires the writer to “improve results through the simple act of teaching scope.” By that he means doing a great job requires effort, not speed. “A great memo probably should take a week or…

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  • Link: Understanding technology today

    “Technology isn’t an industry, it’s a method of transforming the culture and economics of existing systems and institutions. That can be a little bit hard to understand if we only judge tech as a set of consumer products that we purchase.” Original source: Understanding technology today

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  • Link: Survey Shows Cloud and DevOps Complexity and Culture Concerns

    “The findings, based on more than 1,300 responses from DevOps and IT professionals, showed the top barriers to DevOps adoption involve stagnant organizational cultures (according to 22 percent of respondents); managing the jumble of legacy processes, IT infrastructure and newly created cloud environments (21 percent); and growing software complexity that impacts application modernization initiatives (20…

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  • Link: The Cost Center Trap – LeanEssays

    “Accounting drives metrics. Metrics drive culture. Culture eats process for lunch.” Don’t let accountants drive your innovation. Original source: The Cost Center Trap – LeanEssays

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  • Link: Should that be a Microservice? Keep These Six Factors in Mind

    Also, a long section on matching your culture to the stuff. Original source: Should that be a Microservice? Keep These Six Factors in Mind

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  • Link: Tolerating distraction

    “The modern anxiety about distraction betrays a good deal about us. Insofar as we associate attention with power and control, it reflects our fears of losing both in an increasingly unpredictable cultural and natural climate. We also find ourselves living in an economy where we pay for cultural goods with our attention, so it makes…

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  • Link: Explaining the problems in The Last Jedi

    “It is a movie about knowing what’s right and doing that, even though everything else in the universe is stacked against you. It is a movie about why you might start a rebellion against a fascistic order, rather than simply going along with the status quo. Part of the movie is about how the worst…

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  • Link: Diversity in Tech Remains Elusive Due to Racism, Lack of Representation and Cultural Differences

    ‘As a self-proclaimed Black “nerd” and active social media user, Moore also cites cultural differences as one of the main reasons tech companies don’t hire more people from underrepresented minorities groups. She herself remembers laughing awkwardly alongside white college peers and classmates to jokes she didn’t necessarily find funny due to cultural differences in social…

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  • Link: How Culture Affects Depression

    “[B]y virtue of prioritizing emotions and personal happiness, in contexts like the U.S., we are creating a discrepancy between how we feel and how we are supposed to feel… In western societies, we don’t see enough adaptive strategies like reappraisal: learning to tell yourself a different story that would eventually lead to different emotions.” Link…

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  • We are afflicted with the same disease. It’s hard (impossible?) to find a day job that is consuming so we look for other stuff to fill that void, which of course just makes us insane As one of my friends put it. Indeed!

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  • What they will not do is maintain steady eye contact or smile. If a stranger of the opposite sex smiles at you, it’s best to do as the French do and return only a blank look before turning away. If you smile back, you might find yourself in a Pepé Le Pew–type situation. http://www.fodors.com/news/story_3925.html

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