Wired article struck a cord and so I am copying and pasting the whole thing...

Ok. I am not really going to do this. But I just want to do something about this article: Scott Brown's "Gag Reflexes" in Wired (April 2009). The online edition has a longer title: "Scott Brown on Stand-Up Comedy, Lingua Franca of the Wired World" which sums up Mr. Brown's theory.

Maybe crumple up the page and eat it. But I already promised my husband that I will refrain from wrinkling up any magazine pages before he's done with them. (Ok. I am attempting to be funny here. If you read Mr. Brown article, you would understand why I feel exposed, caught in the act of trying to be funny. To earn more currency in this new economy...)

Is it wrong to want to quote an entire article really? Ok. Maybe not 100%. I don't really care for the examples Mr. Brown gave to support his argument. But the insights sprinkled in-between, those struck a cord.

I am no writer, and I am too tired (not to mention lazy), and here is my journal (i.e. I will do what I damn please), so I am going to jott down sentences that particularly resonate with me, and be done with it: (Thank goodness for Ctrl + C & Ctrl + V !!)

"... everything is 'material,' and life is one big writer's room, a massive clusterchuckle of witty one-upsmanship"

"More than that: Everyone must be funny. Because 'funny' is becoming a language unto itself, the lingua franca of the wired world."

Always feel this way since I got hooked on Twitter. Sometimes it feels almost like a comedy show writers' room, the pressure is on to be the next funniest. hence wisest, person in the Twitter stream that you can see.

"Humor saturates the infosphere, for at least two reasons: First, a successful joke implies insight, and insight, especially if it's pithy and self-explanatory, is the basic currency of a high-speed information economy. Second, the fundamental tools and techniques of that economy—memory, annotation, contrast, collage—are also the fundamental tools of comedy."

I absolutely agree with #1. Feeling grateful that someone actually voiced this murky concept so clearly in one single sentence. Everyone is a guru of life, and the shallow shall be deep again. Not so sure about #2 since those are the fundamental tools of storytelling, upon which human history has been, and will be, passed on. What we don't see in the histories in the past is IRONY and self-awareness, imo, which, well, make intelligent comedies.

Moreover, it has always been my one belief that a great sense of humor indicates a great presence of intellect and tolerance.

And this final quote may sound like an accusation "Gotcha!"

"If the references are flying over your head, no worries: You can zip over to Wikipedia and be back in time for the punch line."

Like I said, Google is Your Friend! Raise your hand if you have NEVER done this... Thankfully Mr. Brown provided hyperlinks to all the references he cited for the article.

I repeat: There is NO FREE lunch. Only Freemium.

Chris Anderson (the chief over at my favorite mag, WIRED) is coming out with another book, FREE, this summer. As a precursor to the big PR blitz for sure to come, he penned an article on WSJ, "The Economics of Giving It Away", published today.

Mr. Anderson is the god of generating buzz words (think "The Long Tail") and cool, attention-grabbing titles (such as this one). And this article, like his previous book The Long Tail and the mag that he edits, is an interesting read.

"Does this mean that Free will retreat in a down economy? Probably not. The psychological and economic case for it remains as good as ever -- the marginal cost of anything digital falls by 50% every year, making pricing a race to the bottom, and "Free" has as much power over the consumer psyche as ever. But it does mean that Free is not enough. It also has to be matched with Paid. Just as King Gillette's free razors only made business sense paired with expensive blades, so will today's Web entrepreneurs have to not just invent products that people love, but also those that they will pay for. Not all of the people or even most of them -- free is still great marketing and bits are still too cheap to meter -- but enough to pay the bills. Free may be the best price, but it can't be the only one."

Companies need to find a business model that most likely will be based on the "Freemium" model: Free products and services subsidized by the few that actually are willing to Pay. And the Paid price will most likely be extremely low. Companies just have to make it up on volume. Think all the online RPGs that charge gamers $5 a month so that they can get cool weapons for their characters or customize their avatars. I am not sure how well this model will succeed though since my 10 year-old boy refused to pay, out of his own pocket, for the privilege of making his avatar look super duper cool, after I approved of the expense. "Nah, who cares what I look like?" So he uses the money saved on more Pokemon cards. (Hmmm, where is the logic in this decision?)

And I love this line: "The standard business model for Web companies that don't actually have a business model is advertising." (and here is a cartoon to match).

What's the strangest-looking package you have ever received in the mail?

Goodies: this one from my fav radio station (actually the only station I listen to, other than the station that starts playing Christmas music in October...) and one of my fav magazines:

 

Wired Magazine wanted to find out 9 years ago, so they started the "Return to Sender" Contest...

 

Wired Magazine's nine-year "Return to Sender" contest challenged readers to send any "mailable" item through the postal system without packaging.

 

"During the nine years of Wired's Return to Sender contest, we received some weird stuff in the mail: broken hard drives, a 5-foot felt "long tail," a wooden DNA helix, and an 8-track player containing an Engelbert Humperdinck tape. The rules called for readers to send us any mailable object; if it came in an envelope or a box, it was disqualified. Winners had a photo of their entry published and received—drumroll, please—a Wired T-shirt. Oh, and immortal glory."

 

Read more to learn how you can send your own POOP (permissible objects of postability)!

 

The same concept of POOP is behind this company called "Send a Ball": quite literally, you send a ball via mail!  I guess someone out there should be able to start a new company with a different sort of POOP...  (Ok, not the REAL kind, IYKWIM...) 

 

 

 

 

"Pay-As-You-Go Airline Charges by the Minute"

This from one of my fav magazines, Wired.

 

When I saw the headline, I thought to myself, "Great, now they have run out of things to charge us for, since they are asking the passengers to pay for everything including tiny bags of pretzels and water, they are going to charge us for sitting on the runway too?"  Luckily for travelers, the upstart airline, Airtime Airlines based in South Africa, will not be charging their passengers more for time spent by the plane idling and waiting in line to take off.  Whew. Now that's a relief.

 

This reminds me of the "Onion-esque" unveiling of the fictional airliner Derrie-Air threatening to charge by individual passenger's weight: "the more you weigh, the more you'll pay. After all, it takes more fuel—more energy—to get more weight from point A to point B..."  (It's a shame really. That would be one urgent reason for me to finally follow my default annual New Year resolution of getting on a diet...)  Only that Airtime Airlines is not fictional, it is a real airline, or, well, almost a real one, as soon as they get their hands on real aircraft that can fly real passengers... 

 

"Taking a cue from the cellphone industry, an upstart South African airline is selling flights by the minute and allowing customers to buy tickets and book flights via text message...  passengers will buy minutes instead of a traditional point-to-point ticket. They can buy a "starter pack" of prepaid minutes and top off their accounts by purchasing more minutes — by text message — at the going rate of 5 Rand (about 53 cents) a minute. Flight times have been mapped out in advance, so sitting on a runway for three hours won't triple the cost of your ticket.

Topping off accounts is where things get interesting. The cost for Airtime minutes can fluctuate, presumably according to promotions and market factors, so topping off becomes an exercise comparable to fuel hedging. Buy a big block of minutes when you think they're at their cheapest and you look smart, unless the price drops again the next day. Then again, it might go up. The price recently rose from 3 Rand to 5 Rand, meaning the cost of a round-trip flight from Durban to Cape Town climbed from about 750 Rand ($81) to 1,250 Rand (about $134). Still that's cheaper than the $200 it would cost on South African Airlines."

Read the entire article here.