Seth Godin recounts the story of Google and their motto, ‘dont be evil’. He begins with their start in contrast to Yahoo. Moves onto the death of RSS and rise of the algorithms. This has now moved to a push for changes to email. What it means to be evil today has morphed and Google may have lost track of this. The question then is what needs to be done to reign them in?
Tag: Akimbo
Seth Godin explains that we are moving away from where something came from and what it does for us.
In the Q and A section, Godin provides his own origin story is having the confidence to speak up when you have a story to tell.
Culture is what we do when people like us do things like this.
Riffing off the book Chasing the Moon, Seth Godin shares a number of chances and coincidences associated with flying to the moon.
Gravity’s not just a good idea…it’s the law
In the Q&A at the end of this episode of Akimbo, Seth Godin explains that to focus on Kickstarter (or Kickfinisher) and Patreon misses the point. It is not about improving all the aspects of Patreon, rather it is about building up our permission base.
We always pick our dots
Beware the legal-industrial copyright complex
Seth Godin provides an interesting discussion about copyright, creative commons and spreading ideas. This includes a reflection on the impact that the recent GDPR proposals around copyright would have on the web.
So you’re playing a game. You’re playing a game when run a business. You’re playing a game when you run a project. You’re playing a game when you wake up in the morning and turn on the internet. The question we need to ask ourselves is, is this a game worth playing? Am I getting better at this game? Is this game helping the people around me? Am I glad I am playing this game?
Seth Godin discusses the many games that consume our lives. He encourages us to stop and consider all aspects of life, not just the explicit games. Being in the midst of the Spring Racing Carnival in Victoria, this is an interesting topic to consider. This reminds me of a comment from Tom Chatfield on RN Future Tense:
So in the broad sense you could almost go as far as saying things like Twitter or Facebook are a kind of very clever game because people have a profile which they care about, and they are constantly in the business of trying to make numbers go up, trying to get more followers, trying to get more likes, trying to get more tweets or re-tweets. They are comparing themselves to other people. Again, in Twitter there’s a sort of global scoring system where you can see where you are ranked. And there are these very playful dynamics as well whereby you are free to do anything you like within the rules of the game, within the magic circle there on screen. You can switch on, you can switch off, you can like, you can unlike, you can really indulge whimsy. So that’s one thing.
The power (and the myth) of getting picked
Seth Godin argues that if we cannot pick ourselves then who is going to pick us? This has me thinking about gaslighting and the stories we come to tell ourselves.
Seth Godin reflects on the changes to his blog over time. This is related to his recent move to WordPress as a blogging platform. In the process he discusses changes to blogging, particularly related to SEO. He also touches on the importance of being specific, generous and consistent enough when connecting ideas.
What it means to be a genius is to be generously persistent.