Interrelativity

Interrelativity: musings about interrelatedness

  • Entrepreneurial Karma: Call for Early-Stage Recommender System Startups

    This is pretty cool (though I’m admittedly biased): a mid-stage startup (MyStrands, the company I work for) that has recently secured funding now offering an opportunity to fund an earlier stage startup – a sort of entrepreneurial karma, where we keep the investment flowing in ways that will [hopefully] benefit us all. This initiative is…

  • The Paradox of Choice: Decisions, Happiness and Appreciation

    In addition to seeding my last post – on Dark Nights of the Soul – by sending me a link to an evocative image, Yogi also sent me a link to a 20-minute video of Barry Schwartz giving a presentation on The Paradox of Choice a few years ago at a TED conference. The presentation…

  • Dark Nights of the Soul

    Maureen McHugh, a science fiction writer (who also enjoys "not science fiction" books), has written about the challenges of writing novels (and battling cancer) on her blog, No Feeling of Falling. She augmented her words – which unfold with exquisite openness and vulnerability – with a graphical depiction of the soul work involved in rising…

  • The Onion on Voting, Puppetry and Illusions

    A week ago, The Onion produced a hilarious – not to be confused with Hillaryous – satirical look at the upcoming "election", from the shadowy perspective of reports of Diebold voting machine hacks in Florida a month ago … or perhaps demonstrations of Diebold voting machine hackability a year ago … or perhaps questionable results…

  • Hanging Loose in Maui: a Whale of a Family Vacation

    We spent a relaxing mid-winter break in Hawaii last week, staying at the Polo Beach Club in (or near) Wailea on Maui, the same spot where Amy and I honeymooned nearly 20 years ago. This stay was a little different than the last time – I don't want to say the honeymoon is over, but…

  • Re-rethinking Recommendation Engines: Psychology and the Influence of False Negatives

    Alex Iskold posted an interesting article on Rethinking Recommendation Engines on ReadWriteWeb yesterday. I like (and recommend) his crisp and clear delineation of different types or sources of recommendations – personalized (based on your past behavior), social (based on past behavior of others who are similar to you) and item-based (based on the recommendable items…

  • CharmingBurka: Bridging Gaps and Lifting Veils via Bluetooth

    I visited BoingBoing – one of my favorite blogs – for the first time in [too long] a while, and, as usual, encountered a post of great interest and intrigue: CharmingBurka: CharmingBurka A project by Markus Kison. Synopsis The CharmingBurka sends a self-defined picture of the wearing person to every mobile phone next to it.…

  • The Coming Ad Revolution: Predatory vs. Participatory

    Esther Dyson wrote an insightful opinion piece in Monday’s Wall Street Journal on "The Coming Ad Revolution". I agree with many of her observations and prognostications about how advertising will (and will not) evolve – or, perhaps, revolve – but I had a strong adverse reaction to her use of "targeting" with respect to the…

  • Music and Personality: Reflective and Complex

    As part of my ongoing personal and professional re-engagement with music (since the initiation of my instigation at MyStrands), and renewed exploration of how tastes in music and other media can offer new opportunities for engagement marketing, I was reading up on some of the work by Peter Jason Rentfrow and Sam Gosling on music…

  • Commenting on Validation / Validating Comments

    Ever since my last post, which started out about locked-in syndrome (inspired by The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), but which developed into a revisitation of a frequently discussed topic [on this blog] – "the need for approval … for validation … for appreciation … for mattering" – I’ve been attuned to validation in a…