Must-Read Weekend Reading

Give Up Me to be Accepted by You?
I am friends with John Hagel in real life, and always appreciate that his FB feed is genuine. He does not use FB as a reposting of content from twitter ala Tim O’Reilly and other good folks. He uses it to have a forum to engage “the edge” as he calls it. Earlier this week, John got a strange request to take something off his feed. And that caused him to write this essay on identity well-worth reading.

So, I am here with all my edges.  If that makes you uncomfortable or upsets you, you are welcome to un-friend me or just move on if you are part of the public beyond my friend network.  There are many other interesting people on Facebook to get to know. You are also welcome to express your displeasure on my wall if you are part of my friend network. I admit that I sometimes post things in part to stir up some controversy. I welcome debate and expressions of personal views. I want to get to know you as well.

More here. There are many that will argue to continue to live compartmentalized lives, choosing to not share much on any social network, but I want us to consider what happens when we move from a world of resumes to a world of portfolios, where our passions actually make up part of what we do for work.

Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple – Who will Win?
An amazingly deep piece on the 4 titans of tech influencing all business and many consumer trends. By Farhad Manjoo, whom I find to be one of the few thoughtful writers doing actual analysis.

To state this as clearly as possible: The four American companies that have come to define 21st-century information technology and entertainment are on the verge of war. Over the next two years, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will increasingly collide in the markets for mobile phones and tablets, mobile apps, social networking, and more. This competition will be intense. Each of the four has shown competitive excellence, strategic genius, and superb execution that have left the rest of the world in the dust. HP, for example, tried to take a run at Apple head-on, with its TouchPad, the product of its $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm. HP bailed out after an embarrassingly short 49-day run, and it cost CEO Léo Apotheker his job. Microsoft’s every move must be viewed as a reaction to the initiatives of these smarter, nimbler, and now, in the case of Apple, richer companies. When a company like Hulu goes on the block, these four companies are immediately seen as possible acquirers, and why not? They have the best weapons–weapons that will now be turned on one another as they seek more room to grow.

There was a time, not long ago, when you could sum up each company quite neatly: Apple made consumer electronics, Google ran a search engine, Amazon was a web store, and Facebook was a social network. How quaint that assessment seems today.

Interesting throughout, it’s well worth the long read. (The magazine layout is easier to read so worth picking up the copy.)

Occupy Wall Street – Still Don’t Get It?
Many people don’t get the movement. So when I saw this, and did a guffah, I thought it was worth sharing.

“While a mortgage CEO received a 40-month sentence for stealing $3,000,000,000, a homeless man who turned himself in received 15 years for stealing $100.”

People who wonder what the 99% are whining about maybe don’t experience inequity and therefore don’t feel a sense of injustice. I wrote my take on it here, and I continue to believe not enough people get it because it is hard to define what “it” is. The OWS thing is hard also to define because they are not pushing against something as much fighting for something. During the last civil unrest, it was easy to say “no to war” but harder to know what peace looked like. But this is typically how change happens … in messy, ill-formed ideas getting assembled together by willing participants who want a shared outcome…

<Enjoy your weekend. Celebrate life.>