On The Margins

(Masood Mortazavi)

(Books)(Blogger)(java.net)

Friday March 13, 2009

[ Personal ] Interview -- Second Part

Sun's web team has just posted the second part of the interview that Janice Heiss conducted with me recently.

Janice has also written a very good summary of the interview. In conducting the interview, Janice gave me an opportunity to go over some of my own thinking in the subject matters we considered together. I'm truly grateful to her for turning this into a productive conversation that goes well beyond the expected questions. Thank you Janice.

This interview was originally conducted for java.net and Sun Developer Network.

2009-03-13 17:13:59.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
computing databases ideas java life personal practice technology work

Sunday June 15, 2008

[ Society ] Opinions and Social Pressure

Solomon E. Asch's "Opinions and Social Pressure" (Scientific American, Vol 193, No. 5, 1955) was probably one of the best papers I read during an organizational behavior class I took at Haas School of Business during my studies there. (Barry M. Staw has published the paper in his Psychological Dimensions of Organizational Behavior. The 2nd edition had the paper, and I'm sure Professor Staw has kept it for his 3rd edition. )

A BBC radio program gives very good summary of the paper and Asch's other research on social pressure and conformity.

The following video (posted on Youtube) presents a summary sense of one of Asch's conformity experiments:

2008-06-15 13:13:06.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
evidence ideas opinion pressure social

Sunday April 13, 2008

[ Society ] The Real News

In modern times, distribution has become the bottleneck or the "filter" for ideas.

Those sources that have access or control of distribution shape the ideas that arrive before our eyes and ears.

Internet, at least as it stands today, affords distribution to other sources. However, this medium of distribution might not last long as we know it and, as the volume of content grows, searching for what matters becomes like searching for a needle in a giant haystack.

Example: I don't even remember how I ran into The Real News Network (Beta) reports, including the report embedded here, and some others, including one on Iraq.

2008-04-13 00:53:12.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
democracy distribution ideas internet news

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