Eric Reasons

---150 Connections: The difference between a Community and an Audience--- I found myself in a conversation with friend and sometimes mentor, Nathan Hughes ( @ndh313 ), about the upper bound of one's social connections. Back in the 90's Robin Dunbar proposed an upper limit of around 150 real social connections (knowing who a person is and what their relationship is to you). Scientists have recently used Twitter as a laboratory to confirm that this number holds true , even with all the recent advances in social networking technology. This number has also been confirmed by actual practice throughout the range of human experiences , from hunter-gatherer societies to corporate organizations, to the U.S. military. In our new social media landscape, this limit seems to manifest itself in two interesting effects: Most of you have probably already observed the first effect, and it is unlikely to surprise you: those of us who follow hundreds or thousands on Twitter or Facebook will...

Dennis Yang posted " If Amateur Photographers Are As Good As Professionals, Then We Can All Be Professional Photographers " over at Techdirt recently. It's a nice article and well worth a moment of your time to read. When I Buzzed the article , I got a comment that's really worth addressing from a friend and (quite skilled) amateur photographer. He says: While this is true in some senses, it really only affects the middle to lower tier of talent. Just like in any other medium where technological advances have lowered the bar to entry to fields that were once the preview of only "professionals", having access to professional tools and getting professional results are not the same thing. [...] Creative talent, in many cases, is still a "get what you pay for" field, whether the masses have access to the same tools or not. He's correct, and this is the real crux of the Information Revolution, and how it impacts our culture and economy. *** On one h...