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All rights reserved. webmaster@world-of-newave.com (Webmaster) Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:44:12 GMT Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:44:12 GMT Newave Lisa XML Engine v1.0 - http://www.world-of-newave.info/about.htm 60 http://www.world-of-newave.info/images/wi8831.gif World-of-Newave.info - Knowledge and Informational Database http://www.world-of-newave.info/ 88 31 {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Crowdsourcing Book Excerpt: The Canary in the Coal Mine http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/crowdsourcing-book-excerpt-the-canary-in-the-coal-20080913513.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/crowdsourcing-book-excerpt-the-canary-in-the-coal-20080913513.htm Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:00:00 GMT First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, "crowdsourcing" describes the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of the specialized few. Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise -- it's talented, creative and stunningly productive. Crowdsourcing activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. It's a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education and job history no longer matter, where the quality of work is all that counts and every field is open to people of every imaginable background. If you can perform the service, design the product or solve the problem, you've got the job. But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent employed, research conducted and products made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable. When the original article was published, crowdsourcing still constituted a nascent business model. A few small companies had achieved limited successes with it, and large companies had only begun to test the waters. In this excerpt, Howe argues that in just two years crowdsourcing has revolutionized an entire industry -- stock photography -- and may well be poised to create disruption in other fields as well. - - - Adapted from Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, by Jeff Howe. More at Howe's Crowdsourcing Blog. Chapter 7: The Canary in the Coal Mine There's a story people like to tell about Bruce Livingstone. In late 2005, Getty Images, the world's largest photo agency, was looking to acquire Livingstone's company, iStockphoto, the world's most successful crowdsourcing company. Long before the contracts were drawn up, Livingstone, to show his commitment to the deal, tattooed the word "Getty" in cursive across the tender flesh on his inner wrist. Then he e-mailed Getty CEO Jonathan Klein photos of the tattoo under the message: "Don't make me write another word after this!" It's just the kind of tale -- emblematic of determination and just the right amount of quirky eccentricity -- that tends to burnish the reputation of its subject. In Livingstone's case, it has the added benefit of being demonstrably true. With his penchant for muscle cars, rockabilly haircuts and, yes, tattoos, it's tempting to call Livingstone an unlikely CEO. But I prefer to think of Livingstone as a perfectly reasonable chief for some corporation from, say, the year 2020. A company not unlike iStockphoto. Located in a single, cavernous room inside a former factory in downtown Calgary (Alberta, Canada), iStockphoto houses a tiny fraction of its actual workforce. And Livingstone, dressed in T-shirt and jeans, occupies a desk -- chosen, it would seem, at random -- in the middle of the floor. The corner office clearly loses significance in a company that thrives on decentralization. Jeff Howe explains crowdsourcing, which activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. Video: Courtesy of Jeff Howe Westeel Rosco built the factory in 1925 to manufacture nails, screws and other bits of hardware. Unlike Westeel Rosco, iStock's products -- stock photos, illustrations and videos -- aren't manufactured on-site. They're created by a global, fluid workforce of 60,000 part-time photographers and artists, only a fraction of whom make a living from the work they sell on iStock. Yet they have a devotion to the company matched by few traditional firms. The full-time staffers who spend their days in the old Westeel Rosco plant play a support role for the community -- and community is the only applicable word -- that is making the product iStock brings to market every day. And that community has been very, very good to Livingstone and his investors. In the course of several years iStock has grown from a hobby to the third-largest purveyor of stock images in the world. When Getty purchased iStock in early 2006, Livingstone took home more than half of the $50 million Getty paid for the company. The first stock photo agency was founded in 1920, and for most of the 20th century the industry was an afterthought, trafficking in the outtakes from commercial magazine assignments. Very few photographers tried to make a living off the market in preexisting images alone. This changed after the desktop publishing revolution of the mid-1980s led to a rapid growth in the publishing industry, and to a commensurate demand for images. Suddenly photographers were making six figures a year selling photos they'd already been paid to shoot. It was like minting money. Stock photography is, in relative terms, a tiny industry. The annual global gross for the entire business is estimated to be around $2 billion, which makes it a bit bigger than the market for gift baskets, but a little smaller than the annual sales of orchids. But this little industry has undergone big changes, and could well be a case study in how the crowd will impact much larger businesses. In just the last few years the influx of talented amateurs armed with inexpensive, high-resolution digital cameras has upended the economics of stock photography. Five years ago, a professional-quality image was still a scarce resource. No more. This isn't to say the market for high-end photographs has disappeared. A gifted photographer will always find work. But the professional no longer has a lock on the middle and lower ends of the stock photo business. With a modicum of training, just about anyone can take a decent shot. Sophisticated cameras and photo-editing software do the rest. iStock exploits this fact. Design firms and other small companies working on a budget quickly embraced what became known as the "microstock" model. One graphic designer told me he went from paying hundreds of dollars an image to less than $10. "I pass on some of the savings to my clients and keep the rest. We're both delighted." iStock might be great for buyers, but it's caused all sorts of headaches for professional stock photographers. In my original Wired article about crowdsourcing I quoted a Los Angeles-based photographer, Mark Harmel, saying that this influx of cheap images had caused a slight decline in his income from stock photo sales, which had dropped to $60,000. But in the two years since that decline has fallen off a cliff, to $35,000 in 2007. "If I look at the trend line, it just keeps going down. I'm really concentrating on getting assignments now," says Harmel. "I recently came back from London with 70 really wonderful shots. I'll probably use them on my website, but it's not worth my time to bother submitting them to a stock agency. They won't sell." Harmel's far from alone. In fact, Getty's other businesses have struggled in the crowdsourced era. In the year I spent writing this book the company's stock slid 60 percent, falling to just under $22 by February 2008. That month Getty was acquired by the private equity firm Hellman Friedman for $2.4 billion, a considerably lower figure than the company had originally sought. According to a report released at the time of the sale, Goldman Sachs estimates that Getty's core business -- the sale of rights-managed, professionally produced images -- will continue to suffer an irreversible decline, falling to just 29 percent of its revenues by 2012. In the same period the investment bank projects iStock to continue its rapid rate of growth. iStock sold $72 million worth of images in 2007, a figure expected to jump to $262 million by 2012. In this light, paying $50 million for a crowdsourced photo company looks like the smartest decision Getty ever made. The company is in the midst of transforming its business, from one reliant exclusively on professionals to one that is at least equally reliant on amateurs. As the Goliath of the industry, where Getty goes its competitors are sure to follow, which is to say, stock photography itself has been utterly transformed through crowdsourcing, in which a once-scarce commodity has become abundant. The question to ask is whether the upheaval roiling stock photography is only a leading indicator, like the minor volcanic eruptions that can precede a catastrophic earthquake. Already the trend is migrating to other fields. Most immediately, the same dynamics that made the stock photo ubiquitous -- affordable digital SLR cameras and burgeoning communities of enthusiastic amateurs -- are affecting other markets for visual images. So-called "citizen paparazzi" use cellphone cameras to snap impromptu shots of stars and then sell them to new photo agencies such as Scoopt, which specialize in buying up and marketing their work. Amateurs can beat professional paparazzi for the simple reason that they vastly outnumber them. It's a question of probability: The throng of pedestrians in Greenwich Village, for instance, have a much better chance of catching an unkempt Gwyneth Paltrow than a single paparazzo. And photography may well be just the beginning. iStock itself is doing a burgeoning business in the sale of stock video footage, and the crowd is also making commercials, collaborating on TV scripts, and recording and distributing their own music. They're writing political analysis, creating their own video games, and making feature-length movies. For the time being, all this activity has taken place in something of a parallel universe, without causing any of the economic upheaval visited on the stock photo or pornography industries. But those universes are beginning to collide as more companies attempt to package all this outpouring of creativity into a marketable product. While crowdsourcing has already emerged as a potent force in the media and entertainment industries, it's also profoundly influenced the way even Fortune 100 companies like Procter & Gamble do business. Once famous for its insular culture, Procter & Gamble now crowdsources much of its R&D process, using global networks of scientists such as InnoCentive and NineSigma, which boast a combined membership of 2 million professional and amateur researchers. Even companies operating in a conventional field such as mining have found crowdsourcing applications. The Canadian gold-mining group Goldcorp put geological survey data online and offered a $575,000 prize to anyone who could identify likely areas for exploration. Goldcorp says the contest produced 110 targets that yielded $3 billion in gold. Following its lead, the mining giant Barrick Gold Corporation recently offered $10 million to anyone who could improve its silver-extraction process. The open call of crowdsourcing is also being used by companies such as Google (to develop applications for its Android mobile platform) and Netflix (to improve its recommendation system). The question is whether the iStock secret sauce can be applied to industries like television and journalism and, possibly, even beyond to any business that traffics in bits and bytes. To answer that question, it helps to know what's in the secret sauce. The Community Is the Company iStock has been compared to a cult, and the analogy isn't entirely unfair. It's no accident that the most successful companies in the web's second coming -- most of whom traffic in the crowd's creative output -- are led by outsize personalities. "Bruce is to iStock what Tom is to MySpace," notes Garth Johnson, iStock's VP of Business Development. (Johnson resigned his position after this book went to press.) For those readers over the age of 30, Tom is Tom Anderson, the president of the social networking behemoth MySpace and the first "friend" to greet any new user. Under this new archetype of a company -- in which the community, as much as the customer, comes first -- the cult of personality plays a crucial role in community building, and Livingstone has been as essential to the growth of the iStock community as Anderson has been to MySpace's. "Bruce has a really strong, extremely charismatic personality online," says Johnson. "And that's really helped us build the community." It's safe to say that iStock has left the community-building phase behind: Sixty-thousand people have combined to create an enormous portfolio of over 3.5 million images and 100,000 videos. By contrast, Getty's other divisions combined only use 2,500 photographers. The iStockers offer the company their artwork, and in return iStock goes to extraordinary lengths to keep the iStockers happy. The site offers the budding photographer all manner of free tutorials, and the forums buzz -- at a rate of 38 posts per minute -- with questions about lens sizes, polarized filters and F-stop settings. iStock doesn't offer a chance to get rich. It offers the chance to make friends and become a better photographer. "We don't own anything, the community does" says Johnson. "Everything we do affects these people, whether they're just earning enough to pay for their equipment, or they're making mortgage payments from their photo sales. They all want a voice, and we have to give it to them, because really, the community is the company." The upside to this state of affairs should be obvious -- a dedicated, efficient workforce with no expectation of receiving a living wage -- but there are downsides as well: Even the smallest changes can roil the fickle, passionate community of iStockers. In March 2006, iStock launched a new feature on its web forums, a "forometer" which measured an iStocker's popularity through "bafflingly complex scientific methods" including the date and number of posts to the forum. The forometer displayed its results through a set of red, yellow or green bars. It did not go over well. The community questioned the principles behind the feature, as well as its functionality. Not long after its launch, the feature had been removed. Employees may be hell on overhead, but they're paid to accept all but the most draconian policies with a polite nod. Communities, on the other hand, aren't paid to stick around, and nothing stops them from selling their photos to one of iStock's many competitors. "They don't work for us," Livingstone laughs. "We work for them." If the iStocker feels a sense of ownership over the site, that's understandable: The iStock community predates iStock the company. Livingstone didn't set out to revolutionize an industry, he just wanted to fill a personal need and help a few friends at the same time. In 2000 Livingstone was running a small graphic design and web-hosting firm in Calgary. Bruce is an avid photographer himself, and over the years he had developed an extensive network of photographers and designers. Early in the year he took 2,000 of his images and put them online. Anyone could download his photos in exchange for giving him an e-mail address. Livingstone's friends decided they wanted to share their images with the public, too. That June the budding community instituted a credit system: A user could download one image for every image of theirs that had been downloaded by someone else. It was a classic example of the gift economy, the non-monetary exchange that grew up alongside the internet. During iStock's early years, everyone took something and gave something in turn. "The feeders and the eaters were the same people," as Livingstone puts it. Everyone profited by acquiring new images, though no one made (or spent) a dime. Soon friends of friends heard about Bruce's nifty idea and started uploading their images, too. Then around 2002 a wider public got wind of iStock, and the site began to hit critical mass. Soon Livingstone was paying $10,000 a month for the bandwidth to support it. He could have taken advertising to cover the cost of hosting, but he felt that would violate the spirit of the site. "The focus was on the community, and good design. Advertising would have cluttered the site," says Livingstone. Instead, he started charging a quarter for each image, and he opened the system up to the public. This proved to be a momentous decision. Word quickly spread among publishers that there was a site offering cheap, usable images, and photographers began flocking to iStock to upload their portfolios. Traffic to the site skyrocketed, and soon Livingstone raised the price to $1 per image. "I thought it might become a sideline business," he says. It quickly became much more than that. The quality of the images wasn't always as high (or as consistent) as a traditional stock agency's, but the differences were indiscernible to the general consumer, and after all, you couldn't beat the price. By 2004 a host of other so-called "micro-stocks" had sprung up with strategies similar to iStock's. The professionals panicked. Microstock photos, they charged, were flooding the market with subpar images. At first, the industry aligned itself against iStockphoto and other microstock agencies such as ShutterStock and Dreamstime. Then in early 2006, Getty announced it would buy iStockphoto for $50 million. "If someone's going to cannibalize your business, better it be one of your other businesses," Getty CEO Jonathan Klein told me shortly after the sale. Smaller magazines, nonprofit organizations, and all manner of websites have continued to flock to iStock's high-volume, low-cost model. As of February 2008, iStockphoto had 2 million regular customers purchasing photographs, video footage, illustrations and animations. "Bruce's brilliance," Jonathan Klein once told me, "is that he turned community into commerce." Livingstone uses a slightly different formulation: "I turned commerce into community," iStockphoto has perfected the Jedi Mind Trick that's at the heart of crowdsourcing. It's an incredibly cost-effective strategy -- iStock boasts a 55 percent profit margin. And yet, Livingstone stumbled into this business model by creating a context -- a community of like-minded enthusiasts -- in which financial measures take a backseat to considerably less tangible concerns. Ask someone in the office, and they'll tell you: It's not about the money. Ask an iStocker and they'll tell you the same thing. In fact -- would-be crowdsources take note: If it is about the money, it won't work. It will fizzle, not sizzle, as one of iStock's designers put it. "What's funny is, the money people, they pretty quickly get pulled aside in the forums by the core people. Or they just don't have a voice. People will ignore them, like 'Oh, that's just so and so, they're just here to make money.'" That doesn't mean the iStockers are unmotivated by self-interest. The more a photographer's images are downloaded, the more recognition they receive in the community, and the more credits they earn to download other people's photos to use in their own designs. And the additional income is also welcome, of course. Unlike other cases in which large corporations have attempted to monetize community, iStock does reward its contributors. It paid out $21 million in 2007. It's significant that people in online communities like iStock's react with great hostility to the idea that crowdsourcing is a form of cheap labor -- despite the fact it demonstrably is. After all, no one wants to feel exploited. In the end, what iStock provides is an invaluable if impossible-to-measure currency: meaning. The crowd will give away their time -- their excess capacity -- enthusiastically, but not for free. It has to be a meaningful exchange. Wired.Com Crowdsourcing Book Excerpt: The Canary in the Coal Mine {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - First identified by journalist Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, "crowdsourcing" describes the process by which the power of the many can be leveraged to accomplish feats that were once the province of the specialized few. Howe reveals that the crowd is more than wise -- it's talented, creative and stunningly productive. Crowdsourcing activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. It's a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education and job history no longer matter, where the quality of work is all that counts and every field is open to people of every imaginable background. If you can perform the service, design the product or solve the problem, you've got the job. But crowdsourcing has also triggered a dramatic shift in the way work is organized, talent employed, research conducted and products made and marketed. As the crowd comes to supplant traditional forms of labor, pain and disruption are inevitable. When the original article was published, crowdsourcing still constituted a nascent business model. A few small companies had achieved limited successes with it, and large companies had only begun to test the waters. In this excerpt, Howe argues that in just two years crowdsourcing has revolutionized an entire industry -- stock photography -- and may well be poised to create disruption in other fields as well. - - - Adapted from Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, by Jeff Howe. More at Howe's Crowdsourcing Blog. Chapter 7: The Canary in the Coal Mine There's a story people like to tell about Bruce Livingstone. In late 2005, Getty Images, the world's largest photo agency, was looking to acquire Livingstone's company, iStockphoto, the world's most successful crowdsourcing company. Long before the contracts were drawn up, Livingstone, to show his commitment to the deal, tattooed the word "Getty" in cursive across the tender flesh on his inner wrist. Then he e-mailed Getty CEO Jonathan Klein photos of the tattoo under the message: "Don't make me write another word after this!" It's just the kind of tale -- emblematic of determination and just the right amount of quirky eccentricity -- that tends to burnish the reputation of its subject. In Livingstone's case, it has the added benefit of being demonstrably true. With his penchant for muscle cars, rockabilly haircuts and, yes, tattoos, it's tempting to call Livingstone an unlikely CEO. But I prefer to think of Livingstone as a perfectly reasonable chief for some corporation from, say, the year 2020. A company not unlike iStockphoto. Located in a single, cavernous room inside a former factory in downtown Calgary (Alberta, Canada), iStockphoto houses a tiny fraction of its actual workforce. And Livingstone, dressed in T-shirt and jeans, occupies a desk -- chosen, it would seem, at random -- in the middle of the floor. The corner office clearly loses significance in a company that thrives on decentralization. Jeff Howe explains crowdsourcing, which activates the transformative power of today's technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. Video: Courtesy of Jeff Howe Westeel Rosco built the factory in 1925 to manufacture nails, screws and other bits of hardware. Unlike Westeel Rosco, iStock's products -- stock photos, illustrations and videos -- aren't manufactured on-site. They're created by a global, fluid workforce of 60,000 part-time photographers and artists, only a fraction of whom make a living from the work they sell on iStock. Yet they have a devotion to the company matched by few traditional firms. The full-time staffers who spend their days in the old Westeel Rosco plant play a support role for the community -- and community is the only applicable word -- that is making the product iStock brings to market every day. And that community has been very, very good to Livingstone and his investors. In the course of several years iStock has grown from a hobby to the third-largest purveyor of stock images in the world. When Getty purchased iStock in early 2006, Livingstone took home more than half of the $50 million Getty paid for the company. The first stock photo agency was founded in 1920, and for most of the 20th century the industry was an afterthought, trafficking in the outtakes from commercial magazine assignments. Very few photographers tried to make a living off the market in preexisting images alone. This changed after the desktop publishing revolution of the mid-1980s led to a rapid growth in the publishing industry, and to a commensurate demand for images. Suddenly photographers were making six figures a year selling photos they'd already been paid to shoot. It was like minting money. Stock photography is, in relative terms, a tiny industry. The annual global gross for the entire business is estimated to be around $2 billion, which makes it a bit bigger than the market for gift baskets, but a little smaller than the annual sales of orchids. But this little industry has undergone big changes, and could well be a case study in how the crowd will impact much larger businesses. In just the last few years the influx of talented amateurs armed with inexpensive, high-resolution digital cameras has upended the economics of stock photography. Five years ago, a professional-quality image was still a scarce resource. No more. This isn't to say the market for high-end photographs has disappeared. A gifted photographer will always find work. But the professional no longer has a lock on the middle and lower ends of the stock photo business. With a modicum of training, just about anyone can take a decent shot. Sophisticated cameras and photo-editing software do the rest. iStock exploits this fact. Design firms and other small companies working on a budget quickly embraced what became known as the "microstock" model. One graphic designer told me he went from paying hundreds of dollars an image to less than $10. "I pass on some of the savings to my clients and keep the rest. We're both delighted." iStock might be great for buyers, but it's caused all sorts of headaches for professional stock photographers. In my original Wired article about crowdsourcing I quoted a Los Angeles-based photographer, Mark Harmel, saying that this influx of cheap images had caused a slight decline in his income from stock photo sales, which had dropped to $60,000. But in the two years since that decline has fallen off a cliff, to $35,000 in 2007. "If I look at the trend line, it just keeps going down. I'm really concentrating on getting assignments now," says Harmel. "I recently came back from London with 70 really wonderful shots. I'll probably use them on my website, but it's not worth my time to bother submitting them to a stock agency. They won't sell." Harmel's far from alone. In fact, Getty's other businesses have struggled in the crowdsourced era. In the year I spent writing this book the company's stock slid 60 percent, falling to just under $22 by February 2008. That month Getty was acquired by the private equity firm Hellman Friedman for $2.4 billion, a considerably lower figure than the company had originally sought. According to a report released at the time of the sale, Goldman Sachs estimates that Getty's core business -- the sale of rights-managed, professionally produced images -- will continue to suffer an irreversible decline, falling to just 29 percent of its revenues by 2012. In the same period the investment bank projects iStock to continue its rapid rate of growth. iStock sold $72 million worth of images in 2007, a figure expected to jump to $262 million by 2012. In this light, paying $50 million for a crowdsourced photo company looks like the smartest decision Getty ever made. The company is in the midst of transforming its business, from one reliant exclusively on professionals to one that is at least equally reliant on amateurs. As the Goliath of the industry, where Getty goes its competitors are sure to follow, which is to say, stock photography itself has been utterly transformed through crowdsourcing, in which a once-scarce commodity has become abundant. The question to ask is whether the upheaval roiling stock photography is only a leading indicator, like the minor volcanic eruptions that can precede a catastrophic earthquake. Already the trend is migrating to other fields. Most immediately, the same dynamics that made the stock photo ubiquitous -- affordable digital SLR cameras and burgeoning communities of enthusiastic amateurs -- are affecting other markets for visual images. So-called "citizen paparazzi" use cellphone cameras to snap impromptu shots of stars and then sell them to new photo agencies such as Scoopt, which specialize in buying up and marketing their work. Amateurs can beat professional paparazzi for the simple reason that they vastly outnumber them. It's a question of probability: The throng of pedestrians in Greenwich Village, for instance, have a much better chance of catching an unkempt Gwyneth Paltrow than a single paparazzo. And photography may well be just the beginning. iStock itself is doing a burgeoning business in the sale of stock video footage, and the crowd is also making commercials, collaborating on TV scripts, and recording and distributing their own music. They're writing political analysis, creating their own video games, and making feature-length movies. For the time being, all this activity has taken place in something of a parallel universe, without causing any of the economic upheaval visited on the stock photo or pornography industries. But those universes are beginning to collide as more companies attempt to package all this outpouring of creativity into a marketable product. While crowdsourcing has already emerged as a potent force in the media and entertainment industries, it's also profoundly influenced the way even Fortune 100 companies like Procter & Gamble do business. Once famous for its insular culture, Procter & Gamble now crowdsources much of its R&D process, using global networks of scientists such as InnoCentive and NineSigma, which boast a combined membership of 2 million professional and amateur researchers. Even companies operating in a conventional field such as mining have found crowdsourcing applications. The Canadian gold-mining group Goldcorp put geological survey data online and offered a $575,000 prize to anyone who could identify likely areas for exploration. Goldcorp says the contest produced 110 targets that yielded $3 billion in gold. Following its lead, the mining giant Barrick Gold Corporation recently offered $10 million to anyone who could improve its silver-extraction process. The open call of crowdsourcing is also being used by companies such as Google (to develop applications for its Android mobile platform) and Netflix (to improve its recommendation system). The question is whether the iStock secret sauce can be applied to industries like television and journalism and, possibly, even beyond to any business that traffics in bits and bytes. To answer that question, it helps to know what's in the secret sauce. The Community Is the Company iStock has been compared to a cult, and the analogy isn't entirely unfair. It's no accident that the most successful companies in the web's second coming -- most of whom traffic in the crowd's creative output -- are led by outsize personalities. "Bruce is to iStock what Tom is to MySpace," notes Garth Johnson, iStock's VP of Business Development. (Johnson resigned his position after this book went to press.) For those readers over the age of 30, Tom is Tom Anderson, the president of the social networking behemoth MySpace and the first "friend" to greet any new user. Under this new archetype of a company -- in which the community, as much as the customer, comes first -- the cult of personality plays a crucial role in community building, and Livingstone has been as essential to the growth of the iStock community as Anderson has been to MySpace's. "Bruce has a really strong, extremely charismatic personality online," says Johnson. "And that's really helped us build the community." It's safe to say that iStock has left the community-building phase behind: Sixty-thousand people have combined to create an enormous portfolio of over 3.5 million images and 100,000 videos. By contrast, Getty's other divisions combined only use 2,500 photographers. The iStockers offer the company their artwork, and in return iStock goes to extraordinary lengths to keep the iStockers happy. The site offers the budding photographer all manner of free tutorials, and the forums buzz -- at a rate of 38 posts per minute -- with questions about lens sizes, polarized filters and F-stop settings. iStock doesn't offer a chance to get rich. It offers the chance to make friends and become a better photographer. "We don't own anything, the community does" says Johnson. "Everything we do affects these people, whether they're just earning enough to pay for their equipment, or they're making mortgage payments from their photo sales. They all want a voice, and we have to give it to them, because really, the community is the company." The upside to this state of affairs should be obvious -- a dedicated, efficient workforce with no expectation of receiving a living wage -- but there are downsides as well: Even the smallest changes can roil the fickle, passionate community of iStockers. In March 2006, iStock launched a new feature on its web forums, a "forometer" which measured an iStocker's popularity through "bafflingly complex scientific methods" including the date and number of posts to the forum. The forometer displayed its results through a set of red, yellow or green bars. It did not go over well. The community questioned the principles behind the feature, as well as its functionality. Not long after its launch, the feature had been removed. Employees may be hell on overhead, but they're paid to accept all but the most draconian policies with a polite nod. Communities, on the other hand, aren't paid to stick around, and nothing stops them from selling their photos to one of iStock's many competitors. "They don't work for us," Livingstone laughs. "We work for them." If the iStocker feels a sense of ownership over the site, that's understandable: The iStock community predates iStock the company. Livingstone didn't set out to revolutionize an industry, he just wanted to fill a personal need and help a few friends at the same time. In 2000 Livingstone was running a small graphic design and web-hosting firm in Calgary. Bruce is an avid photographer himself, and over the years he had developed an extensive network of photographers and designers. Early in the year he took 2,000 of his images and put them online. Anyone could download his photos in exchange for giving him an e-mail address. Livingstone's friends decided they wanted to share their images with the public, too. That June the budding community instituted a credit system: A user could download one image for every image of theirs that had been downloaded by someone else. It was a classic example of the gift economy, the non-monetary exchange that grew up alongside the internet. During iStock's early years, everyone took something and gave something in turn. "The feeders and the eaters were the same people," as Livingstone puts it. Everyone profited by acquiring new images, though no one made (or spent) a dime. Soon friends of friends heard about Bruce's nifty idea and started uploading their images, too. Then around 2002 a wider public got wind of iStock, and the site began to hit critical mass. Soon Livingstone was paying $10,000 a month for the bandwidth to support it. He could have taken advertising to cover the cost of hosting, but he felt that would violate the spirit of the site. "The focus was on the community, and good design. Advertising would have cluttered the site," says Livingstone. Instead, he started charging a quarter for each image, and he opened the system up to the public. This proved to be a momentous decision. Word quickly spread among publishers that there was a site offering cheap, usable images, and photographers began flocking to iStock to upload their portfolios. Traffic to the site skyrocketed, and soon Livingstone raised the price to $1 per image. "I thought it might become a sideline business," he says. It quickly became much more than that. The quality of the images wasn't always as high (or as consistent) as a traditional stock agency's, but the differences were indiscernible to the general consumer, and after all, you couldn't beat the price. By 2004 a host of other so-called "micro-stocks" had sprung up with strategies similar to iStock's. The professionals panicked. Microstock photos, they charged, were flooding the market with subpar images. At first, the industry aligned itself against iStockphoto and other microstock agencies such as ShutterStock and Dreamstime. Then in early 2006, Getty announced it would buy iStockphoto for $50 million. "If someone's going to cannibalize your business, better it be one of your other businesses," Getty CEO Jonathan Klein told me shortly after the sale. Smaller magazines, nonprofit organizations, and all manner of websites have continued to flock to iStock's high-volume, low-cost model. As of February 2008, iStockphoto had 2 million regular customers purchasing photographs, video footage, illustrations and animations. "Bruce's brilliance," Jonathan Klein once told me, "is that he turned community into commerce." Livingstone uses a slightly different formulation: "I turned commerce into community," iStockphoto has perfected the Jedi Mind Trick that's at the heart of crowdsourcing. It's an incredibly cost-effective strategy -- iStock boasts a 55 percent profit margin. And yet, Livingstone stumbled into this business model by creating a context -- a community of like-minded enthusiasts -- in which financial measures take a backseat to considerably less tangible concerns. Ask someone in the office, and they'll tell you: It's not about the money. Ask an iStocker and they'll tell you the same thing. In fact -- would-be crowdsources take note: If it is about the money, it won't work. It will fizzle, not sizzle, as one of iStock's designers put it. "What's funny is, the money people, they pretty quickly get pulled aside in the forums by the core people. Or they just don't have a voice. People will ignore them, like 'Oh, that's just so and so, they're just here to make money.'" That doesn't mean the iStockers are unmotivated by self-interest. The more a photographer's images are downloaded, the more recognition they receive in the community, and the more credits they earn to download other people's photos to use in their own designs. And the additional income is also welcome, of course. Unlike other cases in which large corporations have attempted to monetize community, iStock does reward its contributors. It paid out $21 million in 2007. It's significant that people in online communities like iStock's react with great hostility to the idea that crowdsourcing is a form of cheap labor -- despite the fact it demonstrably is. After all, no one wants to feel exploited. In the end, what iStock provides is an invaluable if impossible-to-measure currency: meaning. The crowd will give away their time -- their excess capacity -- enthusiastically, but not for free. It has to be a meaningful exchange.
In this excerpt from the new book {...}
Published: September 5, 2008, 10:00 pm - Indexed: September 8, 2008, 11:26 pm - Page Size: 49KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> News > Breaking News {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - Baby Tattooville artist and collectors retreat, Oct. 3-5, 2008 http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/baby-tattooville-artist-and-collectors-retreat-20080928512.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/baby-tattooville-artist-and-collectors-retreat-20080928512.htm Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:57:37 GMT (click image for full size) The publisher of Baby Tattoo art books is holding its second weekend retreat in Southern California with many of our favorite artists. I heard that the first one was tremendously fun. The 2nd annual Baby Tattooville provides a unique opportunity for a small group of celebrated artists and enthusiastic collectors to spend time together in a relaxed yet creatively stimulating environment. Without the time constraints of a typical personal appearance, or the crowd control issues of a standing-room-only event, artists and collectors will have a weekend-long opportunity to discuss and explore their mutual interests. Original work will be created and celebrated around-the-clock. No one will leave empty handed. Only 18 out of 50 event packages are still available, and they are selling fast. The event takes place October 3-5, 2008 at Southern California's architectural masterpiece The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa. This year's Featured Artists are Ana Bagayan, Glenn Barr, Dave Cooper, Bob Dob, Joe Ledbetter, Brandi Milne, Daniel Peacock, Shag, Any Sol and Michael Whelan. Baby Tattooville artist and collectors retreat, Oct. 3-5, 2008... Boingboing.Net Baby Tattooville artist and collectors retreat, Oct. 3-5, 2008 {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - (click image for full size) The publisher of Baby Tattoo art books is holding its second weekend retreat in Southern California with many of our favorite artists. I heard that the first one was tremendously fun. The 2nd annual Baby Tattooville provides a unique opportunity for a small group of celebrated artists and enthusiastic collectors to spend time together in a relaxed yet creatively stimulating environment. Without the time constraints of a typical personal appearance, or the crowd control issues of a standing-room-only event, artists and collectors will have a weekend-long opportunity to discuss and explore their mutual interests. Original work will be created and celebrated around-the-clock. No one will leave empty handed. Only 18 out of 50 event packages are still available, and they are selling fast. The event takes place October 3-5, 2008 at Southern California's architectural masterpiece The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa. This year's Featured Artists are Ana Bagayan, Glenn Barr, Dave Cooper, Bob Dob, Joe Ledbetter, Brandi Milne, Daniel Peacock, Shag, Any Sol and Michael Whelan. Baby Tattooville artist and collectors retreat, Oct. 3-5, 2008...
Baby Tattooville artist and collectors retreat, Oct. 3-5, 2008 - Boing Boing {...}
Published: September 5, 2008, 7:57 pm - Indexed: September 8, 2008, 10:03 am - Page Size: 34KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk {ARTS > MUSIC} - Tattoo to pay tribute to Robert Burns http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/music/tattoo-to-pay-tribute-to-robert-burns-20081122421.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/music/tattoo-to-pay-tribute-to-robert-burns-20081122421.htm Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT ONE of Robert Burns' most dramatic works is to take centre stage at the 60th Edinburgh Military Tattoo. News.Scotsman.Com Tattoo to pay tribute to Robert Burns {new window}   News.Scotsman.Com - ONE of Robert Burns' most dramatic works is to take centre stage at the 60th Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
- Scotsman.com News {...} - {...}
Published: November 22, 2008, 12:00 am - Indexed: November 23, 2008, 1:06 pm - Page Size: 43KB
Category: Arts > Music

]]> Arts > Music {NORTH AMERICA > LODGING} - What I have to offer is a studio in warm Tucson, Arizona. CENTRAL (central and warm) http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/what-i-have-to-offer-is-a-studio-in-warm-tucson-arizona-20081112322.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/what-i-have-to-offer-is-a-studio-in-warm-tucson-arizona-20081112322.htm Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:30:46 GMT It is fair to say that where I live is the most central part of town. I live a one/two minute walk away from 4TH AVENUE, the main drag in Tucson. The businesses: taquerias, coffeehouses, tattoo parlors, several bars, a wicker and rattan workshop, galleries, a skate shop with its own skate park in the back, beauty parlors,ethnic art shops, etc. One block away from my home is the Epic Cafe, open 6 to midnight every day. Ask almost anyone who knows Tucson and they know this avenue. Also a block away from my place is a market that has been around forever it seems. Time Market. It houses a pizzeria, a deli, a coffeehouse, and a gourmet grocery with a killer assortment of beer. My cozy studio is furnished and smack dab in the middle of Tucson, 3RD AND UNIVERSITY, near downtown and the university. The snow birds, those who live in Tucson during the more temperate periods, are back in town. The desert and its community right now has a lushness, and its inhabitants know it. AND...it is warm here, yes. Midday 75 degrees warm right now. People from all parts come down here, fleeing from colder landscapes. I can only tell you about my place right no as I do not have photos of the place right at hand. It is furnished with paired down furniture and there is much color and character in my house. Here there is a docking station/stereo for your ipod so you can play your music if you have an ipod. My kitchen is stocked with a reasonably large amount of cookware and I would make sure to leave the kitchen and my place immaculate for you. About an eighth of a mile away is an organic market. I am looking for a place or roommate situation centrally located. E-mail me or call me at 916-505-4304 and we can talk about my place and your place. Sfbay.Craigslist.Org What I have to offer is a studio in warm Tucson, Arizona. CENTRAL (central and warm) {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - It is fair to say that where I live is the most central part of town. I live a one/two minute walk away from 4TH AVENUE, the main drag in Tucson. The businesses: taquerias, coffeehouses, tattoo parlors, several bars, a wicker and rattan workshop, galleries, a skate shop with its own skate park in the back, beauty parlors,ethnic art shops, etc. One block away from my home is the Epic Cafe, open 6 to midnight every day. Ask almost anyone who knows Tucson and they know this avenue. Also a block away from my place is a market that has been around forever it seems. Time Market. It houses a pizzeria, a deli, a coffeehouse, and a gourmet grocery with a killer assortment of beer. My cozy studio is furnished and smack dab in the middle of Tucson, 3RD AND UNIVERSITY, near downtown and the university. The snow birds, those who live in Tucson during the more temperate periods, are back in town. The desert and its community right now has a lushness, and its inhabitants know it. AND...it is warm here, yes. Midday 75 degrees warm right now. People from all parts come down here, fleeing from colder landscapes. I can only tell you about my place right no as I do not have photos of the place right at hand. It is furnished with paired down furniture and there is much color and character in my house. Here there is a docking station/stereo for your ipod so you can play your music if you have an ipod. My kitchen is stocked with a reasonably large amount of cookware and I would make sure to leave the kitchen and my place immaculate for you. About an eighth of a mile away is an organic market. I am looking for a place or roommate situation centrally located. E-mail me or call me at 916-505-4304 and we can talk about my place and your place.
What I have to offer is a studio in warm Tucson, Arizona. CENTRAL {...}
Published: November 19, 2008, 1:30 pm - Indexed: November 21, 2008, 12:59 pm - Page Size: 5KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging {NORTH AMERICA > RENTALS} - Room for rent in a 3 bedroom 2 bath apartment near Piedmont Ave. (oakland north / temescal) $548 http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/room-for-rent-in-a-3-bedroom-2-bath-apartment-near-20081158423.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/room-for-rent-in-a-3-bedroom-2-bath-apartment-near-20081158423.htm Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:23:43 GMT The basics: -Rent $548/month + $50 Utilities/month (May go up in coming months) -Available the 1st of December (You may be able to start moving in a little before, if necessary) -BIG apartment (3 Bedrooms, 2 Bathrooms) -Huge balcony that stretches across the front of the apartment with a nice view -Beautiful wood floors (Bedrooms are carpeted) -Great neighborhood. A couple blocks from Piedmont Ave.!! -Nice kitchen and dining room -Each bedroom has it's own heater -Communal household (We are in to sharing, respect and open communication) -Wi-Fi -Very close to several bus stops/580 on-ramp -Very safe and secure building -Unfortunately, no pets -Laundry room -Non-smoking building -$600 Deposit (Can be made in payments) -Parking spot underneath building may be available ($75/mo) You: -Female/Male -Between 20-30 -Stable job -Very open minded and in to communal living -Up to taking on equal part of household chores -Be able to provide a copy of your credit report You would be sharing a bathroom with: Mara 25, Female, Bookslinger, avid music enthusiast, devourer of copious amounts of literature, bike rider, tattoo addict, aspiring cellist, SF Chronicle subscriber, Gin & Tonic lover, part-time student and museum exhibit addict. Pilar is the other roommate: 26, Female, Bookslinger at different location, bibliophile, tv/movie addict (especially sci-fi/horror), aspiring writer, eventual tattooed freak (slow going, those things are expensive!), speaker of random statements in a variety of voices, (Pilar is not good at talking about herself, but if you ask a direct question, she'll generally answer it. And yes, I do talk about myself in the third person. No I am not Bob Dole.) If we sound like a good fit for you, go ahead and drop us a line. :-) Sfbay.Craigslist.Org Room for rent in a 3 bedroom 2 bath apartment near Piedmont Ave. (oakland north / temescal) $548 {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - The basics: -Rent $548/month + $50 Utilities/month (May go up in coming months) -Available the 1st of December (You may be able to start moving in a little before, if necessary) -BIG apartment (3 Bedrooms, 2 Bathrooms) -Huge balcony that stretches across the front of the apartment with a nice view -Beautiful wood floors (Bedrooms are carpeted) -Great neighborhood. A couple blocks from Piedmont Ave.!! -Nice kitchen and dining room -Each bedroom has it's own heater -Communal household (We are in to sharing, respect and open communication) -Wi-Fi -Very close to several bus stops/580 on-ramp -Very safe and secure building -Unfortunately, no pets -Laundry room -Non-smoking building -$600 Deposit (Can be made in payments) -Parking spot underneath building may be available ($75/mo) You: -Female/Male -Between 20-30 -Stable job -Very open minded and in to communal living -Up to taking on equal part of household chores -Be able to provide a copy of your credit report You would be sharing a bathroom with: Mara 25, Female, Bookslinger, avid music enthusiast, devourer of copious amounts of literature, bike rider, tattoo addict, aspiring cellist, SF Chronicle subscriber, Gin & Tonic lover, part-time student and museum exhibit addict. Pilar is the other roommate: 26, Female, Bookslinger at different location, bibliophile, tv/movie addict (especially sci-fi/horror), aspiring writer, eventual tattooed freak (slow going, those things are expensive!), speaker of random statements in a variety of voices, (Pilar is not good at talking about herself, but if you ask a direct question, she'll generally answer it. And yes, I do talk about myself in the third person. No I am not Bob Dole.) If we sound like a good fit for you, go ahead and drop us a line. :-)
Room for rent in a 3 bedroom 2 bath apartment near Piedmont Ave. {...}
Published: November 16, 2008, 8:23 am - Indexed: November 16, 2008, 10:37 am - Page Size: 6KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate > Rentals

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate > Rentals {EUROPE > HEADLINE LINKS} - Tattoo total http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/headline-links/tattoo-total-20081128120.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/headline-links/tattoo-total-20081128120.htm Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:56:12 GMT MP's majority permanently marked on her foot News.Bbc.Co.Uk Tattoo total {new window}   News.Bbc.Co.Uk - MP's majority permanently marked on her foot
BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | MP with... the smallest majority {...} Laura Moffatt talks about life as the MP with the smallest majority in the UK. {...}
Published: November 14, 2008, 8:56 am - Indexed: November 14, 2008, 12:53 pm - Page Size: 52KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media > Headline Links

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media > Headline Links {MARKETING AND ADVERTISING > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Headvertising 2.0: Air New Zealand Does 'Cranial Advertising' http://articles.world-of-newave.info/business/marketing-and-advertising/advertising/news-and-media/headvertising-2-0-air-new-zealand-does-cranial-advertising-20081159019.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/business/marketing-and-advertising/advertising/news-and-media/headvertising-2-0-air-new-zealand-does-cranial-advertising-20081159019.htm Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:22:10 GMT Unearthing headvertising as if it were something new, Air New Zealand held a casting call to find 75 men and women who'd be willing to have their heads shaved and a temporary tattoo applied. Adrants.Com Headvertising 2.0: Air New Zealand Does 'Cranial Advertising' {new window}   Www.Adrants.Com - Unearthing headvertising as if it were something new, Air New Zealand held a casting call to find 75 men and women who'd be willing to have their heads shaved and a temporary tattoo applied.
Headvertising 2.0: Air New Zealand Does 'Cranial Advertising' » Adrants {...}
Published: November 10, 2008, 4:22 pm - Indexed: November 11, 2008, 12:27 pm - Page Size: 38KB
Category: Business > Marketing and Advertising > Advertising > News and Media

]]> Business > Marketing and Advertising > Advertising > News and Media {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - The Roots of Psychopathy http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/the-roots-of-psychopathy-2008119639.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/the-roots-of-psychopathy-2008119639.htm Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:51:01 GMT The New Yorker has an interesting article by John Seabrook about researchers who study the brains of psychopaths: "Suffering Souls." The scanner was housed in a tractor-trailer parked behind the prison?s I.D. center. We followed a correctional officer through an internal courtyard to the rehab wing, which consisted of a large common area surrounded by two-man cells. The prisoners were standing at attention outside their cells, some holding mops and brooms. I entered a vacant cell and saw the occupant?s brain, a grainy black-and-white image on a piece of a paper, its edges curling, tacked up over the desk. Then we walked through the common room and out a door at the other end, passing under a large poster with lines that read, ?I am here because there is no refuge, finally, from myself.? The officer led us along a corridor of offices in which students from the University of New Mexico, where [cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Kent] Kiehl is on the faculty, conduct psychopathy interviews and also counsel participants in the drug-treatment program. Carla Harenski, one of Kiehl?s postdocs, was interviewing a beefy guy with a tattoo on his neck. Her office, like those of all the researchers in the lab, is equipped with a button she can press to call for help if an interview gets out of hand. In order to distinguish psychopaths from non-psychopaths among the Western volunteers, Kiehl and his students use the revised version of the Psychopathy Checklist, or PCL-R, a twenty-item diagnostic instrument created by Robert Hare, a Canadian psychologist, based on his long experience in working with psychopaths in prisons. Kiehl was taught to use the checklist by Hare himself, under whom he earned his doctorate, at the University of British Columbia. Researchers interview an inmate for up to three hours, and compare the inmate?s statements against what is known of his record and his personal history. The interviewer ?scores? the subject on each of the twenty items?parasitic life style, pathological lying, conning, proneness to boredom, shallow emotions, lack of empathy, poor impulse control, promiscuity, irresponsibility, record of juvenile delinquency, and criminal versatility, among other tendencies?with zero, one, or two, depending on how pronounced that trait is. Most researchers agree that anyone who scores thirty or higher on the PCL-R is considered to be a psychopath. Kiehl says, ?Someone who scores a thirty-five, a thirty-six, they are just different. You say to yourself, ?Aha, here you are. You are why I do this.? ? Harenski recently interviewed a Western inmate who scored a 38.9. ?He had killed his girlfriend because he thought she was cheating on him,? she told me. ?He was so charming about telling it that I found it hard not to fall into laughing along in surprise, even when he was describing awful things.? Harenski, who is thirty, did not experience the involuntary skin-crawling sensation that, according to a survey conducted by the psychologists Reid and M. J. Meloy, one in three mental-health and criminal-justice professionals report feeling on interviewing a psychopath; in their paper on the subject, Meloy and Meloy speculate that this reaction may be an ancient intraspecies predator-response system. ?I was just excited,? Harenski continued. ?I was saying to myself, ?Wow. I found a real one.? ? "Suffering Souls." (Image credit: John Ritter.)... Boingboing.Net The Roots of Psychopathy {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - The New Yorker has an interesting article by John Seabrook about researchers who study the brains of psychopaths: "Suffering Souls." The scanner was housed in a tractor-trailer parked behind the prison?s I.D. center. We followed a correctional officer through an internal courtyard to the rehab wing, which consisted of a large common area surrounded by two-man cells. The prisoners were standing at attention outside their cells, some holding mops and brooms. I entered a vacant cell and saw the occupant?s brain, a grainy black-and-white image on a piece of a paper, its edges curling, tacked up over the desk. Then we walked through the common room and out a door at the other end, passing under a large poster with lines that read, ?I am here because there is no refuge, finally, from myself.? The officer led us along a corridor of offices in which students from the University of New Mexico, where [cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Kent] Kiehl is on the faculty, conduct psychopathy interviews and also counsel participants in the drug-treatment program. Carla Harenski, one of Kiehl?s postdocs, was interviewing a beefy guy with a tattoo on his neck. Her office, like those of all the researchers in the lab, is equipped with a button she can press to call for help if an interview gets out of hand. In order to distinguish psychopaths from non-psychopaths among the Western volunteers, Kiehl and his students use the revised version of the Psychopathy Checklist, or PCL-R, a twenty-item diagnostic instrument created by Robert Hare, a Canadian psychologist, based on his long experience in working with psychopaths in prisons. Kiehl was taught to use the checklist by Hare himself, under whom he earned his doctorate, at the University of British Columbia. Researchers interview an inmate for up to three hours, and compare the inmate?s statements against what is known of his record and his personal history. The interviewer ?scores? the subject on each of the twenty items?parasitic life style, pathological lying, conning, proneness to boredom, shallow emotions, lack of empathy, poor impulse control, promiscuity, irresponsibility, record of juvenile delinquency, and criminal versatility, among other tendencies?with zero, one, or two, depending on how pronounced that trait is. Most researchers agree that anyone who scores thirty or higher on the PCL-R is considered to be a psychopath. Kiehl says, ?Someone who scores a thirty-five, a thirty-six, they are just different. You say to yourself, ?Aha, here you are. You are why I do this.? ? Harenski recently interviewed a Western inmate who scored a 38.9. ?He had killed his girlfriend because he thought she was cheating on him,? she told me. ?He was so charming about telling it that I found it hard not to fall into laughing along in surprise, even when he was describing awful things.? Harenski, who is thirty, did not experience the involuntary skin-crawling sensation that, according to a survey conducted by the psychologists Reid and M. J. Meloy, one in three mental-health and criminal-justice professionals report feeling on interviewing a psychopath; in their paper on the subject, Meloy and Meloy speculate that this reaction may be an ancient intraspecies predator-response system. ?I was just excited,? Harenski continued. ?I was saying to myself, ?Wow. I found a real one.? ? "Suffering Souls." (Image credit: John Ritter.)...
The Roots of Psychopathy - Boing Boing {...}
Published: November 7, 2008, 9:51 pm - Indexed: November 10, 2008, 11:33 am - Page Size: 128KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Bicyclists Show Off Their Two-Wheeling Tattoos http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/bicyclists-show-off-their-two-wheeling-tattoos-2008119751.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/bicyclists-show-off-their-two-wheeling-tattoos-2008119751.htm Sat, 01 Nov 2008 04:00:00 GMT : Some hard-core bicyclists sport enough ink to give the Hells Angels a run for their money in the tattoo department. From stark, black-and-white symbols to colorful skin-art standbys like flaming skulls and comic-book characters, you never know what will show up on the arms and pedal-pumping legs of bike fanatics. Left: Sean McKinney, of S&M Bikes, has the company logo tattooed on his wrist. He had the skulls added to the logo for effect. : The number for "4130 Chromoly," a steel alloy containing chromium and molybdenum that is commonly used in bike frames, is tattooed on the right shin of Dave Harris, 34, of Binghamton, New York. "It is my metal of choice," said Harris, who is a welder for FBM Bike. : Matt "The Beard" Bischoff, owner of Cincinnati's Failure Bikes, has a tattoo inspired by bike rider Tim "Fuzzy" Hall on his inner bicep. : A lost bet led to the tattoo on the thigh of Zack "Catfish" Yankush, of Dayton, Ohio. The artwork shows fellow BMX rider Alan Cook doing a back flip over his wife. : Brian Osborne, 31, of Louisville, Kentucky, has sprockets tattooed on his right arm. "BMX," said Osborne. "What more can I say?" : The Silver Surfer rides a Schwinn Black Phantom on the forearm of Jason Faircloth, 35, of Marin County, California. "My buddy had a really cool Silver Surfer tattoo, but it seemed kinda poseur for me to get," said Faircloth, who works as a product manager for Marin Bikes. "I'm not a surfer. I'm a biker." : Brad Cider, 30, of Thousand Oaks, California, has a tribute to his riding partner NJJ tattooed on his chest. Cider is a sales rep for Pronghorn Racing. : World Bicycle Trials champion Vittorio Brumotti has a tattoo commemorating his favorite rider on his chest. : A bicycle tire bursts out of a flaming, winged skull on the thigh of Denver resident East Foster, 39. "I didn't have anything to do with it," said Foster. "I gave a friend free rein and this is what he came up with. I think it is perfect." : Ryan Sher, 28, of Portland, Oregon, is brand manager for Subrosa Bicycles. He has the skull-and-snake emblem from the company's Malum bicycle tattooed on his forearm. While he makes the designs for the bicycles, they don't all end up as tattoos on his body. : Michael Sean Moore of Santa Cruz, California, and an employee of bike shop Calfee Design, has the word bicycle tattooed on his forearm. "So simple," said Moore. See also: Wired.com Readers' Best Geek Tattoos Geek Ink: Comics Fans Show Off Tattoos Wired.Com Bicyclists Show Off Their Two-Wheeling Tattoos {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - : Some hard-core bicyclists sport enough ink to give the Hells Angels a run for their money in the tattoo department. From stark, black-and-white symbols to colorful skin-art standbys like flaming skulls and comic-book characters, you never know what will show up on the arms and pedal-pumping legs of bike fanatics. Left: Sean McKinney, of S&M Bikes, has the company logo tattooed on his wrist. He had the skulls added to the logo for effect. : The number for "4130 Chromoly," a steel alloy containing chromium and molybdenum that is commonly used in bike frames, is tattooed on the right shin of Dave Harris, 34, of Binghamton, New York. "It is my metal of choice," said Harris, who is a welder for FBM Bike. : Matt "The Beard" Bischoff, owner of Cincinnati's Failure Bikes, has a tattoo inspired by bike rider Tim "Fuzzy" Hall on his inner bicep. : A lost bet led to the tattoo on the thigh of Zack "Catfish" Yankush, of Dayton, Ohio. The artwork shows fellow BMX rider Alan Cook doing a back flip over his wife. : Brian Osborne, 31, of Louisville, Kentucky, has sprockets tattooed on his right arm. "BMX," said Osborne. "What more can I say?" : The Silver Surfer rides a Schwinn Black Phantom on the forearm of Jason Faircloth, 35, of Marin County, California. "My buddy had a really cool Silver Surfer tattoo, but it seemed kinda poseur for me to get," said Faircloth, who works as a product manager for Marin Bikes. "I'm not a surfer. I'm a biker." : Brad Cider, 30, of Thousand Oaks, California, has a tribute to his riding partner NJJ tattooed on his chest. Cider is a sales rep for Pronghorn Racing. : World Bicycle Trials champion Vittorio Brumotti has a tattoo commemorating his favorite rider on his chest. : A bicycle tire bursts out of a flaming, winged skull on the thigh of Denver resident East Foster, 39. "I didn't have anything to do with it," said Foster. "I gave a friend free rein and this is what he came up with. I think it is perfect." : Ryan Sher, 28, of Portland, Oregon, is brand manager for Subrosa Bicycles. He has the skull-and-snake emblem from the company's Malum bicycle tattooed on his forearm. While he makes the designs for the bicycles, they don't all end up as tattoos on his body. : Michael Sean Moore of Santa Cruz, California, and an employee of bike shop Calfee Design, has the word bicycle tattooed on his forearm. "So simple," said Moore. See also: Wired.com Readers' Best Geek Tattoos Geek Ink: Comics Fans Show Off Tattoos
See the latest multimedia and applications including videos, animations, podcasts, photos, and slideshows on Wired.com {...}
Published: November 1, 2008, 4:00 am - Indexed: November 4, 2008, 11:25 am - Page Size: 37KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> News > Breaking News {LITERATURE > CYBERPUNK} - Tattoo-inspired haircutting scissors http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/tattoo-inspired-haircutting-scissors-20081036234.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/cyberpunk/tattoo-inspired-haircutting-scissors-20081036234.htm Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:29:54 GMT Freebird Shears is launching a new line of hair dresser scissors influenced by tattoo art. The company's Dieter Scholtyssek tells me that the hammer-forged Japanese steel shears were "inspired by Elvis Crocker, a well known tattoo artist in Arlington, Texas (formerly of NYHC Tattoos)." Freebird Shears... Boingboing.Net Tattoo-inspired haircutting scissors {new window}   Www.Boingboing.Net - Freebird Shears is launching a new line of hair dresser scissors influenced by tattoo art. The company's Dieter Scholtyssek tells me that the hammer-forged Japanese steel shears were "inspired by Elvis Crocker, a well known tattoo artist in Arlington, Texas (formerly of NYHC Tattoos)." Freebird Shears...
Tattoo-inspired haircutting scissors - Boing Boing {...}
Published: October 30, 2008, 4:29 pm - Indexed: October 31, 2008, 9:10 am - Page Size: 38KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Cyberpunk