The Japanese edition of Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City? is now available.
To see all the book covers of Who’s Your City? in their various translations, check out our gallery on the Who’s Your City? Facebook page (and if you’re not already a Facebook friend, join us there as well as on the Creative Class Facebook page).
Have you taken the Who’s Your City? place finder to discover just where you belong? Try it out here and tell us what you think of your results!
Publisher’s Weekly provides the details:
James Levine at Levine Greenberg Literary Agency has accepted several preempts for Richard Florida’s Reset: How the Economic Crisis Will Forever Change Our Economy, Society, and the Way We Live. Hollis Heimbouch took the title in the U.S. for HarperCollins. Preemptive offers were also accepted in Canada from Random House Canada, with Anne Collins editing; and in Brazil from Caroline Rothmuller at Campus/Elsevier via International Editors, Inc. Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class was a bestseller for Basic.
I could not be more excited to be working with such an exceptional publishing team.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia created and diligently monitored by scores of regular users mass collaborating over the internet, has been a source of immense controversy since it first appeared online seven years ago.
While most of us (I think) regard the online encyclopedia as a very useful resource for initial research into an unfamiliar topic (not to mention one of the world’s greatest time killers), and see its method of creation (mass collaboration) as both novel and strikingly accurate, there has been no shortage of bluster from both sides of the aisle to just how best to describe/exalt/deride the online phenomenon.
The staunchest self-described ‘Wikipedians’ see their community as the first real democracy, a new egalitarian mode of production and a nation online.
Critics argue that Wikipedia is, quite literally, the death of knowledge. Wikipedia embodies a generation (mine) of lazy cheaters – using half-baked, ‘user-generated’ (re: inaccurate) articles written by computer-nerds and other weirdos that skew the truth and focus only on the trivial. Wikipedia is lowering our standards for accuracy and simultaneously lowering our collective IQ.
Describing Wikipedia as either a Virtual Utopia or The Death of Knowledge is reductionism at its finest. While I am generally skeptical of these far-flung metaphors that try to pin down the online encyclopedia, I was intrigued by one recent attempt by Noam Cohen in the New York Times. He says Wikipedia most closely resembles a vast, diverse, online fact city- and quite a creative one at that.
Cohen adapts a Socratic tone in asking a number of thought provoking questions. He says:
“Wikipedia encourages contributors to mimic the basic civility, trust, cultural acceptance and self-organizing qualities familiar to any city dweller. Why don’t people attack each other on the way home? Why do they stay in line at the bank? Why don’t people guffaw at the person with blue hair?”
He could just as easily ask: why don’t people sabotage Wikipedia pages? Why don’t people post misinformation?
The reality, of course, is that they do. Just as sometimes in our real cities, people are attacked, lines are budded, and people with blue hair get ridiculed- occasionally. But the stronger the city and the sense of community, the stronger the social forces that combat devious behavior. The same is true for Wikipedia.
To support his claim, Cohen consults the writings of Urban Oracle Jane Jacobs. He quotes the prolific Wikipedian Andrew Lih (who paraphrases Jacobs) saying she “argued that sidewalks provided three important things: safety, contact, and the assimilation of children.” He continues, “She may as well have been talking about wikis. A wiki has all its activities happening in the open for inspection, as on Jacobs’s sidewalk. Trust is built by observing the actions of others in the community and discovering people with like or complementary interests.”
So is Wikipedia perfect? Or another question: will we (because it really is we) ever ‘finish’ Wikipedia? The same question could be posed for Chicago, Paris, or Toronto. Of course it isn’t perfect and it will probably never be finished – just as a city is constantly changing, evolving, and reinventing itself.
For the sake of all people who can access this vast, unprecedented body of knowledge, I hope Wikipedia grows – especially in the 100+ versions that exist now in other languages. Never before have we been given such a low barrier – the internet – to access this vast canon of human knowledge.
So forget the controversy, the metaphors, and the bluster and take a stroll down one of the long, wide information boulevards of the online city – you never know what side street you may end up on, or what secrets you might find.
On a lighter note: College Humor’s take on the Wiki-phenomenon.
Right now, many in the media, at watercoolers, and in the blogosphere are busy castigating a variety of CEOs and individuals at upper and mid management levels for a variety of failures. Although some individuals certainly deserve a virtual lashing, many were just being creative (inventing new hedge funds, derivatives, CMBS, etc.).
Excessive condemnation runs the risk of creating a broad-based workplace culture across a wide spectrum of industries in which leaders and brilliant thinkers only look to avoid risks rather than seek opportunities. Indeed, that is in part the nature of recession – collective attempts to minimize the possibility of failure.
While we all try to sort out how the world fell into this recessionary hole, it’s also important to remember the value that embracing failure can have in our 21st century economy.
Diane Jermyn in her Incubator column in the Globe and Mail did just that last week. She interviewed three specialists on business and entrepreneurial culture and asked about the role of failure in successful enterprises. Here are some noteworthy passages:
“If you’re going to have an innovative culture, you must understand that that comes with the acceptance of failure. Innovation comes with a lot of mistakes.” [says Tony Champman, CEO of communications firm, Capital C]
“You need a culture that allows failure for success because without it, people become anti-failure,” says Charles Plant [Managing Director of the Market Readiness Program for entrepreneurs at MaRS]. “Trying different things is the act of innovation. If you fail 14 times, hopefully you’re going to succeed on the 15th try. Without failure, we’re not going to be driving and growing the economy.”
“Everybody in theory embraces the concept of failure and risk but if the person at the helm is purely financially driven, there really isn’t a lot of tolerance for risk” says Chapman.
This last comment is an important one to monitor in uncertain times or in companies facing adversity – only looking to minimize expenses and cut costs may not be the right solution (how far has it gotten General Motors?). And in some knowledge-oriented industries, managing through risk minimalization isn’t necessarily an option.
“Anybody who’s in the business of inventing the future has to be more tolerant of risk and failure because the future hasn’t been created yet,” says Chapman. “If you’re in the business of creativity or innovation, software, technology or ideas, you have to be tolerant of experimentation and creativity.
But in these times, any organization needs to minimize the downside of failures:
Is there a permissible way to fail?
Everyone agrees that the key to successful failure is doing it in a sensible manner to protect against the downside. The trick to successful failures is to know when to quit.
“I think you have to quickly acknowledge when something is a failure and have a back up plan of what you’re going to do,” says Plant. “Don’t keep flogging a dead horse.”
Does your workplace appreciate and accept failure? Or do you work in fear of making a mistake?
Other thoughts?
Tune in to Richard Florida’s interview with Robert Siegel which will air on NPR’s All Things Considered this afternoon, April 7.
Up for discussion? The great reset – which Richard discussed in his The Atlantic piece, “How the Crash Will Reshape America” – and how the country’s efforts to rebound from the current economic situation is changing what will be considered “normal.” Specifically, Richard will talk about the cities vs. the suburbs, renting vs. owning, and so on.
Have you defined a “new normal” for yourself and your lifestyle in light of the current economic situation?
Listen in to hear Richard Florida interviewed on Lawrence O’Donnell’s To the Point on NPR last Friday. Some details about the appearance:
From Detroit to LA, the Recession Reshapes America
With Detroit home prices at record lows, is this the end of a great American city or its best chance for a revival? How will the crash reshape America? That is the title question of Richard Florida’s piece in the Atlantic this month.
Tell us, what are your thoughts on Detroit?
Richard will be appearing on Stand Up! with Pete Dominick on Sirius Radio, Tuesday, March 10, at 3:20pm EST. Tune in to P.O.T.U.S. SIRIUS 110 / XM 130.
Pete Dominick, comedian and political satirist, talks about the issues as “everyday Americans” do. Unbiased and independent, it’s where politicians can hear how they’re perceived by the people.
Thoughts?
Matt Yglesias reviews The Daily Show’s take on the crisis Wednesday night.
Comedy Central vs. CNBC nicely captures the cultural battle inside the American elite between “creative class” types and the business manager types. Both sides think the other side is composed of idiots, but their side is mistaken.
Richard Florida appeared on CBC’s “The Hour” with George Stroumboulopoulos on March 4 to discuss the current economic situation. Check it out.
The Hour is a national current affairs show – not a newscast, or a magazine show. It’s a different take on the news through the lens of George and company. While news shows cover the issues of the day, The Hour dissects the issues within the issues. Always unconventional. Often controversial. Never predictable.
Your thoughts?
If you thought the gay index raised eyebrows, now get this. A new study by Benjamin Edelman of Harvard Business School finds that subscriptions to online porn sites are “more prevalent in states where surveys indicate conservative positions on religion, gender roles, and sexuality.” And which score low on the … eh-em … “creativity index.” Subscriptions to porn sites are higher in states where more people agree that, “Even today miracles are performed by the power of God” and “I never doubt the existence of God.” Here’s a summary chart.
The full study is here.
