LibraryThing and its predecessors

LibraryThing is an online catalog for your books. The earliest implementation of an idea like this may be the San Francisco Bay area's Distributed Library Project (Mike Benham, 2002) which lets you find a book in the hands of a private owner near you. Now imagine if something like WorldCat.org would search not only libraries but also the Distributed Library Project and LibraryThing.

WorldCat.org

WorldCat.org lets you find a book, journal, or journal article in the libraries nearest your ZIP code.

Meet nearby people with Meetup

Meetup assists in finding nearby people interested in meeting to discuss a certain topic. It also suggests other topics in whom such people tend to be interested. Ideally you would visit these related interest-groups IN PERSON, but if you can't find one, you could start here.

Killer nurse gets 11 life terms

This nurse went from job to job killing patients. Hospitals were afraid to give negative reports to prospective employers because they feared being sued.

The woman who stole my identity was an employee of my physician. Since she was familiar with false identities, doubtless she was able to get the same type of job elsewhere.

This is another good reason for businesses to publish their employees' photos, identification numbers, and names, plus any testimonials that customers have written about them. An a job applicant with too few testimonials over a 15-year career would automatically be suspect and need not be hired. No employer ever need fear being sued for offering negative feedback.

Let's make the world more like a small village. If we self-police, we may fend of the need for a police state. We might use social networking systems like LinkedIn to do this.

Lastly, let me say this: People need to stop being so fearful, get some backbone, and "do unto others." There is a huge difference between a risk of being sued and a risk of someone being murdered. If corporations cannot legally obey the Golden Rule, then corporations must be replaced by unlimited liability partnerships and sole proprietorships.

Read more at www.cbsnews.com/stories...

An Outline of the History of Economic Thought

Stefano Zamagni, an expert in civil economy, has co-authored this book. It is available via a 30-day free trial of Oxford Scholarship Online.

Read more at www.oxfordscholarship.c...

The value of being Nearish, where Nearish = default: people don't think much

As I've said before, your relationship with your customer is valuable because you are Nearish (and Dearish?) in her mind. It can earn you a commission. Case in point: Google is paying lots of money to retailers so that its software and services are the default choices.

People don't think very much. They will find you if you are the Nearish choice along whatever axis they are searching. Chances are, if you are small, you can stand your best chance along the axes of geographic or social proximity. If you are big, you money may not even be able to buy such market intelligence as you would get by more intimate, Nearish interactions with your customers.

LinkedIn: search for nearish workers or work

LinkedIn is a very Nearish idea: when looking for a worker or for work, search first within your own professional network. here is my profile there.

Constructive Luddism with Mechanical Turk (replacing computers with people)

Amazon is making good use of an idea I've had too, and have been cooking up since 1995: Since humans are better than computers at many tasks, we should make it as easy to use humans as it is to use computers. Amazon Mechanical Turk "provides access to a vast network of human intelligence with the efficiencies and cost-effectiveness of computers. Oftentimes, the cost of establishing a network of skilled people to do the work outweighs the value of completing it."

Such ideas come naturally to one who has studied artificial intelligence, whose algorithms are inspired by real-life problem-solving in nature and in society, which has added its own wisdom, and which now can "honor its father and mother" by sending home some of the fruits of its labor to their proud "grandparents."

This site recruits people to transcribe podcasts. It's similar to an idea I had in June 2004, to organize the students in a class to create an audio version of the textbook used in the class.

Another idea I cooked up between fall 2002 and spring 2004 was to recruit people to interpret medical journal articles and codify them in formal computer language that is computable; this is related to "text mining" work being done in biomedical informatics. On March 25 of 2005, another guy published published the same underlying idea.

Technology is always a double-edged sword and the wisdom is in which way to swing it. To use it in favor of localism, Mechanical Turks must permit one to find Nearish talent!

What we are talking about here is essentially better Yellow Pages to reduce search cost. The less time we spend searching for what we want, the better off everyone will be. Yes, Professor Beals, making the search more convenient reduces the meaning of the search, but the personal interaction at the end of the search is even more meaningful.

Partnerships and referral fees help small business

The success of small enterprises in Emilia Romagna is attributed to their dense network of partnerships. Small firms are not afraid to take on large clients because they subcontract out to one another. Any small business could earn referral fees by sending business elsewhere. Amazon Associates exemplifies how this can be done; Booksense offers a similar arrangement with local independent booksellers. Between businesses, I expect there are better examples of referral fee arrangements and I will post them when I find them.

Links to co-ops, including health care

The University of Wisconsin has a Center for Cooperatives, which maintains a list of co-ops of many types, including health care

Bologna and Emilia Romagna - A Model of Economic Democracy

"If we wanted to find a region that had advanced its economic base and might well be the great economic democracy in the West, we would find it in Emilia Romagna."

"I have provided a great deal of space in this paper for the views of Professor Stefano Zamagni of the University of Bologna because he may very well be the seminal academic on the civil economy and cooperatives."

"It should be noted that Zamagni’s work in the civil sector follows a long grand tradition in the country. As Stefano himself notes the term “civil economy” was coined by one of Italy’s first great economists, Antonio Genovesi in 1753."

“Societies where private interest reigns and prevails, where none of their members is touched by the love of public good, not only cannot reach wealth and power, but also, if they have already reached them, are unable to maintain this position.” --Antonio Genovesi

"The Po River Valley with its rich agricultural lands was amongst the first in Europe to escape from serfdom and feudal times."

Quotes above are from this paper by Bob Williams of Vancouver's VanCity Capital Corporation.

2006 Bologna Summer Program for Co-Operative Studies:

Brochure , Syllabus (draft)

Thanks to Al Avans, a local man who blogs at ECODEMA and whom I met Tuesday evening at a showing of a documentary film ("Independent America") on local independent businesses. Al clued me into Emilia Romagna and also to Spain's Mondragon Co-operative. Thanks also to author Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Mars Trilogy
got me thinking in this direction last summer with its "Praxis."



If you're not convinced of the problems solved by co-op, please see the Canadian documentary film The Corporation.

The Wizard of Ads

Sign up for the Monday Morning Memo from the Wizard of Ads. It is credited as a secret to the success of my friend who is the top ad executive at the top radio station in her market of 100,000+. I can see why, too; when reading Roy H. Williams (not the KU coach) I very often smack my forehead and exclaim "yes--he's so right!"

Blogs And Reality TV: The Changing Face of America
Do you remember when America watched awards shows?

If you were somehow unplugged and didn't receive the newsflash, the combined strength of Paul McCartney, Madonna, U2, Mariah Carey, Coldplay, Faith Hill and Jay-Z wasn't enough to swing the hammer and ring the bell during this year's Grammy Awards. A frail 17 million watched these legends read their cue cards while a muscular 28.3 million cheered hopeful, nameless kids singing their hearts out on American Idol.

It was just one more indication of how we're moving away from the vertical hero-worship of Idealism to establish the horizontal links that mark an emerging Civic generation.

Find local bookstores with Booksense.com

Booksense lets shoppers find a local independent bookstore by ZIP code. It's just one of many associations of independent retailers--a good idea.

Read more at www.booksense.com/

The Declaration of Independents

Includes a long list of organizations promoting independent business, with contact information.

Read more at http://www.inc.com/magazine/20010901/23348.html