The central idea of the novel is that the people are unhappy and somehow not really free, in spite of their material possessions. One part of the plot revolves around a strange realization that the country has lost a month on the calendar, which nobody can recall.

A few ideas occurred to me while listening to the author:

• Hong Kong, where the author is originally from, is really a different place. Though dominated by the mainland, its identity is being forced into sharper focus because of the looming merger of political systems set to happen fifty years after 1997.
• Beijing, which the author describes as his favorite place on earth, is experiencing extremely rapid change, particularly since 2000. The idea of a “lost month” in the novel comes from the experience of living here and regularly realizing that major changes happen all the time and never being able to pinpoint exactly when or how.
• The author does not believe that the Communist Party is simply another dynasty. The ancient Chinese belief in a cyclical view of history is just not true anymore in the face of the force of modernity. China is just another nation-state that must confront liberalization and democracy just like every other aspiring emerging country.

Just a few new ideas to add to my highly-incomplete picture of China, and a mental note that I must learn more about the Hong Kong (and Taiwan) perception of this place if I really want to understand it.

But a much more nefarious way to censor is to keep the VPN unblocked, but make it much slower. This makes it nearly impossible for normal users to know how to fix. Is it my current ISP? Is it the VPN provider? maybe the internet is just overloaded right now.  Should I just wait to see what happens?

Here’s my internet speed today from my apartment near Dongzhimen:

and here’s my speed when I turn on the VPN:

Meanwhile I just noticed that the wordpress.com domain is unblocked. I can read/write to blogs hosted here.  The Google-operated blogspot domain is still blocked, so this is my only way to publish something without a (fast) VPN.

Kindle ebooks have several big advantages over internet web sites or blogs:

(photo by John Blyberg)

Tried it on my main blog and my Tumblr blog too.

What do you think?

• Friend — Most of the people that Facebook calls “friends” I call Acquaintances.
• Actual Friend — Someone whom I’ve had a meal with, or has visited my home.
• Real Friend — Someone who would drive me to the airport at 6 am.
• True Friend — Someone who would get me out of jail.

I get where he’s going with this, but it’s still unsatisfying because I’m sure there are plenty of people willing to drive Kevin to the airport at 6am (in order to sell him stuff) or get him out of jail (in order to hang out with Kevin Kelly).

Okay, that last one is due partly to his star status (he’s famous as one of the originals at Wired Magazine).  But even if he weren’t famous, it would apply to such non-friends as a guy would like to kill you.

I’m not sure there is a good way to categorize friendships other than pure manual inspection.  In fact, part of the idea of friendship is that the strength of your bonds are constantly changing.

But that’s going to change, I predict. There’s a fad element to these sites that naturally lends itself to a boom and bust. Now that I’ve reconnected with a few old friends, what do I do next?

That’s why I think LinkedIn is here to stay, contrary to some people who think Facebook makes them obsolete.  LinkedIn doesn’t try to push people together; it just sits there quietly, keeping your contact information up to date.  Facebook makes me work too hard.  But it sure is fun for now.

An upcoming paper in the Journal of Financial Economics studied business plans from the dot-com era and concluded that the “bubble” wasn’t much different from what happens at the birth of any new industry.  David A. Kirsch from the University of Maryland (see WSJ.com) says:

• the failure rate of dot-coms was only about 20% per year
• spectacular blow-outs (like pets.com or webvan) resulted from the “get big fast” strategy that many pursued in order to gain their first-mover advantage.
• many success stories happened in smaller niches that are just fine as businesses, though not as well-known as the big names.

This reminds me of the advice in entrepreneurship classes, how it’s a myth that “the vast majority of new businesses fail”.  In fact, the majority of dumb businesses fail, but well-thought ideas that focus on good, flexible business plans with good execution do just fine.

My quick take: you engage the 19% by offering them a way to participate that is brain-dead simple. For example, Amazon’s “Did you like this review” feature–just click yes or no and you’re done. No registration, no typing, just click on a link and you’re done.

I also think the world needs something to expose your passive activities (e.g. surfing from link to link) in a way that helps you build content and maintain privacy without specifically needing to enter something.

The WSJ article criticizing the Long Tail reminds me that sometime I need to write up my thoughts about why the Long Tail argument isn’t as insightful as it sounds.

There isn’t a single “Long Tail” for anything. Sure, you can rank every book in order of its sales, but how interesting is that? People don’t buy in that order. People looking for books on garbage disposals aren’t shopping for John Grisham novels. Instead, there are several distinguishable rankings for just about every category you can imagine.