Revenge Of The Nerds

Since childhood I've always had a keen interest in learning about nerdy things: especially in the realms of science and technology. Stuff like using the properties of sunlight to melt bugs with magnifying glasses; observing magnetic fields by placing strong magnets beside computer monitors; placing canned food in a campfire to examine pressure and boiling point, etc etc.

These days I often find myself involved in less hands on experimentation, opting for more safety conscious activities like reading books and articles about all types of geeky subjects.

One of my favorite books of the past few years is a popular book called "The Tipping Point". I bought it in an airport in Phoenix on my way back from SXSW, because you can only drink so many beers in the airport lounge by yourself before you get a little bored. It's a very interesting book describing the idea that epidemics don't only apply to diseases, and how those same principles can be applied to the way all sorts of products and ideas grow in popularity. It explains a lot about misconceptions of how you might think ideas spread, and re-examines lots of interesting ideas like the "six degrees of separation" experiment. I definitely recommend reading it if you haven't already.

I often find myself most intrigued by articles that in some way involve how technology is changing the way the world works, so after reading The Tipping Point I stumbled upon another book along similar lines called "The Long Tail". Written by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, it's not quite as easy of a read as The Tipping Point, but it touches upon some economic ideas that are very interesting to me from a band management perspective. The book is centered around the fact that the internet has provided an easy way to achieve super low distribution costs, and because of that fact, products originally considered to be unprofitable can now actually make money. For instance, the genre of "death metal polka" music. There might only be 100 people (or less!) in the entire world who like that type of music, so it wouldn't make sense for record retailers to keep copies of those types of albums in on store shelves. However, thanks to the low distribution costs of the internet, it is now potentially possible to service albums to those 100 fans and have the album turn a profit (assuming you recorded it in your bedroom). This is a very cool idea that applies in some way to almost every possible industry, hobby, activity you can imagine.

Chris also writes fairly regularly in his blog, and recently he turned me onto a neat concept that touches on the untapped manpower potential of regular folks like you and me. It's about the power of volunteer-ism that build wikipedia into the best encyclopedia in the world, and has the potential to do a whole lot more.



Ok, enough nerd speak. I'll try to make my next post more fun.