Steven Johnson writes: “in his classic novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon. A karass is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable links, that actually gets stuff done’ as Vonnegut describes it, ‘a team that do[es] God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing.’ A granfalloon, on the other hand, is a ‘false karass,’ a bureaucratic structure that looks like a team but is ‘meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done.’ … When you find yourself in a karass, it’s an intuitive, unplanned experience. Getting into a granfalloon, on the other hand, usually involves showing two forms of ID. For most of the past 50 years, computers have been on the side of the granfalloons, good at maintaining bureaucratic structures and blind to more nuanced social interactions. But a new kind of software…”

Actually, although I thought he’d perfectly established the trajectory for an article about blogging, Johnson goes on to write about a piece of software the maps social interaction.

Even a poll about how often geeks shower turns to Iraq.

Blogcritics stayed above 20,000 visits yesterday, with many people linking to this round-up of Book-Film-TV-Video recommendations. Meanwhile, www.Command-Post.org’s traffic grew another 10%.

To recap why this is so impressive, Command-Post did as many page views on its third day online as Fark, a communal blog aggregating bizarre headlines, did in 1999. Day five matched Fark’s 2000. (The future? Fark did 30 million page views in 2001 and is on track to do 250 million in 2003.)

Ever the shrewd polemicist, Glenn Reynolds tars with a broad and colorful brush the BCC’s scorn for America’s ambition to oust Saddam. My favorite riposte today: “A common thread among anti-semitism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Americanism is the fear of being outdone by people willing to work harder. It’s not surprising that such a fear exists among a disproportionate number of those who take state-supported jobs.”

“The U.S. Air Force has hit Iraqi TV with an experimental electronmagetic pulse device called the ‘E-Bomb’ in an attempt to knock it off the air and shut down Saddam Hussein’s propaganda machine, CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports. The highly classified bomb creates a brief pulse of microwaves powerful enough to fry computers, blind radar, silence radios, trigger crippling power outages and disable the electronic ignitions in vehicles and aircraft.” Later, all references to the E-Bomb disappeared from the story. Has the military embedded a censor in CBS’s editing booth? (BoingBoing reports.)

Home equity loans are the crack cocaine of the American economy — fun while they last but then a real disaster. Banks like Wells Fargo are pushing Americans to “unleash the spending power locked up in your home!” and arguing that the practice isn’t risky because banks generally lend no more than 75% of the home’s value. Well, sure, the practice is not as risky for the bank that has the home as security, but for a family that has to sell or give up its home if the economy softens, the practice is potentially ruinous.

How many remember that half of America’s mortgages were in default in the depths of the Great Depression.

Proof we should worry: 10% of spam is pushing home refinancings. Yes, folks, step right up… pulling cash out of your home to buy a new car is about as wise as paying to “increase your bust size 20%!!!” and “FREE LUNCHES FOR ALL!”

Jeff Jarvis, one of the enlightened big media execs who blogs and has succeeded in fostering blogs within his company, notes that Time has now joined CNN from axing a reporter’s blog. Jeff runs through all the pros and cons of publisher-funded blogs and concludes, “I predict competition will open this up. If Newsweek blogs, Time will. If FoxNews blogs, CNN will. Give it time.”

Jeff rebuts publisher concerns that j-bloggers will hurt their brand’s credibility. But he doesn’t address what I’ve assumed that the core publisher fear: that the j-blogger will establish a big audience of his/her own and hive off into nanopublishing.

Although publishers pay the bills for now, blogs dissolve the fundemental formula of publishing economics, the imbalance of power that allows a publisher to remind an uppity journalist: “you need our distribution more than we need your copy.”

But perhaps the moguls don’t see this as a threat, but just failed dotcom fantasy?

Winter ended first thing Saturday when a six year old boy awoke and shouted: “the whole front yard is full of grass!”

He’s been singing “the blues” recently, having been hooked by something mournful on the car radio. Inspired, he now croons, “Ohh, baby, I just want to call you on the telephone.” We’ve bought “Whole Lotta Blues,” a compilation CD, and now dress each morning to John Mayall and Eric Clapton jamming “Steppin’ Out.”

Glenn Reyolds says he got 600 Instapuntit-related e-mails yesterday. Blogcritics’ traffic was up 10-fold yesterday, winning 24,000 visits.

Reading up-to-the-minute blogs and news sites, the Layne family subscribes to the local paper “for the coupons and the (limited) local news, and the whole front section is about as worthless as putting on a condom after you got laid. If I wanted to read a bunch of L.A. Times articles from Friday, I would’ve done it Thursday night.”

The intensity of interest in Internet based news is clear in our traffic logs: a) we didn’t have the normal weekend dip and b) visits doubled yesterday morning as people returned to their broadband offices. (I bet newstand sales are up no more than 20%.) To see a traffic graph for one of our servers click (more…)