Tag Archives: Esther Dyson

By Esther Dyson Facebook’s experiment raises the issue of manipulation and unintended consequences There has been a lot of fuss lately about the psychological experiment that Facebook conducted on nearly 700,000 of its users. In order to gauge how people’s Facebook “News Feeds” affect their moods, the company temporarily implemented …

By Esther Dyson All participants should identify for themselves or their organisation what the purpose of the conference is This is conference season – a critical time for building brands, making connections, and shaping industries. Indeed, though people increasingly learn and interact online, we retain a fundamental need to engage …

By Esther Dyson Addressing the world’s most pressing problems, requires helping to tackle the underlying businesses An online charity organisation is taking Silicon Valley by storm. Called Watsi, the charity allows users to read personal tales of medical woe in emerging markets and contribute up to the total amount needed …

By Esther Dyson How do you cure the terrible inefficiency of NGOs that are typically run by people without management skills? Since starting my own nonprofit organisation, I look at other nonprofits with new eyes. There are far more of them than I ever realised. As an angel investor, I …

By Esther Dyson In the field of diet and nutrition, it is possible to work out what is best for you – if you think about it Recently I met with two nice slim men who have just launched a weight-loss app that provides daily menus and recipes, and offers …

By Esther Dyson Does his purchase of the Washington Post reveal an appreciation for journalism in a market of commercialised media? My very first serious job was as a fact-checker for Forbes magazine (now mostly a laissez-faire collection of blogs). I consider fact-checkers to be the altar boys of journalism. …

By Esther Dyson The trick to finding the right people, enlisting allies, and with their help, managing a campaign to achieve a goal Long ago, I used to run a conference called PC Forum. People would say to me, “If only I could sit next to Bill Gates….” Just last …

By Esther Dyson What will be the net economic value of people spending time attracting others’ attention by accumulating “likes”? I was recently posed the following question: “The most important way in which the Internet and online social media are changing our world is [fill in the blank].” My standard …

By Esther Dyson How can I avoid having my messages end up in the jumble of emails that gets abandoned, sent to an archive, or deleted? You may have heard of the “quantified self” movement – the idea that you monitor your own vital signs such as weight or blood …

By Esther Dyson Communities can measure the state, health, and activities of their people and institutions, and hopefully improve them. I have written previously about the Quantified Self movement – individuals equipped with the tools (monitoring devices and software) needed to measure their own health and behavior (and, by doing …