links for 2009-03-26

It’s frustrating to listen to the blather in the mainstream media about the current financial and economic c"risis, which is all about which interventions of types #7-12 (and mostly #10-12), if any, are appropriate to use to ‘rescue’ the greedy and incompetent people and institutions that exploited the financial system for personal gain, and to get us back into the addictive and unsustainable cycle of excessive and ever-increasing debt and consumption. And as long as the rich and powerful espouse only these foolish ways of thinking and ineffectual interventions to perpetuate their realization, and as long as the media dumbly and obediently report these as the only ideas on the table, public discourse will remain uninformed, conservative and unimaginative. And the chances of real intervention bringing about real change — what Obama called for but seems unable to muster — will be next to none.”"

What a site like LinkedIn needs to do is step back, assess who they are *today*, and go back to first principles and design a site that matches their current reality, not a cobbled-together experience that has accreted over time. (And don’t get me wrong — I’m a fan of LinkedIn, and use it frequently. That’s *why* it frustrates me so much, because it’s so incoherent.)