Sometimes I catch myself thinking “oh crap - wrong time to start freelancing” when it comes to the coming recession in the world (which I believe will show up at our doorstep sooner or later). Most of the time I am thinking in a very Louise L. Hay way, that if the recession is coming then I won’t be influenced by it.

If you look at what the economy of abundance has brought to society it is kind of a “have it all” feeling - everything you can possibly think of can be yours… Business models are starting to be formed around giving stuff away for free. Oh yeah sometimes I feel like a spoiled little brat…

Anyway, something tells me that economy of scarcity delivers more creativity and more eagerness than the economy of abundance, which is probably a result of the ” I-could-have-it-all ” kind of life. Why try harder when it is brought to us ?… why make excellent stuff when we can get by with mediocre ? I think a new economy of scarcity will make society work more creatively towards global problems than now where there is this “all is well” feeling to everything. If we need something we will just borrow the money for it in the bank - We are so wealthy it’s incredible.

All is good for now - But my idea is that if the recession comes it’s going to separate “crap” from “gold” and the more substantial people will make a better living than the ones that are in it for the money and the hype.

As Sanjay said in geekarmyknife # 6 ” we are looking at a reversal of stereotypes” - good call, and an really genuine idea to ponder about.

I have talked to a lot of people in tech about this at the recent reboot 10 conference here in Copenhagen.

And I think it’s one of the most inspirational things you can know about people, it makes sense to me to actually perspective it into what they are doing now.

Anyway my first job out of college was for apple computers back in 1999. I literally went from my classroom to Cork, Ireland to help build up their european support center which is still located in the same spot today.

This was before Apple Computers where cool! this was when Steve Jobs went back to working at Apple computers ( he did that while I was there)

I even promised myself after troubleshooting mac’s in english, danish, swedish, norwegian, french and finnish (!) that I would never get a mac because I deeply thought that the OS sucked ( and it wasn’t compatible with windows)..
I am deeply in love with my 2,5 year old macbook pro still ( and that comes from a girl who used to wear a pc laptop out in a year or so.

Both me and Apple has come a long way since then.

And I am deeply convinced that my life would have looked differently if I wouldn’t have worked at apple as my first job out of college.

When I got back to Denmark I was literally sucked into a new computer startup and I haven’t really worked for anything else than something evolving the internet. It’s partly Apple’s fault I’m sure.

so what about you - did you first job out of college shape you as much as mine did ?

To those of you who don’t know it - I have a 4 year old daughter, who diggs the internet and looks for the mouse behind the TV.

I have been watching her when she has been playing around on my computer and it’s really amazing to see how her patterns have changed.

Still - what would you think is her favorite things to do on the computer ? - it’s not playing games on the internet. it’s not taking silly pictures with photobooth. It’s the word processor.

Really- she loves anything that can make her learn. When she’s completely cracking up - it is mostly due to her berzerking on the keyboard -and then having mom and dad pronouncing what she has written. Awesome.

here’s a little treat of hers for you :

see it more clearly on my flickr account

she also likes to watch youtube. I know. We talk about social media all the time, but she’s 4 and her favorite thing is the word processor. it makes me wonder. maybe the “blank page” is the more creative app after all.

Yeah. I think so too.

Also one of the newest and simplest things I have found lately is justwatchthesky.com - enjoy - as close to a blank page as it gets..

answer: mainstream doesn’t exist in a community - I would even argue that there is no mainstream anymore.

Anyways I have been researching a bit during the last couple of days, due to my work with Koblo.com -and the key that I found was in good’old Chris Andersons book “the long tail” where he basically argues the winning situation the niche’s has over mainstream - and he even uses music communities as an example ! -

So the argument is battled between the mainstream hitlist vs. recommendation algorithms in a community.

Somehow as the mainstream disappears, the hitlists becomes irrelevant. Or to put it more clearly - I don’t care about a pop chart hitlists if I am into rock’n'roll. Or maybe I do, but I will always get more relevant data if I get a rock’n'roll hitlist..

So RELEVANCY algorithms are key for music communities - as relevancy algorithms are key on amazon.com for books.

so in general hitlists are becoming obsolete - unless they are relevant and “up close” to the users.

it’s kindoff the same idea that is spreading like a wildfire through the advertisement industry - to make ads seem like “relevant information” to the users so they wont notise that it’s an ad…

smart thinking =)

oh - this is crossposted on the koblo blog