Read time: 4 minutes

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The Essence of The Excellence Dividend
If you are unfamiliar with management legend Tom Peters’ style, here it is in a nutshell: excellence focused, exuberantly delivered. Peters’s most recent book is The Excellence Dividend, and people quoting from it have been showing up in my Twitter feed ever since its release back in the spring.

Recently, Peters posted a 10-page document on his website, free for all, that captures the basic fundamentals of his arguments in the book. (The whole thing is, of course, worth buying and reading as well!)

2Big Trouble in Google’s China
Once upon a time, Google was admiringly defined (or roundly mocked, depending on your perspective) by it’s all encompassing core value statement of “Don’t Be Evil.” The phrase, which had been an overt part of Google’s culture since 2000, was unceremoniously phased out earlier this year.

Whether that step was taken in preparation for Google’s future business plans in China is anybody’s guess. What is clear is that a sizable contingent of Google’s employees think Google is crossing the “don’t be evil” line by it’s plans to operate a government censored search engine in China. Codenamed “Project Dragonfly,” the planned search product “would remove content that China’s authoritarian government views as sensitive, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest. It would “blacklist sensitive queries” so that “no results will be shown” at all when people enter certain words or phrases.”

(And yes, I am quite proud of that punny headline up there…)

via GIPHY

3Life After Google Reviewed
Even as Google is focused on tamping down its employee revolt over its Chinese plans, technology futurist George Gilder thinks it has a much more fundamental problem on its hands. In his new book Life After Google, Gilder makes the case that the consolidating effect of the modern internet organizing model exemplified by Google — a all-encompassing model of free internet-based activities in exchange for your data for purposes of the targeted advertising that earns  eye-watering revenue — will be undone by the next information revolution: the decentralized and secure system made possible by blockchain technology.

This review of Gilder’s book, written by sci-fi writer Tony Daniels, was an interesting enough primer to Gilder’s work to prompt me to add a couple of his books to my ever-growing “to be read” list. The other? – Life After Television, his now prescient predictive piece from 1990 about how the internet’s decentralized nature (as originally designed and before the corruption/consolidation of digital advertising) would be the undoing of the centralized world of television programming. Imagine predicting the cord-cutting effect of computing nearly 20 years before Netflix made its switch from mailing DVD’s to streaming movies.

4Is Netflix Forgetting Who It Is?
Speaking of Netflix, when they launched their original service of DVD rental by mail, their business model threatened the existing business model of movie rental stores everywhere. Most notable of the business threatened by Netflix was Blockbuster Video, which had as many as 9,000 retail locations in 2004. There is now a single Blockbuster left in business — Bend, Oregon, if you’re interested.

Netflix’s bigger impact has been on the viewing habits of media consumers more generally. As Netflix moved away from DVD’s in the mail to movies and television shows streamed over the internet directly, services like Hulu and others joined the fray. Then Netflix opened up a new front in the battle for eyeballs by launching into the production of original content in 2012. Suddenly, media consumers had “cord-cutting” as an alternative to the long hated subscription package bundling of cable and satellite television providers. Choice was the major appeal to consumers who made the move to a streaming television viewing world, but there was another, equally attractive reason to cut the cable cord: no more commercials. Paying a single monthly subscription fee for the pleasure of watching your favorite shows without the constant and obnoxious interruptions of revenue-generating commercials is the best feature of watching television shows on demand.

And now it appears Netflix thinks it’s time to start undoing that great feature of being a subscriber: they are testing “video promos” of suggested content in between episodes of whatever you’re watching. You know how enjoyable it is to watch NBC endlessly plug their own shows while you’re watching the Olympics? Yeah, something like that.

5“It’s Easy,” They Say
Here’s the article’s headline in full, which is … something: “This company embeds microchips in its employees, and they love it.”

What are these grain-of-rice sized microchips embedded in the webbing of employees’ hands for, you may be asking? — “They’re intended to make it a little easier to do things like get into the office, log on to computers, and buy food and drinks in the company cafeteria.”

These folks “love” being a company cyborg with an implanted RF-transmitter under their skin so that things like opening doors and buying a Coke can be “a little easier.” Because using the standard card key on a retracting belt leash and a credit card is such a drain on life and productivity!