Showing posts with label the social network. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the social network. Show all posts

13 February 2011

Behind The Scenes Of ‘The Social Network’ - fiction near fact is still useful fiction

This is a reply to the blog post below:
I wonder if it will also help remind people that the film nominated for eight Oscars isn’t a documentary about Facebook but rather a work of historical fiction.

The Social Network has been one of my favourite films over the past year.  It's quick, it's well thought out and has a killer sound track.  Best of all, even though it's not the "truth" (what ever that maybe) it's certainly enough that you can understand the background to Facebook which is now the world's biggest website. The argument here is, film is both entertaining and close enough to the truth.  In this sense it is very successful and educational at the same time.

It's a big budget movie; it is not a peer reviewed journal. Audiences ought to have a different expectation of truth, and ought to look a bit deeper on the matter if they wish to make judgements about Mr Zuckerberg‎ character or business management style.

So what if there weren't quite as many mostly naked girls in the real word? Timberlake was actually (surprisingly) a good actor and it was terribly entertaining.  Of course I know that nerds are no where near as cool as any film could ever possibly make out. Interestingly enough, I once met one of the Piranha Task Force detectives, and they were sledging the Underbelly because, as he put it "I followed Carl Williams for years, I listened to his every telephone call, I knew what he was up to, and never do I remember so much sex being involved".  Possibly because he being a professional voyeur, he might have enjoyed his work even more if that were the case.  Oddly enough however, all the other little details about the characters, (including their hair styles and choice of footwear) was rather accurate.


I'm sure that Hitler would claim that Downfall was incorrect. I'm lothe believe anything 100% from any one source, and especially not at the movies.  So ought  any other right minded person.  This isn't a courtroom, and facts are kind of slippery when you ask different people their sides of the story.

No. it's not an accurate representation, it's a dramatisation. But for the sake of telling a story (and a damn interesting one at that) - near enough IS actually good enough. 





01 December 2010

Business Idea and intellectual "property" - but can you own a meme?

You know sometimes XKCD just gets it so right. One of the really annoying  things is having a "Business Idea" that doesn't actually go the way you wanted.  But the reality is, that if you really were good enough to make that business work you would have done it already. This is not a reality that we want to hear very often. To illustrate, there is an accurate but confusing line in the the new movie The Social Network where "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd've invented Facebook."


More importantly the real answer to this problem is given in the movie a bit latter.  Larry Summers, The VC of Harvard states that they should "just go and find another idea." But let's face it, even the Harvard Business Review magazine this month admits that's much harder to do. Worst of all, most people and most businesses are lazy.


There is something attractive to this concept that you can just come up with a some magical idea, do no work and then sue people who "steal" it from you. I fear that this concept no more solid a ground on which to base a economic society than the Vikings plundering wealth.  Why? Because the Vikings would have justified a society of plunder on the basis of might it right.  This capitalist world is based on the assumption that legal might and first to the patent office is right. Not effort is right, and not success.


Again, I am a potential author who wants to walk the middle way.  I love Linux, the Creative Commons, and Wikipedia.  I also want to get rich here too. But it seems I have to pick one.


On a side note, I see that Microsoft is also find it self at the wrong end of the endless web of who sues who.