I thought that the videos highlighted in the article were excellent portrayals of the student, their personality and the skills and interests they could bring to the university.
I know that if I were on the admissions board, these students would be rocketed to the top of the pile.

Also included in the article was a link to an article about a high school dub-off. The videos were put together by AV students in rival high schools. The quality of work was superb for this level. It would serve as a very nice addition to their portfolios when applying to colleges.

The article author brought up some very good points about the pros and cons of this potential trend. And I agreed with the points being made.
However, I think the benefits of allowing these types of products into the application portfolio easily outweigh the downsides of doing so.
The creativity exhibited in these videos is wonderful. Colleges should be encouraging this sort of thinking and the first step towards doing so is to let creative students attend their college. They should also be teaching creativity and designing the classroom environment and assignments in such a way as to facilitate and reward creativity. Not all classes, mind you, but enough that college graduates should have the ability and some practice at being more creative after attending college than they were when they entered college.

I support the idea of teaching and fostering creativity at all levels of the educational process. I support this idea in word and deed. I do this because I believe that creativity is good for the individual and good for society. I KNOW it is good for the economy.

• Would the site allow people to insult each other?
• Would it allow them to brag about their latest misdeeds?
• Would a person sign up to it only to be able to reject every request to “friend” them?
• Would a person start out as a friend of everybody who has an account on the page and the point of the site would be to “unfriend” everyone? To make it extra special, one would have to approve whether or not they were unfriended. The truly antisocial would then be able to mess it up for lots of people.

• There is the site isolatr which appears to have been in beta since 2006.
• There is also snubster which, ironically, has a Facebook app.
• Enemybook is also tied to Facebook as a Facebook app and allows you to add people as Facebook enemies (in Facebook, they will be listed right bellow your Facebook friends list). Interestingly, it also allows you to friend the enemies of your enemies.

In my Google search for antisocial networking sites I found several articles explaining the genesis of these sites.

All of the ones listed above were generated as a backlash to the social networking phenomenon and poke fun at how such networking sites stretch the definition of “friend” to the breaking point.

This is a common response to social and cultural trends and one that frequently inspires creative counterparts to dominant social trends.

The articles also point out that the antisocial networking sites are a social commentary on some of the absurdity inherent in social networking sites that stretch the definition of “friend” to its breaking point.

This has also led to some interesting phenomena  as people try to figure out how to navigate the new social interactions enabled by these platforms.

It leads to phrases such as “Person X is a Facebook friend but not a real friend.” It also leads to some debates concerning the appropriate response when ex friends and lovers put in a friendship request. Similarly, there is also concern and debate what the appropriate protocol is for “un-friendling” someone.

Like many disruptive technologies, these sites cause us to think about and question how computer/technology mediated interactions and behavior are similar to or different from our “real life” interactions and behavior.

The author of the article discusses how Apple does everything that companies are not supposed to do if they want to be a creative company. As stated in the article, Apple’s organizational structure and business culture more closely resemble “an old-school industrial manufacturer like General Motors than the typical tech firm.”
Apple is a hierarchical organization with the top dog (Steve Jobs) micromanaging every aspect of the company. Supposedly, this micromanaging includes even little details such as the number of screws to place on the bottom of a laptop or the amount of curve in the corners of a monitor. There is little or no individual autonomy.
This top-down management style isn’t implemented in a soft and fuzzy manner in which employees are reassured about their value to the company and their role in the development and future success of the Apple brand. Oh No. It is of the in-your-face, do it, do it well, or do it somewhere else style.
Extreme secrecy is one of the cultural values. Of course we knew this as it regards telling anyone outside of Apple about Apple’s game plan or in-the-works projects. However, this secrecy extends to individuals and units within the organization as well. Employees only have access to certain areas of the workplace. Teams working on different aspects of the same project do not communicate with each other or are even aware of what the other teams are working on.
What the author of the article points out is really surprising though is that this strategy is actually working for Apple. The secrecy increases the excitement at the unveiling of new products and actually adds to the mystique of the Apple brand. With a visionary such as Steve Jobs leading the company,many of the products are changing the paradigms for that class of product. And Jobs’ managerial style? Well, it appears that people try even harder to please the big boss and earn his approval.

So…does this mean that all the suggestions for making your organization an organization capable of innovating and adapting to a fluid variable marketplace are wrong? We DON’T need flat organizations that emphasize teamwork and open communication? Knowledge workers and innovators don’t need autonomy? We don’t need transparency both within the organization and without? I doubt it.

I think this type of organizational structure works BECAUSE Steve Jobs is at the helm. Have Jobs manage a company such as Google with an organization that is designed to promote creativity and I don’t think creativity and innovation will result. Similarly, put someone else in charge of Apple with it’s current culture and organizational structure and I don’t think you would see the level of success the company has exhibited since Jobs took the helm. I believe that this would be the case even if the CEO managed in a fashion to how Steve Jobs currently manages the organization.

I am just hypothesizing at this point but I think the reason that traditional organizations have trouble with innovation and creativity is because they need a visionary such as Steve Jobs at the helm to be innovative. These people are few and far between. So what do you do if you don’t have a visionary at the helm? You need to fully utilize the resources of the people you do have in an environment that has been shown to promote creativity and innovation.