This is too good a site to let it go fallow. I’m bringing the Speculist back.

Speculist Media publishes three blogs — this one, The World Transformed, and Better All the Time. I intend to continue contributing to the other two, and to get this one back up and running as well. What are we going to talk about?

Live to see it.

After nearly ten years of blogging here at The Speculist and more than five years of podcasting under the name FastForward Radio, we will be moving both the blog and the radio show to worldtransformed.com and, going forward, The World Transformed will be the name both of this blog and our radio show.

Why the change?

For a long time we’ve wanted to get the blog and the show under a common banner, but we never thought “The Speculist” was a particularly good name for  a radio show. On the other hand, “FastForward Radio” is a good name for a blog only if it exists just to support the show, but that was never the idea. The blog and the site are both here to support a common set of ideas.

Anyway, we don’t own the domain FastForward Radio and we’re old fashioned about wanting to own our domain.

Of course, as long-time FFR listeners know, our two landmark special series (in 2009 and 2011) went by the name The World Transformed. That’s a domain we DO own, and frankly it’s just too good a name and domain to let sit around for months or years at a time.

Thus the change.

This doesn’t mean that The Speculist name is gone. The World Transformed will be both a publication and audio production of Speculist Media. And that isn’t just a sentimental thing. We’ll be doing some interesting things under that name in the months to come. Stay tuned.

The class-action lawsuit being brought against the Huffington Post on behalf of unpaid bloggers demonstrates that not all organizational problems can be solved through transparency alone. The facts in the case are not in dispute:

• Arianna Huffington’s eponymous news aggregation and blogging site relies on a network of some 9000 bloggers to produce the bulk of its content, very few of whom are ever paid in any way for their contributions.

• America Online acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million.

The damages sought in the lawsuit are $105 million on behalf of the unpaid bloggers, 1/3 of the purchase price of HuffPo. More facts not in dispute:

• The non-premium (unpaid) bloggers account for less than 1/3 of the HuffPo’s traffic

• These bloggers understood they would not be paid when they signed on

It’s helpful that all parties are looking at the same set of facts. This would be a very different story if there was any indication that the sale price had been obscured, that bloggers had been misled, or if the relative traffic contributions were unknown.

However, even with a common set of undisputed facts, this case will come down to an assessment of what is fair and what is reasonable — which facts on their own can’t provide. The HuffPo argument is that these bloggers provide this content as a way of getting their names out there, likening writing blogs for theHuffington Post to being interviewed (unpaid) by a TV show. The bloggers argue the site has become a hugely profitable business at least in part because of their contribution, and that they deserve a share.

While I sympathize with the bloggers, I don’t think they have much of a case. To knowingly agree to do something for free and then come back later and complain that you weren’t paid for it…

On the other hand, if the current set-up strikes them as unfair, there are certainly within their rights to refuse to write anything more for the Huffington Post, perhaps until the blogger compensation plan is updated. Then the HuffPo will have some decisions to make concerning the value of these particular bloggers, their options for getting content elsewhere, and the potential damage to a noted progressive site’s reputation when it is portrayed as exploiting workers — a charge that is central to the lawsuit.

In the end, a common set of facts won’t solve these problems. But there is a chance that it will help expedite coming to a common understanding of what’s fair and what’s reasonable.

Cross-posted from Transparency Revolution. Please join the discussion there.

Image via CrunchBase

I’ve launched a new blog today — well “launched” might be a bit of an exaggeration. I have one post and a blogroll up, and am working on getting things looking the way I want them to look.

Transparency Revolution is all about using social media to transform organizational development and career management. New topics for me, but not too far removed from some of the stuff we’ve done in the past here about the future economy, the future of work, etc.

This blog is produced in affiliation with Zapoint, where I will soon be joining the management team. You can follow TR tweets here.

Anyway, I’ll still be at the Speculist and FastForward Radio, so there should just be more Phil for everyone to enjoy. I’ll probably do some cross-posting where appropriate, but never assume!

Hope to see you all in both places.

Some are getting a similar string for Google, but I have not yet figured out how or whether this is configurable in Google mail settings. If anyone figures this out, please advise.

If you want to avoid strings and configuration issues altogether, use Facebook or set up a Typepad account.

And not only is The Speculist back online, we’re (finally) fully open once again for comments. You can log into comments any number of ways (including via Facebook if you have a TypePad account.) We strongly recommend using OpenID for commenting, but whatever you use, when you preview your comment, make sure that that the method of commenting you use displays your name — or at least what you want to be called in the context of the discussion.

Some of our fist few comments on the new system came from:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/blahC0QjrcyBFU_wtKjwWKmynzfAHIf.tg–#7560a  (which is me!)

and

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawn1PLofpmT1cLnL_3tmUR6j4uwjSWDTf_k

Which is a friend, but we know not who. And it’s hard to address someone with a string like that. So please, if you’re signed in as a big long string, sign your comments. Even writing “No Name” at the bottom gives fellow subsequent participants in the thread someone to address.

Also, please join the new Google friends group.

See, Stephen? Twitter feeds. Social networking. We’ve finally gone web 2.0!

There will be more gadgets and subtle design changes in the coming weeks. We welcome suggestions about what you’d like to see here.

And not only is The Speculist back online, we’re (finally) fully open once again for comments. You can log into comments any number of ways (including via Facebook if you have a TypePad account.) We strongly recommend using OpenID for commenting, but whatever you use, when you preview your comment, make sure that that the method of commenting you use displays your name — or at least what you want to be called in the context of the discussion.

Some of our fist few comments on the new system came from:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/blahC0QjrcyBFU_wtKjwWKmynzfAHIf.tg–#7560a  (which is me!)

and

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawn1PLofpmT1cLnL_3tmUR6j4uwjSWDTf_k

Which is a friend, but we know not who. And it’s hard to address someone with a string like that. So please, if you’re signed in as a big long string, sign your comments. Even writing “No Name” at the bottom gives fellow subsequent participants in the thread someone to address.

Also, please join the new Google friends group.

See, Stephen? Twitter feeds. Social networking. We’ve finally gone web 2.0!

There will be more gadgets and subtle design changes in the coming weeks. We welcome suggestions about what you’d like to see here.

This weekend I’m upgrading this site as we’ve been discussing for some time. If you come by Saturday or Sunday and things look great — welcome to the new Speculist! If you come by and they look weird, come back Monday. We should be back to normal by then.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/podcasts

So now what?

Well, being in that environment helps to remind me of why we do what we do at the Speculist. We live in an era of unprecedented change, and it’s a great privilege to be even a small part of that. In reporting and commenting on this change as it occurs, The Speculist and FastForward Radio are here to get the word out, to describe both the opportunities and risks we face as we move towards this new horizon.

So now what happens is that we keep on doing what we do, only (I hope) we do more of it and we do it better. I’ve been working in the background over the past couple of months to give this site a new look and feel. I’m hoping to have that wrapped up very soon.

More importantly, Stephen has gone Twitter on us in a huge way, which has given us a serious and much-needed infusion of new future content. Keep it up, buddy.

I realize that I’ve been waffling about our special summer-now-autumn series on the podcast, but I am digging in and waffling no more. Even if the website doesn’t get finished soon, even if we run into a period where things are hard to schedule — no matter what — we’re moving ahead with a new series of shows updating and amplifying our World Transformed series last summer. I am outlining this series now and will begin scheduling guests and promoting the new shows as soon as Stephen and I have had the chance to confer.

I really want FastForward Radio to be a weekly Singularity Summit (or H+ conference, or Foresigh Vision Weekend) for those who are unable to attend or who have not yet attended such an event. And I want the Speculist to be a daily version.

If we can pass on to those reading and lsitening even a small portion of what occurs at such events, we’ll be doing our job.

Image by Rob J Brooks via Flickr

Sometimes we’re so busy hurtling headlong into an astounding future that we miss the little things. The dashed-off ending to my previous entry reminded me that we just passed quite a landmark. On Sunday, the Speculist turned seven.

How appropriate that a flying car post should remind me of that!

Well a great big Happy Birthday to us!

Leslie, now that you’ve got a Speculist account we hope you won’t be a stranger around here.

World’s Biggest Snake Ate New Prehistoric Croc Species

Whats not to like? You’ve got the world’s biggest snake, a prehistoric croc — and not just one of those tired old prehistoric crocs, but apparently a new one!

A good headline, to be sure, but probably not among the all-time greats.