Re: Gmail at Yale

[Mark Funk <mefunk@med.cornell.edu>]

As Joe said, many times good enough is all we need. Wired 
magazine had a story on the "good enough" revolution last August: 
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough

The article even featured this part about publishing:

> Speaking at an Online publishers conference in London last 
> October, New York University new-media studies professor Clay 
> Shirky had a mantra to offer the assembled producers and 
> editors: "Don't believe the myth of quality." When it comes to 
> the future of media on the Web, Shirky sternly warned, resist 
> the reflex to focus on high production values. "We're getting 
> to the point where the Internet can support high-quality 
> content, and it's as if what we've had so far has all been nice 
> - a kind of placeholder - but now the professionals are 
> coming," Shirky said. "That's not true." To reinforce his 
> point, he pointed to the MP3. The music industry initially 
> laughed off the format, he explained, because compared with the 
> CD it sounded terrible. What record labels and retailers failed 
> to recognize was that although MP3 provided relatively low 
> audio quality, it had a number of offsetting positive 
> qualities.

Mark Funk

On Apr 9, 2010, at 12:01 AM, Electronic Content Licensing Discussion
wrote:

> As someone who works with digital research publications said to 
> me recently, it is not sustainable to have 80% of the cost 
> deliver 20% of the value.  In English:  some features cost too 
> much.
>
> I think it is a very serious mistake to design (and pay for) a 
> system that has the most demanding users in mind.  This results 
> in systems that are overbuilt and expensive to maintain. 
> While there clearly are exceptions, very often good enough is 
> good enough.
>
> Cloud computing is (mostly) good enough and getting better. 
> As it matures it will save institutions millions of dollars in 
> IT costs. Any my question is, Considering the cost of higher 
> education and the priorities of research universities, isn't 
> good enough good enough for email?
>
> Joe Esposito