circuitously via www.trkfld.com

So, rather than harness the crowd like a sweat shop, Etsy has invested heavily in supporting them. In January 2008, it leveraged an additional 30 million in VC funding–then its approximate annual sales revenue–to help make the site as functional and aesthetically pleasing as its products. The company also added tools that promoted individual virtual storefronts, such as a shop locator that is searchable by city, state, or country. That’s lead to at least 100,000 new sellers in the last two years and a few million more buyers, who’ve helped boost sales by more than $40 million. (Not to mention the fact that sellers are still charged a nominal fee to post.)

Let’s skip space and colonize the deep.

As Wall Street firms have demonstrated, high bonuses don’t always lead to high performance — and they can be incredibly de-motivating. Frequently, they lead to individual striving without adding anything to the overall endeavor. They create “me guys.” And the players know exactly who they are. There’s one respect in which a locker room is like any other business, and that’s its capacity for discontent over pay. The effect in a locker room when compensation seems arbitrary and undisciplined — when it isn’t linked to transparency and clear goal setting — is the same as in any other office. Creeping disengagement, eroding morale and questions about management’s loyalty.

These are all the reasons why the Redskins need experienced, proven management — and why smart management tells so heavily in the won-loss column across the league. The Redskins’ inability to get their valuations right, to reward real character while constantly tilting the pay scale by dropping huge sacks of gold on it, is arguably as big a problem as their failure to draft well over the last 10 years.

If nothing else good comes out of this woeful season, maybe Redskins management will at last learn something about value. It’s the people the Redskins had the least use for who are working hardest at the moment to preserve the organization’s respectability.

Mendelsund: For the record, I am a tech junkie, and not some kind of luddite or book fetishist–but I firmly believe that a book is more than a mere repository of information (though it performs well as one). A book is also a trophy, a mnemonic device, a totem, an indicator of taste, an emblem of status, a decorating tool, an inscribe-able, meaningful gift, a cultural touchstone. It is durable, mutable, and highly personalize-able. It is an essentially democratic object–just as anyone can (and God help us, will) write a book, pretty much anyone can make a book as well. (Good luck distilling your own E Ink). We all have a general understanding of how books are produced, and conversely we are all estranged from the workings of e-readers. Why does this matter? I’m not sure–but in a very similar fashion, I feel more simpatico with my records than I do with my mp3 files, because I kinda get how the sound is produced by placing a needle on a groove. And this feeling, in some ineffable way, changes the experience of listening for me. Digitized media is fundamentally alienating on some level, though this is, obviously the way most media will be, inevitably, in the post-analog age.