JOHO
Journal of the
Hyperlinked Organization
========================================
June 30, 1998
Editor: David Weinberger (self@evident.com)
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to self@evident.com. Or use our Sub/Unsub form at
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http://www.hyperorg.com/current/current.html
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-----------------------------
CONTENTS
-The Trouble with XML: 1. All hail XML, but we
are about to see the Balkanization of
standards...2. And here's something we can do
about it. 3. We inevitably veer into the
frivolous.
-Devolving Definitions: All Hail Larry, for He
hath brought forth NCs direct from his mighty
forehead.
-Why Search Engines Suck: Lycos takes a swing at
this perennial question.
-Walking the Walk: Subaru decentralizes its
forecasting process via the Web.
-Cool Tool: Fonts for the eye weary
-Internetcetera: Web maintenance is vital and
being outsourced. Also, are Americans slobs? A
Dutch perspective.
- Gartner on KM: CIOs may disagree about the
value of KM, but they agree the name sucks.
-Reader-Suggested Links: JOHO readers have a
come up with a miscellany of interesting sites.
-Email, Comments and Rude Remarks: The usual
amazing mail from readers.
-Bogus Contest: The JOHO Invitational.
SPECIAL INTERVIEW ISSUE
What seems like years ago, I interviewed
Chris "RageBoy" Locke for Wired magazine.
Upon reading the actual interview, they
politely declined to publish it,
entitling us to claim that this piece of
work was just too hot for Wired! Wow!
Chris recently published the interview as
a special issue of his newsletter, EGR.
EGR is itself, of course, too hot for
Wired!
I, however, still write with some
frequency for Wired, entitling me to say
that Wired is the finest magazine in the
world and I completely agree with their
decision not to publish that piece o'
dreck interview. Good call, Wired guys!
Not-Wired Interview:
http://www.rageboy.com/cross-wired.html
EGR:
http://www.rageboy.com/index2.html
-----------------
THE TROUBLE WITH XML
1. The XML Standard Wars are just beginning
I was part of the XML front lash, so don't take this
as an XML backlash. (Extra points: come up with a
way I could work in a "backslash" pun.)
Nevertheless, XML is going to be a big stinking
mess. Now that the XML bandwagon is launched
unstoppably and beyond recall, we need to get real
clear real quickly about what it will and will not
do for us.
Oh, it will do everything it's advertised to do.
Properly applied it will let us build Web
applications that take advantage of the smartened
documents XML allows. And it will let us navigate
through documents more intelligently and do smarter
searches.
But as we attempt to take full advantage of XML,
it's going to get very messy. That's because at its
heart XML isn't simply a standard. It's a standard
way of specifying a standard.
XML lets a document author specify a set of tags
that make sense for the content of that document.
So, instead of having to tag every numbered list as
"
" because you want to get an indented, numbered
list, you might specify some sections as "Tool_List"
and some as "Instructions" and some as "Check_List."
Or whatever. Then the application that looks at your
XML page can do interesting things with that
information -- like show you a list of all the tools
required, or build an interactive check list that
gets uploaded into some master server. Or
whatever.
The "or whatevers" are the strength of XML ... and
its biggest problem.
In order for an application to make sense of the
tags in a particular XML document, it has to know
ahead of time what to do with them. When I use my
ordinary HTML browser to look at your XML document,
it's not going to know that a "Tool_List" has
anything to do with tools. I will instead need a
special application that someone has written
specifically to deal with that particular tag set.
(Maybe the application will be delivered with the
XML document via Java. Maybe not.)
Suppose you want to mark up your page with XML so
that the Web search engines can do smart searching
on it. You want to be able to tell the search
engines that the language is English, that the topic
is water snakes, that the information on the page
will be out of date by next March and that it
shouldn't be looked at by people who are afraid of
reptiles. You can create some XML metadata tags to
capture all that information -- but so what? Alta
Vista doesn't know what your tags mean, and neither
does Hotbot, Infoseek, or Excite (not to mention
Lycos).
Or suppose you're Microsoft and you're making it
possible to save Word documents in XML. (This isn't
idle speculation, by the way.) You need to create
tags that capture tons of information that is
specific to Word, such as tab styles, index tokens,
footnote styles, etc. The result will be a large,
complex DTD (document type definition, which
includes the set of permissible tags) for Word XML
-- what some have called "Word_ML" (a witticism I
first heard from Dan Bricklin although he gave
credit to someone else). And when WordPerfect and
Lotus and whatever save as XML, we'll have
WordPerfect_ML and Lotus_ML ... and a million other
MLs, including SAP_ML, Quicken_ML, Mom_and_Pop_ML,
and ButtScratch_ML.
Will the world be a better place? We'll be able to
create smarter applications because XML will give us
smarter documents. But we are headed towards the
Balkanization of standards in which each person has
her own standard or -- worse yet -- set of
standards.
So bring on the XML and hasten its proliferation.
But don't think life is suddenly going to get
easier. In a twist on the law of entropy, we are
tending towards a chaotic system of micro-order.
2. The Tags We Search By
To avoid the pitfalls of Balkanization, we need to
agree on some common tags, if only so we can do
"smart" searching. That means we want all our Web
pages to be marked up with tags for the different
types of metadata on which we search.
It's not hard to come up with a useful list. And
JOHO isn't the first to think of it. In fact, we're
just about the last. The OCLC (Online Computer
Library Center, Inc.) and the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications convened a workshop in
Dublin, Ohio in 1995 to address just this issue. The
aim was:
...to achieve consensus on a list of metadata
elements that would yield simple descriptions
of data in a wide range of subject areas, and
to lay the groundwork for further progress in
defining metadata elements that describe
electronic information.
They came up with the following list of metadata
useful for finding pages (and I quote):
* Subject: The topic addressed by the work
* Title: The name of the object
* Author: The person(s) primarily responsible for
the intellectual content of the object
* Publisher: The agent or agency responsible for
making the object available
* OtherAgent: The person(s), such as editors and
transcribers, who have made other significant
intellectual contributions to the work
* Date: The date of publication
* ObjectType: The genre of the object, such as
novel, poem, or dictionary
* Form: The physical manifestation of the object,
such as Postscript file or Windows executable
file
* Identifier: String or number used to uniquely
identify the object
* Relation: Relationship to other objects
* Source: Objects, either print or electronic,
from which this object is derived, if applicable
* Language: Language of the intellectual content
* Coverage: The spatial locations and temporal
durations characteristic of the object
This became known as "The Dublin Core," which passes
the Pretty Cool Name test but nevertheless has
failed to catch on. But as XML proliferates, having
standards for structuring and searching documents
will become even more important. We're likely to see
local standards emerge for particular document types
in particular industries. But having some universal
tags would be enormously helpful.
Why hasn't this caught on? Don't give me the old
chicken-and-egg malarkey about needing both the
authoring packages and the search sites to support
it. The point about the chicken-and-egg story is
that we have chickens. In fact, we have too many
chickens. (As a vegetarian, I am not suggesting you
up your chicken consumption. No, I have a dream of
one day restoring to our vast prairies the flocks of
feral chickens that once covered the red dust like a
single squawking, smelly, flightless evolutionary
mistake.)
Imagine that Yahoo! and Microsoft were to announce
that from now on, you'll be able to search using the
attributes like those in the Dublin Core. Imagine
Alta Vista or Hotbot were to join in. Given the
enormous imperative to have your pages found (we are
increasingly like the fly in the eponymous movie
squeaking "Find me! Find me!"), we'd flock to this
new de facto standard like smelly, flightless
evolutionary mistakes.
Just a thought.
3. Beyond Dublin
By the way, there are other attributes we'd probably
want to capture beyond what's in the Dublin Core,
including:
Description
Copyright info
Date written
Date Posted
Best if used by
Recommended age level
Combined tonnage of included graphics
Price per view
Print publishers who rejected this page
Contains phrase "paradigm shift"?
Number of Pam Anderson JPGs
Number of attacks by RageBoy
JOHO is accepting contributions on this important
topic...
-------
Links
(Ignore line breaks, of course! Or go to the
hyperlinked version at:
http://www.hyperorg.com/current/current.html
About the Dublin Core:
http://www.oclc.org/oclc/research/publications/revie
w95/part2/weibel.htm
XML resource center
http://www.xml.com
About the W3C namespace proposal:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/WD-xml-names-19980327
To see an XML romance bloom:
http://www.scripting.com/98/03/stories/lisasSong.htm
l
-----------------
DEVOLVING DEFINITIONS™ DEPT.
Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, was interviewed in PC
Week (May 25):
PC Week: Have you tempered your projections for
NC (network computer) growth?
Ellison: There are a number of [research]
companies that forecast, by the year 2008 or
something like that, network computers will
outnumber PCs 10 to 1
PC Week: Is that a generic term they're using
for "NC"?
Ellison: Yes. An NC is a computer that runs an
Internet browser, that allows you through HTTP
to get at Internet services. That's all it is.
While you're enjoying Ellison trying to squirm out
of the utter wrongness of his earlier projections of
the success of NCs, don't forget to notice the great
confidence with which Larry quotes "a number" of
research companies that are projecting out to the
year 2008 (or something like that). Given the way he
has redefined NC, what those projections really mean
is that in the year 2008, 90% of computers will be
able to browse the web. Sounds like a conservative
estimate to me!
Not content with magically causing all Web-ready
computers to become NCs, Ellison now takes credit
for this year's dramatic drop in the price of
computers
Ellison: An interesting thing has happened
since we first started talking about $500
network computers: ... PC pricing has dropped
to under $800.
PC Week: And you attribute that to the
evolution of the NC concept?
Ellison: I don't know why else they've dropped
quite so fast.
Foolish me! I thought the price drop had something
to do with the dramatic drop in the cost of
component pieces due primarily to competitive
pressures and oversupplies. Little did I realize it
was because Larry Mighty Ellison had declared that
from this day NCs would go forth.
Larry, for the sake of all that's good and just,
could you please invent the concept of the FC, the
free computer? And also the WPC, the world peace
computer. Not to call these forth through the power
of your thought would be a sin.
-----------------
WHY SEARCH ENGINES SUCK
A couple of issues ago, we reported on the bad
articles written about the study in Science magazine
that showed that search engines sites only index
about a third of the Web at best. Hotbot weighed in
with 34% and Lycos anchored the list with 3%. Now,
in CIO Web Business (June 1), Rajive Mathur, senior
product manager at Lycos, tries to put a good spin
on it. He says:
Our goal is to look at what users are looking
at and give them that. We have an editorial
group and technological group working to decide
which answers are relevant. Why should we give
people more results? Our studies show that 93%
of the people want fewer results, and 85% never
go beyond the third page of results.
The fact that people want fewer results does not
mean that your search engine needs to look at only
3% of the available pages (as Lycos does). What
people really want is a site that's looked at a lot
of the Web and which then winnows the results so
what they're looking for shows up on the first page
of results.
What does "a lot of the Web" mean? I dunno, but I
suspect it's somewhere above 3%.
BTW, let me give Mr. Mathur a little marketing
lesson, free o' charge. The right way to put the 85%
figure is "85% of our users find what they need
within the first thirty results!" Sure, we know that
most are leaving because they think page 4 isn't
going to be any better than page 3, but we're
talking marketing here, man!
-------------
David Stephenson forwarded an Information Week (June
1) article that covers many of the themes in theory
covered in JOHO (until you -- yes, you -- forced it
to become a frigging comedy rag instead of a
deep-thinkin', plain-speakin', truck-drivin'
Webby-business prognosticatorium).
I'd give you the direct link to the article, but it
doesn't work. Here's what David sent me, which
worked until recently:
http://www.techweb.com/se/linkthru.cgi?IWK19980601S0
046
I was unable to re-locate this article using the
site's search engine even though we know:
AUTHOR: Noah Shachtman
TITLE: Group Think -- Employees are shattering
the traditional corporate structure with
intranets
MAGAZINE: Information Week
PUB DATE: June 1, 1998
FULL TEXT OF FIRST PARAGRAPH: Not long ago,
intranets seemed little more than vehicles for
disseminating information from corporate
headquarters. Now, at forward-thinking
organizations such as Ernst & Young, Xerox, and
MCI, their real potential is beginning to take
shape: Employees are using intranets to band
together in far-flung groups of need and
expertise that defy traditional corporate
structure.
No, that's just not enough metadata for the CMP
search engine. Apparently we also need to know the
article's width in pixels, its mother's maiden name,
and the author's pet name for his weenie.
I did, finally, find it again by plugging some text
from the first paragraph into Hotbot. It's at:
http://techweb.cmp.com/iw/684/84iugrp.htm
Aaarrgh.
I defy you to find this by using the search engines
at either the CMP or Information Week site:
http://www.cmp.com
http://www.informationweek.com
-------------
A search on Hotbot, the volume leader, for "Windows
stinks" in the past three months turns up only 3
entries, and "Windows95 stinks" turns up zero.
That can't be right...
--------------------
MIDDLE WORLD RESOURCES: A COMPENDIUM OF RESOURCES
COOL TOOL FOR THE HYPERLINKED ORGANIZATION
At the risk of not being hyperlinky cool enough,
let me recommend a trip through Ziff-Davis's
library of font downloads. You'll find some
updated standards as well as some new ones that
swing wildly between being easier on the eyes and
hav ing imp act (= "looking cool, man"). Sure,
these days we're not supposed to worry about
publishing nits like fonts. But a good font is
like a good mood. Oh my lord, what have I become?
Share the fontasy here:
http://www.hotfiles.com/graphics/fonts.html
(You can also test your font knowledge by visiting
the JOHO home page.)
---
WALKING THE WALK
InternetWeek (June 8) reports that Subaru is
moving its forecasting process on to the Web. This
has the obvious benefit of letting the
organization be more flexible as markets change.
For example, while it's predictable that the snow
plow option for convertibles will sell better in
Wisconsin than in Georgia, tastes vary and
fluctuate from city to city. (Who could have
predicted the demand in The Hamptons for cars with
extra long, pointy hood ornaments? Well, you could
have if you had been following the craze for full
body piercing last summer.)
The move will also have the not-quite-so-obvious
(but less-than-startling) effect of distributing
power away from central headquarters and out to
the regional managers who will be able to react to
the forecasts, fine tuning them as required at Web
speed.
There's a four-month lead time for ordering cars
from the factory. Subaru plans on using the Web to
parcel out the cars to dealers more efficiently
since market conditions may have changed by the
time the cars are driven off the ship by their
platoon of defrocked valet parking attendants.
(If Subaru's new-found webbinness inspires you to
buy one of their cars, please check Edmunds
first:
http://www.edmunds.com/edweb/reviews.html
----
INTERNETCETERA
This issue's Net factoid is dedicated to the
improbably named Christel van der Boom who
maintained in a conversation recently that
Americans dress rather formally in offices, while
we are complete slobs outside of the office. This
is in comparison to Ms. van der Boom's native
Netherlands which -- as we all know -- has long
been the world fashion leader (which is why you
can't hardly pry the wooden shoes off of today's
top supermodels).
Au contraire! A recent survey by Christian &
Timbers in Clevland found that 40% of job
candidates show up for interviews in casual
attire. You see, Americans are slobs all the time!
(You can read my interviewing tips in my recently
published book Putting Nudism to Work for You
(with a foreword by Clarence Thomas). The nude
workplace is happening. You read it here first...)
-----------
In a totally unrelated study, Forrester Research
did a study of outsourcing cited in CIO Web
Business (June 1):
Function % Outsourced
Site design 80%
Coding and scripting 82%
Content creation 44%
Content management 44%
Systems management 42%
Strategic planning 36%
Why they outsource so much of this supposedly
strategic asset:
Reason %
No staff 73%
No technical resources 64%
No expertise 55%
Easier 16%
More cost efficient 14%
So, it's harder and more expensive to outsource
these functions, but they do it anyway instead of
staffing up. Does IT think this whole Web/intranet
thing is going to blow over and they don't want a
bunch of people with Web skills sitting around
drinking latte and playing Quake?
----------------
GARTNER ON KM
A recent Gartner Report reports gartnerially that in
research conducted on CIOs (involving sodium
pentathol, eyelash clamps and liquid nitrogen, or at
least we hope), the subjects were reluctant to
recommend anything called "knowledge management"
because it basically doesn't mean anything, although
they see value in the general subject area. ("If you
had any knowledge, do you think it'd be good to
manage it, or what?" "Um, yeah, sure. You said
there'd be hors d'oeuvres.")
Among leading contenders for replacement terms, the
CIOs favored "knowledge sharing" and "knowledge
networking." Apparently, "knowledge knowing" and
"Send your knowledge to college" -- the leading
contenders among JOHO staffers -- didn't even make
it onto the list.
[Thanks and a tip o' the hat to Steven Birnam for
passing this tidbit along.]
--------------------
READER-SUGGESTED LINKS
A number of readers have suggested some links:
David Hitchcock, a London-based JOHO reader, has a
very useful site for those interested in electronic
publishing and documents:
http://www.pira.co.uk/IE
-------------
Joshua Newman has a bunch of links to interesting
material about the importance of metaphors:
http://metaphor.uoregon.edu/metaphor.html
http://www.bell-labs.com/people/cope
http://www.netspace.org/~erica/m4/intro.html
http://www.desk.nl/~acsi/WS/themes/metacc.htm
-------------
Greg Cavanagh, my scholar-athlete nephew doing
research on how to build a brain out of Linux, sends
these "awesome linux links":
The MIT AI lab
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/
The COG project
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cog/
Greg notes that: they have their own resident
philosopher (Daniel Dennett, who, for my money, wins
the "Clever Boy Award for Contemporary
Philosophers").
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cog/Text/people-index
.html
Look for an upcoming article from Greg on why Linux
will beat Windows (well, why it ought to, anyway) as
part of our continuing ignoring of the Linux
phenomenon.
-------------
Larry Fitzpatrick sends along a proposal for a new
standard: "HTCPCP, a protocol for controlling,
monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots" :
http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/coffee.txt
The fact that this proposal is dated April 1 is
probably just a coincidence.
-------------
Continuing the weird cross-fertilization of EGR and
JOHO, Chris RageBoy Locke passes along a great URL
suggested by one of his readers:
http://www.wenet.net/~scoville/svtmain.html
This is a very funny fortune telling site using the
official Silicon Valley Tarot deck.
------------------------
EMAIL, COMMENTS, SUGGESTED LIFESTYLES
There has been a tremendous amount of email since
the last issue, some small percentage of it not from
coeds who assure me that I am essential to their
fulfillment as women (credit cards accepted). The
special issue on the role of metaphors really seemed
to beat the old epistolary carpet, if you know what
I mean (if you don't, just guess...to yourself)
resulting in a special special issue already sitting
in your discard pile. So, here's mail that isn't
about metaphors.
Special special issue:
www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-june21-98.html
--------
Riding on the startling popularity of The Truman
Show, let's begin with a recent JOHO triumph. In the
previous issue, we whined that conference sessions
generally probe and we look forward to the day when
instead of seeing three marketing guys giving
sequential twenty-minute drone-fests which have been
known to cause audience members to chew off their
own feet in order to escape, conference sessions
will take their cue from TV.
No sooner said than done. Andy Moore, editor of
KMWorld (full disclosure: I've been known to write
drone-fest columns for KMWorld) writes:
Hold onto your powder brush and get ready for
your close up. This from the July Summit's
agenda-in-progress:
"The KM Show" Unique to the KMWorld Industry
Leadership Summit, this two-hour mixed-media
show is designed in 'variety/chat show' format.
Interviews with Industry notables from both
sides of the analyst/vendor fence, in an
attempt to learn more about their work, their
enterprises and a little about them personally.
Think Letterman meets Charlie Rose."
JOHO takes full-blush credit for this although
apparently Stowe Boyd (a JOHO reader) had suggested
this to Andy before we did. You know, being first
doesn't make you better, Stowe! Just ask Microsoft.
Andy then goes on to compare JOHO to Tallulah
Bankhead, the gravel-voice Ur-Lesbian of the
30s-50s, for reasons I cannot -- and wish not -- to
contemplate. Um, thanks, Andy.
KMWorld conference:
http://www.kmworld.com/summit
--------
A very feisty Gerry Murray of IDC responds to our
article on the future of displays:
and the crapfest continues. see comments below.
If you haven't upgraded to the latest plasma
gas 128 billion color display system, you might
not be able to discern that my comments are
sprinkled in below in blue and you might
therefore find yourself reading the whole thing
over again, possibly motivating you to
reconsider the $12,000 price tag as pretty damn
reasonable after all.
I know just how you feel, Gerry. Everytime I see a
52" TV for $7,000 and I think it's going to cost us
more than that to reshingle our house and the
reshingling advances our lifestyle not one frigging
inch, I get sort of cranky also. But it seems that
the flat panel prices are dropping. And the
microdisplay prices are considerably less than that
-- they should be about $50-100 per chip (for OEMs)
in the next 18 months. (And remember that the
microdisplays can be used to project large images
and will be used for at least some of the
wide-screen high definition televisions we'll see on
the market next year.)
--------
Gerry's got some comments on KM also:
I know you've been over the context thing. But
here's the beef. KM is really about marrying
the old information management stuff with
context management. (And no, without robust
context capabilities your DM, or imaging, or
push or scanner product is not KM and has no
business being marketed or evaluated as such.)
While this sounds like a truism, in reality it
places enormous new demands on IT and orgs to
somehow infuse a new flexibility into what are
often highly sedentary architectures. For
instance, the real model for KM is the digital
fish tank. It's survival of the fittest
objects, except it more like the fittest
objects get the most air time, more than their
allotted 15 minutes of fame. But the objects
themselves must rise to the occasion by
incorporating attributes not only about
themselves but about their environments. What
is the object, what does it contain, where does
it reside, who created it, when was it created
or updated, what version is it? All these have
counterparts from an environmental perspective.
When did it prove useful, to whom, in what
department, what other objects were also used,
do certain objects trigger value for others,
what was the outcome of the usefulness? I think
there's a lot more to this. Especially since it
has broad implications for existing
technologies and requires innovation that is
not yet on the market. This, therefore, is a
model that provides value to the market, it is
forward looking and hopefully both motivational
and inspirational to customers and suppliers.
I'm motivated! I'm inspired! Bring on the knowledge
objects! But the harder part will be -- as I think
Gerry agrees -- managing the context in which these
smart little woodland folk live and act; you can't
resolve the context into the sum of the knowledge
objects.
Notice, by the way, Gerry's introduction of a new
(or at least different) metaphor: an environmental
or ecological perspective on knowledge. Let's see,
what does that make JOHO: smog, waste dump or
nuclear accident?
The context thing:
http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-feb4-98.html
--------
Kevin Johansen responds to last issue's article on
the coming of truly portable, high res displays:
I like the wrap around monitor idea. Very geek
chic. 'Who's that behind those Displaytechs?'
But does this mean that I get to carry the CPU
in a backpack? If so, please tell me that
MS/Intel are partnering up with Tamagatchi or
something. Or will I just have a very long
cable to worry about? And if so, how will I see
it if I'm wearing the monitor? Will this help
or hurt my astigmatism? And what about my
dyslexia? And don't get me started about my ADD
[Attention Deficit Disorder]...
Let me answer your questions one at a time:
(1) The CPU will be the size of a deck of cards (=
Palm Pilot) and can be directly inserted in several
different orifices (hint: manufacturers are
recommending using pockets). (2) A design aim for
the head mounted displays is to make sure you can
see over, under or through them. (3) Yes, it will
miraculously cure astigmatism. Unfortunately, in
curing astigmatisms, it induces their opposite:
stigmata. (4) An option randomly scrambles the
letters in order to give dyslexics a fighting
chance. (5) And, as with most things having to do
with computers, the best way to understanding this
new technology is as a form of Artificial ADD.
Kevin adds:
Plus, wasn't all of this ('This' being the
Information Age, Apologies to Peter Drucker
...) invented already by William Gibson? I
think everything you've included in this post
was implied and forever after assumed by the
second paragraph of 'Neuromancer'.
Yes, of course. Everything is already in
Neuromancer. Our job as editors is simply to recycle
that stuff. Your job as a reader is to pretend like
you've never heard of it before. If we all do our
jobs, this will work out splendidly.
-------------
Larry Fitzpatrick has a different worry about the
prospect of attaching these displays to one's
eyeglasses:
... we genetically well-endowed that need not
wear specs will become the visually
challenged... unaware of with whom we're
talking, when we last met, the speed of that
bird that just flew past, the 15sec price quote
on our employer's stock, the e-nvitation to the
latest happening pahty... imagine. to be
without glasses is to be socially retro...
nyah, nyah, na-na, nah, two-eyes, two-eyes...
Very funny, Larry, but I know I speak for a
substantial segment of the male population when I
say that I have trouble getting past any message
that begins by claiming that the writer is
"genetically well-endowed". Too damn distracting.
--------
Gerard Van der Leun is set off by my comment in the
previous issue: "..a spokesmodel not a spokesperson.
There's a big difference."
Like what? Big hooters and a skimpy little Nazi
costume? Hey, subscribe me to your page.
Interesting. Of course the "Submit Me" button
gives me a file not found error, but hey
nobody's perfect.
Well, of course the "Submit Me" button didn't work
for you. My page uses advanced Java scripting to
sense -- by how hard you press the buttons -- those
with sado-masochistic tendencies ("big hooters and
skimpy little Nazi costumes"?) and to deny them the
pleasure of pressing a "Submit me" button. All part
of the delicious pain of JOHO.
--------
Web Philosopher Michael Heim responds to the plug of
his book in the special issue:
You should know that Electric Language is
coming out in Spring 1999 in a second edition,
with a preface by David Gelernter (Yale
computer scientist, inventor of the Linda
language, and Unabomb victim).
There's a resume for you!
Electric Language:
http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/books/amazon.html#heim
--------
We got a surprising number of letters on the Dutch
Question (i.e., how can the taxi drivers at the
Amsterdam airport tell I'm American even before I've
said a word?) raised in the previous issue.
John Pyke theorizes:
I don't know the Dutch answer but it happens to
Brits as well - my guess is that Dutch taxi
drivers all have Masters Degrees in marketing
and figure that by the law of averages any one
coming out of the airport is more likely to
speak English than Dutch - so you are happy to
get into a cab where the driver speaks English
(unlike New York) - if by some fluke you (the
Airport exitor)happen to be Dutch, it is also
likely that you will also speak English so it
won't matter - you will understand the driver.
Ah, Pascal's Wager applied to cab fares! Anyone care
to apply the Ontological Argument to this problem?
Avram Goodblatt writes:
You will rarely get to know a Dutch person
really well - they guard their privacy. After
all, it's a small country with lots of people.
They get invaded. So part of the friendliness
is their camouflage so that you'll visit and
leave. And they believe that they speak English
better than you - after all, they were trained
in Oxford English, we just speak something
called American...
The Dutch pride themselves on being VERY aware
of what goes on in the rest of the world, which
isn't a bad trait. ... It's very important for
them to figure out quickly if you are an
American or a German. They have a history of
being traders and its important for a trader to
identify his market. {Americans aren't so much
traders as salesmen)
Mike Oliver has a different, simpler theory:
I suspect that you were identified as American
either because you are ugly or because you did
not check out the bike rack as you exited the
building.
Well, I definitely checked out the bike rack...
D'oh!
Finally, Australian Ron has an explanation embedded
in one of his remarkably fluid emails (from which it
is usually just about impossible to excerpt
passages):
On the Dutch issue, with note to some of the
truly exceptional Nederlanders I have known,
might I suggest it was your assumption of them
as humane and tolerant that immediately exposed
you as an outsider ...
Ouch, there's a world of pain in that remark! And
much of it is likely to be Ron's next time he goes
to Holland.
Pascal's Wager:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathemat
icians/Pascal.html
--------
Robert Morse, in a bid to join the JOHO Checker
Board, takes issue with the sentence: "This refers
to our recent meal in a Vietnamese restaurant in
Boulder which Chris dragged me to. "
Should be:
"This refers to our recent meal in a Vietnamese
restaurant in Boulder to which Chris dragged
me."
Thought I'd pick your nit.
Sorry, Robert, but I have declared independence --
after many years of servitude -- from the reign of
split infinitives and sentence-ending-prepositions,
rules for their own sake. In other words, this is a
nit about which I refused to be picked. You're gonna
have to do beetter to get ontwo the Checker Bored.
[Hint: I have, as always, carefuly sprinkled
grammatical and spelling "mistakes" throughout this
issue just to test your mettle. Can you find
them??!]
--------
Tony McKinley, noticing that the special issue
claims to be as boring as a philosophy course,
writes:
With regard to philosophy courses, I only took
one - Existentialism. At the end the teacher
told us all to give ourselves whatever grade we
think we deserved. I gave myself a B, while
most peopled aced that class.
Tony, I've taught courses on existentialism and I
can tell you that your teacher had it all wrong. The
only ones who pass a self-graded existentialism are
the ones who commit suicide. Learn to play the game,
man!
He continues by hearkening back (can you hearken
forward?) to an earlier discussion of petabytes:
I switched over to Asian Studies, where the
books were much more interesting. Like the
Bhagavad Gita, the Diamond Sutra, yada yada.
Those guys would be right at home in our mega
... giga ... tera ... peta ... expanding
universe. They had a measurement of time called
a kalpa, which was the amount of time it would
take if a hawk dangling a silk thread flew over
a mountain once every thousand years; the time
it would take to wear down a granite mountain
one thousand miles high, wide and long by the
thread brushing over it once every thousand
years. A long, but strictly defined amount of
time.
I smell a bogus contest in here somewhere: new units
of measurement for the Web. I'll kick it off:
A mot: The amount of time it would take an
untrained monkey to find the downloadable
drivers on the Motorola page (= less time than
it would take a Web-aware human being).
Motorola page:
http://www.mot.com
--------
Philip Randall, noticing a JOHO article about
appliances going on the Web, sends an article (from
the Electronic Telegraph, 14 Aug 1997) about
machines armed with phones running amok. Reportedly,
more than 8,000 people a month were pestered by
wrongly-programmed machines trying to report
faults to their operators in the past year.
Well, sure, and whenever there's a low pressure
system I hear a voice in my head urging me to feed a
machine in Sunbury, PA with Zagnut bars, but you
don't hear me whining about it.
--------
Greg Cavanagh points to a recent article in the NY
Times Magazine (AKA "The Sunday Killer") on
"Humankind's
Battle for Scrabble Supremacy":
The NY Times sponsored a 50th anniversary
championship match between a computer and a
team of two world champion scrabble players.
The computer won the best of 11 series.
What's the big deal? Computers have been beating us
at tic-tac-toe for decades. And, in a sense, they
always beat us at virtual pinball as well -- the
ball always goes down the hole eventually. But will
computers will ever beat us at not convicting O.J.?
I don't think so!
------------------------------
BOGUS CONTEST: THE JOHO INVITATIONAL
Having been in the freelance writing business for a
while, I can promise you that nothing sells like a
good title. As you scrounge for topics to pitch to
editors, you begin to hallucinate titles hoping that
some actual content will attach itself to one of
them.
I've been experiencing the same thing while writing
for JOHO. Here are some rejected titles for JOHO
articles:
Is the Web Gay?
Learning from Pornography
No Thyself
The Day the Hippies Lost the Web
The Web Transporter: Now You Can Be
in Two Places at Once
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell none of these
suffer the burden of meaningfulness.
Challenge #1: Submit a one-paragraph précis of the
article that goes with one of those headlines.
Winners may be invited to write the article itself
for a future issue of JOHO.
Challenge #2: Conversely, submit more potential
headlines for JOHO articles.
Remember, at the Bogus Contest, To Enter Is To Win™.
-----------------------------
EDITORIAL LINT
The following information was found trapped at the
top of my washing machine when I ran some issues of
the JOHO through it.
JOHO is a free, independent newsletter written and
produced by David Weinberger. He denies
responsibility for any errors or problems. If you
write him with corrections or criticisms, it will
probably turn out to have been your fault.
To subscribe or be removed from the JOHO mailing
list, send email to self@evident.com. There is no
need for harshness or recriminations. Sometimes
things just don't work out between people.
Dr. Weinberger is in a delicate nervous state, but
if you want to send positive comments to him, his
email address is self@evident.com.
Dr. Weinberger is represented by a fiercely
aggressive legal team who responds to any
provocation with massive litigatory procedures. This
notice constitutes fair warning.
Any email sent to the JOHO may be published in JOHO
and snarkily commented on unless the email
explicitly states that it's not for publication.
--------
The Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization is a
publication of Evident Marketing, Inc. "The
Hyperlinked Organization" is trademarked by Open
Text Corp. Information on preemptive trademarks™™
can be found at
http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/trademarks.html.