MiscLinks

Marek has a lovely Dostoyevskian prose poem today about, well, his soul. Jeneane reflects on it.

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Dahrl Stultz writes:

I laughed at the trumpet man coroner pic. Out of curiousity, I went to Goggle and quickly found he’s New Orlean’s ME. This article about him being accused of selling body parts caused me to shake my head and mutter, “typical Louisiana politician.”

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I bought my first computer in 1983, a KayPro II. While checking the date, I came across a site that gives a history of the KayPro.

There you’ll find not only a scan of the original brochure, touting the “9-inch monster screen” (green character-based) but also a KayPro simulator written in Java as a class project. Ah, the familiar DOS prompt at last! And MBasic! (Actually, S-BASIC was bundled with the original KayPro, a structured form of Basic with subroutines and functions.) Do a DIR and you’ll see that they’ve included a few of the original KayPro games, including a character-based version of Space Invaders. What a flashback! (There are also links to CP/M information.)

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Norman Jensen thinks that in light of my postings about the universality of truth we might be interested in an article that pits Nietzsche against Steven Covey (”7 Habits of Highly Annoying People”). The article’s author, Christopher Jenson, provides a useful explanation of Nietzsche’s aphoristic expressions. This is Nietzsche at his best, “arguing” by painting a new picture. In this case, his beef is with Kant and Plato (and Covey … putting him in rather exalted company) and others who postulate a real world that is both only indirectly knowable at best and supposedly the locus of all real value.

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Keep It Stupid, Simple!

Kevin Marks has blogged links to people who have written about why it’s important to “separate network transport from application protocols.” (Apparently, “The Paradox of the Best Network,” a brief piece I wrote with David Isenberg, helped to stimulate Kevin’s research.) These are useful links.

The general point Kevin makes is tremendously important: The Internet succeeded because it was deliberately built to encode only the minimal information required to move bits from point A to B. There is nothing in the Internet protocols themselves that encodes what type of bits they are. The Internet doesn’t know or care whether you’re sending email or video, a bill or pornography, copyrighted material or instructions on building nuclear weapons. It also doesn’t include bits that say what person owns, sent or cares about the bits. It is nothing but a bit pump. It’s a stupid network, in David Isenberg’s phrase.

Because it’s so good at moving bits, and because the Net makes no assumptions about the nature of those bits, applications can be written on top of it to do whatever you want with bits. Thus, one and the same Internet is used for email, telephone calls and video on demand. Attempts to make the Internet smarter — for example, by including in the transportation protocol itself information about the copyright status of the bits — will bit by bit erode the Internet as a medium for innovation.

The Internet is an idiot-savant. Let’s keep it that way.

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Anals of Marketing: The Problem with Voice

As an official Cluetrain Author(tm), I am all in favor of voice. One of the Web’s main attractions — in fact, perhaps its deepest spiritual attraction, IMO — is that it returns our voice to us. We can sound like ourselves again, shaking off the professional straitjacket we don at work. Companies that continue to talk in the safe-but-robotic soothing monotone we’ve come to expect will come to early ends. Yada yada yada.

But no one ever said this was unproblematic.

For example, Jack Vinson writes:

I have been wondering about the new Mini that BMW is producing. A mongst too much Flash at their website is a bunch of non-corporate speak. They are clearly trying to brand the Mini as a fun vehicle. Even their “user agreement” has silly stuff like “I agree to avoid ruts (in the street).”

And the page with information about applying for a job with them says:

If you’re talented, passionate and can name at least 60 of the best diners in the U.S., please send a resume, a cover letter and your best road trip story to us.

They have a page where readers can submit stories and photos and a humorous “license to motor” exam that is occasionally actually funny.

But then we face Jack’s implicit question: “They are clearly trying to brand the Mini as a fun vehicle.” Indeed. And thus the voice behind this site is suspect. It has to be, for two reasons. First, this site is still broadcasting to us: it is a single voice beaming itself to a multitude in hopes of affecting our buying behavior. It is still their site, not ours. We’ve be idiots not to be suspicious. (On our site about Minis, we’d talk with one another.) Second, it’s anonymous. Voices have to be attached to people. Committees, marketing departments and companies don’t have voices. Only individuals do. As RageBoy says in Gonzo Marketing, corporations have no corpus, no body, no sex, and no voice.

(By the way, there’s been some good discussion of Gonzo Marketing at the Gonzo Engaged blog.)

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Crusty John Dvorak in one of his PC Magazine columns points to a report by Charles Murray in EE Times (Nov. 30) about an effort by the entire Microsoft’s Talisker embedded OS team (30-50 people) to go into the Net discussions about it and listen to what people are saying. According to the article, the engineers have been pulled into frank discussions with their potential customers. The EE Times report is actually pretty favorable. Here’s a long quote:

…the new modus operandi represents a stark departure from business as usual at Microsoft, but they say it’s paying dividends.

“Historically, we didn’t ever want our developers out in news groups,” Morris said. “People would get ahold of our internal addresses and we’d get spammed, so we rarely used actual Microsoft addresses.”

But as part of an effort to generate Linux-like excitement about CE, the company encouraged its Talisker team members to use their real names and e-mail addresses. Now, the engineers who wrote the kernel are accessible to anyone who has downloaded a Talisker Emulation Edition Preview or is working with a beta version. Beta users are given an ID when they sign up, and can use it to enter a news group and “talk” with Talisker team members.

“Now, I’m out there and they can see my name and title, and they don’t hold anything back,” Morris said. “They quite bluntly tell me what they want changed in the kernel or in a menu. Sometimes the feedback is harsh but they can still give valuable criticism.”

To ensure that the developers truly address the users’ issues, Microsoft has even assigned its own people to watch the news groups as spectators and look for any questions that go unanswered. If issues are left unresolved, the “spectators” prod the developers to respond.

Sounds pretty durn cool, and highly voice-ful. Yet, Dvorak’s coverage of this begins by reminding us of the attack of the “Munchkins” when OS/2 was dying — Microsoft employees who fanned out across the newsgroups and message boards, boosting NT and flaming OS/2. Nasty.

The negative conclusion: Companies can easily abuse the openness of the Net by imitating “voiceful” communications. The positive conclusion: Companies can enable employees to participate in the global conversation in an open, honest way … and if they try to cheat (as per the Munchkins), we will find them out and will remember their betrayal for a long time.

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Googlewhacking’s New Home

Actually, it’s always been The Home of the Googlewhack. Gary Stock invented Googlewhacking and while I’ve been proud to have helped promote it, it’s now time for me to bow out. Why? Because we don’t want any forking of the great shining way that is Googlewhacking. And because I’m getting bored. So, in the future, please submit your entries directly to Gary at www.googlewhack.com, or to where that address actually points: Unblinking.com.

One small exception: Gary isn’t tracking high scores. He’s much more interested in googlewhacking as a creative activity and has introduced what I think of as “semantic googlewhacking” which values the interesting juxtapositions of words. So, if you have a googlewhack that surpasses the current winner, let me know. Otherwise, talk to Gary.

Before claiming a high score, surpassing the 292,698,000,000 of RCassidy’s “linux checkerspot,” please keep the following rules in mind: Each word must be found in dictionary.com; no proper nouns; no hits on word lists; don’t search for the words as a precise phrase (i.e., don’t put quotes around the two words when you do the search). And remember the linux constant is 48,300,000.

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Now for some updates before closing the topic on this site.

Gavin Quick suggests “keratinous nimrod” (8,035,500,000) which he says is a “scientifically correct addition to John Travolta’s opinion of Amanda Plummer’s partner (what was his name?) in the restaurant near the end of Pulp Fiction.” (It was Tim Roth. That’s why the Lord has given us The Internet Movie Database.)

Jacob Schwirtz has found “laud boobytrap” (369,495,000), a googlewhack clearly on the side of the aggressor. (Oddly, google.com doesn’t recognize boobytrap as a legit word, although dictionary.com.)

Jeremy Brown likes “snarf dog.” So do I, but unfortunately, so do 2,110 pages. (Even “snarf dof” gets 38 hits.)

Andy C has found “pillows silages”, “wilderness slaggery”, “significance condimenting”, “trampy implosions”, “hobnobs stereos.” In his word: “Joyous.”

Dethe Elza, Chief Mad Scientist at Burning Tiger Technologies, writes:

OK, I resisted, but I’ve been drawn into the “googlewhack vortex” (42130000 Marks, but googlewhack is not recognized by dictionary.com). What are we to do when our whacks point only to word lists, like “inflammable bibliomancy” (a mere 122,016,000 Marks, alas). Do these count or not? And an “andelusian pox” (27324000 Marks) on Matthew Baldwin for making it way too easy to waste time on this. I can feel my productivity being cut into “blepharon sections” (1401700000 Marks).

Wordlists don’t count, and if googlewhacking isn’t in dictionary.com, it just doesn’t count. Nice recursive try, though.

As for Matthew Baldwin, he created an online googlewhacker that checks your word pairs and computes the score. All hail Baldwin.

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Gary Stock himself has used googlewhacking to report on Bush’s Stake of the Onion Address last night:

pseudonymous cockatiel:
Who was the primary author of the 2002 “State of the Union Address”?

necrophiliac cockatiel:
…obviously the same bird who wrote that address.

miasmic frenulum:
…obviously the technical term for that same bird’s hyoid disorder.

cockatiel colonoscopy:
…what Tom Daschle was picturing during the entire State of the Union Address.

macaw colonoscopy:
…I think you get the idea!

bibulous encomiums:
…it’s as if every whack refers to that entire speech!!

Remember, future googlewhacks go to Gary, the creator and keeper of the whackerflame. All hail Gary!

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The New World

I’ve heard from two of you with stories about how the Net is changing your world.

The first is small but telling. Chris Worth writes:

Had an email conversation today with a friend in Kansas. (He’s never been to London, I’ve never been there.) Mentioned my new address.

Next email, he’d looked up my postcode on getmapping.com and seen an aerial view of my nieghbourhood. Asked about the ‘metallic moated fortress’ southwest of me, across the Thames.

I happened to have a snapshot of the view from my balcony, so emailed it back noting, ‘Yeah, you’re probably talking about this thing.’

The building he’d seen from above was obvious and evident in my more horizontal view.

In that email, two separate worlds became a single platform of understanding. Yet none of this would’ve been possible for non-techies even five years ago.

The potential the Internet adds for shared understanding - on a level that was never possible before except to the most talented of writers - is, I think underhyped even by the worst 1997-1999 Internet standards.

And Jeneane cites an idea from her Hyperlinked Mom weblog about a more direct effect:

With the advent of the Internet, physical distance and asphalt highways no longer separate work life and home life. Instead, within the networked landscape of the Internet, individuals, businesses, and customers are seamlessly connected. Technologies like Instant Messaging—which allows my clients to pop up urgent questions, and the occasional good joke, on my screen in real-time—erase distance. Here is there, and there is here, all at once.

Jeneane says “I don’t think i’m going to keep it up as a blog, but who knows?” Perhaps if we all clap together, she will. Come on, you at home — yes, you! — clap! (Jeneane also has a blog at which she publishes dictation from her four-year-old. How connected will that kid feel when growing up!)

I love this stuff.

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You Can Never Have Too Much Fun

Contributed by James Smith or Laura Iveson

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Googlewhacking Miscellany

Matthew Baldwin has introduced a Web-based Googlewhacking tool that rivals Kevin Marks’ client version.

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Stefan Ritter writes:

Stefan Ritter I’d like to note that I think better Googlewhacks are ones in which the terms can be strung to impart perhaps some meaning. But I’ve only been at this a few minutes; I am sure this has been considered.

So sooner said than done. In the same batch of email was a notice that Gary Stock, the creator of Googlewhacking, has introduced a type of semantic googlewhacking in which you are rewarded for coming up with googlewhacks that sort of make sense even if they are low on the Marks scale. He writes:

Thanks to all who are in the Whack Zone! I’ve posted some of your efforts: Examples from the first hundred or so:

What do you get when you add a pound of sawdust to a gallon of gasoline?
jerkwater plastique

What’s on the front of the Rutabaga Railway’s “Lettuce Locomotive”?
vegan cowcatcher

What does a gerontologist call the walk from the parking lot to the office, and back?
nonagenarian biathlon

Some of these, I’m just not sure about:

banana circumcision
What is the most extreme form of…

…no, let’s not go there :-)

E-Brake, however, isn’t afraid to go there. She recognizes that her entry is low-scoring with a a mere 5.6 billion Marks mark, but she puts it forward for its sweetness on the tongue: “Microsoft vomitories.” (Also, Microsoft is a proper noun.)

Likewise, [name removed at the person's request] knows that his half billion score for “spermatozoa astroturf” won’t win any prizes, but, he says “Imagine the hockey they could play!” (Ned apparently isn’t deeply into sports. Even I know that hockey is played on AstroIce, not AstroTurf.)

Similarly, David Stephenson writes:

the Googlewack stuff reminds me of a band that a friend was going to start while we were in grad school: Sarsaparilla Sorcery — taken from the first and last words in one volume of the Brittanica. The only deterrent was that none of us could play anything or carry a tune.

Jonathan Peterson pursues the self-referential meta-Googlewhack with “googlewhack schadenfreude,” a reference to one of the very first Googlewhacks.

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Terry Dooher is all whiny about the fact that Google is wildly inconsistent in its hit counts, costing him many points for “microbicidal linux”:

Damn Google. I had 15,900 for it, then 12,800, now I’m getting 4,110. It’s easy to see how a word might have a 5% tolerance in its score at any given moment, but dropping 70% of its hits in the space of a week is a bit weird.

Now, Terry, the Pillsbury Bakeoff results are subject to variations in atmospheric pressure, chess players are sometimes disturbed by audience members with hacking coughs, and Olympic runners have to contend with inconsistent doses of street steroids, so I don’t see why googlewhacking should be any different.

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BlogThreads: A Request for Product

Peterme blogs today about the nature of cross-blogging — what Peter usefully calls “bloghopping” — using an interchange between Tom and me that was kicked off by my saying that on the Web we’re writing ourselves into existence. He also points to entries from Jeneane and Halley. Peter comments:

Now, I’ve attempted to codify these threads because they expose one of the things I’m currently loving about blogs… free-ranging discussions hopping from page to page, with little structure apart from the hyperlink… Such discussions can be hard to ‘follow,’ but I think attempting to ‘follow’ them misses part of the point. … [T]he anarchic nature of web hyperlinking is part of the reason we can have these kinds of discussions… There’s a free-for-all quality that lets the thoughts roam in all manner of directions, spiralling tendrils across the hypersphere… Standard discussion forums would only constrain this.

Much as I like threaded discussion forums, it is certainly the case that blogs serve a different need. By their nature, blog entries tend to be more self-contained, more fully developed, and less hectically composed. (Of course there are exceptions.) But, precisely one of their weaknesses is that the thread itself isn’t apparent the way it is on a discussion board. That is, I know that Tom counter-blogged because I check Tom’s magnificent weblog just about every day. Besides, he sent me the link. Besides, it shows up when I ego-surf daypop. But, not only might I easily miss someone’s counter-blog, it can be difficult to reconstruct the sequence of blogs. What we need is precisely what Peter has provided in his blog entry: a “codifying” of threads, a mechanism by which the trail of linked blogs can be easily discovered and followed.

Wouldn’t it be cool and useful at the end of a blog to have a link that takes us to a list of all the blog entries that refer to this one? This should be automatically and dynamically updated. Does such a thing exist? Am I just missing it? Daypop, are you listening?

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One of the commentators on this blog entry of Peterme’s writes: “…if David and Tom keep at it, they just might eventually figure out everything that Rebecca articulated over a year ago,” pointing to Rebecca Blood’s history of blogging. Rebecca’s piece is seminal (yeah, yeah, I testify it’s a sexist word) but, with all due respect, it doesn’t really get at what Tom and I have been on about. Nevertheless, it’s brilliant, it’s clarifying, she anticipates many topics that we all keep talking about, and it was good to be prodded to reread it.

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MiscLinks

In response to my query about sites whose existence reminds us of the real value of the Net, Vergil Iliescu cites The Edge where (in Vergil’s words) “you can watch some of the famous names in science discuss a whole range of issues.” Vergil points out that, unfortunately, it is not much of an interactive cite. (Who would decline the opportunity to be guided by Vergil!)

Gilbert Cattoire sends us to FusionAnomaly, an odd linking of disparate concepts.

Bob Filipczak points us to a very amusing interview with Jonah Peretti, the guy who tried to get Nike to customize his sneakers (excuse me, his “machines for walking”) with the phrase “Sweatshop.” He’s now launched “The Rejection Line,” a phone service that says no for you.

Tom Gross thinks we might like Playdamage where new-agey music accompanies a too-static lightshow. He says Playdamage reminds him of Superbad, a site of that seems more involving (or, as we used to say, “bongable”).

Tom also points us to a page at the Playdamage site where there is a “Market-o-Matic” tool that constructs marketing bafflegab based on your selections of nouns, verbs, etc. Very MadLibs.

PoliLinks

Phil Jones sends us to a nicely done but predictable child’s eye view of W.

W. David Stephenson writes:

…thought you’d enjoy my opus in the Homeland Defense Journal on how we need “Internet thinking,” (empowering everyone, closing loops, and linking everything) as much as Internet technology to deal with this problem.

There’s an interesting article in the WSJ about The Jewish World Review. The JWR publishes from the point of view of a socially-aware orthodox Jew. As a result, it tends to range from conservative to neo-conservative. But, since I’m not a religious Jew or conservative or neo-conservative and yet the JWR occasionally publishes my stuff, I admire the editor’s (Binyamin Jolkovsky) open-mindedness (as well as his orthodoxy). This is a one-person enterprise that deserves to survive, but is struggling right now.

The constant Chip suggests we might enjoy these “principles of popaganda,” or at least the introduction. (No, “popaganda” is not a typo.)

Charles Munat is exercised by what he considers my naivete and sends me to Covertaction.org/ for an education in our American blindness to the reprehensible acts of our own government. He was set off by my saying that “Terrorism is a tactic adopted by people who can’t afford armies, so they fight real dirty” since that excludes — and, thus, he thinks I think, exculpates — big countries that deliberately target civilians, as the US has done with disgusting frequency. (I currently have a two-part column in Darwin Online discussing Charles’ views on design.)

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Universal Truth Denied!

Jeez, I’m trying to do some time-wasting BS (it being Saturday an’ all) but I keep getting really interesting email. Will it never end? (Lord, let’s hope not!)

For example, this arrived from Jeff Chamberlain in response to my blog about the nature of religions that claim to be universal:

I don’t think that it’s as black and white as you say. I would point you to the statement of principles by the Unitarian Universalist Association. There can be universal truths, e.g. “The inherent worth and dignity of every person” that translates to “love thy neighbor as thyself” in the Judeo-Christian heritage or the overarching theme of compassion in Buddhism.

The problems comes in when we attempt to find ways for humans to achieve these universal truths. At this point, the religions diverge and attempt to say that their way is the only way to these truths. Enter the wonderful power of dogma. I believe that humans forget that the power of the universe is still beyond their comprehension and that their “truth” is really just a finger pointing at the real truth; it is a symbol that represents something greater than ourselves.

Don’t worship the finger. Instead, revel in the varieties this world offers us to explore. The mysteries of the universe can be found in the multitude of religions people have created just as easily as watching the beauty of a sunrise.

The idea that there is a universal truth expressed by all religions strikes me as, in turn, rather black and white. For one thing, it’s self-referential since we will rule out any set of beliefs as not a “real” religion if it doesn’t support the purported universal truth.

Second, a statement as innocuous as “The inherent worth and dignity of every person” is so broad as to be meaningless. If my religion believes that the individual ego is an illusion and is the source of pain and needs to be seen through, the sense in which my religion believes in the worth of every individual is vastly different than that of the Judeo-Christian tradition. (Note: Talking about the JudeoChristian tradition denies the radical differences between these two religions. It always bothers me. You hit my button, Jeff!)

Third, even if that universal truth could be unpacked (Inherent? Worth? Dignity? Person?) successfully across all cultures and times, its implications are hardly universal, as you note.

Fourth, the way in which a religion unpacks such statements is central to the nature of the religion, and differs widely from religion to religion: Buddhists meditate in a bunch of ways, Jews argue with one another for millennia, some whacko Christians handle snakes and wait for The Word to strike them. So what good does it say that there are universal truths? Where does it get us? And, in particular, wrt to the Friedman article I was blogging about, I believe that it puts a false unity on the face of real diversity.

There are certainly universal truths. Math is full of them. There may even be universal truths about values and morals. I wouldn’t want to try to argue anyone out of a belief in human dignity or the right to worship the way we want. I am not saying that nothing is true, and I’m certainly not saying, along with Dostoyevsky, that “God is dead. Everything is permitted.” I am saying, however, that religions that believe they are the only true religion need to knock it off. Finding a universal ground for all religion reduces us to mouthing abstractions so vague as to be meaningless and ignores what is most distinctive and most important about each religion. We’ve got a whole bunch of religions. They’re genuinely different. But we only have one earth. There’s yer universal truth for ya.

(BTW, if you’re a Christian snake handler, I meant no offense. I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine way of worshipping.)

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Replies to Katz

Thank you, b!X, for the reply to Jon Katz’s review of my unpublished book. And thank you, too, Steve Giovannetti. And Mike “Question King” Sanders. (And, Doc, for blogging this and for well, being a mensch.)

Thanks also to those who have sent private emails expressing support and puzzlement (and occasional outrage) about Katz’s premature, weird slashdotting.

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Bone Dry Future, 2

I blogged about my anxiety about having to give a 3-minute presentation on some new trend, technology or company. I got a few thoughtful replies.

Tony Goodson writes:

Of course this is far from new, but if I look at the Weblogs and the sites I like to read and go to on a daily basis, I realise as I write my own Weblog that to have a paying audience would make a significant difference to time given to my Voice on the Internet. …

I guess you get my drift. Artists of the world get paid for what you do! Surfers of the world pay for what you like! I don’t have a clear way forward on this, but you did ask.

I think Micropayments and the effect they have on the Internet will be the biggest thing, but then again when did a good idea and good technology ever get implemented. I wrote a project on Magnetic Levitation 20 years ago! Good idea. Good Technology. So what?

Yes, micropayments will be huge. Great point.

Halley Suitt counterblogged on the same topic as my original post: weblogs. Here’s a taste: “They are turning a whore back into a virgin, no small task, and preparing the way for a completely new way to work, live, think and prosper.” You go, Halley. (BTW, her blog is most excellent.)

Scott Christensen comes at this rather obliquely:

I hope everything worked out ok with the little talk but what I really wanted to comment on was Cheezits. I’m glad it’s not just me that can consume a vast quantity of Cheezits when under stress. They’re so damn addictive.

You sit and ponder stuff and they seem to fly out of the box into your mouth. It seems that sometimes they have a life of their own and that their only purpose is to be like the moths of the snack food world and leap to their death in your belly.

Of course, the worst thing about the Cheezit eating frenzy is the sudden overwhelming thirst that happens about halfway through the box. A parched desert landscape is better hydrated and I would know because I currently live in Tucson.

So, as I understand it, Scott’s thought is that the most important new phenomenon facing us are animate Cheezits from Hell … just as Bill Joy predicted!

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New Googlewhack Leader, New Tool

We have a new leader in the Googlewhack Sweepstakes. (A Googlewhack is a pair of words that gets only one hit at Google. To score, you multiple the hits for each word individually.) The leader is RCassidy. The phrase is … well, we’ll save that for the end.

Kevin Marks, who gave us the Marks mark system of scoring, now presents us with a tool for automating the scoring of Googlewhacks. You can download it here. Pocket GoogleWhacker is perfect. Enter your words and it comes back with the score. Well worth the $0.50 Kevin asks in return.

Now, news from Googlewhack’s inventor, Gary Unblinking Stock. His page devoted to the Art and Science of Googlewhacking has become quite lively. And, he is now the proud owner of www.googlewhack.com. Let’s hope that this becomes the new international home of Googlewhackery. Finally, he’s been in a colloquoy with the over-stimulated folks at Mornington Crescent. These are serious gamers who aren’t happy until they’ve complicated matters to the point that the rules themselves become the game. Very amusing discussion.

Now, start up your QuickTime engines and imagine a drum roll. RCassidy gives us:

linux: 48,300,000
checkerspot: 6060
Total Marks mark: 292,698,000,000

Note: We use the Linux Constant since Google has a 5,000,000 point swing in its reported hits on “linux.”

This tops Sam Dionne’s previous high of 151,179,000,000 rather handily. It also beats Steve Ringo’s excellent “hackleback linux” that scores 250,194,000,000. Congratulations Mr. or Ms. RCassidy. Well done!

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Premature ESlashulation

Small Pieces has been slashdotted. Jon Katz has written a goddamn strange review 2.5 months ahead of pub date. It seems to be based on the first 8 pages, although he never acknowledges that he hasn’t read the whole book … in which case: Tsk tsk.

While patting me on the head occasionally (”bright and observant,” “The things he sees are new, interesting and significant”) he puts the book into the Cyber BS category, that is, a book that thinks “that for the Net and the Web to be interesting, they must be portrayed as changing everything about everything”:

… his book also reminds us that this age of Cybertheorizing began to die with the demise of the original Wired. This is bad news for over-heated tech writers and academics feasting on cyber-culture courses. In case Weinberger hasn’t noticed — and he hasn’t, if the book is any indication — the Web these days is mostly about sex, free news, entertainment and retailing. For better or worse, we remain the same people we were.

Ok, that’s not an unreasonable point of view. I disagree with it, but what has me flummoxed is the following:

And he’s quite correct in suggesting that the hyperlinking era the Web begins is astounding, even revolutionary.

If the “hyperlinking era” is astounding and revolutionary, then what’s it changing? Katz seems to say that it’s not changing anything:

In the post dot-com era, we see that the Net and the Web aren’t changing everything about the world, just taking the things people have always liked to do — shop, read, yak, play, masturbate — and making them easier.

Doesn’t sound very astounding to me. My book, on the other hand, argues that the Web is in fact changing the building block concepts of our culture. The ordinary happens to be astonishing on the Web. We get inured to it, but it’s there, even in a simple bidding transaction at eBay.

Jon, Jon, where’s your sense of wonder gone?

[Here's my reply to Katz at Slashdot.]

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Thanks for the supportive blog, Doc.

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Broadband Debated

Dave Rogers, whose blog is full of good stuff, writes in response to our “Free the Broadband” bloggerino:

I agree that great connections for all is a worthy goal that reflects the reasons we fought them Redcoats. “Connect and empower” is my mantra. Yet I’m not sure that the tech industry’s approach is the right one.

Did you see this report from MSNBC? It sure makes me—liberal that I am—queasy. Queasy enough that I blogged on it myself right here and even responded (weakly) to your comments here.

My original bloggerino referenced a draft of a site that David Isenberg and I did, called “The Paradox of the Best Network.” It has a set of suggestions quite similar to what TechNet has come up with.

The difference between Dave and me on this probably comes down to perceived facts. It seems to me that the current regulated environment props up aging telcos that refuse to allow competition in the broadband market. But we may also disagree on the solution: I think opening the market would bring about an era of innovation that would deliver broadband to the vast majority of houses in the nation (and the government ought to step in where the market lacks intrinsic incentives). I’m not sure if this makes me a liberal, a neo-conservative, or just plain wrong, but that’s how it seems to me. There’s also a telco meltdown coming that may require government intervention, primarily to let it happen without melting the economy down with it. And let me conclude this proclamation by noting that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

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Davd Rogers also points us to an article by Lawrence Lessig that argues that the legal strictures on copyrighted material are holding up broadband acceptance. Much as I’d like to see changes in the copyright law, I’m not convinced that that’s what’s stopping customer demand for broadband.

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The Textual Avatar

Jeneane agrees with what I wrote about weblogs being a way we’re writing ourselves into existence. She adds that the self we’re transforming isn’t simply online:

That is the joy in it for me—not so much the voice, the self I have created through blogging, but how that unleashed voice is transforming me, the person, the flesh and the mind.

100% agreement. In fact, one of the themes of my upcoming book is that the Web is rewriting our real-world concepts. I do find it frustratingly hard, however, to point to real-world examples of effects because they are mainly anecdotal and one never knows what their actual causes are.

Jeneane extends her thinking to gesture toward and ecological view of web self and RW self that she says needs development. Go, Jeneane, go!

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Tivo’s Open Forum

There’s a discussion on an open discussion board supported by Tivo about whether having such a forum is useful to Tivo even though people air every conceivable (and some inconceivable) gripe. Tivo’s answer: Absolutely.

Full disclosure: I am a deliriously happy Tivo user. Everyone who watches TV should get Tivo the Liberator.

(Thanks to Todd Grinnell for forwarding this.)

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Public/Private Play

Tom Matrullo blogs, beautifully as always, partially in response to my bloggerino about writings as the true avatar. He draws a comparison between blogs and the tradition of the “locus amoenus,” the edenic walled garden into which the hero withdraws for “a brief respite from the shocks and artillery fire of everyday life.” Tom’s tenatively-offered conclusion:

If one attempts to account for the enormous investment of time, energy and other resources that is currently going into blogging, it’s worth considering that more may be at stake here than meets the eye (or, I). The marketplace of messages in which we live is a kind of battleground from which we sometimes need to recuse ourselves in order to find again some notion of who we are. Because as Ariosto knew, this recreative entertainment of the self is not found in the clash of steel or the entropy of market dynamics. It comes alive in the folie of play.

That seems to me to be completely right, at least for some category of blogging. (We shouldn’t forget the teen-age boys who are blogging in order to impress girls.) And the introduction of play into the heart of the self comes with the Web: “The price of admission: Your selves.” But, while I hadn’t heard of the locus amoenus and loved learning about it, it seems too walled and private to be a metaphor for blogs. We blog in public. That’s in fact where the playfulness enters into it: we try on ideas, moods, figures of speech, and personae in public.

Not only is the Web putting play at the heart of the self, it’s also showing us — I hope — that our “real” self is not the self apart from others (taking a pastoral stroll, perhaps, in our walled garden) but is the self engaged with others.

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Later… Some email exchanged with Tom and now I am enlightened. He’s not claiming that blogging is a private activity like sitting in a garden - I knew that couldn’t be what he meant! - but that in contrast to email, discussion lists, etc., blogging lets you carve out a time of your own. You can write about what you want, when you want, and not feel as if you’re banging replies back like a shuttlecock in a hyperactive badminton game.
Halley points us to Eric Raymond on this topic, and usefully compares it to jazz riffing for the appreciative nods of the others in the band.

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9-11 Dreams

Gary Unblinking Stock points us to a collection of dreams about 9-11. They range from the eerie to the funny to the possiblyphony.

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On the Bus, But with Occasional Stops

Saltire blogs today about David Dwyer of New Riders, “Publishing Voices that Matter.” Saltire praises Dwyer’s passion and points to a quote from Dwyer that suggests a really useful criterion: “I care about your opinions as long as they’ve been formed by reliable sources outside of our building.” St. Ken Kesey’s idea that you’re either on the bus or off the bus has a certain commit-or-be-damned feel going for it, but too much time on the bus can wear away at your evidentiary base (as Kesey certainly wouldn’t have put it). And, although Saltire is nice enough to point out that the one book that Dwyer recommended in his presentation to Saltire’s students was The Cluetrain Manifesto, the same has to be true of spending too much time on the Cluetrain. Yeah, markets are definitely conversations, and so is the Web and so is much of business. But they’re also not conversations, just on the general principle that nothing is only one thing. Mysticism? Nah, the enabling ambiguity of language.

(By the way, the full text of the book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, is online here.)

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Bone Dry Future

I’m going to a fancy-pants event tomorrow night at which each one of us — 20 in all — has to talk for three minutes about an impending significant technology, company, idea or trend. Since all 19 other attendees are certifiably smarter than I am — I can prove it — and since I am hypersensitive to what others think of me, I am having a small anxiety attack that has required me to consume my own weight in Cheezits in the past hour.

In the past, in my panic I’d blurt our “Love,” but with “Love Is the Killer App” on the cover of FastCompany (and the founder of FastCompany in attendance), my fallback answer has been co-opted. Would “Hate” work? Can I get away with “Ginger” and a knowing look?

There isn’t a chance in hell that I know about some trend, technology or company that these folks haven’t either initiated or already dismissed with an imperious wave of their hands. So, I’m thinking about saying something like:

The importance of the weblog phenomenon isn’t so much that it enables people to publish their breakfast menus or even their genuine insights. It’s that we now know what our “avatars” on the Net are going to be: not graphical cartoon representations but our body of writing. You are what you write. On the Web we are writing ourselves into existence. This introduces into the self the same issues of control, inspiration, invention, deception and play as have always been present in the relationship of authors to what they write.

Hmm, sounds deep without actually meriting much thought, which is fine since by the time I’m done, they will have moved onto the next person in line. Vague, ethereal, and if said with confidence, may not have the tire-air smell of truly vapid ideas.

If you have something better, let me know quick!

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Googlewhacking Embraces Complexity

We have a new leader in the race for the ultimate Googlewhack (a game promulgated by Gary Unblinking Stock). And he’s only 15. Sam Dionne has come up with “linux hayrack”:

linux: 47,300,000
hayrack: 3,110
Total Marks mark: 147,103,000,000

That’s seems like it’s not enough to beat Matt’s “linux anemonefish”:

linux: 48,300,000
anemonefish: 3,130
Total Marks mark: 151,179,000,000

But Sam reports a score of 157.6 billion and I’d believe him even if he weren’t my nephew. The fact is that Google seems to vary in its count of a word depending on what color socks you’re wearing. When Mark, Sam’s father, looked up “linux” a couple of days ago, Google reported 45,300,000. Within a few minutes, I checked and it was reporting 50,500,000. Matt and Sam cite different counts for “linux.” As a result, we have no choice but to resort to a Linux Constant and declare Sam the current leader … although with a score several billion lower than yesterday’s leader. Such is life in the digital fast lane.

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Mark Dionne challenges our blithely writing off zero-hit Googlewhacking as a challenge for simpletons and unelected national leaders:

I’m not convinced that zero hits is easy with common words. Can you give a competitive example, over 1 billion?

Sam got 6 billion with “directory yestermorning”

I pass the challenge on to you. (However, I get two hits for “directory yestermorning,” one of which is outrageously pornographic…and, no, these pages show up even if you turn on Google’s anti-porn SafeSearch filter.)

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Free the Broadband

TechNet, a consortium of industry CEO’s, has issued a call for a national (US) initiative to get broadband to every household. The main thing the government has to do is get out of the way:

Government policies should foster innovation and reduce regulations — especially with respect to broadband applications and services;

Public policy should encourage new investment in broadband infrastructure and networks through competition and the removal of regulatory uncertainty and disincentives;

State and localities should promote streamlined laws and regulations that encourage broadband investment, and interstate consistency should be achieved whenever possible;

National spectrum policy should utilize market-based approaches that reduce the artificial scarcity of spectrum for valuable broadband applications;

Investment incentives, potentially including targeted tax incentives, should encourage broadband deployment to underserved communities and businesses;

Broadband policy should encourage innovation and government should not pick technology winners and losers.

The members of TechNet are:

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems; John Doerr, Partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Eric Benhamou, Chairman of 3Com Corporation and Palm Inc.; Paul Gudonis, CEO of Genuity; Tony Ley, Chairman and CEO of Harmonic, Inc; Rick Burnes, Partner with Charles River Ventures; John Young, retired President and CEO of Hewlett Packard; Les Vadasz, Senior Vice President of Intel; Bob Herbold, COO and Executive Vice President of Microsoft; Milo Medin, Chief Technology Officer of Excite@Home.

Sure they’re self-interested. But they’re still right.

An AP article by Brian Bergstein quotes Forrester Research analyst Carl Howe:

“There is no proof, in any way, shape or manner, that says if we give more broadband to everybody it’s going to make us more productive,” he said. ”It will make us more connected. It might make us happier. But I’m not sure it’s a better use of our money than putting 50,000 more teachers in schools.”

First, this isn’t an either/or. Second, the broadband project is likely to cost less than a single year of paying 50,000 teachers a salary (figuring an optimistic average salary of $50K). Third, the aim is to enable the market to find ways to provide broadband profitably, with the government supplying incentives only where the market doesn’t.

More important, no, there’s no proof it’ll make us more productive. But there’s every reason to believe that high speed connectivity will bring forth innovations we haven’t begun to imagine. If we give everyone instantaneous access to all of the digitized workds of humans and instantaneous, high quality access to the global conversation, we will change everything from broadcast TV to how we play music together to how gossip works. So, it may not make us more productive (although it probably will), but it certainly will make us more inventive, more creative, more inquisitive, more connective.

The obstacles are artificial. We need to clear them out of the way. This is a legitimate role for government. Let’s do it because we don’t know what will result. Hell, that’s why we fought them Redcoats 225 years ago.

(David Isenberg and I wrote a rough draft of a similar call, based on an incisive analysis by Roxane Googin. You can read the draft of “The Paradox of the Best Network” at NetParadox.com.)

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Spam’s Absolute Zero

RageBoy’s ‘zine, EGR, while touting his marvelous new book The Bombast Transcripts (on which more later), somehow manages to point us at a shrine site devoted to Beaner, a dead dog. After poking around for a while — future anthropologists are going to have to re-evaluate our culture when they unearth this site — I found a related site for Ollie who has joined his dear friend Beaner chewing couch legs in the sky. Ollie’s human life companions provide links to let us sign or read a site guestbook where we can record our thoughts of consolation and sympathy, preferably in all caps to vouchsafe our sincerity: “VERY INSPIRATIONAL FOR ALL LOVERS OF WEINIES”. The very last message reads in its entirety:

Great site. Just surfed in. Visit our discount vacation site @ www.magicrates.com

Yes, this person has spammed a dead dog’s mourners’ guestbook.

My challenge to you: Find me a spammer lower on the scale.

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