Notice of Service Interruption

I’m going to be in China and Thailand until April 7, speaking at a couple of IBM conferences. I will do my best to blog from there, but please don’t think that silence in this blog means I don’t love you all very very much.

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MiscLinks

Lemurzone’s interview with Tom Matrullo, a beautiful and remarkably learned writer, is a treat.

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Peterme says: “You’ll enjoy this.” It’s called “Web Radio, Community, And Streaming Capitalism (A Brief Meditation).” Peterme is right. For example, it says:

The cultural technology of the World Wide Web is invested with all sorts of utopian and dystopian mythic narratives, from those which project a future of a revitalized, Web-based, public sphere and civil society to those which imagine the catastrophic implosion of the social into the simulated virtuality of the Web. But whether such imaginings are optimistic or foreboding, they are indications of what Robert Romanyshyn has termed the “re-enchantment of the world” through the magic of technology.

This reminds me so much of RageBoy’s saying that through the Web we’re learning to love the world again.

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Glenn Fleishman responds to my comments about that damned NY Times article about the fall-off of interest in the Web. He says he has “no malaise because I’ve reinvented myself every year or so. I’m not in the same business I was two years ago and certainly not the one from 8 years ago.” Good point.

(I tried reinventing myself last year but ran into patent issues.)

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Chip sends us to an article in The Chicago Tribune that sites the Asia Times about the “network of multiple Caspian pipelines” the US is developing. For example, a proposed pipeline linking Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey is represented by James Baker’s law firm. Yes, that James Baker.

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I know this has already made it onto and off of the Daypop Top 40, but Mark Dionne points us to truly snarky coverage of the Oscars over at Salon. Very funny.

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Also already high in the Top 40 but well worth reading is Dan Gillmor’s piece on the journalistic “pivot point.” I get a little chill – the good kind – reading it.

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Hollings Is an Ass

From a posting by Peter Kaminski to a mailing list I’m on:

Here are some links [about the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act] I’ve collected. The first is a Declan McCullagh column that received wide weblog coverage, in which among other things he publishes a soon-to-be-felonious digital duplication program in its entirety:

10 INPUT A$
20 PRINT A$

Please visit the second and particularly the third links, wherein Senators Leahy and Hatch and the Senate Committee on the Judiciary are soliciting opinions on this and related matters via web form. Interactive government, what a concept!

Remember to cc your comments to your representatives, who may be found via the EFF link.

http://www.politechbot.com/p-03303.html
http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/feature.cfm
http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/input_form.cfm
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html
http://www.digitalconsumer.org/cbdtpa/ http://www.stoppoliceware.org/
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/
http://www.jerf.org/writings/CBDTPA.html

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That Damn NY Times Article

Jennifer has blogged about the NY Times article about how no one cares about the Web any more. My own reaction to the article was that it’s the typical “go contrary” topic that gives journalists something to write about. Heck, I do it all the time. (Stop me before I go contrary again!)

Then I tried thinking that it’s just an artifact of mainstreaming of the Web. That we take the Web for granted actually proves how important it is. (Go contrary with a half-gainer!) E.g., when asked to point to a way in which the Web has affected real world business, I often point to email which we’ve already forgotten has transformed memos, meetings, org charts, etc.

Then I tried thinking that I have a tremendous self-interest in maintaining that the Web is a transforming technology, especially with a new book just out on the topic. So I put my fingers in my ears and cried “Nah ni nah ni nah ni” alllll the way home.

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Is the Web a Medium?

I blogged yesterday about why I think the Web isn’t a medium. My comment “A medium is something we send messages through whereas our talk of the Web indicates that we move through the Web — we go places, we surf, we enter sites” drew this response from C. McClellan

This is a very narrow definition of medium. Water is the medium through which a fish moves and in which it lives. All previous definitions seem to have been trampled underfoot and forgotten. Medium is not always equivalent to the various forms of broadcasting which dominate our society.

That said, the whole discussion of what the web is or isn’t has gotten pretty silly. People will continue to use it as they see fit, and it will evolve as it must, regardless of how it is defined.

Yes, the term “medium” has many meanings. What word doesn’t? But, our culture has broadly accepted the Whorfian idea that meaning / information / a message is transported between two points via a medium; that’s why “The medium is the message” was such a powerful meme. In the context of communications, a medium is not like the fish’s water. And, given the context, that is the understanding against which I was arguing. (Ok, “arguing” is a bit of a stretch. “Proclaiming,” perhaps.)

As for who gets to define what the Web is: No one. Who gets to try to understand it? Everyone. (And I don’t think it’s silly to try.) Who gets to stipulate a new metaphor? No one. Who gets to try out new metaphors to see if they throw light on the topic? Everyone. Who gets to ask questions which he then answers? Apparently me. Who gets tired of this rhetorical device rather quickly? Everyone.

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Jennifer Balderama also isn’t entirely taken in by the notion that the Web isn’t a medium. As almost always, it comes to what you mean by the term. So, let me recast my comment: The Web isn’t primarily something through which we send messages. It is a space we go through.

But Jennifer anticipates this, writing:

But the fact is that I’m still physically sitting here in my chair…We use “go to” and “surf” to describe our actions because they are the terms familiar to us that best simulate our clicking from spot to spot on the Web.

Yes, but we use those terms because they somehow seem to fit our experience of the Web. It’s navigable. And in our real world experience, navigable things tend to be spaces. And how did “spot” get into Jennifer’’s description? If the Web has spots, it has spaces (or, possibly, measles, but I don’t think that’s what she means.) So, it still seems to me that there’s something importantly spatial about the Web, although it’s not clear exactly what.

As for us moving through the Web, yeah, I admit it’s a stretch. But I’m not sure it’s the wrong stretch. It obviously requires some hand-waving about what a “self” is, but waving hands is how big planes get parked. (Block that metaphor!)

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New, completely self-centered issue of JOHO

I’ve just published a new issue of my (free) newsletter, JOHO. Here’s the table of contents:

What the book is about: It’s harder to say than it sounds… The review I dread: It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of how many. Free children’s version: Yes, I wrote a children’s version. No, I don’t know why. Links: Early reviews, etc. Call to arms: Don’t make me beg The Bogus Contest: What the hell did I mean?

By the way, it contains a parody of RageBoy that has provoked him like a flashbulb going off near a tethered ape. What was I thinking?

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Saltire Reviews My Formerly Upcoming Book

Thanks, Steve.

Steve thinks he’s summarizing part of my book when he says “It’s not the medium, it’s the message.” The messages will continue, he says, even if the medium changes. By gum, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but he’s right! That’s another reason why it’s a mistake to think of the Web as a medium.

In fact, let’s summarize the Top Three Reasons Why the Web Isn’t a Medium.

1. A medium is something we send messages through whereas our talk of the Web indicates that we move through the Web – we go places, we surf, we enter sites.

2. When you call it a medium, the broadcast boys get erections. (And the broadcast girls get more head lumps from jumping up against the glass ceiling.)

3. The Web is “content” – us writing stuff to and for another another – not the transmission medium.

Anyway, I love Steve’s review and not just because it’s so positive.

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A Plea to Bill Gates: Free the Ideas!

“But don’t you worry about Bill Gates getting control of all your personal data and taking control of the entire Net?” I’ve been doing radio interviews in support of my Upcoming Book, and that’s what the interviewer wanted to know after I said something optimistic about the Internet.

Damn straight I worry about Gates. Microsoft wants to own not just the desktops but the connections. They’d even like to own our identities. (See Doc on the topic.) They are clever enough to get away with it if we’re not vigilant. But Microsoft is still constrained by some market forces. Yes, Microsoft twisted the market’s Invisible Hand until all it could do was salute smartly in the direction of Redmond. But the market is still capable of containing Microsoft’s hegemony. Just barely. Maybe.

I am far more worried about the entertainment-legislative complex. Because the market has emphatically rejected its business model, it’s perilously close to rewriting the software and hardware rules to force the market to comply. The government is both venal and stupid enough to do it.

Too bad Microsoft, dreaming of being an entertainment company and getting to invite Jeff Katzenberg over for some barbecue, is siding with the IP anal-compulsives. Microsoft lusts after getting a micro-slice of every entertainment bit that passes on to one of “their” desktops. But you know what? They may make the Windows I run on my machine, but it’s my desktop.

So, here’s my plea to Bill Gates: Be the white knight. Swing your mighty sword in favor of building the most vibrant marketplace for ideas and creativity the earth has ever seen. Storm the halls of Congress. Make it your personal compaign, Bill. You’ll help grow your market so radically that you won’t need to own it all to be the richest man on the planet. And you’ll also be one of the most loved. We all applaud the Gates Foundation, but this is your real chance to change history. Become the digital millennium’s Medici, not its Savonarola.

Besides, wouldn’t you rather barbecue with Courtney Love than Jeffrey Katzenberg?

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My Upcoming Book – Upcoming No More

Although it may not seem like it, I’ve actually been restrained in promoting my Upcoming Book. But I’m girding my loins. Amazon is now shipping the book. Bob Treitman at the SoftPro bookstore tells me that books have actually arrived. So, apparently my book is Upcoming no more.

If you have already read an advance copy of the book, please feel free to write a review at Amazon. I wouldn’t exactly mind a surge of interest.

Also, Marek elicited a Marekian interview with me about the process of writing the book. You can read it here.

So far, I’ve been pleased with the level of interest. The Boston Globe ran an excerpt in their Sunday magazine. I’ve done a few radio interviews and have a bunch more coming up. The book is being considered for review by the appropriate places. And I’ve solemnly vowed to become ruthlessly self-promotional. Any help you can give in getting the word out I will greatly appreciate.

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Musical Blogs

Phil Jones writes:

BeatBlog is an attempt to blog in music.

Currently I’m just concentrating on posting musical fragments on a regular basis, but I’m hoping to find other people to join in with their own musical blogs and create a blogroll. Then we can link and comment by sampling and remixing each other’s micro-pieces. The idea is to see what kind of music evolves in this ecology.

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Happy Celibate Passover

From Bob Treitman of SoftPro Books comes a pointer to an article from the Jerusalem Post that tells us that Viagra isn’t kosher for Passover. Looks like the dough won’t be leavened for some of my brethren for the next week or so.

Happy Pesach and here’s wishing liberation to all of G-d’s children.

[I'm in Miami this morning to talk with a Nasdaq marketing council so you won't be hearing more from me today.]

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Sufi and Wifi

Eric Norlin cites a Sufi rendering of imagination.

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Paul English has started a Web site for Boston-area folks interested in providing wifi services to their neighbors — install a wireless network in your house, put an antenna on your roof, and anyone withing elctro-shouting distance can share your broadband for nothing. (Paul is currently installing a Neighborhood Network in his house in Hull which will provide wireless connectivity to all the boats in Boston Harbor.)

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Blog-Crazy PC Forum

People are blogging like crazy from the wifi-enabled PC Forum. I’ve been enjoying Dan Gillmor and Doc Searls especially — Dan is cool and columnistical while I can envision Doc’s fingers tapping at his Mac until they’re red and swollen. You go, boys! This is is important stuff and your coverage is much appreciated.

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Metaphorical verbs

Through email with Vergil Iliescu, I think I’ve realized what my problem is with the never-ending blogthread on new metaphors for the Web — which I, of course, am now extending yet again. While I like the direction the blogthread has been going, focusing on the associative, hyperlinked nature of the Web and comparing it to the imagination, maybe the problem is that we’ve been thinking about nouns instead of verbs and adjectives. If the Web is like a shared imagination, then what verbs follow? After all, the spatial metaphor is baked right into the everyday language we use for talking about our experience of the Web. A new metaphor would have to replace the quotidian “going to” and “leaving” language the spatial metaphor provides.

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Spatiality, Imagination and Links

AKMA advances the blogthread on alternatives to the spatial metaphor of the Web by focusing on hyperlinks as providing an “associative space,” tying nicely into his earlier comment that “imagination” might provide a better metaphor than mind. He also suggests that Jung might have something to say about this.

I find this more useful than the “mind” metaphor because the point of similarity is much clearer. It is also consonant with the spatiality of the Web since that spatiality is due to the Web’s navigability which is in turn due to its hyperlinked geography.

So, the Web as a global imagination in the sense of an association of ideas. Interesting…

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Meta-Oscars

They really did try to keep it short. No dance numbers. They kept Whoopi to a short, unfunny monologue. So why did it drag on for almost five hours? Because of all the damn special tributes. My free advice to Oscar: Next year, do the tributes after the last award is given out. People who really want to stay up until 1am watching Robert Redford thank the sky for shining above him are perfectly free to do so. The rest of us can go home at 11.

Biggest surprise: Jennifer Connelly’s arms. You’re supposed to have to bend over to tie your laces. If she’s joined a bowling league, apparently she’s using a monster ball.”

Biggest relief: Now that Randy Newman, after 16 nominations, has finally won an award, maybe he can write a different song.

Best argument against regaining control: Halle Berry was great until she got a grip on her emotions and started thanking her lawyers for negotiating such good deals.

Best Living Up to Her End of the Bargain: Unlike her previous time hosting, Whoopi Goldberg didn’t once use the word “beaver.”

Julia Roberts unhinging her jaw
moments before mating with Denzel Washington
and then devouring him whole.

Best Money Spent on a Publicist: In the Oscar site’s gallery of fashion-glam shots from the show, Ernest and Tova Borgnine are the second in the series, right after Nicole Kidman.

[BTW, the Oscahs! tabulator I wrote broke before I could even enter the fifth entry. If you were using it, I'm sorry.]

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Small Photos Loosely Joined and in The Globe

Gary Turner sends a picture of him reading my Upcoming Book, joining the photos of Chris Pirillo and Ev.

BTW, there’s a nice piece about Ev by Hiawatha Bray in today’s Boston Globe. And Scott Kirsner has an interesting update on what’s going on at PARC: modular robotics and collaborative sensing. Although they sound like phrases from the Tech Randomizer, they are actually interesting ideas. Also in the Globe is a good piece by D.C. Denison on Instant Messaging that as a sign of desperation actually quotes me.

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New Virtual Appliances

In the wake of the exciting virtual keyboard

new appliances have been announced in the past few days.

Virtual Watch

Virtual Car

Virtual Bono

Virtual Dentures

Also in the works: Virtual Belt, Virtual Umbrella and Virtual Birth Control

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MiscLinks

Frank Paynter points us to an article (in PDF) in which Valdis Krebs applies what he knows about mapping social networks to mapping the terrorist cell responsible for 9/11. The key illustration is on Valdis’ site here.

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I mentioned Teilhard de Chardin’s “noosphere” when commenting on Akma’s blogthread-inspiring idea that the Web might be usefully compared to the mind. I heard from Trevor Bechtel, Assistant Dean at the Loyola grad school:

In your deliberations about the web and the brain you should know that Jennifer Cobb Kreisberg wrote an article in WIRED in 1995 on just this subject. The article compares Teilhard de Chardin’s thoughts about the noosphere to the rise of new information technologies.

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Megnut writes:

I’m doing a monthly column now for The O’Reilly Network entitled, aptly enough, Megnut. You can read the first one here on “Attendee-Centered Conference Design” aka My Observations from the SXSW Interactive Festival last week in Austin TX.

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Gary Lawrence Murphy has written a spirited reply to Dave Webb’s article “Blogging a Dead Horse.”

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Ryan Ireland has moved his always enjoyable blog, Becoming. (The new host, Movable Type, can suck in all your previous Blogger entries if you move from here to there.)

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Small Pictures Loosely Joined

Now Ev has posted a picture of himself — well, his hands — holding a copy of my Upcoming Book. So did Chris Pirillo. One more and I’m going to start a gallery of Bloggers with Books. You’ve been warned.

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What’s a Meta For?

[Note: I'm sure I didn't make up that punning headline.]

Dave Rogers weighed in with a response to the blogthread (see Akma’s entry and my response to start with) about metaphors for the Web by telling us about C.S. Lewis’ concept of transposition “when one attempts to adapt something of a higher or richer medium to a poorer medium.” That’s why, Lewis says (Rogers says) we can’t describe heaven: as we transpose it into terms we can understand, it loses its richness. “Could it be,” Dave wonders “that we have actually made a ‘higher medium’ that we cannot adequately explain in our ‘poorer medium’ world?”

This is a provocative idea. I think the evaluative terms get in the way, though. We could drop the “higher” and “poorer” and still use the idea of transposition to explain why we have trouble describing the experience of the Web. There are ways, obviously, in which the Web is a deprivation of the real world: five senses reduced to one, almost purely verbal, sedentary. That’s how the Web looks to people who think that it’s making us less social. (Hah!) The Web, it seems to me, is making us more social but also differently social — relationships mediated through keyboards are necessarily different than ones in which two people are close enough to breathe each other’s air. And you are not going to get me to say that one is better than the other.

So, what’s the richness of the Web that the RW can’t appreciate any more than it can appreciate heaven? While it would be self-contradictory to expect a full answer (”Please utter the unutterable in 100 words or less”), we need some type of answer since the Web isn’t something we can only experience by dying. Daniela Bouneva Elza at LivingCode suggests that it’s the “superculture” described by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen in Figments of Reality. A superculture knits together multicultures “like genuine multicellular organisms,” say Black and Cohen. I don’t know that I find this particular metaphor all that helpful, but Daniela sure seems right in pointing at the realm of culture and sociality as the Web’s locus of ineffable richness. Culture, society, even civilization. These seem like good words for discussing what we’re building on the Web.

(By the way, I really like Dave’s explanation of why the Web’s space and time are so utterly different than the RW’s. And Daniela’s passing use of the word “extelligence” struck me; maybe too cute to stick, but there’s something right about it also. IMO.)

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Government Cracks Down on State-Run Piracy Ring

Senator Fritz Hollings today announced the Fair Value Protection Act aimed at stamping out the widespread piracy of intellectual property that, according to testimony before his committee, deprives authors of almost two billion dollars a year of revenues they have earned and deserve.

“The FVPA goes a long way to restoring the fair relationship between creators and consumers,” said Senator Hollings. “Honest consumers want to pay for the value they receive. They understand that creators deserve to be paid for their work and for what they contribute to our proud American culture.”

Mark Miwords, president of the Book Lovers for Fairness, a publishing industry trade association, said in testimony before the committee, “This buy- once-share-with-all practice has to stop. It’s unfair, it’s unreasonable and it’s Unamerican. The fact that governments themselves are funding this type of terrorism against intellectual property is outrageous.”

According to the terms of the FVPA, all public libraries will be closed permanently as of June 24.

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Bombastic Truth

The Bombast Chronicles: Rants and
Screeds of RageBoy collects the best of EGR into one
convenient hardbound volume. EGR is
Christopher Locke’s ‘zine which consists of equal
parts industry insight, comedy and reader
abuse. Chris is a good friend of mine, and mocks me
at several points in his book. Now that
we’ve gotten that out of the way…

Christopher Locke is a brave writer. Despite the
book’s subtitle, this is Chris’ book as much as it
is Rageboy’s, and not because Chris is the person
behind the persona. The Bombast Transcripts is
RageBoy and Chris Locke by turns. It’s RageBoy
interviewing Mr. Ed (yes, the horse) about ecommerce
and
post-modernism and RageBoy ranting about the demonic
master he served (known to the rest of us as IBM).
But it’s also Chris trusting us with his heart, as
well as with his art. It’s Chris falling in love.
For real. As in love poetry:

sitting in the lobby
of the Grand Wailea
there is no inside or outside.
the sky comes right through
it’s a breeze.
everywhere clouds
water flowers
one world continuous
no edges.

so much
so much has happened here
and on the way to this place
which has taken a lifetime
to arrive at.

…

And there’s Chris also writing in a lovely way
about the Buddhist prayer flags on Mt. Everest. And
there’s Chris reporting on his trip to Denmark in
which we feel him falling in love, but just for a
moment, with one of the organizers of the event that
brought him over. It’s in that essay
that he tells us flat out what we realize we’ve been
waiting for him to say all along:

What’s going on has nothing to do
with ecommerce or broadband or any of that. Those
are just tools. Like the horses we painted in the
caves at Lascaux, like the bone axes and bows we
made, the religions and mythologies we invented, the
literatures, arts, intellectual disciplines. Just
tools. What they are for is to help us fall in love
with the world again, and again, and again
forever.

The Web is the sound of us falling in love with
the world again. RageBoy is just tough love.

The Bombast Transcripts is a tour de
force. It is as right about the Internet as anyone
has been. But that story is entwined with Chris’
own. As he’s throwing acid in IBM’s face, he’s also
invoking his months of meditation, his decades of
debauchery, his years of geekhood. Bombast
risks everything in order to be true. Chris is
willing to embarrass himself and to embarrass his
readers if that’s the way to say what’s needful. No
one will like all of this book but if you can’t feel
the gust of truth blowing through it, then, well,
may RageBoy take your soul.

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Damn Canadians!

Thomas Vincent writes in response to my running Gary Lawrence Murphy’s call for ripping CDs as a form of civil disobedience against the coming legislative stupidity:

All for bootlegging, all for the argument and I think it’s our duty as partiots…but did you notice…it’s easy for him to talk….he’s in Canada.

If our legislators keep this up, we’ll all be in Canada, pal. Eh?

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Web Space, Web Mind

AKMA continues his quest for a non-spatial metaphor for the Web. He wonders if the Web isn’t “a mind that we are building from the ground up.” AKMA is uncomfortable with the spatial metaphor because space is so familiar and the fit is so inexact that the metaphor may blind us to what is truly different about the Web. He likes the mind metaphor better because:

…we would be comparing something we’re only just beginning to apprehend (the Web) with something we’ve been misapprehending for millennia (the mind).

Nicely put, as always.

Given Akma’s misgivings about the spatial metaphor, I think he likes the mind metaphor not because we misapprehend the mind but because we are less certain of our understanding of the mind than we are of space, so we are less likely to fall into old habits of thought if we compare the Web to the mind. That is, the benefit of the mind metaphor is precisely that it’s less obvious to us.

There’s been a lot of thought given to the relationship of the Internet and the brain. My problem is that the more accessible that research is to me, the less I agree with it. The incomprehensible bits about the mechanics of the brain’s literal neural network seem promising and thought-extending. The parts I can understand talk about consciousness and suggest that the Internet as a whole is becoming aware, as foretold either by Nostradamus or Colossus: The Forbin Project, I forget which. This seems to me to make the old error of conceiving of consciousness as a set of formal, instantiate-anywhere processes (”Just add matter — of any type! — and stir!”)

People also intermittently notice that the Web is like Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere, which also has the advantage of comparing the Web to something we don’t understand. I find that the noosphere comparison helps to focus my attention up from the many individual ideas and rants on the Web, but I’m not sure what else it adds.

The question about the mind as metaphor is whether it fits well enough to be obvious but is rich enough to shine light on corners otherwise left dark. And there are dangers, as with any metaphor. In particular, I personally find almost totally unappealing the notion that the Web, like the mind, is self-aware and self-interested. And the concept of a “hive mind,” as some have suggested, strikes me as actually repellant. (Note: I am announcing my prejudices, not justifying them.)

So, now the task might seem to be to write a 100-word essay on “How the Web is like a mind” but I think it’s actually to think about what it would be like to talk about the Web in mind terms. For the talk about metaphors swirling through the blogthreads is in fact really about a new rhetoric, replacing the old spatial one of “going” and “leaving,” etc. I don’t see what that new rhetoric would be. But I’m sure my co-bloggers will have suggestions…

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Speaking of Akma, how could you not read a blog entry entitled “More Saints Endorse Plagiarism,” especially if you know that the blogger is a theologian?

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The Obvious?’s Euan reminds us that Lawrence Haggerty’s “The Spirit of the Internet: Vol. I: Speculations on the Evolution of Global Consciousness” talks about minds, the evolution of consciousness and the noosphere. (The implication that I have read it would not necessarily be warranted.)

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Keep on ripping

Gary Lawrence Murphy encourages us to keep on bootlegging as an act of civil disobedience against the coming Punish the Spread of Ideas and Creativity Act:

Unfortunately, mass civil disobedience is historically the best antidote to an unjust law. We can make it as clear as we can what our intentions will be. Let them sign it into their law. We, the people, will follow our law. Let Congress make his-story. We will make our-story.

Bootleg everything you can get your hands on.

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The Instant Gratification of Stupidity

AKMA, reflecting on sermons, writes

As I stop and look around, I observe both the amplified tendency toward speed that Dave [Rogers] cites and a patience for interesting narration (taking as examples Garrison Keillor, Lily Tomlin, Spalding Gray, Eve Ensler, extended raps, poetry slams, and other such cultural practices and practitioners). I don’t see people unable to follow a story, an argument, a sermon, but people who have diminished patience for tedium.

Oooh, a diminished patience for tedium! I like it!

But it reminds me of a line in my Upcoming Book with which I have become uncomfortable. It says something like “Are our attention spans getting shorter, or is the world becoming more interesting?” Facile, glib, and missing the real point which is that both are happening simultaneously. Likewise, part of the tedium for which we are losing patience seems to me to be the patience required to start slow and build, to do scut work so that your thinking can advance later. Instant knowledge gratification. As AKMA, a seriously well-read, multi-lingual scholar obviously knows, mastery often requires tedium. I worry about this, seeing my own impatience eroding my ability to think and to learn.

(Flameproofing myself: Yes, mastery is a sexist and politically charged term. But you know what I mean: If you want to learn ancient Greek, chemistry, medicine, piano or how to dance, you’re going to have to endure some boredom.)

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BTW, AKMA also has a thought-provoking piece on the significance of the facelessness (literal) of the Web.

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Why search engines suck™

At NetworkSolutions, go to the Manage Account tab, type in the name of the domain you want to manage, and click “Go!”. You’re taken to a page that presents an Ask.com search query box where you can type in the question you want answered. Could it be any easier?

Unfortunately, if you ask “How do I change domain servers?”, “How do I change name servers?” or “How do I change nameservers?”, the response is:

“Thanks for asking your question! Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any answers for this one.”

Ok, How about something a little easier? Why not try the example thoughtfully provided right under the instructions “Type in your question and click ‘Go!’”: “How do I renew my domain name?”. Response:

“Thanks for asking your question! Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any answers for this one.”

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Nothingness Explained

Judging from email, it seems that some of you have missed the hilarious point of my What Type of Nothingness Is the Universe and the Pathetic Bit of It You Call Your Life? quiz. Hint: It’s a quiz about nothingness. Get it?

Oh hohohoho. Oh, that’s rich.

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Wild Utopia

Kevin Marks writes, in reference to my “Web as Utopia” piece:

Dave, being a nice bloke, sees the
web as utopia. A transcendent Platonic ideal of
Socratic discourse, where those of good faith
commune on the nature of the world. Then there are
those who see in the seedier side of the web the
darkness of their own souls, for we are all fallen
creatures, and the line between good and evil runs
through all our hearts.

Hell no! I don’t see the Web as socratic. I see
it as connective, and socratic dialogue is only one
form of connecting, and a pretty paltry one at that.
Yelling, joking, teasing, provoking, criticizing,
grieving, and flirting are all forms of connecting.
So is simultaneous masturbation (no, I don’t mean
blogging). What makes the Web utopian (in some
sense) is that it’s connective, not that it’s
polite, rational or even intelligent. At least that’s what I meant to say. If I threw off the estimable Kevin Marks, I must have put it badly.

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Links and Stirrings

Arnold Kling juxtaposes a sourpuss interview with David Gelernter in The American Spectator with a quote from my Small Pieces site. Given the Jonathan Katz slashdotting of Small Pieces, I can see the way my book may polarize some discussions, with dyspeptic cynics squaring off against vapid optimists. The important point to remember is that this is not an empirical argument. It’s not even a religious dispute like Macs vs. PCs. It’s more like two different moods encountering one another:

Cynic: “I’m depressed and angry.”
Optimist: “No, I’m not!”

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Eric Norlin is feeling the urge to be involved in “the content side of things” and wonders whether others are feeling the same stirrings. Judging from the explosion of “content” in weblogs, I gotta say: Yeah, it’s a trans-hemispheric springtime. Long may it last.

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Mike O’Dell sends us to a site about a project he’s involved with. Hint: What might be the opposite of a Segway scooter?

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Telco Pro and Con

David Isenberg has published another issue of his SmartLetter.

Article 1: More states are barring public ownership of telecommunications. This is a bad thing.

Article 2. Dewayne Hendricks and David Reed (an all-star cast!) on packet relay radio as a way to get around the impending 802.11 spectrum mashing.

Article. Mini-Article 3: Steve Talbot on Evil.

This is important stuff even if — especially if — like me you find these issues more than a little confusing. My rule of thumb: Isenberg is right.

Not that George Gilder thinks so. Gilder, the swami of telecosms, goes after the article Isenberg and I wrote together with the subtlety of a velociraptor in a bunny farm. Unfortunately, he’s locked his ideas into his $600/year newsletter so you’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that he’s wrong. (Yo, George, how about publishing the article on your site for free so we can have a decent conversation about it?)

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What Sort of Nothingness Are You?

Here’s my contribution to the ineffably stupid genre of “What sort of …” quizzes: What Type of Nothingness Is the Universe and the Pathetic Bit of It You Call Your Life?

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Unprecedented Humor Attack

Simon Wistow over on the Cluetrain discussion list points us to BigBlueSmoke.com, a site that proclaims: “Sun Launches Web Site Debunking Big Blue Claims.” It attacks its competitor with a ferocity and sense of humor I can’t recall ever before seeing coming from a multi-billion dollar company. (Simon points out that a whois on the domain name does indeed point to Sun.)

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Is the Web Utopia or Switzerland?

In my highly implausible bloggery about the Web as utopia, I wrote:

The Web is a world that is profoundly social. Its geography itself is social, a map of connections and passions. It is thus a world that we’ve made for ourselves that is a reflection of our best nature and a place where can imperfectly perfect our imperfect natures.

Kurt Kurosawa puts his finger on the issue in an email to me:

Nah, it amplifies the powers not only of trolls but True Evil.

There’s a lot of truth to that. In fact, it’s undeniably true. But, ultimately (i.e., indefensibly) I don’t think it’s a neutral technology. It’s an amplifier because it’s connective, and connectedness isn’t neutral.

The real question is: How would we ever settle this issue?

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It’s Like a Metaphor

Kevin Marks’ blog reflects on the analogies the handcuffs-and-copyright crowd are using:

“If someone figured out how to unlock the gas in the gas station, people would be outraged,” Mr. Eisner added. “They wouldn’t say to the oil industry, `You need a different business model.’ ”

If someone worked out how to make gas from water using a chemical reaction, you would expect the oil industry to adopt it instead of passing a law against it so they can continue to spend millions drilling holes in the ground and storing highly explosive chemicals every 10 blocks in our cities.

But Mr. Chernin of the News Corporation suggested that matters might be different if the tables were turned. “Let’s say I decide to broadcast on my network the code for how to make Intel chips or Microsoft software,” he said. “I think they’d find a way to stop it.”

Yes, they’d sue you. They wouldn’t lobby for a law making TV illegal. After all, the code for the Linux Kernel is being broadcast on the radio…

I’ve quoted beyond Fair Use (yeah, so sue me, Kevin!) but it’s just too good…

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Small Pieces Loosely Mischaracterized

This just in from Powell’s Bookstore’s listing of my book:

Click for full page screen capture

Apparently, I am a CIA operative who has written a tell-all book. (PS: Powells is one of my favorite sites. And, as if to confirm this, they fixed the problem within three hours, and sent me a nice, human email msg about it.)

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In other Small Pieces news, Eric Norlin’s welcome warm-up comments already provide a blurb sure to make it onto the cover of the paperback edition: “…muted gnosticism…” This will definitely put the book over the top with the Mandaeans, sole surviving Gnostic group, living in Iraq and Iran!

Iran??? Hey, this can’t be a coincidence. Maybe I am an ex-CIA spook who’s the only one who knows the location of Saddam Hussein’s secret supply of Mysterium 238 but – and here’s the twist! – I’ve got amnesia and have settled down as a geeky sort of Web guy. Oooh oooh, can I be played by Tom Cruise? Or at least Steve Buscemi?

Categories: uncat Date: March 18th, 2002

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