Dinner with Loic

I got to have dinner with Loic Le Meur tonight. As you know, Loic is a serial entrepreneur and the head of Europe for Six Apart (=TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal). We went to a brasserie where I had a delicious salad — why does French lettuce taste so much better than American? — an omelet, liberte frite, and a fantastic tarte. But, most of all I got to talk with Loic for three hours. We talked about why there are an incredible three million bloggers in France, what people on the Net have in common, whether American waiters mean it when they ask how you like the food, and lots more.

I would never have met Loic if we weren't bloggers. And we were friends before we met because we are bloggers. [Technorati tag: LoicLeMeur]

Dutch blogging and PR confab

This morning I was part of a two-hour panel discussion sponsored by Edelman PR on the effect of blogging on business. Also on the panel: Fiona McDonnell of Forrester Research, Peter Olsthoorn, a journalist, and Richard Edelman, CEO of guess what company. About 50 business people and journalists showed up.

I went first and talked for about 15 mins on what blogs aren't: Bloggers are not journalists (by and large). Blogs aren't a medium any more than conversations are a medium. The long tail isn't straight; it's knotted with links and conversations. We don't just talk about our cats, but if our cats are interesting to us, then why wouldn't we write about them? There is no one definition of blogs, but I find it useful to pay attention to: 1. The way blogs are our selves in the new public of the Web; 2. The way the fallibility of blogs creates intimacy; 3. The fact that blogs are conversational in ways that the mass media simply can't be. Finally, blogging is not a fad.

Fiona presented the result of Forrester's studies showing that the influence of the Net is continuing to increase and that we trust other people like ourselves more than we trust authorities. (This finding is consonant with Edelman's "trust index.") Then Peter gave a journalist's view, worrying about the unreliability of blogs as they gain influence. We hadn't seen each other's slides beforehand, and his final one flat out disagreed with my final one; his said "Journalism is for real. Blogging is hype." (That's a paraphrase.) What can I say? Peter is a very smart guy with a lot of experience as a journalist, and we disagree. Then Richard talked about how the rise of blogging in particular and the Web in general is changing the practice of PR. He is encouraging clients to blog, and writes his own here. (Disclosure: I am a consultant to Edelman PR.)

Afterwards Richard and I flew to Paris where tomorrow we have a similar session, moderated by no less than Loic Le Meur. Immediately after that, I fly home. I love Paris and wish I had more than an hour of free time here, but I am very ready to be home for a looong time...

Gary Turner's Webmaster Traffic Art

Gary presents the first known instance of this nascent art form.

Thank goodness Gary hasn't turned his genius to evil. [Technorati tags: GaryTurner humor]

African bloggers blogging about Live 8

From Rebecca MacKinnon:

On Global Voices, Ethan Zuckerman has a roundup of African blogger reaction to Live8: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/?p=263

Ethan adds his own two cents on his own blog here: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=98

[Technorati tags: GlobalVoices EthanZuckerman Live8]

Sticky eyeballs

I'm in Amsterdam today and half of tomorrow, talking at meetings set up by Edelman PR, to whom I consult. I had the afternoon off, so after falling into a state of unconsciousness deeper than that of the mattress on which I lay, I set out with nothing but a map and zero sense of direction.

I walked into the center of the city and then came back out and went to the Rijksmuseum for an hour. Most of it is closed for renovation, so they've concentrated the masterpieces into about ten rooms. Astounding. Too much. I had the sense that I could see the paint run backwards into the puddles of color on a palette, and then I simply could not imagine how the process ran forwards. I could almost hear the suck and pop as my attention pulled from one painting and attached to the next.

And I had an experience I never had before. There was a landscape — I amazingly didn't bring a pen with me so I don't remember who painted it — that wasn't particularly attractive to me. It was somewhat washed out, perhaps by time but perhaps on purpose. An oak tree twisted itself up from a hill against a low Netherlands landscape and miles of gray clouds. The craft of the painting didn't particularly strike me — I'm a sucker for craft — yet I felt a yearning to be on that hill on that bleak day. I actually felt sad that I couldn't be there. The painting made me homesick for a landscape I've never been centuries before I was born. [Technorati tag: amsterdam]

Alert reader Peter Dawson figured out that it's "Landscape with Two Oaks" (1641) by Jan van Goyen.

Explosion on Mars Puzzles Editors

You know how early on in cheesy sci fi movies they would casually show a small article in the newspaper like "Explosion on Mars Surprises Scientists" that foreshadows the disaster that is about to impend? A couple of days ago, I saw a headline like that: Reuters wants to become a front line news source, rather than simply having its content used by other newspapers. (I tried to find the article today but try searching on "Reuters" at Google News.)

So, imagine that we — you and me, sister — have access to this miscellanized news content. Who needs the NY Times editorial judgment to tell us what's important when we can filter it for one another? Or let me get a mix filtered by the NY Times' judgment with a heavy dose of the interests of Ethan Zuckerman, Rebecca MacKinnon, AKMA, The Kenyan Pundit, Zephyr Teachout and Susan Crawford. Then throw in the stories that have caught the eye of The Daily Show staff writers, Michael Moore, Andrew Sullivan, Ken Mehlman, Powerline, Isaac Mao and Esther Dyson's mailing list...just for starters.

It's not just, as Dan Gillmor famously says, "My readers know more than I do." We readers, clumped into knots of interest, also are better judges of what matters to us. Put that together with an explosion on Mars, and you've got the fleet of flying saucers just about to enter our atmosphere. (Early saucer sightings: Rojo and NewsILike.com [Technorati tags: reuters media]

Assessing conversations

A teacher who heard my talk at the NECC last night has sent me an email wondering how teachers (pre-college) can "evaluate and assess the level of student contributions to conversations." No fair disputing his premise that he has to assign grades, because we're talking about a public school system under increasing back-asswards demands for more and more "accountability" and testing. So, given that he has to give grades, if he moves more to a conversational model, how can assess students' participation? Do you know of any interesting approaches to this?

Thanks. [Technorati tag: education]

Italian translation of Small Pieces for Kids

Alberto Mucignat has translated the kids version of Small Pieces Loosely Joined into Italian, and has posted it into a wiki. Thanks! [Technorati tag: smallpieces]

Blog Live8

One.org is giving away 50 backstage press passes to bloggers. Dave Sifry explains how you enter the drawing, as do Joe Trippi and Powerline. [Technorati tag: live8]

(Get your own Live 8 graphic like the one above here.)

Lumberjerk Rule of (Swollen) Thumb #423

My brother and I are known to our family as "The Lumberjerks" not so much because we can't drive a nail straight but because of the throroughness of our lack of familiarity with the basic properties of three dimensional space.

As I was constructing a simple set of bookshelves today, I discovered the following Lumberjerk principle: When fastening an object, every additional screw you put in increases the probability that you have positioned the object in the wrong place. [Technorati tag: diy]

Supernova roundup

Quick before it goes behind the Boston Globe pay wall, you can read Scott Kirsner's Supernova primer:

...the conversation was thick with concepts and terms that may be familiar to those who marinate daily in the blogosphere, but are novel to those of us who are still retrograde enough to read (or write for) an ink-on-dead-trees publication. Let me try to explain a few

[Technorati tags: ScottKirsner supernova2005]

In case the Grokster decision didn't depress you enough...

...read Susan Crawford on the BrandX decision that gives the FCC regulatory control over all bits. [Technorati tags: fcc grokster]

NECC talk - New Shape of Knowledge

I'm keynoting the National Educational Computing Conference today in Philadelphia. Here's a sketch of what I plan on saying. (The first two paragraphs are a variation on my "stump" speech, and you may recognize bits from elsewhere.)

Knowledge is being shaken to its roots. Knowledge began in ancience Greece as a way of sorting through conversations to discover what's the right advice for guiding the state. Over time, it got associated with certainty and became more and more restricted and less in touch with the messy human context. In fact, it took on four properties, two of which mirror the nature of reality and two of which mirror the nature of autocratic political reality: 1. There's one knowledge to serve all humans. 2. When sorting ideas, we have to put them in separate bins. 3. We need experts to do the sorting. 4. These gatekeepers have power.

But in the digital age, we snip the connection between how we organize physical stuff and how we organize knowledge. Four principles of organization change: A leaf can be on many branches, messiness is a virtue, the owners of the information no longer own the organization of that information, and users are contributors.

So, what is the new shape of knowledge?

First, Andy Clark in Being There reminds us that we have always externalized thought, which is a good thing: We got smarter when we learned how to write on walls to express more complex ideas. We used to worry about the effect of calculators on children's cognitive abilities. Now we worry about Google. Books made us smarter. Now bits are going to make us even smarter.

So, what happens when we shake knowledge off of paper? Quick example: Freed of the limitations of paper and publishing, topics get smaller and better aligned with human interests.

But, you can see with Linnaeus how the use of paper shaped knowledge. The fact that he recorded species on index cards led to him organizing them one way and not another.

And we've treated documents as if they were containers. That's because we've thought of our minds as containers. But the Web is made of links — pages pointing outside of themselves to other pages — each a little act of generosity.

But why believe what anything on the Web says? Yes, why believe even Doc Searls? Because are now capable of multi-subjectivity: many voices in conversation. Knowledge is becoming conversation.

Two further effects: 1. On the Web, we don't have to settle every dispute. Thus, knowledge can stay local and ambiguous. 2. We don't insist on a perfect beer before we drink one, and we shouldn't insist on perfect knowledge; since knowledge is social, it's as flawed as we are. (Of course, the criteria of belief vary by domain. I want more certainty from my doctor than I do from Jon Stewart or Michael Moore.)

So, how do we teach our kids? Do we cram their heads full of content and then test them on it? As individuals? Do we imply ambiguity is a failure? Do we insist on being right? Or do we say that knowledge is an unending conversation? Do we teach children to seek ambiguity and love difference?

Conversation is a paradox because it iterates difference on a common ground. That a paradox happens every day is a miracle. [Technorati tags: epistemology taxonomy NECC]

Steven Johnson in the funnies

Everything Bad Is Good for You got an oblique reference in the Sunday Doonesbury. That, along with appearing on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, has to be on Steve Johnson's life list... [Technorati tag: SteveJohnson]

MoveOn and other enemies of democracy

I just made the mistake of turning on the TV and seeing the George Stephanopoulos show just at the moment where George Will, minimizing Karl Rove's dangerous disconnect from reality, lumped MoveOn.org and Michael Moore as "extremists."

Say wha'????

Michael Moore is an irresponsible provocateur and humorist who sometimes raises topics — and says truths — the mass media is too craven to discuss, so I can see why Will might confuse him with an extremist. But MoveOn.org, which came into existence with the radical extremist notion of censuring Clinton and then moving on? Is this a conscious effort by Will to shift the table to the right, or is he really so lacking in vision and historical perspective?

You would think that a vibrant democracy would take as a matter of pride the range of opinions it embraces... [Technorati tags: politics GeorgeWill MoveOn MichaelMoore Karl Rove]

Technorati Live8

While I'm talking about companies I am an official advisor to, Technorati is serving as "blog central" for the Live8 Concert. Live8 wants your voice, not your money: The idea is that lots of our voices maybe can influence the G8 to put an end to poverty. The goal is to get a million posts supporting this idea. I don't actually believe that even ten million would make any difference to the leaders of the G8, but what can it hurt?

Dave Sifry, Mr. Technorati, talks about this in my video interview of him at Supernova, which you can see here at C-Net. (The aggregation of v-blog interviews is here.) [Technorati tags: live8 technorati]

New in BlogBridge

BlogBridge, a free open source aggregator client for Windows [added:], Mac and Linux, put together by my pal Pito Salas, has announced two cool features. [Disclosure: I'm an unpaid advisor to the company, but I had nothing to do with these features.]

First, BlogBridge is recruiting subject matter experts who want to put together sets of feeds on a topic. For example, Amanda Watlington is aggregating feeds on search engine optimization.

Second, BlogBridge now lets you create "smartfeeds," feeds made of other feeds based on rules you specify. E.g., you could ask to see all the feeds you currently subscribe to that use a particular keyword. Or, you can have it fetch tagged feeds from the likes of del.icio.us, findory, flickr and technorati.

I've been using BlogBridge as my main aggregator for a few months now, and I'm happy with it. Yes, there are a couple of edges that I consider rough, but BB is free, it's open source, and I've known Pito long enough to know he's a really good guy. [Technorati tags: blogbridge rss]

Wifi-ing the Big Apple

Andrew Rasiej, running for the obscure post of NYC Public Advocate, has put forward a plan that would connect wireless routers on city lamp posts using the city's dark fiber. The total cost would be less than $10/person (= $80M) and would provide free wifi access in public places; businesses and residents would pay about $20/month for basic high-speed service.

Of course, the incumbents, always zealous in their protection of the free market (hah!) are lobbying hard to prevent municipalities from providing this service. [Technorati tags: rasiej wifi]

KM, Beeb style

Inside Knowledge devotes 2,300 well-written words (by Sandra Higgison) to the work of Euan "The Obvious" Semple at the BBC. Euan has been leading the BBC down the social software path before software was called social.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to wrestle my 75+ pages of notes on the Beeb's digital make-over into 2,500 words for Wired. More words! I need more words!

Karl Rove: Apologize, resign, or both

As a liberal, I'm not insulted by Karl Rove's remark that "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." He's just demagoging based on a seed of truth: I do want to understand our attackers (because it's stupid in n dimensions not to understand the people you're fighting) and I do want a nuanced, well-thought-out response that will actually make my children safer, rather than the kneejerk Bomb Someone strategery we got from Bush and Rove. So, fine, politicians exaggerate the positions they don't like and even end up stating utter falsehoods like Rove's.

No, what gets my goat is his unthought assumption that every issue and event is fodder for political advantage. So he goes into the very city where firefighters ran up the stairs instead of down, and he mouths off to score some points at a fund-raiser? Tell me now who doesn't take 9/11 seriously, the liberals or callow, unfeeling, assroves like him? This split from reality — he was in New York City! — is where evil takes root.

Karl Rove should apologize or resign...apologize not because our poor widdle feelings are hurt but to acknowledge that reality still matters. [Thanks to the Daou Report for links and fire.] [Technorati tags: KarlRove 911]

ILaw made fun

Irina leaves the serious content blogging to others and instead presents the lighter side of the Berkman ILAW conference now underway... [Technorati tags: ilaw berkman]

[supernova2005] Seely-Brown

I'm actually getting to sit in on a session at Supernova. John Seely-Brown is talking about the themes of his book with John Hagel, The Only Sustainable Edge. For an excellent overview and probing of these themes, see Kevin Werbach's interview of the co-authors at Knowledge@Wharton.

Fair, but snippy, play

From USA Today:

With boy safe, searchers celebrate
Prayers answerd in Utah mountains as lost 11-year-old is found after 4 days

Maybe I'm feeling snippy this morning, but in the interest of fairness, I expect to see a headline like the following soon:

Body of missing pretty white woman found
God turns deaf ear to distraught parents

Yeah, I guess I'm feeling snippy.

Video blogs out the wazoo

A whole load of v-blogs from Supernova are up. I interviewed a bunch of interesting people, including Jonathan Schwartz (Sun), Hossein Eslambolchi (AT&T), Mena Trott (6 Apart), Chris Anderson (Wired), Lili Cheng (Microsoft), Da Scoble (Microsoft), Peter Quintas (SolidSpace), Scott Kirsner (Boston Globe) , John Patrick (IBM, ret), and more. (C-NET has started posting them as well.) [Technorati tag: supernova2005]

[Supernova05] At Supernova

I'm at the Supernova conference from which I'll be doing video blogging for C-NET and Knowledge@Wharton. C-NET's coverage is here. The video bloggery is here. [Technorati tag: supernova05]

Jarvis on the LAT wiki blowup

Says Jeff:

This is like hearing Kathy Lee Gifford try to rap and then, upon hearing the results, declaring hip hop dead.

I'm not convinced that wikitorials make sense, but if they do, they should heed Jeff's three pieces of advice...

Betsy's father day

Betsy Devine has a lovely reminiscence of her father and her mother. Affecting. [Technorati tags: BetsyDevine FathersDay Fathers]

No, I'm not keeping up with your blog.

I would like to. I really would. I like it and I like you.

But we're now well past the point where any of us can keep up with all the blogs worth reading from the people worth keeping up with. Even with an aggregator.

I just can't do it any more.

I've been faking it for a while. Months. Maybe a year. If we've met and I look confused about something you told me, and if you said, "I blogged it," as if that should be explanation enough, I've made some excuse as if I read every one of your posts except that one.

The truth is, I probably haven't read your blog in weeks. Months maybe.

And I don't expect you to have read mine.

I don't want to lie any more. I don't want to feel guilty any more. So let me tell you flat out: There are too many blogs I like and too many people I like to making "keeping up" a reasonable expectation, any more than you should expect me to keep up with Pokemon characters or I should expect you to keep up with Bollywood movies. I'm not going to feel guilty any longer about my failure.

I will read your blog on occasion, either because I've been thinking of you or because something reminded me of you. Maybe it'll be because you sent me an email pointing to a post you think I'll enjoy. Go ahead! I'd love to hear from you.

But I hereby release you from thinking I expect you to keep up with my blog, and I preemptively release myself from your expectations.

Otherwise reading each other's blogs will become a joyless duty. And we're too good friends to do that to each other.

[This is from the latest issue of my free newsletter, available here.]

Supernova live

C-Net has put up its page where the Supernova videoblogcasts (and more) will occur. I fly out there tonight and start vblogging tomorrow morning... [Technorati tag: supernova2005]

Hiawatha and Rebecca on China and Microsoft

Boston Globe columnist Hiawatha Bray writes about Microsoft's enabling of Chinese censorship, wisely using Rebecca as his primary source. Good column, although I think he's overly-optimistic at the end about the ability of the Chinese government to cut off access to sites it doesn't like. The Berkman report on Chinese filtering paints a more depressing picture... [Technorati tags: RebeccaMacKinnon HiawathaBray China]

(I blogged a response to Scoble's defense of Microsoft.)

A poem

Spring

A maple leaf
as flat as an open palm
and cold with rain
leaned over and slapped me
as I walked on the sidewalk.

The advantage is mine:
I have evolved thumbs and vengeance.

[Technorati tags: poetry humor]

Where the raging rivers join

RageBoy writes what may be the least corporate blog post to ever appear as an official corporate blog post. Called "Lashing them together" — the "them" refers explicitly to a writer's sentences but sentences are not the only ones who receive the edge of RB's cat o' nine tales — this is a cauldron of ideas and gestures that is about child rearing the way Mt. St. Helen's was about the even distribution of ash. [Technorati tag: RageBoy]

The change a'comin'

Terry Heaton blogs about a "think tank" confab at Ball State University where he became more convinced than ever that the mainstream press is on the precipice. I have that sense more and more, too, although I couldn't quantify it or even argue for it. You know how you feel when the wind blows a little colder than usual and there's a drop in the air pressure? That's how I feel. Something is on the way. [Technorati tag: media]

Your life as a comic book

Comic Life (Mac only) turns a series of photos into comic book format, complete with captions. The Flickr feed of the results is pretty cool.

How to set an Eco-Drive watch

I got an Citizen Eco-Drive watch off eBay a few of months ago. As I blogged, the instructions for setting it are incomprehensible. So I posted my own instructions into the entry for Eco-Drive at Wikipedia . But I'm afraid an editor will take it down since I think Wikipedia doesn't like "how-to" articles. So, I'm going to post it here, just in case.

The English-language instructions for setting Eco-Drive watches are close to incomprehensible. Here are instructions for one particular model - BL5XXX - that probably hold for similar Eco-Drive watches. This particular model has three small dials in addition to the main face, two buttons and a stem. Its functionality includes an alarm clock, a chronograph (i.e., stop watch) and a perpetual calendar.

Here is how these instructions will refer to the various elements of the watch:

Main Face: The place where the main minute, hour and second hands are.
Dial A: The upper left small dial numbered up to 24. Underneath it says "Chronograph" and "Alarm"
Dial B: The upper right small dial numbered 0-8. Underneath it says "Perpetual calendar"
Dial C: The bottom middle small dial. It has four labels that repeat around the circle: TME (time), CHR (stop watch), L-TM (local time) and ALM (alarm)
Button A: The top button
Button B: The bottom button
Stem In: The stem in its normal position, full pressed into the watch
Stem Mid: The stem in its middle position
Stem Out: The stem pulled out all the way into this third position.

Turning the stem to the right means giving it a half turn or so in a clockwise direction. This generally turns the affected hand counter-clockwise. Likewise, turning to the left means turning the stem counter-clockwise, generally causing the affected hand to turn clockwise.

Changing modes

With the stem in, give the stem a little twist in either direction. This will cause the hand on Dial C to move, changing the mode of the clock from TME (normal time), CHR (using the stop watch), L-TM (local time) and ALM (setting the alarm). Depending on the function, changing modes may automatically change the big hands on the main face.

Setting the Perpetual Calendar

Make sure Dial C is set to TME. (See "Changing modes" above.)

Set the stem to mid. Turning it to the left will set the date. If you give it a full turn instead, the date will change continuously until you give it another little spin. (It can be difficult to get the stem spun just right to start the continuous date changing.)

The second hand points to the month. E.g., if it is pointing to 1, your watch thinks it is January. If it points at 12, your watch thinks it is December. Press B once to advance the second hand by one month.

Now you have to tell it when the next leap year is coming. Dial B indicates that. If the hand on Dial B is pointing at 0, then your watch thinks it is currently a leap year. If it points at 1, it thinks it was a leap year last year. If it points at 2, it thinks it was a leap year two years ago. And if it points at 3, it thinks it was a leap year three years ago (and that therefore next year is a leap year). Adjust this by pushing Button A once for every year you want to advance Dial B.

Push the stem all the way in. Your watch is now set to keep track of dates for the next few decades.

Setting the time

Make sure Dial C is set to TME. (See "Changing modes" above.)

Pull the stem to its out position. The second hand should advance to 12.

Turn the stem to the right or left to cause the big hands to turn. (To the right moves the hands clockwise.) The hand in Dial A will turn. Give the stem a little turn in the other direction to stop the movement. (NOTE: Dial A tells you whether the big hands are showing AM or PM; if you are setting the watch to 7:00pm (or 19:00, if you prefer), for example, the hand on Dial A should be pointing at 19. To make the hands move faster, give the stem two or three fast turns. (NOTE: This doesn't always work.)

Push the stem in all the way.

Setting the date

Make sure Dial C is set to TME. (See "Changing modes" above.)

Pull the stem to its mid position.

Turn the stem to the left to cause the date number to change. (Give the stem a little turn in the other direction to stop the movement.) The big hands will move as the date is set. (NOTE: This doesn't always work.) To make the dial move faster, give the stem two or three fast turns.

Push the stem in all the way.

Using the stopwatch

The stopwatch, or "chronograph," can measure up to an hour.

Set Dial C to CHR. (See "Changing modes" above.) The second hand will advance to 12. Button A starts and stops the stopwatch. Pressing Button A continuously resets the stopwatch to 0. Dial B records minutes.

Using local time

Set Dial C to L-TM. (See "Changing modes" above.)

Pull the stem all the way out. Turn the stem left or right once for each hour you want to advance or setback the time. When you're done, press the stem back in. So long as you are in L-TM mode, the watch will show local time. If you set the mode to TIM, it will show the time where you started.

For example, if you are visiting some place three hours ahead of your home, you would go into L-TM mode, pull the stem all the way out, and turn it stem three times to the right.

NOTE: If in setting local time you go past midnight, the calendar date will change

The alarm

(I think these instructions are correct.) To set the alarm, set Dial C to ALM. (See "Changing modes" above.) The hands move to whatever time the alarm had been set to previously.

Pull the stem out fully. Set the time you want the alarm to go off by turning the stem. Check Dial A to make sure you have it set for AM or PM. (For example, to set the alarm to go off at 11:30 PM, Dial A should point to one tick before 24. Push the stem in. The alarm is now set.

To turn off the alarm when it is beeping, press Button A.

To un-set the alarm so it won't go off at its appointed time, set Dial C to ALM and pull out the stem. Pressing Button A toggles the alarm on and off. You can tell whether it's on by looking at the second hand. If it is pointing to 41 minutes after the hour, the alarm is on. If it is pointing to 37 minutes after the hour, it is off. Why Citizen decided to make the difference a matter of four minutes beats the heck out of me.

[Technorati tags: ecodrive eco-drive howto]

Two as a metaphor

Bev Trayner gets appropriately complex about the intersections of communities, languages, norms and metaphors. Here's a snippet:

Recently at two different conferences which represent two different international communities I belong to I was aware of the genre boundaries we are crossing in our work on communities, technologies and learning. The combination of different modes and technologies and a focus on emerging processes and diversity changes the whole nature of communication. It also changes our ways of of working together, what gets done, whose voices get heard, and where power lies...

Meanwhile, in my local community I have to develop another Zen-like robustness to help me through the quagmire of rules, norms and fixed expectations. The complexity of my universe here is to be found in the discovering or revealing of nests of relations and realities...

(Thanks to Nancy White for the link.) [Technorati tags: NancyWhite BevTrayner]

Two books, two whines

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers was worth reading, but I felt used. Paul Erdos was a completely fascinating eccentric who proved that not all mathematical geniuses do their important work by the time they're 30. I won't go through his bundle of oddities because the author, Paul Hoffman, does a good job enumerating them through anecdotes. But don't expect a biography: Hoffman doesn't get much past anecdotes.

That's not, however, why I felt used. First, the title is a lie. Hoffman makes it clear that Erdos loved his mother, loved little kids, and loved — in his own weird way — his friends, many of whom he kept for his lifetime. Second, this started out as a magazine article and it reads that way. It jumps around in the history of mathematics in order to pad out the book. Some of those jumps are interesting, but as a reader, I felt disrespected, as if Hoffman thought I wouldn't notice that he'd changed the topic without even the courtesy of a transition sentence.

When in London I picked up a paperback of Blowfly, the not-quite-the-latest in the Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell. I'd pretty much given up on the series, but the book was on sale so I figured I'd give it one more shot. I'm about half way through it and that's probably as far as I'm going to get.

The series started out well — a smart, feisty, female forensic pathologist who solved crimes the CSI way except without the techno beat. (The series undoubtedly was an inspiration, if that's the word, for the CSI sausage factory.) But as it's progressed, Scarpetta has gone from interesting to perfect. The people around her tell us that she is gorgeous, flawless, a genius, perfectly moral, the most caring person they've ever met. This would just be bad writing except I get the creepy feeling that Cornwall identifies completely with Scarpetta.

That's in addition to a standard problem writers of crime stories now face: The Temptation of the Lambs. In the first half of Blowfly, Cornwall spends more time with her pair of serial killers than with Scarpetta. She apparently believes she is a fine observer of character. But, her serial killers are impossibly monstrous and monstrously over-written. It's embarrassingly melodramatic and creepy in all the wrong ways.

O, Thomas Harris, what hast thou wrought?

What the hell is your BIOS talking about, anyway?

If you're a PC owner and have looked under the hood at the BIOS, you may be a teensy bit confused about whether you should "Allocate IRQ to PCD VGA" or enable "Palette Snooping." The Rojak BIOS Optimization Guide will explain it all to you. Then it's up to you to decide if you want to risk varying from the defaults. Most of the entries come from 2003, and the information is not specific to particular motherboards, but I've found it to be a good place to start. [Technorati tag: bios]

The Case of Theresa Schiavo

That's the title of a piece by Joan Didion in The NY Review of Books in which she insists on finding the complexities, ambiguities and unaddressed questions in the Schiavo case. Whatever your position, you'll come out of the article less sure that you were right. [Technorati tags: Schiavo JoanDidion]

Blogsday

An email from Brendan Greeley (lightly edited):

Last night on Open Source (Chris Lydon's radio show), in honor of Bloomsday, we decided — quite arbitrarily — that this Tuesday, June 14, 2005 was "blogsday." We spent two days poking through the Internet to find the sound of ordinary people writing about their own lives.

For an hour on the radio, we had Chris Lydon and two actors read out these blog entries, all from a single day. I think the results are kind of stunning, which is why I'm sharing them. The writing is gorgeous; it hits on barbecue, adopting a child in China, an infantry patrol in Iraq, marriage, the purchase of a hula hoop and about fifty other things.

My favorite entry is a post from a 365-pound man who had made it his goal to get a yellow belt in karate; his tone is earnest, driven and honest in a way I've never read, from any writer.

I think we captured a bit of this hum of people recording their lives and came up with a day in the life of America. We're proud of it. Take a listen.

I haven't listened to it yet, but I figure especially with podcasts, if I wait until I've actually heard it, it will be too late to recommend it. But between Brendan and Chris, its provenance can't be beat...

Japanese numbers

Joi runs the startling results of a survey of Japanese Internet usage. Some highlights:

36.2% of homes have broadband.

72.5% have heard of blogs, about double last year.,

25% of women in their teens and 20's have blogs. (!)

Wow.

Fr**dom of sp**ch

Rebecca tried to create a Chinese language MSN Spaces blog with the title "I love freedom of speech, human rights, and democracy" in Chinese and got the error message "You must enter a title for your space. The title must not contain prohibited language, such as profanity. Please type a different title."

She's got screenshots, and links to Bennet Haselton's Freedom Hack Instructions.

(I blogged about Microsoft's enabling of Chinese censorship here.) [Technorati tags: GlobalVoices china blogs microsoft]

Linnaeus' paper

The Linnean Society's entrance is tucked away in plain sight, just another stone portico and another dark oak door, across from the Royal Geological Society, and sharing a courtyard with the far larger Royal Academy of Arts. Inside, the headquarters is done in mustard and parchment white, with wood trim and brass, all very British and 19th Century.

Go up a flight of portrait-lined stairs and you are in the two-story library decorated with prints of carefully drawn specimens (flowers, worms, ticks, "Syncorme pulchella"), portraits of people important in the Society's history, and a three-foot-high statue of the man himself, at the base of which someone has laid ornamental squash and drying flowers.

Tucked away near the entrance is a 12-drawer card catalog of the library's books arranged by author. In the work room across the hall sits a computer that allows you to search by abstract, key words, notes, titles, and subjects. There is no hierarchical topic listing.

I wander back to the first floor and pull back the cloth on a couple of glass-topped tables that exhibit some of Linnaeus' original specimens, the reference points for disputes about whether a particular binomial — the genus-species names Linnaeus pioneered — refers to this or that creature. If you want to be sure, you can look at the remains of the being Linnaeus held in his hand when he said "I name thee...thus!", the very moment represented in his triumphal statue outside the courtyard, part of the Royal Academy. To the statue's right are Cuvier and Leibniz. Above him and to his left stand Newton, Bentham, Milton and Harvey. Static hierarchies force tough choices.

When Mike Olmert's undergraduates from the University of Maryland arrive, Gina Douglas, Librarian and Archivist, takes us all into the Meeting Room. There, on extraordinarily uncomfortable benches — I feel like a cry baby when one of the brochures brags about the modern padding — we listen to Ms. Douglas explain that Linnaeus' collection ended up in London because his widow sold it for dowery money for her daughters. The buyer was a rich young British scientist eager to make his mark. It worked, as the prominence of his oil portrait proves.

Linneaus, she tells us, knew his classification system was artificial and looked forward to the day when it would be replaced by the "real" one. (Without a theory of animals descending from other animals, it's hard to imagine what would make one set of morphological likeness more real than another. I should re-read Foucault.)

Ms. Douglas divides the group in two and takes the first half down one flight to the collection room, a room protected by a 6-inch thick metal door and designed to survive a nuclear bomb. "The whole of the taxonomic world depends on the legal concept of the type," she explains. The brochure says: "The Linnaean Collection comprises the specimens of plants (14,000), fish (158), shells (1,564) and insects (3,198) acquired from the widow of Carl Linnaeus in 1784 by James Edward Smith." It doesn't seem possible that this room contains all those specimens, plus all of Linnaeus' own book collection.

The room is about 15 feet square, lined with specimen drawers and book shelves. Ms. Douglas opens an oversized book, a first edition of Linnaeus' classification system. There he has named and organized God's creatures so that we can have a common way to talk about them. She turns the pages: Animals, vegetables, minerals...so common to us now that they have almost become a nursery rhyme. In this book they are new.

She draws our attention to the two page spread devoted to the Animal Kingdom. On the extreme right is the category "Vermes" (worms) which Linnaeus used as a catchall. If it wasn't an insect, he put it into the Worms, as close as Linnaeus came to having a "Misc." category.

Ms. Douglas spreads out some specimen pages, each with one plant type, gray as dust, attached. "Notice the K on that one," she says, pointing to a small letter at the bottom of the page. "That tells us who collected it. It's rare for a page to have that information." Too bad because some of the specimens I saw in the cases upstairs had been misidentified: Linnaeus grew Solanum quecifolium from seeds that he thought were from Peru but were actually from somewhere near Mongolia. If only he had had better metadata to work with...

Ms. Douglas takes out a thin pile of 3x5 cards, as soft as handkerchiefs. On each, Linnaeus has recorded in his fine hand one classified species.

This moment, as close as I'll ever get to seeing Linnaeus at work, makes clear how the requirements of the physical world silently persuade us to shape our understanding: Linnaeus' classification resulted from the nature of paper. Because you only have one card for each species, your order will give each species one and only one place. You will organize them by putting cards near cards like them, naturally producing an ordered series or a set of clusters. As you lay out your cards, like next to like, you are drawing a map of knowledge. That's why Systema Naturae is oversized: a map makes the most sense when you can see it all at once. (The size of the paper also determines the degree of detail possible on the map.) The largest units in Linnaeus' classification are kingdoms not because Animals, Vegetables and Minerals somehow lord it over the particular creatures they contain, but because kingdoms are the most inclusive territories on political maps. Knowledge thus derives its nature from the paper that expresses it: Bounded, unchanging, the same for all, two-dimensional and thus difficult to represent exceptions and complex overlaps, and all laid out in a glance with no dark corners.

Our time is up. The next half of the group waits quietly for us to ascend the narrow stairway. [Technorati tags: EverythingIsMiscellaneous taxonomy linnaeus]

Rhythmic static

I've occasionally noticed static playing over speakers in roughly the same rhythm: a quarter note and three triplets. Deeeeet dit-dit-dit dit-dit-dit dit-dit-dit. At first I thought it was something wrong with my PC speakers or sound card. But I've also heard it over the headphones while waiting to go live at a professional radio station. And I heard it over the speakers in the back of a London cab yesterday.

Deeeeet dit-dit-dit dit-dit-dit dit-dit-dit. Deeeeet dit-dit-dit dit-dit-dit dit-dit-dit.

Is this some predictable electrical noise, like a 60-cycle hum? Or is it a coded message from our equipment?

My book has a home

Times Books has agreed to publish my book, Everything is Miscellaneous.

I'm very happy about this. They are a great publisher and my editor, Robin Dennis, is going to give the guidance I need to write the book in a way that people (we hope!) will want to read. She is, by the way, Jay Rosen's editor as well.

I have a year to write it and should come out in Jan. 2007, which only sounds like a long time away if you're not facing it as a deadline. [Technorati tag: EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

Speaking of Jay, his blog won the Reporters without Borders Freedom Blog award. Woohoo! Where would we be without PressThink?

Jay graciously points to his fellow winners:

It's a serious honor to share that page with Shared Pains, which is a blog from Afghanistan in Arabic, with Al Jinane, written in French by a Moroccan, with ICTlex, which is like an Italian Lessig, with netzpolitik.org, or Net Politics in German, and especially with Mojtaba Saminejad of Iran> (whose story of imprisonment is told here and here) and Screenshots...by Jeff Ooi (see Dan Gillmor on Ooi's struggle with the thought police in Malaysia.) For them, international recognition is vital, possibly a matter of life and death.

[Technorati tags: JayRosen BridgeBlogs GlobalVoices]

BBC and Linnaeus

I spent a fascinating day at the BBC yesterday, and much of the day before, researching an article for Wired. There is so much stuff going on there, both technically and culturally. The Beeb is making a serious effort to serve its constituency by moving beyond the traditional broadcasting model. Wherever it can, it's using the digitizing of content to give control back to their audience: Control over the when, what and where of listening/watching (on-demand, interactive, on multiple devices)and control over what you can do with their content (remix it, redistribute it non-comercially). Rather than feeling beleaguered the way so many big media companies do when they look out over the Internet sea, the BBC-ers use words like "liberated." Invigorating, to say the least. (Now all I have to do is figure out how to turn 75 pages of notes into a 2,500-word article.)

Today, after meeting with another BBC'er, I join a tour of the Linnaeus Society headquarters in Piccadilly. This is for my book (about which I'll post some news tomorrow), which has something to do with what happens to how we organize stuff when we snip the connection to the physical. Linnaeus, the great classifier, had a sample specimen for each of the species he categorized, which is a very definite tie to the physical. But I'm not sure what I'm going to learn there. Which is why I'm going.

Tonight I fly home. Good. I miss my family. [Technorati tags: Linnaeus BBC taxonomy]

On the road

Joshua "Outlandish" Koenig and two of his friends are spending the summer driving around the US and promises to regale us with tales via email.

The first post is here. In it Joshua says the road trip's been around "for maybe ten years or so." Uh uh. National Lampoon's road trips may be that young but traveling as a type of freedom goes way back. At the very least Joshua should bring along a copy of Kerouac's On the Road.

But here's how much of a dreary parent I've become: I'm worried by the boys naming their trip's site — and ten years ago, how weird would that phrase have been? — "Vagabender," putting the "bender" front and center. Yo, Josh, drink in moderation. And don't forget to put on your galoshes. [Technorati tag: JoshKoenig]

Worthwhile mag column

I write a column for Worthwhile magazine and occasionally blog there as well. The magazine has posted a pdf of my column in the current issue; it's on why "Don't be evil" doesn't do much for me as a slogan.

Hey, I just realized that in the photo of me, they airbrushed out my moles! I knew I looked funny! [Technorati tags: worthwhilemag marketing]

EFF's guide for bloggers

Donna Wentworth at the Electronic Frontier Foundation has put together a set of FAQs that address the legal rights of bloggers. Read it before you get your next cease-and-desist order. (And join the EFF already!) [Technorati tags: eff DonnaWentworth]

Emergency VoIP

Susan Crawford explains the FCC's requirement that VoIP providers enable their users to call 911, reach the right local number, and automatically provide the local operator with location information.

VoIP providers in the US will have to negotiate separate contracts with 6000 emergency answering points, persuade the Bells to give them access to the necessary facilities at a sensible cost, and load up routers and databases with the right information. And compliance will be sufficiently expensive to make it no longer worthwhile to do business — unless you're Vonage.

Susan continues:

This seems to be an unprincipled and blatantly political order designed to protect the incumbents' ability to control the market for online voice services. Although the Commission is coy about the basis for its jurisdiction (how strange is that?), to the extent it decides to lean on Title I the DC Circuit has already said harsh things about the FCC's overreaching in that statutory context. It's a good bet that a good lawyer could attack jurisdiction effectively here.

Susan in her next post points to a report that explains the "complexity in every direction" of VoIP systems providing 911 services. [Technorati tags: voip fcc SusanCrawford]

Aristotle and conversation: Maybe I wasn't completely wrong

A couple of days ago, I wrote up a thought that I was afraid sounds better than it is. But now I think maybe it isn't as hollow as I'd thought.

The idea was this: Aristotle says that to know x is to place x into a relationship of similarity and difference: A robin is a type of bird (same as all other birds) but is a unique species of bird (different from all other birds). This is a world-changing insight, especially since Aristotle thought it was true not just of knowledge but of reality. But as our belief in a single, uninterpreted reality — or our ability to know a single reality — falters, we find ourselves in a global network of conversations. And conversations iterate differences on the ground of shared beliefs — difference and similarity.

I was worried that the formal similarity between Aristotle's idea and the nature of conversation was too facile. But this morning I think there's also something right. In these billions of conversations, we attempt to work out what's true. But, especially as the conversation goes global and involves people with deep differences, we (= I) have no hope of ever resolving issues and creating anything like an eternal tree of knowledge. That dream of Reason is gone. (Appropriate exceptions admitted.) Instead, for the rest of our time on the planet, we will be iterating differences, hopefully on an increasing ground of commonality. But we're never going to all agree and fall silent. That's not even a desirable outcome.

So, I think maybe I do believe that knowledge is becoming the eternality of conversations dancing difference over common ground.

(I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow.) [Technorati tags: EverythingIsMiscellaneous aristotle philosophy]

Skype Out

You know what works? Skype Out. You plug a microphone and headset into your laptop (or use the built-in ones), plug your laptop into a broadband connection, pay Skype 10 euros for about 10 hours of talk time, and you can call anywhere in the world. Plain old Skype lets you call any other Skype user for free, computer to computer, but Skype Out lets you call from your computer to other people's phones. The connections have been a bit echo-y, and calls to mobile phones are way more expensive -- 4.14 minutes to the US from London cost me .085 euros while 2:06 minutes to a London cellphone cost .615 euros -- but it works.

Or, you could bring your VOIP modem with you and plug a telephone into it, but not if your family needs the modem at home.

Tipping point reaches tipping point

USA Today's front-page headline today:

So now a tipping point is any change. Thus has the term reached the pinnacle of success: It's become utterly meaningless.

Anti-social networking

Glenn Fleishman writes in the NY Times about a Seattle cafe that gives free wifi on weekdays but is wifi-free on weekends in order to encourage conversation...

Chinese blog censorship

From Rebecca MacKinnon at GlobalVoicesOnline.com:

Microsoft has launched a Chinese-language version of its Spaces blog hosting service, and guess what? Users are banned from using the word “democracy” and other politically sensitive words to label their blogs — although it does appear possible to use those words within blog posts, for now. (As noted in my interview with Isaac Mao, people who set up blogs under this service don’t have to register with the authorities because MSN is already obliging the government by policing their content.)

I understand the argument — Google's, for example — that it's better to provide limited access to Web services than no access. Of course, that argument happens to work out in favor of the companies' commercial interests, so it's tainted. But there's also a point at which the compromises turn your software into an instrument of control. I don't know where that point is but it should be making companies intensely uncomfortable.

Of course, about the control-obsessed, fear-based Chinese government there can be little ambiguity. [Technorati tags: china GlobalVoices microsoft RebeccaMacKinnon]

Here's Scoble's take. (And isn't it most excellent that he's out there talking for and to Microsoft?) Although he staunchly believes in free speech, he says he has "ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS forcing the Chinese into a position they don't believe in."

First, I agree that it's important to understand the other country's perspective. I have heard, on my few brief trips to China (I could say "Please," "Thank you" and "No, I don't want to buy a DVD," so I am obviously an expert in Chinese politics) that during this difficult period, the Chinese people can't afford to allow a few enemies of the people to spread their seductive lies. And I don't believe free speech is an absolute right: I support laws against slander, perjury and even giving away genuine trade secrets. But I have also had the privilege of meeting Chinese people who have risked death by speaking freely. So, when Scoble talks about "the Chinese," I want to know which Chinese he's talking about. Every Chinese person? Or the Chinese government?

Second, if Microsoft had refused to compromise its software, it wouldn't be forcing the Chinese government to do anything. It would be refusing to enable the Chinese government to impede free speech. (On the other hand, to be honest, I'd like Microsoft to take a stand on this in order to influence China, and influence can be taken as a type of force.)

Personally, I think there are times when we absolutely do not want to enable other governments to do whatever it is that they want to do. I would not have wanted my company to help enable Apartheid, and I won't even go back to enabling the legitimate government of Germany in the 1930s. My point is not that the Chinese government should be compared to this or that other regime but that I do not agree with Scoble's idea that companies have no right to take moral stances against the policies of other governments. Whether this is one of those cases is a separate point; in fact, it's point #1 above.

So, I agree with Scoble that we don't want to go around thinking our values are the only values, forcing the rest of the world to act the way we think they ought. Excellent point. I even agree that there are times and places where free speech isn't the highest value. And I don't think it's totally obvious what Microsoft ought to do in cases such as this. But I disagree with Scoble's reasoning that takes the moral issue off the table. Instead, I think there needs to be vigorous, practical debate about whether this particular software compromise is acceptable. Reasonable people (like Scoble) may disagree on this question. But it is, for me, a question.

Copenhagen to London, with some heavy metal in between

It has been a long but wonderful day.

I woke up in Copenhagen unreasonably early and went for a walk aimlessly and maplessly; since I am so direction-impaired that I can't even read maps, bringing a map doesn't really help. I walked along the river and wandered down large and small streets. Because it was early on a Sunday morning, there wasn't a lot going on. The city was quiet, empty and quite rectangular. And, as Doc pointed out last night, the streets are awfully broad given that they were created long before cars would come along to use up all that bandwidth.

By accident, I walked into a park that turned out to be the huge churchyard cemetary for notables. The "You are here" sign listed Soren Kierkegaard as one of the residents ("You are here, but these guys ain't leaving"), so I paid him a visit:

Somehow I don't think Kierkegaard — whose name means "church yard" — would have been tickled pink to find out that he is such a popular dead guy that he gets his own direction sign:

Then it was off to the airport for the 1.5 hour flight to London. Traveling in coach with us normals was a heavy metal band, complete with road managers and handlers. I thought someone said they were Iron Maiden, but the Maiden site says they're traveling from Italy to Switzerland today; Copenhagen would definitely be a wrong turn. It seems not to have been Iron Butterfly either. (Man, in the photos on their site do those guys look old, i.e., my age! Who'd believe that after one hit in 1968 they'd still be touring, especially since that hit is unlistenable unless you are massively stoned.) Metallica is traveling between Austria and Germany today. (My fantasy was that one of the Metalllicans would sit next to me and I'd explain why file-sharing is good for them. Even in my daydream I lost the argument.) Motley Crue seems to be off the road, although their site tempted me to send $40 to join their fan club so I could get my own motley.crue.com email address. Anyway, whoever those folks on the plane were, they seemed to be very nice young men, albeit nice young men who aren't so young and now are doomed to remind people initially of Spinal Tap. (By the way, here are some spare umlauts for you sprinkle appropriately over their names: ............)

I got to my hotel in London at 14:00. (Modulo 12 to get the real time.) It's a lovely little hotel, picked by Wired's travel agency because I'm here writing a story on the BBC. But the Internet connection at the hotel has been down for two days and they aren't doing anything to bring it back up. That's like having a hotel room without a telephone or a TV. Or blankets. So I asked them to find me another hotel. As a result, I'm in the Hilton across the street for precisely the same room rate. The Internet works in the Hilton...but it's 15 pounds a day, or almost US$30. Oy veh!

I went out for a 3.5 hour walk, up through Picadilly, to Leicester Sq., then beyond, then down a little, and then some curlicues around some statute of someone on a horse, then swoop up past a very large green swath, then catch the end of a demonstration that my first reaction to is "Gosh, I hope it's against us," then some doglegs and a loop around the back 9, up through a really crowded bit, then a cone of soft ice cream that tastes like blackboard eraser, then a zig here and zag there, past Buckingham Palace, head in the wrong direction entirely, cross the big yard in front of the Palace waving all friendly-like to the quaint locals as they make a big show of saving the Queen, and finally back to my hotel.

I love walking in London. It's like NYC but with elbow room and history.

Before you go bopping me upside my head for hoping the demonstration was against us, let me explain: I'm against us — at least against how we're fighting the "war on terror." I acknowledge, though, that seeing another nation's people denounce the US is painful, even when you agree with them. No, you want to say as they chant, it's more complicated than it seems from the outside. We need more of that nuance that our President so despises. [Technorati tags: copenhagen london]

[reboot7] Reboot overall

It's Sunday morning. Reboot is over. It was a damn good conference.

For a geekfest, a surprising number of sessions were on cultural topics. And the presence of academics was stronger than I'm used to in US tech conferences. Yet it all felt quite integrated. For example, Jyri Engestrom's session on object-centered social networks used insights from sociology to help software designers create apps that work. I hope US tech conferences take a look at Reboot's program to get ideas about how to broaden both their appeal and their significance.

The conference was well-run, informal, over-packed with sessions, in English, presumptively in favor of open source, and in Copenhagen. What's not to like?

Ok, one thing not to like was the meagre presence of female presenters, including zero keynoters. Yet, fwiw, the atmosphere felt less testosteronic than at the typical US geekorama. I heard less techno one-upmanship, saw less swagger. On the other hand, maybe I'm just not as good at decoding European testicular displays. [Technorati tag: reboot7]

Aristotle and conversation

Last night I woke up after four hours of sleep — which was odd because I had been on a sleepless red-eye flight the night before — and had an idea for the talk I gave at Reboot yesterday. The idea connected three points.

1. I had been planning on beginning by talking briefly about Aristotle's discovery of the shape of knowledge: To know this robin is to see its place in a hierarchy of similarities (it's like other birds) and differences (it's different from other birds), an incredibly efficient way to organize complex systems.

2. I had been planning on ending by talking about knowledge as a property of conversations.

3. Last year, when writing about why blogs are not (generally) echo chambers, I had talked about conversation as the iterating of differences on a shared ground.

So, in the middle of last night it occurred to me that conversations, as the iteration of differences on the basis of similarity, are formally like Aristotle's description of knowledge as the placing of the known in a system of differences and similarities.

This makes for a neat line of patter: Knowledge going from static, pre-existing content the same for everyone to an emergent social process embedded in unique-yet-shared cultural and personal contexts.

My hunch is that there is something true about this, but that there is also a good deal of hollowness. Everything in the universe can be described in terms of similarity and difference, so showing that A and B both can be characterized that way is a bit like saying that crocodiles and hair balls are formally the same because they can both be used as the subject of sentences. But I'm too tired to actually think about this. [Technorati tags: Aristotle conversation philosophy]

Second chance for a pun

On the irc chat at Reboot, I got a straight line I'll never get again. We were on a brief thread about how tired we all were. Someone posted "We're brain dead." I posted: "And some of us are Dane bred."

What are the chances of the opportunity to use this Spoonerism ever arising again? Hence my shameless, context-free repeating of it here. Forgive me.

Berkman everywhere

First, on the plane ride here I read an article in The Times of London that cites John Palfrey, and tonight I come back from the Reboot social event, flip on CNN and there's Rebecca MacKinnon on a panel about news and bloogging. What next? Ethan Zuckerman Brand soap in my hotel room?

[reboot7] Why execs should go to media art festivals

Régine Debatty (we-make-money-not-art.com) shows examples of art projects, from her blog: The Medulla Intima is a "jewel" you wear that betrays your feelings by showing what your face would look like with the appropriate emotion. The Key Table shows your emotions based on how you throw your change and keys on a tabnle. Iyashikei-net lets you pump water in your house to cause "tears" to fall from a sculpture of tears. Needies are a cross between pillows, plush toys, and Furbies; they compete for your attention. Spatial Sounds is a robot arm that tries to establish a relationship with the person near it. The Hug Shirt hugs a remote wearer if you hug your own Hug Shirt... (She gives many other examples.) [Technorati tags: reboot7 RegineDebatty]

Hoder is going home

Hoder is going to visit Iran and is looking for support: donations and the protection that public-ness can provide. [Technorati tag: hoder]

[reboot7] The first blogger

The effervescent Ben Hammersley argues that Richard Steele was the first blogger, publishing his first post was on April 12, 1709. He postsed three times a week, ran comments, had 800 readers, and drank lots of coffee. "This guy is a blogger."

Amateur publishing + coffee = Revolution, Ben says. When fashion no longer flagged status, and people were drinking coffee in coffee shops, getting more and more animated, you get conversations among equals. The Tatler then broadcast this cafe society to the hinterlands.

Ben's equation: Normal person + Anonymity + Audience = Total fuckwad. "The new technology...is resisted because people don't know how to use it within their social environment. They are afraid of humiliation." Most people live in "the Hinterweb" (Danny O'Brien's term) of "X10 popups, porn adware, and endless, endless Hotmail and Yahoo spam." "New technology needs a new etiquette. This needs time." Our mission, says Ben, is a new Tatler that will teach the people in the Hinternet "how to deal with each other in this new technological world that we've already created." If we don't teach them that, they will destroy the new world because "there are more of them than there are of us." He adds that he doesn't mean "teach" so much as show.

[The talk was too entertaining to blog well. So I've over-simplifyied badly. Sorry.]

[reboot7] Social tagging

Lee Bryant of Headshift talks about five case studies.

1. In an experiment, users get to tag stories on the BBC news page and see other people's tags. (Stowe blogged about this here.)

2. Local aggregation, pulling in news, blogs, links, photos and government information. Text analysis derives common themes. Show the keywords by frequency so people can navigate. Make everything comment-able.

3. Building shared meaning with tags — cluster and search on themes.

4. Negotiating language — learning from unstructured data. They asked for user-driven feedback on health services based on unstructured stories. They use text analysis to identify matches with formal taxonomies. If the user says that's wrong, the system learns. So, they create "user-generated tag clouds."

5. Where do we go from here? His company is trying to escape from the "taxonomy deadzone" by providing a lightweight social software interface.

Q: (Dina Mehta): How do you talk a company into taking this bottom up approach.

A: Point out what isn't working. Show them how they can build on top of what they have.

[Excellent talk.]

[reboot7] Object-centered sociality

Jyri Engestrom (who blogs at zengestrom.com) is applying sociological theory to the online world to explain why some social networks work and others don't.

Design is always motivated by theory, he says. The most popular theories behind social networks are ones discussed in the books Links and Nexus: "A social network is a map of the relationships between individuals." (He takes this definition from Wikipedia.) This doesn't explain what connects particular people and not others. But another tradition of theorizing, people connect to each other through a shared object.

By object, he means things such as dates and jobs in addition to tangible objects. "Tangible objects invite play." Objects "knot" networks. "When a service fails to offer the users a good way to create new objects of sociality, they turn the connecting itself into an object." "The services that we love to play with hvae made those objects tangible: They afford tagging, crafting, tuning, hacking...ways of playing and fabricating." Objectives are goal; objects generate new goals.

[Great talk, but he's stretched "object" so far that I'm not sure it can be use as the differentiator. I.e., LinkedIn has an object — contacts — but it's still failed because it's not very useful. LATER NOTE: I raised on the conference IRC and people straightened me out: You have to have objects that people can play with.]

Iranian blogger faces death penalty

From Reporters without Borders:

Reporters Without Borders voiced deep concern today about the fate of 25-year-old blogger Mojtaba Saminejad, who has been sentenced to two years in prison by a Tehran revolutionary court for "insulting the Supreme Guide" and who is due to be tried soon on a separate charge of insulting the prophets, which carries a possible death penalty...

...arious initiatives are under way on the Iranian Internet in support of Mojtaba. Internet users have dedicated a blog to him in both English (http://mojtaba-samienejad.blogspot.com) and in Farsi (http://en-mojtaba-samienejad.blogspot.com). Some 50 Iranian bloggers are openly backing him. The Penlog bloggers group has also firmly condemned his conviction (see http://penlog.blogspot.com/2005/06/blog-post_05.html).

Plugging a plug

I've posted a 2-minute video plugging my upcoming video blogging of SuperNova. The conference, about business in the decentralized world, runs June 20-22, and I'll be there June 21-22, interiewing speakers and attendees. It's an experiment that I'm looking forward to. [Technorati tag: supernova]

[reboot7] Long Tail of fashion

Ulla-Maaria Mutanen applies the long tail to fashion. She's going to connect craftblogging, fashion and the long tail.

Craftblogging is, obviously, blogging about one's crafts. She takes us through some sites. But, she asks, does all this craftbloging constitute a new market? Is it part of the long tail market? She summarizes the long tail as: 1.Most of us want more ethan jst hits. 2. The market of non-hits is bigger than the market of hits. 3. Most successful businesses on the Net are about aggregating the Long Tail in one way or another.

Yes, she concludes, these craftblogs are part of the long tail of fashion...if they have easy, accessible tools. Craftspeople could use better tools for creating, sharing, managing reputations, purchasing...She proposes a unique naming scheme for fashion products with human-readable and machine-readable codes. She's written a Craft Manifesto.

[Very interesting, especially since the marketers I've talked with think the point of the long tail is that they can sell into it, not that the long tail is going to be selling to itself. ulla-Maaria says in response to my saying this that, yes, the long tail will be selling to itself, and it'll be selling not crafts but tools.] [Technorati tags: reboot7 longtail craftblogs]

[reboot7] Science Commons

Paual Le Dieu who describes herself as an "(i)commonist" talks about the science commons. She works on the BBC's "creative archives" — the generous licensing of BBC content — and is the director of Creative Commons International. (I'm writing an article for Wired on the BBC's progressive content policies, so I will be tracking her down...) There are 12-14 million web page swith a Creative Commons license.

Science Commons aims at enabling "the creation of an open, accessible commons for scientific knowledge." There's obviously lots of scientific information online, but access is spotty at best. To get SC off the ground, it'd be good to show the impact of one's work, she says. Paula points to CC Mixter, a music mixing site, as an example of a site that shows the sources one's work draws on and the sources that cite one's work.

This year they will be publishing a semantic web browser + cc publisher.

[reboot7] Overview

Four hundred techies are gathered in a pleasant exposed-brick building in Copenhagen. And although the group is as geeky as it gets, the topics so far are wider ranging than at a tyupical US tech conference. Here's what the conference's site says Reboot is about:

reboot is a community event focused on digital change and culture

Reboot is the European meetup for the practical visionaries who are building tomorrow one little step at a time, using new models for creation and organization ó in a world where the only entry barrier is passion. Reboot is two days in June filled with inspiration, perspective, good conversations and interesting people.

I missed Doc's talk on re-framing the Net. I heard Scoble's rap on why blogging is here to stay. Jimbo Wales talked about Wikipedia. These three are stars of the tech conference circuit. But I also participated in a session led by Johnnie Moore and James Cherkoff that used improv techniques to lead a discussion about open source marketing. When the discussion turned to llimitations on openness, someone asked: "Does anyone know of a company who is too open?" Good question. (Johnnie and James' del.icio.us tags are here.) I also heard an imaginative talk by Thomas Harttung on "gap dynamics" and farming — he runs his farm not via Darwinian competition but by increasing collaborative complexity.

The gap conversations have been just wonderful. And, by the way, although there are few women speakers, there are lots of women attendees, and their presence is definitely felt.

Also by the way: So far, conversation seems to be the meme du jour. It keeps showing up in sessions as the corrective to the existing model. [Technorati tag: reboot]

Reboot IRC

There's an IRC channel for Reboot: irc.freenode.net #reboot7.

JP is everywhere

I read The Times of London this morning on my flight from London to Copenhagen for Reboot. There was an article about a squabble over who owns the "sandwich" domain name. And who gets quoted as a legal authority but John Palfrey of The Berkman. How far do I have to go before I can escape his evil influence? [Disclosure: In some sense, JP is my boss.] [Technorati tags: berkman JohnPalfrey]

Time setting from the future

My laptop keeps getting set to the wrong time. For example, today after I forced a re-synch using XP's built in facility, I got this response:

If I set the date correctly and use Windows' own time server instead of NIST's, it gets the time and date right. Is the national timepiece off by six days???

The real neural network

David Tebbutt points to some images of neurons that are interesting on level, beautiful at another, and awe-inspiring at yet another. [Technorati tag: neurons]

Preparing to reboot

Tomorrow I leave for Copenhagen for the reboot conference. I'll arrive just as it's beginning on Friday, I hope in time to hear Doc's opening keynote.The sessions look fabulous. This is an awesome group of, um, guys. Mainly guys.

On Saturday I give the lunchtime keynote, and I am still struggling with the presentation. The title is "The Natural Shape of Knowledge." (Here's the blurb.) This is a very rough outline of what I think I'm going to say:

Knowledge (K from now on) has had a "natural shape" because it's been tied to the physical. But now that the world's going digital, it's assuming a different shape closer to our nature. Less like nature and more like us, so to speak.

What does K look like? Like Wikipedia. Like blogs. Like etc.

How did K get into its current shape? Aristotle first described the shape of K: We organize ideas into trees. But trees result from the physical world's constraints on organizing: You divide your laundry into a pile for each kid, then divide each kid's into basic body parts, then divide the socks into sports and school socks. That's a tree and it happens because in the real world, socks have to go in one pile or another.

So, if the shape of K has been determined by the limitations of the physical world, what comes out of that? A few things:

To know is x to see where it fits in a structure

That structure is divined by experts

Meaning gets confused with definitions — we can't define "blog" perfectly but so what?

We think the real has to be unambiguous. Ambiguity is a sign that K has failed. (Not really.)

Gatekeepers think they have an ontological mandate

So, now we're digitizing everything. Those points get undone. [I'm struggling to figure out how to organize the following.] So, what happens to K? Instead of asking about K, ask "How do we know stuff?" I know x if I can answer a question about it or talk about it sensibly. I know x if I can look it up or ask someone. So, here are some things that change:

Topics get smaller. Compare Wikipedia to Britannica.

We can no longer believe that K and the structures of K are rooted in nature. They are tools, not mirrors.

This is about a shift in power. That's why Jon Stewart is the most respected journalist on TV: When the former authorities are the last to know that they're not in charge any more, you have the conditions for farce. [Yes, I know this is a local reference.]

No more forced rationality: The Web is big enough to let us disagree without feeling we have to get everyone else to agree.

Multi-subjectivity replaces objectivity in many fields: Multiple points of view in conversation can have some of the heft of objectivity.

Finally, I think I want to point to the idea of "local revelation" in religion (particularly Judaism) as a way to co-exist. We can live together thinking that one group only has the truth, nor can we afford to conclude that all truth is merely relative. But suppose God reveals Himself differently to different people at different times. That means giving up the idea that knowledge lets us into a realm beyond awareness where we see things in themselves, but that was always a doody-headed idea anyway.

Let the singing of Kumbiyah commence.

[Ok, so I have to pare this down and try to make it interesting. Hah! Any and all help gratefully appreciated.] [Technorati tags: taxonomy knowledge]

Two much fun

Those of you who spent most of last summer playing Zuma will be distressed to learn that Reflexive has a knock-off called Luxor that's almost as good. It's $20. (Several elements of my family have also been enjoying playing around with the level designer of Reflexive's Ricochet Lost Worlds, the game that breakout wanted to be.)

For that you could pre-order two copies of the Professional Edition of Bradsuck's CD. You can also download his music for free, but, jeez, what more do you want from a one-person singer/songer band? He should come to your house personally and butter both sides of your whole wheat toast? Jeez! [Technorati tag: bradsucks]

Meta-question

Some standard Windows dialogue boxes put a question mark button up next to the close box (the little one with the X in it). If you click on the question mark, you get a question mark cursor. Click on something in the dialogue box and it pops up an explanation. Except if you click on the question mark button up next to the close box, in which case you get nuthin'.

And — in a failure of meta-ness — if you click on the close box, it closes the window.

Wisdom of crowds comes back with guilty verdict

Intrade, an opinion market, now reports that the money has moved to a guilty verdict for intoxicating the kid but acquittal on the charge of molesting him.

My own bet: Michael Jackson will moonwalk to Vegas and phone in a report that he's been kidnapped, thus creating the Mother of All Media Non-stories. The only thing that could make it bigger would be if he were a pretty, white woman.

Attention

Tom Matrullo begins a post with this:

Walter Benjamin notes that Malebranche called attentiveness "the natural prayer of the soul."

It goes on from there, but you've got your money's worth with that one line.

Halley interviews Megnut

I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but Halley's interview of Megnut sounds like a good 'un.

China's effect on the Internet

Fascinating informal discussion at the Berkman Center this morning about the effect the next billion users will have on the Internet. What will it mean if and when standards are no longer driven by the US and Europe? Which devices will dominate? Whose routers? Will the new dominant hardware come with control hooks built in? (As noted in the discussion, CALEA and Intel's burned-in DRM capability show that it's not only non-US/EU states that want to control and/or monitor communications.) Will GSM becomes the basis for non-mobile communication? Will government filtering of access become the unassailable norm?

By the way, Googling "China's effect on the Internet" (with the quotes) turns up zero hits.

Rebecca has a scary post about the Chinese effort to control all blogs. She cites a report from Reporters without Borders:

Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm today at the Chinese government's announced intention to close down all China-based websites and blogs that are not officially registered. The plan is all the more worrying as the government has also revealed that it has a new system for monitoring sites in real time and spotting those that fail to comply...

BridgeBlog aggregator

Global Voices has set up a Bloglines page that aggregates feeds from "bridgebloggers" — bloggers giving insight into their countries. Very interesting to poke around in. For example, From the Rock in Libya has been writing about trying to reconnect with a friend after communication was cut off by sanctions. At Amarji - A Heretic's Blog the Syrian author Ammar Abdulhamid gives a vivid picture of the life of dissent. And at Indonesia - Everyone's Tagged Photos you'll find Flickr's Indonesia tagstream. . [Technorati tags: blogs GlobalVoices]

Steve Johnson on The Daily Show

He's on it tomorrow night, Tuesday, talking about why Everything Bad is Good for You. He promises to blog about it afterwards...

Open Source DUI

From the Tampa Tribune:

Hundreds of cases involving breath-alcohol tests have been thrown out by Seminole County judges in the past five months because the test's manufacturer will not disclose how the machines work.

All four of Seminole County's criminal judges have been using a standard that if a DUI defendant asks for a key piece of information about how the machine works - its software source code, for instance - and the state cannot provide it, the breath test is rejected, the Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesday.

Prosecutors have said they do not know how many drunken drivers have been acquitted as a result. But Gino Feliciani, the misdemeanor division chief in the Seminole County State Attorney's Office, said the conviction rate has dropped to 50 percent or less.

[Thanks to Brad Rosen for the link.] [Technorati tag: opensource]

RocketBoom and Ring Tone: The Movie

Rocketboom's report today includes a substantial clip from the theatrical smash "Ring Tone," starring my daughter. (Well, it's theatrical in the "theater of your mind" sense.) And don't miss the tap dancing at the end of the RocketBoom report.

Chanuka in Swahili

The Chanuka blog by Pampauka in Kenya explains that Chanuka in Swahili means " lighten up! get into action! Complain less and Act more."

Oddly, in Hebrew it also means "lighten up," but in the literal sense :) [Technorati tag: chanukah]

Violence without amnesty

There's an unsettling post by Black Looks on Amnesty International's Nigeria: Unheard Voices on violence against women in Nigeria. She writes: "The kind of violence taking place in Nigeria is hardly different from elsewhere but what is different and important is how Nigerian women are dealing with the violence." Apparently there are a number of programs that provide free access to legal help. She concludes: "Nevertheless, none of these projects or initiatives can be of much use unless victims of violence can access the services and there is a high profile awareness..." [Technorati tag: Nigeria]

Technology knitting memory

David Berlind, in the course of researching his genealogy, came across Yizkor (memorial) books, a type of citizen journalism in which the life and lives of European Jewish communities are recorded. More than that, he discovered how the Net can stitch together memories against the will of the strongest, most malevolent forces.

Ring Tone Dancer: The original

Apparently "Ring Tone Dancer" is one of the leaders in the Contagious Media contest. I prefer the version my daughter and I made a few months ago. And, no, I am not biased in the least.

Chuck Olsen's blogumentary

Chuck Olsen made a good documentary called "Blogumentary." Now someone is trying to bully him out of the name. Not being a lawyer, I don't know who has legal rights to the name, but now that I've seen how this new guy responds to a civil inquiry, I have asked him to drop me from his list of interviewees.

Why I should not be let near hardware

I have this morning failed to install a new motherboard (an Asus P4P800-E) on my machine. The little internal LED is on indicating that power is getting to it somewhere somehow, but nothing else comes on. Yes, I've checked that the internal power connectors are connected.

Tomorrow I will bring it to the friendly local computer store where they they have the decency not to laugh at me until I've left.

Panel on blogs for PR folks

The conference to which my tiny, content-free post referred was a get-together of Big Co marketing communication VPs. I was on a panel on blogging with Rebecca Blood, Alan Nelson of CommandPost (who chaired it), and John Hinderaker of Powerline. This panel was the first time in the group's history that they've allowed any proceedings to be on the record.

The discussion went well. Rebecca explained what blogs are and aren't. John gave examples — e.g., Rathergate — of how blogs have beat the mainstream media at their own game. I tried to preempt some of the obvious marketers' misunderstandings by saying that it's a mistake to think that only the high-traffic blogs count, that blogs are conversations, and that trying to manipulate weblog conversations is a very bad idea.

I'm not doing the session justice, of course, but it seemed to go well. And it was great to be on a panel with those folks. [Technorati tags: RebeccaBlood Powerline]

I don't know what sort of schmuck leaves his computer behind when he heads for the airport but — oh, yeah, now I remember: It's a schmuck exactly like me. But Mara, the woman driving Rebecca, Alan and me to the airport, stuck with me for 15 minutes, tracking down my computer and then arranging for a competitive car service to bring it to me on their next next trip out.

Thank you, Mara, of Dolphin Transportation in Naples, Florida. She saved my veggie bacon and was incredibly sweet about it. She wouldn't even let me tip her. If you need a car service in Naples, you can reach Dolphin at (239) 530 0100.

KM re-explained

The K stands for blogs.

The M stands for tags.

Put 'em together and you get "KM." [Technorati tag: km]

Live blogging, but content free

I'm at a conference where an example of blogging is in order. This is it.

Cigarettes kill...bad guys

The Financial Times reports that India is going to start pixellating cigarettes in movies to avoid glamorizing them. Alternatively, they may run health warnings on screen whenever a cigarette appears.

Doesn't the Indian government know that in American movies smoking is a sure sign that you're a bad guy/gal whose comeuppance will come long before lung cancer can take hold?

The regrettable exception are action heroes who substitute not shaving and smoking for acting talent.

Trackbacks off

I've turned off trackbacks on this site because I'm getting about 100 a day, of which a tiny percentage aren't spam.

Too bad. Trackbacks address a real need.

RageBoy is not a blood-drinking lizard. Probably.

RB blogs about a very very strange guy. Holy mother of Rodan!

And, by the way, when you heard that someone had been appointed Chief Blogging Officer, did you ever ever think that this is the sort of stuff he'd be writing about? [Technorati tag: RageBoy]

Mediation

Dave Rogers pushes back on Doc's statement on the Chris Lydon show he, Dave Winer and I appeared on that the Net isn't a medium and is unmediated. "Doc's weblog is as heavily mediated as network television, it's just that there's only one box in the org chart and his name is in it," Dave writes, part of a long post I can't summarize adequately. I think it's helpful, though to drop the word "mediation" and its variants for purposes of this discussion. With that word out of the way, it does seem to me there's a real difference between mass media that are owned by a handful of people and this other thang. Is the Net "unmediated"? Nah. It's differently mediated, but that difference is substantial.

(Personal note: Yes, Dave, I am big on the importance of voice. But I'm wary of "authenticity." Voice can be — always is — artful to one degree or another.)

Some links: Here is Dave's objection to my assertion that the Web is more world than medium. Here's Doc's link to Dave's post on mediation. And here is Mike Sanders' set of assertions disgreeing with Doc and me. [Technorati tags: RadioOpenSource media authenticity cluetrain]

I wrote the above quickly because I was (and am) in Penn Station waiting for a train, but I want to object to Dave's use of sales terminology, especially in order to analyze Doc. Sure, we can say that all social interactions are about buying and selling...we can say it, but it obscures more than it clarifies. Doc is no more "selling" himself than is anyone who cares about what others think of her. But that's not "selling." It's being human in a shared world.

In fact, Dave's use of selling terminology I believe draws him into some real confusion: "... authenticity is the difference between speaking the truth and trying to sell it. You can't sell the truth because, unlike the web and another unhelpful assertion from Doc and Dave, nobody owns it. What people sell is their authority, and so they mediate their messages to make their own authority as pleasing and palatable as possible." But when we "speak the truth" we generally don't issue flat assertions; we argue for it. If we're going to use sales terminology to talk about conversation and truth, isn't that "trying to sell it" in some sense? Then Dave denies that you can try to sell the truth. Instead you can only sell your own authority. Say what? I'm really confused by this, and I suspect it's because "selling" - of truth or of authority - isn't a helpful metaphor here.

One hell of a bad bill

Sen. James Sensenbrenner (Rep., Wisc.) has introduced H.R. 1528, a bill that would mandate a ten-year minimum sentence if you smoke pot within 500 feet of a child. And that's just the beginning of its badness. If you see someone using drugs anywhere near a child, you must tell the cops within 24 hours or go to jail for 2-10 years...unless you're the parent of the child so wickedly exposed to someone smoking a joint, in which case you're sent away for 3-20.

Yeah, forcing people to become informants. That's what's made this country great.

The bill has been referred "to the Subcommittee on Health, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Chairman." I hope that means that it's died of shame.

This post has been ignored

With her new Aggregator 2.0, Jeneane is able to ignore up to 1,500 blog posts an hour...

Intel adds bolts for Microsoft's chains

Intel apparently has added "Microsoft-flavored" DRM to its Pentium D and 945 chipset. Hannibal at ArsTechnica guesses:

From what I can tell, DTCP is essentially a protocol that sits on top of TCP/IP and provides DRM by ensuring that both endpoints in an IP connection are trusted before transmitted protected content. I imagine that Intel's DTCP support is some kind of hardware-level means of enabling the strict enforcement of this endpoint authentication in software. As to what specific form this enablement takes, only further digging on our part and more revelations from Intel will tell.

This would, apparently, prevent unwanted (= malware) programs from being transmitted to your computer, but would also allow DRM to prevent you from moving content to computers it thinks is unauthorized. (The odds are currently 35:1 that I'm getting this wrong.)

DRM will bring some benefits, but I continue to believe that ultimately Microsoft's driving aim is to turn itself into the dominant delivery mechanism for Hollywood content. It achieves this if Hollywood can be persuaded that only Microsoft has secure players (which used to be known as "computers"). So, we'll be watching movies at home, playing games, listening to music and reading our newspapers and textbooks all via Microsoft software running on "trusted" hardware. That's the big win for Microsoft and if that means locking down the formerly open domains of personal computing and the Internet, then that's a price Microsoft is willing to have us pay. IMO.

This would be an excellent time for some very skeptical and well-informed people to take a look at Microsoft's "InfoCard identity metasystem". The very skeptical and well-informed Johannes Ernst (of LID), whose opinion means a lot to me, thinks it makes sense, but when he says "InfoCard will be anchored pretty deeply inside the Windows OS in a secure process space," I worry how far secure digital ID is going to advance the Microsoft lock-in.

Before you start flaming me for my paranoia and for my downplaying the importance of security, let me counter: It's all in the trade-offs. By all rights, each one of us should put proximity to a hospital as the main criterion for choosing a place to live, but we don't — even though we might die because we're an extra 3 minutes or 3 hours from one — because reduction of risk is not the only value. Likewise for our computing and networking platforms.

(Thanks to Eric Norlin for the link.) [Technorati tags: drm microsoft intel]

World Heritage life list

Jonathan Peterson at Way.nu points to UNESCO's World Heritage list of irrecplaceable world treasures and notes the one's he's been to. Having "tons of memories," as Jonathan says, sure is a good spur to caring about the preservation of these places.

He's also created a technorati tag called worldheritagelifelist so we can all compare notes... [Technorati tag: worldheritagelifelist]

The Denture Divide

A new report from eMarketer (reported by the Center for Media Research) says boomers are kicking 65-and-over butt when it comes to Net participation:

The full report will set you back $700, so let me boil it down for you: Out of our way, grandpa and grandma! Boomers rule! Booyah!

[Disclosure: I am 54 and a half and still have some of my own teeth.]