RatcliffeBlog - Mitch Thinking Out Loud

Another insulting right-wing asshole, I...

Another insulting right-wing asshole, I guess

Richard Bennett posts inaccurately and insultingly about me, saying:

The Well is a pay-to-play gated electronic community for Marin County-esque hot-tubbing, partner-swapping left-wing Democrats who thrive on self-deception. Wellberts, as Well members are called, are the kind of people who claim to be passionate about civil liberties while expelling members from their community who don't follow the hive mind in all its excesses. Long-time Wellbert Mitch Ratcliffe has some bizarre observations on my observations on the Emergent Democracy "happening" that are so charming they deserve mention:

This is no Molière for our times writing here, though he plainly fancies himself a wit. First off, when I was on The WELL, it was WELLBeings, and I cancelled my account in 1993, making me a long-time former WELLBeing, not today's Wellbert.

Second, whilst I may have logged onto The WELL, I live 900 miles as the crow flies from Marin county and have never swapped wives or expelled anyone from a gated community, online or off. His portrayal of me is demagogic and distracting.

Finally, Bennett only proves my point that he hasn't evolved his political perspective since his teens. Rather than engaging in a debate, he cast aspersions to distract from the fact his arguments are empty and uninformed. He clearly doesn't understand that Joi's paper is built on a conscious decision to focus on tools for democracy; I have a lot of problems with the paper, too, but I don't think it is appropriate to be insulting as a way of dismissing someone's efforts at authorship. This, along with the repetition of his "credentials," most of which are pretty goddamn inflated, except for his systems design work, demonstrates that he doesn't understand how politics could change, is changing and has changed since he first starting combing his hair to cover the bald part, which I wager was about the time he was 17. Posting a picture of yourself on television doesn't make you a pundit, though I'm sure it has made Richard Bennett a legend in his own mind.

The ants move more earth...

The ants move more earth every year than we do

Joi's Emergent Democracy paper has created a lot of stir, partly because he has the gall to say we need tools for better organizing (we do) and partly because he focused on the tools, because that's what he does: focus on tools. There are a few things I'd like to toss in, albeit without wading in too deep....

First, there is the issue of the ants, a metaphorical trope Joi invoked to talk about the very real fact that small actions create large effects on the world. This comes from a variety of sources, but most recently Steven Johnson's Emergence. I think it is a useful metaphor with a very limited range of applications, because there is a gross over-simplification of the complexity of ant "society" inherent in most discussions of emergent behavior.

Steven's ant discussion is very nuanced, and I respect his thinking on this subject greatly, but I think the researcher he quoted is far too taken with the minutia of ant behavior to lend an accurate foundation for a meaningful metaphorical comparison of ants and people. In fact, after reading E.O. Wilson and Bert Holdobler's The Ants, I'm with Joi, we are not so different than ants. We should recognize that is not because we are ant-like, but that ant behavior, such as the branching of regularly used trails and the explicit behavior of dragging the pheromone-producing portion of the abdomen along the ground from a food source to the colony, is very complex.

Steven Johnson wrote about this issue very astutely:

The objection revolves around the fact that humans are both more nuanced than ants in their assessments of the world and their decision-making capacity, and that they're capable of understanding the dynamics of the larger system in ways that ants cannot. As Adina Levin says, "The atoms of ant action are simple: pick up crumb, bring crumb to ant colony. The atoms of human action are more complicated: identify people and groups interested in opposing Total Information Act, encourage people to persuade local congressperson."

I think there's a lot of validity to the distinction, but I still think there's value in thinking about ants in this context. To me, when you're talking about emergent democracy in the online world, the equivalent of the ant is not the individual human, it's the software. The atoms of human action are indeed incredibly sophisticated ones, but the atoms of software that enables those actions to connect in new ways are much simpler. It's more like: "follow this link, connect this page to other pages that share links, look for patterns in the links." The decision-making process that leads one human to link to another person's page is indeed more complex than the instinctual actions of ants following pheromones, but the decision of the software to manipulate those links, and learn from them, is much more like the way ants behave ---- or at least it could be, if we choose to build it that way.

The atomic units of human action are more complex, to humans. But to the ant, who does a variety of things with its body to communicate besides deliver pheremone sprays now and again, may not be acting at all like a human and more like a part of our brain, a single cell, which produces a variety of substances to communicate with its peers -- this is what emergence is about and why it is important to understand. A good book on this topic is Conversations with Neil's Brain or any other title by William Calvin.

The tools we use to link up as people are a lot like the substances cellular units of collectively intelligent non-intelligent entities (compared to us humans) use to communicate, so we must focus on them sometimes. Joi, as a venture capitalist and nerd-with-a-long-heritage, does that naturally.

This is where the argument invoked by anti-techoutopians, who oversimplify the way we communicate, becomes weak and rather desperate, because they want to imagine that a single person can dominate in a world of followers. To some degree, I could be accused of believing that, as well, because I am convinced that leadership is the key element in any movement and that it emerges from much more than an iron will. It can come from frustration, anger, love and hatred. Without leaders the tools humans use are worthless, a truism across many dimensions of human experience. But therein lies a double bind: leaders without good tools are seldom very successful, either.

Richard Bennett writes:

Yes, we communicate faster than we did in our grandparents or our parents time. But the breadth and depth of the average person's knowledge -- even the incorrect beliefs and mixed up information of the confused -- is far deeper than at any time in history. That is dramatic. This didn't come to pass over single generation or century, but through many evolutions of minds and tools for communicating. Talking about how the printing press ignited mass media is wrong. It was simply another link in a long chain of the evolution of knowledge and its transmission. The mass media did not appear for centuries after the advent of moveable type in Europe. Our monkey brains barely keep up and often make tremendous leaps to do so, just like nature has with its pre-Cambrian explosions and sudden shifts in the shapes of the forebrain. In fact, it is nature we're talking about. Even our tools are part of nature.

The press did not even start literate culture, because there was a literate and cloistered European culture even in the dark ages (read Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change). Bennett ignores that since the beginning of the 16th century the amount the average person can know has increased dramatically, which changes the locus of power. He focuses on speed and distribution almost exclusively.

There is no one who can know everything anymore, because there is simply too much information for one lifetime. In the gaps, our tools grow (I choose the organic term carefully), and they allow people to unite and divide movements, to undermine leaders, to elect the unwilling to roles of leadership into which they might grow. No single person can dominate in this world for very long these days, because our tools for communicating link us like ants and we can move the world while undemocratic leaders try to hold it still. People peck the man on the big horse to death like hungry ducks if he leads them down the wrong path or takes too many liberties on the journey.

Bennett puts a label on the debate over Joi's paper, capitalizing Emergent Democracy and calling it a "meme," but I don't think anyone on the two calls in which the idea was discussed thinks they are in a revolutionary vanguard, though a few probably fall prey to thoughts of memetic terrorism. Bennett further suggests in a post on Joi's site that the paper demonstrates "lack of any awareness of how legislative bodies function, about how governments function, or about political theory generally." This proves that he hasn't changed his view of politics since sometime in his teens and misses the point entirely: this is a debate about tools that was purposefully framed that way.

We've been discussing how to change the communication channels, which does, as any historian of politics can tell you, change the nexus of power. But we are not talking about direct democracy or voting by wire, just about new tools for organizing. It's the same discussion that happened when people realized the human voice was a political tool (read Thucydides or Cicero), when people realized the press was a political tool, that radio was a political tool, that television, the mass march, the sit-in, the video camera in the home, etc., etc. Occasionally, that Poly Sci degree from Washington State University comes in useful.

You see, in the emergent democracy happenings, I probably come across as the least tools-centric and most interested in the current political system; I probably cling to my hopes for American politics more fervently than I should. I still believe in a good debate and the ability of a people to stumble on great ideas by arguing. People who can keep things stirred up for the advancement of understanding are to be treasured, because people who excel at at keeping the waters stirred so that we cannot make informed judgments rule the day.

The emergent democracy happenings, which is nothing like a movement and is misinterpreted as being a movement by some, is important precisely because it is about putting tools for reflection into the hands of many more people. If we could collectively capture enough information and just think about it for a moment, together, we could change the world -- that amount could be tiny, as small as a vial of anthrax waved by Secretary of State Colin Powell or the core of a nuclear weapon coveted by Saddam Hussein (both small, but vastly more physical than any idea), and it could change the world.

I'm all for better tools so we can connect and collect the will and force to make the world a better place. It's not that I am naive, because I am not, having been in all sorts of situations where I've seen the worst of politicians and people (and some of the best, as well), but that I think we should try. So, criticize the ideas, folks, but don't belittle the debate. It's worth having. What you have us do? Sit here and take the nonsense doled out by government today as though it was high-minded oratory and principled debate about issues of great import and fine nuance? I don't think so.

See, the Herring is dead

See, the Herring is dead

While others were talking about AlwaysOn, Red Herring founder Tony Perkins Web site that uses blogging styles, your humble correspondent reported the Herring was going under. According to The Deal, Red Herring's mailing list and assets are up for sale for $2 million, a lot less than the company owes in debts, based on what I've heard.

Now, if I'd only posted the Google/Pyra rumor on the Thursday before the Saturday it was revealed by Dan Gillmor, what a god I'd be....

Meshes of PlayStations dancing in...

Meshes of PlayStations dancing in our homes

Sony is going to roll out a mesh computing infrastructure built on Linux, putting a vast open source computational resource in reach of masses of nerds ready to write code that does wild stuff. What starts as a gaming service could turn into all sorts of interesting network services.

Media Free Pass

Media Free Pass

I Want Media has two pieces on bias in the media toward the Bush administration, one from the BBC and the other from Jesse Jackson. Both are very good reading.

From the BBC piece: "The White House briefing is a ritualistic and almost daily opportunity for journalists to get the presidential view."

This is because the press has been ritually separated from the president for more than two decades now. I covered the Clinton Administration for ON24, traveling with the president during one of his Digital Divide tours. The press office would cordon us off with the rest of the press behind ropes 100 feet from Clinton and once offered to let us get footage of the Man himself walking by -- only 20 feet away. This was a big favor. It was disgusting how the press went along with it just to get the obligatory image of the day. I told the Associated Press it was a joke and said we'd come back when there was real news to cover, like a thought from the president that wasn't scripted (and Clinton was a president worthy of that kind of coverage). Needless to say, I wasn't invited back.

More reporters should thank the administration for the invitation to the show and go forward finding and reporting real news.

Hey, this is a good...

Hey, this is a good book on wireless!

I've been reading Adam Engst and Glenn Fleishman's The Wireless Networking Starter Kit. It helped even though I'm not starting out. Good read, full of useful knowledge.

We're 50 percent less uptight?

We're 50 percent less uptight?

The Gallup Poll shows that constant coverage of the heightened terrorist alert has numbed us to the idiocy of our growing police state.

Playing every angle

Playing every angle

IDT, a formerly little telecom start-up that began with a car and selling brochure placements in motel lobbies, is bidding $255 million for Global Crossing. This after selling Net2Phone to AT&T for $1.1 billion in 2001.

The offer is about 35 percent lower than the offer by Hutchison Whampoa made for a controlling interest in Global Crossing. The argument for the low-ball offer: Don't let an Asian company get its mitts on the U.S. data network operated by Global Crossing, in a blatant playing of the jingoism card:

"Would we give the keys to the Justice Department buildings or the board rooms of some of our largest corporations to a foreign government so they could listen in? Absolutely not. The idea is absurd. Yet a foreign telecommunications company based in communist controlled China, is asking our government for control of Global Crossing..."

Okay, how about we recognize that we live in a global economy and live with that fact instead of raising the spectre of godless communism when describing a company that has been aggressively capitalistic throughout its history, most of which took place in Hong Kong before the British turned the city-state over to the PRC?

H-P: Crawling toward the middle

H-P: Crawling toward the middle

H-P reported earnings today and the news wasn't good. A third of Hewlett-Packard's profit for the quarter were due to savings compared to the previous quarter. That is, fewer people, less capital spending and lower sales volumes. Revenues were up only because of the Compaq acquisition. Sales in the enterprise market were down and H-P lost ground in printers. Not a pretty picture.

Always a confidence booster to see this: Affirms Q2 Consensus Estimates of $0.27 Non-GAAP EPS

In other words, the company thinks it can cut enough to make numbers before it finds ways to mask missing the goal.

Maybe we shouldn't jail them...

Maybe we shouldn't jail them or speak in constant contradictions

U.S. commercial attache to the consulate general in Saudi Arabia Michael McGee told an audience in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia:

First, he demonstrated how poorly Americans can speak English...

“Except for aviation, we have increased our annual exports to the Kingdom to $5.7 billion, while imports from the Kingdom are a whopping $12 billion. The Kingdom thus has a real good trade surplus.”

Then he said going to college in the U.S. (and risking arbitrary arrest) is not as cool as studying online...

He said the US education sector is “losing terribly” after Sept. 11 as students are not going from here to the United States. “Educational institutions have an online system for distance learning, but it is not the same as going to the United States for studies,” McGee added.

And finally, got condescending because Saudis don't rely on ecommerce, which, of course, is something they'd do more of if they purchased elearning services from the United States...

McGee said the Arab world had fallen behind in the use of e-commerce. “However, Saudis have demonstrated they are hungry for technology and this should augur well for the growth of e-commerce and e-business here.”

Dumb.

Britt rocks the history of...

Britt rocks the history of societies

Britt Blaser has a thought-provoking piece up on the "obvious society," one in which personal interactions (note that is not to say personal information, but the exchanges that go on in society) will be completely transparent. We've been riffing on an old plan I put together in 1996, called NetCredentials, and an even older plan Britt and Flemming have been putting into code, called Xpertweb; Britt was actually able to take my old plan and use search and replace with his ideas to produce a coherent description of a business -- so, suffice to say, we agree about a lot of things.

A key passage, one that relates deeply to the emergent democracy discussion Joi has initiated, the Socialtext plans from Ross, Adina, Peter and Ed, and much else going on right now:

When obviousness is finally embedded into the socioeconomic interface, we can each become masters of nuance rather than slaves of mystery. Isn't the aim of User Interface Design to allow us to master options more broad and subtle than previously manageable?

The enabling technologies of the Obvious Society, while intriguing, are irrelevant. What's critical is that it promises to free us from the smoke we blow up each others' asses and, with a little bit of luck, make "isms" obsolete.

What we're talking about is Quality Assurance for tansactions, trust systems if you will, which is what Xpertweb provides. Britt is on to something very important.

The nature of collaboration, whether for political, social or economic goals, is one of constant dynamism--our relationships evolve over time, so our tools cannot lock us into a mode of interaction and leave us there. What I like about Xpertweb, what I thought was a winning quality in NetCredentials (though, at the time, Mitch Kapor read the plan and said I was suggesting too large a change in business practices by asking people to record their judgements of the value of work and relationships), is the fact that the tool does nothing but allow people to measure the quality of their experience when interacting with another person/entity. Whether we want to or not, the economy is becoming more like John Perry Barlow described back in the early 1990s, a small town where everyone knows everything that is going on or, at least, could find out anything by having a chat over the backyard fence. Isn't it obvious yet? That's what the conversations described in The Cluetrain Manifesto are about: exposure, living in the open and taking the wounds that come with that life gracefully.

What the world is coming...

What the world is coming to?

The San Francisco Examiner is laying off all but six staffers and going to become a free daily. Now, with this kind of thing going on, where will alternative voices come from?

The Fang family, which owns the Ex, also owns a home-delivered newspaper, the Independent, which it will tout as a new alternative to the SF Chronicle. Yet, the Independent's web site is still undisclosed.

After all, two reporters, three editors and a columnist aren't going to be delivering much in the way of investigative journalism; they'll just recycle the wires. A good time for blogging to be emerging.

Sounds like wishful thinking to...

Sounds like wishful thinking to me

"This evens the playing field. It lets the phone companies compete head-to-head with cable," says Geoff Burke of Next Level Communications of the FCC decision to revoke open access requirements for new networks baby Bell companies might build in the future. The capital necessary to build out new networks simply doesn't exist today and, since DSL and cable haven't paid off in a significant return on investment, not likely to come streaming in just because wired providers don't have to share new networks. Wireless is totally unaccounted for in the calculation that suggests the FCC decision makes new network investments inevitable, at least in time to resurrect the valuations of companies like Next Level.

Times joins Google/Blogger speculation

Times joins Google/Blogger speculation

I enjoyed reading the New York Times story on Google's acquisition of Pyra Labs, developer of Blogger, because everything in the story is a week old in blogspace and demonstrates why Google might want to tap Blogger in real-time. This is the reason Meg Hourihan, who co-founded Pyra, provides for the acquisition. I remain skeptical about this motive, since the success of the strategy would depend on having everyone using the Blogger database in order to maximize the search utility Meg describes. Instead, being able to tap the blog world as both an input to Google and a way of expressing search results through people-empowering tools seems the most cogent and complete explanation to me.

David Weinberger recounts the blogger...

David Weinberger recounts the blogger "rain" at Supernova

Nice audio piece from JOHO/Cluetrainer David Weinberger, despite the lame description by NPR, which says that people engaged in instant messaging were "carrying on sneaky conversations" during sessions. Apparently, the NPR folk didn't quite get the point of the commentary.

Our mobile emotions are frequent...

Our mobile emotions are frequent and intense

According to a new study by the UMTS Forum, "Social Shaping of UMTS - Preparing the 3G Customer," the use of mobile phones doesn't increase the breadth of our social networks, but does make our existing contacts "more frequent and intensive." The report goes on to say that phones are more intimate devices than PCs and PDAs.

This is an industry study vetted by industry executives, so who knows whether the findings reflect reality. Take the measure from this passage:

[T]he study suggests that people have a more 'emotional' relationship with their mobile phone than they do with other forms of computational device, for example a PC or PDA. There is a distinct emotional attachment to the information contained on and delivered via their mobile phone. Mobile phones are increasingly becoming the only place people store their social and family phone numbers and diary dates. Consequently, the potential loss can cause anguish to owners.

Sniff, sniff. Makes me choke up just thinking about my phone. Cuddly little bloodsucker. However, on a slight serious note: This does provide justification for wireless providers' continued emphasis on voice and giving away data services to keep voice customers, which will only enable better data connectivity at lower costs.

Resolution

Resolution

Never try to configure a server, write a business plan, help out with the two-day school auction and write two articles for publication over a weekend when I've come down with bronchitis.

Trade deficit up 10.6 percent...

Trade deficit up 10.6 percent in December

Indicating that we're buying more cheap stuff and selling less expensive expensive stuff (which adds up to further evidence of the coming deflationary epoch), the U.S. trade deficit took an unanticipated leap in December, climing 10.6 percent to $44.2 billion. Analysts had expected the deficit to be closer to $39 billion. Deflation's a-comin', folks.

``In a difficult economy, everyone is trying to cut cost and raise productivity. The best way to do that is to produce in China,'' [Wells Fargo Bank economist Sung Won Sohn] Sohn said.

In other words, cheap labor will set global prices. And China's cheap labor includes lots of scientists and engineers, which will drive down U.S. cost structures.

Not all the news is bad. We still run a services export surplus of services, but importation of services grew at three times the pace services exports did. Interestingly, despite all the crying about piracy, royalties and licensing fees accounted for a $4 billion gain in services imports during 2002.

Less broadband competition

Less broadband competition

The FCC did indeed rule today to limit open access to new network capacity built by the baby Bells. So, whomever builds the last mile from now on gets to use it exclusively, virtually assuring the last mile will never be optical because of the huge capital investments involved. Instead, we'll get more of the same DSL service and some of it tied to taking the baby Bell voice services.

AT&T says it "applauds" the decision because it lets them continue to offer DSL services. Woohoo, more DSL....

The broadband entertainers are coming

The broadband entertainers are coming

And they're going to offer you what you get on television, plus movie trailers! Some people just don't get it.

Kevin Marks' interpretation of the...

Kevin Marks' interpretation of the blog power law

Following on Clay Shirkey's recent essay on power laws, Kevin Marks has assembled an interesting analysis that explores the sample biases in Clay's analysis and summarizes:

So what conclusions can we draw from all these graphs?

1. 20 Weblog links do follow a power law
   
2. 21 This saturates less quickly than other media, due to low barriers to entry
   
3. 22 Therefore the many lightly linked weblogs outnumber the few heavily linked ones

Keeping the Bells on life...

Keeping the Bells on life support

The FCC reportedly will rule that Baby Bells that can reserve exclusive access to new broadband networks. Chairman Michael Powell wanted to revoke the open access provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which would have been disastrous. As it is, the monopoly on the last wired mile is pretty much intact when it comes to broadband when it needs to fail fast instead.

By the way, the FCC has conveniently locked down in response to the terrorist threat. This notice appears on the site these days (so much for transparent government):

NOTICE: Due to the elevated homeland security alert announced February 7, 2003, the FCC has taken additional security precautions that will limit visitor access to the FCC headquarters building in Washington, DC. Until further notice, the Maine Avenue lobby is closed. All visitors must enter the building through the 12th Street lobby, and will require an escort at all times in the building.

Where have we heard this...

Where have we heard this before?

Continuing my America is headed down the Japanese economic hole theme, where have you heard this phrase before: "All hope of economic growth appears to be in the hands of the individual consumer"?

That is the lede of the Asahi Shimbun on the shabby performance of Japanese Gross Domestic Product in the last quarter. The description of the impact of consumer cutbacks on restraurants, services and retail have the same bleak tone that the U.S. press has adopted.

The Arab world and statemanship

The Arab world and statemanship

Two pieces from ArabNews raise the very important issue of the complete exasperation the world feels at the policies of the Bush Administration. The Saudis say that a summit of Arab leaders is pointless because war will happen no matter what. A second piece, the editorial of February 20, points out that calls for cooperation with the U.N. are no longer aimed only at Baghdad, the U.S. is on the receiving end of these imprecations, as well.

The important point here is not that these articles are right or wrong, but what they indicate about how the world will begin to align against the United States. Saudi Arabia is jockeying for Arab leadership in an "anti-unilateralism" bloc that is emerging in Asia, and the sentiment informing that alliance is widespread. The summit of Arab leaders that had been planned to address Baghdad will certainly happen, but in reaction to the U.S.

“A second resolution (for a US-led attack on Iraq) would be useful,” President Bush said yesterday, adding: “It’s not necessary, as far as I’m concerned.” If only things were as simple as that.

Unfortunately, nation after nation is demanding that the UN weapons inspectors be given more time and facilities to disarm Iraq peacefully.

So this unwillingness to listen even to their friends is America’s real problem, not the alliance of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” led by France. To persist in a course of action in the face of overwhelming world opinion is not the mark of a statesman.

Bush has still time to change course before he finds himself with his bete noire in a “coalition of the unwilling”.

Pull a buck out of...

Pull a buck out of your pocket-sized phone

Interesting article on plans by Japanese carrier KDDI's plan to test a 3G phone with built in credit information, eliminating the need to carrier plastic. Sony and NTT DoCoMo are going to roll out competing service.

Warning: This device limits your...

Warning: This device limits your rights

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told a digital rights symposium that he'll sponsor a government-mandated labeling program that warns consumers when a device contains anti-copying technology (something along the lines of "The U.S. Congress wants you to know that this device will prevent you from making illegal copies of DVDs" on a DVD player, for example). The idea is that consumers will choose not to buy these devices and Hollywood will learn that restrictive copyright-enforcement technologies aren't popular. There are all sorts of compromises in the language used in the warning that could take any value out of the label -- it needs to be something like a skull-and-crossbones or a "no freedom" slashed circle graphic.

I like the idea in principle, but couldn't we just establish people's rights to reasonable use of content they purchase?

Apple: Pain in my ass

Apple: Pain in my ass

I ordered Mac OS X Server the other day, since I am moving several domains from a co-lo operator into my house. I went to the Apple store on the Web and ordered the 10-user license version of the server, which sells for $499. Apparently, there is an upgrade from 10-users to unlimited users available for the same price and that is what Apple sent me.

The package was really light, so I opened it expecting to find a CD but got a slip of paper with a serial number that upgrades an existing server to an unlimited number of users instead.

So, I called Apple, where a customer service guy informed me that because I have opened the package, they will charge a 10 percent restocking fee to take it back -- they sent me the wrong product and I'm on the losing end. I've gone back to the site and followed the order through and am sure I selected the 10-user version of the server, which must be linked to the wrong product in their database.

The customer service guys says "Look at your invoice, the programming error as you call it wouldn't have caused this mistake." But, of course, if their systems recorded it incorrectly, there would be no way to prove I clicked the "Add to Order" button on the 10-user license page, so I'm out $50.

He went on to say I should speak with a sales person to make sure I got what I wanted. I guess Apple thinks differently about an online store experience, if this is the standard answer.

So, I'll just have to say that this isn't a very good customer experience. I had been considering buying a number of Apple products, but if this is what I can expect in terms of customer service, Apple doesn't get my business unless I absolutely have to buy their stuff, and I don't.

Man scared by government, media...

Man scared by government, media will suffocate in house before surrendering to Saddam

On the "Perhaps this is going too far" front: Paul West of Winstead, Conn., wrapped his house in plastic sheeting and duct tape after government warnings blasted through the media scared the wits out of him. Now, I ask you, do you think the media's doing us any good when this is the result of its unreflective regurgitation of idiotic advice from the Department of Homeland Security? I think not.

Foreign direct investment: Being the...

Foreign direct investment: Being the destination, not the rest stop

At InnovationWorld, the research firm for which I provide editorial direction, we study the plans of companies that are going to invest in new markets. I believe in globalization, though not unbridled capitalism, which has its downsides. Ireland doubled the size of its economy in the 1990s and now is seeing that growth slow -- some companies are moving on to China or Eastern Europe, but the country still has a much larger economy. The key to success in attracting foreign direct investment is in establishing more than just a short-term incentive to place a factory in a region; it requires deepening ties between companies and the people of a region and the establishment of sustainable models that bind a company to a long-term relationship.

New York Times: Things are...

New York Times: Things are bad in NYC

In the "Duh!" Category: I have news for the folks at the Times, which has the parochial audacity to say: "The rest of the country may be debating whether the economy is recovering or heading into a second downturn, the dreaded "double dip." In New York City, there is no question.The economy here is in recession."

The whole country is in recession and the only place anyone is debating that reality is at the White House.

Home networking increasing rapidly

Home networking increasing rapidly

In-Stat reports that 10 percent of U.S. households now have home networks, up from eight percent in 2001. It's being driven by the need to share broadband connections to the outside world, not in-home communications, even printer sharing. Notice that the report says gaming, filesharing and outside services drive home networking.

“In-Stat/MDR’s research finds that home networks are installed for both business and personal purposes; for tasks including sharing Internet, files, printers, digital music, and gaming.” Additionally, home control and remote video monitoring are other reasons for having a home network, though these network functions are still in their initial stages of deployment.

The growth in home networking also opens up new opportunities for service providers, as consumers look to their Broadband Service Provider (ISP) for home networking equipment, and services. The future ISP roll-outs of residential gateways, voice, security, video content sharing, and home automation services can provide service providers with new revenue sources.

 

Free 802.11 wireless connectivity with...

Free 802.11 wireless connectivity with hotel rooms

I recently paid $15.95 a day for broadband in a Marriott hotel room. Now, I'm going to seriously consider the Omni when I can, because the hotel is giving away wireless connectivity with rooms. In a buyer's market, this is a significant differentiator for the wireless legions; just as wireless carriers have had to give away 3G data services to retain voice customers, hotels are going to be giving away Wi-Fi to fill rooms.

The satellite suckers

The satellite suckers

For some reason, investors have bid up shares in XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite radio after they said they were making gains with new installations in cars. Both companies need three million subscribers to break even. XM has 360,000 subscribers and Sirius 30,000 subscribers. As an industry, satellite radio is less than 10 percent of the way to break-even.

The two companies have burned through vast amounts of capital. General Motors has backed XM and is installing the radios in new vehicles. But XM is worth less than the $450 million that GM recently injected. What will certainly happen is that it will let XM build out to the point of breaking (not even, but going broke) and then acquire the assets for pennies on the dollar. Neither of these companies will succeed on their own

Overture's AltaVista buy

Overture's AltaVista buy

What happens when you take a profitable company, like Overture, and weld a money loser like AltaVista? An increasingly less profitable acquirer. The deal is expected to "be accretive to Overture's earnings by mid-2004." Bunk.

Overture had no overhead in search technology before and in order to bring AltaVista into competiton with Google Overtrue will have to incur significant costs -- then spend more to stay competitive. Moreover, now that it has its own search inventory, Overture comes into conflict with the customers it has today. Dumbest deal in the last 18 months.

A genetic explosion of creativity

A genetic explosion of creativity

For those of you arguing whether the process of change in human behavior is heavily influenced by tools or biology, here's a new finding: Oxford University scientists beleive we got creative quite suddenly due to a change in the FOXP2 gene, which is related to learning and language processing.

Human populations that previously had produced similar functional tools suddenly began to make artefacts that looked very different according to local style, and to create symbolic objects with no practical function at all. That idiosyncratic creativity is generally accepted as the defining quality of the modern human mind.

“When you look at the archaeological record before 50,000 years ago, it is remarkably homogeneous,” Professor Klein said. “There are no geographically delineated groups of artefacts. Suddenly, you see geographically and chronologically restricted groups of artefacts with a lot of style involved in the manufacturing, and the geographic distribution is very limited. Suddenly, modern-looking people began to behave in a modern way, in producing art and jewellery and doing a whole variety of other things that they hadn’t done before.”

An explosion in innovation on existing tools is what they are describing. Not just invention of tools, which we know some other animals have approximated. The long influence of frustration with inadequate tools seems to have ignited our creativity.

Deflation 2.002

Deflation 2.002

Japan's average monthly salary dropped 2.4 percent in 2002. I'm telling you, this is the major threat we're looking at in the U.S. economy -- war or no war. As overseas manufacturing becomes more efficient (think China), U.S. wages will fall, taking the steam out of the consumer's spending.

Why point to Japan as an example of what could happen here? Because it is an economy dominated in terms of earnings by so-called "symbolic analysts," people who manage information, just like our economy. The impact of overseas manufacturing on our economy is lower than, say, a Taiwan, where sweat shops are competing with sweat shops somewhere else for low-cost work. So, at first, the impact of deflation on the U.S. is quite mild. But it will pick up steam if the economy lags behind and service industry and other key sectors suffer protracted downturns.

What's Next: Magnetic RAM?

What's Next: Magnetic RAM?

Japan's battered tech sector is betting on ferroelectric and magnetic random access memory (FeRAM and MRAM) for the next generation of low-power, high-performance devices. These are interesting technologies, because they are aimed at cell phones, embedded systems and so forth, where power consumption and heat dissipation are important factors. My bet is on the MRAM category, which has the most interesting variation on current non-volatile memory technology, since it uses magnetic "charges" instead of electrical charges to store data.

IBM and Infineon, too, are looking at MRAM to supply memory for televisons and other newly computerized gadgets (everything will have some compute power soon).

The meaning of search

The meaning of search

Looking at the Google acquisition of Pyra (Blogger). There is a very important barrier between data and making it meaningful. The Google API is a very powerful instrument for shaping searches from various perspectives. Likewise, remember when the company was criticized for introducing its automated news gathering service -- "no editors! God forbid," the press cawed.

The acquisition of Blogger gives Google a channel to put its automated searching capabilities into people's hands in a very meaningful way. This can be applied in a variety of markets, including the enterprise, but also raises Google's potential to reshape the Net by focusing on how links are made and managed.

UPDATE: Evan Williams doesn't explain much about what will happen in his Bloogleplications posting about selling Pyra, but I'll guarantee this is the basic idea after hearing the questions Sergey Brin was asking at lunch during Supernova.

Consider Autonomy, another data-mining/search player, just announced its collaboration with Hutchison's 3G efforts. Though it has been primarily aimed at the enterprise, Autonomy is using its beachhead with carriers to expand into commercial search/data delivery:

"Due to the display and bandwidth requirements of mobile phones and ...handheld devices, Hutchison 3G needed a solution that could deliver highly relevant information in real-time to their subscribers," said Dr. Mike Lynch, CEO and co-founder of Autonomy. "Autonomy will provide a scaleable infrastructure that automatically links related information as it becomes available."

Context, context, context. It's what media has done for us and that we're now taking on ourselves. The question is whether Blogger is the right channel. The Blogger API is a good start, but there is a much wider range of media than text that needs integrating. AudBlog, which was demo'd during the Live from the Blogoshere event deals with capturing phoned-in sound, but there are a wide range of media types, from MIDI files created by sound engineers and music, to pictures, video and streams (vs. downloadable files).

We're going to see a ton of activity around various data formats, a metaBlogger API, XML-RPC, Jabber and many other hooks, a veritable media scaffolding being built for a new mode of expression. Get ready for a fast ride and keep a level head.

Google goes Blogging

Google goes Blogging

I remember sitting at the table with Sergey Brin and Dan Gillmor during Supernova in December. Sergey was asking a lot of questions about blogging and now Dan reports that Google has purchased Pyra, creator of Blogger.

Now, what could you do if you searched everything on the Web and made it available for bloggers to use -- now that's an interesting way to express search services: enable human intermediaries.

The thing that keeps me...

The thing that keeps me sane and hopeful

Baseball's Spring training has begun. Ichiro is taking BP in Arizona and telling the press:

"I'll always hope I can speak better English, but everybody expects me to play better baseball than to speak better in English," he said. "So I practice baseball more than practicing better English."

Baseball, like life, is just too full to fit everything in. Ichiro wants to learn English, but the game takes too much time. It's the only American game without a clock, but you still never get a whole lifetime into one game; something will always surprise you if you watch with an open heart and trained eye.

In fact, the reason I am sure that George W. Bush can't destroy this country is that, to whatever degree that it wasn't just a way to make money, he is a baseball guy. And, you know, he loves those special snacks in the owner's box....

If the pros can do...

If the pros can do it....

For a while, I've been suggesting that studios and broadcasters should make their content available for remixing/riffing/modification by end users. Now, Mike Myers has signed a deal that lets him do "film sampling" to take existing scenes from films to make new stories. If Dreamworks, the company Myers is working with wants to have some fun, they should let people sign up for $20 a month to access and modify any part of its library, then share or sell those new stories with a cut going to Dreamworks.

Sure, a lot of the stuff will be crap, but what the hell? People want to tell stories, not just consume them.

BlogOnRadio, redux

BlogOnRadio, redux

A lot of folks have emailed about my posting yesterday on an idea for a blog-like radio program. There have been some really interesting contributions about distribution, of which I especially like the pirate-radio approach described here.

But, let's get this out in the open: I do think a show has to be self-sustaining financially as well as thematically, or it just sort of peters out. See my comments this weekend on the Chaordic Commons for a sense of this. I think we need to drive the voices of ordinary people right into the mainstream of media and take the ramparts from them. It is necessary right now.

I'm setting up a mailing list to start a discussion and coordinate with contributors who want to be involved. Mail me if you want to join up.

Dell: Continuing to climb

Dell: Continuing to climb

I've been saying it for a long time: Dell will come out of this downturn stronger than ever. Something about Just-In-Time manufacturing and the way it drives costs down and lets Dell respond to customers. And, if an H-P wanted to do it, it would have to re-invent itself, not just keep inventing products for a retail channel that is months behind Dell. Even if Dell management is expecting a slow year, this is a company to own.

AlwaysOn Surveillance?

AlwaysOn Surveillance?

Evan Williams comments on the total information awareness program at Tony Perkins' new AlwaysOn business blog. The transfer of data directly to advertisers through Salesforce.com contradicts the stated privacy policy, making this "insiders' network" something that gets inside the reader's life in a disturbing way. Read what Evan has to say.