August 31, 2003
Adding a RatcliffeIRC channel
Adding a RatcliffeIRC channel
I've been hanging out on Joi Ito's IRC channel, which is fascinating and fun. It also got me thinking about how to provide contributors to Correspondences.org a way to collaborate quickly, as well as how to facilitate discussion about emergent polities and what I write here on RatcliffeBlog. So, I've set up an IRC server and you can log on -- it's running on IRCXPro, a handy server that runs on this Windows system I have that I use for hardly no purpose.
Want to join in? Aim your IRC client at: 68.165.130.145, port 6667. The channel is #mitch. It's a meeting place where I'll be most of the day, except when I am traveling. I'll also be on Joi's channel, too, since the gang there is fascinating and fun.
I'm also going to mess with writing a "Sociobot" that ties into MySQL to allow people to be introduced and to track relationships by looking at who links to whom on Technorati and, if I can figure out how, on LinkedIn and other systems. Being a total neophyte, coding this will probably be hopeless. If anyone wants to help, let me know.
August 29, 2003
Dumber at AOL
Dumber at AOL
AOL's blogging service is blocking referrers from the LiveJournal community, meaning it is clipping the wings of its blogging service. Ross Mayfield has more on this, but basically it means if you blog on AOL you have no idea who is paying attention and cannot keep track of references to your site. Ross says people won't bolt to other services, but that's not the problem -- AOL has to attract new customers and, if your brother blogs on LiveJournal and knows AOL won't let him link to your site to conduct a family conversation between your two blogs, you won't get a recommendation that AOL is a good blogging option. He's probably right that AOL will back off this policy, but I think they will only back away part way. The walled garden mentality at AOL is a big problem, especially now that Time Warner people call the shots.
FOLLOW UP: The Head Lemur says "BZZZZT!!! Wrong!" to Ross.
August 28, 2003
A legitimate scoop at Correspondences.org
A legitimate scoop at Correspondences.org
Peter Shaplen, my colleague at Correspondences.org, seems to have beaten the entire press corps to the story that Jesse Ventura's talk show is being flushed before it ever launches. We're getting calls from a number of papers.
This demonstrates the power of civic journalism. Peter, who is well connected in the media business, gets a story before it reaches the public relations circuit and reports it unspun. With experts in lots of little areas, a site like Correspondences or Slashdot can outgun the most well-funded media companies.
WiFi Everywhere
WiFi Everywhere
Jonathan Peterson blogs in response to my comments about free WiFi in hotel rooms, saying his wife wants WiFi at the local hockey rink so that she can work while her son is at hockey camp. This is coming, from many points. In Santa Rosa, Calif., for example, my brother can earn small fees each month by making his wired connection available through a citywide wireless ISP. I don't know if they have a hockey rink in Santa Rosa, however.
Business Blogging Ain't Business As...
Business Blogging Ain't Business As Usual
Jimmy Guterman, writing in Business 2.0 (you'll need a subscription to read the whole article), says "blogging is more marginal than critics contend" in response to claims that blogging is sweeping the business world, which is sure to set off a small firestorm here in the blogosphere.
Ross Mayfield replies, saying, in a nutshell, that blogging is a tool for a particular type of communication that can happen inside, inside and outside, and only outside a company. This is the essence of a flexible technology that can be applied to many problems (another example: the PC, or the Net), but not the foundation of a specific business practice. David Weinberger, whom, along with several other bloggers, Guterman singles out as "endlessly self-referential," says that blogging is conversational. True, but it can be declamatory, expository and any number of types of communication, as well. The point is largely to be self-referential, since for the most part, blogs are a form of marketing and have been since they were birthed. People talk about their work and, through that sharing of knowledge and perspective attract more work. It works for me.
Guterman says the recession has been good for blogging, because it freed up a lot of time among early bloggers, who threw unused time into their blogs. As with many avocational phenomena that catch fire and spread through the economy, this is certainly true, but it does not follow that economic recovery will lower the energies put into blogs since they have proved effective tools for instigating action and attracting business. Sure, it is hard to imagine people skipping paying work to blog, but the fact is that companies dedicate productive labor to marketing and smart bloggers will do the same, allocating some of their time to keeping their audience and building new business opportunities. Doc Searl's suggestion yesterday about a Mydentity system for WISPs, for example, is a catalyst for a lot of value, some of which Doc will find a way to bring to himself.
Guterman makes some interesting observations, but leaps to the eulogy prematurely.
August 27, 2003
Real contender, real economics
Real contender, real economics
I've been pleased to see Howard Dean take on the Republicans and more so with his announced intention to provide support for small business through tax credits, because that is where the real job base in this country resides. He is right when he says that these are jobs that remain in the United States and don't migrate overseas when it becomes cheaper, as he did in Spokane the other day.
I am a globalist economically, yet Dean's economics make sense in terms of how we develop an economy that can thrive in an environment of generally falling manufacturing costs as China and India continue their economic modernization.
According to the New York Times:
The staggering, seemingly spontaneous crowds turning up to meet him — about 10,000 in Seattle on Sunday and a similar number in Bryant Park in Manhattan last night — are unheard of in the days of the race when most candidates concentrate on the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire and would seem formidable even in October 2004.
The electability issue is almost put to bed, but let's think about the issue of whether it is "being led into the wilderness" to support small business, question military adventurism and seek better healthcare? Frankly, I'm glad that Joe Lieberman isn't vice president, after the things he's been saying about the direction Dean would take the Democratic party. Yes, I believe we need to move past party politics, but I also think that this should be a transition led by a populist, which Dean is, although he is not a left-liberal Democrat and needn't be to qualify as populist.
Most of the polarizing discussion about the wilderness vs. the mainstream is irrelevant to the issues of the campaign, which are being spelled out quite clearly by the people: economy; war and peace; equality vs. privilege; participation vs. government by edict. If we focus on those questions, the wilderness has nothing on the stinging realities that will drive voters to the polls.
Doesn't anyone use anti-virus software?
Doesn't anyone use anti-virus software?
I've received more than 1,000 messages from people spawned by the Sobig virus. The happy note is it is almost all from spammers who are revealing their actual address, which creates all sorts of opportunities for fun. But, seriously, there are applications that can stop this.
Or, one could use a Macintosh. People chuckle about the Mac, but not being a major target of opportunity for virus writers is a big plus.
August 26, 2003
Now, watch the market plunge
Now, watch the market plunge
I'm starting to think this stock market has real legs.
Bronfman will win Vivendi entertainment...
Bronfman will win Vivendi entertainment prize
The news reports say Vivendi Universal is "paring the number of bidders" in the auction of its entertainment assets. In other words, the questions being asked or the prices offered by Liberty Media and others have been hard to answer honestly or the price was too low. Here is why Edgar Bronfman, who built the business as part of Seagram's, will win the bidding.
Bronfman knows the answers and is still bidding. General Electric's NBC, the other bidder, is going to run into hard questions that can't be answered without affecting the NBC bid. Bronfman has been on the board at Vivendi, so even though he is not getting inside information in the past, he is far better prepared for the final rounds of bidding.
Bronfman has wanted to be in media since the day he first drank from the Seagram's faucet and has spent lavishly to become a media baron. He now has a chance to buy back what he sold to Vivendi at a discount. The only question is how much of his existing profit he will have to shovel back into Universal.
Bronfman has nothing to lose, because he's out of a job once Universal is sold by Vivendi. He is vice chairman of Vivendi because it bought Universal to get into media, and Bronfman can structure a deal that lets him do what he wants (that would be media) while making his departure from Vivendi easier on everyone, including him. For example, he could sell his stock back to the company as part of the deal, ceding influence at Vivendi, offsetting the cost of buying Universal back.
Wi-Fi will be a free...
Wi-Fi will be a free amenity
Boingo Wireless signed a deal that expands its presence in the hotel industry, and IDC analyst Keith Waryas says "The question is whether or not they (hotels) are going to be a moneymaker for hot spots, because travelers have multiple ways of (getting) broadband access, including wire-line connections." This is missing the point.
Hotels and restaurants are going to provide free wireless connectivity in common areas as a competitive necessity. They may still charge for wired or wireless connectivity in guest rooms, but it will be free flowing in conference rooms and lobbies in order to make the hotel an attractive meeting space, so comparing the business model to the airport connectivity model is to understand the evolution of the business, IMHO.
The added cost of providing connectivity in common areas is low -- it requires few access points and every hotel has some significant IP connectivity available already that it can give away. The question is whether they can get guests in their rooms to pay $3.95 or $5.95 a day for access in their rooms, whether it is wireless or wired broadband, instead of seeing them wander into the lobby to do their data networking. I do think the convenience and privacy of sitting in the room can carry a small premium.
August 20, 2003
Will the Investment Banks Survive?
Will the Investment Banks Survive?
The Securities Industry Association (SIA), the banking industry organization of investment banks, is complaining loudly about the new capital requirements in the New Basel Capital Accord, or "Basel II." The reason they are against the program, which would increase the amount of cash banks need to have on hand, reducing the potential for sudden fluctuations in capital reserves across regions and the globe. Here's the summary:
The Basel Committee recognises that the New Accord will require more cooperation and coordination between home country and host country supervisors, especially for complex banking groups. The New Accord will accentuate the need for cooperation because the new rules will be applied at each level of the banking group....Where a banking group has operations in at least one country other than the home country, the implementation of the New Accord may require it to obtain approval for its use of certain approaches from relevant host country supervisors on an individual or sub-consolidated basis, as well as from its home country supervisor in respect of consolidated supervision. The need for approval of more than one supervisor is not a precedent; the 1996 Market Risk Amendment entailed similar requirements. However, the New Accord could significantly extend the scope of such multiple approvals and is therefore likely to create some new implementation challenges.
Even the SIA says this will be good for commercial banks, since it will prevent localized runs on banks and monetary crises like the Asian meltdown, but its members say that having to keep more cash on hand will prevent them from doing deals with the same facility as today. In other words, it could cut into their profits, which means they'd have to raise fees for the companies and investors they represent in transactions. What is not clear, based on the Basel guidelines, is whether there won't be substantial national discretion that could create bastions of banking activity (think Cayman Islands). This means that some regions could be less friendly to transactions, which could be bad, but only at certain stages--moments of crisis or consolidation--in a company's life. What isn't being addressed is whether the increased stability offered by commercial banking capital requirements being increased will not have a greater positive impact on markets than the downside the investment banks are complaining about. Or, maybe, investment bankers ought to get used to making less money. The last couple years have certainly prepared them for this reality.
Notably and probably to the ultimate emasculation of Basel II, China and India have refused to play along. Since these are two of the fastest growing economies (and China's banks are virtually insolvent), the investment bankers don't need to worry -- or, do they? If China's banking system isn't set aright, it could make any transaction in Asia far riskier and more expensive than it would be in a more stable banking environment.
Voice Killing PDAs
Voice Killing PDAs
IDC, the research company, will host a webinar/teleconference on August 28 about the evolution of the mobile phone, which is says is subsuming the PDA market (sorry, but this is a paid link to the Financial Times). While I agree that the convergence of telephony and data services are inevitable, since people do want to talk to one another first and foremost, the question is at what point does the technology start to get in the way? When does the hardware we use to stay in touch with remote contacts get in the way of our direct experience of the world?
If you've ever been to the Experience Music Project (EMP) in Seattle, backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, it is a strangely alienating experience because they hand you a hip-hanging device and headphones to use as you stroll through the museum. So, you and all the people you are with can't really talk about what you are seeing and hearing, and you are usually seeing and hearing something different, because you might be across the room from one another -- I've noticed that groups break up while visiting EMP. This suggests that while it is convenient and trippy cool, technology can also get in the way.
On the other hand, the fact you can snap a photo and send it with a voice message ties you to people who are far away. IT is a blessing and a curse.
August 19, 2003
Prediction for 2010: Job Flight...
Prediction for 2010: Job Flight and Deflation
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The rise of Asian economies will drive the cost of everything lower in the coming decade, especially in the technology market, and U.S. jobs will head overseas. Dan Gillmor reports that John Chen of Sybase is saying basically the same thing to the Progress & Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit.
Apple is Porsche
Apple is Porsche
If there wasn't verifiable proof that the PC industry is segmenting into a market differentiated by price, power and style, the 100,000 orders for the G5 Macs that greeted the release of the systems by Apple yesterday is concrete evidence. Where the typical PC might sell for $1,400 pretty fully equipped, this new, stylish Mac starts at $1,999 for the basic unit. It's completely cool and very powerful, like a Porsche Carrera. There are plenty of fast PCs, too, but here you have style and power packaged together.
That makes Dell the General Motors, HP the troubled Ford and IBM the Chrysler, so to speak. Why do people pay a premium for Alienware PCs? They are kind of powerful, but here is a Pentium 4 3Ghz Alien system with the basically the same configuration and the same price as an entry-level G5 CPU. Style rules for a certain buyers, just as in cars. Apple is Porsche and, I guess, Alien is BMW....
Joe Trippi on the Howard...
Joe Trippi on the Howard Dean online campaign strategy
Very interesting interview with Howard Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, over at Larry Lessig's blog. A few interesting points for anyone, political or not, to keep in mind when thinking about communication with a far-flung plural audience.
Trippi says the way they have dealt with trolls on the Dean blog is to use troll postings to trigger campaign contributions through a Dean Team. This shows the troll that their negative and abusive posting is actually helping the campaign -- shuts it down fast. Actual discussion, even if it represents a challenge to Dean campaign positions is welcomed, but trolls are shamed out with contributions.
Trippi admits that it is hard to let go of the hierarchical approach to campaign message management. That's hard for everyone, but combined with the clever anti-troll strategy, it can provide the basis for self-organizing responses to challenges created by the total openness created by the Net. Lesson: Learn to let go.
Here's the power of an egalitarian campaign in a nutshell: "On the Cheney lunch: the Vice President had something like 125 people who gave him $2000 each, for a total of $250,000. We had 9700 people, giving roughly $53 on average, totaling $508,000."
My criticism of the interview is that Lessig starts from a "your blog" assumption, as though BlogforAmerica was a single-pronged effort. In fact, the Dean blog is just one of a constellation of blogs about the Dean campaign, and that is what gives the campaign so much power -- many hubs connecting many constituencies.
Recommended Listening
Recommended Listening
I'm a long-time baseball fan, and I can appreciate the dissection of statistics to get an advantage in any situation. Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game takes both these passions of mine and wraps them into a great story about how an underfunded team can compete with anyone, even the deep-pocket New York Yankees by choosing players and salaries wisely.
August 18, 2003
Can the Stones ignite Rhapsody?
Can the Stones ignite Rhapsody?
Most of the attention to the announcement by RealNetworks that it will provide the first legally downloadable versions of The Rolling Stones' music has been on Mick and the boys. The real meat is the retail placement of Rhapsody at Best Buy, where the Stones' music will be the anchor of a free trial program.
As I see it, it's great that the Stones are going digital, but who the hell cares? They are digital already -- I ripped Exile on Main Street two years ago and play it on my iPod already. I didn't put it on Napster or Gnutella, but, come on, everyone already owns the Stones who is going to buy the Stones. However, if the younger folks, the ones without gray hair who maybe don't have the whole of Mick and Keith ouvre on CD, try out some of the old rockers' music in digital format, Rhapsody might hook a customer. The real question is whether there will be a single format that is secured by all players. We are still a full generation of consolidation away from a standard approach to selling digital music that allows people to purchase digital music from any retailer (Rhapsody, iMusic, etc.) and play it in any registered player. There is still a layer of technology--distribution channel technology--that needs to be stripped out. Records and CDs sold because you could pick up a 45 or an album and it would play on your stereo regardless of where you bought it.
The question is, did RealNetworks pay too much for the short exclusive? As an industry, technology companies have an unnatural compulsion to pay too much for content when they bother to pay for it at all. RealNetworks is generous with content revenue splits, so I hope the free trials pay off or it is going to hurt the bottom line. Assuming a Stones album costs Real $2.50 in royalties, they need to convert one-in-six ($15 per converted customer) to one-in-ten ($25 per customer) trial customers to make this worthwhile.
Now, take a look at Best Buy's site, again. Did you see the Stones promo? At this writing--the day of the announcement--it is below the fold, beneath a no-interest offer and a save-$250 Toshiba offer. We shall see if the Stones have the old magic.
August 17, 2003
The Calculus of Political Power
The Calculus of Political Power
Here's another draft of a section of my emergent polities paper, this one dealing with whether networks create an egalitarian environment for self-organizing solutions to social and political problems. Your comments and criticisms welcome, as I am trying to iron this out. This draft does not address the role of leadership sufficiently, but the critique of network theory is complete enough to start getting feedback.
Networks and their effects on human relationships have been the subject of intense study for only a few years, but theorists propose a wide range of rules that describe the behavior of connected people, networked groups and organizations. These laws are double-edged blades for the aspiring social theorist since a “law” in the scientific sense when applied to groups of people is an appeal to reason in nature which may not exist in the population one is describing, because people can act irrationally or inconsistently in similar circumstances. The laws discussed in this essay are valuable because they are descriptive and can be used in retrospect to understand human events, but should not be understood as proscriptive of human behavior. Albert Camus wrote when Lucretius first suggested that atoms clump to together randomly to form matter “the great problem of modern times arises: the discovery that to rescue man from destiny to is to delivery him to chance.” If the laws discussed here are to become useful in the socio-political arena, they need to be refined into a tool for increasing the probability that, given a knowledge of one’s, or a collective group’s, resources, informed decisions about how to accomplish a social goal can be based on the analysis of the social networks in which that person or group exists.
It is early and reductive to suggest that any of the rules suggested by network researchers guide our behavior to a significant degree, yet that is the tendency among many of the more influential contributors to this discussion. Despite the fact that the mathematics of networks are generally couched in value-neutrality, the absence of influence and the notion of frictionless transaction, they are projected onto a value-filled social networks of influence characterized by many forms of friction. What we shall see, however, is that network theory is useful, because it highlights the singular importance of influence and leadership within social and political networks.
Let us begin with the idea of scale[1], which in mathematics describes the place of any numerical expression relative to a chosen base. For example, a base ten system, the scale describing any value is demarcated by 10s; think of a topological map, on which a mountain range’s height can be determined by counting the number of lines from the base elevation and multiplying the steps by the number of feet they represent. In social situations, we can think of scale as the number of steps it takes to accomplish a goal, how many people in city hall do you have to talk to in order to get your sidewalk repaired? How many people can fit into the local Starbucks before you have to build another one? Scaling issues are very important to any investment of social, political or economic capital, because if an additional step forward takes more effort than each additional step saves, society or your investments starting two steps back for each step forward. The critical mistake for many investors and managers working at Internet companies during the bubble years was assuming that any investment would pay itself back in multiples, when, in fact, many of the steps companies took led to low-revenue customers who weren’t willing to pay a premium for the convenience of, for example, buying dog food on the Web.
In political networks, we are familiar with and react against the notion of power as it is exercised by individuals for their own benefit. Everyone has a story of a politician who, seeing only their own well-being, sacrificed the common good to maintain their power and privilege. Everyone knows someone who has monopolized connections for their benefit at the expense of others. Everyone knows any number of abuses. But experience does prove that people tend to remember the affronts to good behavior more often than good behavior when they have little at stake. On the contrary, when there is something at stake, such as in a lottery or at the craps table, people focus on the few moments of good luck. You’ve seen people win in
Yet good people do step up regularly and volunteer for the good of others. Cincinnatus, a patrician farmer, was called to be dictator of
There is an important distinction between the notion of a mass media and an egalitarian press controlled by many different contributors. The mass media, which
It is accurate to describe the mass media as autocratic.
A network’s power and efficacy, then, is in large part the result of leadership and economic backing for particular ideas or, switching to the mechanics of connectivity, creation of important hubs that can influence the availability of resources needed to collect information. Most network theorists start from the suggestion that the capability of a node in a network is essentially equal and that is true if one ignores how a node can be augmented to increase its influence in the network.
According to network researcher Albert-La`szlo` Baraba`si:
“In a random network the peak of distribution implies that the vast majority of nodes have the same number of links and that nodes deviating from the average are extremely rare. Therefore, a random network has a characteristic scale in its node connectivity, embodied by the average node and fixed peak of the degree distribution. In contrast the average nod and fixed by the peak of the degree distribution implies that in a real network there is no such thing as a characteristic node. We see a continuous hierarchy of nodes, spanning the rare hubs to the numerous tiny nodes. The largest hub is closely followed by two or three somewhat smaller hubs, followed by dozens that are even smaller, and so on, eventually arriving at the numerous small nodes.”[4]
This paragraph from Baraba`si's book, Linked, describes the full range of phenomena at the center of network research today. Many network theorists argue scale is eliminated in dynamic networks, that these systems are “scale-free” and can add new nodes without incurring any additional inefficiency or cost in terms of the complexity users of the network must undertake to use the network.
Key to Baraba`si’s argument is that because of power laws, the predictable pattern of connections within a network that ensure some nodes will rise to the top, visits to the most-trafficked node will exceed the traffic of the next by an order of magnitude and the rest trailing off rapidly into a large population of nodes with relatively few connections and very little traffic. In a graph, it looks like this:
Figure 1: Technorati link distribution
Source: Jason Kottke, Kottke.org[5]
Baraba`si and
Why should the insurmountable curve of the power law be susceptible to conquest? The answer lies in the visualization and statistical limitations of a two-dimensional view of a network. When we draw a network, it invariable looks like a flatland with nodes distributed across its face (see Figure 2), when there is a third variable that adds a real-world dimension that makes the single peak of the power law an impossibility.
Figure 2: Network Mapping
Source: Valdis Krebs, Orgnet.com[7]
Two dimensional analysis focuses attention on the connections without providing the flavor of those connections. By stripping the links of their meaning, the analysis of networks suggests that all links are equal. Baraba`si writes that modeling a growing network is a relatively straightforward exercise because “[a]t each moment all nodes have an equal chance to be linked to, resulting in a clear advantage for senior nodes.”[8] This aptly describes what happens in the random networks, which Baraba`si says are not guaranteed to produce highly ordered networks, yet they often do. The reason is, he acknowledges, is that there is competition for links between nodes in a network. Competition is based on differentiation between what nodes have to offer, otherwise the choice between any two nodes in the network would be irrelevant and random because any choice would provide the same results.
Nevertheless, Baraba`si’s early research focused solely on the number of links possessed by any node in the network. This leads to an oversimplification of network topologies, because, it seems to me, he wants to generalize about the applications of his research.[9] One of the most important ideas Baraba`si concentrates on is the notion of hubs that link nodes in a network. Google is his most prominent example of an Internet node and in the software business (and economics in general), he puts forth the idea that the rich-get-richer is an enduring law, using Microsoft as an example of a company that owns the entire market. Certainly, those with the capital to invest are better positioned to get richer, but the fact that markets are made up of people who lose the money others gain suggests that the rich who bet everything on one idea, one company or one node in a networked economy are more likely to get poorer—portfolio theory, which urges diversification on investors, proves this conclusively.
Network theory, however, concentrates on specific instances of connectivity rather than the general experience of living in a network; it is quantum mechanics to the largely Newtonian world we exist in. This makes the reading of network theory a landmine for anyone inclined to apply analogy or metaphor promiscuously, because Baraba`si and others, in an attempt to generalize their laws, apply a shifting definition of “nodes” and “links” that conflate two very different types of networks. Though there are similarities between the ways networks grow, the way a physical network built on actual connections between points in space and time and the way that a network of relationships between people develops and endures are very, very different.
Physical versus logical; growth versus evolution
Physical networks grow through interconnections that are largely scale-free for two reasons: there are always new nodes coming online and the geometric increase in the capacity of copper and fiber optic cables and switching semiconductor equipment erase the friction that would slow the delivery of data as the network grows. If the progress of
But what, exactly, is a “link” on the Internet? Is it a physical connection between two sites or the logical connection between information on two Web sites? It is both, actually. The example of Google as a hub of connections is misleading, because it is doing nothing more than examining the Web for the number of sites making logical links to particular sites in order to assemble a one-stop location for finding the information most often linked to by others. Remove Google and there is no severing of connections between the sites Google is pointing to, only the link from the Google search results to the target information is lost.
A physical connection, or more accurately several physical connections made this Web of logical links possible, but they exist at another lower level of connectivity that provides the foundation on which all the informational or “virtual” structures of the Internet are constructed. Mapping the physical Internet and the logical Web produces an overlay that look largely similar, because Web sites and services that are most heavily trafficked tend to sit on or near the largest interconnections of physical networks. This ensures better performance, but it creates the misleading impression that the two kinds of links are the same thing. Physical networks, however, are expensive to build and maintain; they tend to stay largely intact and, while other links grow around existing physical links, the system has a sedimentary quality that gives it the permanence of an ancient seabed while logical networks flow like water above.
Why Google is successful tells us much more about the nature of the logical network. Google came into the market late and well behind the established players, Inktomi, which provided search results of Yahoo!, AltaVista and several other large search engines. Today, Google surpassed Inktomi in a few years and replaced it as Yahoo!’s search provider, only to see Yahoo! buy Inktomi when Google’s business became a threat and restore Inktomi as its search engine. Baraba`si attributes Google’s “new kid on the block” success to its “fitness,” which he describes using the analogy of the social environment in which people who are more able to make friends produce larger social networks. Today, it is the most connected node of the network, because people point to a variety of types of Google search results.
“The fitness model predicts a very different behavior [than the scale-free network model],” Baraba`si writes. “It tells us that nodes still acquire links following a power law, tb.” That is, a node’s connectivity increases as a function of time, though the pace of growth is a function of how early the node joined the network, according to the rich-get-richer model. But in the fitness model, “the dynamic exponent, b, which measures how fast a node grabs new links, is different for each node. It is proportional to the node’s fitness, such that a node that is twice as fit as any other node will acquire links faster because its dynamic exponent is twice as large. Therefore, the speed at which nodes acquire links is no longer a matter of seniority.”
What has happened to Baraba`si’s formula is that everything has become dynamic. From an analytical perspective, it can describe anything, which isn’t very useful, since the nature of fitness is vague. It has none of the virtue of Einstein’s E=mc2 which very specifically describes the amount of energy in any body of matter (there is a whole lot more than anyone thought). The age of a node will differ and its fitness will differ, so that every node performs differently and, because the fitness of a node can be manipulated, the system will not behave predictably. If I invest in building my node of a social network based on these vague dynamic variables, I have no indication what I will get, because fitness, especially, can be augmented in a number of ways, from making one’s node more prominent to those who might know about it (marketing) to publishing a seminal article that gets picked up and pointed to by many other sites (luck); both require an investment, but I cannot hope to know what the result will be, since so many undefined factors, such as the influence of other events of the day when I market or publish my paper could distract the world. Woe to the airline mileage program credit card that launched on
What is useful to know, based on Baraba`si’s model is that no node is ensured success or doomed to obscurity in this model, which brings us unavoidably to the realm of the real world, where cunning, skill, brute force and all sorts of characteristics can change the outcome of a competition. From the perspective of the emergent polity or any other self-organizing entity, this is where the rubber meets the road and any predictions about what will come to pass in an evolving network are fruitless without God-like perfect knowledge.
We can learn from market-based solutions that the whole system does not matter, only the choices we make in specific circumstances. Lanchester’s First Law, developed to guide combat planning at the dawn of the air age by British engineer Frederick Lanchester, is a pragmatic approach to choosing a path to success in a complex system, especially where there are stronger competitors. It doesn’t guarantee success, but provides guidance.
Lanchester, who was trying to figure out how the British air force could win in a totally new battle environment narrowed the difference between two forces of equal size to the efficiency of their weapons. Winning depends on the fitness of the army’s weapons for destroying their opponents, the reverse image of Baraba`si’s fitness for making connections. Google’s weapon, even though it was vastly outnumbered in terms of existing connections, was much more efficient than its competitors because of its constantly evolving search algorithms, which reduced the gaming of search results that other search engines suffered from since they focused on the content of sites rather than the links pointing at sites (in short, the utility identified by people who took the time to read pages and decide to link to them was scraped and aggregated by Google to provide more efficacious search results). Google compounded the efficiency of its search engine with a set of application programming interfaces that allowed programmers to use Google as a platform for adding Web search to their applications. The result was easily predictable based on Lanchester’s First law. Therefore, Lanchester-based strategies, which have proved effective in warfare and marketing, are a more reliable approach than a dynamic variable that could describe any number of actual characteristics of a node on a network.
A second rule for planning combat based on Lanchester’s theories, which has been applied by Japanese businesses in marketing with significant success, is the Law of Stochastic Warfare derived from scenarios in which weapons can fire randomly, allowing each member of a smaller force to kill more of the enemy in less time. In a nutshell, all the factors in the first law are squared, meaning that advantages in numbers, skill and weapons efficiency are amplified. But so are the costs of competing, since these weapons are more expensive. Google had solid venture capital backers who, seeing a powerful tool, gave Google the resources it needed to amplify the value of that tool in the marketplace, so that today Google is the most trafficked site on the Internet.
Finally, Lanchester’s rules describe the scale problem that is inherent in any set of interactions. At a certain point, Lanchester equations suggest around 74 percent, it becomes more expensive to win new customers than those customers are worth. Competitors in niche markets pick off the customers who want, for example, better hardware designs (Apple) or more robust publishing tools (Adobe) and so on. Porsche, BMW and Lexus exist in similar niches of the automotive market. The evidence that Microsoft is well past that point with Windows is the low-cost licenses sold to PC manufacturers and the increasingly costly upgrades of those licenses made available to consumers. It is difficult to keep a Windows installation intact because the system is checking for changes to the hardware configuration to determine if it is running on the PC on which it was originally installed. This translates into a less pleasing experience for all Windows customers, meaning the company must pile additional features into its software to try to please everyone.
Here is where Baraba`si’s conclusion about Microsoft, that “essentially Microsoft takes it all,” is challenged. Networks seem to crave diversity or, at least, novelty, eating away at monopoly positions on small fronts rather than taking the whole monopoly position in one fell swoop. Microsoft knows that its position in the market is tenuous, because in order to take advantage of its 85 percent-plus market share it must hold the number-one position in each and every market it enters to justify the expense of its core monopoly. While the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office, the two dominant products Microsoft relies on to force its way into new markets, such as the Internet browser, email servers, Web servers, streaming media, and so forth, are robust and profitable, Microsoft loses money on virtually everything else it does. It must give away product to win market share, which it can do because it is a monopoly. Yet, as it gives away products it also lowers the price point it can charge for those products in the future once it has eliminated most competition. This has given rise to a low-cost approach to programming, open source software, that turns Microsoft’s willingness to lower retail prices and raise future revenues from selling support, into a weapon that can be used against Microsoft in each of the markets it occupies. With open source software, users can download and modify application code to create robust alternatives to Microsoft products, often at no charge. The makers of open source software, usually distributed teams collaborating via the Net to assemble code much more rapidly than Microsoft ever could, is indicative of the small front challenges that can eat away at a dominant hub in the market.
Baraba`si and his colleagues searched high and low for formulas that could account for what he describes as the winner-take-all network and settled on the rather dense concept of the Bose-Einstein condensate, a physical phenomenon that was not observed until 1995 and yielded the observers a Nobel prize. A Bose-Einstein condensate occurs when you lower the temperature of matter very close to absolute zero and all particles condense at the lowest energy level, they become still and pile up at the center of a field like a mountain in the midst of a convoluted topographical region (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Bose-Einstein condensate. The white center, which rises as the temperature is lowered from 400 billionths of a degree Kelvin (left) to 200 billionths of degree (center) and, ultimately to 50 billionths of a degree above absolute zero, is the densest concentration of particles.
Source: University of Colorado Atomic Lab, http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/bec/three_peaks.html
“…[S]ome networks can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation. The consequence of this prediction can be understood without knowing anything about quantum mechanics: It is, simply, that in some networks the winner can take it all. Just as in a Bose-Einstein condensate all particles crowd into the lowest energy level, leaving the rest of the energy levels unpopulated, in some networks the fittest node could theoretically grab all the links, leaving none for the rest of the nodes. The winner takes all…. Bianconi’s calculation indicated that in terms of topology all networks fall into one of only two possible categories. In most networks the competition does not have an easily noticeable impact on the networks topology. In some networks, however, the winner takes all the links, a clear signature of Bose-Einstein condensation”[10]
This is a powerful analogy, but hardly descriptive of the roiling character of the exchange of information on the Internet. A network that became as still as the gases cooled to near absolute zero to create a Bose-Einstein condensate would be useless in a world where both people and physical connections are constantly changing, because it is the proverbial sure thing in which one node wins and always wins. The activity of adding new nodes on a network would never allow a network to approach the stasis that would erect a massive power law in the center of the network. Rather, it would tend toward dynamism that distributed the topology of connections and power more evenly. And it is this third dimension that provides a rich topology of peaks and valleys under normal circumstances that best describes why power laws are of limited importance to the functional destiny of any node on a network.
Powerless law
Let us reexamine the notion of the power law in light of the third dimension and the way logical links are used by people on the Internet. A power law describes the blunt edge of the question of connectivity, measuring the number of links pointing to a site or the number of visits to a site. As
Imagine that we are looking now for another variable, this representing the ideological character of weblogs, which we will distribute across the base vector from left to right according to a simple assignment of sites to “left” or “right” categories. Some of each of the sites will be more popular and most less so, the result looking more like a normal bell curve (Figure 4). However, it is actually two power laws, one describing the popularity of left-leaning and the other of right-leaning weblogs, placed in opposition; in other words, power laws describe any one-dimensional distribution of network connectivity and the addition of another variable, ideology, produces a normal distribution of sites by popularity and ideology. In Figure 4, you will note that right-leaning sites have a few more sites that are popular than the left-leaning sites. This reflects the finding by Kevin A. Hill and John E. Hughes that although people who use the Internet for political activity tend to be more liberal, the right tends to produce more content.[11]
Figure 4: Distribution of left- and right-leaning sites by number of links
Of course, we know that there are far more grades of ideology than right- and left-leaningness, so being to think in three dimensions and the convoluted topology of the real Web begins to emerge from the details. Figure 5 (below) shows the distribution of ideology with a second ideological vector, describing sites as being left-libertarian or left-authoritarian and right-libertarian or right-authoritarian. This graph still does not show the traffic relating to different topics, only the distribution of traffic by two factors which could be applied to any topic, including abortion, the application of government power to redistributing wealth and teaching the Ten Commandments in school. We are still topic-neutral, although the values-related characteristics are beginning to pile up.
The sites described in figure five may represent any amount of traffic and could be blogs, portals or publications (hence the differently shaped dots), since the graph no longer accounts for the number of links these sites attract. It is as though one is looking down on a crowd of people who have separated themselves into quadrants based on their basic political orientation relative to the power of centralized government to enact social policy. Some of these sites may have hundreds of links that allow them to influence many people and others may be virtual hermits, albeit with strong opinions, isolated from virtually any interaction with other sites on the Web.
Figure 5: Distribution of ideology and views of the exercise of government power
It turns out that some of these sites are very strong connectors between their ideological neighbors and, in a few cases, bridging the boundaries between ideological groupings. These sites are the hubs, the "connectors" in the Malcolm Gladwell’s terms[12], that provide the glue that holds society together and knits it anew each time the site ventures into a new topical area. (See Figure 6). These links, indicated in blue, are the conduits of public debate about the direction of society that can cause whole nations to slide in one political direction or another. They are as rare as a candidates’ debate in terms of their statistical frequency and sit atop the power law graph in terms of their connectivity—they are everyone’s source of information or friend, whether close or casual acquaintance, that they turn to for an introduction. Much of the actual discussion of social and political options happens in isolation from the hubs and is connected to opportunistically by hubs in order to wield influence. Hubs are in the position to lead in society, but don’t necessarily do so, as we shall see later. They may have many connections or a few key links that allow them to bridge an existing barrier; this view is contrary to general view of hubs in network research, where it is assumed that a hub must have many connections. I argue that, especially in political situations, the ability to make a key connection is more important than having many connections, albeit having many available certainly gives the connector a larger inventory of options.
Figure 6: The Left-Right, Libertarian-Authoritarian network of hubs
Now, let’s account for traffic. In Figure 7, red circles indicate the clusters of sites in the ideological scatter graph that represent the most traffic. These circles include several sites that are unconnected to other participants in the network webs described in Figure 6. Here is where we can begin to see the complexity of topic-based discussions, as there may be very popular ideological sites that fall into a particular range on this scatter graph but do not deal with an issue that is being discussed by many other sites. For example, the right-libertarian site that sits unconnected to any other node on the graph might be dedicated to fiscal responsibility and would not link to sites that are primarily concerned with social issues, such as abortion. Nevertheless, they represent important peaks in the distribution of traffic.
Figure 7: Traffic concentrations among Left-Right, Libertarian-Authoritarian sites
For ease of understanding, Figure 8 removes the network of sites and presents just the traffic concentrations on the two-ideology graph. You can see that there are two “twin peaks representing high-traffic sectors of the ideological spectrum indicated by the letters “A” and “B,” and a two valleys indicated by the letters “C” and “D.” Now, if you will look back at the rich topology of the Bose-Einstein condensate chart, particularly in the left, warmer field, you will see the origin of the many small peaks and valleys is quite clearly the multiplicity of issues and ideologies discussed on the Web. There may be sites about every conceivable variation of every topic, many of which sit at the bottom of valleys in the patterns of traffic, but there are also many peaks of popularity.
Figure 8: Traffic peaks and valleys on the Left-Right, Libertarian-Authoritarian sites
Compared to the mass media, which concentrate output and traffic in a few nodes, the many-dimension view of the densely networked environment of the Web presents many more opportunities for “local dominance” in traffic and influence regarding specific issues.
Beyond statistics: The transformative value of human action
Here, let us return to some of the conclusions already being proposed by network theorists and reconsider them in the light of the many-dimensions view. I do not wish to suggest that there is something supernatural in networks which allows them to transcend physical laws, for I believe we are discovering many physical bases for human behavior. However, I do agree with philosopher Daniel Dennett and sociobiologist E.O. Wilson that human behavior is a dynamic combination of nature and nurture that produces extraordinary results within the confines of a largely deterministic world. We benefit from the fact that gravity exists and that networks tend to produce hubs that reduce the number of steps between any two points on the Web. It is very early, though, in our quest to understand networks and certain conclusions are premature.
- Inequality in results in very different than inequality of opportunity. The nature of the Web, which facilitates easy and cheap logical connections between a wide variety of sites ensures that the difference in accessibility between any two sites is an order of magnitude smaller than the difference in reach between two mass media outlets. One need not gain distribution, as is the case in print and broadcast, to be heard; a single link can start a cascade of connections that elevate a particular author or just one article to the heights of popularity.
- The fact that some Web upstarts will become employees of consumer media companies and, consequently, will adopt different ethics, goals and styles that conform to their employer’s priorities does not reflect on the nature of the network that elevated them to the attention of mass media. This is a process of cooptation of culture that is ongoing and, ultimately, is the result of individual decisions to conform. Just as there are popular writers and filmmakers who exist outside the mainstream media, there will be many Web content creators who content themselves with the longer, tougher road of building an large audience on their own terms.
- Individual sites do not scale to become general interest services without substantial investment. This has been true in mass media and, based on the evidence of eroding network viewership in broadcast and cable as audiences flee to niche channels or the Web, the increasingly specialized media will create an opportunity for the enmeshing of different audiences for specific topics to create meta-audiences that could, among other things, be a powerful political force, if mobilized to those ends.
Albert-La`szlo` Baraba`si makes a number of statements that I agree with and several that do not make practical sense, I believe, because they are based on mathematics that relate to real life in the strange way quantum physics does. The plain fact that the spin of a particular particle can be affected by observing it does not translate to substantial changes in the gross phenomena in the world we live in and so it goes with network theory. Baraba`si makes a profoundly counter-intuitive leap from real life to the mathematics of connectivity when he writes:
“The most intriguing result of our Web-mapping project was the complete [italics in orginal] absence of democracy, fairness, and egalitarian values on the Web. We learned that the topology of the Web prevents us from seeing anything but a mere handful of the billion documents out there.
“When it comes to the Web, the key question is no longer whether your views can be published. They can. Once published, they will be instantaneously available to anyone around the world with an Internet connection. Rather, faced with a jungle of a billion documents, the question is, if you post information on the Web, well anybody notice it?”
He has obviously published, but Baraba`si has apparently never been a publisher. In mass media, specialized media or the Web, it is hard to get attention. As hard as writing, frankly, though I never gave my first publishers credit for what they could accomplish with my work. Then, I took on the job of publisher and learned that, while it is hard to gain attention, it is a skill that can be learned and applied, just like grammar and research skills, whether literary or scientific. In larger organization, particularly in general interest publishing or broadcating companies, there is such a broad range of choices about what to publish or put on the air that most contributors compete for what space or time they get. This surplus of content acts to create sufficient impetus to keep audiences coming back, even if the offering of writers/contributors may be changing daily.
The question, then, is not whether, having published, you’ll be noticed, but how one organizes to be noticed and the tools at their disposal to keep the attention coming once it is turned, even momentarily toward a particular site or issue.