Context & Continuity

We're Afraid of Hurting our Computer's Feelings.

This morning, in todays' Wall Street Journal, I was fascinated by these two paragraphs in the article, Sweet Talking Your Computer:

If you were asked how much you liked, say, a plate of lasagna, you would undoubtedly say nicer things to the chef than you would to a person who had no connection to the chef. This would be the polite thing to do. Would you also be overly nice to a computer that tutored you for 30 minutes and then asked how well it taught you?

To find out, I ran an experiment at Stanford University. After being tutored by a computer, half of the participants were asked about the computer's performance by the computer itself and the other half were asked by an identical computer across the room. Remarkably, the participants gave significantly more positive responses to the computer that asked about itself than they did to the computer across the room. These weren't overly sensitive people: They were graduate students in computer science and electrical engineering, all of whom insisted that they would never be polite to a computer.

Having been in close terms with too many computers over too many years, I'll confess to developing certain affections but only on the same level I do with my M150 Pelikan fountain pen.  A good tool is a good thing.  It might be interesting to deal out the data to see if there are any breaks along the age of the participants.  Maybe my daughters have a closer emotional relationship with their digital gear than I do with mine.

Oh, and one more thing about this article:  It has a priceless description of Microsoft's "Clippy" debacle.  Must read.

 

 

 

 

NYTimes: Wi-Fi Sucks.

For better or worse, I've worked in and around the Wi-Fi business since before it was a business.  First at 3Com and then at Trapeze Networks, I saw the business get invented and then evolve.  (And if you're nice to me, I'll tell you why Wi-Fi is called Wi-Fi.)  Furthermore, I've been a rather aggressive consumer of Wi-Fi who has gone to the trouble of building a custom access point and had three internet / Wi-Fi radios scattered around the house for the family's listening pleasure.

Today, the New York Times decided to rip Wi-Fi a new one. Here's the first paragraph of the story:

When one of the first instructions a popular wireless Internet router from Netgear gives its owner is a choice between the security protocols known as WPA-PSK (TKIP) and WPA-PSK (TKIP) + WPA2-PSK (AES), you know the home networking industry has problems. [more]

And it goes downhill from there until we reach a plug for Ethernet over powerline, something I've considered were it not for the sunk cost of Wi-Fi gear and the presence of some devices (iPhones, etc.) that aren't ever going to connect over the wire.

First of all, the author is correct in calling out security issues which have beleaguered consumers for Far Too Long.  This is why Tivo, endearing itself to its installed base, dropped its requirement for an encrypted connection.  So many of us were running an open network, managing security through Layer 1 methods, that encrypting our entire network just for the sake of one, albeit important, device, ... well, this made us quite cross.  The author is correct about complexity and the industry, try as it might, hasn't been a huge help.

Second, radio is weird.  I've been cheek and jowl with enough wireless engineers to know, with absolute certainty that networking over radio waves is, at best, a difficult challenge.  Think about it:   Thorough network planning has to take into account whether the carpet on the floor is indoor-outdoor or shag.  That's insane, but it's the price we have to pay for for taking our laptops with us to the conference room or letting our daughter watch Hulu in bed when they should be sleeping.

Third, Wi-Fi isn't going anywhere.  Sure, frustration has made us consider any number of alternatives ranging from cellular to the aforementioned powerline.  But the cellular companies (e.g. AT&T) found out that an unlimited data plan isn't its best idea and I've got to tell you the truth, even though some people I Really Admire invented powerline networking, I'm thinking once, twice, three times before I jack 110 into my Cat5 socket.  It's irrational, but that's my burden.

So, let's take a seat and fold our hands and try to make the best of it while we wake for the Brilliant Engineers at Cisco to figure this out.  I just hope it doesn't take another decade.

It's Official: Information Technology Make Us Dumb.

The New York Times continues its crusade / jihad / words of warning about our new digital culture in yet another series kicking off in today's paper, penned by the inexhaustable Matt Richtel.  Actually, Mr. Richtel did some promotional media appearances before today's story, notably an appearance on Fresh Air. (Highly recommended.)

We have crossed the Rubicon between accumulated anecdotal evidence and into the land of science.  Observe:

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.” [more]

I've noticed this line of reporter before and will continue to track it as I have a very deep, lifelong and generational interest.  Furthermore, the idea strikes me as completely correct and valid based on my own personal experience.  I recently participated in an unplanned separate from my devices and I re-discovered something important in my life:  reading books.  Now, some of you who know me might find that to be a rather bizarre comment as I've spent my life surrounded by and immersed in books.  But, for about the past year, I've had difficulty sustaining my attention long enough to blaze through a book as I did in days gone by.  Well, this cherished skill has returned, and I plan on keeping it this time.

Please listen to Mr. Richtel on Fresh Air and decide for yourself.

By the way, this meme is creeping into popular culture too.  I've been enjoying the new AMC series, Rubicon and it's all about intelligence analysts.  Now, one might guess that, in the 21stC, this work would be done on hydra-headed computers connected to multiple DS3 feeds.  Wrong.  Aside from the occasional conversation with a computer technician who's literally locked in a cage as if he's a feral animal, all the real work is done on pads of paper and pencils.

 

Great Minds Think Alike: Booz & Co. + McKinsey Have Heads in the Clouds.

Well, cloud computing has been a discussion topic for either forty or four years, depending on how one prefers to count it.  So, it probably shouldn't come as too big of surpise when two of the planet's largest counsultancy decide to examine the cloud computing meme around the same time.

The Promise of the Cloud Workplace, published in Booz & Co.'s Strategy + Business magazine takes a human spin on cloud computing and peeks in on the rising mob of freelancers who are cloud-enabled and are helping all types of businesses increase productivity at a very low margin cost.  In particular, the article's author, Andrew Jones, drills down on the idea of co-working which in this context refers to the notion of common workspaces that can be used by freelancers and corporate outliers.

McKinsey & Co. decide to show us where their ball landed, the one they hit thirty months ago when they put some wood on the notion of cloud computing and called it a "technology-enabled business trend" that was "profoundly reshaping strategy across a wide swath of industries." In other words, "We were right."

I don't mind a well-deserved declaration of victory (afterall, I work in public relations) but when the three authors of the article decide to substantion their home run by citing the rapid rise in the population dwelling in the Facebook Nation, ... well, I kind of blink my eyes and cock my head to one side trying to figure out if I'm missing something or Bughin, Chui and Manyka have ganged up on a non sequiter.  (If you have any breadcrumbs you can send my well, please write in.)

This is all front matter to McKinsey's annual prognostication-fest on business technology trends and cloud computing checks in this year at  trend number seven, "Imagine anything as a service."  For the record, these are the ten trends:

Trend 1: Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream

Trend 2: Making the network the organization

Trend 3: Collaboration at scale

Trend 4: The growing ‘Internet of Things’

Trend 5: Experimentation and big data

Trend 6: Wiring for a sustainable world

Trend 7: Imagining anything as a service

Trend 8: The age of the multisided business model

Trend 9: Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid

Trend 10: Producing public good on the grid

Here, I am tipping my hat to the good people at McKinsey who have quite perfected the art of writing prose that is just a little bit clear, rather intriguing and opaque enough to drive the reader to yearn for more.  Really:  "Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid," migh be self-explanatory but, honestly, what does "The age of the multisided business model" mean to you?

As I've written before, I am not, at heart a Gloomy Gus, but if we think that private data infrastructures are rife with insecurity, then what happens when we put all our eggs and milk and cheese and white wine in the same refrigerator?   Willie Sutton is famous for, among other things, his answer to the question, "Why do you rob banks?"  I contend there is probably a new generation of people with huge computer skills licking their chops at the idea of cloud computing, "Because that's where the money is."

Our Insecure Infrastructure: Where Were You When the Lights Went Out.

I'm beginning to feel self-conscious about my posts on computer security.  I'm not an alarmist.  Really.  Rather, I'm passing along to you, gentle reader, news on this topic, from today's Wall Street Journal:

Computer networks controlling the electric grid are plagued with security holes that could allow intruders to redirect power delivery and steal data, the Energy Department warned in a recent report.

Many of the security vulnerabilities are strikingly basic and fixable problems, including a failure to install software security patches or poor password management. Many of the fixes would be inexpensive, according to the Idaho National Lab, an Energy Department facility that conducted the study.

The report reinforces concerns that intelligence officials have raised in recent years about growing surveillance of the electric grid by Chinese and Russian cyber-spies, which The Wall Street Journal reported last year. One worry is that a foreign country could shut down power in parts of the U.S. [more]

This story is closely related to another story I posted, also from the Wall Street Journal.

Here's what I think almost everybody knows:  We are drawn to work that's exciting and, dare I type it, sexy.  Frankly it is exciting to break into a computer or network than it is to build a system that's unhackable.  Then, we need to notice this:  Systems are build by teams of people, sometimes including contractors and outsourced staff that's scattered around the world.  All it really takes is just one person in this chain of trust to build in a simple back door and the entire system is compromised.  Just the facts, dear.

 

WSJ: Breaking News: Your Privacy is an Illusion, Big Time.

For reasons only people far smarter about journalism will be able to fathon, the Wall Street Journal broke a Big Time story on Friday afternoon.  I'm counting a total -- so far -- of seven stories that are described as the first in a series that all about how your online life is an open book that's bought, sold, resold, parsed and aggregated.  Dear, we aren't talking just about cookies and milk.  The WSJ's crack team has found beacons and trackers, bits of code that are recording and broadcasting what you type and click.  --Brother, Sister, we are toast.

By the way, the WSJ opened a unique, easily consumable URL for the series: http://online.wsj.com/wtk

Broad overview:  WSJ studied fifty websites that draw about forty percent of all the page views on the internet.  Those fifty sites dropped 1,380 tracking files on the test computer.  The worst offender?  Dictionary.com.  The purest site:  Wikipedia which dropped zero files. 

The journal didn't find any trackers that identified, by name, a computer user, but, honstly, the name is all but inconsequential when put into the perspective of what is being collected.  Here's how the story opens: 

Hidden inside Ashley Hayes-Beaty's computer, a tiny file helps gather personal details about her, all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny.

The file consists of a single code— 4c812db292272995e5416a323e79bd37—that secretly identifies her as a 26-year-old female in Nashville, Tenn.

The code knows that her favorite movies include "The Princess Bride," "50 First Dates" and "10 Things I Hate About You." It knows she enjoys the "Sex and the City" series. It knows she browses entertainment news and likes to take quizzes.

"Well, I like to think I have some mystery left to me, but apparently not!" Ms. Hayes-Beaty said when told what that snippet of code reveals about her. "The profile is eerily correct."

Ms. Hayes-Beaty is being monitored by Lotame Solutions Inc., a New York company that uses sophisticated software called a "beacon" to capture what people are typing on a website—their comments on movies, say, or their interest in parenting and pregnancy. Lotame packages that data into profiles about individuals, without determining a person's name, and sells the profiles to companies seeking customers. Ms. Hayes-Beaty's tastes can be sold wholesale (a batch of movie lovers is $1 per thousand) or customized (26-year-old Southern fans of "50 First Dates").

"We can segment it all the way down to one person," says Eric Porres, Lotame's chief marketing officer.

Mr. Porres isn't making a confession.  He's bragging.  A lot. 

I've written before that I completely understand, and in a very sick way, sympathize with the businesses that are on the cutting edge of this sort of practice.  I can even walk over to the opinion that, if sponsors / advertisers have a very precise understanding of what turns me on, then I'm going to see less random stuff and more stuff that hits the sweet spot of my interest.   And I'm OK with that. 

What I believe the real problem is comes down to two points:

1.  I don't remember anyone ever asking me is it's OK for them to monitor me so closely.  And that's not really OK.

2.  Furthermore, I don't remember anyone asking me if its OK to drop executables onto my hard drive.  I paid good money for my disk.  I am constantly protecting and grooming my disks to protect them from the vandels and to ensure they are working as well as possible.  I also pay good money to Comcast for the bandwidth I consume. 

So, what it comes down to is the must vaunted issue:  Transparency.  Frankly, I lead my online life based on the assumption that anything I post is exposed to the worldwide online public (as if anyone really cared).  In return, I'm being stalked by a bunch of companies (motives and means of executive aside) that are in the business of sneaking into my house, installing a secret camera, and following my every move.  --That's not cool. 

Danah Boyd on Facebook, Youth and Privacy: Attention, Please.

I don't think I've mentioned First Monday in these parts ever before which is a huge oversight on my part as First Monday is one of the most thoughtful pieces of media on the net about the net that you'll ever find no matter how high or low you look.  Really.

Case in point is an article from First Monday's upcoming August issue.  The peer-reviewed piece by Ms. Eszter Hargittal and the omnipresent Ms. Danah Boyd, pictured to the left and not wearing one of her infamous hats.  These two have teamed up to research and write an article about how 18- and 19-year-olds feel about Facebook's privacy settings / options. 

Thesis:  This cohort doesn't feel very strongly about privacy issues and doesn't think too much about their privacy on Facebook.  Finding:  Wrong. 

It's important to note here that this study was conducted over a year and surveyed how attitudes might have evolved.  It's also important to note that the research was funded, in part, by the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft and Harvard's Berkman Center.  Ms. Boyd works for Microsoft (which always struck me as rather incongruous until I considered what I might do if Microsoft offered me enough money).  

Of course I knew this all along because I have a 17-year-old who has probably contributed terabytes of data to Facebook only I only have a vague reckoning of this as she's my friend but understands how to manage her privacy controls so that I can only see when she's online and that's about it.  Good for her? 

As Esther Dyson forecasted decades ago, online privacy is going to be a huge business if it isn't already what with companies such as Reputation Defender popping up here and there.  Soon enough, we will be working with brokers who will auction off slivers of our privacy to the highest bidder.  For example, I can easily envision a future whereby Mr. Bezos will call me up to make me an offer:  He will give me a deep discount on future purchases over a period of time if he's allowed to sell my purchase history to the highest bidder, including my email address and telephone number.  Gentle reader, you might want to start figuring out what your price will be because it's coming sooner than we think. 

Google to Launch Facebook Rival: I'd Like to Buy a Vowel, Please

As I am so much the egoist, I consider myself able to understand most things I read in the newspaper.  Yesterday and today, however, I've failed that test when applied to the WSJ story, Google Develops a Facebook Rival. 

As I completely agree with Mr. Dewey that a problem well defined is a problem half solved, let me dissect my issue so you have a leg up on helping me solve it. 

Yesterday, and again today, I've received alerts from the WSJ to the effect that Google is launching a Facebook rival.  Okay.  I can understand that idea and have been in this technology business too long to be surprised by this headline.  Afterall, Facebook came out of nowhere an now has a population of netizens outnumbering many countries.  Facebook has accomplished this by accumulating a critical mass of people and information about people.  And, it hosts some sort of entertainments (Farmville, Mob Wars, etc.) that, frankly, I just don't understand.  I use Facebook and pretty much enjoy it as it's connected me to people I like a lot. 

Google, which for argument's sake, has infinite resources, and, beyond question, has a ton of information about all of us, well, Google can pretty much get whatever it wants.  Agreed?

So, here's the part I don't understand:  What evidence does the WSJ article cite?  Well, Google has been in discussions with several companies that build some of these aforementioned online games.  Specifically these companies include Playdom, Playfish and Zynga.  And, by the way, Disney acquired Playdom this week for a mere $763 million and that, dear friend, is a whole lot of money.  Electronic Arts acquired Playfish in November for a mere $300 million.  According to some estimates, Zynga is valued at ~$5 billion. Wow. 

So, the rumors that have resulted from Google's chats are that these online games will be part of Google's social networking offering.  So let's step back for a second and take a look:  the WSJ is reporting rumors that Google is in discussions with online gaming companies that have significant presence on social networking sites.  And from this we extrapolate that Google is going to enter the social networking business.

What I hear here is a reporter and editor that can feel a story can't quite report it.  What do you think? 

Speaking of Dytopia: Recent Computer Security News from t/ WSJ.

Perhaps you've noticed the same thing I did:  Two recent stories about computer insecurity that involve some Very Important Companies:  Siemens and Citibank. 

It was in Thursday's paper last week that the WSJ carried a story about a virus attack on Siemens' equipment.  Now, we aren't talking about personal computer equipment.  This gear from Siemens is very large scale computer equipment that's used to monitor automated plants.  These are plants that purify water, generate power and, plain old ordinary manufacturing facilities.  This is very bad news as it realizes some of our worst fears, fears articulated by Richard Clarke in his book Cyber War. 

Then, in today's paper, comes news that Citibank's iPhone app stores information about accounts and recent transactions on the iPhone which, theoretically, could lead to weakened security position.  Think of it this way, it's almost like leaving your bank statement in your car on the passenger seat.  It's probably safe, but you know it isn't a best practice. 

Our hunger for the benefits and convenience of technology far outstrip our ability to safely satisfy our appetite.  Furthermore, we're becoming inured to some of these threats and mere weaknesses.  For example, it just occurred to me that loading my Tivo with music and movies from my computer.  Of course, all the music and movies I've transferred have been legitimately acquired, but what if they weren't.  Tivo collects viewing data from my machine.  Etc.

Frankly, I'm much more concerned about the threat to our serious infrastructure than my own privacy as my life is blameless, of course.  I just don't ant to be under the Bay on BART when the lights go out.  Agreed? 

Cognitive Surplus Visualized.

One of my information sources is a blog called Information is Beautiful.  So when that blog visualized one of Clay Shirky's soundbytes from his already blogged about new book, Congnitive Surplus, I was enthralled and am, therefore, because I care about you, dear reader, passing that link onward to you. 

As Information is Beautiful is a blog about graphics, there isn't any text to support the graphic, so I'll fill in here.

The large cyan square to the left is the amount of time adults in the US spend watching television.  The tiny cyan square to the right of the big square (Can you see it?  There it is.)  Is the amount of time it took to create Wikipedia.  Thus, the concept of Cognitive Surplus whereby we can get things using our heads without much of an opportunity cost at all.  As Mr. Shirkey's book points out, this doesn't mean that we'll do anything useful or pretty with all our free time, but there is that possibility. 

NYTimes, 7.18.10: Another Message from the Internet's Shores of Discontent

Then the third of today's articles in the NYTimes that forwards its Technology and its Discontents series, there comes the essay from the backpage of the Sunday Book Review, Only Disconnect.  I can highly recommend the essay by Gary Shteyngart.  And you just received bonus points for remembering that, earlier today, I posted an interview w/ Shteyngart that ran in today's Sunday New York Times.   That means that the NYT's awarded Shteyngart SuperHero status an is letting us know that, for this week, he's the one to watch.  Observe:

As of two weeks ago, I am a Facebooking twit. With each post, each tap of the screen, each drag and click, I am becoming a different person — solitary where I was once gregarious; a content provider where I at least once imagined myself an artist; nervous and constantly updated where I once knew the world through sleepy, half-shut eyes; detail-oriented and productive where I once saw life float by like a gorgeously made documentary film. And, increasingly, irrevocably, I am a stranger to books, to the long-form text, to the pleasures of leaving myself and inhabiting the free-floating consciousness of another.

I am sitting underneath a tree beside a sturdy summer cottage rebuilt by an ingenious Swedish woman. The birds are twittering, but in a slightly different way than my New York friends. I open a novel, “A Short History of Women,” by Kate Walbert, a book I will grow to love over the coming week, but at first my data-addled brain is puzzled by the density and length of it (256 pages? how many screens will that fill?), the onrush of feeling and fact, the surprise that someone has let me not into her Facebook account but into the way other minds work. I read and reread the first two pages understanding nothing. [more]

NYTimes: More from the Dataphere of Discontent.

There were several interesting articles in today's New York Times relating to its ongoing meme, there might be trouble regarding the online life. 

I've written here before about the new book, Hamlet's BlackBerry.  Now the New York Times has given it the spotlight.  Let's take a quick look: 

While reading “Hamlet’s BlackBerry,” I sporadically paused to check my iPhone — whenever its ping signaled the arrival of a new e-mail message. I hated to turn away from William Powers’s elegant meditation on our obsessive connectivity and its effect on our brains and our very way of life. But I did anyway.

...It should surprise no student of history that this moment in time — when many of us feel as if we’re teetering on the edge of a brand-new technological cliff — can also be seen as a familiar human problem. Powers reminds us of when Socrates, the greatest of all oral communicators, was freaking out over “the very latest communications technology, written language based on an alphabet” (though as Powers concedes, “writing wasn’t completely new”). Socrates believed that scrolls would erode thought by permitting people to forget what they had learned because they’d be able to look things up, that “they wouldn’t feel the need to ‘remember it from the inside, completely on their own.’ ” Worse, writing wouldn’t “allow ideas to flow freely and change in real time, the way they do in the mind during oral exchange.”  [more]

NYTimes, 7.18.10: The Russian Immigrant’s Handbook

The New York Times continues its information, ad hoc serious on the dangers of the new information / internet age with an interview w/ Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story.  Observe: 

I don’t know how to read anymore. I can only read 20 or 30 words at a time before taking out my iPhone and caressing it and snuggling with it.

...Silence has been destroyed, but also the idea that it’s important to learn how another person thinks, to enter the mind of another person. The whole idea of empathy is gone. We are now part of this giant machine where every second we have to take out a device and contribute our thoughts and opinions.  [more]

NYTimes, 7.16.10: Tweet Less, Kiss More

Highly recommended. 

Mr. Herbert uses his bully pulpit as NYTimes columnist to join the barricades to protect civilization against information technology, aka the internet.  Note this:

There’s a character in the August Wilson play “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” who says everyone has a song inside of him or her, and that you lose sight of that song at your peril. If you get out of touch with your song, forget how to sing it, you’re bound to end up frustrated and dissatisfied.

As this character says, recalling a time when he was out of touch with his own song, “Something wasn’t making my heart smooth and easy.”

I don’t think we can stay in touch with our song by constantly Twittering or tweeting, or thumbing out messages on our BlackBerrys, or piling up virtual friends on Facebook.

We need to reduce the speed limits of our lives. We need to savor the trip. Leave the cellphone at home every once in awhile. Try kissing more and tweeting less. And stop talking so much.

Listen.

Other people have something to say, too. And when they don’t, that glorious silence that you hear will have more to say to you than you ever imagined. That is when you will begin to hear your song. That’s when your best thoughts take hold, and you become really you.   [more]

Juan and Alice say... Happy Birthday, Esther Dyson!

If one is very, very blessed, there will appear two or three teachers who will completely change our view of the world and point us towards undiscovered continents of understanding and wisdom.  So, I've been especially blessed.

Esther Dyson, through her writings and conferences, taught me more about information technology that I could have imagined.  But more than just that, she taught me how to think.  And even more than that, Ms. Dyson taught me how to think about thinking. 

On this day in 1951, Ms. Dyson was born in Zurich and this small corner of the world has never been the same.  So I will join my voice with Juan and Alice and wish Ms. Dyson a very happy birthday and wish her many, many more. 

Thanks for everything. 

Clay Shirkey: Why Facebook has Surplanted Minesweeper as Time Waster.

I've written about the great work Clay Shirkey has been doing regaring online and social media. Perhaps you haven't had a chance to read his new book, Cognitive Surplus. If that's the case, and you'd like an appetizer before the entree, I'm sharing with you a few minutes of Mr. Shirkey's brilliance as relayed to us by Big Think.  Please make the time to watch and learn. 

Facebook Creates Own International Currency.

How big is Facebook?  Are you sure you want to know?  Really?  Then ask yourself a question:  Does the company you work for have its own currenny, i.e. its own money accepted around the world? 

Let's say you work for one of the large companies in Silicon Valley:  Cisco.  Does Cisco have its own currency?  No.  Or another company here in the Bay Area, Safeway.  Safeway comes close because it has its own prepaid cards, and that's what Facebook is creating with the help of a company in Malaysia.  (Malaysia?  Great company, but why go so far to create Facebook Credits?  Oh, of course.  It's off shore.) 

Here's the quick reporting from Business Week / Bloomberg:

Facebook users may buy credits to use in games such as Farmville, developed by San Francisco, California-based Zynga Game Network Inc., which attracts more than 62 million players monthly, according to Facebook’s website.

MOLPoints will be available in cybercafés, 7-Eleven Inc. convenience stores and online banks...

Some of us, well that would be me, aren't quite sure we (I) understand the notion of life in this new fangled virtual world.  If that's the case for you, perhaps you'll want to follow my lead and spend some time digesting the new issue of First Monday, an online publication you really ought to learn more about and appreciate.  In the current edition, one finds the following stories:

Seller Activity in the Virtual Marketplace

My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft

And this very interesting article,

Pirates of Silicon Valley: State of exception and dispossession in Web 2.0

Which includes this gem

Our conclusion is then that the definitions of and attitudes towards legitimate piracy is very much in the air right now.

Indeed.

Overall, please visit First Monday.

Jakob Nielsen, t/ Smartest Guy in the Room, on eBook Usability.

Jakob Nielsen.  You're already familiar with him and his work because you've been paying attention to web design issues during the past ten years.  He's carved our a well-deserved reputation for knowing more about web design than anyone else.  Period.  

So, I was Very Excited when I discovered Mr. Nielsen turned his high beams onto the subject of eBooks because, as you know, dear reader, eBooks make my short list of interests / obsessions. 

Here's a link to Nielsen's report, and, below are some of the salient points:

(Love this...)  On each device, we asked each user to read a short story by Ernest Hemingway. We picked Hemingway because his work is pleasant and engaging to read, and yet not so complicated that it would be above the heads of users.  (Yes, that would be Hemingway, not too complicated.)  

The iPad measured at 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the Kindle measured at 10.7% slower than print. However, the difference between the two devices was not statistically significant because of the data's fairly high variability.  (Hooray for books!)

Most of the users' free-form comments were predictable. For example, they disliked that the iPad was so heavy and that the Kindle featured less-crisp gray-on-gray letters. People also disliked the lack of true pagination and preferred the way the iPad (actually, the iBook app) indicated the amount of text left in a chapter.

I didn't seen anything metric on trying to read in sunshine, which is where the Kindle is supposed to shine over the iPad, but it might appear in the full report on in the next report.

Godspeed, Mr. Nielsen.  Godspeed. 

Are We Worried Yet? CyberWar.

I've written before about Cyber Security, Internet Security, what-you-will and have been professional interesting in the issue for a long, long time.  Eventhough I'm an English Major, I've been able to teach myself enough about how the internet works to believe "internet security" is a non sequitur.  Or, as Mr. Scott McNealy once said, "It doesn't exist."  We can always depend on Mr. McNealy to put things plain. 

Now, some years after the popularization of the internet, we find all types and manners of things attached to it, including some important parts of our national infrastructure such as the national electric grid and assorted nuclear power plants, air traffic control systems and, oh, just let your imagination run wild.  

There's been a spate of recent articles and news about this issue.  Most recently, today, the Wall Street Journal reports that Raytheon has won an enormous contract to help protect the United States of America from a cyber attack.

The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government's chief eavesdropping agency, would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn't persistently monitor the whole system, these people said.

Defense contractor Raytheon Corp. recently won a classified contract for the initial phase of the surveillance effort valued at up to $100 million, said a person familiar with the project.

and...

The NSA years ago began a small-scale effort to address this problem code-named April Strawberry, the military official said. The program researched vulnerabilities in computer networks running critical infrastructure and sought ways to close security holes.

April Strawberry?  This is only one of the many reasons I'm not employed by the U.S. intelligence community.  

In addition to the Wall Street Journal story, I can recommend the following:

The Economist, CyberWar

Intelligence Squared:  The Cyber War Threat Has Been Grossly Exaggerated.  This program is especially good as it features Jonathan Zitrain, Marc Rotenberg, Bruce Schneier and Mike McConnell and these are people who know what they're talking about. 

Facebook: We Have Found the Enemy...

... or, at least, a media whirlwind. 

David Kirkpatrick's book, The Facebook Effect, has been making the rounds of the news interview shows, including today's Morning Show on KPFA.  The nice thing about Mr. Kirkpatrick's appearance on this Pacifica affiliate is that Mr. Kirkpatrick let's his hair down, so to speak, about Facebook's threat to personal privacy.  If you're interested in media coverage of Mr. Kirkpatrick's book, or interested, in general, in Facebook, I highly recommend listening to the program. 

My favorite part of the interview comes when Mr. Kirkpatrick explains how Facebook management believes online privacy is a fiction.  Mr. Kirkpatrick describes how Facebook takes two steps toward reducing privacy, faces user outrage, takes one step back and then, a few months later takes that other step forward again.  And, just to ensure users share the blame with Facebook, these features, such as the News Feed, becomes an essential element of the service.  --Quite true. 

Any erosion of privacy we experience on Facebook is a cooperative effort as we users continue to pile terabytes of content onto the service every hour.  To quote Walt Kelly, "We have found the enemy, and he is us."

KPFA Morning Show Thursday July 8,2010 - July 8, 2010 at 7:00am

Click to listen (or download)

The Man Who Invented t/ Future.

Because I grew up in a remote part of the U.S. founded next to a river populated with lots of skilled labor, Fort Smith, Arkansas was center for printing and, at one time, printed tickets for most of the sporting and other entertainment events in the country.  The company; Weldon, Williams and Lick; still says it's still the leader in printing tickets for events. 

So, the high school I attended was fitted out with a printing plant.  There were two Linotype machines and a large platen press.  This meant that those of us who worked for the school newspaper labored cheek and jowl with our friends in the print shop and this was a great education on rigorous newspaper layout and design.  When one is working with slugs of lead type locked up in a chase, precision is paramount. 

Bethatasitmay, all of the above is a simple preamble to the point, Louis Moyroud, one of the two people responsible for inventing what we came to call "cold type" has passed away at the age of 96.  Here's an extract from the obituary in today's NYTimes:

In the 1880s, Ottmar Mergenthaler invented the Linotype machine. Its operator sat at a keyboard that looked something like a typewriter, creating lines of type that were formed from lead bubbling in a melting pot at more than 500 degrees. Columns of type, called galleys, would be loaded into a heavy metal frame, called a chase. The chase was then pressed against a thick paper mold, from which a curved metal printing plate was cast and, finally, placed on the press.

It was a cumbersome and costly process.

Then, in the early 1940s, Mr. Moyroud and Mr. Higonnet — electronics engineers and colleagues at a subsidiary of ITT (formerly International Telephone & Telegraph) in Lyon, France — visited a nearby printing plant and witnessed the Linotype operation.

“My dad always said they thought it was insane,” Patrick Moyroud (pronounced MOY-rood) said. “They saw the possibility of making the process electronic, replacing the metal with photography. So they started cobbling together typewriters, electronic relays, a photographic disc.”

The result, called a photo-composing machine — and in later variations the Lumitype and the Photon — used a strobe light and a series of lenses to project characters from a spinning disc onto photographic paper, which was pasted onto pages, then photoengraved on plates for printing.  [more]

Online Identity: Work in Progress, Threat to Privacy, Essential for Progess

Color me conflicted.

Tom Stoppard once said he enjoyed writing plays because he could both sides of an argument.  I can see that, especially as it applies to online anonymity / identity.

I want anonymity, not because I'm afraid to be caught surfing my friends' posts on LiveJournal, but because I really don't want my interests to be instantly commercialized.  Honestly, when I read my mail through a browser instead of Thunderbird, I am not amused by the odd advertisements Google decides to push my way.  (Tired of ads when you're sending / receiving email?  Then consider joining an interesting conspiracy.  Somepeople are including words such as suicide, death, caskets and other Edward Gorey-esqe notions in one-point type in their signatures.  Apparently, when Google parses these messages, the company elects not to push ads.  --Wise choice.  Easy, if morbid, hack.)

But I digress. 

There are perfectly good and honorable and courageous reasons to be anonymous online.  Consider those politically active folks in China, I mean the ones who are working to reform the current government.  I think it's a really good idea that they're anonymous. 

Then, I can see some great reasons why identity is so important.  I've worked on behalf of people who want to sell stuff online and this activity is rather tricky.  Really good identity would make this a safer and more satisfying.  Furthermore, I want to know that the person who sent me a message is really the person who claims to have sent me the message.  --Rather fundamental, eh?  Right now, it's a matter of trust.  Have you ever received a text message from your husband only to find out it's from one of your kids?  Better still, have you ever received a call from your wife only to find out that it's your kid using your wife's cellphone?  This can be rather embarrassing if one spies the caller id and decides to speak words of love and affection as a greeting. 

Esther Dyson studied this issue Long and Hard back in the day and I highly recommend wandering through her stacks of past issues.  Her newsletters are a post-graduate course on everything most important in technology.  Most recently, the Famous Ms. John Markoff of the NYTimes has checked in with his take on the issue, Taking the Mystery Out of Web Anonymity.  Herewith:

In effect, the approach would create a “walled garden” in cyberspace, with (virtually) safe neighborhoods and bright (cyber) streetlights to establish a sense of a trusted community.

Mr. Schmidt described it as a “voluntary ecosystem” in which “individuals and organizations can complete online transactions with confidence, trusting the identities of each other and the identities of the infrastructure that the transaction runs on.”

Still, the administration’s plan has divided privacy rights activists. Some applaud the approach; others are apprehensive. “It seems clear,” Lauren Weinstein, the editor of Privacy Journal, wrote “that such a scheme is a pre-emptive push toward what would eventually be a mandated Internet ‘driver’s license’ mentality.”

The News for Nervous Parents Isn't Getting Better.

So, your kid is on Facebook and they've "friended" you and assigned you to the online equivalent of a dead letter box because you're on a friend list that's probably called "Parents Suck" and you never, ever see any postings eventhough beloved child is spending five hours a day feeding the Facebook machine. 

You're pissed off and want the two guys in the picture to the left to help you out.  They have post-its.  They have sharpies in a rainbow of colors.  They have a white board and a Moleskine notebook.  And their physiognomy belies too much time in front of their mulit-monitor displays.  (As if I don't live in a glass house.) 

Bethatasitmay, the New York Times spills some big ink on services paranoid and cautious parents can use to help ensure their little ones are playing nicely on the net.  It's an interesting and compelling idea but let me show you this extract that sums up the reporter's findings:

The companies charge for subscriptions; the lowest costs $10 a month or $100 a year. For harried parents, the question is: Are they worth it?

Certainly not for people who are Web-savvy. The services gather data that can be freely collected with a bit of ardent Web searching.

Okay?  Feel better?  No?  Neither do I.  As someone who is, by any measure, "web savvy," I won't embarrass myself by sharing with you exactly how much I'd be willing to pay for an effective service.  Instead, I will share with you what I believe to be effective parenting on this issue:

1.    Does your kid really, really need a computer or want a computer?  Wouldn't a nice, powerful desktop with a ass-kicking display centrally located in, say, the kitchen where the parent can parent by watching what's crossing the screen when the kid is online.  Let me share this Received Wisdom with you:  If you give your kid a computer, you need to understand that you will have very little control over what happens next.  As much as the makers of NetNanny would like you to believe otherwise, it is not a solution.  Best case, it's a warning system.  Worst case, it is an investment your kid will overturn using well-documented cracks and hacks. 

Or, let's say you're a real mastermind and you've taken your Linksys router and re-imaged it with the fabulous software known as dd-wrt (highly recommended) and this software let's you manage, down to the last inch, what websites your kids can access and when.  And that slapping sound you hear is you patting yourself on your back.  Yeah.  Even that doesn't work because four of your neighbors are running open access points you kid can see from her room. 

No.  Bestowing a computer to your kid is squeezing out all the toothpaste from the tube and you already know it isn't going back in. 

2.    Let's say that your kid really needs to Facebook or run the risk of becoming a social pariah or merely stunted.  Then, what you need to somehow manage (and good luck with this) is to somehow make sure that you can see what your kid is doing from your own Facebook account.  I describe above how your kid can shut you out by putting you on a friends list that's the equivalent of a gulag in Siberia.  But that's where you're going to have to figure out how to parent through this knothole.  My experience indicates this situation leads to confrontation and / or your kid retreating ever deeper and further behind the privacy settings Facebook is actually improving.  Her ability to screen her Facebook from strangers is the same way she will hide from you, dear.  Remember, she's probably just as good as you are with these tools, if not better.  

3.    Life abhors vacuums and boredom is a huge vacuum that is Quite Easily Filled with the Infinite Internet.  A vacuum is probably symptomatic of some sort of parenting gap that can be spanned with chores, outside activities (gardening?), the library (even if they do have online workstations) and sports.  How about homework?  Extra credit assignments?  A hobby like model building?  Skateboarding?  I know, a part-time job!  --You get the picture. 

Because some of you know me, you know that I'm not writing to you from some Perfect Perch where I've untangled all these issues.  However, I've thought about this issue probably more than you have and I have experience born from running down all sorts of dark alleys and dead end streets on this information superhighway.  These perambulations haven't made me any smarter, but I certainly know what the garbage smells like.  

Okay? 

The Clock is Ticking, Dear. The 168 Hour Week.

The thread on personal productivity is vividly colored and more like a rope really.  Recently (let's say during the past five years) the topic leader has been Getting Things Done, penned by author in recovery David Allen. Now, there's a new book that looks like it might step into the bright and favorable light of public approval. 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam was reviewed in yesterday's WSJ and the notice was both favorable and interesting.  Joseph Tartakovsky, the reviewer, could help himself from taking a few sly pokes at Ms. Vanderkam's POV:

What does have intrinsic worth? Exercise, for one, and efficiency itself. While waiting on a Chef Microwave to cook, Ms. Vanderkam is "in the habit of dropping to the floor and holding a plank pose." She counts minutes, literally, suggesting that we make calls while doing dishes, "pray" while waiting for the elevator, or "study a painting" in the moments before a conference call.

Mr. Tartakovsky also makes the point that the book could have made a great article in Real Simple magazine. 

Other notices have been less qualified.  Seth Godin writes, "We so often live our lives day by day. Laura wants us to think about doing it hour by hour. Living this mantra by example, she gets more done in a day than most of us do in a week."  And Publishers Weekly has this to say, "But given that the author seems to be targeting a very rarefied echelon of upper-middle-class working moms (like herself), the book might have very limited appeal. More alienating, though, is her insistence on pummeling the life out of life. Vanderkam's vision may yield plenty of time to pursue worthy activities, but it's a life leached of color or spontaneity."  Ouch.  Yes, from what I've read of the book, one will need to be in that "rarefied echelon of upper-middle-class" to effect Ms. Vanderkam's suggestion.  Nevertheless, it looks like important material to consider. 

WSJ: Hamlet's Blackberry. Really.

Today's Wall Street Journal brings us a review of another book to shelve next to Clay Shirkey's Cognitive Surplus, Jaron Laneir's You Are Not a Gadget, Nicholas Carr's The Shallows and a couple of other books I need to find out about. 

David Harsany reviews the book and writes this:

It convincingly argues that we've ceded too much of our existence to what he calls Digital Maximalism. Less scold and more philosopher, Mr. Powers certainly bemoans the spread of technology in our lives, but he also offers a compelling discussion of our dependence on contraptions and of the ways in which we might free ourselves from them. I buy it. I need quiet time. [more]

So, I haven't read the book yet, but it seems to me to be a worthy addition to the ever lengthening list.

Shirky v. Carr: The Steel Cage Match Edition.

In previous posts, I've noticed the publication of new books by Nicholas Carr, The Shallows and Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus.  The Big Press is starting to notice this books too and how they are shaping how we think about and understand the impact of the internet on us and society.  A huge wave of ink about these books is breaking over us.  Carr is receiving more attention than Shirky because he's more mainstream, better connected and has the more dire and colorful thesis.  (We can always count on the cameras to focus on the bigger fire.)

The Wall Street Journal spilled a ton of ink on Saturday, June 5, on both books and set up byline duel between Shirky and Carr on the front page of the Weekend section.  I found this interesting because I find the two books to be more complementary than competitive (and I want to put Jaron Lanier's book, You Are Not a Gadget, in the same bin just for the sake of completeness).  Leave it to the media, including my beloved Wall Street Journal, to find or create unnecessary dualities.  

Here are two extracts from the face-off:

Shirky

The response to distraction, then as now, was social structure. Reading is an unnatural act; we are no more evolved to read books than we are to use computers. Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read. Now it's our turn to figure out what response we need to shape our use of digital tools. [more]

Carr

What we seem to be sacrificing in all our surfing and searching is our capacity to engage in the quieter, attentive modes of thought that underpin contemplation, reflection and introspection. The Web never encourages us to slow down. It keeps us in a state of perpetual mental locomotion.  [more]   

Please read and discuss.

NYTimes, 6.4.10: Stray Quesitons for Nicholas Carr

The most fun I've had in the past seven years is watching the kerfuffle caused by Nicholas Carr's article in the Harvard Business Review, IT Doesn't Matter (later put between hardcovers and re-titled Does IT Matter).

He's back.  His new book is The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and it looks like it might be a winner.  Carr's interviewed on the NYTimes website and the interview is a real hoot:

What role does the Internet play in your writing life?

It plays a very beneficial role in helping me to do research efficiently, to find, very quickly and with a minimum of effort, relevant books, articles, and facts. At the same time, it plays a very damaging role in constantly disrupting my train of thought and leading me down endless rabbit holes. Robert Frost had a lover’s quarrel with the world. I’m having a lover’s quarrel with the Net.  [more]

Carr might have kicked off the opinion wave that Jaron Lanier and Clay Shirky are riding and, frankly, I deeply enjoy reading anything contrarian about Our Brilliant Online Future, especially when those opinions are as well-developed and articulate as Messrs. Carr, Shirky and Lanier. 

AT&T Unlimited Dataplan: Same as it Never Was

For better or worse, I've been a moderate early adopter.  I try, very hard, not to invest an any  software or hardware and feel a bit more adventurous when it comes to web based offerings that are free and don't blatantly violate my privacy or that of my friends and business associates. 

So, I didn't invest in a first or second generation iPhone but, as I was already an AT&T customer, was okay buying into a third generation iPhone and I've been very pleased.  I was a bit less than pleased when my first born had to have an iPhone.  A $30 / month unlimited data plan for a junior in high school seemed a bit excessive.  After all, I couldn't expense it or write it off my taxes. 

So it was with a certain amount of chagrin and remorse that I read about AT&T ending its unlimited plan.  David Pogue at the NYTimes says that AT&T's new dataplan might save some consumers money and this is either an indication of Mr. Pogue's astute reportorial skills or AT&T's crack public relations team or a combination of the two.  I'll leave that issue alone for the time being as it might be completely unimportant.  Bethatasitmay, I now find myself in the position of regretting not getting my wife and second child an iPhone when the getting was good.  I might be able to socially engineer something from my friendly AT&T rep down the street but have learned not to rely on the kindness of multinational corporations.  

My head is still stuck in the longago days of internet ISPs who didn't know better than to charge a flat rate back in the day when we weren't watching television online or downloading the complete works of Johnny Mathis.

Web Worker Daily, 5.26.10: 5 Problems With Measuring Social Marketing

When I took a first look at this post from Web Worker Daily, I thought it might be an interesting post on how we might commercialize social media on behalf of our clients.  Then, I read this:

I’m pulling my hair out, and not because there is no way to measure these things, but because I feel that we’re limiting ourselves by using antiquated ways of measuring online activity and interactions. We are also hamstrung by how each site, network and tool defines and dictateaus measurement in their own proprietary terms.

So while we can construct measurement grids, and gather metrics such as friends, fans, followers, connections, likes, comments, posts, views, downloads, @’s, DM’s, retweets, and the like, we are still at the mercy of the companies that develop these sites and tools we’re using. And I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice that these companies often seem to have little or no strategic consideration for their business users (Facebook, anyone?).  [more]

So, in my humble opinion, the author may be missing the point.  When selling social media, one must, must, must make is measurable on its contribution to sales.  Period.  exclamation mark.  We didn't something so completely measurable and then miss the point about why we measure.  I've worked very hard to measure the benefit of public relations and finally found a couple of ways to skin that cat.  Regarding anything internet based, we have a special obligation to our clients -- and to ourselves to deliver real, meaningful measurement that is not only descriptive but prescriptive as to how to make our programs more effective.  --Heaven forbid we cede social media to ... advertising. 

Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky: What to read next

About a million years ago, when the internet was navigated with command line and one had to know what to do when confronted with "$" on the VT200 emulator, I joined a merry band of folks on a NYC community call Panix, still to this day, a high-quality, high-value vista on the internet superhighway.  Right away, I knew I was lost and needed help.  The Panix community was populated with Very Busy and Very Talented people, some of whom were happy to lend a hand to us hopeless newbies and clays was particuarly patient and helpful.  I came to learn that clays was the nom du net for Mr. Shirky who would become famous far beyond the Panix neighborhood. 

clays grew up and did a lot of good consulting work for, among others, Nokia, the BBC, Newscorp, Microsoft, BP, Global Business Network, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Navy, the Libyan government, and Lego.  Because he's a pretty good writer too, he's been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times, Harvard Business Review and Wired.  He has a great perch at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University where Stacey Horn of EchoNYC     (another pioneer) has taught. 

Anyway, clays has already written a great book, Here Comes Everybody,  but his new book, Cognitive Surplus, looks to be even better.  Here's an extract from the flap copy:

Since we Americans were suburbanized and educated by the postwar boom, we've had a surfeit of intellect, energy, and time-what Shirky calls a cognitive surplus. But this abundance had little impact on the common good because television consumed the lion's share of it-and we consume TV passively, in isolation from one another. Now, for the first time, people are embracing new media that allow us to pool our efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind expanding-reference tools like Wikipedia-to lifesaving-such as Ushahidi.com, which has allowed Kenyans to sidestep government censorship and report on acts of violence in real time.

Shirky argues persuasively that this cognitive surplus-rather than being some strange new departure from normal behavior-actually returns our society to forms of collaboration that were natural to us up through the early twentieth century. He also charts the vast effects that our cognitive surplus-aided by new technologies-will have on twenty-first-century society, and how we can best exploit those effects. Shirky envisions an era of lower creative quality on average but greater innovation, an increase in transparency in all areas of society, and a dramatic rise in productivity that will transform our civilization.

The potential impact of cognitive surplus is enormous. As Shirky points out, Wikipedia was built out of roughly 1 percent of the man-hours that Americans spend watching TV every year. Wikipedia and other current products of cognitive surplus are only the iceberg's tip. Shirky shows how society and our daily lives will be improved dramatically as we learn to exploit our goodwill and free time like never before.

Okay, I'm hooked.  Can't wait.