Context & Continuity

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.

 

Local Heroes: Stewart Brand.

You already know the facts and the legend, Stewart Brand.  Considering the length of time he's been in the public eye, he's done an amazing job of making important contributions to the public dialog and understanding on a freakishly regular basis beginning all the way back to The Whole Earth Catalog.

I've written before about how I spent the formative years of my youth relentlessly enscounced in the Carneige Library, Fort Smith, Arkansas.  There, some of the oversized books were kept out for display and The Whole Earth Catalog was constantly on one of the reading desks.  For an ordinary boy with a fascination with tools, this was an amazing way to while away my hours.  Many hours.

This week, the Wal Street Journal decided to pay attention to Brand and spills some significant ink on a lovely color photo.  The occasion is the publication of his new book, Whole Earth Discipline wherein, among other things, he makes a case for nuclear energy.

Notice this from the interview:

I think I was the most prolific reader of books in the world for a while in the Whole Earth Catalog days. I was basically reviewing 10 books a day, 20 books a day. So I developed a pretty rapid way of sucking the marrow out of a book.

Often the first place I'll go is the index because I'll be looking for what does this person know, what do they refer to? I'm looking for the shortcut. I'll read the first line to see if they know how to start a book. I'll look around for a part of this [book] that I think I know about and see how what they know compares to what I know. And am I learning stuff. [more]

 

 

 

Mahler: A Complete Update on the Occasion of his 150th Birthday.

We (that would be you and me, Sarah) are blessed with an amazing selection of amazing recordings of Mahler's symphonies.

The first one that comes to mind is the insanely wild Bernstein / Columbia complete recording.  Completests will note that Berstein's second recording of the complete Mahler Symphones for Deutsch Gramophone is better only on the merit of its sonic fidelity.

The next one that comes to my mind is by Bernstein's protege, Michael Tilson Thomas and I don't think I'm including that here just because Maestro Thomas is the home town team.  This version is more thoughtful than passionate and perhaps that's because Maestro Bernstein had a monopoly on passion.

A recent issue of the Forward includes a story about Mahler on the occasion of a his 150th birthday and EMI's release of a sixteen-disk collection of Mahler's complete works with no less than nine, count them, nine comparative performances of "I Am Lost to the World."  The EMI edition, Mahler: The Complete Works, 150th Anniversary Box, is price only at $48.18 at Amazon and strikes me as a bargain, especially in light of the fact the conductors for the set include Simon Rattle, John Barbirolli, Otto Klemperer, Klaus Tennstedt and George Szell.  That's a line up that would do the Yankees proud.

I haven't read many reviews yet of this edition, but am confident it's a good investment and as soon as I'm able to scratch together the investment, I'll let you know what I think.

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."

Stoppard Penning BBC2 Programme: Ford Maddox Ford's Parade's End.

One of the more humbling experiences springing from putting so many and so many diverse opinions onto the internet is when we must admit our deficiencies.  Our imperfections are usually on parade and quite clear to anyone who can parse a sentence, merely spell, or has a much better grip on the material on which I comment and opine.  Deficiencies, for me, are usually confessional as in, "I've never read anything by Ford Maddox Ford but if Tom Stoppard has decided to invest a slice of his life dramatizing it for BBC2, then count me in. --I should be receiving an Everyman's edition of the work by the end of the week.  But enough about me.  Here's an excerpt from the article in the Guardian:

Ford's tetralogy, published between 1924 and 1928, established him as one of the country's finest novelists. He died in 1939. Stoppard is reported to be hopeful that the BBC2 drama will restore Ford's reputation, placing him alongside authors like DH Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh in the pantheon of early 20th century greats.

Ben Stephenson, head of drama commissioning at the BBC, told the Independent: "Tom Stoppard is without a doubt one of the world's finest writers and we are thrilled to welcome him to the BBC with his extraordinary, witty and hugely complex take on a complex work."

Mr. Stoppard has a long relationship with the BBC.  If one casts about the internet, one will be rewarded with audio from his many radio productions including The Real Thing and Rock 'n Roll.  (Remember to say your prayers for someone to produce an audio version of The Coast of Utopia.)  And I can recommend all of them.  The production of Parade's End will be a five-part television production. 

Of course as I find out more about the production, rest assured, you, gentle reader will be informed. 

PS:  If you want to buy the book from Amazon, please click on the image of the cover.

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? 

Happy Birthday, Brazil: @ t/ Intersection of Interest

I expect I'm like many others who are fascinated with a dystopian imagining of the future because we believe dystopia is far more believable because it's far more likely than utopia.  So, when the theme of dystopia intersects with Terry Gilliam and Tom Stoppard, well, I'm all in. Someone brought it to my attention that this is the twenty-fifth anniversary of Brazil, so this is an excellent excuse to notice it here.  

First Terry Gilliam shares an interesting quality with Orson Welles:  Sometimes there creative imagination greatly outstrips the commercial resources necessary to realize their vision.  And in this vein Gilliam and Wells share the distinction of trying, and spectacularly failing to make a movie from Don Quixote.  Mr. Gilliam's movies are always visually spectacular, and, in an of itself, this is good enough reason to see them over and over again. 

Regarding Mr. Stoppard's contribution, who knows.  He shares the writing credit with Mr. Gilliam and Charles McKeown, who also helped Mr. Gilliam with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and shares a writing credit for Ripley's Game. 

Finally, regarding dystopia:  watching Brazil is much like a ride on a fantastical roller coaster, twisting and turning and zipping in and out of tunnels along the way.  However, this is a roller coaster that, instead of safely coasting to stop back at the platform, it jumps off the track and smashes straight into a cement block wall.  (That's a spoiler, isn't it.  Sorry.)  When I watched it the first time, it felt as if I had been struck in the chest, and, honestly, I couldn't watch it again for several years.  Even today, I have difficulty sitting through it.  But in spite of, or because of, this, I think it's a work of art and wish it all the best over the many more years to come. 

NYTimes, Technology & Its Discontents, part 31.

Herewith, your warning:  The Sunday NYTimes Magazine is cracking off another in its series "This Technology Stuff Might Not be Too Good." 

Actually, the article went online around Tuesday of this week, but I've been holding back on mentioning it here because I want to support those of us who read the deadtree edition. 

Here are some of the lessons from the article, The Web Means the End of Forgetting:

• People have lost their jobs, and been turned down jobs, due to items they've posted online. 
  
• As the title suggests, the web makes it very difficult for society to forget our mistakes (and some of us of a certain age that dates back to the dark ages can commence snickering now). 
  
• Facebook (surprise?) is strategically involved in this mess.
  
• Reputation brokers will rise and thrive.  (I'm obliged to point out that Ms. Esther Dyson pointed this out more than ten years ago.)
  
• Jorge Luis Borges foresaw all of this and more.
  
• Some exclusive clubs in NYC require members to sign oaths to the effect they will not blog, tweet for facebook about what happens in the club.  (How very Fight Club of them.)
  
• Forgiveness and understanding might turn out to be the best way to navigate this social inflection.

This is required reading. 

NYRB: David Foster Wallace on Television and Writing.

As for me, I've read The Broom of the System, and either I'm not smart enough to understand it or ... whatever.  Bethatasitmay, I love the idea of David Foster Wallace, the enormously gifted and tragic writer who love writing and reading.  So I was catching up on the July 15, 2010 of The New York Review of Books and was enjoying Wyatt Mason's review of David Lipsky's book, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.  In the review, I cam across this: 

You teach the reader that he’s way smarter than he thought he was. I think one of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you’re dumb. This is all you can do. This is easy, and you’re the sort of person who really just wants to sit in a chair and have it easy. When in fact there are parts of us…that are a lot more ambitious than that. And what we need, I think—and I’m not saying I’m the person to do it…is serious engaged art, that can teach again that we’re smart.

and then this...

The old tricks have been exploded, and I think the language needs to find new ways to pull the reader…. A lot of it has to do with voice, and a feeling of intimacy between the writer and the reader…. Given the atomization and loneliness of contemporary life—that’s our opening.

Now I need to consider taking a run at Infinite Jest.  

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]

Great News: The Real Thing @ Livermore Draws Big Review.

Now I'm tremendously excited.  The Real Thing opened at the Livermore Shakespeare Festival and received a stellar review in the local paper.  Observe:

The play's sharp humor, excellent dialogue and engaging story (not to mention some wonderful comments on the craft of writing) make it captivating viewing. As I watched, I got the feeling I was seeing one of Stephen Sondheim's brilliant marriage songs ("You Must Meet My Wife," "Could I Leave You?" "The Little Things You Do Together") become a play.

And what a wonderful play it is. Director Lisa Tromovitch has assembled an excellent cast to bring the show to the outdoor stage at Livermore's Concannon Vineyards. Jones and Le Blanc are stunning in the leading roles, creating memorable characterizations and inhabiting them fully. [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]

Yeah. We Should Have Guessed: Rosencrantz & Guilderstern Are Undead.

Dear reader, as you know, I've been thinking, and blogging about the new movie, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead.  And, now we know the answer to this burning question: 

What happens when the talents of Dustin Hoffman and John Lennon's sons are combined with the notion that Hamlet is a vampire and a project title that plays on Sir Tom's most popular achievement. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, nothing good really results from this potpourri.  Observe:

Blood spills, a "Get Smart"-like secret society investigates (as does an obtuse detective played by Jeremy Sisto), the Holy Grail is chased and the show must go on. But the farcical elements simply pile up instead of congeal and it's suddenly a very long 82 minutes.

Of course, the other way to look at it is that the movie is only 82 minutes. 

[more]

Sir Tom Leading t/ Charge Against Increase in Library Fees.

I'm a member of one of the oldest private libraries in United States, The Mechanics' Institute Library and Chess Club in San Francisco. Besides being a very nice library and an outstanding chess club, it's a terrific place to work and meet with people when I'm in San Francisco. 

I just discovered that Sir Tom Stoppard is president of The London Library, founded in 1841 and home to Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, T. S. Eliot, Rebecca West and Isaiah Berlin.  

I can't find out how much the London Library charges for membership but, according to the story in the Telegraph, the rise in membership is set at thirteen percent.  

Now, I'm obsessed about getting back to London and spending a day at the library.  And if you aren't of the same mind, then I suggest you watch the video I've embedded below.  

The London Library from Jeremy Riggall on Vimeo.

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. 

The Coast of Utopia: Voyage: Belinsky's First Monologue, Act One.

Some time ago, I was blessed to attend the "marathon" production of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia, three plays about the intellectual underpinnings of the Russian Revolution.  It was another life changing event for me. 

My favorite character in the plays is Vissarion Belinsky, a Russian literary critic who was a friend of Alexander Herzen and Mikhail Bakunin.  In the first of the three plays, Voyage, Belinsky is vacationing at Bakunin's family estate.  He's amazed by the contrast of the culture and the wealthy and the 500 serfs in service to his friend's father.  Early in his stay at the estate, he's drawn out and reveals his purpose and perspective.  It was a gift to receive this in the first act of the first of three plays that would stretch out all afternoon and evening.  I you like what follows, I'll be posting the second monologue as soon as I get it typed up. 

Mikhail Bakunin: You said we had no literature.

Vissarion Belinsky: That's what I write. We haven't. We have a small number of masterpieces, how could we not, there are so many of us, a great artist will turn up from time to time in much smaller countries than Russia. But as a nation we have no literature because what we have isn't ours, it's like a party where everyone has has to come dressed up as somebody else – Byron, Voltaire, Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare and the rest … I am not an artist. My play was no good. I am not a poet. A poem can't be written by an act of will. When the rest of us are trying our hardest to be present, a real poet goes absent. We can watch him in the moment of creation, there he sits with the pen in his hand, not moving. When it moves, we've missed it. Where did he go in that moment? The meaning of art lies in the answer to that question. To discover it, to understand it, to now the difference between it happening and not happening, this is my whole purpose in life, and it is not a contemptible calling in our country where our liberties cannot be discussed because we have none, and science or politics can't be discussed for the same reason. A Critic does double duty here. If something true can be understood about art, something will be understood about liberty, too, and science and politics and history – because everything in the universe is unfolding together with a purpose of which mine is a part. You are right to laugh at me because I don't know German or French. But the truth of idealism would be plain to me if I had heard one sentence of Schelling shouted through my window by a man on a galloping horse. When philosophers start talking like architects, get out while you can, chaos is coming. When they start laying down rules for beauty, blood in the streets if from that moment inevitable. When reason and measurement are made authorities for the perfect society, seek sanctuary among the cannibals... Because the answer is not out there like America waiting for Columbus, the same answer fro everybody forever. The universal idea speaks through humanity itself, and differently through each nation in each stage of its history. When the inner life of a nation speaks through the unconscious creative spirit of its artists, for generation after generation – then you have a national literature. That's why we have none. Look at us! – a gigantic child with a tiny head stuffed full of idolatry for everything foreign … and a huge inert body abandoned to its own muck, a continent of vassalage and superstition, an Africa of know-nothing have-nothings without a notion of a better life, or the wit to be discontented drunk or sober, that's your Russia, held together by police informers, and fourteen ranks of uniformed flunkeys – how can we have a literature? Folk tales and foreign models, that's our lot, swooning over our imitation Racines and Walter Scotts – our literature is nothing but an elegant pastime for the upper classes, like dancing or cards. How did it happen? How did this disaster befall us? Because we were never trusted to grow up, we're treated like children and we deserve to be treated like children – flogged for impertinence, shut into cupboards for naughtiness, sent to bed without supper and not daring even to dream the of the guillotine...

Yes – I've got off my track, hell and damnation … excuse me … it's always happening to me! … I forget what I'm trying to say – I'm sorry, I'm sorry … Every work of art is the breath of a sing eternal idea. That's it. Forget the rest. Every work of art is the breath of a single eternal idea breathed by God into the inner life of the artist. That's where he went. We will have our literature. What kind of literature and what kind of life is the same question. Our external life is an insult. But we have produced Pushkin and now Gogol. Excuse me, I don't feel well.

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)

Jumpers: A Life Changing Experience.

In 1977 I sat down in a small theater on the campus of the University of Missouri - Columbia, watched the play Jumpers and was changed for life.

This was just five years after the play opened at the Old Vic with Diana Rigg in the leading role and a mere three years after the play opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater. 

Somewhere in the dark, middle of the U.S., I sat in the theater and was transfixed.  This was, by far, the smartest thing I ever experienced.  It was a perfect melange of the smartest things from history.  For example:

It was precisely this notion of infinite series which in the sixth century BC led the Greek philosopher Zeno to conclude that since an arrow shot towards a target first had to cover half the distance, and then half the remainder, and then half the remainder after that, and so on ad infinitum, the result was, as I will now demonstrate, that though an arrow is always approaching its target, it never quite gets there, and Saint Sebastian died of fright. 

It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.

How the hell do I know what I find incredible? Credibility is an expanding field... Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight.

Language is a finite instrument crudely applied to an infinity of ideas, and one consequence of the failure to take account of this is that modern philosophy has made itself ridiculous by analysing such statements as, "This is a good bacon sandwich," or, "Bedser had a good wicket."