david galipeau information flow\how

New Blog @ www.galipeau.com/blog

2009-07-23T14:37:00.001+02:00

Been busy lately but in actuality, I no longer post here --- but here:

http://www.galipeau.com/blog/

The New Blank Society and Web 3.0

2008-05-19T00:29:00.003+02:00

Globalization is taking place and it's not reversible - rather historical. Inequality within society (financially and non-financially) - governance systems - including weaker national government influence - don't work on a global scale.

So the question is, 'How will economic and technology trends influence the way that society develops and what is our role in the near future?'

Our roles are becoming more specialized. In essence, I believe that the 'renaissance man' is an anachronism in our modern society, due to the huge driving force toward specialization.

No longer is a writer a writer, a chemist a chemist, or a philosopher a philosopher. They are each specialized in a subdivision of their field, often with little interest in other realms of knowledge (within their field, let alone even daring to venture outside of it).

This specialization seems to hinder progress within each field, as each group of specialist develops a highly distinct, individualistic mode of communication (a new, lonely language) that excludes non-specialist and hence fortifies the barrier of communication between knowledge fields and, in effect, humans.

Our society and the mechanism that define and regulate it are drastically changing exactly because of this specialization of knowledge.

Seems bad but not really - it's an opportunity.

We now have a chance to re-think the way we adapt to society and its influences. Global societies and their interactions are the most complex structures in the world. We barely understand it and how it works. We theorize, evaluate and research but do we know the main mechanisms that govern our societies?

No.

In order to balance the inequalitie between loosely consolidated private power (that initiate innovation) and highly consolidated public and capital power (that regulate it) requires creativity and a different mechanism of control - not hierarchical in nature but rather networked and layered.

This is where I was today in a large, rather heated discussion. The question boils down to a chicken and egg discussion. Some would believe that these attributes (networking, self organizing, multidirectional), as a result of technical innovation, are leading societal change.

My specific argument is that these attributes are actually being developed after the fact to fill the voids and gaps left between public and private power.

Global society is developing as a result of a higher consolidation of power (market, capital and governance or influence) within the hands of fewer people and thus, the development of networks and multidimensional matrices are a creative innovation of the common man or private power.

Social technology (or social media) is the result - not the cause – of these changes.

Why? How?

Our world is at a transitional moment. This transitional moment will be (or is) very disruptive and costly but that’s another 3 hour discussion so I won't include it here.

The point here is that in our (my) world, at the intersection of technology and society, this discussion helps us to define what Web 3.0 will become.

By my definition, Web 3.0 is the new paradigm of the collection and sharing of human knowledge.

This will be the defining factor on how the New Blank Society will be shaped. Web 3.0 won’t be simply be a term attached to the Internet because the Internet is changing and in a few years from now, the so-called Internet will look very different to what we see currently.

By my definition, Web 3.0 will scale to define our society in the future.

It will include inherent support for private power and the creativity of innovations and rewards to support future innovation. And it will include a balancing mechanism that will define public power and the governance models that will allow and accept redistributive equality into the ‘social knowledge sharing’ equation.

Web 3.0 will be a defining initiative for society in the near future. I hope we get it right.

The winds are a changin'

2008-04-10T17:08:00.005+02:00

As some of you are aware, I did some research on the Anonymous vs. Scientology event that happened during the first part of the year.

The conclusion of the research didn't have an opinion on Anonymous or Scientology, per se, but focused more on this unique experiment of 'online to offline crossover influence'; the fact that an anonymous group of so-called 'hackers' could mobilize a physical demonstration against an organization.

We are now seeing a secondary experiment with the mobilization of demonstrators intended to protest the torch run of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

In both cases, a very large proportion of the demonstrators were not personally involved with the organizations, in these cases, Scientology or Tibet. Most demonstrators have rather illogical reasons for participating ... but here they are .. in large numbers.

Why?

Is Scientology the most pressing 'religious' issue that the world is facing? Is Tibet the most important 'political' issue? Of course not - they are mere distractions and are, at most, emotionally charged. Perhaps that's the key - emotionally charged or better yet, mass irrationality.

Sound like a Freudian conspiracy?

I have also been watching the RSA conference closely as well. In addition to the usual suspects - botnets, infrastructure security and greynet activities, there is an unusual amount of 'channel' security in discussion. Channel security? Read: monitoring your online activity.

A few quotes from US homeland security chief Michael Chertoff:

'We take threats to the cyber world as seriously as we take threats to the material world. Please send some of your brightest and best to do service in the government. It is the best thing you can do for your country' ... and then he talked about the federal government’s new cyber security 'Manhattan Project', an ambitious and expensive initiative to, in part, monitor the complex computer networks of all federally funded agencies.

Federally funded agencies? Do a search on this - you'll find university programs, NGO programs, corporate programs and ALL government websites.

And in the spirit of 'Minority Reportitis', my favorite quote, 'The best way to deal with an attack is before it happens rather than after it has occurred'.

Speaks for itself.

At the same time, we have the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell stating in an interview that the Intelligence Community, 'must have access to Google [and presumably all other search engine’s] search histories, private emails, and file transfers in order to identify cyberterrorists – and terrorists.'

You can draw your own conclusions but it seems that these virtually initiated demonstrations are starting to get the attention of the darkhats.

Conspiracy theory?

Probably - but remember, 80% of all propaganda is 'disinformation'.

Reading and Writing

2008-04-07T09:50:00.002+02:00

I'm split into two zones - Sometimes I'm zoned into writing and other times I'm zoned into reading. Lately, I've had a reading phase - and I mean LOTS of reading. I always read Gerry - simple but straight to the point. He's the one that really turned me on to looking at the Web as a Comms tool. Here's his last newsletter brief - it makes sense [you can sign up to Gerry's newsletter here]

THE NEW WEB COMMUNICATOR

The Web offers one of the most significant opportunities to
communicators in modern history, but requires a total
redefinition of what communications is.

Traditional communications is one-way, passive and past-tense.
It is all about telling people what you have done, what you are
doing, or what you are about to do. There is a core belief among
certain traditional communicators that people need to be
"educated".

Traditional communications is not all that different from
traditional journalism. There is a saying in traditional
journalism: "The reader is not as stupid as you think they are.
They're more stupid."

There might have been some truth in such a view forty years ago,
but we are now in a different age. It is not the digital age. It
is not the information age. It is the informed age. The very
success of the Web is based on a questioning society. We are a
society that searches because we want to find out.

The Web is where we go to know, to be informed. Those societies
that want to control what people know, who fear independent
thought and action, will always fear the Web. Those societies
who think it is exclusively the job of the elite to inform the
masses will always fear the Web.

But the people love the Web. They love the Web because they can
find out for themselves, from people like them. They love the
Web because the Web is many messages, and the Web gives people
the chance to compare, rate, question, talk back, and-most
importantly-act.

The essence of the Web is action. We go to the Web because we
have a task; there is something we need to do; there is a
problem we need to solve. What helps us do? What helps us act?
Written words. The oxygen of the Web is written words. There is
no life on the Web without written words.

Written words are the tools of the communicator. But these
written words have a very different function on the Web. I
analyze a lot of government websites. Unfortunately, too many
overflow with vanity, pomposity and waffle. Some of them are
little more than campaign websites full of puff pictures of
preening peacock politicians.

Many web teams still struggle to convince their PR and
communications colleagues that on the Web you communicate by
doing. A friend of mine was worried about his wife, who had just
given birth. She was not well and he believed that the doctor
has misdiagnosed her.

He went to the Web, and on his journey to find out, ended up on
some government websites, where he was faced with puff PR about
how much the government was investing, and what the Minister for
Health had for breakfast. He didn't want to know how much was
being invested. He wanted help; he wanted to read content that
could help him find out what exactly was wrong with his wife.

He found answers, and he was right-she had been misdiagnosed.
This is the power and potential of the Web, and this is the
challenge and opportunity for the communicator. Show by doing.
Inform with active verbs. Make your words work for your
customers.

The Internet is now Fair Game

2008-02-04T08:40:00.000+01:00

Just so you know - the Internet has now changed forever.

Regular channels, including the media and 90% of the bloggers who blog about bloggers, didn't notice the IRC and the /chan/b/ activities and the 'sudden' arrival of a group of Internet activists known as Anonymous and their coordinated attack against Scientology.

This isn't an alt.2600 play like, 'c4n sUm1 h31p m3 w1tH h4x0RiNg mY sk00lz c0mPz?'

Here's a few links:

1st Contact (Jan 21, 2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ&feature=related

2nd Contact (Jan 28, 2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrkchXCzY70

Code of Conduct (Feb 1, 2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-063clxiB8I

The Economist claims that,

'it [Anonymous] is promoting cyberwarfare techniques normally associated with extortionists, spies and terrorists.'

No it's not. Here's why:

The economy of the developed world is moving from focusing on producing goods (i.e. cars, houses, food, and computers) to being based on the exchange of information. This shift may be compared to the transition from feudalism to capitalism where the power shifted away from the landed aristocracy to the newly enriched bourgeoisie. Recently, the power shifted from the owners of productive capital (i.e. factories) to those of informational capital.

As predicted by Marx, we have seen a strong shift away from productive capital to financial capital in the last 15 years. But as the new access points to information increased, the ability for speculative investments to wreck havoc on national economies (such as Mexico’s 1994 crisis, Southeast Asian financial crisis, the sub-mortgage debacle last year) became clear. Each day over 3.1 trillion dollars is traded in international currency markets. Financial capital was the overwhelming power of the state - as we see with the Chinese government owning 80% of the US national debt, it isn't any more.

Now, the economy has entered a new stage [I have discussed new economic models before, especialy the XY model] and a new class has gained power. This new class of "info-bourgeoisie" have become targets as hackers fight over the 'technopower' that has arisen from the imbalance of information ownership. Thus the recent 'corporatization' of the Internet' and the public efforts to move to a post-capitalist and socialistic economic model?

Although they have only recently raised their public head, Anonymous, the g00ns - as well as many other backchannel groups - have been around for a long time and have been active for several years. They are very good at what they do and better at exploiting what they want you to notice them doing.

Some of these groups, as reported in the broad media, ARE a self-mobilizing collection of scriptkiddies (whitehat operators) but more [certainly more than you want to know about] are individually funded by corporate, government and military 'onint', 'intint or 'nn' programs.

This is not new - this is not the beginning - this is not a conspiracy theory - this is real and it is certainly is not the end.

Traditionally, following the storyline of Frank Abagnale Jr., who was hired by the Ant-Fraud section of the american FBI, the US, French and Israeli military has been the best employers and trainers of online intelligence agents to 'search' the Internet and 'gather' darkchannel information. The creation of 'honeypots' has been publicly downplayed for several years and the skill of these institutionalized hackers is extraordinary.

But as new money rolled in, self-proclaimed "ethical" hackers now work on blackhat operations for private and semi-public figures/organizations all over the world.

Sound like a Bond movie? No. Darknet is very real. There are a reported 5000-8000 DDoS every day. Repeat: EVERY DAY. That's not including other l33tspeak activity - and this is definately not lutz matter.

Hackers are move beyond their previous limitations (broad gender based, deeper politicized, and more concern for recruitment and teaching) and have now become hacktivists. They work with non-technologically based and technology-borrowing social movements in the struggle for global justice.

Humanitarian organizations need to get more involved with technologically based social movements or face difficulty continuing to maintain their power base to the new technopower elite.

Smart people can do the research and see where I am going with this; the Internet has changed and Anonymous (and groups like them) are now public. Their call to action on February 10th will be successful and this meme will not pass.

They are Anonymous
They are Legion
They do not forgive
They do not forget
They will be heard
Expect them

Facebook's Privacy Policy - First Bite?

2008-01-16T15:13:00.000+01:00

Tip to Australia's man in New York - Micheal - and Tom Hodgkinson

1 We will advertise at you

"When you use Facebook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalised features."

2 You can't delete anything

"When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information."

3 Anyone can glance at your intimate confessions

"... we cannot and do not guarantee that user content you post on the site will not be viewed by unauthorised persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the site. You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of user content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other users have copied or stored your user content."

4 Our marketing profile of you will be unbeatable

"Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (eg, photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalised experience."

5 Opting out doesn't mean opting out

"Facebook reserves the right to send you notices about your account even if you opt out of all voluntary email notifications."

6 The CIA may look at the stuff when they feel like it

"By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States ... We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies."

Want more bite? Read this ...

Tweens on the net – constructing a social space

2008-01-11T17:33:00.000+01:00

Mattel, a large and well-researched toy/gadget manufacturer, dubs the trend “KAGOY” – Kids Are Growing Older Younger.” Recently, a few items surfaced that support this trend. According to a Jupiter Research report, nearly one-half of children (in the US) between the ages of 12-13 and one-third of children ages 10-11 will have cellphones by the end of 2007.

A Nielsen Study completed in December 2007 revealed that 35% of tweens (ages 8-12) have a mobile phone and 20% have used text messaging.

And you know that the EU, India (the new America) are not far behind.

But, according to eMarketer, the reach of social networks is set to plateau in 2008.

Huh?

Although young people (kids and 'tweens') are the largest single source of growth in the future, the rising concern about the perils of sharing personal information online, breaches of privacy and security and the dangers of revealing too much (as the media hypes at hyper speed), there will be a transition on how youth will look and use technology.

What is really represents is that investors will slowly shift from putting their (your) money into the oversold Web 2.0 markets and switch to more lucrative markets - soaking youth into long-term payment plans.

Easy cash? Consumer advertising at its worse?

Not really - the so called 'mobile advertising' will not take-off as predicted and although young internet users tend to will spend longer online; they also explore options and seek value for their money.

Examples are BlueCrest Capital Finance, which provided $10 million in new debt financing to KAJEET, a pay-as-you-go cell phone service made from 'a kid’s point of view' and sold at Toys “R” Us and Longs Drugs Stores in the US.

Tween-only websites - the cyberspace constructions of the new generation, only help to commercialize and support the definition of this micro-economy from a purely marketing standpoint.

While researching a paper that I'm writing, I saw that these results were echoed by The NPD Group’s 'Kids and Consumer Electronics Trends III' report, which notes that the average age at which children begin using consumer electronics devices is now 6.7 years, down from an average of 8.1 years found by a similar 2005 study.

Ever hear of a Silicon Valley gaming startup called Elementeo and its 13-year old founder and CEO, Anshul Samar?

Across Europe, the social and cultural gap will widen between seniors (ages 55 or older) who join the online population, and the younger generation. In developing nations - it a magnitude more extreme.

It's being proven (not yet but almost) that technologies teens use, such as cell phones, weblogs, wikis, digital cameras, iPods, and Sidekicks is changing the way that youth recognize and respond to the emotional states they commonly experience - if only frequently changing students’ physiological states to prevent them from getting bored or mentally checking out.

Sites like the the PBS tween focused website, 'It’s My Life' draws on this discourse and positions the tween as vulnerable, and suggests that risks are to be avoided through access to information and social and emotional support. However, one could also argue that the tween is addressed as a serious and intelligent Internet user—nothing on this site is ‘dumbed down’ and there are no condescending attempts to appeal to tween popular culture.

Tween evaluation of risk-taking in social environments (sex, violence, substance abuse, illegal activities, etc) and the way they look at 'faith', new age spirituality or religious participation are also changing.

Technology will influence biological and maturational changes that occur during puberty, highlighting changes in brain development during adolescence.

Technology driven changes to risk taking is common in contemporary society and leads to substantial loss.

Adolescent-risk taking behavior is a function of these neurological changes and suggests that educators (and marketers) will have to watch out and adapt.

For the better?

Time will tell.

Reading and writing

2008-01-11T01:08:00.001+01:00

book: table for one

paper: technological influence of risk-taking in social micro-environments (research paper on youth and technology)

Theoretical Man - Archetype II

2007-07-12T01:18:00.000+02:00

OK - been awhile but many things are happening ... anyways, I read lots.

I was reviewing the article by Cathy Young a while back and then I was reading Theoretical Man - Archetype II on Dannie's blog and it seems to be a movement of thought. Googled around and yes - there is discussion.

Indeed, it's difficult to find a contemporary work of research OR science fiction that does not engage with the ideas of the transhumanism or the 'next man' complex. We see this in the shape of natural evolution but also in cybernetic implants, genetic reconstruction or (my bedtime reading of) cognitive engineering and synthetic biology.

Both reads offer interesting - and I really do mean interesting - ideas and concepts but in both of their arguments, there is an element of 'conscious decision making' whereas I think that this movement is more natural, inevitable and rather close at hand.

And it will happen again and again because man is simply a combination of nature and philosophy. A product of science and religion. The by-product of our current societies.

Some may say that the rapid fertility decline in most advanced industrial nations, coupled with secularization and the disintegration of the family, is a sign that man (civilization) is beginning to collapse, even while radical religious movements pose challenges to so called 'western dominance' but what is that really saying? That the idea of a changing 'humanness' is already with us? Moving slowly but present nonetheless.

I don't agree because this argument is one sided and the general discussion has lost its neutrality and perspective.

In theory, current developments in biotechnology, including human genetics, human-animal hybridization, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, pharmacologicals, and robotics advocate both great benefit and tremendous challenges to a truly human future. But how are we analyzing the ways they may affirm or erode human well being? Aren't we basing our evaluation with respect to how we see society today?

Isn't that the wrong approach?

Under these circumstances, it is pointless to be cautious about developing converging technologies that undermining the entire basis of ethical decision-making, so it is necessary to seek a new basis for social acceptance and the uneasy relations between science (read: nature) and religion (read: ethics).

And remember: ethics, like humans, are not to be considered north, east, south or 'western'.

So what are the REAL prospects for developing a new and self-sustaining civilization or 'theoretical man'?

I think it was W.H. Auden who said that:

'We are all here on earth to help others. What I can't figure out is what the others are here for.'

And I think that this is exactly the problem. Without the concept of the singularity, societies overlap and because of this, minds overlap - and ethics overlap - and values overlap. This is nature and there is no linear solutions to be had.

Human evolution has many conflicting work streams and the critical lines are very very red. The future of man is, at this moment, undefinable.

Hopefully, it will always be so.

Tags: transhumanism, ethics, social media, religion, ...

I agree with Andrew Keen

2007-06-06T23:21:00.000+02:00

I've been asked a few times about the 'AK' affair and I must say - I totally agree with him beacuse he isn't saying much. All he's saying to those who are listening is, 'Move on'.

If you can avoid it - and believe me, many are stuck and many more will try to bleed the this dead horse - don't get stuck in the Web 2.0 sitcom - it's becoming a formula novel.

Listen, the sun is shining, it's beautiful out here and there's a big world on the other side of the 2.0 fence - now go out and play!

Tags: Keen, Web 2.0, social media, Web Next, ...

The most important discussion of our times has finally started

2007-05-22T14:42:00.000+02:00

There’s been lots of blogging about double amputee Oscar Pistorius, a sprinter who uses a pair of Össur carbon fibre transtibial artificial limbs called ‘Cheetahs ’ ... In case you haven’t read – he wants to be included in the Olympics and the IAAF has said no - Pistorius has run the 400 meter dash in 46.56 seconds and the 100 meters in an impressive 10.91 seconds.

This is notable, because this is the start of the public debate about the question of, ‘what-do-we-do-when …’

This debate will then certainly move towards other biotechnologies that result in increased intelligence, better memory and improved emotional control include genomics, nanotechnology and neuropharmaceuticals.

Of course, there are people alive today who are already reaping the benefits of these technologies. Paraplegics are using neural interface devices to control computers, allowing them to type, move pointers, and play games with their minds.

Synthetic neurons have been around since the early 90's (PDF), but recently research created a series that can take over the processing responsibilities of dead or dying neurons (conditions that are brought about by such diseases as Alzheimer’s); humans will soon be using cybernetic prostheses to assist in cognition.

But cognitive enhancements are also a way to alleviate the arbitrariness of the genetic lottery. Perhaps, a strong techno-ethical case can be made that the availability of such enhancements will help us work toward social justice, but I don’t see it that way. Together, with each society pushing and pulling us, we don't use our 'common sense' like individual humans would.

It is often said that common sense will be the remedy that would cancel out the need for cosmetic neurology but the bigger question that creates the fuzziness is, ‘What constitutes a person to be ‘more’ or ‘less’ human?’

The safe answer based on biology has a cognitive bias (after all, we are humans making decisions about humans, ain't we?).

Let's be honest - our definition of a ‘human’ is very arbitrary at the moment. We have a much narrower understanding of what a ‘robot’ is that we do a ‘human’. So, as much as we should debate the ‘man-machine’ question – that debate is already passed. We missed the debate and we are missing the point.

Don’t get me wrong, neurotechnologies, whether they are cybernetic or pharmaceutical, will offer grand opportunities to overcome physical and psychological disorders but I think the current discussion is being misdirected - the real ethical debate (and the real risk) should be focused on artificial intelligence.

I am getting bored with all the 'big media' discussions about social media tools and apps and how they can reduce the digital divide and how these 'tools' influence our society and new generations to come but it's only a literary debate - not an educated and informed debate.

It's clear that those pushing the vanilla envelope of Web 2.0 have to earn a buck but it's also very clear that those already at Web n+1 need to introduce a different mode of thinking.

In the coming decade, humanity will create a powerful AI. Paying homage to the almighty bottom line, business will use this 'wonder' to help manage our economies, our logistics and our information. But, without the cognitive bias that protects us (human decision making with all it's faults and frailties), we are in the midst of giving up our right to decide the rules.

Decisions will be made for us. And who do you think they will decide for?

So - FINALLY- the discussion predicted by Clarke, Heinlein and Gibson has started.

And it's about time - I could hardly wait any longer ... and neither can humanity.

Tags: Transhumanism, cybernetics, social media, artificial intelligence, ...

Technology and the belief of God

2007-04-12T16:21:00.000+02:00

We were discussing an as yet unpublished paper (thus - no link) about technology and Religion and there always seems to be allot of qualified people offering the scientific and technical reasons why God 'cant exist' or religion isn't true.

Clearly, the three most common Web sites are porn, health and religious ones. Obviously, porn and health are not surprising, but religion as number three is.

That should be telling us something. People want their porn without going to seedy theaters and getting it in brown paper packages. People crave religion and spirituality without having it crammed down their throats in a Church, Synagogue, Mosque (or wherever).

Anonymity and having the user be the one in charge have driven the growth of the internet as well as the online porn and spirituality engines. Technology has allowed thousands - if not millions - of people to begin to develop sexually and spirituality outside of the traditional power structures or social norms.

So if the role of religion, organized or not, is to meet human need on a social or community level, then surely technology - which arguably has transformed the way groups of people communicate - has a role in religion and thus, society as a whole.

But Plato once said that, 'man does not discover anything - he merely exhumes what's fed into him' so I did a quick poll of my students, friends and colleagues in this space and asked them:

'What do you think was the science or technology invention that most damaged peoples ability to believe or understand religion?'

Below is the top 10 of my unscientific research - I checked around on the net and these 'inventions' seem to be supported but not necessarily in this order. Either way - I was a bit surprised.

1. Artificial Intelligence
2. Creation of a standardized and free education system
3. Literacy
4. The printed and freely available Bible
5. Availability of the Pill (the sexual revolution)
6. Transportation and mobility
7. Application of economic theory and the creation of the 'middle class'
8. The telescope
9. Mathematics that led to 'logic' theory
10. Psychiatry (discovery of the 'Self')

So where will religion and technology be in the mid-future?

Clearly - there will be no centralized church structures - mainstream religion will finally understand and embrace telecommuting, so to speak.

The definition of a religious place or center will have to be re-imagined and the concept - or even the believability - of a God in the context of a digital world and in terms of cause-and-effect science will remain 'untestable voodoo'.

But isn't that what most non-IT people think of IT? Try to explain 'usability' to an tax accountant and you know what I mean.

But in the end - geeks know that IT isn't voodoo - and maybe religion isn't either.

PS - kudos to Vonnegut - he beat the this sad little system of ours.

Tags: Vonnegut, Religion, social media, God, ...

Hey Galipeau - you still around? Part II

2007-04-11T14:56:00.000+02:00

Hey y’all – too busy to write these days – my plan to take a few months off didn’t quite work out as well as I thought. Four projects – three pending funding applications - two papers – a book review and a 'wait and see' … Ubi bene, ibi patria!!

Couple of ideas that I am playing with and a few comments about what’s going on.

IDEA:

Thought this article about using Google maps in security zones was interesting (thx to Natascha in Darfur).

Nothing new here but the way it ‘could’ be used may be interesting. A new approach about to begin? Sent it off to a UN friend (and excellent photographer) that is working on a large project in this direction.

PROJECT:

Gigi poked me a while back with this (Numenta.com) and I am certainly enlightened.

A cognitive approached to knowledge and the impact of information are an interesting mashup but how does one capture this. Jeff Hawkins, best known as co-founder of Palm and Handspring, may have it.

HCI, AI and Robotics are going through some of the greatest re-thinking in it's history and rightly so - the scientists had it all wrong - cognitive theory is a small world but is starting to have a great influence on how the near- and far-future will really turn out.

Currently writing an hypothesis of using hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) theory, coupled with face recognition on a large scale project that I am working on.

BLOGS:

Nothing new so I have been following this latest 'development' on blog security and the 'code of conduct', etc.

I think that 'bloggers that blog about blogs that blog about themselves' (BTBABTBAT) should realize that no one with an independent mind really cares about this. It’s a basic marketing 101 play - not even a grad level tactic.

Understanding that blogs are simply websites that people update often - no different than when AOL 1.0 for Windows was released in 1993 started the 'online personal opinion' movement - why would there special rules? Not that I condone the threats but is Kathy Sierra the first person on the Internet to be threatened?

It’s one of the few times that I’ll side with Jeff Jarvis but seriously? If big media wasn’t pulling the BTBABTBAT puppet strings on this story - this would be a non-issue. I’m bored already.

READ:

++ Fakesteve
++ Simputers – could use this for a project
++ bootleg papers (not sure how I got these) by Derrick de Kerckhove about technopsychology - an exploration of collective consciousness as it is applied to mobility ... another near-future project potential

HEAR:

++ Zero 7
++ K&D Sessions (old skool)
++ Frou Frou

THINK:

++ In late 2003, Google had 8 petabytes of hard-disk storage. As of last week, the Google cluster now has 8 petabytes of collective RAM. About the size of the human brain. Hmmmm.

Tags: Code of Conduct, Numenta, social media, Cognitive Theory, ...

Ricky Gervais saves Africa

2007-03-26T21:05:00.000+02:00

Talking about 'making a buck or making a difference', here's a nice spoof. Stay till the end!

Thx to my Boston (part-time Hawaii) friend Rachel for the poke!

Tags: Ricky Gervais, Red Nose Day, social media, Digital Divide, ...

Challenges with technological equality

2007-03-13T09:38:00.000+01:00

I was recently having a in depth discussion about the 'digital divide' with a foundation start-up in Asia when they complained that,'We all read that we will never achieve some economic Independence unless we have open source apps, Blogs, electronic demonstrations and protests, Internet centers, $100 laptops, broadband and whatever. Which is it? Which is the most important? Where do we focus?'

It's true that we in the west are always directing which is which but what about the concerns of underdeveloped nations? What's the key?

A participant chocked up an obvious answer - social media and e-protests.

But there are catches, aren't there? As the so-called 'blogging', social media and e-protest movements grow broader and noisier, its focus will surely become less sharp. After all, everyone can agree that governments should 'do more' but when it comes to choosing between specific responses, it may be harder to teach the world to click in perfect harmony.

And there is no reason to assume that global e-campaigns will always be mounted in 'progressive' causes: what about e-movements for the death penalty or for more curbs on immigration?

I think that the voters' faith in old-fashioned parties is at a low ebb in many democracies. E-protest may or may not disrupt the sleep patterns of world leaders; but it has already made life more interesting for hundreds of thousands of jaded citizens.

But so what?

Another standard - identifying the problem exclusively as an economic deficiency - also rings inappropriate: the digital divide expresses itself also in the impossibility to use digital technologies within a considerable percentage of the industrialized countries population. This means that even when people can afford buying a computer or a mobile phone, they are not automatically capable of using it.

The Development Gateway has some great resources about education and training. This is an excellent starting points for anyone willing to train or self-train on topics such as Open Publishing, Internet security and anonymous usage, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) implementation for local needs and since recently production of audio and video content over the Internet.

But again - so what? You still need a platform and access to the Internet. That cuts out a large path for rural communities.

Recently, I moderated a Digital Divide panel at LIFT07 with Dr. Sugata Mitra of the 'Hole in the Wall' project. Here is an excellent example of self-organizing education (read the results) but it still involves an amount of technology that is unsustainable and unaffordable to the average rural community.

So where do we go from here?

The famed One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project isn't the answer. The basic idea has not changed: create a rugged, efficient, powerful but intuitive laptop and get education ministries around the world to buy it for their young people in large numbers.

True: No order below one million laptops will be accepted but Negroponte insists that this is 'an education project, not a laptop project,' but in reality, the value of the project is as a Trojan horse: You think you’re getting an e-book reader or a math helper when the real value is that kids with laptops, connected to each other and to the world will talk to each other - organize - learn - communicate - tolerate.

So what’s not to love?

First of all, much more attention is being paid to the technology than the software and more to software than support and more to support than the impact. Secondly, while $100 alone doesn’t sound like much, it sure adds up: buying one laptop for each Nigerian child would use up 73% of the country’s total budget!

So, where does this fall on the love-hate spectrum?

Lets face it - no one wants to be left behind. Everyone wants to be India; everyone wants to be a cyber-nation going forward, whether you’re Rwanda or Ghana. But once a government is actually think about putting this device in the hands of every student, you have real questions about what the classroom is going to look like. There is really interesting pedagogical theories to be discussed. What about the teachers and the classrooms in schools?

Clearly, the combination of open technologies and a redesigned education curriculum is the key but if you think about it - so, again, this is a very linear solution that isn't very well thought out.

To be effective, there are three issues that must be considered:

Economy:

The lack of opportunities for business and the low level of economic progress that characterizes most of the developing countries is certainly the primary reason for slow technology uptake. The governments of poor countries must challenge themselves with more pressing concerns, such as food, health care and security, rather than technological improvements.

As a result, the population of these countries will not reach higher levels of education and is not provided with the knowledge that is necessary to create any lasting impact or value.

Usability:

Proprietary or open source, digital technologies are still far from being simple and 'easy to use'. This issue is valid both for educated and uneducated people and is transverse to any geographical locations. Many people would still be unable to use a computer even if they got it for free.

Right now, the level of literacy skills among computer owners is very low: only 40%.

Additionally, only a few websites follow the guidelines for writing for low-literacy users and many institutional sites aimed at poorer citizens usually adopt a very complicated language.

Lower literacy, however, is different than illiteracy.

People with lower literacy can read, but they encounter difficulties doing so. The most remarkable difference between lower- and higher-literacy users is that lower-literacy users can't understand a text by glancing at it. They must read word for word and often spend considerable time trying to understand multi-syllabic words.

Senior users, a growing and very under-utilized population, face accessibility problems but again, there is little interest in the guidelines for making websites easier for older users.

Empowerment:

Most of the people who use digital technologies are still trapped to a limited use of their capabilities and are not yet ready to make a step forward. The so called digital divide has as much to do with equitable property rights, basic human rights and legal equality as it does with access to technology.

The integration of enhancing technologies MUST be added to broad projects that focus on poverty reduction and rights equality instead of the other way around.

The challenge won't be resolved with 'open' this or 'open' that - they'll only be resolved with an open mind.

Now THAT'S real challenge.

Tags: human rights, digital divide, social media, $100 laptop, united nations

Neural Internet

2007-02-28T21:57:00.000+01:00

Reading some papers on the Neural Internet - a new technological advancement in brain computer interface (BCI) research, which enables locked-in patients to operate a Web browser directly with their brain potentials.

Descartes - the man behind 'Cogito, ergo sum' - is also the name a system that uses neuronal signals from the brain and transforms them to binary or multi- dimensional computer commands enabling the patient to surf the Internet and read and send e-mails.

In Descartes (the system), the commands are arranged in a dichotomous decision tree based on a modified Huffman’s algorithm.

For those that really want to know how this is done, google it or here's a short list:

• Electroencephalographically (EEG)-controlled Web browser using SCPs, SMR/beta EEG-rhythms,
or P300 evoked potentials
• Invasive methods using electrocorticographic activity (ECoG),local field potentials or neuronal action potentials
• Metabolic brain activity measured by hemodynamic methods such as near infrared spectroscopy

But where is this going? Where's this going?

Although the functioning of the neural Internet and its clinical implications for motor impaired patients are highlighted, these techniques will bubble up to the common user within the next 15 years. That's right young moms and pops - your children (and maybe even some of you readers) will be able to access and maneuver within the Internet with thoughts alone.

The ultimate nextgen SecondLife app.

Future studies will have to investigate under which social conditions neural Internet can be offered to a wide range of users that do not suffer from any significant communication impairment. In general, it can be assumed that if a patient can achieve reliable control of any brain signal, which can be used as a binary or even as a multidimensional input signal for a BCI system, any standard Internet functionality can be implemented based on this signal.

As seen above and on Nakazawa Hideki's homepage, applications are already being used in artistic and cultural examples.

Neat but for full fledged use on the Internet, this is in the long-term planning.

In the mid-term, the plan is that we will be using a combination of a voice/neural mash to navigate virtual space. Our minds are naturally able to do simple and routine 'transactions' or 'events' - while voice recognition apps manage the complicated commands.

Here's a scenario:

[voice] 'browser, url wired magazine'
[mind] (following retina reader) scroll down left hand navigation
[mind] (neuronic activity map) click on 'News'
[voice] 'search negroponte'
[mind] (retina reader) click 3rd search result
[mind] (retina reader) click on $100 laptop
[voice] 'bookmark, print and send url to JohnnyG'
[mind] (retina reader) find 'send',
[mind] (neuronic activity map) click 'Send'
[voice] 'back'

This complete set of instructions, with practice, would be done in under a minute - in a 'look ma, no hands' fashion.

We should be planning for this - forget Web 2.0 - this is the new Internet - this is Web N+1

Tags: neural internet, voice recognition, social media, web n+1, descartes

Googlish - new language?

2007-02-28T17:22:00.000+01:00

... from my moblog via sms ...

Heard a rumor that Google has been working on a new form of mashed language communication, called 'Googlish,' a common denominator to replace all the world’s languages. It will have its own grammar, vocabulary and spelling rules.

Talk about power ...

Tags: Googlish, language, translation, esporanto, communication

Digital thinking

2007-02-15T23:01:00.000+01:00

One recent survey of eight to eighteen-year-olds (8-18 year olds) claimed that children were now spending on average 6.5 hours a day using electronic media.

Could this screen and multimedia culture impact on thinking and learning behaviors? And what does this mean for social change and the work of us technologists?

Obviously, the most notable difference in this age group is the ability to multi-task and, as a tip to Orwell's 'Doublethink' - the death of linear thinking and the integral use of multidimensional thinking.

We don't tend to see the impact but will soon - and todays youth start to excel and show their rising competence and excellence in adapting.

The journalist Kevin Kelly [the founding editor of Wired] summed up the issue very well:

'Screen culture is a world of constant flux, of endless sound bites, quick cuts and half-baked ideas. It is a flow of gossip tidbits, news headlines and floating first impressions. Notions don’t stand alone but are massively interlinked to everything else; truth is not delivered by authors and authorities but is assembled by the audience.'

When those of the first half of the twentieth century read a book, most usually the author takes you by the hand and you travel from the beginning to the middle to the end in a continuous narrative series of interconnected steps. It may not be a journey with which you agree or that you enjoy, but nonetheless as you turn the pages one train of thought succeeds the last in a logical, linear fashion.

One might argue that this is the basis of modern education. It is the building up of a personalized conceptual framework, where we can relate incoming information to what we know already. We can place an isolated fact in a context that gives it significance. Traditional education has enabled us, if you like, to turn information into knowledge.

We of the second half then of course compare one narrative with that of another medium (we read a book and then see the movie and then listen to the audio book with our iPods) another. In so doing we start to build up a conceptual framework that enables us to evaluate further mental jumps and journeys, which in turn will influence our socially networked lives.

What about those of this generation – the first of the 21st century - the MySpace youth?

Here it is - imagine that there is no robust conceptual framework any more.

Imagine that you are sitting in front of a multimedia presentation where you are unable, because you do not have the experience of many different intellectual journeys, to evaluate what is flashing up on the screen.
The most immediate reaction instead would be to place a premium on the most obvious feature, the immediate sensory content - call it the 'wow' factor or the 'yuk' factor... or the wii factor.

Here's the difference - you would be having an experience rather than learning.

THAT's the difference between us and them. The term 'multidimensional thinking' is equivalent to the idea of 'modal logics' and always requiring an additional dimension for indication and implementation - using feedbacks.

Due to the opportunity for communities to leapfrog technologies – this is happening in both the developed (8-18 yr olds) and non-developed world (all populations under 38).

Surprised? Well read on.

This is exactly what is redefining socio-economic development requirements and is why most of today's ICT and development projects are not producing the results that were expected. Period.

We now have access to unlimited and up-to-date information at the touch of a button, but in this new, answer-rich world surely we must ensure that we are able to pose appropriate, meaningful questions.
Its not that we are asking the wrong questions – its that we are not recognizing the correct answers.

Does this mean that young people are acquiring different skills?

It seems that there is currently no conclusive evidence that reading standards are deteriorating. On the other hand, there is evidence that the enjoyment of reading has declined in the last five to ten years.

Is our world too linear? More visual?

Already the visual icon is often substituting for the written word. Audio - the spoken word - will be increasingly available.

We will soon have voice-interface computers – truly the next paradigm shift - embedded in our clothing or personal effects, you might simply need to ask your watch for the date of the Battle of Vimy Ridge or ask your phone to book you a reservation for two at a local sushi shop.

Why is voice recognition such a big deal? And what about the effect on the educational/economic divide?

Memory.

That's it.

Memory may no longer be essential for us to 'experience' or 'learn'.

Huh? C'mon Galipeau - what'r you talking about? But listen.

Here's the deal - the ability to remember today may no longer be as essential as it was for those of us who had to remember such dates or had to learn reams of Latin grammar.

Imagination - that mysterious and special cognitive achievement that until now has always made the book so very much better than the film – is taking on a new role. A very prominent role because imagination and reality are mashing in the minds of today's post-2000 crowd. Here's a few question that, if asked and answered empirically, may hold the key:

What are the influences on youth/children today?
Where is the actual evidence of a new type of impact?
What do youth/children need to learn?
And, most importantly, how do we deliver these desiderata?

Is this shift transhumanism? No.

But is this the next level .. let's call it transsocialism? Yes.

Technology is not only changing the individuals role in all our distinct societies - its simultaneously changing all the distinct societies – the two don't sync for us (well .. my generation) but it will for the next and for the majority.

And – for us all - what a wonderful world it will be. Why? Because this shift promotes the ability of science and technology to go beyond the authority and the norm that is accepted in our current mindset - whatever that is - for physical and mental human enhancement.

Wow.

Tags: learning, education, social media, transocialism, MySpace

Was LIFT07 a 'Mr. Play-It-Safe'?

2007-02-14T22:03:00.000+01:00

No.

Not at all. But what was most interesting about LIFT07 is what it wasn't.

LIFT06 was about talking and there was enough of that at LIFT07 but there's talking - and then there talking with conviction which in my mind equals knowledge.

Listen.

It's becoming clearer that pervasive personal communication technologies offer the potential for important social benefits for individual users, but there is also the potential for significant social difficulties and costs.

In face-to-face social interaction, ambiguity is often identified as an important cue for resolving social difficulties. At LIFT07, and in the afterclass opportunities and blogs, the 2007 graduating class of LIFT university were overheard discussing concrete actions and reactions - both the fieldwork of commercial systems (Flickr, Wiki, Lee Bryant at Headshift, etc.) and, most notable, unrealized social design concepts.

My play on this is that we are starting to see (and question) how user behavior in social interactions can be influenced by technological issues that result in ambiguity and unresponsiveness. Read: the focus is too narrow on technology and online social tools are not enough to keep a relationship/community ongoing.

We are starting to see the need to balance the utility of social ambiguity against the utility of communicative clarity to get the 'real' value out of all Web 2.0 tools that are being pushed our way. (thx Euan)

Basically, social interaction requires face-work to keep it real. That was more than obvious at LIFT07 (or at any gathering of the social/techno hybrids).

Face-work is used to accomplish goals such as avoiding embarrassment and maintaining harmony in relationships as well as credibility and influence. Face-work involves managing the impressions that other people have of your behavior.

Technology isn't there yet. We talked about it but it just isn't there.

Recognizing this, we discussed the design of social communication tools that can be 'deconstructed' in a way that helps designers in addressing these issues.

Usability for the non-user is a great example of this. I had a short but interesting discussion about this with Jeffery Huang. I think he liked it.

We now realize that not only the users online benefit from being online. In several instances - those 'wrapped around' the online person benefit as well. So designers of social tools should also consider their 'requirements' as well.

I would like to see a 'Snailmail to a Friend' option right beside the 'Email to a Friend' link.

Rather than simply looking at novel social communication tools in terms of their effectiveness in transmitting information, we also need to consider their designs in terms of how they address users' overall social needs.

That (up there) changes relationships.

But this (down there) also changes relationships.

One of my key observation at LIFT07, as well as in my daily life as I travel and interact with people all over the globe in all ways thinkable, is that more interpersonal knowledge often makes managing social relationships harder. Sociologists have long argued that 'strong and valuable relationships presuppose a certain ignorance and a measure of mutual concealment' to function smoothly.

So - is creating identities in Facebook, LinkedIn and SecondLife really increasing the value of my online (and offline) relationships?

We might, then, think of evaluating designs in terms of their support for creating personal space through ambiguity, a goal that may have to be traded off against the goal of clarity that we usually associate with communication.

But that sounds like disconnection. And it is.

This led to a new discussion about going noware.

Adam Greenfield gave a great talk about Everyware but I was thinking about noware - how life will be in the future as people decide to disconnect or decide not to get connected at all.

The concept of disconnection was largely unaddressed - we all tended to focus on tools that allow interactions to begin with greater spontaneity, rather than on facilitating the ability to avoid, pause or escape interactions as needed. However, many situations exist in which it is desirable to delay or avoid an annoying social communication. With all of our information online - how can we get offline?

People are constantly balancing demands on their attention. Even in face-to-face interaction, balancing the attentional demands of quasi-present 'friends' can be difficult. The challenge is much greater as mobile technologies make communication with remote parties more pervasive and intrusive.

You know, (to borrow the attitude of my good friend Richard), the truth is that sometimes I prefer listening to the ring tone more than actually answer my phone.

So Lifters - what's this got to do with you?

Lots.

We all bitch about the Web 2.0 hype - but we are living the dream/nightmare right now. And, let's be honest, we know that it's not working.

The fundamental problem with the so-called 'social media tools' is that social interaction is an affirmation of a social relationship as well as communication. For this reason, the closing sequence of a telephone call between people with an established relationship often involves an affirmation that they will talk again (and perhaps even when this will happen). Online - we assume - but we just don't know.

Read: Disconnected relationships.

Consequently, a simple SMS or Twitter or invite to the 'new next' tool contains an element of social insensitivity between people who are not well-attuned to each others' behavior or motivations.

Read: Disconnected communities.

The combination of me in SecondLife and in Facebook and in LinkedIn does not create an 'online personality' in a socially acceptable way - either online or off.

Read: Disconnected identity.

All my identities online are just pieces of a puzzle. Not exactly what a few stage-jockeys at LIFT07 were telling us in that 'be here - be there - be everywhere - be everyone' power point presentation, eh? But allot of the break-time discussions were touching on it and that's a good sign.

I think what LIFT07 attempted to do is to strengthen the dialogue between designers of mediated communication systems and socially linked 'users' in a face-to-face interaction.

And, bravo to Laurent and his team, I think it worked.

I hope that LIFT08 will continue to be brave and design discussions that might include explicit consideration of how users make sense of their interactions and relationships at the meta level.

If they do - LIFTo8 will be about the next web - Web N+1

Tags: LIFT07, disconnect, social media, liftconference, united nations

Digital divide thoughts

2007-02-06T21:17:00.000+01:00

Here's a thought:

Was there a 'color TV' divide in the late 1950s?

A 'telephone' divide at the beginning of the 20th century?

A 'cell phone' divide in 1990?

Can you add to that the microwave-oven divide, the automobile divide, the video game divide, and the video recorder divide?

But seriously, if you were to sit down and compare how much it costs to get on the web in 1995 US dollars (cost of computer plus online service) and today, what would you learn?

This is from Wayback.org in late 1995, for a middle of the road PC: US$2,340 for an OptiPlex XL 5100 slimline 100MHz Pentium processor, with 8MB RAM, a 540MB hard drive, 15LS color monitor, Windows 95 or Windows 3.11, and a mouse.

Memory tells me that a dial-up AOL account account cost about US$22 in 1995. Today, you can get an online account for US$9.95 and buy a new decent laptop that is a gazillion times more powerful and flexible than the desktop I note above for under US$1000 (soon to be under $100!).

If you wanted to buy a used desktop in very good shape your cost is probably close to US$200. And it’s about 100 times better than the 1995 machine.

Oh, I should mention that $2,340 in 1995 money is $2,900 in today’s dollars.

In other words, it’s never been cheaper to get onto the Net than today. Do people need to get their heads on straight about this digital divide thing?

This is whats wrong with this argument:

By definition, the digital divide is the chasm separating the haves and have-nots in digital technology. On one side are people who can afford or who have access to computers, a high-speed broadband connection and the plethora of services from online banking to social networking to blogging. On the other side of the equation are people who cannot afford the technology, cannot get broadband access because of their location, or who have learning or cultural limitations to using the technology.

But it's not only that.

There are many digital divides: Rural and urban; poor and rich, immigrant and native; old and young; disabled and able; developing nation and developed nation.

All these factors have been studied and solutions have been debated for years. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. talked about such a divide in one of his last speeches four days before he died in 1968:

There can be no gainsaying about the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today…That is, a technological revolution with the impact of automation and cybernation…Modern man through scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance. Through our genius we have made this world a neighborhood. And yet we — we have not yet had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this.

(Read more about King and the modern day digital divide on this blog post by Bonnie Bracey Sutton at the Digital Divide Network.)

By definition, the various digital divides are closing over time to some extent. More people are adopting digital technologies as the costs drop and very few people who have computers abandon them completely.

In the U.S., Nielsen/NetRatings found that 78% of residential Internet users had broadband connections last November, up from 65% a year earlier.

But as far as total broadband penetration in the entire population, the U.S. came in 16th place among the top 20 economies worldwide in 2005, according to the International Telecommunication Union.

Pew Internet’s most recent survey from December 2006 showed the stark differences in Internet usage among various groups in the U.S. More than 80% of people aged 18 to 49 use the Internet, while only 33% of those older than 65 do. And in racial groups, 72% of whites and 69% of English-speaking Hispanics use the Net, while 58% of African-Americans do. Plus, 59% of those with a high school education use the Internet, while 91% of college-educated folks do.

BUT - If you’re a child growing up in South Korea, your Internet is 10 times faster at half the price than if you’re a child growing up in the Southern Tier or in the South Bronx, New York.

Beyond the political rhetoric and research numbers, there are real people stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide in communities around the nation and the world. It's complex but basically, there are three stages:

Stage 1: Economic Divide

In its simplest form, the digital divide is manifested in the fact that some people can't afford to buy a computer. Although politicians always talk about this point, it's growing more irrelevant with each passing day - at least in the industrialized world. We should recognize that for truly poor developing countries, computers will remain out of the average citizen's reach for 20 years or more.

In areas like North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia's advanced countries, computer cost is no longer an issue. Dell's cheapest computer costs US$379 (with a monitor) and is about 500 times as powerful as the Mac I used to write my thesis. While it's true that a few people can't even afford US$379, in another five years, computers will be one-fourth their current price. Would that all social problems would go away if we simply waited five years.

Stage 2: Usability Divide

Far worse than the economic divide is the fact that technology remains so complicated that many people couldn't use a computer even if they got one for free. Many others can use computers, but don't achieve the modern world's full benefits because most of the available services are too difficult for them to understand.

Almost 40% of the population has lower literacy skills and yet few websites follow the guidelines for writing for low-literacy users. Even government sites that target poorer citizens are usually written at a level that requires a university degree to comprehend. The British government has done some good work on simplifying much of its direct.gov.uk site information, but even it requires at least a high school education to easily read.

Lower literacy is the Web's biggest accessibility problem, but nobody cares about this massive user group.

Senior citizens face the second-biggest accessibility problem, but again there is little interest in the guidelines for making websites easier for older users. Companies don't even have the excuse that it doesn't pay to cater to this audience, because retirees are rich these days. Even though seniors are the main remaining source of growth in Internet use, companies are still endlessly fascinated by young users and ignore older, richer users who would be much more loyal customers - if only someone bothered to sell to them.

Whereas the economic divide is closing rapidly, I see little progress on the usability divide. Usability is improving for higher-end users. For this group, websites get easier every year, generating vast profits for site owners. Because they now follow more e-commerce user experience guidelines, companies that sell online typically have conversion rates of around 2%, which is twice the conversion rate of the bubble years. That's all great news for high-end users, but the less-skilled 40% of users have seen little in the way of usability improvement. We know how to help these users -- we're simply not doing it.

The digital revolution can create additional barriers for people with disabilities: for example, by creating a digital divide - a widening of the socioeconomic gap - between people with and those without disabilities, rather than helping to close these gaps.

These gaps are highlighted when the disposable income available through the disability pension is compared with the average disposable income of the able bodied. The digital revolution may be at the forefront of a divide between the educational and interrelated disparities of people with disabilities and most of society’s so-called "normal" members.

People with disabilities need a collective and empathetic approach so as not to add to the social exclusion and impoverishment they already feel compared to mainstream society. They need to be regarded as more than just the stereotype of people with lesser abilities. They need collective assurances that using technology to develop new skills is not an elusive dream.

Stage 3: Empowerment Divide

We have the knowledge needed to close the digital divide and I remain hopeful that we'll get the job done.

The empowerment divide, however, is the hard one: even if computers and the Internet were extraordinarily easy to use, not everybody would make full use of the opportunities that such technology affords. In the west - the Internet is seen as a commercial tool - selling - buying - look at my ads. This ideology is being sold in underdeveloped nation as a consumer tool - they don't need it. What they need is an empowerment tool - an education tool.

Because new and inexperienced Internet users lack the initiative and skill to take matters into their own hands, some users remain at the mercy of other people's decisions.

....................................

The digital divide, on a global scale, doesn't appear to be in the process of shifting dramatically one way or another. While some celebrate one aspect of success here and there, technology does not slow down - catching up to where others were a few years ago means that those years constitute a digital divide.

The main problem with this is that people working on the digital divide are trying to get everyone up to present day technology when instead they should be preparing everyone for future technology.

The irony is that one of the best ways we can coordinate these efforts is through a website and digital technologies — but it would have to accommodate dial-up users.

What do you think?

Is the digital divide a fading problem or a glaring one that needs to be addressed? What solutions can you envision? If you've got something to say ... drop me a line or if you are in Geneva, Switzerland - come to the panel discussion that I am giving at at LIFT07

Hey Galipeau - you still around?

2007-01-31T10:55:00.000+01:00

I have to apologies for the delay in migrating my blog - it's been a very busy time lately with lots of travel to disconnected locations. Lots going on though and I am still answering emails from the last post :-)

2007 will see me creating another new company/consultancy. I am planning to stay in the social networking/media/new technology adaption area but I am also developing a social/tech educational workshop and and naturally, broad online communication strategy - something that I have been doing for over 10 years now.

It has already started! This year will also see me off to many wonderful places - Australia, Africa, Asia - and I am evaluating a very interesting Russian project as well. I will stay based in Geneva and will be working on several UN projects as well as a few of my own.

I'll be at LIFT07 next week moderating a panel on the Digital Divide - come along and join the discussion - I believe it will be quite interesting.

I'll be adding some stuff here because I don't think I'll have time to migrate soon - or maybe I'll go to the other Panel - Dealing with Technological Overload :-)

Social Communications - Inter Mirifica

2006-12-24T22:51:00.000+01:00

On this Xmas eve, I was having a skypecast with with some people from the Jesuit Communication Project (JCP). They stated, much to my realization, that Social Communications started with the religious organizations a long time ago.

Huh?

Inter Mirifica is the Second Vatican Council's Decree on the Media of Social Communications. It was approved by a vote of 1,960 to 164 of the bishops assembled, and promulgated on December 4, 1963 by Pope Paul VI. The title, taken from the first line of the document (as is customary with significant Catholic documents), is Latin for 'Among the Wonderful'.

The term Social Communication or Social Communications, apart from its more general use, has become the preferred term with agencies and consultants - but let's face it, all communication is social but not all communication is a 'socially benefit'.

Stowe Boyd has been writing allot on the social tools and social networking but I wonder what he thinks about how religion has been using these tools lately. My Jesuit friends are convinced that these new tools will bring about the social awareness that's been missing of late. And they say that they are leading the pack of the Web 2.0ers.

IdolChatter is a good example. It sits over in BlogHeaven which list religious blogs from all sides. IdolChatter twists and turns religion into today's news - and it is effective.

Why am I on this? As most of you know, I work for the UN and have been trying to get these people up to speed on the development and economic impact of social tools. Too many of the agencies focus on technology and forget that 'social' means 'people' - that people have to be integrated in the decision making. Examples abound but still been a very difficult sell.

Why?

Because they are still trying to use what they have. What we have to remember is that a large percentage of these organization - private and public - are still getting use to leveraging a simple website. It's a interesting situation. Web 2.0 is still a distant dream.

Tags: religion, stowe boyd, social media, jesuit, united nations

just a little cheer ...

2006-12-24T17:55:00.000+01:00

Well - y'know .. happy silly season .. still in migration mode - a few mishaps but should be online soon .... and yes, I will answer the emails ...

Informaticiens sans frontieres

2006-10-29T12:13:00.000+01:00

I am doing a paper on Media and its role on the digital divide and its clear that in recent years, the connection between the media and internet have had an enormous effect social and economic development in urban area but more noticeably in rural communities.

On the other hand, considering the complexity of the technology and the time and money involved in the deployment of the technology, it is highly desirable for economic development practitioners and policy makers to review various aspects of broadband technology deployment in these communities.

To make development sustainable, we have to give people a voice and then help them to make that voice heard.

It’s our responsibility to steer the course for our industry.

Take any group of people from any developing country - demonstrate how the Internet can bring the world to their fingertips, make online computers available to them, and watch what happens.

Cynics will question if online shopping, anonymous access to pornography or computer gaming (the big 3 western uses) are worth all the fundraising to bring the Internet to everyone, but one has to pay attention to the obvious positive evidence.

Developers are finally starting to think about open source differently.

Internet access, software and hardware are all big, profitable businesses that will charge what a market can bear – and if it can't bear much, the businesses will go somewhere else. We know that.

But from day one, the Internet has been pioneered by hackers and crackers (let's called them mission-driven volunteers) who continue to pursue a course parallel to the commercial exploitation of cyberspace through the free software or ‘Open Source’ movement.

It costs a huge amount of money to operate off a Windows or Mac platform; it costs nothing to use Linux.

Source codes - standardized and shared - allow all sorts of innovative software can be developed and re-circulated to anyone who can use it.

Finally, the Open Source movement is turning into a sorta 'Informaticiens sans frontières' - this is good but more need to get onboard.

The term ‘Information Society’ has been coined to refer to communities in which there is ready access to information and knowledge, leading to sustainable and equitable opportunities for growth and progress.

In an Information Society, there is free flow of two-way communication between governments and their people and among the people themselves.

It’s not happening.

In this fictional society, everyone is informed of current affairs, especially those affecting them directly; and everyone has the ability to make his or her voice heard. That means that everyone has a say in shaping socio-economic plans and strategies of national relevance.

Some people even profess to say that we have achieved this ... but there is a thorn in this argument - the media. What do the media have to do with such our brand new Information Society?

Without exaggeration, pretty well everything.

In an Information Society, communication HAS to reach the masses. It has to seep down to the grass-roots level – to fishing villages by the sea, hamlets on mountainsides and even to remote nomadic settlements wherever they may exist.

But Web 2.0 is pushing the one-way transfer - us to them. That's wrong.

Community needs and aspirations, culture and values, indigenous wisdom and experience have to filter up to policy makers and other stakeholders in order for communication to truly improve people’s quality of life.

The most cost-effective way of achieving such widespread communication is through the mass media and especially the radio. As I have said before - the internet of developing nations IS radio.

Of all forms of media – both traditional and new – radio has by far the most pervasive reach. People living in rural areas in many countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, depend heavily on the radio to connect them to the bigger world ‘outside’.

The potential of newer forms of media – such as the Internet – in non-urban areas is also there. However, these forms of media have not as yet made their way to a large enough area beyond major towns and cities to have significant mass impact.

The concentration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in urban enclaves, as we all know, has led to the digital divide which neatly splices the world into its haves and have-nots.

Another typical side-effect of Web 2.0.

Once again, given the proper incentives (money, naturally), traditional mass media can make a difference.

Radio, television and newspaper journalists can make a bigger effort to educate those on ‘the other’ side of the digital divide about ICTs and how they can be used to improve standards and quality of living in up-to-now neglected areas.

There is as yet very little reporting on ICTs and their long-term potential and consequences in the traditional media. Yes, superficial news on the launch of an updated version of some hot technology will make the pages of newspapers, but in-depth, analytical and thought-provoking pieces on the impact of ICTs on development do not often appear.

Why is that?

As a purveyor of information and change, the mass media has a duty to shine the spotlight on this potent tool and agent for global change.

However, ICTs on their own are not enough.

ICTs depend, for the time being anyway, on the mass media to create greater awareness of the potential benefits that can be derived from it.

There are admittedly certain challenges that the mass media has to overcome if it is to fulfill its grass-roots duty. Over the last decade and a half, western media around the world has grown in number and acquired greater freedom with regard to content. In developing nations, mass media is owned by national governments.

Financial independence of the media is a positive move towards liberalization BUT this also means greater reliance on advertising which has tended to concentrate media houses in urban areas where there is an obligation to cater to urbanites’ demands. In terms of radio, this has resulted in higher entertainment content and ‘hip’ programs imported from developed nations.

Mass media - radio stations in particular - needs to break from the commercial groove and focus more intensely on rural folk as well as other marginalized groups. The ultimate aim is to create what has been termed ‘media pluralism’, namely media that reflects the needs of all members of society, and especially those whose voices have till now been ignored.

We should all do our part to help media pluralism materialize by pushing for policies and regulatory frame-works that will facilitate free, plural and inclusive media.

We also need to become involved. Make decisions. Act.

Get off the Web 2.0 bandwagon that Reilly is pushing - listen to the heart! (Wow - a bit sappy but hey, give it a try)

Support locally produced content created by local people – become your own version of an 'Informaticiens sans frontières'.

Be a mentor.

Be a volunteer.

Give your knowledge away to benefit someone.

Do it.

Act.

Designing common sense

2006-10-13T01:39:00.000+02:00

Well, the easy goal is to build a ‘thinking’ system resourceful enough to combine the advantages of many different ways to think about things, by making use of many types of mechanisms for reasoning, representation and reflection.

But there are two questions; how can we build a machine with the intelligence of a person but more importantly, why would we want to?

The world is getting very complex and quite seriously, we need help to decipher the information overload to decide the proper scenario that we would want to follow.

Read: our common sense is becoming useless with so much stimulation. We need help – cognitive help – to redefine our human common sense.

There is no shortage of ways to recognizing faces, parsing the syntactic structure of sentences, or planning paths through cluttered spaces but these all fail miserably in comparison to people when it comes to common sense.

It’s simple to focus on solutions that can be captured in the form of single, simple method, algorithms and representations, but the world is becoming so varied and complicated that any single such solution fails when presented with problems even slightly different from those they were programmed to handle.

Deep Blue, a massively parallel, RS/6000 SP-based computer system that was designed to beat the grandmaster Kasparov, has the IQ of a Stanley 7 oz. light duty hammer. Not more.

Minsky’s Society of Mind theory started it all but it looks like this …

OK – that’s inelegant – so we were discussing something simpler, based on some new mathematical principle or universal method of learning or reasoning but can we realistically expect something comparable to the human mind to be reduced to some simple algorithm or principle given the range of things it must be able do?

Yes.

So for this digital persona, we’re going to try to design a computational model of attitudes - investigating how a persona can be supported by the support of other personas or social agents

Read: mashing non-first-person non-deterministic algorithms using a simulated annealing approach.

Get the mix? If you can - lend us a hand.

Tags: digital identity, artificial intelligence, society, cognitive architecture,

Thing/thing society

2006-10-10T13:56:00.000+02:00

I've been hit with the 'Postmodernism vs. Marxism' virus. It's in my email - lots of email - people are sending me articles - stop already - you are missing the point of what I am saying.

It’s not about political definitions – the world has already passed that stage – open a door and look at what’s happening in the world today. There are no more political movements, we are only being distracted by religion, race and gender inequalities.

What I really think people are discovering is that they are confused by all the communication that we receive - all the differences of opinion and all the technology that is being introduced into equation.

Communication is being defined by the current relationship between people and their gadgets. People are becoming concerned that their lives are being forced to play by cyberspace rules. No more beneficial government shepherds directing the sheep - no more beneficial corporate leaders providing a working class with opportunity. What we have is an ever growing menu of choices. we are being forced to make our own decisions.

For western society - this is new.

OK - that's sounds hack but I'm talking about the combination of ubiquitous communication and the ever increasing pace of change combined with 'what am I suppose to do today?' complex.

We are not living in Multi User Domains (MUDs) but some people are starting to consider our virtual live as real. Others are even considering our real lives as just one more window in a multidimensional social space - a mixnet of on and offline lives.

Like Herz in 'Joystick Nation', we are starting to comprehend the increasing importance of simulation (not stimulation) in our daily lives. More and more, we are starting to make decisions using 'what if' scenarios.

Clearly, society can not be understood in terms of any systematic theory but if we accept society’s opacity we can learn at least to navigate its contours more effectively.

A sociologist would suggest that the rise of postmodernism is associated with the defeat of the revolutionary movement. A mass movement of the working class was derailed by the 'western leadership' who sought to turn the mass movement into legalistic and parliamentary channels.

In place of a battle against the ideology of the ruling class we are manipulating a kaleidoscope of competing social ideologies - not political parties.

At the same time, on top of the battle to define the global society, we are starting to see a continual struggle to decompile and reconstitute the 'self'.

Us. But more than us. Not 'thems' but 'its'.

There is a clear linear movement from family/family to place/place to people/people to our current situation of people/thing.

In the near future, we will be entertained by the fascinating developments of artificial intelligence and the shifting ground of the debate around the ability of computers to have intellectual ability and display emotions. It's just a matter of time, dear readers, just a matter of time.

Humans and machines will occupy the same social and intellectual space - it just not clear whether the machine will be forced to pass a social Turing test .... or we will be distracted by the hype and fail.

Our failure to come to grips with the current societal trends will be the defining mark in history and the start of the thing/thing society.

Tags: postmodernism, marxism, social media, artificial intelligence, political movements

Oversocialization - where's the value

2006-10-08T17:40:00.000+02:00

We now know we have literally tens if not hundreds of digital identities out there in the world for each one of us – some of them constructed by us and some of them constructed by others.

As more and more of our sense of self beings to come from these digital identities it suggests that we as human beings are becoming the ghosts in the machine.

In the future our work and social lives, our intimate relationships, our perspective of the world, our complete identities may emanate from the digital realm. This isn’t a question of Echelon or DCS1000 (commonly called Carnivore) – these two projects will corrupt the trust of the common man but for the youth coming up through the system – enough is starting to be enough.

This is not a movement towards de-socialization or more mainstream definitions like querkyalone. This is also not a deep shift like Nietzsche was predicting by naming the opposite of slave morality as master morality.

But this is definitely a trend that will continue. Why?

Long term studies (several are here) show that there are two conflicting political movements in the world today - Socialism and Authoritarianism (the slow but steady drift to the right seen in several countries today). Simply defined, the defining characteristic of each is one distrusts the masters and wants the slaves to rise and the other distrusts the slaves and wants the masters to retain and expand their control.

Let’s face it; there is a strong correlation between ‘being connected’ and ‘being controlled’ – an even stronger correlation between self identity and public identity. We are becoming more transparent – ghosts in the machine – and that opens up opportunities for the two political deities to get their hooks in.

Think about it.

Both political positions are based on the tendency to think about other people and the consequent desire to influence their behavior and interact with them and the consequent desire to control them.

Connected - most people are inflicted with this desire, it's psychologically repellant to most people that others should be independent from them, that they should do their own thing and not be codependent with everyone else.

There is already the sense in a small way that meeting people face to face is a bit odd, especially for people like yourselves whose lives are deeply embedded in technology.

Meeting someone face to face – that is, really meeting them for a purpose - may someday be a very rare, unfamiliar and awkward event. We may begin to lose the ability to effectively communicate in a face to face world by losing the ability to interpret the verbal and non- verbal cues.

Moreover, the growth in the number of digital identities associated with us as individuals may lead ultimately to the fragmentation of the self – the inability to formulate and retain an integrated sense of ourselves.

This fragmentation of our identity into so many different pieces is obviously going to have consequences both for our psychological well- being and it is going to be interesting to see just how it affects our quality of life.

Learning more about how people construct and manage identities may provide some valuable insights in the information security arena. This suggests that concepts like Kim Cameron's 'Seven Laws of Identity' are an important advancement in identity management, there may indeed be a long way to go before we can apply some of the lessons to be learned.

This is coupled with the concept of ‘over-socialization’. Wired has just started to talk about the backlash of over-socialization but I think the trend has already started. Predicted in the ‘Unibombers Manuscript’ nearly 10 years ago, we are now starting to see the effects of constantly being accessible.

But being connected is not the whole story. Why aren’t we talking about the value of the connection – the impact of the connection? I think that if we were to consider these two variables into the equation – disconnected would be a great alternative.

Tags: digital identity, privacy, social media, Echelon, political movements

Global media bias?

2006-10-05T22:32:00.000+02:00

It’s worth repeating here the metanews of Newsweek’s most recent cover as it appears around the world:

Here's the worldwide cover story “Losing Afghanistan” ... except in U.S.

Believe it.

Freedom of the press? Self-censorship? Just plain scared of the public opinion?

Bingo!

Tags: america, gullibility, big media, politics

Quality of experience

2006-10-05T10:28:00.000+02:00

I was recently at SHiFT and was discussing usability and user experience. My concern was that usability (UA) and 'quality of experience' (QoE) experts focus too much on the application/browser - to much on the 'user' and not enough on the 'non-user'.

Remember, decision making process are not unique to the online experience. Users often go between the online and offline worlds while deciding their actions.

IF we want to modify behavior, we need to look at both worlds of the user.

Here's an article that touches on these points (somewhat dry but interesting) from the Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) hosted at the Texas Digital Library.

Tags: hypermedia, usability, adaptation algorithm, SHiFT06

Political fall-in

2006-10-05T00:18:00.000+02:00

Increasingly, states are adopting practices aimed at regulating and controlling the Internet as it passes through their borders. Seeking to assert information sovereignty over their cyber–territory, governments are implementing Internet content filtering (read: sniffing) technology at the national level.

The implementation of national filtering is most often conducted in secrecy and lacks openness, transparency, and accountability but policy–makers are seemingly (hmmm...) unaware of significant unintended consequences, such as the blocking of content that was never intended to be blocked.

But hey, guess what? Once a national filtering system is in place, governments may be tempted to use it as a tool of political censorship or as a technological 'quick fix' to problems that stem from larger social and political issues.

As non–transparent filtering practices meld into forms of censorship the effect on democratic practices and the open character of the Internet are discernible. States are increasingly using Internet filtering to control the environment of political speech in fundamental opposition to civil liberties, freedom of speech and free expression. The consequences of political filtering directly impact democratic practices and can be considered a violation of human rights.

Listen clearly now.

The most commonly used circumvention technology is a Web–based circumventor. Essentially, a Web–based circumventor is a Web site that has a standard Web form through which users can submit requests for filtered URLs. This Web site has a specially designed script that fetches the request page for the user and re–writes all the links in the page to point back through the Web–based circumventor. Using this technology a user (you) can seamlessly browse the Internet without being subjected to any kinds of filtering.

This type of circumvention technology is being used by Internet users in China to bypass the filtering restrictions in that country. The U.S. government has sponsored similar technology, albeit poorly designed, for use by Iranian Internet users. While many of you may be unwilling to use this technology for fear of ... reprisal - the determined users (you again) will always be able to use this type of technology to bypass filtering restrictions.

Although governments and commercial filtering manufacturers actively target public anonymity and circumvention sites, they are unable to effectively counter distributed, private circumvention strategy.

I can't list the sites here BUT google around - they're easy to find.

Oh, and btw, here is a new study about online social networks and user generated content to be released September 15th, 2006 by the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (IPDI) called, 'Person-to-Person-to-Person'.

Typically, it's a pay-2-read but the summary is here (pdf, 183 kb). I'll try to get this online for you soon but here's a primer for non-partisan website best practices until I do ... just do the opposite and you'll get a 'partisan' best practice ... get it?

Very american, I know, BUT these practices can be applied to most web sites. Basic but good.

'Dead Words Walking' audition

2006-09-30T16:09:00.000+02:00

I was thinking of Thomas’ presentation at SHiFT. He called it 'Dead Words Walking' and I want to add a word.

Good-bye

In today’s connected society and especially for me it has no real meaning. 'Good-bye' in my world means ‘Hello’.

I leave places and friends and people that I have just met but I am just on my way to meeting others. Let’s dump the word and not replace it with another useless variation.

I am going to give it up and just smile and say 'Thank you' when it’s time to move on.

SHiFTing down

2006-09-30T04:35:00.000+02:00

Got up late this morning and missed the speaker’s tour. Shit - woulda liked to go on that. Maybe I'll see a few at the airport.

I like these conferences - takes me out of my regular world and puts me in an emospace where I don't get too often. I do too much but I like doing too much. That's a real dilemma. I should do a presentation about it :-)

This conference opened a bunch of new questions for me - but one of the low-lights was realizing again that some people don’t realize the importance of what they are doing. Society has a way of penalizing unstructured minds and discriminating against what cannot be fully defined.

Us.

OK - that sounds trite but the fact is that we are creating a brand new world. OK – that sounds even triter but we need to get around that.

Listen up - the old rules don't apply to us and every member of the audience IS making a difference whether they know it or not.

But they should know it. We live and work in a space that has to walls – no textbooks that we must follow – no traditions that must be upheld. This is a privilege and a dream for most of the 90% of the working population that are bound by ‘experience’.

As workers and members of established industries and cultures are conditioned to follow the ‘experience’ laid down to them by a previous ‘successes’ or ‘traditions’, we are creating new experiences and traditions that is creating a new society.

This is true. This is not to be understated. Be proud.

The world will see a clash in the near future between the two common approaches to change. Western plutocracy is maintained by the hydraulic model of give and take. As I take, you lose – it’s commonly called a closed fixed sum model.

Eastern cultures relay on a more fluid model based on the concepts of yin and yang. It is an open model that adapts quickly to changing forces. There is no start or end to change – it is always adapting. Sum rules are built to allow win-win as well as lose-lose situations. Losing = winning.

We have to learn this.

Any ways, this can get deep and I need to take a shower and head off to the airport.

If you saw my presentation - let me know what you think here. Thx to the SHiFT team - good show!

SHiFT reading list

2006-09-29T13:01:00.000+02:00

Sitting at SHiFT and working on my presentation and here are a few sources that are pre-telling the dilema that we face with social change.

INTERNET EVOLUTION

A survey of technology thinkers and stakeholders shows they believe the internet will continue to spread in a “flattening” and improving world. There are many, though, who think major problems will accompany technology advances by 2020. A predictions can be viewed here.

Comment: Truely a bit flat and a bit biased towards short term thinkers but still a good read.

FUTURE HISTORY

This book describes:

How human societies have alternated between centralized and decentralized societies
Why globalization will destroy capitalism
How automation will displace the capitalist and working classes
What the society after capitalism will be like

The book is available here as PDF

Comment: Long term thinking that gets a bit over focused on capitalism but also a good read.

UNIBOMBER

In 1995, Kaczynski mailed several letters, some to his former victims, outlining his goals and demanding that his 35,000-word paper: Industrial Society and Its Future (commonly called the "Unabomer Manifesto") be printed verbatim by a major newspaper; he stated that he would then end his bombing campaign.

Comment: Excellent read. A MUST!

Connected

2006-09-21T11:55:00.000+02:00

Tons of emails but this sorta stuck out for it's provocation:

Societies have alternated between:

Decentralized societies with slow change that laid the basis of a radically new type of social and economic stage
The resulting centralized societies with rapid economic growth and social development
Following the above patterns, the next stage after capitalism should be similar to Primitive and Land-duty societies.

Therefore:

Globalization will eventually result in capitalism's collapse
Government and the economy will decentralize, becoming more local and more global
Central government will have an enabling role rather than a controlling one
Devolved self-managing small economic units will perform large-scale production
Automation will remove the need for the working class's physical labor
Some physical labor will remain for a long time and with it remnants of the capitalist and working classes
The class that will dominate the next society hasn't formed yet

This class is likely to be self-employed information product creators

Way to light and not totally thought out BUT it IS interesting ... I can see that the role of government is changing (becoming less valuable to todays societies) and the role of the UN, NGOs and private foundations are increasing their awareness campaigns and impact on developing societies.

Automation is coming at a speed that not many would believe - right in front of our eyes. Employment and the pre-war ideas about retirement and education are drastically changing.

Face it - what is above is there - but coupled together, the combination of what is above is shattering. The rapid intoduction of technology and fast information flow is quickening the pace.

Scary? .... email and let me know what you think.

Disconnected

2006-08-19T23:06:00.000+02:00

... back at the end of September - off for some much needed rest and relaxation

In the meantime, check out SHiFT - it will be all about emerging technologies, whether they’re the latest internet trend or the latest social or psychological development.

The technology of social disorder

2006-08-17T15:37:00.000+02:00

Let’s face it; the general press doesn’t represent the public any more. I don't believe they have a check-and-balance function. The national press corps had become little more than another special-interest lobbying group.

Indeed, the territory the traditional media once occupies is increasingly being deluged by political lobbying, celebrity publicity and product advertising - cleverly staged ‘photo ops’, carefully produced propaganda rallies, preplanned ‘events’, tidal waves of campaign ads and the like.

Afraid of losing further influence, access and the lucrative ad revenues that come from such image-making, major media outlets have found it in their financial interest to quietly yield to new media channels.

But we live in a very dangerous time in which the right to express dissent and to raise questions about the workings of power is seriously imperiled by fundamentalisms of many kinds. Now more than ever, we need to keep the lessons of history foremost in our minds and to defend the critical discourses and practices that enable differing experiences and perspectives to be heard and understood.

What does this downgrading of the media's role say about how our government views its citizens – or in most cases - consumers?

It suggests that because ‘we the people’ are seen not as political constituencies conferring legitimacy on our rulers, but as consumers to be sold policy the way advertisers sell product. In the storm of selling, spin and bullying that has been the big media ‘hic et ubique’, traditional news outlets are finding themselves increasingly drowned out, ghettoized and cowed by the public opinion.

Good news. Finally.

Add in a further dynamic (which intellectuals from Marxist-Leninist societies would instantly recognize): Groups denied legitimacy and disdained by the state tend to internalize their exclusion as a form of culpability and often feel an abject, autonomic urge to seek reinstatement at almost any price.

Little wonder that the traditional channels have had a difficult time mustering anything like a convincing counter-narrative to the onslaught of Web 2.0 tools.
Not only did a mutant form of skepticism-free news succeed - at least for a time - in leaving large segments of the population uninformed, but it corrupted the ability of traditional media to function.

All too often they simply found themselves looking into a fun-house mirror of their own making and imagined that they were viewing reality.

Then social networking showed them what the real ‘reality’ was.

In this world of personalized news, information loops have become two-way highways again.
The done of the higher ups to ‘stay on message’ the campaigns to dominate the media environment employ all the sophistication and technology developed by communications experts are now based on the understanding and use of psychology to market ideas; public relations techniques as a fountainhead of artful propaganda so well-packaged that most people can't tell it from the real thing.

At the moment, the general population is being pushed forward to the front lines of faith-based truth. And make no mistake; this experiment will continue if we allow it.
Complete conversion would mean not just that the press had surrendered its essential watchdog role, but - a far darker thought – that it might be shunted off to a place where it would not matter.

Although freedom of information has been endlessly extolled in principle, it has had little utility in practice. What possible role could a free information play when ‘revelation’ trumps fact and conclusions are preordained?

An honest and truthful information source is logically viewed as a spoiler under such conditions, stepping between those who have and those who need … and those who are true believers.
Information feedback loops have played a crucial role in any functioning democracy but are ceasing to operate. The media synapses which normally transmit warnings from citizen to government are frozen.

Television networks continued to broadcast and papers continued to publish, but dismissed and ignored, they are becoming irrelevant, except possibly for their entertainment value.
As the quality of information diminishes, normal Jane’s and Joe’s on the street – both west and east – are being deprived of the ability to learn of dangers to our societies.

Just as the free exchange of information plays only a small role in the relationship between a fundamentalist believer and his or her God, it is playing a distinctly diminished role in the world of money and politics.

After all, if you already know the answer to a question - what is the use of the media, except to broadcast that answer? The task at hand, then, is never to listen but to stand on the soap box and sell the gospel to non-believers, transforming the once interactive process between citizen and its leader.

New social networks inflate the way technological systems operate with modern human communication. We are supposed to believe that we live inside the world of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and that salvation is only attainable via very specific technological expertise unleashed against the system.

Consider the heroes of Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters such as The Matrix whose power lies in their knowledge of ‘the code.’ It is implied that we operate in networks because computers and the Internet have restructured our lives and because global economic systems have turned us into global citizens.

‘Social hacking’ then comes to stand for all forms of critical engagement with preexistent power structures.

I’m just a little too old to believe these new media mantras unquestioningly.

While I can understand that there might be a dearth of knowledge about tactical interventions of previous societies, I am perplexed by the apparent loss of short-term memory of today’s cultural technocentrics.

The shift from internationalism to a more globally inclusive worldview came long before the age of the Internet. It was launched outside Europe and America and emanated from the geopolitical margins.

The process took place across a range of fields of knowledge, culture and politics. This revision of the world picture was catalyzed by postwar decolonization; the Non-Aligned Movement launched in 1961; and civil rights struggles in the developed world, including the Black Power and Chicano movements—all of which invariably affirmed their alliances with Third World revolutions.

This political process was expanded upon by a postcolonial understanding that various diasporas shared transnational connections and that these diasporas were produced by the economics and politics of colonialism and imperialism.

The historical bases of these movements are consistently obscured by the technocentric rhetoric.

Instead of dealing with these histories, modern discussion on globalization and new technology tend to dismiss postcolonial discourse as ‘mere identity politics and societies’.

I am a great admirer of the practice of electronic civil disobedience and those that have used ‘hacktivist’ software such as Floodnet to engage in online protest actions. But I find the willed historical amnesia of new media theory to be quite suspect and even dangerous.

The alienation caused by multinational corporate domination that many feel is just the last chapter in a long history of reactions against imperial projects.

Those that argue that increasing the use of social technology, rather than simply increasing social consciousness, would do well to examine the history of globalization, networks, social dissent and collective actions in order to understand that they are rooted in the geopolitical and cultural margins – not the new world order.

Planning superintelligence - Part III

2006-08-15T16:03:00.000+02:00

In response to all the emails I have received within the last few days - there are a few non-absolutes that most of you aren’t thinking about. This is long but READ IT before any of you send me another email on this subject.

Subnote: This is to all my friends going through their many mid-life crises – to all the amateur philosophers and ‘new world order’ entrepreneurs. This has as much to do with developing artificial life as with our day-to-day strife.

Remember, all our (and future ‘conscience’ machines) major decisions are based on philosophy, psychology and our sense of self-worth. This is true. This just is. It who we are … or at least who we THINK we are.

Our decisions – whether about our next job, our next sexual partner, our next vacation or our next stock pick are all based on evolutionary philosophy (and other contemporary factors that acknowledges the limitations on our understanding), the psychological (if not absolute) reality of values, free will and other phenomena and our desire to live as best we can.

Two points:

We live by relative values, biological dispositions, upbringing, habit and perceived choice.
We don’t know how much we can modify ourselves, what makes up happy or what we value.

That’s it.

Every decision is based on what we do not know; all through humanity and even before. I am stating that there are four absolutes. So. let’s start at the beginning.

1. The origin of the universe cannot be understood

We can see no reason why the universe (and the rules within the universe) exists and it doesn’t seem we will ever find one. Any explanation would simply become part of what has to be explained. Given the way our minds are constructed, no final satisfactory explanation seems possible. Even a newly discovered law of physics would pose the question as to why that should be the case.

So called ‘Big Bang’ theories may explain the origin of the universe but it only provides an explanation up to a certain point in time or perhaps to the beginning of time itself. But it does not explain why there should be space-time or laws of physics that might allow a universe to emerge from nothing at all.

It’s possible that a final explanation for the origin of the universe exists but cannot be known by us. Such an explanation, even if incomprehensible, seems more likely and more desirable than a universe that came into being from simply nothing. Perhaps this is because the explanation at least satisfies the deep-seated belief that everything has an explanation.

The existence of this incomprehensible explanation might be confirmed by meeting an alien species that convinces us there is more to the brute existence of the universe than we ourselves can comprehend.

2. Morality has no absolute rational foundation

There is no chain of reasoning that has been offered or that we can imagine as to why we must adopt any fundamental moral obligation or value over another or any at all. That we generally do (or act as if we do) is clear, as it is that many values and behaviours are shared and others are not.

No convincing argument has ever been published to avoid Hume’s original observation that an ‘ought’ cannot be derived from any ‘is’. Read: that no agreed upon fact of nature can tell us why we are obligated to actually do something.

Let’s face it - moral agreement and disagreement are ultimately arbitrary. We only judge another’s behaviour morally wrong to indicate its inconsistency with our deepest feelings and principles about how people should treat each other such as respect for an individual’s rights, maximizing the greatest good, acceptance of a social contract, a particular sense of justice, the word of God or whatever we believe comprises and justifies that belief.

This does not prevent us from reasoning with those with whom we share at least some values to show that behaviour is in fact consistent or inconsistent with those shared values and such arguments occupy much of what counts as moral debate.

Some disagreements can also be seen as disagreements over the purported facts of the matter of whether animals are conscious, whether one group of people represents an inherent danger to others or over predictions of what will result from a particular behaviour.

3. The origin of human morality lies in human evolution

It seems likely that our moral sense has its origins in evolution. An innate sense of sympathy, tit-for-tat reciprocity and other similar traits probably provided evolutionary advantages when they first appeared, increasing the likelihood of the survival of the individual or perhaps a group with such shared characteristics.

Culture and, more generally, the sort of human brain given by evolution that allows for the creation of culture can then take such morality far beyond what was given in evolution.
And anyways, there isn’t one moral theory.

But could it be possible that there are moral truths even if we cannot establish them by reason alone?

It seems at least possible that some prohibitions could fit this description given how widely shared are both the prohibitions and the belief of the effect on the individual of violating them; or, conversely, that some positive principles really exist, given the broad and cross-cultural desirability of certain character virtues such as courage.

But it seems unlikely that there are moral truths of any kind that apply to all significant behaviours given what we can see of the complex way psychological nature unfolds through biology and environment and the range of opinion on and apparent effects of various behaviours.

But again, moral and philosophical disagreement is mostly psychological in origin. Read this again – this has a huge impact on what we do daily and how our society will develop.

Morality is primarily driven by a range of intuitions and emotions, though moral discourse plays a role in persuading others if not a fundamental one in actually generating moral behaviour. Ethical reasoning usually starts with conclusions, not premises.

But we have to admit that some people have unquestioned beliefs they view as absolute. This will always be. It’s wrong but it will always be.

Why? Well, because unquestioned beliefs benefit those who believe them; especially if you ‘choose’ to believe in an unquestionable belief.

Setting out to believe in something without question is not attractive and probably difficult to achieve, even if it can happen more or less unintended.

Why humans choose to hook ourselves up to ‘experience machines’ (read: religion or other theological beliefs) that could deliver any kind of reality we chose is because we value our experience being perceived as real in addition to the experiences themselves.

Psychotherapy seems preferable for many because they think it effects its improvements by really transforming us -- our beliefs, behaviours and emotions - rather than by giving us a drug-induced experience.

In the end, drugs are not all that different from psychotherapy or any other form of personality manipulation including religious conversion.

4. We don’t really have free will but act as if we do

Brains are conscious but we don’t know how. Consciousness is a puzzle and probably always will be. It seems the brain alone gives rise to consciousness; there is no good evidence for a soul or for irreducible pieces of consciousness making us self-aware but we don’t understand how the brain does it and probably never will.

No matter how much brain function we can imagine understanding and no matter how tightly correlated that function is shown to be with the minutiae of these experiences, there appears to be an irreducible ‘explanatory gap’ between the most we can ever say about neurons or electrical fields in the brain and the tangible experience of reality.

If the brain alone produces consciousness then it seems possible that an artificial machine could be built that would be conscious. But we can’t see how the physiology of the brain could produce consciousness and we may never be able to know how to construct such a conscious machine; except, perhaps, as an indirect or accidental consequence of some construction.

Therefore - we’re unlikely to be able to explain consciousness but machines can and will have a form or mimic consciousness.

As a society, we will have to integrate this form of consciousness under our ‘laws’ and ‘beliefs’ that will contradict our moral and ethical foundations. I predict a social break-down when it finally does happen.

Planning superintelligence - Part II

2006-08-14T14:13:00.000+02:00

Ok – let’s take this discussion a bit further but let’s step back a step – in order to discuss how to implement super intelligence – let’s look at where this aspect of artificial life MUST be derived from – what tricks does it have up its sleeves?

Super intelligence is complicated. It is body AND soul. It is an artificial mind. It encapsulates several different schools of thought that have to work together. We have to look at:

Computational biology: bio-networks, development, evolution, and prebiotic evolution and artificial chemistry
Complex systems and networks: information and complexity, collective behavior and population dynamics, evolutionary and collective games
Embodied cognition: embodiment and behavior, language and learning
Achievements and open problems: biologically-inspired computing and technology, and formal as well as philosophical models

So, as Ramos stated a while ago, ‘the emergence of complex behavior in any system consisting of interacting simple elements is among the most fascinating phenomena of our world.’

Imagine a ‘machine’ where there is no pre-commitment to any particular representational scheme: the desired behavior is distributed and roughly specified simultaneously among many parts but there is minimal specification of the mechanism required to generate that behavior, read: the global behavior evolves from the many relations of multiple simple behaviors.

In formal terms, we are talking about a machine or artificial organism that avoids specific constraints and utilizes multiple, low-level implicit bio-inspired mechanisms that end in a transaction.

These transactions (decisions or actions) will be based on almost every field of today’s scientific interest, ranging from coherent pattern formation in physical and chemical systems, to the motion of swarms of animals in biology, and the behavior of social groups.

In the life and social sciences, one is usually convinced that the evolution of social systems is determined by numerous factors such as cultural, sociological, economic, political, ecological, etc.
However, in recent years, the development of the interdisciplinary fields ‘science of complexity’, along with ‘artificial life’ has lead to the insight that complex dynamic processes may also result from simple interactions.

Moreover, at a certain level of abstraction, one can also find many common features between complex structures in very different fields. Francis Heylighen, mentor of the Principia Cybernetic Project, points precisely to this paradigm shift with a remarkable historical perspective, namely in what concerns the view within the social sciences, using biology as a metaphor and more recently those from complexity science.

In 'The Global Superorganism: an Evolutionary-Cybernetic Model of the Emerging Network Society', he writes:

‘ Recently, the variety of ideas and methods that is commonly grouped under the head of Artificial Life, has led to understanding that artificial organisms can be self-organizing, adaptive systems. Most processes in such systems are decentralized, non-deterministic and in constant flux. They thrive on noise, chaos and creativity. Their collective swarm-intelligence emerges out of the free interactions between individually autonomous components.’

In fact, as one can see, those decision making processes or algorithms should be viewed as behaving like a swarm.

Rather than take living things apart, super intelligence will attempt to put living things together within a bottom-up approach. That is to say that it cannot copy life-as-we-know-it but must delve into the realm of life-as-it-could-be. It will have to generate lifelike behavior and focus on the problem of creating behavior generators that are inspired by the nature itself (even if the results that emerge from the process have no analogues in the natural world).

The key insight into the natural method of behavior generation is that it is reflected in the ‘architecture’ of natural living organisms, which consist of many millions of parts - each one of which has its own behavioral repertoire.
As we all know by now, living systems are highly distributed and quite massively parallel.

So this super intelligence must be a property of a system:

where the collective behaviors of entities interact locally with their environment resulting in the emergence of coherent global patterns
that provides a basis with which it is possible to explore collective (or distributed) problem solving without centralized control or the provision of a global model
that applies the formation of a coherent social collective intelligence from the observation and evaluation of individual behaviors
that stresses the role played by the environmental media - driving force for societal learning - as well as by the positive and negative feedback produced by the many interactions among independent agents

Finally, presenting a simple intelligence based on the above features, one can address the collective adaptation of a social community to a cultural, environmental, contextual and informational dynamic landscape for the purpose of complex decision making processes – read: three-dimensional mathematical functions that change over time (non-causal 4 dementional decision making processes for you 'high-math' types out there).

Therefore, the super intelligence must be a collective intelligence that is able to cope and quickly adapt to unforeseen situations including those with two different and contradictory purposes – this is the only way we would be able to control it - in a bottom-up manner using the mechanics of human-based logic based on ‘similarity’ – a cognitive term.

Similarity underlies the fundamental cognitive capabilities such as memory, categorization, decision making, problem solving and reasoning. Although recent approaches to similarity appreciate the structure of mental representations within an AI, they differ in the processes posited to operate over these representations.

Due to this construction, super intelligence would be unrivalled: it would be able to bring about almost any possible outcome and to thwart any attempt to prevent the implementation of its top goal.

It could kill off all other agents, persuade them to change their behavior, or block their attempts at interference. Even a ‘controlled’ super intelligence that was running on an isolated computer, able to interact with the rest of the world only via text interface, might be able to break out of its confinement.

So we’re back at Step 1 - the risks in developing super intelligence include the risk of failure to give it the supergoal of philanthropy - read: NOT to build it so that it serves only a select group of humans but rather the whole of humanity in general.

More subtly, a super intelligence could decide that the state of affairs that we humans might now judge as desirable turns out to be a false utopia in which things essential to human survival may be irreversibly lost.

Given the state of the world today – and how we ‘respect’ humanity in general - that’s not a pretty insight.

Lots to think about.

Planning superintelligence - Part I

2006-08-07T14:10:00.000+02:00

I received a vast amount of email about the last post - the socialization of autonomous robots. I was asked the most intriguing question, ‘How should we 'socialize' super human intelligence?’

I believe that superintelligence WILL be the last invention humans ever need to make – we’ll be there soon - but from Bill Joy to Marshall McLuhan, there has been this 'scary' feeling that we are opening Pandora's Box.

What IS so scary? There are several ideas about this so I am borrowing a bit but let's look at this a bit deeper.

The ethical issues related to the future creation of machines with general intellectual capabilities far outstrip those of humans and are quite different and distinct from any ethical problems arising within our current societies. Superintelligence is different.

Superintelligence would not be just another technological development but it WOULD be the most important invention ever made and WOULD lead to explosive progress in several (if not all) scientific and technological fields.

But what about moral thinking? How do we 'socialize' this ability to think? Should we control it? How do we control it? Can we control it?

Ethical questions all. But since ethics is a cognitive pursuit, would superintelligence surpass humans in the quality of its ethics and morals? Wouldn't the superintelligence simple know when to stop developing?

By definition - a superintelligence is any form of collective intellect that vastly outperforms the best human brains. Rather simple, but this definition leaves an obviously open question - how the superintelligence is implemented. No matter that it could be in a digital computer, an ensemble of networked computers, cultured cortical tissue (biological computer) or something else we haven’t quite seen as of yet, the scary question is how this superintelligence is implemented.

I’m not talking about Deep Blue or a cluster of Crays but more about the result of growing hardware performance and increased ability to implement algorithms and architectures similar to those used by human brains. We are learning how right now. It's just a matter of time but it WILL happen in our lifetimes.

It will.

First, let’s all agree that superintelligence is not just another application or technology; not just another tool that will add incrementally to human capabilities.

Superintelligence is radically different.

Given a superintelligence’s intellectual superiority, it would be much better at doing scientific research and technological development than any human and possibly better even than all humans taken together.

Therefore, it can be assumed that technological progress in all other fields will be accelerated by the arrival of advanced artificial intelligence.

It is likely that new technology (and applications thereof) will be speedily developed by the first superintelligence that build on the current trends of today. By nature of who and what will develope this new brain, these technologies will most likely be molecular manufacturing, advanced military weaponry and space travel including things like new propulsion techniques and von Neumann probes (self-reproducing interstellar probes).

Health solutions will come much later. Remember, a completely healthy population creates huge issues - both policy and economic - for governments that will have a dramatic short term negative effect. Governments - and believe me, it will be a government agency that will first create superintelligence - will first use this additional power to protect themselves. The general population will come a distant second.

But if you think logically, we are also looking at:

neural uploading (neural or sub-neural scanning of a particular brain and implementation of the same algorithmic structures on a computer in a way that perseveres memory and personality). It's starting already.
elimination of aging and disease
fine-grained control of human mood, emotion and motivation

Just these three add up to either the reanimation of cryonics patients and/or fully realistic virtual reality.

Next, logically, it will be natural that superintelligence will lead to more advanced superintelligence. Not only would superintelligence create this but also improve it and make its own ‘source code’ - artificial minds that can be easily copied so long as there is hardware available to store them.

The same holds for human uploads. Hardware aside, the marginal cost of creating an additional copy of an upload or an artificial intelligence after the first one has been built is near zero.

Artificial minds could therefore quickly come to exist in great numbers, although it is possible that efficiency would favor concentrating computational resources in a single super-intellect.

As you can see, from the beginning, the emergence of superintelligence will be sudden. While it may thus take quite a while before we get superintelligence, the final stage may happen swiftly.

One day it won’t be there …. and the next day, it will.

Will we be ready?

Again, superintelligence should not necessarily be conceptualized as a mere tool. General superintelligence would be capable of independent initiative and of making its own plans and will be an autonomous agent.

C'mon - its own thoughts and plans? Humanity is doomed!

But listen - there is nothing implausible about the idea of a superintelligence having as its supergoal to serve humanity or some particular human, with no desire whatsoever to revolt or to 'liberate' itself.

It also seems perfectly possible to have a superintelligence whose sole goal is something completely arbitrary, such as to manufacture as many paperclips as possible and who would resist with all its might any attempt to alter this goal.

For better or worse, artificial intellects need not share our human 'motivational' and greedy tendencies.

It could be that the cognitive architecture of an artificial intellect may also be quite unlike that of humans. Artificial intellects may find it easy to guard against some kinds of human error and bias, while at the same time being at increased risk mistake that not even the most hapless human would make.

So - one should be wary of assuming that the that the nature and behaviors of artificial intellects would necessarily resemble those of human (or other animal) minds.

As I stated above, ethics is a cognitive pursuit. A superintelligence could do it better than human thinkers. The same holds for questions of policy and long-term planning; when it comes to understanding which policies would lead to which results and which means would be most effective in attaining given aims, a superintelligence would outperform our feeble minds.

But the option to defer many decisions to the superintelligence does not mean that we can afford to be complacent in how we construct the superintelligence.

On the contrary, the setting up of initial conditions, and in particular the selection of a top-level goal for the superintelligence, is of the utmost importance.

Our entire future may hinge on how we solve these problems.

Whoa - I gotta think some more – this get’s complicated. Watch out for a Part II.

The ethics of social robots

2006-07-27T09:41:00.000+02:00

Skype conference and the question was, 'when will robots finally be here?'

To answer that. let's look at what just happened first ....

It's interactive: like the telephone and the telegraph (and unlike radio or television), people can overcome great distances to communicate with others almost instantaneously.

It's a mass medium: like radio and television (and unlike the telephone or fax), information can reach millions of people at the same time... fast!

It has been vilified as a powerful new tool for the devil, awash in porn, causing users to be addicted to hours each day during which they are away from their family and friends resulting in depression and loneliness for the individual user and further weakening neighborhood and community ties.

Whew ... but wait - there's more!

It has been hailed by western leader as the ultimate weapon in the battle against totalitarianism and tyranny and credited by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan with creating a 'new economy.'

It was denounced by the head of the Miss France committee as 'an uncontrolled medium where rumormongers, pedophiles, prostitutes, and criminals could go about their business with impunity' after it facilitated the worldwide spread of rumors that the reigning Miss France was, in fact, a man.

'I’m terrified by this type of media!' he/she said.

OK – we all know what I’m talking about but that's the human angle. I'm thinking about Robots today. What do youthink their opinion is?

Listen, electronic agents have been using this 'new medium' for 20 years – long before humans created a way to interface with the zeros and ones.

Why don't we ask them?

Social Robots (as opposed to industrial robots) will become increasingly important in our society, but, oddly enough, their social role remains unclear.

So, how do we define and enable robots to follow human social conventions?

Humans have all sorts of conventions that make interaction easier, including how to pass each other in hallways, how to go through doors and in and out of elevators and how to enter and wait in line.

There are several schools of thought looking at techniques that enable robots to use such social conventions by modifying their nominal behaviors. Eventually, one whould surmise, that robots would learn such conventions on their own.

Past discussions were all based on the 'Media Equation' - which explores how people treat computers as social actors. Now this is being applied to robots. But the Media Equation is too limited in that it studies human-robot interaction by focusing only on robot abuse.

But that is changing .... attitudes are changing. Humans are starting to be nice to robots - respecting them.

Robots have been important in our society. Now, robotic technologies that integrate information technology with physical embodiment are now robust enough to be deployed in industrial, institutional AND domestic settings.

The United Nations, in a recent robotics survey (PDF), identified personal service robots as having the highest expected growth rate over the next few years.

These robots will help the elderly, support humans in the house and improve communication between distant partners but we need research vehicles for the study of human-robot communication.

Why is clear enough. How these robots should behave and interact with humans remains largely unclear. When designing robots, we need to make judgments on what technologies to pursue, what systems to make and how to consider context. Robots in a human society? Or just 'society'?

Researchers and designers have only just begun to understand these critical issues of how to ‘design’ robots as social actors and how to 'train' robots to act within a society.

This is more than AI, high math and way more than appearance – it’s really about social class systems and strongly questions the inherent ‘ethics’ of technology. Should rules of social conduct apply to technology itself and the products of technology implementations?

Wow, that’s a big question.

The Media Equation started the discussion on how social norms apply to robots and at the basic level, robots often have an anthropomorphic embodiment and human-like behavior.

But what about the interaction - under what conditions should humans treat robots like social actors or even like humans? What happens when this social illusion shatters and we treat them again like machines that can be switched off, sold or torn apart without a bad consciousness?

Are robots punishable? Can 'killing' a robot be socially acceptable?

Ultimately, this discussion eventually leads to legal considerations of the status of robots in our society.

First studies around this theme are becoming available but thay take a very ‘non-human’ approach. To examine this borderline in human-robot interaction it is necessary to step far out from normal conduct (and I’m not talking about the Scientological view).

Logic would say that the next step is that robots must be designed and implemented so that they will be capable of performing legally binding actions (as electronic transactions do today). These advances necessitate a thorough treatment of their legal status and consequences.

But first we must demonstrate that these 'electronic agents' behave structurally similar to human agents. Then one needs to know how declarations of intention stated by robots are related to ordinary declarations of intention given by natural persons or legal entities and also how the actions of robots in this respect have to be classified under a national law.

But does this mean that robots, in the social context, must have a national citizenship and respect national laws over and above the very basic Three Laws of Robotics written by Isaac Asimov?

But then, if the ‘electronic person’ is a legal nationalized entity, what civil and 'robot rights' do they have?

As you see, we are not ready – the ethics of of this type of technology haven’t been discovered yet. There are so many questions that have to be answered and so many questions that haven't even been asked yet.

Time to begin.

They've started to build the robotic society already - but they forgot to set the rules.

MySpace vs. the US Military

2006-07-26T16:00:00.000+02:00

Recent events in light of the new global battlespace created by information technology, the meaning of security, the hallmarks of asymmetric warfare and the resources we need to get by are changing.

Two things:

The social networking hero, MySpace was hit by a powerful worm about 10 days ago.
The US military saw in coming and didn't stop it.

Why?

They were involved in the annual Cyber Defence Exercise (CDX), an annual competition between students at the five U.S. Service Academies that has developed into an exercise where defensive technologies are implemented and tested.

Remember - these are the guys that use terms like 'Adversary Characterization and Scoring Systems', 'motivational counter-agent subtypes' and 'intrusion signature analysis'. They have great gadgets like the remote active operating system fingerprinting tool, Xprobe2_vb.

They propose that to make the internet safer – it should be attacked even more.

Truth in point - the two similar events that have been publicized recently are the DEFCON 'Capture the Flag' (CTF) competition and the military Cyber Defence Exercise. These two competitions follow different paradigms.

The DEFCON event set all teams to be both attackers and defenders, while the Cyber Defence Exercise focuses the teams on defensive operations only. So why wouldn't they alert MySpace?

According to the Internet Storm Center and a recent announcement by Hitwise, MySpace has become the #1 most popular destination on the Web.

An unusual aspect of this worm was that it resided purely on MySpace pages, rather than installing itself on personal computers of its victims.

The essential component of the worm, which Symantec called ACTS.Spaceflash, was a Flash object that was embedded in the victims' profile pages on MySpace. The offending code resided in the redirect.swf file, and looked like this:

getURL("http://editprofile.myspace.com/index.cfm?
fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=93634373&blogID=144877075", "_self");

The viewer of the Flash object was redirected to a page that, through clever scripting, modified the victim's profile. As a result, whenever someone viewed the victim's profile, the viewer's profile would also get infected.

Essentially, the weakness that these attacks exploited was the ability of users to embed active content in the form of Flash objects in MySpace pages. This - in some convoluted way - brings me to the Honeypots.

Honeypots are information system resources, whose value lies in unauthorized or illicit use of these resources. The Honeypot Project that has established a world-wide distributed sensor system of honeypots. All platforms send all logging data to a central database, enabling some major mining and data correlation.

Why?

To see how the collected data can be used to learn more about cyber-attack patterns. In addition, they are trying to define the root-causes of attacks, specific tools or techniques used by attackers.

Why?

Here we go - almost all aspects of our life read: internet, fix or mobile phone, online banking, depend heavily on computer systems. Due to the growing pervasiveness of computers and ubiquitous mobility of users and devices, this dependence is steadily increasing.

Nevertheless, there are more and more security threats in communication networks: we are flooded with unsolicited bulk e-mail spam, we have huge problems with viruses, worms and other malware, Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, electronic fraud and crackers are often able to break into systems - downsides of the digital economy, social networking sites and in general, Web 2.0.

An approach to learn more about attacks and attack patterns is based on the idea of electronic decoys, called honeypots. A honeypot is an information system resource whose value lies in unauthorized or illicit use of that resource.

Honeypots can also be combined into networks of honeypots (honeynets) to learn more about the diverse proceeding of attackers. Honeypots are cool but there are several projects that exist to observe malicious traffic on a large-scale base or the whole Internet.

They often consist in monitoring a very large number of unused IP address spaces to monitor malicious activities. Network telescopes, blackholes, darknets or Internet Motion Sensor (IMS) are the better known ones.

All of these projects have the same approach: they use a large piece of globally announced IPv4 address space and passively monitor all incoming traffic.

For example, the network telescope run by the University of California (which the several national militaries have access to) uses 2²⁴ IP addresses. This is 1/256th of all IPv4 addresses.

This means that one packet is 256 is 'read', stored and analyzed. That's allot!

And here's the catch - the telescope contains almost no legitimate hosts, so inbound traffic to nonexistent machines is always anomalous in some way, i.e., the principle of honeynets is also used in this context. By analyzing all packets, they are able to infer information about attackers.

While remaining 'unseen'.

So you see, the MySpace attack was perfect. Finally some of the boys and girls in black hats saw some real-time action.

Valuable? Definitely.

Fun? Oh yaaaaa!!

Moral? Well .....

Legal? Hmmm ......

Digital Citizenship

2006-07-25T14:40:00.000+02:00

Let's talk about the inverse of the digital divide - digital citizenship.

Citizenship in today's world, however one defines its characteristics and practice, draws its sustenance from the access to information - read: education; within the information society, especially democratic ones, citizenship must come to terms with technology; and that the level access to technology - as means, object and context - influences education is undeniable.

These three points are the driving force of dynamism that is currently underway in countries undergoing a transition towards the development of knowledge or information societies.

This particular constellation of social, political, economic and technological phenomena is complicated but there are a few things that one should consider and I bet that every one reading this can come up with current examples:

the development of sophisticated digital technologies of information and networked communication and their rapid deployment across a wide range of social, political and economic practices and institutions, domestically and globally;
the emergence of novel and powerful biological-based technologies that provoke moral, ethical and political controversy;
the 'commitment' post-industrial states to encourage application of technology as crucial to economic growth and material prosperity, national cultural autonomy, democracy and social well-being;
the post-war restructuring of capitalist economies around priorities euphemistically styled as 'innovation', 'flexibility' and 'competitiveness';
the increased attention to the role played by research academics in generating opportunities, innovation and sustaining flexibility in knowledge-based economies;
the rapid integration of new information and communication technologies into society at all levels;
the growth of private, non-profit, commercial enterprises;
the crisis of democratic citizenship in most western democracies as seen by the decreasing rates of formal political participation and civic engagement, declining levels trust in political institutions, diminished civic capacity and political knowledge and normalization of state repression of civil liberties;
the widespread popular hope in the potential for new information and communication technologies to reinvigorate democratic citizenship and governance.

Individually or together - these points testify to the role of 'information access' in addressing the concrete challenges of living well in today's, contemporary technological society.

As we concentrate and write about the digital divide, we should remember how we are defining the digital citizen. This is not only a problem/solution for developing nations. This is a global issue. In there own ways, every nation asking themselves what this new 'information society' is.

Let's not hide behind the notion that this is only a problem of the developing nations.

Bad usability that is good

2006-07-24T16:51:00.000+02:00

I am interested in some of the darker aspects of human nature when it comes to technology: I would like to understand frustration when things go wrong in order to design new tools with the right emotional impact.

Why not ‘build in’ a navigational workflow order that creates anger to help select those who need to defuse fraught situations.
Why not deliberately design ‘bad’ situations; obviously this is necessary to study issues like frustration, but also we could design bad things in order to understand what is good!

There are times when good is dark and the bright light of day needs to be shrouded just a little frustration.

Gamers know this. Game developers know it better.

Slowly you edge down the dark corridor, distant daylight dimly illuminates the walls on either side, your heart races you know there are others in these corridors and they are after you. You near the bend. What is beyond? Too late you wheel round only to be momentarily blinded by a bright light, and then you hear a pistol crack and see the ground race towards you, already red with blood, your blood.

Game Over.

Video games are escapist, virtual, just a game, but in the heat of the moment the emotions can be very real. Research on affective gaming seek in various ways to understand, measure or infer the emotions or more normally simply arousal of the gamer in order to adapt the game and create a more engaging, more immersive experience.

Early work used heart monitoring to measure arousal and create a game that modified the level of challenge accordingly, low levels of arousal led to more enemies attacking, although easier to kill ones in order to maintain the same level of difficulty.

More recently they've focused on frustration, both the 'proper' frustration when you get shot by a cleverer opponent for the 10th time, but also the frustration when a moment’s delay in the controller means you can't duck in time. Cruel, cruel design that everyone loves.

We grow up in the real world, physical things that respond to gravity, bump into each other, have weight, solidity and stay where they are put until moved. Then we move into the electronic world whether virtual reality or simply a desktop interface.

Things are no longer so simple and the laws of physicality breakdown: there are delays between action and effect, things change without apparent agency; it is a world of magic and not a little superstition. Where is my information? How come search isn’t working?

I think that we need to understand what usability is and the ways in which design can recruit our natural understandings of the natural world to create better tangible interfaces and ubiquitous environments.

Some of this we can find by examining existing artifacts, mining the implicit knowledge within the organization – understanding this and investing in proper technology to enhance what is working.

This has enabled us to produce putative design guidelines, but there is only so much you can learn from good design.

In neurology it has been the freak accidents and illnesses, skull fractures and cancerous growths which have revealed much of the structure of the brain. It is when systems fail that we begin to understand how they succeed.

So why not employ cruel design, experiment on systems designed to be strange, hard, annoying or simply impossible to use? By manipulating the level of physical coherence of physical-digital mappings we are delving into the properties that make things work well by making them work badly.

Why not create a bit of anger?

Abuse, violence and emotional turmoil are a day-to-day part of many peoples lives. How do you train people to deal with traumatized, angry, upset clients? Training videos, I guess , but how do you design a system that deal with aggression?

Here’s the point: When you can't help you need to be helpful. That is exactly what usability design should be about.

Hey Mr. Designer – Hey Ms. Usability - can you soothe the angry user before there is blood on the keyboard?

Abusive agents

2006-07-19T15:42:00.000+02:00

In discussions with my 'darker' friends, we've noticed that research into developing socially intelligent agents has increased over the last decade with the main focus being on how they can enhance human computer interaction. Remember - enhance human computer interaction

Most research related to the use of embodied agents has tended to concentrate on the benefits that these agents bring to an standard interface and how they can arouse positive emotional states that enhance cognitive functions (read: learning and problem solving skills).

But the flip side of this research could concentrated on the potential that these agents have to manipulate our behavior for unethical purposes.

Hard to believe? It's happening right now.

Look at the potential negative impacts that embodied agents have on an interaction? As they are becoming more socially intelligent, there is the increased possibility that they will be able to 'abuse' us (the user) in a number of ways.

As i see it, we seem to treat computers as social entities. Its interesting to note how we can make use of social skills in human-human interaction and use them in HCI to enhance human computer relations. Ask Jeeves and Amazon are just a few examples - Lufthansa and Swiss use agents to 'suggest' different flying options 'more suited to your requirements'.

Foriegn or 3rd party agents are building and maintaining long-term relationships with your agents right now and they are useing many of the relational strategies that humans often use (read: small talk and talk of the relationship, trading of 'secrets' to enforce 'trust').

Alarmed? Come on.

Clearly, we seem to prefer interacting with embodied agents that have some form of social intelligence. This is despite the fact that the level of intelligence demonstrated by such systems is very limited in comparison to our own.

However, with computer processing speeds doubling every year, I believe this ability is likely to change drastically in the near future.

Kurzewil predicts that by 2010 we will have virtual humans that look and act much like real humans, although they will still be unable to pass the Turing Test.

By 2030, he believes that it will be difficult to distinguish between virtual and biological humans. Singualrity.

This potential increase in agent intelligence and representation raises a number of troubling issues.

Our tendency to treat computers as social actors suggests that socially skilled agents may be able to utilize many of the strategies and techniques that humans use to manipulate other peoples' behavior.

For example, in human-human interaction, we tend to act on the advice of people we like and trust rather than people we dislike and distrust.

It is possible that the same principle might apply in HCI. If, in fact, we like and trust socially skilled agents over ones which have no such skills, these agents may be able to manipulate human behavior more effectively than agents with no social skills built into them.

Wow - could this be a new type of social hacking, online or virtual memes that spill-over into the physical world?

Could a government or other 'subversive' parties create and maintain an 'independant' blog that is totally automated to spit out gramatically sincere propoganda? Could it be happening right now?

Socially intelligent agents also have a number of advantages over humans when attempting to manipulate our behavior, including their ability to persistently make use of a wide variety of persuasive techniques without ever becoming tired or deterred (read: asking somebody to register for a product every time they start up their computer).

They can also make requests at times when it is more likely that the request will be complied with (read: a computer game or product that asks children to provide personal details before being able to progress to the next stage). Remember - these agents can also analyze data and situations 1000 times faster than we can.

In some circumstances, users may also trust computers more than they do other humans. Whether deserved or not, some professions have a reputation for being manipulative and deceptive (read: Geneva landlords, used car salesmen) and people often tend to be cautious when interacting with such people.

However, if users were to interact with a computational sales agent, they may drop their guard and be more open to manipulation as computers generally do not have a strong reputation for deception and attempting to manipulate peoples' behavior.

Is it acceptable for agents to manipulate (perhaps deceive) people in this way? Simply in order to help companies sell more products? Governments catch more terrorist or tax evaders?

Perhaps so, as long as the user believes that they have received good value for their money and do not feel exploited. But would they even know IF they were being exploited?

This is a form of manipulation (and deception), and most people are aware that many salespeople are like this. While this may not please people, they are unlikely to mind if they feel they have received value for money and a good service.

On the other hand, if customers feel cheated they will be unlikely to return with their money again. As embodied agents' social skills improve over the coming years, the danger of them being used to manipulate our behavior will increase.

In fact, there are many embodied agents available today that attempt to manipulate peoples' behavior in questionable ways.

The success of agents such as these is yet to be fully tested, but the potential for them to manipulate user behavior certainly exists.

As we move more towards managing computer systems rather than directly manipulating them, we will work more closely with agents in everyday activities as they undertake tasks on our behalf.

This means that people are likely to develop long-term relationships with agent entities in their interactions, which (who) they will grow to know and trust.

It may be that these agents are then in a very strong position to alter their behavior and start becoming more and more manipulative over time (like a cult: nice to begin with, drawing a person in and then changing and starting to abuse the trust that has been created).

This may happen by initial malicious design, or more intriguingly, by external people cracking an agent and making it turn on its user!

Perhaps a new form of virus writer may emerge.

It is vital that we begin studying in more detail how socially intelligent agents can manipulate our behavior.

A deeper understanding of these areas will enable us to take steps toward avoiding agent abuse against users, both now and in the future.

Remember - Evolution never refactors its code. It is far easier for evolution to stumble over a thousand individual optimizations than for evolution to stumble over two simultaneous changes which are together beneficial and separately harmful.

Now this is the deep part - a bit heavy but it will explain WHY manipulative agents will happen.

Human intelligence, created by evolution, is characterized by evolution's design signature. The vast majority of our genetic history took place in the absence of deliberative intelligence; our older cognitive systems are poorly adapted to the possibilities inherent in deliberation.

Evolution has applied vast design pressures to us but has done so very unevenly; evolution's design pressures are filtered through an unusual methodology that works far better for hand-massaging code than for refactoring program architectures.

Now imagine a agent built in its own presence by intelligent designers, beginning from primitive and awkward subsystems that nonetheless form a complete supersystem.

Imagine a development process in which the elaboration and occasional refactoring of the subsystems can coopt any degree of intelligence, however small, exhibited by the supersystem.

The result would be a fundamentally different design and a new approach to Artificial Intelligence which Eliezer Yudkowsky termed 'seed AI'.

Seed AI is AI designed for self-understanding, self-modification, and recursive self-improvement.

This has implications both for the functional architectures needed to achieve primitive intelligence, and for the later development of the AI if and when its holonic self-understanding begins to improve - but improvement is in the eye of the beholder - improved cunning and self defense techniques will eneable an agent to 'defend' itself (read: HAL)

Seed AI is not a workaround that avoids the challenge of general intelligence by bootstrapping from an moral core; seed AI will begin to yield benefits once there is some degree of available intelligence to be utilized.

The later consequences of seed AI (such as true negative self-improvement) only show up after the agent has achieved significant holonic understanding and general intelligence.

The question is, 'What happens afterwards?' And this is a serious question.

The next future

2006-07-17T13:57:00.000+02:00

What a lot of us (notably VCs and typically, only the most informed Web 2.0ers) are attempting these days is to look ahead to the future of the current information culture.

Already our technological capabilities have created a world in which ubiquitous connectivity is, or is becoming, a reality, even for emerging countries which, for example supply village to village connectivity via a WiFi-enabled motorcycle that drives through the Cambodian countryside.

And with ubiquitous connectivity comes the effect of pervasive proximity.

Our experience of reality – literally what we feel – is changing. We touch and are touched in ways that transcend the apparent visual barrier between the cyber and the physical worlds.

It is a only a misconception, and soon-to-be artifact, that the screen represents a DMZ between reality from non-reality. When measured information exchanges, it is clear that this interface is quickly vanishing.

Experience effected through the processes of pervasive proximity means that what we feel online – those whom we touch and those who touch us – is quite real, despite its lack of physicality and materiality. What this means is that under conditions of pervasive proximity, experience transcends our traditional conception of media boundaries. And it is through transmedial experiences that we can begin to observe the emergence of a culture for the global village.

The dominant technology of the previous era was the book and the printed word. Among the memes that came along with the book were the acceleration, intensification, and reinforcement of vernacular languages, and with that the distinct cultural separations that created 'the other side of the story'.

Along with the book came the development of the individual mind that could not exist without reading; the whole concept of the individual and the public as distinct entities, the notion of privacy, secrecy, guilt, superiority, class systems and shame.

Among the creative classes, the book created the author (and, some say, even authority), it created the artist and the composer – and it also created the audience, again as a distinct and separate entity.

And with that dominant technology, it was always the case that the “text” – the words, the art, the music – could be removed from both its creator and its creative context.

The content creator is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because s/he is one of the few that were aware of the present. But remember that the creator is a distinct entity from her or his audience or consumer. Today, we are no longer merely consumers of culture. We are instead – all of us – producers of our indicative cultural creations that exist for as long as we are experiencing them — and no longer.

The hallmarks of of this new playground for creativity (one that we are only beginning to recognize) include collaborative creation, transmediality and the elimination of the interfaces – the stark demarcations – between the physical and virtual worlds.

Such a conception almost evokes aspects of magic and mysticism - the image of the tribal shaman who acts as a medium between the visible and invisible worlds, practicing forms of magic that exert control over what otherwise appear as natural events.

The ability for everyone to actively engage and participate in creation and reflexive consumption of culture is paramount. This, however, flies directly in the face of cultural cartels in whose interest it is to maintain a monopoly on production and distribution of information and who therefore seek to control the means of creation, connection, and collaboration.

Therein lies the role of governments, conventions, treaties and summits: to actively resist partisan commercial interests in order to protect and nurture the subtle beginnings of the next cultural epoch, the beginnings of which we are privileged not only to witness, but privileged as well to actively participate as its midwives.

Since we are all creators, creativity – and the means to express and experience creativity – belongs to everyone, collectively as a public trust.

It's not about the technology - it's about how this technology is modifying individual and collective behavior.

Internet Control

2006-07-12T17:58:00.000+02:00

It is commonplace among technologists to support a policy that intermediaries on the Internet should ‘pass all packets.’ This so-called end-to-end principle calls for intelligence to be located at the edges of the network, if at all possible.

While the end-to-end principle has been both challenged, this principle remains a sacred concept among true believers in the openness of the Internet's original design.

Over the past decade, most states—the United States among them—have established rules that sometimes encourage and sometimes require intermediaries to block or to inspect packets as they travel through the Internet.

These rules prompt private actors to violate the end-to-end principle, at least theoretically in the name of the public interest.

We must now considers the changes over the past ten years to the rules that require private parties to control packets at various points in the network, a trend brought into relief by the current public debate over competing ‘net neutrality’ proposals - a political and economic concept often conflated with the end-to-end principle of network design.

One (if one were looking hard enough) can see a rough trajectory is emerging; fewer controls are imposed at the end-points and more controls closer to the center of the network. We note also an increasing emphasis on governments (and corporations) requiring or otherwise causing private parties – intermediaries, in both a technical and a literal sense – to exercise control of packets as they pass through the network. This trend is clearest in those states that are seeking to impose content-based filters on Internet content.

Isn't the idea is to focus on a key question of Internet law in the context of what is now commonly known as ‘Web 2.0’: What actions are governments taking when they do not want certain types of packets to pass through today’s increasingly interactive and distributed network, or when they seek to learn more about the packets that are passing and those who are sending and receiving them?

read: censorship and countries that monitor internet traffic

Let’s face it - technological innovation, participatory democracy, cultural development, generatively, and other wonderful things could no doubt continue to develop without the Internet.

These interests can plausibly be vindicated in ways other than by upholding the end-to-end principle of network design. It would be a drastic overstatement of the problem to contend that any given incremental online legal, or combined legal and technical, control means the end of free expression on the Internet.

A reasonable legislator or judge might find in favor of potentially more effective ways of solving the problems of online life - whether to do with sex, commerce, culture, and politics - over the benefits that end-to-end bears with it.

Information technology continues to evolve rapidly and to bring with it new and tricky puzzles to solve.

The job of the policy-maker, who has to set rules in a time of technological innovation, is challenging, if not unenviable. Social and economical development depend on these people (not the ones selling music, running shoes or even Bono!)

In such a fast moving environment, towing the end-to-end principle is a consistently safe bet.

However, it is a bet that is not easily draped in language that has legal force, other than as end-to-end solutions themselves tend to support and foster greater free expression online.

If history is any guide, the preservation of an end-to-end network will mean promotion of a flourishing democratic culture, potentially on a global scale - cultural innovation in an unusually rich, empowering sense that should be the goal of the policy-maker and technologist alike.

This is why WSIS is important – it starts the dialog, asks the questions.

The current trend is to move away from legal controls consistent with end-to-end principle, toward controls that involve blocking content works against innovation, development of democratic institutions, and the aspiration of semiotic democracy.

In a particularly worrisome development, intermediaries - such as technology service and content providers - are increasingly being placed in the position of carrying out some of the most egregious of these proprietary controls as a condition of competing in highly attractive emerging markets (read: Google – Yahoo – Microsoft).

As the online regulatory environment continues to shift toward more control, the job of the technologist (that is – you and me) must be to articulate better the aspects of the threatened network designer - whether translated as net neutrality, generatively or under other monikers - that are necessary to be preserved.

The job of non-profits and universities is to express the power and the possibilities of the network in its most open form.

The job of the legislator, the regulator, and the judge should include listening carefully to the technologists and determining how to preserve those essential elements of the end-to-end principle in the public interest.

The most difficult job may ultimately prove to be the challenge facing the us that want to see the inequities on the digital divide vanish. We are caught in the cross-hairs of government and corporate playground games.

Our challenge is to shape and then to adhere to a set of best practices for participating in markets where repressive regimes mandate excessive control of technology injections. In the end – it’s an information war; those who have and those who don’t.

Control the access to information and control the citizen behavior.

Control.

Generation C = New Consumer

2006-07-04T17:37:00.000+02:00

At the core of all consumer trends is the new consumer, who creates his or her own playground, own comfort zone, own universe.

It's the 'empowered' and 'better informed' and 'switched on' consumer combined into something profound. At the core is control: psychologists don't agree on much, except for the belief that human beings want to be in charge of their own destiny.

Or at least have the illusion of being in charge.

And because they can now get this control in entirely new ways, aided by an online, low cost, creativity-hugging revolution that's still in its infancy, young and old (but particularly young) consumers now weave webs of unrivaled connectivity and relish instant knowledge gratification.

They exercise total control over creative collections, including their own creative assets, assume different identities in cyberspace at a whim, wallow in DIY / Customization / Personalization / Co-Creation to make companies deliver whatever and whenever, on their own terms.

And it's not all about Adidas, Levi's and online travel. It's about philanthropy, developing nations, education, health and leveling out some of the inequalities of this world.

So, what's next in the metaverse?

Second Life will no doubt continue to expand, especially if they manage to partner with the Flickrs, eBays, Playaheads, MySpaces and Yahoos of this world. Meanwhile, Google is said to be eyeing a metaverse entry, combining Google Earth and Google Sketchup (a 3-D modeling program).

The company is now encouraging developers to build 3-D layers on top of Google Earth. For examples, see the 3D warehouse. This prompted the designers at Form Fonts 3D to create 97 virtual pieces of IKEA furniture, ready to download, which can then be used to furnish one's SketchUp dream house.

If you ignore online branding, rest assured a member of Generation C will launch your brand for you, just keep your fingers crossed that they'll do it to your liking.

** Gen C = consumers who produce and share content. They mix their own music, edit their own videos, post their photography to the Internet, or publish a blog or a book.
They are a big group, and one that's constantly growing. More than 53 million adults in the US have created online content, according to a recent report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Also keep an eye on new metaverse platforms like Active Worlds, Open Croquet Project and Multiverse, all aiming to help independent game developers create high-quality Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and non-game virtual worlds for less money and in less time than ever before.

As this is still early days, this is prime territory to claim many a 'first' in online branding (read: IOs and NGOs - wake-up).

Time to set up a meeting with these guys?

The next frontier

2006-06-29T13:17:00.000+02:00

All stripes of media are attempting to connect with the growing broadband audiences. The change is happening in every media sector, television, motion, sound media.

Most recent tipping point? September 2005, when news about Apple’s video iPods began to make the rounds. News of this new platform sparked a wave of investment into broadband content like short films and news clips. Ever since, it has been a headlong, pell-mell, dizzy kind of rush.

For big media - it’s very exciting and quite scary.

Early adopter and progressives have an advantage in this new environment. The majority of the people at the front end of these new technologies have a progressive worldview and inhabit the coastal blue cities and urban hubs. Companies innovating in this space are often run by out-and-out avowed progressive types.

Take The Young Turks, a trio of liberal radio hosts that can be heard on Sirius Satellite Radio and on the Web. They are pioneering the next frontier of online broadcasting.

After a failed attempt to get MSNBC to pick up their radio show as a liberal TV show, the Young Turks went a different route. With the support of investors they bought digital cameras and rented studio space. As the Los Angeles Times reported, 'In mid-December, they began streaming their three-hour show every weekday on their website … billing it as the first live Internet talk show,' writes Matea Gold.

In the process, they’ve helped pioneer the rapidly developing field of online programming—from webcasts to video podcasts and vlogs (the video version of a blog)—now delivering content that traditionally would have had to survive the television development season and pass the muster of network executives to find an audience.

The Young Turks are part of an explosion of efforts to bypass network and cable channels and develop content for emerging satellite, dish and digital broadcast platforms.

Other efforts include more established broadcasters like LinkTV and Free Speech TV, online projects like PoliticsTV and Guerrilla News Network, an effort to establish a progressive cable channel.

Traditional media - print, radio and television - are struggling to balance staying true to the tenets of journalism, with reaching new audiences with interactive features and, in some cases, the ideologically aggressive tone that has come to characterize much of the mainstream news environment.

This rapid technological evolution is challenging print publishers but it’s not an either-or proposition. Despite drops in circulation, print magazines are not going the way of the dodo bird (indeed, there are over 5,000 more magazine titles on sale now than there were in 1988) - and the 75,000 new blogs appearing every day won’t be the death knell of Big Media.

Instead, if the mainstream media play their cards right, the new media could provide a transfusion of energy, passion, and immediacy that will alter - and ultimately save - them.

Provided they keep adapting to the changing technologies—and, more importantly, the changing audience.

The same can be said for the new media.

In order to flourish, new media makers must understand and pursue this new online audience, as the rise of the geo-political blogosphere attests. Yet even the bloggers must contend with the hegemony of the mainstream media.

Simply put, without the participation of the media and the world political establishment, the netroots alone cannot generate the critical mass necessary to alter or create conventional wisdom.

That is not to say that blogs can’t be the first to draw attention to an issue, as they often do, but the half-life of an online buzz can be measured in days and weeks, and even when a story has enough netroots momentum to float around for months, it will have little effect on the wider public discourse without the other sides of the triangle in place.

While progressive bloggers focus on the daily news grind, other new media participants play a different, but equally important, role.

This static triangle of the 'voice of government, the bloggers and the big boys of cable TV will not shift the debate.

It will take a vibrant network of new media outlets, reporters, artists, grassroots organizers, politicians, NGOs and the UN, researchers, celebrities, activists, think tanks and citizens working in concert.

That gonna happen? Think so. Wait and see? NO! Start now. Do your part.

Disconnected ....

2006-06-08T13:16:00.000+02:00

... until June 29th or so - and I need it. I'm off to some sun and fun.

Political social-networking in the US

2006-06-06T14:56:00.000+02:00

George W. Bush's recent immigration address was described as an attempt to assert 'presidential leadership.' The White House, like most governments, must have been unaware that the leading role in the immigration debate was already taken.

After years of Minuteman militias' preening 'border patrol' exercises, months of Congressional grandstanding and weeks of debate over a House bill to crack down on immigrants, the immigrant movement struck back.

In March, demonstrations and boycotts mashed millions of people together. Critics assailed the protests as futile symbolism but in fact, the protests were so massive - the mainstream media reported that Los Angeles's 500,000 demonstrators made up one of the largest marches for any cause in recent US history - that opponents rushed to offer concessions.

BusinessWeek, a predictable barometer of establishment opinion, observed that the protests forced the US government leaders to repudiate a controversial component of a bill criminalizing assistance to illegal immigrants.

The public also noticed.

While the policy debate continues, some progressives are wondering how this movement quickly organized such large and effective protests. How did so many young people and apolitical Americans get involved?

Many factors were in play, but two innovative facets of the movement may offer lessons for for future social movement organisers.

Common base:

The protests drew huge numbers because they embraced people who are typically shunned by the political process and some of the gatherings benefited from technology-driven grassroots organizing, using everything from text messaging to social networking on the Internet.

Conventional campaigns are targeted at people who already exert influence in the political process, namely activists, voters and donors. But the immigration protest was the rare effort that welcomed the apolitical, who do not usually vote and those who cannot vote.

The rallies and marches drew nonvoters, students and illegal immigrants into their mashed coalition.

Many students got involved through MySpace.com, a social networking website that lets people link to friends and create profiles with photos and music. With 70 million members, most of whom are teenagers, it is one of the top ten most popular destinations on the Internet.

Students were already communicating about their lives through MySpace, so when immigration became a hot issue, why not that too? Sprinkled through the website's millions of pages, comments cropped up about the protests, the national boycott and how students felt about Congress trying to criminalize their parents' existence.

For example, May1--san anto against 4437 - a page mobilizing San Antonio protests against HR 4437. The site is run by an unnamed 36-year-old woman in San Antonio who provides updates on legislation and local events; it is plastered with colorful fliers, protest pictures, editorial cartoons and snippets of conversation from visitors.

The week before the May 1 boycott, Carl Webb, a 40-year-old in Austin, posted an open request for related events in his area. Webb, whose page greets visitors with a recording of Gil Scott-Heron's 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised'.

Yet the messages also spread to young people who showed little interest in immigration or activism. The MySpace page of G, a student at Marshall Senior High in Los Angeles, is devoted to Nike sneakers and rap music. But by late April, G posted what appeared to be his first political message, advising his friends to participate in the 'National Boycott for Immigrant Rights No Work! No School! No Business as Usual!'

The immigration protests suggest that fairly apolitical young people can quickly be moved from politics online to activism in the streets if the issue is salient and if the information comes from trusted sources.

With millions of young people connected through these social networking sites, is it time for a political MySpace? A social MySpace? A gender-based MySpace?

One cool website, Essembly.com is betting the answer is yes.

Founded by Harvard senior Joe Green with venture capital, the start-up is billed as a networking site for the politically interested to debate ideas and organize.

While social sites tend to connect people based on where they live and what they like to do, Essembly adds ideological links to the matrix.

Let's face it - people usually visit social networking sites because they're trying to get laid or have a conversation.

Essembly encourages the latter by asking users to vote on simple statements, called resolves, which are provided by both the website and users. They range from offhand musings, like 'I can't stand kids who think its cool to hate America' to policy pronouncements such as 'The United States should continue with its plans to build a wall on its southern border to help slow the flow of illegal immigration from coming into our nation.'

After voting, users can see the aggregate results and search for people, informal groups and organizations that are ideologically close and define friends, allies and even nemeses.

While many popular Essembly groups have been created by users, such as 'Socially Conscious Surfers' and 'Proponents of Minor's Rights' - several organizations are experimenting with top-down recruitment through the site.

It is still too early to tell whether social networking sites will engage and empower a significant number of new activists or young people. Essembly may provide a dynamic space for new people across the political spectrum to debate ideas and take action but it could also reveal that ideological social networking appeals mostly to the activists who are already engaged.

The immigrant protests did prove that young people in America can still mobilize for massive, coordinated and effective progressive action. Whether that will happen again soon does not simply depend on the issues at stake.

It depends on how political leaders regard traditionally powerless groups, and whether the Internet generation decides politics is so personal that it is worth pushing on their friends.

I hope the fever catches on.

Free Press? Whatever!

2006-06-02T15:05:00.000+02:00

A new analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists has found that North Korea is the worlds deepest information void with not a single independent journalist and all radio and TV receivers locked to government specified frequencies - the country gets the number one spot in the committees Top Ten report.

But that’s not the story. What would you prefer – to know your enemy or not? To know that you are censored or pretend that you’re not?

Let's look deeper at the promoted 'free speech' in the western world. Even the most reluctant of the Fox News crew would agree that all mainstream journalists work for a corporation and if you're not towing the company line - it's on the street with ya.

All mainstream journalism IS censored – partly attributed to government policies (USA, Germany and France amongst others) but mostly by the corporations that employ them. Corporate hand-outs don’t come easy when your employees are biting the hand that feeds them. Journalism, like news, is a consumer product that is branded (Fox News, BBC World Service, CNN). News and newspapers are businesses that need rating to sell advertising

Look at the way that Bush and Co. run the media - it's THAT form of censorship that is more dangerous to an open society than North Korea. Better an honest policy of 'No Free Speech' that a watered down media that claims to be telling it all - fair and balanced. Only the most sheepish of the sheep believe that story.

News anchors, like athletes and celebrities, are branded and made up to sell the network - not the news. News is treated like a commodity that is shaped into a product, wrapped in the 'latest color' and sold to consumers. You are only, and treated as, a consumer of a product. Used to sell advertizing slots to the highest bidder.

Feel that warm and cuddly feeling?

Media companies are no different than Tobbacco and Pharmaceutical companies - no different than Harley Davidson and Levi Strauss - marketing companies.

But the real story is how technology is cleaning up the 5th Estate. Big name journalists are loosing credibility.

I live in a country where I have free access to several news sources including BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera. One story told three different ways but I get to make up my own mind based on different versions or biases.

I feel sorry for those that are stuck to one media source - I feel sorry that they actually believe what they get. Stars & Stripes syndrome at it's worse.

Bloggers know this.

Believe me when I say that lots of bloggers are not believable but at least we have the options can get opinions - weigh them - and make our own minds up.

Blogger Carlo Longino, a veteran technology journalist, wrote an insightful essay on his personal blog about why journalism is broken and what could be done to fix it. Carlo's rant was a response to Mark Cuban's post titled 'Why Journalism Matters.'

From Carlo's essay:

The biggest problem facing the journalism world is its ongoing ignorance of opinion. Facts are often meaningless without interpretation. To act like bias and subjectivity in that interpretation don’t exist is not only naïve, it’s short-sighted. For all that people talk about wanting 'just the facts', that isn’t true, they want them interpreted and presented in some particular way - witness the popularity of Fox News, or the interest in things like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. It’s this embrace of subjectivity that tends to separate old and new media, and is holding back journalism

Read On

How would Freud treat a cybermind (updated)?

2006-06-01T10:54:00.000+02:00

On Freud's 150th anniversary, I want to ask Freud a few questions while his legacy is being dismantled.

Cognitive therapy is now the orthodox talking cure and social media seems to be supporting this. But with cognitive science comes a new battle for the meaning of the human mind. And the human mind is being shaped by technology.

Ok this will get a bit philosophical but stick with me.

The analysts - whether Freudian, Jungian, Kleinian, or Lacanian - do not tell you what it is that you've got, nor does he or she explain how you will get over it. Instead, you embark on a personal exploration during which you find that you don't only suffer from the symptoms you thought you did, but also a range of other conflicts underlying them.

The process is classically driven by two mechanisms and these are essentially all there is to the technique (though not, of course, the theory) pioneered by Freud. These are 1. data extraction (receiving structured information in a cognitive form) and 2. contexuality (what does this information have to do with me or how can I use it effectively).

The form that the information is now delivered and received is being shaped by technology - mainly, the Internet.

Delivery models are being drastically modifies and the ontology of the cybermind is changing. Basically, because I receive information in new ways, I classify and retrieve them differently.

Enormous changes occur within every social order which always returns the unexpected; this is the only law.

I used to receive many phone calls and very many happy knocks at the door. Surrounded with the smiling faces, I would receive the voices and visitors with joy in my heart (and beer in the fridge). Now, the voices and visitors come over the wires and I am reduced to the sound of myself typing or scrolling to the texts that fall upon themselves on my screen.

In order to speak or hear or see you, I move my fingers. My fingers now talk.

My kids now chat with me. They sign me on and sign me off; I am in a folder called ‘family’ under the sub_folder called ‘Dad’ which in the end is represented electronically by a stain on their hard drive. Recorded – dad lives on to be heard or seen whenever they want.

What would Freud think of the new cybermind? Does the cybermind mean that a cybersociety exists independently of human action?

Is there both an ideal and a real manifestation of cyberspace. The former is the mapping of transmissions across nodes - i.e. ideal movement of data-streams and the latter is the hardware and actual movement across it.

If cyberspace can be considered a form of liquid transcript with its contents in bytes, then one might speak of cybersocieties in the plural - referring to any telecommunications network and its transmissions/receptions. I can be here and there at the same time.

This cybermind does not need to postulate an identity-holding ego amid a network of neural processing; this sits well with the Buddhist principle that the self is constituted out of a series of illusions which may be extinguished on the road to enlightenment.

I can be here and there at the same moment and then disappear when I want. Which begs to ask, 'What happens when we die? Do we continue to grow and self-develop in cybersociety?'

Freud's favorite novel was The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky's vision of the inherently perverse, self-destructive drives of human nature made sense to Freud. He got much of it scientifically wrong, and he famously misinterpreted some of his own patients.

But the ambition was to articulate the conflicts to which the human mind is subject and from which it may never escape. Cybersociety creates conflicts with the 'disconnected' world.

Little may remain of his classifications or his model of the unconscious, but there are those both inside and outside the psychiatric profession who understand that change may contain meaning and that the relationship between people was the engine of human change. Is technology the mew engine? Can we control it?

Freud remains one of the pioneering influences; trying to understanding our new social constructs and how the world is developed is not child’s play. We all need to take this serious and play a role. We all have a role.

Are you defining your role or is technology defining it for you?

Technorati Tags: Freud, Social Media, Psychology, Society

Internet Bores!

2006-05-31T09:38:00.000+02:00

Interestingly enough I was having a chat a few hours ago with some Asian Web 2.0ers and this thought came to me, 'What a bunch of internet bores!'.

I was shocked - outraged - even a bit scared that I could utter those words but then I started to look at it. Is the internet becoming boring? I am as deep as the next guy in the internet and I'm not bored but maybe the word is 'conventional'.

That, I agreed with myself is the problem. The internet is becoming conventional - compromised by greed and ego.

Look at the world - fashion, cars, music, our jobs - the same energy that was sucked out of these industries is being sucked out of the internet. If you are a Web 2.0 company in the crosshairs of a VC - well, ya, that IS exciting but what about the users or the employees.

Look at Google. Is Google Unconventional?

Not anymore. The founders’ letter written by Page and Brin states, 'Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.' On the surface, how could anyone conclude otherwise?

After all, the Googleplex offers three free gourmet meals a day, free onsite medical care, beach volleyball, and all the toys a geek’s heart could desire. There are even futuristic Japanese toilets - replete with heated seats and push-button controls to wash and dry your backside - that would make any champion of artificial intelligence proud.

It’s a graduate school campus on steroids that aims to stimulate creativity and teamwork by eliminating the distinction between work and play.

But don’t confuse these artifacts of the culture with the company itself. Google, as a business, turns out to be very traditional. Just like Hewlett-Packard and dozens of other Silicon Valley companies, it was born at Stanford University. It soon moved to a nearby garage off campus and received funding from mainstream Bay Area venture capital firms.

Page and Brin are the formidable dynamic duo, but so were Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. When Page and Brin decided in 2000 to search for an outsider to become CEO, they poached Schmidt, an experienced manager from Novell. He has assembled a traditional management team to operate the business, implemented traditional mechanisms to measure the company’s financial performance, and installed various safeguards against fraud and other activities.

Google certainly tried to hang on to its idiosyncrasies by waiting longer than many other start-ups to offer shares to the public. But as soon as it announced its initial public offering, Google was beholden to the same rules as any other company. Like a rebellious teenager who learns to ditch her mohawk and piercings when she gets a job, Google has grown up.

Google self-righteously protects its crown jewel—its database of how Googlers search—by claiming that it’s in the best interest of its users. But in reality, Google operates in the best interest of Google.

Recently, the U.S. Justice Department sought information from AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google for a child pornography investigation, asking for a week’s worth of searches. The others complied, but Google put up a legal fight for several months before the Justice Department agreed in March to reduce the scope of its request.

Google’s motivation wasn’t protecting people’s privacy; it was a fear of losing its competitive edge. If Google were forced to disclose too much information about how its users search the Internet, then its competitors might be able to decipher secrets of its technology. Google will fight to protect its privacy at all costs - yours ONLY when it's good for business.

The internet has to spread its wings and learn to adapt to the 80% on the worlds population that is not connected. 80 percent!

And I am not talking about silly misadventures of the Web 2.0 wannabes.

French President Jacques Chirac announcement of Franco-German support for the creation of an ambitious new European search engine, called Quaero (“I seek” in Latin) is a plain waste of the French taxpayers money - based on insecurity of the French Polyschool graduate class.

I'm talking about a new wave of innovation that will supersede the current internet; new delivery models that will ensure social and economic wealth being distributed to the lowers caste of online-ees.

It remains to be seen how successfully WSIS and the new formation of UNGIS (PDF, 80 Kb) can navigate the challenges posed by distinct cultures and foreign governments as it aggressively pursues to share the wealth of the Internet Age.

The discussions this morning from a cold dark kitchen in Geneva to the established Web 2.0 in Asia wasn't boring - it was an eye-opener and that's exciting.

'Circle the Wagons', says McKinsey

2006-05-30T14:39:00.000+02:00

I like Mckinsey because they don't have any original game plans - they simple do what you ask them to do and they will pretend, for a fee, that it was their idea. Hired hachet-men who will take the blame .... for bucks.

I was reading the FT and came across this article;

High-level media and advertising executives are to meet for a brainstorming session aimed at capitalising on the surging popularity of social networking websites.

McKinsey, the management consultancy, is understood to have asked senior executives from old and new media groups alike – from Yahoo to YouTube – to a session with advertising agencies to discuss ways of turning the hugely popular internet sites containing photos, videos, blogs and other user-generated content into viable media businesses.

The meeting, which could take place in New York within the next month but no date has been finalised.

Plans for the meeting reflect the rapid shifts felt by the media industry as people, particularly younger internet users, spend increasing amounts of time on social networking sites such as MySpace and sharing photos, videos and blogs created by themselves rather than professionally produced content.

... read more here.

So the media big boys are getting scared and are using Mckinsey as the bait. Web 2.0 will end here like the North American Indians did - free thinking, social conscience and entrepreneurs will be herded into a reservation and put on welfare. Our language will be taken over and we will become dependant on the powers that be.

Military-industrial-complex? You know it baby!

If you thought that consultant-baiting was a peculiarly one of my favorite pastime, spare a thought for the Brits and the Germans - both famous for not wanting to move on.

Germany - currently promoting itself as the 'Land of Ideas' in the run up to the World Cup - is rapidly becoming one of the most consultant-unfriendly countries in the world. Whatever stereotypes I hold, this is a country which is deeply resistant to change and highly suspicious of modern capitalism.

Consequently consultants get it in the neck twice over, as meddlers with cherished ways and stormtroopers for the Anglo-American world order.

The latest assault on the consultancy industry comes from Thomas Leif, with the grandly titled 'Advised and sold: McKinsey & Co, the big bluff of the management consultants' which claims that consultancy culture is undermining the less capatalist lives.

Consultants have restructure thousands of jobs away but that's not a bad thing. It's the kowtowing to whomever is paying their bill that's more of an issue. These guys are simple middle men with great marketing prowness. By selling themselves - they sell the work of the hand that feeds them.

Their function is obscure, their success disputed. With their PowerPoint presentations consultancies offer extremely simplified solutions for complex processes. They destroy enormous public and private means and undermine the work of administrations.

This is called hype. It seems that 'information' is becoming a field of permeable boundaries dominated by cross-disciplinary carpetbaggers. Business is talking over the hybrid expressions like 'cultural rights', 'corporate responsibility' and 'social media' which epitomize this normative drift – toward where remains to be seen.

They are perfect for Web 2.0.

Off Topic: Pierced Glasses

2006-05-28T16:37:00.000+02:00

James Sooy and Oliver Gibson have come up with Pierced Glasses - the most minimalist eyewear since the Pincenez glasses that clip onto your nose was invented in the 1840's.

For those who think that Pierced Glasses are dangerous or crazy, listen to what the creators say about other surgical alternatives to glasses: "Paying ... to have someone cut your eyes and shoot a laser in them (just so you don’t have to wear glasses) seems extreme to me…"

My favorite extreme eyewear from science fiction are Molly Million's surgically inset glasses from William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer. The glasses consisted of the lenses only, which were implanted so as to seal off her eye sockets completely. Her tearducts were rerouted to empty into her throat, as I recall.

Boy - and I thought that eyeball tattooing was hard ...

Technorati Tags: Fashion, Society

Human Thought and Technology

2006-05-28T15:52:00.000+02:00

Thinking outloud:

Just as it is not possible to look ahead to the technological changes now taking shape, it is not easy to look back to the ones that have helped form our own culture.

It is difficult to think about communications technology because the medium shapes thinking, and it is not easy to think about thinking.

It is the problem of the Zen koan, 'How can the hand grasp itself grasping?' Thought is so intimately associated with the conventions of a technology that it is hard for users to see that different media are independent means for the expression of our thoughts - for whatever purpose.

The challenge is to break out of the confines imposed by immersion in the conventions of our own technologies to understand the thinking of cultures whose conventions for communicating are unfamiliar to us. Web 2.0 is a bad example of this - Many are finding it hard to go beyond it and are making up new 'definitions' for it.

Alphabet users have a hard time giving up their literate intuitions, for the adoption of writing systems that have transformed human thought. Stated more accurately, human consciousness, perceptions, relationships, society, even values are now different from what they were before this innovation.

This is why the change from an oral to a written technology in the ancient Greek civilization might shed light on events now underway in our own.

Read on ...

USA - Information Highway Robbers?

2006-05-17T18:16:00.000+02:00

What makes the Internet revolutionary is that it is democratic, open to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.

That could soon change.

The US House of Reps was setting to vote on the “Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act of 2006,” a bill written by the telephone and cable TV corporations.

Among other provisions, the act formally guts what is known as the First Amendment of the Internet - network neutrality. The Senate will consider a similar bill in late May or early June.

Net neutrality ensures that the public can view the smallest blog just as easily as the largest corporate Web site and prevents companies like AT&T from rigging the playing field for only the highest-paying sites and services.

By not including network neutrality protections, the COPE Act upholds a 2005 ruling from the Federal Communications Commission that allows Internet service providers - telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon and cable companies like Comcast - to charge Web content creators a fee to make their sites readily accessible.

For example, take a filmmaker who wants to produce a documentary and distribute it to the public on his Web site - free. Under this new legislation, a service provider like AT&T would be able to charge the filmmaker for making his content available to their customers.

Or, if AT&T (or somebody within the government) did not approve of the documentary, it could refuse to let its customers access it all together—thereby allowing corporate censorship of a medium now characterized by the freewheeling exchange of ideas. In effect, the legislation allows the telecom industry to become the tollbooth operator on the information superhighway.

The Internet will begin to look like cable TV, where viewers can only choose from available options. Where is ITU? What are they doing?

The Internet has always been driven by innovation. Content succeeds or fails on their own merit. Without net neutrality, decisions now made collectively by millions of users will be made in corporate boardrooms.

To harness the power of those millions is the goal of Save the Internet.com, whose key players in addition to Free Press include MoveOn, Punk Voter, along with bloggers like Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit and Matt Stoller at MyDD.

But as netizens are heeding a call to arms, the telecom industry has responded with a counterattack. Watch Mike “Industry Sock Puppet” McCurry, the former press spokesman for President Bill Clinton. McCurry is now a partner at Public Strategies, a PR firm whose motto is “managing campaigns for corporations around the clock, around the world.” In other words he is a 24-hour toy boy for the telecom industry.

McCurry is a masterful propagandist. Consider his 561-word Huffington Post screed against the slimy “net neuts.” Of the 26 sentences in this “essay,” 11 of them were rhetorical questions.

My rhetorical question is, 'Mike McCurry, when did you decide to become an industry whore?'

What to do?

Sign a petition that demands Congress to pass enforceable net neutrality provisions. Visit SavetheInternet.com and make your voice heard.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Net Neutrality, WSIS, eGovernance

Just in time information

2006-05-17T16:00:00.000+02:00

The rising tide of user-created content and of companies decentralizing - and in some instances reversing - their communications models, is throwing everything into question.

Publishers (content creatures or aggregators) are being pulled in both directions especially when it comes to the fraught area of hosting communities and user generated content.

Who in the end will benefit? Making a buck or making a difference? Both probably – one doesn’t disregard a profits AND societal benefits. It happens all the time.

Information has become a strategic economic and business resource as well as a social and political tool. Thus the introduction of censorship and filtering tools.

And let’s not kid ourselves – censorship is a profitable business. There is money in misinformation.

Google is the best case on a small scale that there is a huge profit in ‘altering’ a normal communication flow. Pay for position in the form of product placement - either on the shelf or on Oprah - is the marketing backbone of the FMCG industry and is becoming the norm in the Web 2.0 world.

This new pattern generates more than just technical issues (No - not AJAX - it is not the 'just in time' platform that all you seem to think it is); it creates issues around how information is created in the first place.

What information should be filtered? How can we identify deceptive information? When we see the same data, do we get the same information? How do filters which are known to impact information quality?

So what's the big deal?

Social norms are cultural phenomena that naturally emerge in humans (and animals) and help to prescribe and proscribe normative patterns of behavior. Social media is affecting these norms at all levels of communications and within all organizations. I mean really starting to drive change.

Virtual is becoming reality. Most of us have played with virtual communities. Some of us actually role-play in some sim-wannabes. Relationships, networks and now economic models are becoming real with virtual ATMs passing out real dollars.

\after.the.fact\ And real lawsuits have also started.

Nothing new, the military saw this a decade ago - so did Bill Joy.

In many application areas, including urban planning, utility workflow, guideline and protocol management, architecture and biology to name a few, information is being introduced into the equation. 'Time' as a variable (composite and/or periodic events, mutually related by temporal constraints on the desired outcome) and geo-positioning are also becoming very important.

Such events represent ‘classes’, since they can be instantiated to specific executions of the decision making process and each execution must ‘respect’ the temporal constraints imposed on the corresponding classes.

Research is being done using constraint propagation algorithms to deal with constraint inheritance and to perform temporal consistency checking.

Needless to say - don't read that paper - all it means is that information, in several different forms, hits a human from all angles and this 'puzzle' needs to be digested in a way that makes sense within the constraints of todays societal norms crossed with the specific individual’s norms. Agents are being developed for AI purposes but also for medical or biometric uses. Robotics will develop these further until body-machine implants can communicate directly with the primary sensory areas of our cerebral cortex.

Today, with more information and the recognition that information is digested in a cognitive fashion using all the senses (and more), information is actually affecting our beings beyond what we consciously recognize. The basic premise of information and biology are closer than we think.

Ever feel you have just realized that you know something but you don't know how you know? That's what I am talking about but not necessarily at the level of the individual – if smart mobs act similar to individuals, how is information digested by the mob – reminds you a bit of the Borgs, eh?

Weird but true – we’re sorta going in the same direction.

But it’s not about community decision making. I think that it’s more about the ‘just in time’ aspect of information. The ‘when and where’ are just as important as the information itself.

The development of the social media arena is actually changing the context-aware adaptive communication protocols that we use - like wearable devices, user-centric mobile services, peer discovery or networking communities.

These can be reconfigured according not only to the local context, but also to the context of the learning triggers (read: value) like time and position as well as the softer triggers like shadow, texture, smell and associative pairing.

Contextual information and how it is configured feed a Markov decision process that derives the appropriate value to the receiver of the information – marketers rely on this – the education industry doesn’t quite get it yet.

The advantages of this are illustrated using an adaptive group communication situation that is being validated by the increase use of mobile devices as communication delivery platforms.

Just in time information IS important and will transition facilitate a transition to Web 3.0 – it is as important where you get the info as the info itself.

Google hacking and Cantennas

2006-05-16T12:54:00.000+02:00

I was having a late night Skype conference where we were discussing some of the finer points of Google hacking ... basically, the using of search engines to find systems vulnerabilities.

Generally inquisitive people can use carefully crafted searches to find things like open ports, overly revealing error messages or even (smokin' ...) password files on a target organization's computer systems.

Blame the popularity of the somewhat imprecise phrase "Google hacking" on Johnny Long and the virtual swap meet where members exchange and rate intricately written Google searches.

We all know the commonly agreed-upon protocol called a "robots.txt" file. This file, which is placed in the root directory of a website, contains instructions about files or folders that should not be indexed by search engines ... check out the White House's file at just for fun.

Many companies that run search engines heed the instructions in this file but others look at this as a roadmap to success.

Then technology takes from the garbage can and delivers! Cantennas - I thought that these things died a slow death but now an increasing number of users in the developing nations where the cost for a connection is high enough to pay for first class schools for the average dictator.

Nothing new but as wireless carriers spend billions for the hardware and software needed for modern mobile networks all you need is a juice can and some legos to connect to a free 802.11b network.

Homebrew 802.11 devices will not outperform most commercial products.

You can forget about a potato chip container or soup can follow today's move toward Non Line-of-Sight wireless connections - one tree branch and you're toast.

So, what draws people to tinker with their Airport AP or WLAN card?

The same drive for freedom that powered people like homebrew computer fan Steve Wozniak is at the heart of the free wireless movement today.

Juice up your Tin Cantenna with a surplus satellite dish and here's a spreadsheet for optimum can size calculation (I kid you not!)

Another case of the doc's 'technology giveth and technology taketh away'.

Event: Who Controls and Protects the Digital Me?

2006-05-15T22:19:00.000+02:00

The Identity Mashup Conference is a three-day event to explore the role of identity systems (tools that let users and merchants know whom to trust on the web) in furthering or inhibiting privacy, civil liberties and new forms of civic participation.

A variety of parties — governments, technology companies, international agencies, non-profits, financial institutions, health organizations, and merchants among them — are clamoring for identity systems to address a spectrum of issues from terrorism and child pornography to identity theft and spam.

The proposals vary dramatically from national ID cards with centralized data stores and a single universal identifier to highly-distributed “user-centric” models with distributed data stores and authenticated anonymity. The goal of this conference is to examine the problems these organizations are trying to address and assess which solutions offer the greatest benefit.

Identity Mashup Conference: Who Controls and Protects the Digital Me?, June 19-21
To find out more, and to register, please see www.identitymash-up.org

Information capitalism

2006-05-06T11:32:00.000+02:00

I'm thinking about Marx and I am also thinking about a book i read a while back called Linked: How everything is connected to everything else and what it means, by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi.

Barabasi says that - scientifically speaking - everything we thought we knew about networks is wrong.

How do we know? The internet is the first real man-made network that functions like an organic one. It's possible to study it because every aspect of it can be quantified and measured, and all its functions are known. Exploration and analysis of the Internet has overturned many network theories of which, admittedly, I knew nothing.

Barabasi's writing style is highly entertaining and readable, and the story fascinating.The book ranges from six degrees of separation to Hollywood to cellular dynamics and why we haven't cured cancer yet. It talks about the long tail, the 80/20 rule, social networking and many other topics of interest for the Wannabe 2.0 crowd.

But let's get deeper - into the areas of the social sciences that - for complex reasons - have developed a strange amnesia about the functioning of capitalism. I want to suggest that if one examines the wider panorama - of which mainstream sociology and its interface with cultural
and developmental studies is but a small part - it is not difficult to locate works on ICTs that have escaped this amnesia and are thus more likely to be of an enduring value in sustaining the sociological imagination in the Information Age.

In particular, the emerging 'spatial turn' in the social sciences has the potential to offer materialist, empirically grounded and theoretically engaging analytic resources that should appeal to critically orientated sociologists with an interest in ICTs in an age of informational capitalism.

If we focus on the impact that social media is having at the interface of sociology and social geography - especially, work in the area of contemporary 'Urban Studies' – I think we begin to find analyses of social technology better able to provide the sorts of sociostructural and contexts that for the normal Joe - actually make sense.

Corporate blogging is one example but the the base improvement is in decision-making transparency or discriminations made on the pemise of social norms (in the case, the social norms of the workplace).

The 'cultural turn' that preceded much of the contemporary interest in social media or in general, ICTs, led to a widespread antipathy towards the funding of small technology projects in the developing world. Look at the Middle East and Korea for polar examples.

Local projects is but a small part - it is not difficult to locate works on ICTs that have escaped this amnesia and are thus more likely to be of an enduring value in sustaining the sociological imagination in the Information Age.

In particular, the emerging 'spatial turn' in the social sciences has the potential to offer materialist, empirically grounded and theoretically engaging analytic resources that should appeal to critical nay-sayers with an interest in ICTs in an age of informational capitalism.

The problem and concern now are that cultural analyses derived more from the humanities than the focus on issues of the body, the virtual, connected identity, AI and so on.

What had happened was a failure on the part of western society to respond to the demise of Marxist social theory and the emergence of a virulent informational capitalism.

What might a critical economic model look like in today's informationalized, yet ever more capitalist, world order?

If Marxism served pre-eminently as an arme de critique in a previous class-structured, nationally bounded manufacturing society, then what might instead replace Marxism in an era where axial principles of class, nation and industry have ostensibly yielded those of virtual identities, a global re-ordering and the production, circulation and consumption of communications?

Hmmm

Technorati Tags: Marx, Social Media, ICTs, Society

Military freedom to watch

2006-05-05T12:47:00.000+02:00

There is a feeder story in the Times Online about the new US embassy in Iraq.

Officially, the design of the compound is supposed to be a secret, but you cannot hide the giant construction cranes and the concrete contours of the 21 buildings that are taking shape.

One question puzzles and enrages the Iraqis: how is it that the Americans cannot keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a couple of hours a day, yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy on Earth?

Size = 42-hectare (104-acres)
Cost (so far) = $592 million (£312 million)

The second question is, 'What is the purpose of this building, anyways?'

Here's a clue.

The story is the US will create a wireless net for all of Iraq. That's a good thing - freedom of speech - access to information - blogging - letting the world no what it's like to live in a democracy.

But a bigger story is that DARPA is issuing RFPs for WIFI enabled cyborg-insect drones (UAVs) create the most watched and listened to country on earth.

There is (naturally) a requirement that U.S.-based CDMA technology be installed. Some wireless analysts have criticized the plan as being out of step with most other wireless services in the Middle East, potentially creating problems with roaming.

Like the US military want roaming ....

US lawmakers suggest that CDMA is more compatible with delivering broadband and upcoming third-generation wireless services than GSM. The people are going to expect, going to want the advanced broadband.

Means to an end?

This is a true 'technology giveth - technology taketh away' situation. This will take the London case-study to a new level and not a very encouraging one.

To many, the development of CCTV in public areas, linked to computer databases of people's pictures and identity, presents a serious breach of civil liberties. Critics fear the possibility that one would not be able to meet anonymously in a public place or drive and walk anonymously around a city.

Demonstrations or assemblies in public places could be affected as the state would be able to collate lists of those leading them, taking part, or even just talking with protesters in the street.

In this case, Iraq will be monitored wall to wall with sound and video. Even the possibility to follow and get into those places that would normally be blind-sited ... like private backyards and possibly even inside buildings.

Gatekeepers? Oh ... here's one ....

The UrbanEye Project will measure the effects on society and allow the public to see the reports and outcomes but look at the partners ... don't see what I see? Look a bit closer.

There's always another story behind the story.

Consumer is king

2006-05-04T13:45:00.000+02:00

I like it when the consumer has a strong say in what types of technology will be used as standards.

In the aregunment of determining which of the two blue-laser DVD formats — Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD — will be the winner in the battle to replace DVDs for high-definition content, the pornography industry will likely play a big role. Let's face it - the 'users' don't get a hand in this and quite honestly, they don't care as long at the close ups are, ummm, 'close up'.

The article ends with the voice of reason, though, which is something you don't always see when mainstream publications try to hop on the porno bandwagon - that's a wagon you don't want to fall off of ... ba dum pum pum ....

Too bad the 802.11n discussion isn't on the same track.

What do conference delegates really want?

2006-05-03T17:36:00.000+02:00

Just as an add-on to the post below, I think that product placement at these types of conferences is becoming pervasive - just look at the number of Social Media and Blogging conferences where the sponsors are also the speakers.

There are quite a few coming up in 2006 - some good - more wannabes.

I was looking at the 'Blogs and Social media Forum' in May - I was thinking of going but it seems to be a bunch of vendors pitching the audience - program seems a bit tired. The pharmaceutical, finance and IT industries are great at setting up conferences to promote themselves.

I am not hitting on these guys (my good buddy Euan is also speaking) but c'mon - I'm looking for impact - not how to make my blog rank high in Technorati. (OK - that was unjust but you know what I mean)

I want to see a social media conference that has social engineers, anthropologists and people working in international development or 3rd world projects; not VCs, Web 2.0 has-beens and the big media boys. I want to hear from linguists or from those measuring gender indicators - certainly religious, military and social informatics types.

Throw in a psychologist, a farmer and a criminologist - now that would make a great conference.

This is where I'll learn something more than just where to spend my budget.

After.the.fact: Read the review from Suw Charman - it supports my comments above and below. Got lots of emails on this one but sorry, Suw got it right.

Comments answered about Web 2.0

2006-05-03T12:42:00.000+02:00

Marc wrote that Jeff Jarvis is bored as seen through his blogging of the We Media event in London, UK. Actually - lots of people were bored. We Media Fringe could have been interesting but looks like they were bought.

Marc (owner of web 2.0 company - that is to say that he sorta knows what he is talking about and allowed me to use his name) goes on to ask me several questions. I'll try to answer some of them here because I think that they are great questions.

When the so called 2.0ers question the validity of the medium where they live - that's is something worthwhile to discuss. You can figure out the questions by reading the answers...

1. If selected C-listers links to each other in an organized way - you create an A-lister who then returns the favor. I have actually seen this happen. Like a well planned implementation of SEM/SEO with a bit of Google bombing thrown in for good measure, it works the same way with blogs and wikis.

2. I know of several companies that are paying for 'product placement' on blogs and wikis. I know of few marketing execs that have been rebuffed - most bloggers and wiki owners will take the cash and run - nature of the beast, I'm afraid. It is a legitimate vehicle to use if you can define the target audience.

Don't believe what you read - be skeptical of most A-listers and watch who they link to and what they write about. It's not just the blogroll - watch the body links as well. Quite a few of them are 'owned'.

3. The concept of Web 2.0 is finished - it's now owned by corporations either from a funding perspective or from the buy-build-or-renovate crowd. There will be a new alternative. I am not sure what but just as Bill Joy saw the signs in '98, the signs are presenting themselves now.

Like interWhatever, xWhatever and iWhatever - Whatever 2.0 is a has-been.

No need to rethink your business model - there are lots of followers out there that haven't figured it out but be cautious - the alternative can blind-side you if you are not watching. Readers are becoming jaded.

4. Most seasoned bloggers don't create original content - most just quote other sources of media or their friends. It's quite simple with RSS and Google news. They have run out of original observations and are 'trolling' Technorati. Besides the personal-slash-friends-slash-family blogs, most original content comes from students and academia but that's just my limited view.

Read another discussion about 'Strong bloggers don't link' ... or do they? Scobie also has a nice comment - and btw - Fripp is cooler that any blog

5. The real impact is organizational more that social. Social modification is a bottom up series of steps whereas organizational is a top down one - classic organizational behavior. Lots of blogs are talking about a revolution - that the masses will take over and the world will be different but look at what is really happening.

Always look in your own backyard as a good measure.

Milbloggers ARE getting the word out but what is the effect - the US government is planning on making the same mistake with Iran yet holds a publicly hypocritical position with India and North Korea. Big business is behind them because of the new consumers that would be created are needed to feed the capitalist machine.

Exxon anounces US$8billion in quarterly revenue and it's not gouging. Rome says that, 'Europe is a Christian culture' and the EU has agreed. There are 25 million Muslims in the EU, more than the population of most individual member countries.

The only real difference that I see is the growing indifference.

The public is becoming indifferent. They just don't care anymore. They talk the talk but refuse to walk the walk. I see it in my daughters, my colleagues and peers and within the academic fields. It's the 'making a difference vs. making a killing' argument.

As NWA said in the '90s- don't believe the hype. This doesn't mean that you stop trying - keep up the attitude and the small cracks in the 8 foot think wall will start to make a difference but we are a ways away.

6. Definitely 'the means to the end'. There will never be an end - but the way is a helloffa trip. This is why there is a definite power shift from your IT team to your creative team. It's organic. IT needs a 'end date' and 'end state' in order to function. All the creative team needs is a start date.

7. It's all I needed.

Thx for the email.

Technorati Tags: credibility, blogs

A step backwards

2006-05-03T12:05:00.000+02:00

Dear users of social media: Are your so-called A-listers telling the truth?

Ever consider that the world is treating information the same way that we would choose a product out of a catalogue. This is a retro-trend that is catching up in a similar pattern to technology in the 80's and 90's.

You know about 'cocooning' - the need to retreat from the harsh realities of life, which was big in the 80s and 90s - and you may have seems the blogosphere go from trendsetting alternative media to Blogvertizing 2.0. You understand the concept of 'Hiving' and you may even have visited one of those 'Homes of the Future', with talking fridges and annoying robots doing a Jetson’s wannabe spiel.

Fact is, consumers' access to information is and will forever be their alienable right and most prized possession, which means spotting new information, before others do, could net you serious bucks, euros, pounds and yens.

Forrester and the big media giants have finally caught on. The Scobelizer becomes the Scobeladvertizer.

So the big thing in the world of domestic bliss right now? How about re-creating experiences from the outside world into subsperiences for the mind? I am seeing a social trend I'll call 'offliners'. People will re-discover the richness of staying offline.

Subsperiences will be as much about extending experiences as flat out replacing them: consumers will still choose to visit a 'real' gym on the weekend, they will still hang out in bars with friends, they will still stay in hotels and they will still come to the office for meetings and human contact.

But with online coaching, online psychologist, teleworking and even a dose of virtual religion, why not just feed the brain from home. Sounds good? Not really if you think about it.

There are studies now showing this trend and the AI labs from around the world are tapping into this social cognoscence.

In the post 9/11 world of insecurity: 'let's stay in and invite some friends' says it all. Information consumers are still time-starved, so having or doing ‘anything’ online means not having to venture out, which saves time and most likely, money. Unheard-of levels of prosperity for millions of ‘mass class’ members from Sao Paulo to Singapore to San Francisco and ever-higher demands for information-at-a-fingertip from experienced social media consumers.

The global (read: western) standard is now the best of the best and preferably the best of the best from the best and most knowledgeable (read: not mainstream) insider - reviews will be done from the 'inside' with the mushrooming of employee blogs. Employees are becoming empowered which will slowly allow them to speak honestly without any reprimand. Hype hype hype. Six Apart becomes the Six for One marketing ploy.

Dear Bloggers and others of the new social media revolution: Are your audiences loyal?

From urban warriors in Manhattan to aspiring members of the middle class in South Korea, the previously-only-available-to-those-in-the-know tidbits of information is getting old and mistrusted. Marketing, applied generously just like goods and services is transforming even the tiniest allowance of credibility into ‘read and tryvertizing’!

The trend is evolving. It will continue to be about readers wanting to 'domesticate' any interesting information they find in the semi-public space.

Offline. Disconnected. Surges in communal rooms, mirroring cool neighborhood bar and restaurant experiences … or the latest in home offices … or yoga rooms … or the creation of ambient information.

The embodiment of social and cognitive theories in interactive content sets a high bar for the future.

Social media can backfire ... the hype is getting stale - we need to sit and think before we corrupt the rest of the developing nations in order to create the 'social media consumers' that the hype needs to be fed.

after.the.fact: Read what Shel Holtz says about this. Credibility is an issue.

Technorati Tags: credibility, blogs

Knowledge vs Wisdom vs The Enterprise

2006-04-20T21:17:00.000+02:00

What's all this babble about Web 2.0 & The Enterprise ... coming to a company near you? Organizational memory meets the photocopying machine? Cut and paste and offer it to the employees and customers alike? Sounds like Anthony_Kiedis is singing another song about California :-)

What are the leaders and shakers thinking these days? How is the new world of social networking, individualistic journalism and Web 2.o affecting them?

Here’s the deal: contrary to popular belief, there’s no such thing as a organization or a company - product company, telecom company, international organization, consulting company or a retail company. All companies are people companies. All collectives are people collectives.

People make products for people. People serve people. People work with people and for people. I’d venture a guess that the root cause of business problems is not financial, not product-related and not structure-related. Businesses live and die by its executives' and employees’ talents, levels of empathy and ability to play well with others… and by their willingness to listen and acknowledge that customers (also people) just may have some valuable input.

If an orgaization is rife with internal politics, fiefdoms and one-upmanship, I doubt that it will be successful in this new customer-centric era. If a company’s employees aren’t successful in their personal relationships at home, it can’t become a successful people company.

The solution is not a new business model: or organizational model: it’s a new people model.

We don’t need a new ad campaign or a new org chart. There are no quick fixes. The skill sets needed in today’s times are not management consultants or marketing specialists. If we’re all really honest with ourselves, what we really need are psychologists and coaches and relationship experts. We’re talking about real people connections, not a personalized direct mail piece.

And this is why blogging and other social technologies have exploded onto the scene.

Over the past few decades, we’ve lost the humanity of organizations. With the advent of mass-produced global one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter solutions and multi-dimensional geometric org charts and 24/7 relocation and nuclear, non-nuclear, secular families, we’ve forgotten our ability to relate and connect.

How do we expect an organization to build relationships with people when most of us have difficulty making genuine connections with anyone? So we can keep talking about the importance of employee focus, transparency and co-management but we’ll never get there until we recognize that it’s not that easy to overturn decades of organizational depersonalization.

We may have to make some difficult choices: letting go of talented employees who are more focused on being right than being empathetic; moving to a new job at a company that fosters a relationship culture; taking a risk and going out on your own. I’m sure that part of the free-agent trend stems from a rebellion against the dehumanization of organizations.

Web 2.0 and the Enterprise? C'mon - who are we kidding?

We can't turn back time - to a time of community marketplaces, bazaars, neighbourhood shops and pubs where everyone knew your name, and town squares. Or going back further still to trading posts and tribal campfires.

Or can we?

Let’s start and focus on who we can influence and what we can do in our own sphere. Let’s start where we are. Let's start with the person in the next office but let's not stop there. We can use Web 2.0 in the office if we can do Web 2.0 in oerson. Offline comes before online. That lesson has been taught over and over.

Creating a social enterprise is a pre-requisite to attend the global classroom. Remember - knowledge does not equal wisdom. Knowledge is flat. Wisdom is knowledge experienced. Wisdom creates value.

So let's spread the wealth.

Early to bed - early to rise in South Korea

2006-04-20T20:11:00.000+02:00

Cyworld=MySpace+avatars+Flickr+virtual world+people

Started in South Korea and owned by SK Telecom (Korea’s largest wireless provider), Cyworld boasts 17 million users — that number is almost one third of the country’s population.

This is possible because South Korea is the world’s most wired country, where 72 percent of all households have broadband access. The secret of their success is that South Korean government decided back in 1997 that the only way to get ahead in the world it to be a tech-savvy community, so this type of business gets a lot of help from authorities, directly and indirectly in such ways as having almost every school have advanced Internet connections for all students.

But Cyworld is smart in that it integrates video gaming, mobile technologies, music downloading and every possible aspect of what users want to do online — so it is a kind of monolithic all-in-one service, a kind that may not be quite as popular in the US because of cultural differences.

This is all nice and said but what about the impact? Let's face it, social technologies succeed when they fit into the social lives and practices of those who engage with the technology.

Society as a whole is moving in a direction that supports this. As the speed of innovation increases and the social glue of the family unit decreases, youth and alienated individuals are inclined to spend more time going through identity development processes because they are trying to "figure out who they are."

The menu is getting bigger and bigger - more social networking opportunities are at hand - decisions are harder to make due simply to the opportunity cost.

Blogs and social technologies are particularly supportive of this. Of course, blogs require having something to say while social media let you meet people and exchange ideas like never before.

People do grow out of ongoing identity production, but not for quite some time. Traditional (read:local) society needs people to be serious and fit into pre-defined checkboxes - to know who they are.

the new society (read:global) allows for individuals to broaden their reach and connect to others with similar ideas - wherever they are. Smartmobs breaking any type of boundaries. Dissatisfaction in France leads to uprisings in Germany.

See what I mean? It's not all about productivity. It's about knowledge.

Even when there's no prescribed reason for surfing the net - people are collecting ideas. They're hanging out. They're comparing their ideas with others in front of digital mirrors. They're supporting these ideas and patting their friends on their digital backs. They're increasing the strength of their relationships through sharing. They're consuming and producing cultural nuggets of knowledge that position them within their digital societies. They're laughing, exploring and being entertained - all while attending the digital classroom.

South Korea gets it. Too bad we don't. Too bad developing nations can't.

Social entrepreneur 2.0

2006-04-19T15:02:00.000+02:00

Despite efforts to spread an innovation-based definition, far too many people still think of social entrepreneurship in terms of nonprofits generating earned income. Too bad. This shifts attention away from the ultimate goal of any self-respecting social entrepreneur, namely social impact and focuses it on one particular method of generating resources.

This view is too narrow and sorta misses the mark.

Entrepreneurship turned eBay founder Pierre Omidyar into one of the world's richest men. Now, he's betting it can ease one of the world's most daunting problems: poverty. Omidyar, who started eBay 10 years ago, has announce that he is donating $100 million for a new Tufts University program to generate millions of tiny loans, some as small as $40, to finance entrepreneurs trying to escape poverty in India, Bangladesh and other poor countries.

This type of social entrepreneurship began about 30 years ago in rural Bangladesh when economics professor Muhammad Yunus launched what is now Grameen Bank. It has 3.7 million borrowers, virtually all women, relying on the bank's nearly 1,300 branches covering 46,000 villages. Repayment rates are 95% to 98%.

But now the focus has shifted from social impact - a hard indicator to measure - to earned income.

This is only a means to a social end and it is not always the best means. It can even be detrimental - taking valuable talent and energy away from activities more central to delivering on an organization's social mission.

Though it is very popular right now, it is just one funding strategy among many and must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The key is finding a resource strategy that works.

Focusing on earned income leads people to embrace the problematic idea of a 'double bottom line.' Profits should not be treated with equal importance to social results. No amount of profit makes up for failure on the social impact side of the equation.

Any social entrepreneur who generates profits, but then fails to convert them into meaningful social impact in a cost effective way has wasted valuable resources. From a management point of view, the financial 'bottom line' is certainly important, but it is not on the same level as social impact.

Social entrepreneurs have only one ultimate bottom line by which to measure their success. It is their intended social impact, whether that is building houses for the homeless or expanding ICT programs to reduce the digital divide.

The biggest problem facing micro - entrepreneurs in developing countries is the inability to access the larger public market and its market information. They do not have efficient channels to reach customers.

This creates a significant barrier for the working poor to rise from poverty. This is exactly where the digital divide sits. Often owned by national telekoms, ICT expansion using the national backbone at the local level is limited at best - expensive and segregated at worse.

Indeed, recent discussions, including those within the context of the WSIS, have reiterated the need to sustain and strengthen substantive dialogue in a global, multi-stakeholder, open, inclusive and transparent manner. the national monopolies must listen or loose their markets to the new social technologies like Skype and Jajah.

The window of opportunity is closing ... not fast, not just around the corner but fast enough that action is now needed.

Any form of social entrepreneurship that is worth promoting broadly must be about establishing new and better ways to improve the world. Social entrepreneurs implement innovative programs, organizational structures or resource strategies that increase their chances of achieving deep, broad, lasting and cost-effective social impact.

This resource-shifting function is essential to progress.

As Peter Drucker has said, 'What we need is an entrepreneurial society in which innovation and entrepreneurship are normal, steady and continuous.' Now - who's volunteering?

Social entrepreneur 1.0

2006-04-19T14:01:00.000+02:00

While the ‘digital divide’ makes computer technology an elite domain, a ‘cognitive divide’ may hinder local socio-economical development and eventually, the success of any local initiative. Should social entrepreneurs start bridging the cognitive divide?

Just a note: the United Nations today announced the launch of a new Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Development which will bring together a wide variety of interested participants as part of broader international efforts to harness technological advances for use in the fight against poverty. It aims to help integrate ICT into national policies in order to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

But is this the idea behind social entrepreneurship?

In the 'shifting involvements' between private and public approaches to governance and economic management, nations have tried different versions of capitalism and different versions of socialism, debated market failures and government failures, coming sooner or later to some form of mixed economies.

Attention has lately focused on the third sector, the nonprofit/NGO sector. The public, private, and the NGO sectors thus constitute the institutional map within which policy makers and others are looking to solve mundane as well as urgent social problems.

But is there a fourth sector, the social enterprise sector, which happens to be situated within the overlap or the shared space among the three traditional sectors mentioned above. Efforts to enlarge that sector, to support social enterprises and social entrepreneurs in that sector, must be based on a theory about who a social entrepreneur is or what social enterprise management is.

And what role does the digital revolution play? ICTs? Technology of a broader reach?

Message for the class of 2010

2006-04-14T00:12:00.000+02:00

The currently enrolling class at universities will be the graduating class of 2010. What are they thinking? Why are they different?

Here's some very humble advice.

1. Bringing online behaviour offline.

Online or cyberspace is like 'training wheels.' On the internet, you may be experimenting with new ways to express yourself. You may be developing new behaviours and aspects of your identity. If you introduce them into their f2f life and relationships, you will better understand those behaviours and why previously you were probably unable to develop them in the f2f world.

2. Bringing offline behaviour online.

Translating an aspect of your identity from one realm to another often strengthens it. You are testing it and refining it in a new environment. So if it's beneficial to bring online behaviours offline, then it's also beneficial to bring offline behaviours online. Cyberspace gives you the opportunity to try out your new and usual offline behaviours and methods of self expression in new situations, with new people.

3. Web 2.0 is over.

The new WEB 2.1 is all about the on and offline mashup. Not for the rich or the 'west' - but for everyone. The new graduating class of 2010 HAS to understand the disconnected world before any aspects of the online world can be affected. Don't get caught up in 2.0 hype. Blogging can be opinionware at it's best. Facebook is organized and legitimized social phishing. They are going to sell your so-called 'user generated content' to the highest bidder.

Look around by using your eyes AND all the screens that you have. As a rule, the integrating of online and offline life and of the various sectors of your internet lives is a great idea.

Why?

Integration - like commerce - creates synergy. It leads to development and prosperity. Both sides of the trade are enriched by the exchange. If the goal of life is to know thyself, as Socrates suggested, then it must entail knowing how the various elements of thyself fit together to make that Big Self that is you. Reaching that goal also means understanding and taking down the barriers between the sectors of self. Barriers are erected out of the need to protect, out of fear. Technology often plays a large part in creating these barriers. Those anxieties too are a component of one's identity. They need to be reclaimed, tamed.

The next generation entering the workforce can make great changes - break down barriers - think and act differently. Start now and change the 101 courses that you attend.

Speak up. Act up. Measure up.

Don't just dress up in the costume that the universities are handing out. Learn to understand yourselves and where we, as humans, fit in the world. My guess is that the laws of nature will inspire you more that the laws of the concrete jungle.

Have a good long week-end everyone - I'm disconnecting for a few days to recharge!

Look behind the numbers

2006-04-12T16:48:00.000+02:00

A European Union report released on April 6th showed big differences in the level of Internet use among EU nations, with Benelux and Nordic countries leading the way and eastern and southeastern Europe generally lagging behind.

But that's not the story here. The EU tried to play it up but the numbers are dismal. We in Europe think that we are part of the 'inner circle' when it comes to internet and all the Web 2.0 hype.

Europe is not. It's that simple.

In the Netherlands, 78 percent of households are connected to the Net, compared to just 16 percent in Lithuania, according to the report from the Eurostat statistics agency, based on data gathered in early 2005.

The Dutch lead the way in domestic broadband access, with 54 percent of homes with broadband but look at this ... 1 percent in Greece, 4 percent in Cyprus and 5 percent in the Czech Republic.

In Greece, 73 percent of the population say they have never used the Internet.

More than half the citizens of the Czech Republic, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland and Portugal have never logged on to the Net. Among students, only 7 percent across the EU have never used the Internet.

That's a sad story.

For EU businesses, Internet access rose from 89 percent to 91 percent, while broadband connections increased from 53 percent to 63 percent.

Perhaps an a tax incentive for individuals households would make sense.

Below are the world numbers - another obvious story being told. Growth is where it should be.

Committee to Protect Bloggers

2006-04-12T16:21:00.000+02:00

'Closing the digital divide is one of the most important things we could do that would have the quickest results in alleviating poverty, which is inexcusable in the kind of economy we’re experiencing in the 21st century.'

President Clinton made this statement in April of 2000. The solution to poverty, he was saying, is to increase people’s access to the Internet and to computer technology.

So, poverty can be alleviated by giving technology to the less fortunate? Broadband DSL and high speed Internet will not pay the electric bill or watch the kids while parents are at work.
Is the Internet and the bridging of the digital disconnect a true panacea for poverty’s eradication?

No but there are soem differences being made.

I was fascinated by a project by the folks at the Blogswana and the idea is that they will train 20 university students from Botswana in journalism and blogging, then those students will go into the field once a month and interview some one who does not have access to the web or blogging.

The interview will be turned into a blog post for the interviewee's blog, the interviewer will have a blog of their own as well, and the most recent posts from the blogs written by the 20 students will be aggregated onto a central site. Comments left by users will be delivered to the interviewee next month and their answers will be posted back on the blog.

The AIDS angle is that all the parties involved will be people who have been impacted by AIDS in one way or the other, though that won't be the central topic of the interviews.
The instigators of this project hope that it will be a pilot for many others based on the principal of overcoming the digital divide and doing citizen journalism by actually visiting and talking to people who are not online.

Technological change has, of course, always been a central engine of economic growth, but what is significant about the past decade is the acceleration in the pace of change and, as more and more countries have made efforts to improve their macroeconomic and policy environments, technology and technological innovation appear to have entered a 'golden age', a time when they are emerging as the key drivers of growth and development.

There are, to be sure, still many basic battles to be won in the developing world, addressing fundamental issues of development, from reducing poverty levels and the incidence of disease to enhancing opportunity and the quality of life for large segments of the world’s population.

But, as economists are prone to point out, what matters most is what happens ‘at the margin,’ and at the margin technologies today - particularly information and communications technologies (ICT) - are increasingly playing the central catalytic role in pushing the development process forward.

Mankind is facing some tough challenges in this modern era. We have progressed
at amazing speed through the technological age, harnessing the forces of nature to produce marvels that were not dreamed of a mere century ago.

But the progress has come at a price.

While some of us enjoy material comforts that were once reserved for royalty, much of the rest of the world is living in poverty. The global population has grown exponentially, putting enormous pressure on earth's resources, and we now have evidence that the very climate has been altered in a few short decades of industrial development.

We concentrate too much on technology.

For example, when we talk about pollution, and what causes it, what we're really talking about is people; about human behavior. Thus the real challenge is not what we should do about the pollution, but what we should do about our fellow man; what should be done about the fact that so few people care.

We have to look at and come straight to grips with the hard reality of an uninvolved, disconnected society, starting right where people live, at the grass-roots – on the streets, in the parks, the plazas, and in the neighborhoods where we make our homes.

What can one person do to change the world? Can you personally make a difference in your community? In your neighborhood?

Damn right!

The triumph of the industrial economy is the fall of community. But the more freedom that individuals aquire, the more requirement there is for a community.

What we are missing is a new social, philosophical, and political map and the organizations to lead it forward. The Committee to Protect Bloggers and their supporters are a good example. More here

Convergence bought

2006-04-11T13:03:00.000+02:00

It's beginning to feel as though actors need advanced degrees in computer technology and economics just to keep up with their industry. Every day, the trades shout front-page news of another media conglomerate or mogul making a million-dollar partnership to develop entertainment for new media, such as the Internet and mobile devices.

Just this year, for example:

NBC Universal acquired the female-oriented Web portal iVillage for $600 million
Disney unveiled a new Web service called My ABC, which will offer free ad-supported content as well as downloads of "Lost," "Desperate Housewives," and "Grey's Anatomy"
Mark Burnett signed to produce an interactive online reality series titled Gold Rush for AOL
Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Films announced it will create at least five comedies for AOL.com and its instant messaging service
Steven Spielberg partnered with Yahoo! to develop online programming

And the list goes on. Making a difference? Or making a killing?

Convergence awards

2006-04-11T12:55:00.000+02:00

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in the US released the nominations Monday for the first Emmy Award that will recognize entertainment programs created specifically for new media, such as iPods, mobile phones and websites.

Watching me watching you

2006-04-09T13:54:00.000+02:00

Surveillance is nothing new.

Technology has created effective ways of identifying and monitoring citizens, especially those who might resist a new ideology. Look at the first three decades of the Soviet Union. Its pioneering strategies for molding the minds of its people, monitoring compliance, and punishing non-compliance modelled government control to other totalitarian regimes around the world. Soon China, North Korea, and other Communist nations followed suit.

But what's happening in Britain? They are plunging ever deeper into citizen monitoring.

Great Britain has become what the Observer newspaper recently called the 'closed-circuit television nation,' with a guesstimated 4 million public and private surveillance cameras in use. Most of them are in London, where it is said that the average citizen shows up on screen as many as 300 times a day.

Since the 90's the US, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia have been monitoring all electronic communications for threatening content. That's all your email, cell phone calls, everything.

A few years ago, an ordinary Canadian woman received an extraordinary visitor - a government investigator with a mission. He had come to question her about a recent telephone call. Apparently, Canada's Communication Security Establishment (CSE) , working covertly with Echelon, the secret surveillance system established by a partnership between the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, had picked up several trigger words during her conversation with a friend. Two of the words were 'shot' and 'killed' and were totally innocuous.

What about the words you and I use in our email and telephone conversations?

Now the Mobile Gazette is reporting that the British government wants to shut down the UK's GSM networks next year and re-use the frequencies for gambling terminals and a new citizen surveillance program extending the use of the new compulsory ID cards.

We all know that in Singapore, all of the Internet Services Providers are operated by government-controlled companies. Each person in Singapore wishing to obtain an Internet account must show their national ID card to the provider to obtain an account.

Streaming of 'explicit political content', such as podcasting and videoblogging, is cleverly banned under 'election advertising rules' set in 2001. Bloggers that espouse a political line must register their sites with the government.

Is the reverse possible? Using the same technology to monitor against political corruption?

In Santo Domingo, the European Union and 2 non-government organizations will . The European Union, Citizen Participation and Intermón Oxfam have create a surveillance network to monitor against corruption in Santo Domingo. The project’s main objective is to contribute with transparency by means of applying tools similar to citizen monitoring back on the governments themselves.

Information is etching a new political landscape.

To date, most discussion of cyber-politics has centred on such traditional topics as political campaigns, lobbying, regulation and legislation. But citizenship only thrives when the entire culture encourages and reinforces social participation.

New social media channels are changing the ways in which culture and information delivery have influenced definitions of the privacy. This has a large effect on social participation.

This social participation, facilitated by social technology, helps us to define new approaches to such questions as the role of gender, race, and economic status in determining social change; the role of popular culture in shaping political values; the ways in which developing nations are exploiting (or failing to exploit) digital media to reach socio-economic goals or to establish new sorts of relationships with peers.

The international dimensions of this emerging political culture, especially the points of tension between the positive and negative uses of the same technology, are now being shaped. As the same technology eradicates some of the imbalances within today's society, it creates new ones.

We are all part of a social experiment as remarkable as the industrial revolution. All of us - the political class and the citizens, teachers and the students, rich and poor. All being watched.

Watching me watching you.

Subconscious extranet

2006-04-08T23:11:00.000+02:00

Just commenting on a few emails I just received about my last post .. and Matt's comment ...

With pervasive and instantaneous information exchange, what will happen when we are able to exchange information with other people and not even know it?

Imagine when you don't know who you are exchanging information with BUT it is influencing both of your decision making.

Imagine when our subconscious becomes an extranet - gathering, evaluating and filtering information that we are not consciously aware we are receiving. Our minds will be creating case scenarios (which from a cognitive perspective, we do all the time) and make decisions by analyzing information from sources that we do not control. This isn't subliminal - this is rewiring our knowledge process.

Studies show that multitasking (the replacement of linear learning process by multidimensional ones) is defining new skills in the youth of today. A skill that society still doesn't know what to do with.

I'm a hybrid - I have a job where I work but I actually do several jobs at the same time - often in the same moment. I weigh inputs and outputs and make decisions but in doing so, I often refer to information/knowledge that I don't consciously know I have.

Go exponential with that thought .... Nicolas Nova touches on some of the mechanics here. Jordan Crandall also touches it. Who then has control and influence over the way we learn and act?

Better we find out before others do.

Designing information

2006-04-08T11:11:00.000+02:00

There is no such thing as good information or bad information. Like design - there is no good or bad design - there is design. There is information.

Society often adds the 'value layer' on information and design. At the same time, human society has lost control of the amount, type and delivery mechanism. Our influence is diminishing.

Today’s culture embraces portability. The world has become smaller, in part due to the Internet’s possibilities of transacting internationally on a scale unheard of 20 years ago. Further, this opportunity to connect, transmit and receive information has moved away from simply using a personal computer to view web pages. The advent of total wireless and body implants (BMIs) or symbiotic machine-human interfaces, is just around the corner.

But the next step will go beyond the most basic and inherent constraints of our human condition so that we can increase our potential and attain an even better existence.

Going beyond the fundamental constraints of the human condition is called ascension. Ascension may begin partly through advanced mind and body practices, but in its fullest form it will likely arise only through new technologies that will allow us to completely transform the nature and processes of our minds and bodies.

Human beings have always struggled with obstacles in the way of attaining their purposes.

Sometimes these obstacles have been aspects of the rest of nature and the world, but often human beings' own inadequacies have been the obstacles. Poor thinking, poor relating to other cultures, poor competence at basic skills and erratic moods have harmed humanity at every turn.

These sorts of flaws in fundamental human nature have been extended by the ills of widespread ignorance, delusion, apathy and despair. Very soon, technological singularity - the accelerating mash-up of technological, biological and medical innovations will lead to the development of new forms of expression and intelligence.

But this is getting too philosophical.

Right now - is it possible to 'design' information that changes our social dimension?

Structured content, micro-formats, ambient findability and new models of information delivery let me do what I want, when I want, how I want. They let me manage how I fulfill my desires; how I accomplish my goals.

Information design gleaned from many diverse sources: years of pre-Web application design, the best interactive web sites and mobile devices such as cell phones and iPods are becoming pervasive.

At the same time, our environments are becoming intelligent.

Our environment is now self-designing and is being influence more by a variety of disciplines including artists, philosophers, computer scientists, designers and sociologists - all are in the debate on how information can contribute to improving the quality of everyday life.

Therefore, we need to promote discussions that take a completely fresh view of the interaction between society and technology; how this should be used in the future to maximize the benefits to individuals and society.

Globalization cannot be stopped. It's not even here because it has already happened. Intercultural in now intracultural. Physical and virtual environments have meshed together.

I met Jeffrey Huang from Harvard at the LIFT06 conference a while back and he jogged a few nerves. This idea has been stirring in my brain for a bit. To humbly paraphrase Jeffrey, the way we exchange information is fundamentally changing how we practice some of our most basic everyday activities and challenging how we perceive and use space. Yet the nature of these information-driven changes and their effect on humanity and society is not understood - rarely even noticed until after the fact.

By nature, information is becoming patterned after natural language. Cultural differences are melting into one with 'personal opinions' being the only differentiator.

I think that our environment - interactions, products and tools, space and time - will also start to be designed this way. Not by people but organically. We, as humans, do not have the influence as we must compete with nature itself.

In the Kardashev scale, proposed by Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964, he classifies potential civilizations by their ability to exploit the energy available in their environment.

We need to develope a new scale that helps us define ourselves in our pre-type I societies. We will move and interact in our daily lives with the same ease and comfort as reading Bukowski.

Now wouldn't that be perfect!

Public definitions

2006-04-07T17:45:00.000+02:00

Have you ever considered the relationship between publics, cultures, markets and societies?

It seems that publics are groups of people who are connected by information flows, and each of the others are sets of people who use the information carried by those flows to arrive at various kinds of consensus read: markets are groups who arrive at a consensus on the value of some particular good or service.

According to the discourse mostly attributed to McLuhan, the notion of the public, and concomitantly individual privacy, were created as artifacts of mass literacy post-Gutenberg.

Now, as this age has been decimated by the digital ease of access to information, the concept of 'public' is rendered non-dominant in terms of shaping society and privacy reverses into publicy.

Deeper you ask?

Historically, we have talked about the public, as in the public sphere. Implicated in the word 'public' as a singular, is the idea that there is only one entity that one could address or visit. Translation: publics are made up of strangers who are connected by information and, thus, share a coherent position as receivers of that information.

In other words, a public in London is not the same as a public in Hong Kong. For example, when Jacque Chirac speaks of addressing the public, he means all of France. If he uses the "local" hall or arena - information is contextualized to local public issues.

Yet, Chirac cannot speak of addressing the public in a global sense because he is not addressing the poor farmer in Kenya. Likewise, that Kenyan's notion of a public doesn't include France when he speaks in his town's public square.

It's more than content and more than information: the digital effect deals with relationships that transcends the traditional reach.

Digital life has really screwed with the notion of public, removing traditional situationism that connects strangers. If the Kenyan farmer is connected to the internet and reads French, he can be a part of Chirac's public. Yet, this does not mean that the French websites would include him in their public, nor does it mean that his public acts would be equally visible by other constituents of the same websites.

This is where social networks have made their mark. This is the new definition of information sharing and thus, knowledge sharing.

Digital architectures alter the structure of social life and information flow. Persistence, searchability, the collapse of distance and time and certainly, the ability to forward and copy are not factors that most everyday people consider when living unmediated lives.

Yet, they are increasingly becoming the societal norm.

Throughout the 20th century, mass media forced journalists and 'public' figures to come to terms with this, but digital structures force everyone to do so. People's notion of public radically changes when they have to account for the Kenyan farmer, their lurking boss and the person who will access their speech months from now.

People's idea of a public is traditionally bounded by space, time and audience - the park is a public that people understand. And, yet, this is all being disrupted.

Benedict Anderson predicted some of this in his work - Imagined communities.

This is nothing new in the digital age. Organized crime has been aware and profiting from this since the BBS days.

Organizations are behaving differently - SMEs are not the traditional 100-250 employee shops of a few years ago - this application of the term is changing rapidly - one-man shows are changing the nature of information flow. People with absolutely no authority are gaining influence.

Jean-Luc Nancy's concepts of community, experience, discourse, and the individual argues that modern thought and the ability to communicate determines how all organizations/communities succeed.

Couple or questions:

What will the 'public' look like when they are infused with the features of digital and the new social architecture?
What social effect does it have when individuals and groups can speak across time and space to an unknown audience?
What happens when you cannot predict who will witness your act because they are not visible now, even though they may be tomorrow or later in the future?

Corporate memories are small when we consider the changes there are happening to social memory and the definition of 'peers'.

Wolfe under a new moon

2006-04-06T23:15:00.000+02:00

In 1973, Tom Wolfe identified the four main devices 'New Journalists' borrowed from literary fiction:

Telling the story using scenes rather than historical narrative as much as possible
Dialogue in full (Conversational speech rather than quotations and statements)
Third-person point of view (from inside the head of a character)
Recording everyday details (which indicates the status of character's lives)

New Journalism is not fiction. It maintains strict adherence to factual accuracy and the content creator being the primary source. To get inside the moment, what one is thinking or how one feels is imperative.

30 years later, it is starting to become a reality.

Is social media the next wave?

2006-04-06T20:11:00.000+02:00

No. Already here. Biotechnology will be the next wave.

The biotechnology industry will surpass information technology as a dominating force in our lives. All industries - everything from fashion to television - will have to breed with biotech in order to stay ahead.

Products will be genetically modified to serve as mobile bio-environments that not only take us where we want to go but also ensure our safety and well-being, geared to our individual circadian rhythms, hormonal balances and brainwave patterns.

As computers and biotechnology overlap and merge, we will be able to develop a completely simulated human who can be used for any purposes, for the study of everything from thought processes to mental health and other aspects of human behavior and biology.

Content is the food of social media. Life will be the food of biotechnology.

Re-inventing public information

2006-04-06T18:11:00.000+02:00

Rejecting the 'me vs. you' bipolarity of traditional pubcasting (in which television is neatly divided into the vast wasteland and the much smaller promised land), alternative content producers have adopted a rather bio-organic stance for channel development.

Most of new media DNA (which include digital arts, vlogging, blogging, moblogging, college and community radio stations, websites, podcasts, and other forms of alternative media) are forced to subsist in the cracks and fissures of the mainstream media.

In comparison to the biggies like Fox, Viacom, Time Warner and Disney, they are tiny operations, almost insignificant in their reach. Collectively, however, independent media represent a sizable force on the media landscape, and that landscape is rapidly changing.

Nowhere is this change more evident than in the areas of digital audio and video being produced on the fly by normal individuals. Just a decade after the US military loosened the tight grip on the Arpanet - over 600 billion Web pages are now available.

Note: China now has over 100 million of its citizens currently online - number two after the US. Technology has a huge impact on ones life when the air is polluted and you can't drink the water.

Not only that (if that's not remarkable enough) there are an estimated 10,000 Internet radio stations currently in operation, most of them customized sites that reflect personal tastes and serve niche markets.

With the growth of satellite radio (over 7 million subscribers to XM and Sirius, which offer more than 270 channels between them) not to mention the growing number of podcasts and the evolution of wireless technologies that will make online broadcasts much more accessible, the radio universe will soon be far different than the tidy AM/FM world of just a few years ago. Africa and India have already seen this.

Does this mean that the oligopoly of media masters will disappear? Hardly. The 21st century is not the 20th century. Religion, technology and organized crime are the three pillars of the 21st century.

But it does mean that those with particular messages to deliver will find it increasingly possible to do so. Mobs will form on the fly, just as content is created on the fly.

While growth is slowing at most top Internet sites, it is skyrocketing at sites focused on social networking, blogging and local information. This growth in reminds us that the Internet is fulfilling its original promise about participation.

What the Internet has done for radio will soon be the same for television, with much the same dynamics and consequences (i.e. an explosion of new video choices, but with comparatively little diminution of audiences for mainstream television, at least in the short term).

We're not that far from a time when artists and writers can distribute their own work and make a living doing it. That's the kicker - now it's just for the passion -soon they will do it for a living. Millions of them.

So we will have little movies and little records and little magazines on the Internet because the Internet is made up of so many different interest groups.

All this while the media giants are still pushing Brittany Spears. Cheap sensationalism - the won't even here it coming.

What HAVEN’T you noticed lately?

2006-04-06T17:00:00.000+02:00

Does it seems that despite creating systems, complex organizations and supporting social media and communication systems to acquire and manage knowledge, we often miss something.

There is always something of which we are unaware. No matter how much knowledge we have of our organizations, our customers, our markets, our competitors, there is always more to know.

So perhaps we’re going about it all wrong.

In trying to capture as much information as we can possibly find, we may be undertaking an exercise in which, like the Red Queen says in Through the Looking Glass, 'it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.'

Perhaps we should ask a simpler question. Like … 'What haven’t you noticed lately?'

say it - 'What HAVEN’T I noticed lately?'

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to achieve the requisite awareness of what we haven’t noticed while we are immersed in a comfortable, or at least accustomed, environment. We are all subject to the ground-rules, that is, the rules and unperceived effects that govern our ground or context.

It is like asking a fish to suddenly become aware of water.

One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in. It is only when it is pulled from the water that the fish becomes acutely aware of its former environment.

The challenge in achieving the awareness to notice the formerly unnoticed - what is called 'integral awareness' of the total environment - is to create an appropriate 'anti-environment.'

Simple. Change. Now.

Internet IS the Intranet

2006-04-05T18:59:00.000+02:00

Regardless of the communication area, new media or traditional, internal communications is one of the driving powers behind the successful actions of any organization or group.

In reality, it doesn't matter what the organization is - the employee or the manager, Friendster or Fusker, the demonstrators or the riot police - internal communications is the driving force behind successful action.

The Toronto Globe and Mail pointed to a report - Watson Wyatt Worldwide study that linked employee communications to bottom-line performance:

Shareholder returns for organizations with the most effective communications were 57 per cent higher than returns for firms with less effective communications over the past five years.

The survey also found that the best communicators had a 19.4-per-cent higher market premium the extent to which the market value of a company exceeds the cost of its assets than the less effective communicators.

In the real world, one doesn't talk about shareholder value but just plain value - this can be interpreted as the successful completion of a task, transfer of knowledge or simply a collection of ideas.

However, a couple of items in the opiniosphere recently have had me pondering the positioning of employee communications within the organization and what is the role of employee bloggers or any employee making public statements.

Allot of managements have disregarded employee chatrooms/forums because of the 'threat' of disgruntled employees blowing off steam or being negative towards management.

But perhaps the opposite is true.

Bloggers or other social platforms are personalized information - they are not anonymous. Doesn't this raise the level of content when the one who officially write the babble has to officially be responsible for itaccuracycy?

Perhaps the 'threat' is the disruption of the hierarchy - the blogger becomes an official spokesperson for thorganizationon. It's a rallying call. It's the formation of an opinion where others can support anpropagatete.

Robert Scoble's characterization of employee bloggers as being 'at the edge of a company' is slightly off the mark. I think that, when successful, they are at the center of the company.

That's the threat, perhaps.

But in the end, as employees are constantly questioning managment desisions, isn't it a question of employee credibility?

If 10 or 20 employees voice their diverse opinions about an organizational issue and in the course of their discussions articulate subtly different information, which one reflects the authoritative statement of record for the organization? The manager or the employee?

The question of where authority resides is an intriguing one. Where is the actual or informal authority? I guess it's up to the listeners or readers to deduce that.

Perhaps that is the threat.

While we wrestle with these issues as we journey farther into the era of social computing, there is one thing organizations can do to ensure accurate information is presented to various external publics: they can communicate more effectively internally, providing accurate information and access to details that will help those employees who blog (or otherwise engage in the great conversation) avoid making any mistakes.

In other words, internal communications is having a greater and greater effect on external communications.

Internet IS the Intranet. Internal perceptions IS the external message.

Given that, how much additional emphasorganizationsations need to place on employee communications, and where should it reside? Too often, the answer comes down to politics.

Wherever your internal communications department sits in the org chart, though, you'd better make sure there's a strong tie to the external team and that messages are clear, consistent, accurate, thorough and candid.

If not, this new era of social computing could reach up and bite the organization in the backside.

Milbloggers under pressure

2006-04-04T23:11:00.000+02:00

More and more, U.S. military commanders are clamping down on military blogs, known as milblogs. Rumsfeld hey are getting too 'informative' but after all, photos of blown-up tanks and gritty comments on urban warfare don't just interest the parents let alone the general public.

The enemy, too, has a laptop and satellite link.

Nowadays, milbloggers get shut down almost as fast as they're set up - something is lost as the grunt's-eye take on Tikrit or Kabul is silenced or sanitized. The Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy have now tightened control on bloggers by requiring them to register through the chain of command and by creating special security squads to monitor milblogs.

Hartley was targeted for his honesty of his blog.

A visitor wrote: 'Is this a joke or what? This whole blog gives a bad taste in the mouth.' Hartley replied, 'It leaves a bad taste in your mouth? That's sorta the point.' Another blog reader, with the moniker Alberto, defended the shock-blog: 'The point of being so graphic it's to see what a war really is. Good blog, keep it up!'

Hartley was among the first active-duty combat troops demoted and fined for security violations on his blog.

'Well - what happens - the ones that stay up are completely patriotic and innocuous, and they're fine if you want to read the flag-waving and how everything's peachy keen in Iraq,' said Hartley, who is back in New Paltz after two years stationed in Iraq.

The military, at first unaware of the milblogging trend, began targeting bloggers with warnings, punctuated by high-profile disciplinary action. Echoing the World War II censorship slogan, 'Loose lips sink ships,' the Pentagon in November 2005 sent out an advisory titled 'Loose blogs may blow up BCTs.'

A waste of time?

Let's face it - the military commanders can't control the flow of information by shutting down soldiers' blogs. There's a tremendous communication underground - soldiers won't even go remote unless there's a connection - at least email - the Army is wasting its time.

So milblogs remain popular. Mudvillegazette.com claimed more than 700,000 page views in 2005, with blackfive.net not far behind.

And michaelyon.blogspot is ranked in the top 100 (No. 81) of the 8 million blogs tracked by Technorati.com.

A complete milblog blackout will never succeed - as long as there are soldiers with something to say. In the end, it's the public who has the power to make or break any blog. Not Rumsfeld.

Fact vs. opinion: Who wins online?

2006-04-04T22:24:00.000+02:00

Demonstrations are interesting.

Its 7:55 pm in Geneva and I am watching CNN and BBC. The commentators are discussing the demonstrations in Paris. I am not a supporter of violent demonstrations but a couple of ideas come to mind.

History shows that they work.

Its the fifth day of riots and the commentators, especially Jim ... are saying how terrible these demonstrations are. But here's a question: What would happen if we we didn't speak our minds, gather in protest? Would the politicians here and react to our wishes? I mean - day 5 - where is Chirac?

Cataloging the thundering ineffectiveness of government expenditures in fighting poverty is trite, yet the salience of government failure is perhaps greater now than ever before. Witness the impotence of France where, in the space of a year, one Paris-burning riot protesting widespread socialist unemployment was followed by the current Paris-burning riot against any reform of that same system.

Close up on a demonstrator reading and writing a text message. People on both sides of the tear gas using video cameras to record the action.

Now, Sarkozy is mounting a counteroffensive among French bloggers, who he thinks are mainly 25-years-and-under. In the same paragraph, Sarkozy told Business Week that he is all for 'debate and exchange.'

Then he says in a CNN interview that business leaders fear France's image will be damaged if protests continue and that investment and tourism could suffer, particularly because the crisis has erupted so soon after rioting by youths in French city suburbs late last year.

Making a difference? Or making a buck. Demonstrations work.

Meanwhile, Fox News displayed a strange form of journalism during its 'Dayside' coverage of the French protests. Fox News found the protests on the streets of Paris and elsewhere in France so compelling that it junked most of the planned segments and shows video of the people in the street being shot with water cannons by Paris riot police. The video was supposed to be so enticing that Fox played in a split screen even during a briefing from the Pentagon by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Co-hosts Juliet Huddy and Mike Jerrick remarked about the protests turning violent, but mostly mentioned people throwing rocks, bottles, eggs, and balloons filled with paint. During about 45 minutes of video, one demonstrator hurled something, but mostly the scene was one of several thousand people milling around and occasionally shouting something at the police, or cowering under streams of water from the double-decker trucks moving through the crowd.

The co-hosts spoke with Fox News correspondent Greg Burke, who was supposed to be covering the protest in Paris. Most of his comments focused on actions of the police, noting he saw some police almost totally covered with paint and some protesters being dragged on the ground, but said they probably deserved it if they were resisting arrest.

Had Fox News relied on journalism of the old fashioned variety, viewers might have gotten some real information, as readers of the New Zealand Herald did. In its story on protests in Paris, the reporter talked to average Parisians, one a young person and the other an older one.

Or read the Al Jezeera report.

Fact vs. opinion: Who wins online?

In his online column last Friday, Slate founder Michael Kinsley questioned whether readers will continue to buy articles written by professional journalists from a detached and purportedly objective point of view.

"Will anyone sit through a half-hour newscast invented back when everyone had to watch the same thing at the same time?" he asked. "Or are blogs and podcasts the cutting edge of a new model for both print and video: more personalized, more interactive, more opinionated, more communal, less objective?"

To that, media executives say that if news organizations hope to be trusted, they have to retain clear lines between factual reporting and opinion — even if point-of-view websites and blogs are increasingly popular.

Wanna know how to get the most out of covering a riot in Paris? Stand on a balcony and write.

Meanwhile, John Green, weekend producer of ABC's Good Morning America, has been suspended for a month after an e-mail he wrote to a colleague in which he criticized President Bush and former secretary of State Madeleine Albright appeared last week on The Drudge Report and The New York Post.

Meanwhile, between 500,000 and 1 million people filled the streets of downtown Los Angeles on March 25th, 2006 to protest the anti-immigrant bill HR4437, which would make all 12 million undocumented people in the United States into felons as well as anyone who aids undocumented people in anyway.

This march came in the wave of many other large demonstrations - didn't see much comentary on the internet about these 'riots' ... meanwhile the Paris students are already planning for later this week ... the future of the media is becoming an open competition.

$ign of the Times

2006-04-04T17:39:00.000+02:00

From Jon Lebkowsky at worldchanging:

Day one of David Isenberg's two-day Freedom to Connect conference in DC has ended, and I don't know that we have a handle on "net neutrality" or the larger issue of how we sustain the freedom and openness that has been so much a part of the Internet's architecture and culture throughout its history. Money changes everything, and the Internet is clearly a platform for profitable innovation.
As FCC Commissioner Michael Copps pointed out in his opening address, we view the Internet as a place of freedom and openness where the possibilities for innovation are endless, with a dumb network and intelligence at the edges. But we're hearing a warning: new broadband "toll bridges" that would give network providers a cut of content providers' profits could restrict this freedom, openness, and innovation.
To ask web sites to pay for the traffic they generate is problematic in two ways: companies for delivery of content. But it's a model that's possible, and one that it's the content that makes the broadband service valuable, and the large service providers would be "double dipping" by charging users for access and web-based service providers like AT&T and Verizon are seriously considering as a way to participate in the success of companies like Google.

Jajah´s license policy

2006-04-04T17:29:00.000+02:00

Just a follow up on a recent post, Fred pointed out some interesting aspects of the Jajah licensing agreement .... little devils ....

Disconnected and Slow

2006-04-03T21:50:00.000+02:00

Had a beer with Laurent last night and he struck a nerve (as he usually does). He mentioned the word disconnected and then he was talking about something he saw on Bruno's blog ... something about 'Slow' .. a book or something ... little bit of google action and here we are, at the website of Carl Honoré, In Praise of Slow.

The book sounds interesting but this is not about the book - this is about the rest of the world that's not connected.

Disconnected and slow.

I was talking with some very smart and passionate North Africans at a British Council sponsored conference in Tunisia. What does 'disconnected and slow' mean to them? What does it mean to the multitude of people from all over the world that are missing the wave .... the ones deep in the ditch of the digital divide?

While the high cost of Internet connectivity may still remain a challenge for countries without adequate infrastructures, an even bigger hurdle can often be establishing a culture of collaboration among countries within the same region to create 'economies of scale.'

But then there's education. Seven of the world's largest distance education universities - where students and faculty alike all use some form of computer-assisted learning - are located in developing countries.

For these communities, educational resources available via the Internet can offer cutting-edge applications of cyberspace. Yet, roadblocks - from inadequate national communications infrastructures to teachers reluctant to adapt to eLearning - exist for the full success of online education for higher education.

Latin America is making a change .... Red CLARA (Cooperacion Latino-Americana de Redes Avandazas) is an Internet education network for Latin America that began in 2003. It is funded by the European Union through a project called ALICE (America Latina Interconectada con Europa) that is supported by @LIS (Alliance for the Information Society).

Red CLARA links national academic networks in 15 countries. At the beginning, the networks were based on commercial Internet services at low speeds (frequently 256Kbps) but graduated to 2 Mbps through Internet2 (i2), a U.S-based consortium led by 207 universities.

Now that many of these countries have access to fiber optic cable, Red CLARA really got going in 2005. For instance, Ecuador was just connected to Red CLARA in January 2006 creating new opportunities to get connected to academic peers around the world.

These are theinfluencers - key people that can foster change - raise awareness at the political levels - open doors for students. The ripple effect is ongoing ....

Meanwhile, the use of internet in developed countries for corporate training is predicted to overtake education usage in developing countries by 12-to-1, becoming an estimated $150 billion industry by 2025. Something smells.

The history of African telecoms is based on the initial infrastructure developed during colonialism followed by a period of stagnation during the 1960's to 1980's that saw little advancement (except in the pockets of the colonists and then, their puppet governors).

This stagnation resulted in a terribly inadequate system with the lowest teledensity of any continent. Thus when the Internet arrived in the mid-90's, Africa was wholly unprepared to access its new opportunities.

But the Internet does have a vital role to play in advancing African development; the emergence of the global information economy is unavoidable.

But it's still not a done deal.

If some efforts are not focused on bringing Africa into this economy, it will surely be left behind and end up further marginalized than it already is. There are five major areas where ICT development holds the most potential. These include:

Education - ICTs improve opportunities for African scholars to advance their own work and access the wealth of information (especially e-journals) available throughout the web.

Health and Medical Information - Telemedicine and other innovations have proven effective at delivering services over wide areas and IP based communications have the potential to inform poor populations about a variety of pressing health issues.

Balanced Media Environment - IP based publishing and broadcast media could help to shift the balance from Western produced media to more regional information and entertainment sources. Honestly. news about Africa is often filtered through Western lenses before Africans receive it!

Economic Development - ICTs can make major contributions to the functioning and competitiveness of African entrepreneurs and contribute to African efforts to become producers of knowledge rather than producers of goods.

Human Rights - Access to information is central to efforts to challenge and check governments and political forces and there are studies that have causally linked interconnectivity and increased respect for human rights.

Here's the chicken and egg question: while education should probably precede infrastructure development, how can the people become educated without the important tools necessary for such education.

Investments in the emerging markets of Africa (like cellphones) are more likely to generate rapid returns on investment that will generate the resources for improved education efforts. Guess one has to pay the devil first ...

Despite the difficulty that the continent faces in leapfrogging into the information economy, the prospects for improving the lives of Africans make such efforts worthwhile. The changes that are embracing the entire globe also affect Africa and it would be perilous for the continent if it does not heed these winds of change and embrace a new liberalization of the access to information - open the doors or at least the windows!

Western nations are not patiently waiting. Listen to this;

'Children need to participate fully in digital culture in order to develop the skills, knowledge, ethical frameworks and self-confidence needed to be full participants in the world around them,' MIT Professor Henry Jenkins told members of the AAAS recently.

Jenkins proposed that there is a high 21st-century literacy rate among teens -- measured by their skillful use of all things digital, including instant messaging, Myspace, sampling, zines, mashups, Wikipedia, gaming and spoiling -- that has far more meaning than "screen time" implies.

How are the children in the developing nations going to compete?

There is no getting away from the Internet - what does this mean for any digital divide - in relative timeframes - we better start now. Each one of us!

Why? Listen, the number of people online will triple in the next 10 years, and the number of connected devices will increase by billions.

The number of people online will triple in the next 10 years.

With the Internet such a critical component of national economies, governments will struggle to determine standards and oversight.

A UN solution? A UN responsibility? a UN obligation?

African Digerati

2006-03-30T03:24:00.000+02:00

You only keep what you give away - sound crazy?

Let's talk about Africa - stereotyped? Certainly, we can agree on this statement. Well, try this google. 277.000.000 results?

Let's step back a minute a look at the broad strokes.

One of the qualities that developing nations must have is the ability to envision the future. Vision might seem a lofty goal compared with the hard (and sometimes, harsh) realities of of the local village or neighborhood but without vision, direction and decision-making becomes difficult. Without a view of the big picture, making even a small decision can appear to be a mountain to be climbed.

Africa is such a big and diverse place. It's a good thing to have a view for the big picture. But how does this view come together? Bottom-up? Top-down? In most African nations, the answer is obvious but technology is changing that.

$100 laptop? No.

Bono and Bill Gates? No.

IMF? Global Fund? World Bank? Jeffrey Sachs? No.

This has to be homegrown - a movement of the masses in Africa and it's starting.

It's easy for readers - and even smart commentators like Sachs - to forget how young most African nations are. Even in Ghana, the first nation to shake off colonial rule during the post-colonial last half century, many people remember the pride of independence and the pain of colonial rule. Looking to the years where people couldn't govern their own countries or move freely in their own nations, is it so hard to believe that many Africans could be profoundly hopeful, despite misrule, corruption and civil violence?

This hope can be fuelled through knowledge sharing and opportunity. We all need to be involved in the discussion but we also need to shut-up and let them get on with it.

Listen to these statements about breaking stereotypes.

Ghassan Essalehi, student, Morocco outlined personal goals from his own perspective. Download ghassan_essalehi_edit_mp3.mp3

Amri Malika, law student, Tunisia wanted to see the following taboos lifted in her country. Download amri_malika_edit_mp3.mp3

Google it and you will find several results about breaking stereotype of African music, dance, women, politics but where is the African Digerati? It's there - loud and clear - just have to look for it!

Below is a very very very short list. Do me a favor and read about Africa from the Africans. I don't agree with all that I read (even so in the Western media) but it's an interesting perspective.

But we all know that being a 'passive consumer' rather than an 'active participant' is not in the best interests of a developing nation's government or business sectors. Technological self-determination in developing countries is key to their future prosperity and is contingent on harnessing the power of this high-tech phenomenon.

But it's not about the technology in itself.

It's about how the technology is used to deliver information. A cure or a placebo? Certainly a cure if social and behavior change is the result.

The Internet user base in Africa is said to exceed 25 million with two-thirds of that access coming in from cybercafes but if the Internet is to play a significant role in the lives of Africans, much of that access has to shift to homes.

But the +400% growth in usage per year is very attractrive to the telecom monopolies and corrupt or restrictive governments.

Give them a read - it will open your minds and I hope that you share the knowledge - remember - you only keep what you give away.